A Nasty Twist
As soon as I left the company, I ran into something strange.
The dark alley in front of the building greeted me the moment I stepped through the main gate. Beneath a flickering streetlamp, a man in a suit stood completely still.
Even as the after-work crowd scattered in every direction, the space around him remained unnaturally quiet.
Huh...? Is that Assistant Manager Park? Did we leave at the same time?
His build looked vaguely familiar, so I took a step closer. That was when it happened.
“Heh..... uhehehe.... kuhik..! Kek..! Kihihit..”
A grotesque, skin-crawling laugh spilled into the silence. It sounded like metal scraping, the way wipers screech across dry glass.
An ominous chill swept over me. I tried to back away, but it was already too late.
In time with the flickering streetlight, the man slowly turned. No—he didn’t turn his body.
Crack.Crunch.Snap.
With a nauseating series of sounds, only his neck twisted 180 degrees backward to face me. Blood trickled from his eyes. Where his nose should have been, there were only two gaping holes. Those freezing pupils locked onto me.
“Diiiimeeeensioooon... Sceeeent... Yooouuu... Miiiine...”
“What the… fuck?!”
That wasn’t the end of it. As the man began walking toward me, my understanding of reality shattered. Both knees and elbows bent backward like a praying mantis, and the suited figure dropped to the ground, scuttling forward like a giant spider in clothes. He charged at an impossible speed.
What the hell is this?! A monster?! Is this a movie? A prank show?!
My pathetic, shut-in survival instincts finally screamed at me. I clutched my bag and stumbled backward. The sheer terror was so overwhelming that I tripped and slammed onto the pavement.
Thud!
“Ugh…!”
By then the twisted horror was already right in front of me. Its reversed fingers sliced through the air, reaching for my throat. I thrust my hand out to block it, but I was losing ground.
Fuck, what kind of strength is this?! Is it even human? How can joints like that produce this much power?!
Am I going to die here…? Shit… Suyeon…
Right before the monster’s claws tore into my neck, the first thing that flashed through my mind—idiotically—was the image of my wife waiting at home in her apron.
In that split second before death, a black silhouette streaked through the night accompanied by a cold silver arc.
BOOM—!!
A heavy shockwave that rattled my skull blasted past, followed by a piercing ring in my ears. The joint-bent monster didn’t even get to scream. It collapsed, its completely severed head rolling across the asphalt, painting it with blue blood.
“…Huh?”
I cautiously opened my eyes—eyes I had squeezed shut in terror—and saw the silhouette of a woman standing with the streetlight behind her. She wore a black hood, a mask, and sunglasses, gripping a strange silver dagger while catching her breath.
The aura radiating from her made my whole body tremble. My instincts screamed that I must not offend this woman.
What… what is she? A murderer? Is this actually a movie shoot?
I sat there on the ground, staring up at her in a daze as she approached with eerily silent steps. Even through my fear, I realized she had saved me. My voice shook as I barely managed to speak.
“Th-thank you! I don’t know who you are, but thank you so much for saving my life…!”
“Get the hell home. Now.”
The voice that came from beneath the hood was low, husky, and as cold as a machine. Yet at the very end, something about the intonation felt strangely familiar.
I picked my glasses back up and leaned in, trying to see her face more clearly.
“…Tsk.”
A tiny click of the tongue came from inside the hood. Then she grabbed my head with one hand and shoved the barrel of some kind of gun against me.
“I’m sorry! Please, just spare my—!”
Flick.
A blinding flash erupted from the muzzle. My mind went completely white. Everything I had just witnessed—the monster—began to blur and forcibly fade from my memory.
Flick. Flick.
“Wait… where am I right now…? How did I get here…?”
My tongue tangled. My eyelids felt like they weighed a ton. All strength drained from my body and the world went dark.
“Aish, why does this clueless idiot have such insane resistance? I had to shoot three times before it fully erased. This guy really makes everything so damn exhausting…”
The last voice I heard faded completely from my mind.
“Aish, why does this clueless idiot have such insane resistance? I had to shoot three times before it fully erased. This guy really makes everything so damn exhausting…”
Only after cranking the memory-erasure device M-D.02 to maximum output and firing repeated violet flashes did Cheon Taerang finally collapse spread-eagle on the asphalt, completely out cold.
Baek Suyeon pressed hard on her throbbing temple, fighting off a brutal migraine, and looked down at the big, dumb bear of a man sprawled on the ground.
She was an S-Class hunter, yet here she was playing bodyguard to a pathetic virgin who couldn’t even handle a low-grade dimensional mob. Did that make any sense? Any at all?
Just then, the special terminal hidden in the inner pocket of her thigh vibrated. Suyeon frowned and pulled it out. It was a text from her hunter colleague Kim Juhyeon, who was currently undercover at Taerang’s company as “Assistant Manager Kim.”
“This useless bastard should’ve told me sooner. I had to abandon the meat mid-stir-fry and sprint out here, you son of a bitch.”
She cursed under her breath and shoved the terminal back into her pocket.
“Looks so happy~? Aegyo~? Next time I see that prick at the Association I’m going to suplex him into the floor and beat his ass for real.”
Yet one line in the message kept bothering her.
Kept thinking about you and sprinting like a madman?
…What the hell am I supposed to do with that, you sex-crazed bear. Obviously he was running while fantasizing about screwing me.
She forcefully erased the thought from her mind and checked the time. Five minutes remained before the dimensional distortion field collapsed. She had to get back to their newlywed apartment, put on an apron, and have food on the table before that idiot woke up.
“Ha, fuck my life. This is harder than cleaning up dimensional trash…”
She left the cleanup to the external surveillance team, roughly yanked her black hood back into place, and leaped toward the apartment complex. Using streetlamps as stepping stones and the outdoor AC units on the building walls as footholds, she slipped through the bedroom veranda window of their new home in exactly five minutes.
Tap!
“Haa…… haa……”
Baek Suyeon braced herself on the veranda railing, breathing hard. She had done it in exactly five minutes. Being an S-Class hunter and still living like this made her wonder how pathetic her fate truly was.
To think I’d end up like this just dealing with one low-grade dimensional mob. This is a first since the mission started.
The real problem wasn’t stamina. The fight itself had taken less than five seconds. It was that dumb bear’s ridiculous resistance to memory erasure that had drained her dry. A single shot was usually enough for normal civilians, yet he had endured three. So a sensory medium singularity could manifest this way too. She would have to file a separate report with the Association. What a pain.
She stuffed her mask and combat suit into the hidden double drawer, quickly combed her hair, then ran to the living room. She tied on her apron and turned the stove back on. The meat she had abandoned mid-stir-fry had gone cold in the pan.
After hurriedly finishing the dishes and setting them on the table, she focused her senses. Far away, she caught the sound and vibration of the elevator stopping on their floor.
Why is he so fast? Is it because of the sensory medium singularity?
Suyeon took one deep breath and instantly transformed her expression. In 0.1 seconds, the gentle smile of a devoted wife was perfectly in place.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.Ding-dong—
“Honey~~! I’m home!”
The front door flew open and the big bear who had just been lying unconscious in the street barged in with surprising confidence.
“Ugh… ow, my head…”
I opened my eyes on the cold asphalt. Looking around, I realized I was in the dark alley in front of the company. A glance at my watch showed only ten minutes had passed since I left work.
“Why the hell am I lying on the ground…? …Oh!”
I rubbed the back of my neck and picked up my bag when I suddenly smacked my knee.
It came back to me! I had been bragging about my wife to Assistant Manager Kim, then left exactly on time. I got so excited thinking about seeing Suyeon that I started running. On the way I had to keep my little guy under control, so I forced myself to chant the national anthem… Maybe the dopamine rush from love was too strong for my brain?
“Aish, I collapsed before I could even meet my wife. You pathetic loser! She must be waiting anxiously—let’s hurry!”
Blaming my weak stamina that didn’t match my muscles and my overflowing affection, I brushed the dirt off my pants and sprinted toward our newlywed home. My head was already filled with the image of my wife worrying about me, on the verge of tears.
The moment the elevator doors opened, I rushed to our front door and frantically punched in the code.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.Ding-dong—
“Honey~~! I’m home!”
When I threw the door open, there was Suyeon—silhouetted like a fairy beneath the warm kitchen light, wearing her apron and looking at me.