Karmic Retribution (5)
"Han Sora... you fucking bitch. Living it up, huh? Look at that glowing complexion. Hmm?"
Kim Suhyeok.
The root of Han Sora's trauma had finally shown his face.
"Who the hell are you people!?"
Park Seeun stepped forward in place of the frozen Han Sora.
"The fuck are you? I've got business with that worthless cunt Han Sora. Get lost."
Kim Suhyeok completely ignored Park Seeun — but his gang did not.
Their eyes raked over her from head to toe without the slightest pretense of subtlety.
"Holy shit... look at those endless legs..."
"I heard girls like that are absolute monsters in bed. Squeeze you dry."
"You won't manage her alone. Look at those eyes — full of fight."
"That's exactly what makes breaking her so fucking fun. Hehehe...!"
The shameless filth pouring out of their mouths left Park Seeun speechless. These lunatics. Were they seriously saying this shit out loud like it was nothing?
"Han Sora... fuck, I solved that whole mess you were so worked up about and helped you every way I could, and you stab me in the back and take a leave of absence without even asking? I thought you'd left this neighborhood for good... but you've been living right here in XX District this whole time? Great for me, honestly... but you've got zero conscience. You know that, right?"
"W-what are you..."
Han Sora couldn't make sense of a single word Kim Suhyeok was saying.
This bastard had shown up with a gang, reeking of filthy intent — and he was claiming he'd helped her? That he'd solved something she'd been struggling with?
She had no memory of anything like that.
"Look at this fucking bitch... playing dumb, acting all innocent. Fuck... the more you pull that shit, the more I want to shove your face into the dirt and wreck that ass of yours. You know that, Han Sora?"
Seeing her flustered only encouraged Kim Suhyeok to spew more obscenities without a shred of restraint. Park Seeun, standing right beside her, was getting angrier than Sora herself.
"Hey, you piece of shit! Who the fuck do you think you are, talking to our Sora unnie like that!"
"I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to Han Sora. Shut up."
"What did you just say?"
Park Seeun bristled.
No — she looked ready to cave Kim Suhyeok's face in with her blunt weapon right then and there.
The only reason she didn't was that Han Sora raised her voice first.
"D-don't tell me... S-Suhyeok, you... th-this is about the... u-underwear incident...?"
"Huh? What, I thought you didn't remember. Ha...!"
At the strained, courage-wrung words that finally left Han Sora's mouth, Kim Suhyeok let out a snort of pure contempt. Snickers rose from the men behind him.
Arms crossed, chin tilted high, he answered with the arrogance of a man who owned the world.
"Yeah, you fucking bitch. I went out of my way to clean up that nasty little incident that had you so upset, and instead of thanking me you stab me in the back and file for leave? A thankless cunt like you — I'm glad you're still alive. Why? So I can personally re-educate your ungrateful ass. With my cock, you fucking bitch!"
"That son of a bitch...! Unnie, don't stop me, I'm gonna fucking kill this—"
Park Seeun, who knew the full story, had her rage stoked to a blaze. This bastard had orchestrated the whole thing from behind the scenes, and now he was standing there bragging like he was some kind of hero!
Even if Han Sora tried to hold her back now, she was ready to charge.
But the voice that came from beside her was nothing like a plea to stop.
"I-I'm not stopping you... Seeun-ah."
Far from fear, Han Sora's eyes burned with fury.
"S-Suhyeok... you're doing all this... j-just because of... that?"
Something dangerous was rising in the air.
"Because of... that? Just because of that... you came all the way here to find me and..."
At some point she had already nocked an arrow and drawn the string taut, ready to loose at any second.
"...came here to talk about... r-raping me...?"
The moment the words left her mouth, Han Sora had the bow leveled squarely at Kim Suhyeok, one breath away from releasing the string.
The atmosphere among his gang shifted. No matter how many of them there were, a drawn bow pointed at your face had a way of putting steel in the spine.
"Huh... fucking hell. Look at Han Sora, this loser bitch... gets a little power and suddenly thinks she's hot shit?"
But Kim Suhyeok remained utterly at ease. A sneer spread across his entire face as he opened his mouth with triumphant swagger.
"You pathetic shut-in bitch. Just because I haven't seen that broken personality of yours in a while, you think I forgot? Fuck, every time I tried talking to you I wanted to cave your skull in — you think that was once or twice? Fucking hell...! You've got the exact personality of someone who spent half her life with her head buried in games! And on top of that your tits are disgustingly huge, so every time I saw you I wanted to rip your clothes off and squeeze those things until they—"
Kim Suhyeok never finished the sentence.
An arrow hissed past his earlobe, leaving a thin trail of blood in its wake.
"Th-that fucking... that fucking bitch...! She actually shot at me!"
The calm contempt he'd worn while insulting Han Sora vanished. Face twisted with genuine shock, Kim Suhyeok jabbed a finger at her and scrambled backward. Park Seeun's mouth fell open as well — she had never seen Sora this aggressive.
"W-what the... she actually shot!"
"L-look, she's aiming again!"
"N-no, more than that... did anyone even see her shoot just now?"
Han Sora's unexpected action sent Kim Suhyeok's gang into a panic. He had sworn this would be as easy as picking his nose — but what they were looking at now was a pair of eyes filled with killing intent.
And the way she held that bow... it didn't look like a beginner. It looked like a professional archer who had long since made the weapon an extension of her body.
Kim Suhyeok was rattled too, deep down. The Han Sora he knew — power level be damned — had always been a timid, awkward introvert who radiated shut-in energy from every pore.
He'd assumed someone else had carried her through leveling. Even if she'd somehow managed on her own, he had been absolutely certain she would never point an arrow at another human being.
What he saw instead was Han Sora, murderous aura rolling off her, one heartbeat from loosing another shot.
"Y-y-you fucking bitch...!"
Shock and rage made his whole body tremble.
Thump. Thump. Thump! His heart hammered so hard he could hear it in his own ears.
Was that just the shock of Han Sora's unexpected defiance, or—
"Huh...?"
"Mm...?"
Thump. Thump. Thump!
Something about the sound was wrong.
That didn't sound like a heartbeat.
In that instant, the atmosphere between Han Sora, Park Seeun, and Kim Suhyeok's gang shifted into something strange. All of them were hearing the same thing at the same time.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump!
An irregular, heavy resonance pounded against their ears and through their entire bodies.
No — the ground itself was shaking. Sand sifted down from overhead, as if an earthquake had struck the tunnels.
"What the hell, what the hell!"
"Sora-ya, Seeun-ah! There's a weird noise coming from the other side of the wall...!"
Rumble...!
The villa survivors, who had been hanging back at a distance, crowded in around Sora and Seeun. The fact that they had heard it too proved this was no hallucination — it was real.
Danger...!
In that moment, every nerve in Han Sora's body stood on end — the instinct of an Archer, no, of a Sniper.
She scanned her surroundings. Something caught in her pupils. One of the subway cars. A single car, standing alone on the tracks. That made no sense.
...No. Looking closer, one end of that car had been forcibly torn away.
What if something — someone, or some thing — had smashed the rest of the train and kicked that single car free down the tracks...!
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
"Ah, aah...!"
The vibrations grew louder still.
And Han Sora knew with absolute certainty. Her premonition was about to become reality.
KRAAAASH!
Something shattered and collapsed — and Han Sora's nightmare stepped into the world.
The sound of destruction came from directly behind Kim Suhyeok's gang.
Startled by the crash — almost certainly a wall being demolished — every human inside the subway station turned toward the noise as one.
They couldn't see it. The lamp light didn't reach that far.
So one of the villa survivors, almost unconsciously, swung a flashlight in that direction. Slowly...
"Prrrrrk...!"
A monstrous creature stood there. Its two legs were closer to those of a bull or a horse than a human's.
But its torso and arms were humanoid, packed with staggering muscle.
And its head... a savage bull's head sat atop those shoulders. Three living things that should never have been fused together had formed a single body of head, chest, and legs.
People had a name for that grotesque creature born from Greco-Roman myth.
A Minotaur. One of the monsters endlessly recycled across countless fantasy RPGs.
In games, it was treated as a convenient plate of experience points for players...
"PWOOOOOOOOOOOH!"
The Minotaur standing before them in reality looked fully prepared to treat humans as a convenient plate of experience points.
"A m-monster!"
"Run, ruuuun!"
Here, the two groups of survivors reacted in completely different ways.
Kim Suhyeok's gang screamed.
They scattered in blind panic, bolting in every direction they could. Anywhere — so long as it was away from the Minotaur.
But the villa survivors led by Han Sora and Park Seeun were different.
"Eek! A monster!"
"Th-this is insane... what kind of level is that...!"
"W-what do we do! What are we supposed to...!"
The villa survivors did not run. Part of it was that their feet simply wouldn't move — but more than that, they had grown somewhat accustomed to fighting monsters. Instead of fleeing, they fretted and dithered, unable to decide how to escape this crisis.
Until now, they had always had top-tier leaders like Jeong Hoon and Kim Seyeon. Even when danger struck, they could stay calm knowing those two were there. That familiarity was why the villa survivors could hold their formation while Kim Suhyeok's gang fled screaming in every direction.
And that composure allowed Han Sora to make the right call.
"Th-the subway car... hurry...! Tell the others too...! Quickly!"
Han Sora grabbed one of her companions and whispered desperately, pointing at the single subway car left standing alone on the tracks. Park Seeun heard her and passed the same message to the people nearby in a low voice.
"PWOOOOOOOOOOH!"
"Aaaagh, it's coming... it's cooooming!"
The Minotaur began walking toward them in earnest.
Han Sora had a gut feeling that if they stayed bunched together like this, they would all be trampled to death at once. The other survivors seemed to sense it too — their faces went deathly pale.
But this time, Park Seeun showed her quick thinking.
"Everyone, turn off your flashlights. Now!"
She called out to the others, then took her own flashlight and hurled it in one of the directions the men had fled.
Whirrr — the flying flashlight sprayed light in every direction before clattering to the ground.
"Prrk!?"
The Minotaur reacted to it.
At the same moment, every flashlight held by Han Sora's group went dark. In an instant, the subway tunnel was filled with nothing but the dim glow of the wall-mounted lamps.
"PWOOOOOOOOOOH!"
The Minotaur bellowed again and thundered forward. In the faint spill of lamp light, Han Sora could just make out which way it was going — straight toward where Park Seeun had thrown the flashlight.
"AAAAAAGH!"
"Help me, heeelp me! Guhk!"
A desperate death cry rang out, followed by the sickening sound of a body being crushed underfoot.
Even through that, Han Sora kept her head and passed instructions to the survivors around her.
"Hurry, that way...!"
Park Seeun caught the order and whispered it onward to the people nearby. In moments, the roughly twenty villa survivors were moving swiftly toward the subway car.
One of the car's doors had been smashed open. Han Sora climbed up first and checked the interior. The faint lamp light revealed a little of what was inside.
Nothing. Just a faint musty smell.
Thump-thump-thump-thump!
"PWOOOOOOH!"
"N-no! Nooo!"
CRUNCH!
Nearly twenty people piled into the subway car in a rush.
All the while, the Minotaur seized another survivor and ended their life with a hideous noise. Even so, the villa survivors managed to get every last person inside the car with steady composure.
"Hah, hah...!"
"Haa, haa...!"
"Th-that was too close...!"
"Keep your voices down. Everything echoes in here...!"
Even as she caught her breath, Han Sora carefully kept her eyes on the smashed partition door at the far end of the car — the direction the Minotaur had charged.
The plan was simple: hide here for a while, and once the noise died down or moved farther away, lead everyone into the Clean Zone.
"Ah, fuck...! Sora unnie... we've got a problem."
"H-huh?"
Suddenly Park Seeun spat a curse and tapped Han Sora on the shoulder.
Startled, Han Sora looked at her — and Park Seeun grimaced as if she'd just seen something revolting, pointing somewhere inside the car.
"F-fuck... fuuuck... what the hell is that monster..."
There, trembling violently on the floor, muttering nonsense under his breath, lay a man. One of Kim Suhyeok's gang must have bolted in blind panic and thrown himself into the subway car along with the villa survivors by pure accident.
The only problem was that the man in question was Kim Suhyeok himself.
"What do we do? Should I just pulp him and toss him onto the tracks?"
Park Seeun ground her teeth and put the question to Han Sora. But with a far greater threat still prowling outside, Kim Suhyeok barely registered in Han Sora's mind anymore.
It was almost a kind of calm. The truth was, she had long since become someone else's woman. In a life-or-death moment like this, a certain faith filled her heart — the same faith that had given her the composure to lead everyone into the subway car and hide.
Jeong Hoon oppa... he'll definitely come save us!
That faith was also what finally crushed the awkwardness and fear she had carried toward Kim Suhyeok into fine powder.
"S-Sora-ya! I-I was wrong! So please, please don't throw me out there with that monster!"
"Shut up, you piece of shit! That thing will hear you!"
"Please, pleeease...!"
And so, watching Kim Suhyeok kneel and beg for his life right in front of her, the only thing that crossed Han Sora's mind was how pathetic he looked.
To think she had suffered trauma because of a creature like this... she almost wanted to scold her past self.
"...I-it's moved farther away. Slowly... let's go out slowly..."
Whether Kim Suhyeok was weeping and thrashing right under her nose or not, Han Sora never took her eyes off the deep stretch of tunnel beyond the car.
Once that massive shape — the Minotaur — had truly faded and the noise had quieted, she made her decision.
"Slowly, toward the lamps... we just need to get into the Clean Zone. Everyone keep completely quiet, and move slowly..."
Han Sora stepped out of the car first, taking the rear guard, and issued instructions to the group.
Leading from the front fell to Park Seeun. She told the people behind her to watch their footing and follow at a careful crawl.
"U-uuuh...!"
"You shut the fuck up and follow. Or I throw you to that thing as bait. Got it?"
"Y-yes...!"
Of course, Kim Suhyeok tagged along.
Park Seeun had decided, for now, to let him live. Once they made it back to the Clean Zone, she would drag this bastard in front of Jeong Hoon oppa and beat him like a punching bag. That was the plan.
Killing him here and having him thrash around would only put their own group in danger. Instead she ordered him to walk at the very back, right in front of Han Sora — she'd wanted him dead last, but Han Sora had shaken her head and insisted on taking rear guard herself.
Kim Suhyeok wasn't completely without survival instinct. He grovelled and even used honorifics toward a junior at least two years younger than him as he obeyed.
The slow escape lasted nearly ten minutes, but for the survivors it felt like ten hours. The taut tension made cold sweat pour down their backs even in the chilly subway air.
Unable to turn on even a single flashlight, relying only on the lamps fixed to the walls, only made it worse.
"Ah... I see it. The Clean Zone."
Then Park Seeun spotted a lamp glowing far ahead. More precisely, she confirmed the marker they had set beneath it.
The sign that marked the boundary between the Clean Zone and everything outside it.
The problem was that her voice had risen just a little too high — and Kim Suhyeok, walking at the very back, heard it.
And Kim Suhyeok—
"Wh-what, r-really!? Thank god, we're saved. We're saved!"
We're saved! We're saved! We're saved. We're saved...
He repaid Han Sora and Park Seeun with the single greatest act of trolling either of them would ever experience in their lives.
"PWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!"
Far in the distance, a monster that had heard the echo ringing through the underground bellowed and stamped its feet.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump!
Anyone could tell it was coming straight toward Han Sora and Park Seeun's group. No — the sound was clearly getting louder by the second.
Fuck! After walking that long... it was this close the whole time!?
Park Seeun was stunned, but she still shouted from the front of the line.
"Run for the Clean Zone! Hurry! Now!"
"Kyaaaah!"
Only then did the villa survivors pour every last drop of strength into a sprint and hurl themselves into the Clean Zone.
A dozen or so people managed to throw themselves across the boundary without falling. Only two or three remained, along with Park Seeun, Han Sora, and Kim Suhyeok.
But Kim Suhyeok managed, once again in Han Sora's life, to—
Thwack!
"Huh!?"
"Hey! You son of a bitch!"
—deliver another masterpiece of trolling, achieving the spectacular feat of a double troll.
Instead of running, Han Sora had been walking backward, bow aimed at the darkness opposite the Clean Zone.
Responsibility. In that life-or-death moment, Han Sora's sense of duty had kept her as the rear guard until the absolute last second.
She never imagined that sense of duty would put her in mortal danger.
The troll who had a grudge against her seized the moment while Han Sora's attention was locked on the Minotaur — and acted on a surge of spite.
With an open palm, he shoved her unprotected back as hard as he could.
Thud!
"Ugh...!"
Caught completely off guard by the impact, Han Sora went sprawling across the floor.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
"PWOOOOOOOOOOOOH!"
"You fucking piece of shiiiit! Kim Suhyeooooook!"
"Hahahahaha! Die! Just fucking die already, Han Sora!"
Park Seeun converted pure rage into a scream and sprinted toward Han Sora, while Kim Suhyeok crossed into the Clean Zone crowing with triumph.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Park Seeun's charge was far too late.
The massive Minotaur had already arrived right in front of Han Sora's head.
"Prrrrrrrk!"
The Minotaur raised its fist.
That enormous fist carried more than enough force to pulp a human the instant it touched flesh.
"NOOOOOOOOO!"
Park Seeun's scream tore through the air as the Minotaur's fist came crashing down toward Han Sora's back.
BOOOOM!
A thunderous impact shook the entire subway station.
Han Sora's faith never wavered.
Oppa...
Even in the moment she fell, that faith did not break.
Jeong Hoon oppa...
Even with the Minotaur bearing down right in front of her, that faith did not break.
The man I love... Jeong Hoon oppa...!
It had already crossed into the realm of true belief.
Save me...!
And that faith—
BOOOOM!
"Sorry I'm late."
—did not betray Han Sora's wish.