Too Late for Apologies
The mood was far too serious for me to get away with a flippant answer, so I turned the question over in my head for a long while, but I couldn't arrive at anything like a clear conclusion.
"Well... I'd imagine anyone dreams about that kind of situation at least once. So in that sense, I suppose I do want it."
I paused there for a beat, and this time I looked at the monster with genuine earnestness.
If—by some impossible chance, some truly one-in-a-million chance—the monster really did have the power to grant what I'd just described, I found I could imagine exactly how it would go about doing it.
"If that situation actually came true, I'd be happy for a little while, but I'm certain the end of it would feel empty. A world where everything moved according to my will... it wouldn't even be fun, honestly. And if the process of getting there meant hurting people or making them suffer, I don't think I'd be able to enjoy it fully, either."
"...I see. You're a good person, Hyun-ok. I knew it."
The monster gazed at me with slowly widening eyes, as if beholding something radiant, and then let a faint smile touch its lips. For some reason, that smile made me feel warm and settled.
"Hmm...? Was there really anything in what I just said that made me a 'good person'...? Well... anyway, yes. To sum up my answer... I don't think I want it. Not yet. Oh—but I wouldn't mind having a bit of money."
Even as I said it, there seemed to be contradictions scattered through my answer, so I ended it with a dry little "ahaha."
"Money is nothing to worry—"
The monster began to speak, then caught itself and continued, sounding slightly less certain.
"...I don't think you'll need to worry about it."
That hesitation nagged at me—it had been bothering me from the start, honestly—so I decided to raise the question now while I had the chance.
"Come to think of it, what are we going to do about money...? You said you'd earn it, but honestly, from where I'm standing, that feels a little irresponsible of me."
Going by the abilities Arin had described, the monster had endless ways of making money. It could manipulate other people's memories or common sense to extract payments, or it could transform into someone entirely and simply transfer that person's assets to itself.
There were other methods beyond those, but nearly all of them had been ruled out by the restrictions I myself had asked for.
The monster had evidently remembered the constraints I'd imposed, and that was why it couldn't speak with the same confidence it had before. I felt guilty about it.
"I'll just work too."
The monster's eyes fixed on mine with quiet force as it spoke, firm and resolute.
"Hyun-ok. If you genuinely want to work, I won't stop you. But if it's not that—if you'd only be working for the sake of survival—then I'd rather talk you out of it. I can earn enough on my own to feed the two of us for the rest of our lives. For you to go out and earn money on top of that would be a waste of your life. That's how I see it."
"But—"
"There's no need to worry. I know what you're thinking, but there are ways to make money beyond those methods. Ones that stay within the limits you asked me to keep."
"Hmm..."
I was curious what those might be, but as the one being supported, it felt difficult to press the question.
"Okay. But if you ever need my help, tell me. Anytime."
"That won't happen. But I appreciate the thought."
The monster smiled faintly, gathered the empty dishes, and rose from its seat.
"Oh—thank you for the meal. It was really good."
"And I thank you for eating it so well."
I listened to the monster's replies as it washed the dishes, and when I lay down on the bed, drowsiness began creeping over me by degrees.
Three square meals a day, a place to sleep, sleep whenever I wanted it, and sex with a beautiful girlfriend whenever I wanted that too—was there any happiness greater than this?
Maybe I only said such things because I'd never experienced anything beyond this level of happiness, but either way, the me of right now was happy enough.
The monster gazed down at Hyun-ok's face, sound asleep atop the bed, and drew the blanket up to his chin.
Sitting beside him, staring endlessly at that face, an inexplicable sense of ease settled over it.
It was doing nothing more than watching him sleep, and yet it never grew tired of the sight—it felt as though it could look at him forever.
Why do I feel this way? It tried to regard the question with skepticism, but no clear answer came.
It could feel that it was expressing emotion far more openly these days—an obvious change, ever since meeting Hyun-ok. Among its own kind, it had always been one of the sparse ones, nearly empty of feeling.
At times that left it so bewildered it startled itself, but it could not deny that these feelings, tasted for the very first time, were not unpleasant.
Looking at Hyun-ok stirred all manner of emotions within it.
Of course, appetite still took priority. That much it couldn't help.
But just as humans cannot live on bread alone, it was not a creature that could go on living with nothing but its hunger filled.
Its earlier words to Hyun-ok—that it wanted to understand humans—had in truth carried many layers of meaning.
Even the way it had spoken of survival, again and again, was not the same survival Hyun-ok had understood.
In that sense, Hyun-ok had become something more to it than a mere provider of meals. His death, or any threat to him, had become inseparably bound to its own true survival.
And that was why...
Drip... drip.
In the darkness, something began to twist and contort with a strange wet sound, and within the shadow cast by the blackout curtains, something started to writhe.
A predator's growl, chilling to hear, rumbled low enough that it did not wake the boyfriend sunk deep in sleep.
"Wine after a good meal is just nectar, I swear."
Arin, draped in a white robe, tilted her wine glass with elegant grace as she gazed out at the cityscape glittering beyond the window of her high-floor luxury officetel.
It was a scene that looked like the leisurely life of a woman blessed with beauty and money—but in reality, it was nothing more than an unidentified monster, one that had survived by devouring hundreds of humans, imitating the shape of a human life.
The wine she was drinking wasn't for the intoxication or the appetite-suppressing purposes humans had in mind for it; it was simply a tool for savoring the present moment.
That said, she had replicated the human tongue with perfect fidelity, so she could genuinely taste it—it wasn't like drinking water.
Some of her kind shunned human food and drink altogether, but really, that was a matter of preference.
It was true that wine brought no sense of fullness, but then again, humans drank their snacks and beverages less for the fullness than for the pleasure of consuming them. That motive was by far the larger one.
In that sense, she enjoyed her wine under very much the same logic.
"Kind of a shame I never got a taste of that oppa's cum. No wait—no, more than that, I wish I could've talked with him a little longer..."
Arin turned over the one regret from her day, then decided it couldn't be helped.
Just as humans aren't automatically friendly to other humans, her kind wasn't unconditionally friendly to its own either.
Which meant that if one of them felt its territory had been encroached upon, it was entirely capable of trying to kill her.
And a Rook-class, especially, had more than enough power to kill something like her without breaking a sweat.
Glug, glug... kuhu. He'll reach out someday. I am this gorgeous, after all—hohoh!
Arin was deeply fond of her current appearance—proud of it, even.
This face was the result of devouring a woman she'd happened to cross paths with in Gangnam. Out of the countless women she'd seen over the long years, this one had been the most strikingly, modernly beautiful—and matched her own tastes, too.
The fact that she'd chosen to become a woman, when she could just as easily become a man, was partly because of the gazes of men on the street who fell for her and couldn't look away.
Watching them burn with lust, aching to make her theirs, sent a strange little thrill through her.
Making those creatures yearn, toying with them, stringing them along—it was a pleasure of living quite apart from feeding.
In that sense, she didn't regard humans as merely lowly the way some of her kind did.
She enjoyed their civilization to the fullest, and the ever-shifting face of that civilization, the endless parade of new humans she met day after day, was entertainment that never grew stale.
Having her survival threatened by humans annoyed her, sure—but she'd even come to think that without them, the person she was now wouldn't exist.
"So I want to live as long as I possibly can, and enjoy this life while I'm at it."
"Is that so. What a pity."
...Huh?
Startled by the voice that came out of nowhere, she turned around—and saw a young woman sitting on the sofa in her living room, gazing languidly down at the floor.
Where did she—
Thud!
A black shadow flickered briefly across her vision, and then a searing agony drove straight through her face.
Her face, pierced through to the mouth, couldn't even manage a scream. She felt herself being lifted, her body floating weightless, dangling limp and helpless in midair.
I've been got—the instant that thought registered, she moved to assume a counterattack stance without panicking, and that instinct alone proved her rank was no Pawn. She was a Knight.
Ah... uhh...?
But her body wouldn't move.
The thing that had pierced her face had become a kind of stem, boring into her body in an instant and seizing it from within.
The whole process had taken a fraction of a second—an instant almost too brief to call seconds at all. No matter how powerful a Rook might be, it was far, far too fast a time in which to hijack a Knight's body.
At the same moment she realized her attacker was one of her own kind, she decided there might still be room for talk, and with every ounce of her dying strength she forced out eyes and a mouth in one small corner of the body she no longer controlled.
The moment she learned her attacker was her own kind—and of a rank above hers—asking for its identity would have been a fool's move.
The other had made its hostility plain by attacking her outright, and what mattered above all was that her survival now hung entirely on the creature before her eyes.
"Atonement? I see. So that's your word for it. I've heard that word many times before, you know."
Her own kind answered in a voice utterly devoid of feeling, its gaze never once lifting to look at her—still quietly fixed on the floor below.
"You met a human named Hyun-ok, early yesterday morning, didn't you?"
...Ah.
At that single sentence, everything fell into place in an instant, and the filthiest curse she knew was the first thing to surface in her mind.
I'm so fucking dead. Shit.