Rulers and Vermin
Thwack!
"Ggrrrghkk!? Kiiiek!?"
The moment something fired by the woman struck him, a high-voltage current flooded through his entire body, and his movements froze. It was only because they possessed bodies that transcended humanity that they didn't die outright — the electrical shock was far beyond a lethal dose, enough to kill an ordinary human instantly.
Because of that, the tentacles he had brought out to kill lost their strength, flopping limp and sagging grotesquely toward the floor. He tried desperately to move his tentacles, his body, anything, but most of his physical structure — built from human flesh — was paralyzed by the current coursing through it, and not a single part of him would obey.
"Your attack patterns are always obvious. You whip out your tentacles and go for the head or the heart. But through electricity — humanity's crowning achievement — we can subdue vermin like you just this easily."
The black-haired woman crouched down beside him as he lay convulsing on the floor, and showed off the stun gun in her hand with a lazy flourish.
"Kii… you vermin…"
Thwack!
"Kiiiiiiek!?"
Furious that a mere human dared toy with him — a Ruler — he tried to roar his rage, but all he could do was convulse under the second volley from the stun gun.
"Vermin… what was that?"
The woman smirked slyly and cupped a hand to her ear as though she hadn't heard him.
"You… damn insect…"
Thwack!
"Couldn't quite catch that. What was it? Ver… what?"
"K-Kii… kii…!"
"That's right. Squealing like the beasts you are suits you best. How dare you try to speak a human's language, you worm. Although, now that I think of it, you sound a bit like a monkey."
The black-haired woman burst into a mocking giggle — kekeke — and looked down at him with contempt.
"Hey, you've got some kind of misconception, I think. You're living creatures too, in the end. Whether you take a bullet, a stun gun, or a knife, once the damage piles up, you die. What, did you think you were immortal?"
Clenching his jaw against the humiliation, he desperately forced his internal organs to work, struggling to repair his body as fast as possible.
…This was bad. Even his heart, which he had been forcing to beat, was losing its resistance to the current and slowly grinding to a halt.
He would have to transfer to another body.
Which meant he needed to buy time.
"Kii… you… kiek… what… what are you…?"
The truth was, he had a rough idea already.
He knew there was some unidentified organization that hunted down Rulers like themselves. He had no idea how they had detected his existence, hidden as he was among the human throng, but that hardly mattered right now. Survival came first — and once he transferred into the black-haired woman's body before him, her memories would tell him everything anyway.
"I already told you. We're from an agency dedicated to exterminating parasites like you."
"Kk, and you think you'll walk away un… unscathed after this…"
Thwack!
"Kiiiiiiek!?"
When the stun gun fired again, his consciousness flickered out for a moment.
This was bad. His heart was stopping.
He had to escape this body before that happened.
There was no more time.
"Spare me the cliché villain lines, I'm getting bored. You only know those lines because you ate the humans who said them. And do you know what your next move always is? It's—"
The moment the woman relaxed, sneering her insults, he seized his chance — hauling his core up through the brain channel, wrenching the top of his skull wide open.
Pop!
Like a flower bursting into bloom, the fleshy core sprang free of the gaping skull and shot straight toward the woman's head.
If he could just parasite this woman's body, he was confident he could easily kill the blonde. No matter how aware a human was that someone had been possessed, when that person's familiar face and voice pleaded with them, any human would hesitate to pull the trigger. He would kill the blonde woman in that instant of hesitation.
Thwack!
But something came flying from somewhere and slammed into him, knocking him sideways, scrambling his thoughts into chaos.
Kh—ah, kkugh…!?
Stripped of its human shell, the monster's bare core took the stun gun's blast dead-on. The bloody mass of flesh shuddered and twitched, and began sliding toward a death it had never once imagined in all its existence.
"…That's right. When you're about to die, you try to parasite the nearest human body. See? Just like I predicted."
The black-haired woman turned and beamed at the blonde woman behind her, the one who had shot the core down mid-flight.
The blonde — that exotic, foreign beauty — said nothing. With a perfectly blank expression and empty eyes, she simply stared down at the twitching, convulsing mass of flesh.
"Getting ambushed or not, dying this pathetically… you must be a Pawn, at best. Oh, and by the way — that ranking system you parasites use? We named it."
The black-haired woman narrowed her eyes into a sly sliver and grinned down at the flesh, whose death throes had finally stilled.
"…There's no one left to hear me, so why am I monologuing? Whatever. Grab the corpse and let's move."
The woman grimaced and worked her jaw as if something had leaked out of her mouth, then rose to her feet and gave the order. The blonde woman nodded silently, and as the black-haired woman brushed past her to leave the room, she suddenly stopped, turned back, and spoke.
"…That female employee who left right after we came in — not the secretary, the other one. Look into her. Nothing felt off, but… something was strange. She smelled a little… like a rotting corpse."
For the first time, the faintest ripple of disturbance crossed the blonde woman's face — but it vanished almost immediately, and she nodded once more.
"Ruler… 'sovereign,' was it? A lowly parasite, daring to call itself by such an arrogant name? You're nothing but worms clinging to humanity to survive."
The black-haired woman glared at the monster's corpse sprawled across the floor, her voice dropping to a murmur heavy with chill, seething malice.
"I'll kill every last one of you. Vermin parasites."
Together with the monster, I was folding laundry while staring blankly at the television, where news of the murder from a few days ago was still playing.
"Wow, that's terrifying… who would kill someone, and why? A director of a major company, no less… well, I guess at that level there are plenty of grudges coming from every direction."
When I asked the monster watching the news beside me, the answer came back in its usual expressionless tone.
"…Perhaps."
The response came a little later than usual — a slight deviation from its normal behavior — but not enough to raise any real suspicion.
"Still, about that…"
Swoosh.
I glanced sidelong at the woman in the kitchen, Ji-yoon, dressed in a business suit with an apron tied over it as she cooked, and asked the monster cautiously, my question heavy with unease.
"What's going on? Why are there… two of you now?"
The being folding laundry right beside me was my girlfriend, Yoon Sung-ha — the monster. At the same time, the one cooking in the kitchen behind us was a female employee from Seosan Life Insurance named Lee Ji-yoon, and the problem was that she physically existed, simultaneously, alongside Sung-ha.
At first I'd panicked, thinking she was the real person — but watching her cook with the same blank, expressionless face as the monster, I'd gradually figured out that she was a part of it.
"I created an additional individual temporarily to handle the housework efficiently. Does it bother you?"
Created an additional individual.
The monster spoke of something tantamount to the creation of life as if it were nothing, and I, long past the point of being shocked, answered in a state of half-resignation.
"It… does bother me, a little. But then how is she — hmm, how is she moving around? And which one of you is the one in front of me?"
At my question, the monster paused its hands mid-fold and stared silently at the floor, searching for the right words.
"The master — the original — is the one you are looking at right now. That one is something like a copy, created from a piece of my own body. Even as a copy, it remains connected to me and moves according to my commands. Its personality is currently imitating the human Lee Ji-yoon exactly. If that unsettled you, I apologize — but you need not worry."
"That's right, sir. There's no need to worry at all. If it really bothers you, shall I change back to how I was before?"
"Ah — no, that's not… umm…"
When Ji-yoon, who had been cooking, suddenly turned and beamed at me with that polished, professional smile I'd seen the first time we met, I fumbled over my words, then quickly changed the subject with a thought that had suddenly occurred to me.
"Wait… then just how many of you can there be? Of those copies, I mean."
The monster raised the corners of its eyes upward in a distinctly human gesture of deliberation, then answered with a faint hint of helplessness.
"…I have never counted. I'm sorry — I can't give you a proper answer."
Never counted… did that mean it could multiply beyond any number worth counting…?
But my questions weren't finished.
"Didn't you say your kind couldn't multiply themselves? If it's a copy, then… doesn't that mean the internal structure is at least somewhat the same? Those… tentacles, and all the things humans don't have."
At that observation, the monster lowered its gaze slightly and resumed folding the laundry as it answered.
"Just as I became Yoon Sung-ha, if you asked whether that one is a being called Lee Ji-yoon, I would answer yes. But if you asked whether it is the same individual — a kin of my own kind — I would say, at least in that sense, no. It possesses a physical body and a personality, but in the end, it is a subordinate organism that moves according to my commands."
"…Hmm. That's complicated."
"I understand."
It was the kind of explanation that felt like it almost made sense and almost didn't — complicated, exactly as it had said. But no sooner had I understood one thing than another question sprang up.
"Still, if you can multiply copies like that, you wouldn't need to get hunted by humans, would you? Setting aside the whole 'kin or not' complication."
If the monsters colluded and multiplied their numbers that way, it seemed like they could put up a real fight against humanity. Even as I said it, the words felt like a betrayal of the human race, and a faint guilt pricked at me.
"As expected, you're sharp. You're right. But there aren't many of my kin with the ability to multiply themselves the way I do. And among them, I am the only one who can create individuals capable of existing permanently, like that one."
"Ah… really…?"
Somehow, the monster in front of me suddenly looked magnificent — genuinely impressive.
"But even setting housework aside, I think multiplying individuals like this from time to time is not a bad thing."
"Hm? Why?"
The moment I asked, someone had crept up behind me without my noticing, wrapped their arms around me, and whispered into my ear.
"Doing it with several of us is more exciting, isn't it, sir? It could heighten your arousal even further."
As Ji-yoon's full, heavy chest pressed against my back, a sweet rush of pleasure ran up my spine and poured into my brain.
"I don't consider it cheating, oppa. Because that woman is me, after all. So…"
The monster — now become Sung-ha again — took my hand and guided it down toward her own body. Then the two of them looked up at me in unison and spoke the same words at the same time.
""Devour the two of us.""
Ah…
Only then did I realize it had become the monster's mealtime.