A Reasonable Choice
"…I'm sorry, what?"
The words were so far beyond anything I could have imagined that my mind simply emptied out. All I could do was stare blankly up at her — no, at the monster.
Tap.
The monster took a single step toward me, and the shadows that had been hiding her most intimate parts peeled away, baring everything. I flinched and whipped my head to the side.
"Why are you looking away?... Ah, is it embarrassment? It doesn't matter to me. Look, if you want to. No — actually... if you become my boyfriend, I'll allow you to look."
"W-wait, hold on! First of all... what exactly, what... how did any of this..."
"I ate your girlfriend. You may also call it absorption, or parasitism. It makes no difference."
The monster answered my question with brutal, thoughtless directness.
"...Why?"
Even to that stupid question, the monster replied with the same placid indifference.
"In human society, my true form draws attention, does it not? So I needed a template to mimic, and as it happened, your girlfriend was alone and conspicuous. So I ate her. There is no other reason."
These impossible things, these violations of every common sense I owned — my reason simply could not keep pace with reality anymore.
Just in case, I scanned our surroundings, but of the hidden-camera host who should have come bounding out by now, there wasn't so much as the tip of a nose.
Which meant this was... reality, then...?
"Ha!... Haha!!"
It was so absurd that I clutched my head and burst into hollow laughter.
For a long while I sat there with my soul leaking out of me, until at last — barely, just barely — I dragged my reason back up to the speed of the real world and tried to judge the situation coolly.
"So you're telling me... to become the boyfriend of the thing that killed my girlfriend?"
Judged by any sane standard, this situation made no sense — in several different senses of the word.
"That is correct. If it is the death of your girlfriend's existence that troubles you, however, you need not worry."
"...What?"
I turned my head in shock, and there she was — my girlfriend's body, standing naked and utterly unbothered in the dark park.
Earlier I had looked away out of modesty; now I had no room in my head for anything of the kind.
"I, parasitizing this woman's body, am biologically identical to your girlfriend in every respect. Her DNA, the thing humans call it — even if you cut her open and examined her, it would hold."
"That's not the point—!"
"Then perhaps you mean the memories that form a human personality? In that case, the memories are perfect as well. I possess all of the memories of the girlfriend I absorbed. I maintain this manner of speaking only to remain distinguishable from the woman she was. If you wish, I can imitate her personality and speech exactly, based on her memories.... So don't worry, oppa. I can talk the way I always do. See? Identical, isn't it?"
As if to prove its own words, the monster reproduced my girlfriend's smile — that usual, half-affected, aegyo-laced smile — perfectly, and flashed it at me.
If a being appeared before you with a body and memories that matched your own down to the last syllable, would it be a different existence from you, or a separate one entirely?
Should it be called human? Or something other than human?
It was a question as deep as philosophy itself, and I could not reach a conclusion.
And because I could not reach one, I couldn't begin to guess whether I ought to feel rage at the monster before me, or something else entirely.
"Do you refuse?"
To the question of becoming its boyfriend, I answered in a voice drained of all strength.
"And if I do?"
"Then I must kill you. You have seen me mimicking this woman's body, and you might tell someone."
"Ghh...! Th-then I won't say anything! I won't tell anyone about what happened today, so just let me go!"
"I cannot trust that."
I had spoken in desperation, but the monster sent back a cold glare through my girlfriend's eyes.
"In that case... you have no choice but to become my boyfriend, do you...?"
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why...? If I don't become your boyfriend, I die, don't I?"
At my matter-of-fact reply, the monster tilted its head slightly.
"I do not understand. You speak as though death were not among your available options. Are humans not the species on this Earth more capable than any other of choosing their own death by free will?"
The monster's words were bleak and drained of color, yet buried inside them was a logic that brooked no denial of a perfectly ordinary question.
The option to die existed.
For any living creature it was a road you would never want to choose — but flip it around, and it also meant you could choose it.
Strangely enough, at that outrageous yet airtight reasoning, I found myself convinced.
"You're right... Yes... there's also the path where I deny you and you kill me for it. That's a choice too."
Those indifferent eyes did not press me for an answer; they simply kept watching me, steady and unblinking.
Inside eyes identical to my girlfriend's — inside whatever organ passed for the monster's brain — what was it thinking right now?
After agonizing over it for a long, long time, I forced out my conclusion.
"I'll do it. Be your... boyfriend."
I won't pretend that not wanting to die wasn't part of it.
But more than that, I couldn't refute the points the monster had laid out, and I wanted a little time to think it through before deciding.
Whether the thing in front of me was the girlfriend I used to know — or truly a monster.
"A reasonable choice."
"But."
I broke off once, then slowly got to my feet and asked, carefully, in a shaking voice:
"Later on... I'm allowed to change my mind, right? At that point, you can kill me if you want."
"...Of course."
"Okay, thank yo— no, wait... Haah, I don't know anymore. My head is a mess... Or am I going insane? Was I never sane to begin with?"
"You are not insane, Hyun-ok. I guarantee it. You have made an eminently rational judgment."
Being soothed by the monster left me with deeply conflicted feelings.
I wondered for a moment whether the monster might have some hidden agenda, but as of now, there was nothing I could do to reach any real conclusion about it.
"Then what should I call you from now on?"
"Yoon Sung-ha."
"That's my girlfriend's name."
"I have no particular name of my own."
"Fine. Then for now... I'll just call you that for the time being."
"Yes, oppa."
"...Could you not use that tone of voice right now? My head is complicated enough."
"Understood."
"Anyway... c-could you put some clothes on now?"
Only now did the embarrassment of my girlfriend's naked body hit me again, and I pointed at her clothes strewn across the ground.
"You are my boyfriend now, are you not? Then you may look without shame. It means nothing to me. A male wanting to look at a female's naked body is only natural."
"No, I... we, we should probably get out of here first, shouldn't we...? And if we do that, a naked body is going to draw attention, right?"
"That is a valid point."
The monster considered it for a moment, then nodded and began pulling on my girlfriend's clothes.
"You won't watch me dress?"
"F-forget it, just hurry up and get dressed..."
When the monster asked so casually, I flushed red and answered in a flustered scramble.
The taxi ride back to my place — the one I lived in alone, the monster riding beside me — was so nerve-wracking and chaotic that I retained almost no memory of it.
The whole time we were in that cab, I was half out of my mind worrying that the monster might hurt the driver, but contrary to my fears, it said nothing at all, only gazed indifferently out the window at the passing scenery.
"This is my place."
I said it as I guided the monster into my barren one-room apartment, all ten pyeong of it.
"I remember this. Your girlfriend came here once. One time, in an entire year."
The monster answered while narrowing its eyes and sweeping its gaze around the room.
"Yeah, she was too busy to come more often..."
"Do you believe that?"
The moment the excuse was out of my mouth — she was just too busy — the monster shot it down flat, in a voice utterly devoid of feeling.
"I don't know. More importantly... what do we do now?"
Stung inside, I sat down on the bed and let out a long sigh.
I had become the monster's boyfriend.
And then what?
Maybe I was just exhausted, or maybe I'd reached the point of whatever happens, happens — but by now, questions came out of me toward the monster without a shred of hesitation.
"What were you after in the first place? What's your goal?"
"Survival."
For some reason the monster kept meticulously inspecting every corner of my room as it gave me that blunt answer.
"Be specific."
"Surviving by eating humans."
"Hack— hack...!!"
I was so startled that a coughing fit tore out of me.
Once I'd barely calmed down, I tried to ask in a voice that trembled more than a little.
"That means..."
"It is true that humans are my staple food. However, unlike my kin, I have altered my method of survival to some degree."
"Kin? Does that mean there are more monsters out there besides you!?"
"Yes."
Swish.
The monster turned its head and answered as if it were nothing, with that unbothered, my-own-pace look in its eyes.
"Oh my God..."
I barely managed to hold my sanity together in the face of that shocking revelation.
I pulled myself together embarrassingly fast, though, and asked in a weak voice:
"What do you mean, you changed your method of survival?"
"I mean I changed my staple food."
"To what?"
"The semen of human males."
"Hack— hack...!!"
Another coughing fit burst out of me.
"You cough frequently. Do you have a respiratory illness?"
The monster, wholly unaware of my true state of mind, asked with genuine concern in its voice.
Somehow steadying my breathing, I asked:
"Why? Hack."
"Humans can sustain themselves on a plant-based diet without eating meat, can they not?"
"...You mean... you're a vegetarian? Unlike the rest of your kin?"
"If an analogy must be made, yes."
Grrrooowwl...
Whether by chance or by design, a sound suddenly rumbled out of the monster's stomach, demanding to be fed.
"I am hungry."
The moment the monster's gaze fixed straight on me, an indescribable uneasiness came crashing over me.
"Y-you already ate my girlfriend, didn't you?"
"Parasitizing is not eating. It is, if anything, a process of absorbing something into myself, and it consumes more energy than it provides."
"Then some other food..."
"Nothing but the human body and a man's semen provides me with energy."
"...W-wait. I get it. I get it, but... why are you, uh, coming toward me all of a sudden?"
"I have somewhat little patience when it comes to appetite. When food is right in front of me, restraining myself is difficult."
Thump.
The monster shoved me down onto the bed with sheer force, climbed on top of me, and looked down into my face.
"Give me your semen."
And then my girlfriend's pitch-black eyes narrowed into vertical slits and flooded red, beginning to transform into the eyes of a beast.