Are You a Demon?
When class began and the break arrived, Siwoo, seated beside me, spoke up in a voice pitched just loud enough for me alone to hear.
"I passed by the freshman lecture hall on my way in here."
"Yeah?"
"There was this whole buzz, like something had happened. I got curious and peeked inside, and there was this gorgeous freshman girl in there? At first I thought, same as the other newbies in the hall, that some celebrity had enrolled at our school, so I looked up articles on my phone. But there was nothing."
"Ah…"
The moment I realized who the commotion was about, I reacted—and Siwoo fixed me with a doubtful look.
"You know her?"
Even as the thought I've been caught flashed through me, I fell into deliberation.
Should I tell him she's my sister?
No… no.
If I did, I would live the same life as before—forever measured against her. I had only just begun trying to start fresh in a place where no one knew anything about my relationship with my little sister. I couldn't let that go.
"No, I heard the noise like you did and looked into that lecture hall. That girl… she's unbelievably pretty."
Even as I denied it, I was acutely aware that I had failed, after all, to escape my sister Yoon Jia's shadow.
Could it be… had Jia—or no, the demon—already been spreading word about me?
Should I have warned them in advance?
Regret curdled into a sudden, sharp anxiety.
Siwoo studied my troubled expression for a moment, then snorted a laugh.
"Why the long face? Planning to make a move on the newbie? I mean, even I—as a woman—could hardly take my eyes off her. What chance do you guys have?"
"Oppa, Unnie! Would you like to grab a meal together after class?"
Hanbyeol turned around and suddenly asked the two of us out of the blue.
"Can I come too?"
Seohyun, who had been sitting next to Siwoo scrolling through her phone with studied indifference, looked up at the conversation and slipped into it with a wide grin.
"Uh…"
Hanbyeol, who hadn't even learned her name yet, stared in surprise, and Seohyun said, "Lee Seohyun, returning student, twenty-four. The two other returning students sitting here and I are on casual terms."
"Oh, um… sure."
Seohyun's brisk little introduction left Hanbyeol flustered, unsure how to respond. That was when Wooshin raised his voice and declared himself with cheerful bravado.
"Pleasure to meet you, ma'am! I'm Shin Wooshin! Twenty-one years of age!"
"Such an energetic little brother figure."
Seohyun giggled and looked at him as if he were adorable, and Wooshin flushed faintly, wearing an awkward smile.
"So, we're all going together?"
Somehow, it was Seohyun who asked, her eyes on me. With no real grounds to refuse, I agreed first, hoping to settle the mood myself.
"Let's do it. Call it fate."
"Sounds great!"
With Hanbyeol's bright, beaming second, the five of us promised to eat together at the school cafeteria after class.
[I hate the way other human women look at him. He belongs to me and me alone.]
At that moment.
I startled at the familiar voice that seemed to come from nowhere and scanned my surroundings. Hanbyeol and Wooshin were chatting between themselves, Seohyun was on her phone, and Siwoo was rummaging through his bag.
Seeing no one else react, I was about to chalk it up to my imagination—but on the faintest chance, I glanced back.
There she was: the woman to whom I'd lent a pencil earlier, still seated in the row behind me, watching me with eyes full of knowing.
"Let's begin today's lecture."
I finally resolved to ask her what that unreadable gaze was about, but fate had other plans—with the professor's announcement that class was resuming, I had to shut my mouth once more.
A female student in Dohyun's lecture hall watched as a group of three women and two men filed out of the classroom the moment class ended. Returning students, she guessed—and thought to herself, they've gotten close already. She was gathering her things and about to step out of the room when she had to stop mid-stride.
"…What's going on?"
A murmur of voices, and students crowding toward the doorway of the lecture hall. It was strange.
"What is it?"
She asked a friend, who turned back and answered with a flustered face. "No idea. The door won't open all of a sudden."
"The door won't open?"
The students pressed against the lecture room door tried every means to force it, but it didn't budge an inch. They shouted for help from outside, tried their phones—no connection, no answer.
Squelch.
"Huh?"
At the sudden wet crunch beside her, the female student turned—and her friend, the one who had been answering her just moments ago, was gone.
In her place was something emerging from the shadow along the wall: a beast's maw, its jaws packed wall-to-wall with razor-sharp teeth, masticating something. Every time the beast moved its mouth, a vivid red liquid ran out past its lips.
She stared blankly at the impossible scene, and then she realized—the shoe lying on the floor belonged to her friend. The one who had been talking to her a moment ago.
Squelch.
The wet crunch again. This time it sounded somehow clearer. And then—
"Kyaaaaaaah—!!"
"S-save me!!"
"What is th—"
Last-word screams tore through the classroom, mingled with cries of pure confusion. It happened in an instant. Maws bursting out of the darkness began devouring the students inside the lecture hall.
Blood erupted from every corner; bodies were torn apart. A grotesque spectacle unfolded in full. It was like a dream—a vicious nightmare. Amid that hellish tableau, no one had yet regained their grip on reality.
Why hadn't the door opened? Why were the monsters eating them? Why them? No one knew. There was no reason given for their deaths.
Could there be a death more absurd, more wretched than this? Who could ever have imagined dying like this?
As the female student watched her classmates being devoured with a hollow, vacant face, she realized the monsters were eating the women first.
As if the beasts were savoring it—every emotion behind it—the way they ate the women was violent, cruel. They took care not to kill in a single bite, instead inflicting pain slowly, piece by piece.
…Women.
Only then did she understand her own situation, and her eyes flew wide open. Survival instinct had, miraculously, snapped her back into reality.
"Please, spare me—"
Squelch.
A tearing agony ripped through her lower body, an awful burning heat—and from somewhere deep in her guts, her scream and her blood burst out together. Her wails begging for her life, her cries for her mother and father, went on and on until they vanished into the monster's mouth.
But no one heard that pitiful weeping, those screams. As if the classroom—and everything inside it—had never existed in this world at all.
Creeeeak…
The door that would not open swung wide, and the college students inside streamed out in their little clusters, chattering and laughing as though nothing whatsoever had happened.
Among them was the female student who had spilled blood and tears, screaming so desperately—yet now she was smiling, chatting calmly with someone else.
Fzzzt.
Like footage streaked with static, the students leaving the lecture hall blurred once, then snapped back into crisp resolution.
They walked on, each according to the purpose in life they had always carried—and though they unmistakably had human eyes, somehow their depths looked hollow, as if empty all the way through.
"Burp."
At the sudden, short belch, I froze with a piece of pork cutlet halfway to my mouth and stared straight ahead. I wasn't the only one—every gaze converging to identify the source of the sound landed on Hanbyeol.
"I-I'm so sorry…"
Ashamed of the belch that had escaped her mid-meal, Hanbyeol clapped a hand over her mouth, her face flushing beet red.
"Aw, don't be. It's cute."
Said Siwoo, seated on my left with a laugh—and Hanbyeol turned redder still.
"Tell me about it. There was a time I was that fresh-faced too… what I wouldn't give to be young again."
Seohyun, on my right, prodded halfheartedly at her cafeteria food with a fork and snorted her agreement. At that, Wooshin, sitting beside Hanbyeol, tilted his head slightly, and I caught him murmuring that the two of them couldn't be more than a few years apart.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—Seohyun didn't seem to have heard him.
True to our promise, the five of us ate together at the school cafeteria after the lecture, and there we asked each other all the things we hadn't had time to ask during class—where we lived, which high schools we'd come from, what had brought us to this university. Perhaps because we shared the common ground of the same school, the conversation never ran dry, and since everyone was easygoing and unpretentious, nothing about it felt awkward. Seohyun too, despite the less-than-warm first impression she'd given, blended into the talk with ease.
We laughed, we joked, we got along. It had been so long since I'd shared a peaceful conversation with anyone outside my family that I felt my emotions welling up despite myself.
"Do you have a girlfriend, hyung?"
"Hm? No."
As the conversation drifted toward romance, Wooshin asked me out of the blue, and I waved a hand with a wry smile.
"What? Really?"
When Wooshin gaped at me in disbelief, it was I who found it strange.
"Why?"
"Well… a guy as good-looking as you? I figured you'd definitely have one."
"Right?"
Siwoo chimed in with a surprised-sounding agreement, and Seohyun watched me with an expression of mild interest. Hanbyeol said nothing, only listening.
They were compliments meant to lift me up, yet everyone's eyes were strangely serious—too serious to wave off lightly.
Handsome, huh…
Not many people thought that about themselves. I was no exception—but I'd heard it from people around me often enough that I couldn't call it completely wrong.
Still, I suppose I did inherit the same genes as my sister…
I snorted a rueful laugh inside.
"I'm not thinking about that right now. All I want these days is to build something deeper with the people here."
Grrrk.
…Grrrk?
The moment my words ended, a sound like teeth grinding came from somewhere close by. I turned my gaze toward where it seemed to have come from—and over Hanbyeol's shoulder, I saw the woman who had given me that meaningful smile in the lecture hall, watching me still.
When our eyes met, she smiled, gave a little tilt of her head as if beckoning me to follow, and turned away.
I hesitated at first, not understanding—but that smile, that look she'd given me back in the lecture hall, kept gnawing at me until I couldn't stand it.
"Give me a minute, I'm going to the restroom."
In the end I excused myself from the group, rose from my seat, and started after her.
Bzzt.
I had left the cafeteria and was trailing the woman toward a deserted corner of the building when a notification chime sounded. I checked my phone.
Reading Jia's message, my eyes narrowed.
If this were the Yoon Jia I knew, she'd be well on her way to hitting it off with new people by now—so on the surface, nothing about the message was unusual.
But remembering the demon nested inside it, the content did strike me as somewhat unexpected.
Shffk.
"Answer only yes or no. Keep it short."
I'd been walking lost in thought for a moment when a frost-cold voice came from behind me—and with it, the chilling touch of a blade pressed against my neck.
"You… are you a demon?"
Only as the words echoed back through my mind did I realize: the woman who had lent me—no, been lent a pencil in the lecture hall was standing behind me, holding a knife to my throat.