002 – A Really Scary Story # 2
002 - A Really Scary Story # 2
002 - A Truly Scary Story # 2
My place is in the studio apartment village near Sanmun University.
Geumyeong Villa. A studio apartment of about 200 square feet.
It has an air conditioner, a fridge, a microwave, and even a veranda with a small washing machine.
The kind of studio apartment you can see anywhere near a university town.
The front door on the first floor is locked with a keypad whose password is shared only among tenants, and the neighbors next door and upstairs are mostly college students—that kind of place.
If there's one notable feature, it's that the number of Southeast Asian tenants has increased over the past few years.
Even the woman living right across from me....
......
Anyway, that's where my studio apartment was.
Beep-beep-beep. As I opened the first-floor front door keypad, something whooshed past me.
A thief wearing a padded jacket.
I went up to the third floor and beep-beep-beeped my own door password.
As the door opened, the dark padded jacket zoomed into the house before I did again.
"You actually followed me all the way home...."
I took off my shoes and went inside too.
The padded-jacket thief was curled up in the corner by the bed, staring straight at me.
The look in those eyes, visible beneath the hood of the padded jacket, was full of obvious wariness.
What on earth is that thing?
Guuuuuu─.
It clutched its stomach.
Must be hungry.
I was hungry too, since I hadn't finished my cup ramen at the convenience store.
I took minced garlic and leftover bacon out of the fridge and put them in an oiled pan.
Sizzle-.
When the garlic aroma started to rise, I poured in about two cups of water and added pasta noodles, about the size of two 500-won coins.
After stirring and simmering it down, a one-pan oil pasta was complete.
Feeling like I was just adding one more spoon to what I was already eating, I divided it into two plates and set it on the small table with forks.
Slurp, slurp-.
As I started eating the pasta, the thing in the corner sniffed the air—sniff, sniff—and slowly crept toward the table.
Then suddenly─.
Nom, nom-.
It started eating the noodles with its bare hands, without a fork, and because of that violent movement, its padded hood fell off, making me gasp.
It was because its messily cut, dirty hair was red like blood.
Its face was grimy with stuff smeared all over it, but if you looked closely, it was as young as an elementary school student.
'A girl?'
Was my younger sister exactly like that when she was in 6th grade?
Anyway, she devoured the pasta quickly and went back to the corner where she had been.
"......."
She's like an abandoned dog that's become wary after being abused and dumped by people.
That's exactly how Bori was when he first came to my house.
But the problem was that she had a terrible stench.
Should I call it the distinct smell of homeless people?
I hadn't noticed it until now because I was so flustered, but now that she had eaten and I was relaxed, it felt like my nose was going to twist off.
"Hey, you, get in the bathroom and wash up."
It didn't seem like it would be easy to kick her out today anyway.
So, I approached the padded-jacket girl, grabbed her wrist, led her to the bathroom, and closed the door.
"Hah."
After closing the door, a sigh came out on its own.
It was because I wondered what on earth I was doing right now.
If that thing is a hallucination or auditory hallucination, then I'm just putting on a one-man show.
I thought I'd search to see if there were similar symptoms on the computer, so I pressed the PC power button with my thumb.
Tap-tap, click-.
「Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness that presents with symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, distortion of reality, and emotional blunting due to imbalances in brain neurotransmitters.」
It's similar to the situation I'm suffering from, but....
The point that didn't really hit home was that my only strength was having a healthy body and sound mind.
'It's not... schizophrenia symptoms. I'm sure of it.'
I searched for 'invisible padded-jacket girl', 'unseen thief', and so on in succession.
As expected, no satisfactory results came up.
Then, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
"What did she say earlier?"
When she was caught by me while eating raw ramen in the studio apartment's underground parking lot.
I remembered that she had been rambling about something.
It was about a chef.
"...Meka Chef."
I searched it.
「Michelin 2-star Chef Seong, who cooks like a machine, and the reopening of his restaurant 'Yosu'!」
「Meka Chef, Seong Junwon confirmed as a regular on 'Please Take Care of My Freezer'!」
Damn it, just ruined my mood for nothing.
Searching even more with the feeling of wanting to grasp at straws, I found a strange phrase.
"Oh... found it, Meka Chef."
Meka Chef.
It's a Hebrew word from the Bible.
Hebrew is the script used by the noisy Israeli people in the Middle East.
"The Korean translation of the Hebrew word Meka Chef is...."
「Magician」
...Magician?
Hah. A breath escaped my lips on its own.
Half strangely puzzled. Half laughter.
And at that moment, I realized that something was going wrong inside the bathroom.
"......."
It's too quiet.
Creeeak-.
Just in case, I opened the bathroom door.
Then, the red-haired, grimy, homeless padded-jacket girl was standing blankly in the bathroom, blinking her eyes.
'I even hoped she might have cleanly disappeared when I opened the door.... But of course, that wouldn't happen.'
I told her to wash up because she smelled.
Did she not understand?
Feeling somewhat at a loss, I turned the faucet and turned on the shower water.
Swaaaaaa-.
"......!!!"
The padded-jacket girl flinched in surprise.
It was a gesture as if she hadn't even thought for a single hair's breadth that water would spray from the showerhead.
It was only for a moment that she looked at the showerhead with wary eyes.
She knelt toward the water that was starting to pool on the floor─.
Chup-chup-chup-chup, lick-lick.
She started licking it frantically!
Just like thirsty African animals gathering at a small puddle during a long drought!
I was slightly stunned by the sight.
"Oh, yeah. You gotta stay hydrated."
# # #
My younger sister, who is three years younger than me, was a tomboy who went around stirring up trouble everywhere.
It's not something to brag about, but I did a pretty good job acting as my sister's guardian in place of our parents, who were busy with dual incomes.
Washing one small, grimy kid is nothing to me.
"First, let's take off these smelly things."
I zipped down the black padded jacket that this strange convenience store thief girl was wearing.
And I stripped off the tattered dress she was wearing underneath, which was no better than a rag.
"Geez, you're nothing but bones."
For reference, the texture of the yellowed dress felt more like touching a rough rice sack than clothing.
'Still, it's a relief she's staying still.'
I was worried about what I'd do if she went crazy and started thrashing around.
Perhaps she instinctively realized that I wouldn't harm her since I gave her food and water, but she was unexpectedly docile.
It was at that very moment when I gathered the contaminated clothes to throw them into the laundry basket.
Swish-swish-.
An incredibly unrealistic movement was caught in the corner of my vision.
Something extending long from behind the girl, from below her waist, and swaying.
It looked about as thick as my index finger and nearly a meter long.
The color was a glossy black, and it looked just like a leather whip that had been oiled.
The tip was shaped like a sharp triangle, like an arrowhead, and no matter how much I racked my brain, the conclusion converged to one thing.
"A taaail...!?"
It was a tail.
To be precise, something like a devil's tail.
There was a round metal ring-like thing hanging on that tail, which looked like an ornament.
"It's invisible to others and it even has a tail?"
What on earth are you, really?
Scrub-scrub-.
Anyway, I put a bunch of shampoo on my hands and lathered up her hair until it was clean.
Drip-drip-drip-drip-.
It was so dirty that the filthy water turned the floor pitch black.
I'll have to clean the bathroom thoroughly with bleach and water as soon as it gets bright tomorrow.
And that's the end of the bath!
"Alright, let's go out, dry off, and get dressed."
Flap-flap-flap-flap-!
Just then, the girl who came out of the bathroom shook her wet body and hair wildly toward the studio apartment.
Just like a wet dog or wolf!
Water splashed everywhere.
"Ah, fuck."
Thinking about having to do a deep clean tomorrow, I felt like tearing up already.
Whoooooosh-.
After drying her hair with a hair dryer, I put my t-shirt, underwear, and pants on her.
Even though they're men's clothes, it'll be a hundred times better than wearing that rag-like dress or padded jacket.
Then what should I do with those clothes?
They're so contaminated that the washing machine would probably break if I just washed them.
Should I throw them away?
As I reached out toward the padded jacket with that thought─.
Swoosh-. The girl, who had been docile just a moment ago while drying her hair, moved faster than me, hugged the padded jacket, and scurried back to the corner of the room.
She was acting as if that old, black padded jacket was some kind of great treasure.
"...Fine, whatever."
Fatigue hit me suddenly.
As I flopped onto the bed, my body and eyelids were surprisingly heavy.
Maybe it'll all be a dream when I wake up tomorrow....
# # #
Swish-swish-.
I opened my eyes at the sensation of something tapping my face.
The tail that had been swaying in front of me quickly whooshed away.
Following its trajectory, I saw the girl curled up in the corner.
I was wide awake.
It wasn't a dream.
Even until last night, it felt like all of this was a lie and a joke.
By now, a sense of reality spread through the blood vessels of my whole body along with my pounding heartbeat.
"What on earth are you?"
".........."
Naturally, there was no answer.
I finished the deep cleaning of the bathroom and room that I had put off last night, and made a bright red ham kimchi fried rice by stir-frying the leftovers in the fridge with a generous hand.
Steam rising from the mound of fried rice piled round on a white plate.
Gulp-.
The girl swallowed her saliva and reached out to the hot rice─.
"Hieeeek...!!!"
She screamed, probably because the freshly fried rice was hot.
It was so funny that I ended up bursting into laughter.
"That's why you have to use a spoon."
I put a spoon in the girl's hand, and then, as if to show her how to use it, I also scooped up the fried rice with a spoon. Is it a bit salty?
"......."
She started eating using the spoon, as if she wasn't used to it.
Clatter, clack-.
As the meal was roughly coming to an end, I turned on the computer and used the internet.
Girl with a tail.
When I searched, various things came up.
「Demon」.
The girl's tail most closely resembled the arrowhead tail of a demon from cartoons or movies.
I searched more about demons.
Lucifer, Baal, names I'd heard quite often, as well as names that sounded grand and plausible like Lemegeton, the 72 Demons of Solomon, Mephisto, Faust, etc., all came up in a row.
"Paimon... one of the 72 demons of Solomon, ranked 9th among the 72 demons, with the rank of King. The areas of jurisdiction are crushing, rampage, ruin...."
It said that mainly demon worshippers or magicians summon or make contracts with such great demons to achieve their desires.
Come to think of it, she called me 'Meka Chef', meaning 'Magician', right?
Seeing a demon that others can't see, bringing her home, washing her, feeding her.... So....
"So I'm a magician?"
Thump-.
Somehow, my heart was pounding.