Side Story – My Friend's Girlfriend Is a Monster (5)
Who was it that called life a fucking bitch?
Why had I only just now realized how beautiful life could be, if only you had enough money and enough women?
Why had I never understood that if there was just one thing — one being — that let you twist the whole world around your little finger, this world came pretty damn close to heaven?
"Gyahahaha―――!! Oppa! The whole world's going spiiiin~"
"Shiiiit――fuck~ Sex~ Sexuuuuh~"
"Ahn ahn~ Fuck me harder, oppa~ Turn my cunt, dripping with my juices, into a worthless little slut hole~ Hehe! Ah, I can't stop laughing~? What is this, what's happeeeening~ Oppa, you look like two of you~ Hihihi!"
"Heh heh, heh heh... you filthy bitch, the way you talk is so goddamn crude. Kah kah! Sure~ Today I'll give you a second cunt hole to go with the first!"
"Puhaaahat! What, oppa~ How, ugh, hicc! Do, do, do cunts even get two holes? Kikikikikit!"
The monster and I, drunk out of our minds, were naked in the middle of the living room, grinding our lower halves against each other with desperate enthusiasm.
I gripped the monster's twin tails like a horse's reins and drove my hips over and over, pumping even more pleasure into a head already spinning from the drugs.
Out of her mind too, the monster drooled and leaked every filthy thing her body could produce — nectar, spit, tears — babbling the same lunatic nonsense I was.
As time went on, I lost track of what I was doing, of what the monster was saying; even the line dividing the two of us grew blurred and indistinct.
All the countless worries in my head, the guilt and the anxieties, washed away like a receding tide, and what remained was only a joy and pleasure that resonated all the way to the marrow of my brain.
Money makes everything possible.
Drugs, the kind you only saw in movies — with enough money, you could get them in this country too.
Women?
You could buy whatever woman you wanted. But with the monster around, why bother purchasing passive bitches like that?
With the monster, I could just point at any woman on the street, have her picked off and devoured, and play with her however I liked, whenever I liked.
The monster's food?
Money solved that too.
With enough money, making a few humans disappear without a trace in the middle of Seoul was nothing at all.
The monster was happy too, because it could pick and choose its preferred prey, and no longer had to go on tiresome, nerve-racking hunts every single time.
And so we drunk ourselves on a life of arrogance and abandon.
When money ran short, we devoured another rich woman and refilled the coffers.
The monster ate people of wealth and status whole, and so I brushed against experiences I never could have touched in a lifetime — luxurious experiences, meetings with people I'd only ever dreamed of seeing.
We chartered yachts and fucked on them; we booked the most expensive suites in five-star hotels and fucked there; we bought prostitutes and fucked them alongside the monster and a crowd of other women.
Beyond that, we did everything — every fantasy and carnal desire a man could dream up, all the things a man who'd lived a wretched past couldn't have managed across several lifetimes.
"How is it, sir? Our airline's breast-milk service — available only in-flight, and only for our most premium customers."
The monster, having eaten so many humans that it could now take on many different forms, had bared its tits in the appearance and uniform of a stewardess it had devoured just days before, and said this with a soft smile.
The neatly tied-back hair, the makeup that looked natural without looking bare, the guaranteed beauty of a stewardess, even the pristine, unwrinkled uniform — combined, the effect was indescribably erotic.
Seated in a chair like the kind you'd find in an airplane cabin, I crossed my legs with a tycoon's arrogance, buried my mouth in the stewardess-monster's breast and sucked like a child, then delivered my review.
"Shlwup, chup, chup... Mmm. Delicious. Excellent work. This flavor is... it's... a fucking flavor?"
"Thank you, sir."
The way she bowed her head obediently, imitating the stewardess she'd devoured — I barely managed to hold in the laughter that nearly burst out of me.
Apparently, when she'd eaten her, the woman had been in the early stages of pregnancy, and she'd eaten the unborn baby inside the womb too, she told me.
In human terms, a special feast, she said.
Pat, pat.
"Very satisfying."
"Sir, you really mustn't do that... if you do... my lower region is going to get wet. If I get aroused in the middle of duty... I'd be committing a breach of etiquette toward you, a custo—mer... I... think..."
When I patted her ass and nodded in satisfaction, the stewardess squirmed, turned her body away from my gaze, then looked back at me with glistening, wet eyes and murmured in a low voice.
"Hmm... this airline won't do... training the staff this sloppily... I suppose I'll have to train you myself. Lift your skirt and take off your panties. Now."
"Ahn~ Sir, you can't do that. If you do..."
Ding-dong.
"...Ah."
"Tch."
The moment someone rang the doorbell in the middle of our ripening situation, both our expressions changed at once.
Mine with irritation; the monster's with longing.
The monster didn't feel sexual desire itself, but it thoroughly enjoyed playing out situations like this, built around the personalities of the humans it had eaten, just for my sake.
"Ha! And it was just getting fun... tch!"
I rose from the chair in irritation and moved toward the intercom to see who'd rung the bell —
"Oppa! Don't open it!"
"...Huh?"
Beep-beep-beep... Click, thud.
Behind the monster's desperate shout, the front door opened by itself for some reason, and something rolled in through the gap.
I narrowed my eyes and stared hard at it — and realized it was a flashbang, a bomb I'd seen exactly once in my life, in the military. My eyes went wide.
That instant.
Without thinking, I spun and threw myself forward, kicked off the floor, and wrapped the monster in my arms.
FWUMP!
Screeeeeeeee――
"―――!!"
Can't see, can't see, the world's gone white...! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuck――!! What the hell is this all of a sudden! WHAT THE HELL―――!!!
My ears filled with nothing but a shrieking ring, and my retinas flashed madly, as if a light had suddenly been blasted into a dark room.
Losing the most important of my five senses all at once, I panicked, thrashing and screaming at a volume I couldn't even hear myself make.
Then something like a whip coiled around my waist, and my body was dragged forcibly somewhere.
A nasty sound that felt like it was stabbing into my ears rang out with a clang, fierce winds whipped across my skin, my body felt weightless —
CRASH―!!
With the sensation of slamming into something, my whole body reverberated from the impact, and the world found its place again.
"Nnnghh... it hurts... it hurts so much... Oppa, I hurt..."
"Hold on just a little longer. Let's wait for now — those bastards might still be looking for us..."
Holding me in its arms from the fall through the window, the monster had two legs and one arm reduced to limp rags of flesh.
I hadn't escaped the shock entirely either — cracks ran through my bones in several places — but I couldn't complain to the monster, broken to pieces right in front of me.
Hidden in an alley steeped in deep darkness, I soothed the monster as it wept wretchedly like a child, all while keeping watch on the outside.
I never got a look at the faces of the ones who'd attacked us so suddenly, but they seemed to be the group the monster had once told me about — the ones who killed parasites.
The question of how they'd found us didn't weigh on me deeply.
Considering everything we'd done, and the way we'd gone about covering it up, the real miracle was that we hadn't been caught until now.
Dimly, I'd thought someone might grab me by the back of the neck someday.
Even a blockhead like me had expected it — but steeped in sweet reality, I had only thought it, never prepared for it.
And because of that, I was facing death for the first time in my life, and even now might be dying, and fear and dread soaked into me deeply.
My hideous past, the crimes I'd committed, sins no human could ever forgive — they all surfaced, and my hands and feet shook; I wanted to scream like a coward and run away, right that second.
And yet I couldn't — because of the monster, sitting huddled in the corner of the alley, bloodied, crying like a small child to protect me.
"Hey. It's okay. Oppa will take care of everything."
"Sob... yeah, okay... I believe in you. Only you, oppa."
Because of that foolish monster that believed in and followed me and me alone, I had to force myself to bluster.
"Hurts like hell, right? Bear it a little... for now, let's just wait. Your wounds... you said you could heal them if you eat a human, right? Just hold out until then."
"Mmhm..."
When I stroked its hair, the monster hiccupped like a child, seized my hand, pressed it to its cheek, and nuzzled against it.
Crouching down beside the monster, I groped through my clothes for a cigarette — then realized there was nothing left at all, and stared blankly up at the dark night sky.
The moment I understood that everything I'd thought was mine had never been mine, a nameless self-loathing washed over me.
Ha.
Fuck, this really turned to shit... goddamn it... shit, fuck...!
"Oh my? Whatever is one of our kin doing in a place like this?"
At the sound of a girl's voice with an archaic ring to it, I turned — and saw a blonde girl standing near the mouth of the alley, dressed in a princess's gown.
I scrambled to my feet in alarm, but froze halfway when I heard the word kin leave her mouth.
"Ah, aah... ah, ugh... k-kin... look!"
The monster, which had seen the girl too, was frozen in shock with a vacant expression, and I understood from the situation what that meant.
"A human? Hmm... a human, together with our kin? Would you kindly explain your situation?"
Her eyebrows curved like paired scythes as she approached us, and strangely enough, I realized instinctively that there was no other path open to me except to explain myself to this girl.
"Splendid! What a beautiful tale! Ah...! Your love is a story that should be an example to us all! A human and — one of us — in love...! A romance that shines with beauty! Like the tale of Lord Hyun-ok and Lord Seong-ha — a beautiful story out of a fairy tale!"
Having heard our entire story from beginning to end, the girl cupped her cheeks in both palms and twirled in place as if dancing, lost in an ecstasy of her own.
The monster blinked at her, shooting me a look that begged for an explanation of why its kin was acting like this, and I answered by pressing a finger to my temple, hidden from the girl's view, and twirling it in a circle.
But — Hyun-ok?
Did I mishear?
Or someone with the same name?
"When That Person hears of your story too, I'm certain They will rejoice!"
That... Person...?
Amid a cascade of words I couldn't make sense of, while I was still fumbling for what to say —
"Very well, I shall help you! First, those wretched humans who hunted you — I cannot kill them... but I shall make it possible for you to kill them!"
"Um..."
"Wait here! You. Must. Not. Go anywhere else! You must not leave the bounds of where I can protect you!!"
I reached out to stop her, but the girl vanished from my sight in the blink of an eye, leaving only an afterimage.
As I floundered under the absurdity of my brain failing to keep up, the monster tugged at my collar and spoke beside me.
"Don't worry, oppa. That kin of ours is sooooooo strong. Seriously batshit. If she felt like it, she could blow this whole city away, easy."
"...Seriously?"
"Yeah."
Strong enough to casually blow away an entire city... that's way too big a scale...
"...Honestly, I don't really get what's going on, but... let's just trust her and wait."
Suddenly left with nothing to do but wait for the girl, the two of us, as if by some unspoken agreement, looked up at the sky at the same time.
The two women the girl brought back stood vacantly before the monster and me, their eyes unfocused, like souls had been drained clean out of them.
"They are the two human agents who pursued you. As a bonus, I altered the memories of all the other humans hunting you in the area, so they will never hunt you again."
In less than an hour — how had she found them? What exactly was this girl? Why was she helping us? The questions still swirled... but now didn't seem the time to ask them leisurely.
Drip.
The monster stared at the plump, undefended prey standing before it like something possessed, drool stringing from its mouth.
"Mealtime is here."
When the girl spread her hands wide before her and smiled brightly, the monster beside her glanced at me out of the corner of eyes gone reptile-red.
To treat the monster's wounds, it had to eat humans anyway — and if the prey was the very pack that had attacked us moments ago, there wasn't a single reason to object.
I nodded, and the monster lunged at once, tearing into one of the women with frantic haste.
The other woman simply stood there, staring blankly into empty space, as her colleague was grotesquely devoured right beside her.
I couldn't fathom the mechanism, but the girl's ability to puppeteer human consciousness at will filled me with a sense of unknown dread.
"Much as I would like to cheer the two of you on further... I have my own important duties, and this is as far as I can assist you. My apologies."
When the girl bowed her head with her hands folded respectfully before her, even a bastard like me couldn't help feeling humbled.
"No, well... th-thank you... this much is more than enough. Really... thank you."
I owed her a hundred bows for surviving what should have killed me, but with the girl being the monster's kin and everything that had happened, I couldn't quite go that far.
"Then, I shall take my leave. May the two of you be happy and well in your love..."
"Wait."
When I caught her as she was about to leave, the girl blinked and looked at me without a word.
"Th... the Hyun-ok... no, never mind."
At my half-finished words, the girl tilted her head slightly, puzzled, then smiled again, lifted the hem of her skirt on both sides like a proper young lady, curtsied, and vanished in the blink of an eye.
With our airways cleared thanks to the girl, the monster and I sat side by side on a bench in a deserted park, the streetlights casting light into the dark.
"Oppa... what do we do now?"
The monster, fully restored to its original human form after eating the two people, asked anxiously.
"We bolt for overseas first. Your kin helped us, sure, but it's a stopgap. Sooner or later those bastards will catch on again. So... instead of somewhere like Korea with good policing and sharp eyes, let's head somewhere remote and start over there. Somewhere like that, eating humans won't stand out the way it does here. I figured this might happen, so I've got cash stashed away separately. It'll be enough to hold us over while we settle abroad."
As I wiped down the monster's blood-soaked body with towels from the convenience store, I laid out the plan I'd turned over in my head.
"Oppa, you're amazing! When did you even think of all that? This is exactly why I need you, hihi!"
The monster laughed breezily and clung to me, but my mood, unlike the delinquent's carefree tone, sat heavy.
If only I'd thought a little harder... if only I'd cleaned up properly after the monster ate... none of this would have happened...
Countless regrets and thoughts churned through my skull.
And since my mistakes now endangered the monster's survival along with my own, I had no more room to act like a fool.
"Both our passports are made, so let's head straight to the airport and book a flight."
As I stood, I naturally took the monster's hand in mine.
"Ah..."
"...What?"
When the monster opened its mouth in apparent surprise, staring at our joined hands, I asked in bewilderment.
The monster gazed at our clasped hands with wide eyes, as if beholding something dazzling, then broke into a bright, childlike smile.
"My boyfriend, hihi!"
...Ha, this little shit.
You can be cute once in a while, huh?
"That's right, I'm your boyfriend, and you're my girlfriend, 'kay?"
"'Kay!"
We looked at each other's faces and burst out laughing over who knows what, then set off forward together with firm steps.
Walking together, the two of us.
That's right... together.
Swish!
...Huh?
Along with a sound like something being cut, the hand in mine grew heavy, and I turned, puzzled.
And I saw the monster's arm, blood streaming from the severed end, dangling loosely, swaying as if about to touch the ground.
...What, the...?
"...Oppa... my... hand... got cut off...?"
The monster too, lifting its own severed hand and staring at the cross-section, looked at me with eyes that couldn't comprehend.
THUD.
It happened in an instant.
Within that scale of time, there was nothing I — an ordinary human — could do.
The monster's entire body was struck from all sides by tentacles bursting out of the darkness, hoisted into empty air, and I had not even the strength to stop it.
When I finally managed to wrench my frozen neck around, I saw figures in the darkness — maids of unknown identity, smiling with a creepily identical smile.
At first, seeing the tentacles jutting from their backs, I mistook them for kin like the monster — but the doll-like faces corrected that assumption.
"Ghehk!? Khh... a-agh, it hurts — what, what is this? Ghehhhhk―!? It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurrrrts―――――!!?"
As surprise and confusion curdled into anguish and pain, the monster screamed, and I snapped to my senses and tried to charge at the maids.
Before any thought of what I could actually accomplish, my body moved first, purely to save the monster.
But.
Heh heh...
A girl's low, skin-crawling laugh, and a smell thick with disgust, stabbed into my nose — and the strength left my advancing body, and I collapsed limp to the ground.
"Ngh, agh... khh! Ahehh... wh-what is this... m-my body...?"
My fallen body, paralyzed, wouldn't obey me; it only trembled.
Step.
Then a pair of small, bare feet came into view before me, and as I raised my eyes, I saw a silver-haired girl in a pure white dress.
Hands clasped behind her back, she looked down at me with a smile that seemed innocent, yet brimmed with a malice unlike the monster's — unreadable, alien.
"Fun, this is fun, heh heh, heh heh... is this the second time I've seen a human and a parasite together? But you, big brother... you don't interest me... you're not worth setting up a date for. You don't resemble our big brother at all. And..."
The girl bowed her head, met the eyes I was looking up at her with, glimpsed something inside me — then erased her smile and pronounced, with a face gone cold and sour:
"Trash."
I had no idea what the silver-haired girl was, but I understood she was a hostile presence to us, like the ones who'd attacked us moments ago.
"Save me, oppa!! I-I'm, something's wrong... it's like I'm becoming, I'm not becoming myself anymore!! I don't want to die, I want to live...! Save me! Save... khh! Save, me... please... oppa...! Ghhrrrk!?"
Hanging impaled on the tentacles, the monster wept and begged me desperately — then suddenly frothed blood and lost consciousness.
The monster that had followed me in order to survive, believing in me and me alone — its desperate reach toward me flickered before my eyes like a mirage.
The tentacles embedded in it seemed to be burrowing into its body, eroding the monster, transmuting it into something unidentifiable.
And when I became baselessly certain that the product of that transmutation was those maids, the same as these — rage and cursing boiled up from my gut.
You son of a—
"Khh!? ...Kh!, Kh!... Ghhk!? Nghhhhaaaaarg!?"
The moment I tried to spit out the boiling heat, a pain like my intestines twisting erupted through every part of my body, and I screamed alongside a gush of blood.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts... it hurts...!
With pain fiercer than anything I'd ever felt in my life, I reflexively curled my unresponsive body up as best I could, thrashing against the agony.
My heart pounded violently, and I could feel life draining out of me in real time.
For the first time in my life.
Understanding what it felt like to die, I thought, truly, that I didn't want to die.
I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die... please, save me, please...
"You're going to die soon, big brother. You won't ask why, will you? You know very well yourself that you're a human deserving of death. The humans who died because of you felt exactly what you're feeling now, as they died."
When I looked up at her, my face plastered with tears and spit, the girl spoke flatly, her face frozen cold.
With the death-god's incomprehensible declaration ringing out, my consciousness and vision blurring through the pain, I turned over my thoughts and the regrets of my days gone by.
The reason I'm dying?
I know it.
I'm trash, and this is the price of the evil I've done.
If hell exists, that's where I belong.
Facing the moment of death, it wasn't that I had no regrets — but even now, even in the middle of this, there was something that snagged at me like a heavy weight caught in my throat.
It was... the monster.
...I don't understand.
Why should a selfish, trash, hopeless scumbag like me — dying — worry about his first and last girlfriend... and not even a human, but something else... more than himself...
Is this what people call love at first sight... kikik... or is it image laundering, wanting a shot at heaven now that it's too late?
Whatever it was...
"H-, her... khh!"
Drip.
With a voice cracked to ribbons, I grabbed the silver-haired girl's ankle and forced out words like a last testament.
"Save her... save her, please..."
At my words, the girl's eyes widened slowly — then she wiped away the cold expression and put the devilish smile from before back on her face.
"Ahahah... in the state she's in now, she can't be brought back. Why save such an amusing joke for the very end, what a pity. But... I'll let you be together, at least, at the end."
Step.
As the footsteps swallowed my fading vision, I barely dragged my gaze around — and saw the monster standing right over me, looking down.
Still alive... thank... god... it's... alive...
The monster gazed at me with hollow eyes like the maids' from before, then forced its mouth open and, as if resisting something, ground out one labored word at a time.
"Op-, pa... I'm, sorry... I'm... sorry."
When it apologized to me instead of cursing me, even in this situation, my throat went warm and my face crumpled all at once.
Fuck... what do you have... to apologize for... this happened because I'm the idiot...
To the monster shedding bloody tears as it looked at me, I forced out a last smile as if to say it was all right, and shook my head weakly.
Crunch.
...Kik!
Watching the monster's face split open, the tentacles bursting out from within, I knew by instinct that I would meet the same death as the people I'd killed by looking away.
And at the monster's hands — the same hands that had killed them.
And so.
Mouthing soundlessly, I offered the monster my last.
Not love, exactly... but I did... like you, in my own way... my fucking... one-of-a-kind girlfriend...
The moment I thought that, at the very end, I could become nourishment for my girlfriend and lend her strength, I found I could put real effort into the corner of my mouth I'd raised.
Crack.
Along with the writhing tentacles, something dark washed over me — and the life that had blazed like a shooting star met its night.