The Face I Must Never Show Him
"I'm home, oh…?"
The monster, who had been busy cooking away in the kitchen, stiffened mid-smile the moment she saw me walk in through the door with Arin propped against my side.
Relieved that the monster, who'd been out on some errand, was home ahead of us, I laid Arin down inside for the time being.
The monster helped me settle her, then cast a measuring glance between Arin and me, once each, and waited in silence for an explanation.
"You two… know each other, don't you?"
"…We do."
After a beat of silence, the monster answered flatly.
"I'll tell you the details later, but before that… is there any way you can treat her?"
"There is. But do you… want that?"
"Huh? Do I… want that? That's…"
So Arin and the monster had never known each other at all…?
Had I been mistaken? Or had Arin lied to me?
Something about it felt tangled and off, but the situation was too urgent — I had to make a decision fast.
"…I don't know anything about the method, but if you can do it without wearing yourself out, then I'd like you to."
"Understood. In exchange, I have a request."
"What is it?"
"I do not… wish for you to see the process of treating this one."
At first I didn't grasp what she meant, but the intent sank in soon enough, and I nodded.
"Ah… right, okay. I'll step out of the room for a bit."
"Forgive me."
When the monster dipped her head slightly, I was the one who felt awkward instead, waving my hands as if to say it was nothing before stepping out of the room.
Once Hyun-ok had gone, she lowered her lashes and, in a posture of perfect detachment, looked down at her unconscious kin, who was still bleeding out.
She didn't yet know the whole story, but regardless of the circumstances, a quiet irritation and fury welled up inside her — that because of this creature, Hyun-ok had worried himself sick and worn his body ragged.
If it turned out this had happened purely through the kin's own fault, then with Hyun-ok's blessing she intended to put her down without mercy.
Thk!
Grrrrlk… glrk. The moment the extended tentacle drove into the kin's body, she convulsed violently once, and grotesque sounds rang out across the room.
Healing the gravely wounded kin was an utterly simple matter — but from a human standpoint it was a scene to turn the stomach, which was precisely why she had wanted to keep it from his eyes.
Unlike in the past, she wanted to be reflected in him now only as a human — only ever in a clean, beautiful form.
On the premise that his desires and his happiness came before everything, she wanted to show him nothing but goodness measured by a human's yardstick.
When he told her he was thankful, that he liked her, her expression never changed — but her mood lifted all on its own, and she always found herself wanting to do something more for him.
Faced with any word or gesture that said he needed her, she even thought she wanted him to lean on her for everything, whatever it might be.
If she ever heard him say he hated her, her chest would tremble; fear would swallow her whole.
Merely imagining the words let's break up stole her breath as though she were dying — and at the same time she resolved to do whatever it took to turn his heart back.
It ached to see him worry, to see him anxious, to see him hurt — and whatever had made him that way, she intended to make it regret ever being born into this world.
If this, in human language, is what they call love… then I accept it, gladly.
I love Hyun-ok.
Even if that love's form strays somewhat from the human standard.
Thk!
"Ugh… khk!?" Driving the tentacle into Arin's brow once more, she began sifting through her memories — and her expression chilled so visibly that even she herself noticed it happening.
…Ah. Humans again.
Again.
And again.
These wretched, gut-spilling bastards.
With her mind in its present state, she wanted to kill every human being on this earth except him and live out her days with him, just the two of them… but he would not want that.
He wouldn't even want the silver-haired girl who had dared to tempt him to die.
And so she had to endure.
This boiling reflux of rage she had never once known in her existence, this pulsing urge to rend apart, piece by piece, everything that troubled him and gnawed at his attention… she had to swallow it all down.
Ordinarily her emotions lay as still as a lake — but anything concerning him turned her terribly, terribly emotional.
Proof enough of that…
Drip… drop, drip-drip…
Her body twisted this way and that beneath the dark eruption of feeling swelling from within, and she strained with everything she had to keep her true form from surfacing.
No. I must endure.
If she let herself rise any further, he would see her ugly, unbeautiful true shape right outside that door.
That alone she could never, ever allow him to see.
Barely turning the turbulent current of emotion back to its placid course, she returned, whole, to the human called Yoon Sung-ha.
"Whew…"
Exhaling a heat that was cold and burning all at once, she tore off one of her own arms and flung it to the floor.
The fallen arm flopped and twitched like a fish just hauled up onto land — and in an instant, it shaped itself into the form of a beautiful girl.
The blonde girl dressed in a gothic-lolita gown that belonged in the medieval era was dazzlingly beautiful — and at the same time she inspired, from a single glance, a fear whose depths could never be fathomed.
The girl with reptile-red eyes held the two ends of her dress hem demurely, bowed knee and head, and offered the monster a greeting with an aristocrat's grace.
Born as she was from the monster's own flesh, the girl was mindful of Hyun-ok waiting just outside, and so she tried to offer her greeting through the mind-link — a private exchange possible only between the two of them, across their connected consciousness.
At that furious retort, the girl grasped the gravity of the situation at once — her blooming smile froze solid, and she dropped swiftly to one knee.
She, too, was a being in whom nightmare-like, overwhelming dread seethed without end.
Yet at the monster's single word, she turned the color of death and shook so violently it seemed she might vanish from sight.
The girl lifted her head, eyes gleaming with a zeal that offered up her very life as she asked.
For a long while, the monster simply stared at the being born from her own body, silent and expressionless.
Beneath the silence of her mother, her true self, her master, the girl fidgeted like a child awaiting punishment, glancing about anxiously as she bore the discomfort.
If that silver-haired girl had truly laid hands on Hyun-ok — if she had so much as scratched him — the monster would have ordered her death that very instant.
But weighed against the promise she had made with Hyun-ok, the girl's actions were, objectively speaking, ambiguous — suspicion without a shred of proof.
And yet neither could she simply wave it off and let it pass. She considered, for a long moment, the line she must not cross if she was not to be hated by him — and then spoke, heavily.
The girl, on the verge of vanishing, went still at the monster's following words, and with her head still bowed she waited for what came next.
If she truly willed it, she could annihilate such pitiful human organizations at any moment she pleased.
The only reason she had not was the constraint Hyun-ok placed upon her — there simply was no pretext yet.
But if so much as a hint of one appeared, she intended to use everything her servants gathered to wipe them out to the last man.
The girl answered with vigor, her face flushed and her voice brimming with fulfillment — and then she vanished from the room.
The highest of grades. The girl, ranked by the very standards humans themselves had defined, was a being that those worthless humans could never kill, no matter how desperately they thrashed and struggled.
Unless a nuclear bomb struck her dead-on, she could assert with certainty that no living thing on this earth could erase her existence — her own kin alone excepted.
She would have much preferred to carry out the tasks she'd assigned the girl with her own hands, but she hated to be apart from him over something so trivial.
Besides, the flies that had lately begun swarming around him kept gnawing at the back of her eyes; with anxiety coiling in her chest, she could not bring herself to leave his side.
"…Oppa, all done~"
The moment she steadied herself, her voice returned — as if by magic — to Sung-ha's tone, a gentle warmth settling into it.
She must never show her beloved this dark side of herself — never let him glimpse even a fragment of what stirred behind her hidden face.
"You okay?"
Hyun-ok asked carefully as he came back in.
"Yeah, the treatment went off without a hitch. She'll come to soon."
Truthfully, Arin had regained consciousness long before — only to black out again moments later, after her memories were rifled through — but that part went unmentioned.
"No… I mean you."
"…Me? Why?"
At the question she had never anticipated, the monster raised the ends of her words in feigned puzzlement, doing her utmost to look unaffected.
"You just… look tired, that's all."
"I'm fine. More importantly, oppa — shouldn't you be washing up? Take your clothes off. You're covered in blood."
The remark felt like a deflection, and Hyun-ok was left with a faintly suspicious feeling — though a beat later he finally registered that his clothes had indeed been soaked through with blood while carrying Arin back.
"Hm… I was too out of it to check, but you're right."
Just as he began to undress, someone suddenly pulled him into an embrace from behind, whispering with tender affection.
And that someone was the first — and only — girlfriend he had ever had.
"Oppa."
"…Huh?"
Flustered by the unexpected skinship, Hyun-ok froze — but Sung-ha paid it no mind at all.
"I… love you, oppa."
Her whispered confession carried not a shred of a lie — and yet somehow it sounded lonely, and drained of strength.
The sudden confession both puzzled him and set his heart pounding, but the shadow hidden within her words kept him from simply answering with easy delight.
"I… like you too."
Even so, that was no obstacle to his feelings reaching her exactly as they were.
"Really?"
Sung-ha's eyes went round as if she'd been startled out of her wits, and then she broke into a smile so wide it dimpled her cheeks, brimming over with joy.
That adorable, achingly pure look of hers — enough to stop a heart — drew a pleasant smile blooming across Hyun-ok's face in answer.
Even if every one of these moments was a calculated performance built atop the persona called Sung-ha, it no longer mattered at all.
"Yeah. Really."
"Then… can I wash you?"
"Uh…? How'd we get there?"
"You've got blood on you too, oppa. Aren't you going to wash?"
"I mean… yeah, I have to."
Even as he answered, he was certain she didn't mean it literally — and the certainty brought a flush of embarrassment creeping up on him.
"Right — which is exactly what I meant when I said I'd help you wash. …Don't tell me… you were imagining something weird?"
"…Huh?"
"See? You totally were~ You pervert, oppa."
He was embarrassed, true — but Sung-ha's teasing warmed the somewhat heavy air, melting it into something cozy.
"Come on, let's get you washed, oppa. I'll wash every trace of that filth clinging to your body clean — wash it all into me."
Sung-ha's — the monster's — gaze flushed scarlet, and slid slowly down toward Hyun-ok's lower half.