Guro District (1)
Guro District (1) — Cycle Truth Cult Main Hall, Daegu Metropolitan City
Kim Seongpil was an ordinary man, born and raised in Daegu. He had gone to school like everyone else, landed a job at a company, gotten married. He had prided himself on a life without a single bump in the road. And that was precisely why, today, he cursed his own ordinariness.
"Today, once again, we welcome those who have come to awaken to our great Truth."
Bound with a rough, fraying rope, he was being dragged somewhere he could not see. He opened his eyes as wide as he could, desperate to make sense of the situation, but nothing appeared before him. Whether it was a sack or a bag covering his head, he couldn't tell — for him there was only darkness.
"H-honey! Are you okay?"
"...Yeah."
The reply came from behind him, barely a whisper. His wife, unable to conquer her hunger, was too exhausted even to answer his question. He tasted iron where her pressed lips had split — biting down had been the last resort against the gnawing emptiness in her stomach. And that final choice, made to keep her alive, had led them to this absurd ending.
"Everyone, let us welcome them with a round of applause!"
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Three lifeless claps. Then someone behind him struck the back of his knee, and Kim Seongpil dropped to the ground.
"Aaaaagh!"
"Honey! Y-you bastards!"
He thrashed at his wife's scream, but it was useless. Someone behind him was pinning his shoulders down hard, holding him in place.
"Why! Why are you doing this to us! Won't somebody please answer me!"
His cry — thick with injustice and grief — rumbled and echoed through the main hall.
"..."
Spit. Spit.
They only ever spoke at him, one-sidedly, and never once deigned to answer. Then someone behind him silently peeled the sack from his head.
At last, Kim Seongpil had his sight back, and he stared straight ahead. People sat at even intervals throughout the vast space, every one of them wearing a white hood pulled up, every head bowed. He narrowed his eyes, trying to look more closely. Perhaps because the candlelight was the only source of light in the room, their faces wouldn't come into focus.
"What are you looking at so intently?"
A man leaned his face in close. He was the only one without a hood, bending at the waist to peer down at him — a man about his own age. Neat, well-ordered features and rimless glasses lent him an intellectual, gentle air. Something about him seemed capable of reason, and Kim Seongpil spoke up in desperation.
"W-why are you doing this to us, all of a sudden?"
"Suddenly? Weren't you the ones who walked in here of your own accord?"
"That's true, but... we only came because we were told there'd be food..."
"Yes. Exactly. The Truth Cult will resolve your hunger for you."
"Th-thank you. But then why on earth were we tied up with rope..."
Simply being wary of outsiders didn't explain it — the atmosphere in this place was far too strange. He'd braced himself when he first heard the cult's name, but this was a bizarre scene beyond anything he had imagined. Not a single one of the people filling the hall had raised a hooded head. In a place so silent he couldn't even hear breathing, the man's voice flowed out, soft and unhurried.
"Why do you tremble with such anxiety? On this joyous, joyous first day of setting foot in the Truth Cult."
"That is... w-well, my wife hasn't eaten anything in days. Would it be possible to give her the food you promised, right now?"
"Are you certain that's what you want?"
Kim Seongpil tilted his head, not understanding. Why was the man asking him whether it was all right to hand out food?
"...Of course it is."
"Stepping into the Truth has always been painful, as it ever was."
"...I'm sorry?"
Kim Seongpil frowned and pushed back. What on earth was this man talking about?
"...Honey."
At his wife's voice, Kim Seongpil turned his head. She was smiling faintly, as if to tell him not to worry, but the smile was so thin it seemed it might sever at any moment. Watching her, his eyes welled up with tears.
Starvation. To die for no other reason than that her stomach was empty. He had failed to keep his vow never to make her suffer, but he refused to send her off by letting her starve.
As Kim Seongpil stood there, unable to act, the man stepped past him and crouched before his wife. He slowly took her chin in his hand, tilted her face up, and whispered.
"Beautiful. A lotus blooming from the mire, truly."
Kim Seongpil's pupils trembled at the man's words. A chill crawled up his spine at the thick, unhurried certainty in that voice. The most vivid nightmare he had dreaded and feared all along.
"Sh-she's my wife."
"Yes. She is your wife. Do you know why the lotus is beautiful?"
"Please, please, just not that... we... we promised each other our whole lives..."
"Because it grows in the world's muddy water, yet is never stained by the filth."
The man rose slowly. Behind him, the hooded figures creaked and shambled forward.
"Wh-what are you doing!"
As if to drown out his voice, they formed a circle around his wife. Wringing with dread, he tried to lunge toward them, but the weight was still pinning his shoulders down.
"I said what are you doing! You fucking bastards!"
At his desperate scream, a head popped out slightly from the circle. The man with the glasses answered as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"What am I doing? Resolving her hunger, just as you asked."
But there was no food in any of their hands.
That's not solving hunger. That's rape. Those bastards are going to rape my wife, too weak from starvation to even lift her arms.
"Don't do it! Don't you dare, you fucking monsters!"
The circle kept closing in on her. Mad with rage, Kim Seongpil squeezed his eyes shut. Hot tears streamed down both his cheeks.
Crunch!
"Aaaaaaagh! H-honeeeey!"
"...Huh?"
At his wife's scream, Kim Seongpil hurriedly opened his eyes. The figures had surrounded her and bent down over her. And they kept moving their heads back and forth, back and forth.
"Aaaaaaaaagh! Aah— th-that's— aaaah!"
They were chewing and tearing at something. The sound of blood spattering and raw flesh being gnawed filled the hall. His wife, who had been writhing and screaming, twisted her body — and Kim Seongpil denied reality at the sight, because it was all too familiar.
She rose slowly at the center of the circle. Face smeared with blood, she looked at him and opened her mouth.
"Keeeeeeee—"
"N-nooo!"
Beneath even the worst he had wanted to escape, there was a lower floor. Becoming a zombie meant she was already dead.
Kim Seongpil screamed at the man approaching him.
"Why! Whyyyyy! Why did you kill my wife!"
"Kill her? We merely resolved her hunger for her."
"Aaaaaah— y-you, you—"
His rage was so violent that no curse would come. As he stared at his wife scraping her throat with hollow, pointless wails, something glinted in his eyes. She hadn't lunged at him. Any zombie should have gone into a frenzy by now, yet she stood rooted to the spot.
Kim Seongpil spoke to the man in a rush.
"She's not really a zombie, is she? Right? You fed her some strange drug or something, didn't you? Huh? Right?"
The man offered no answer — only a smile. The uncertainty swelled, and Kim Seongpil spoke again, rubbing his palms together fervently as he begged.
"P-please! You said my wife was beautiful! Please, please — I'll do anything you want, anything at all, just please save her!"
For the first time, the man wiped the smile from his face.
Step. Step.
He came closer, his expression cold, seized Kim Seongpil by the hair, and growled.
"I am a seeker of Truth. A herald as well. And you dare speak to me of lust!"
A white light began to seep from his body.
"I did not bring you into this faith for so petty a sin!"
He pointed a finger at Kim Seongpil's wife.
"She feels hunger no longer! She has no need of sleep! I have created her into a being one stage higher! Just as..."
He whispered, his face rapt with ecstasy.
"Just as one makes a lotus bloom from the mire."
Before Kim Seongpil's eyes, the man drew a circle with his finger. Two white afterimages traced the air, then joined into one.
"Cycle."
At his gesture and his voice, the fury that had been surging up in Kim Seongpil like fire guttered out. A deep weariness flooded his whole body, and the man's words rang in his ears.
"The greatest truth of the world has always been the cycle."
A white blankness spread through his overloaded mind.
"A tadpole becomes a frog. That frog becomes a corpse, buried in the soil. And upon that soil, new eggs come to float."
The man shifted his body slightly. Through the gap that opened, Kim Seongpil could see someone creaking their way toward him.
"I love you humans too. But the age of humanity is drawing to a close. If all are to return to being human again through the cycle, then first, all must become zombies."
Kim Seongpil's eyes — the only part of his body he could still control — trembled wide. His wife was walking toward him.
"That is the cycle. And that is the Truth."
The man smiled with such benevolent grace. White light gathered around his body. That radiance flooded the main hall — and by its light, the world it revealed left Kim Seongpil aghast.
In this place, the only human was that man.
"Welcome, believer Kim Seongpil. You, too, have become part of the great Cycle."
His wife wrapped her arms around him.
Crunch.
Amid the sound of his own raw flesh being torn and chewed, he shed the last tears he would ever shed as a human being.
"It means you have become family of the Cycle Truth Cult."