The Murderer and Madness
"No, listen carefully. We do need to get to that garage eventually, sure — but at least one person who can actually drive has to go."
"...Right."
"But if we pull aggro with that thing, the side that draws it first is going to get spotted or at least grab its attention, yeah? So of course we need people staying here to hold the line. And the ones with actual weapons are..."
I glanced at the pitiful candlestick clutched in the president's hand, then finished the thought.
"...Me and the president. That's it."
The president stared at me with a blank expression.
Well. What of it.
"If the people upstairs count as part of the defense, then more bodies is obviously better. And—"
Sang-hyeon raised a hand and cut me off mid-sentence.
"Got it. I more or less understand—"
He kept talking, then flicked a glance at my hand — the one still clenched in a fist, thumb tapping restlessly against the knuckles — and seemed to relax a little before continuing.
"How about we shake on it."
I nodded, unclenched my fist, and held out my hand. Sang-hyeon took it.
He's gotten a lot sharper about reading the room.
I shook with Sang-hyeon, whose face was locked somewhere between trying to smile and freezing solid, then pulled him into a brief half-hug and whispered a few words so fast that only Yeom Sang-hyeon could catch them.
The moment we broke apart, Sang-hyeon shoved his hands into his pockets and turned toward the back door — then hesitated, spun back around, and quickly hugged both the vice president and the president as well.
I spoke to Sang-hyeon as he stood waiting by the rear exit.
"Grab that sack next to you too. If you find anything out there, bring it back."
A nod was his only answer. He stood by the back door, face tight with tension, waiting for the signal.
The vice president had pressed her face to the window crack, eyes alone peeking out, her expression twisted as she watched the outside. The president stood ready by the door, candlestick in hand.
I knocked on the door — very, very quietly.
Knock... knock....
The vice president's face contorted as if her headache were getting worse by the second, but she never looked away from outside. She clenched her fist twice.
No reaction.
I knocked a little harder.
Knock. Knock.
Only then did the vice president clutch her head, stumble backward, and sink to the floor, nodding.
And then—
Through the living room window, a faint shadow began to take shape against the curtains.
That dim black silhouette grew denser, began to move.
Something shot past the kitchen window in a blur—
And I could feel it: something was standing right outside the closed front door.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
A bizarre standoff settled over the room.
I took a short breath, then wrenched the door open.
Standing right on the threshold was a grotesque figure, wearing a bone-chilling smile, one hand buried inside its coat.
I grabbed it by the collar and hauled it toward me.
A wet, rotting stench washed over me.
Up close, what might have passed for merely a hideous face at a distance filled my vision and revealed its true nature.
Those eyes that had looked merely dark were nothing but hideous holes.
From those black sockets, something like writhing threads of smoke poured out — whether concealing something deeper inside or simply leaking from within.
A writhing like guts in motion rippled again and again across the surface of its face.
An incomprehensible form.
I was face-to-face with something that defied cognition itself.
Time seemed to slow.
According to the plan, the president should have brought the candlestick down right about now — but through the gaps around the murderer filling my vision, all I could see was a pair of hands trembling violently.
The tiny, insect-like writhing on its face gathered and took shape.
A smile stretched so wide it looked ready to tear the mouth apart.
If you could even call that a mouth.
A nauseating sensation, like sticky clay clinging and crawling, climbed from the hand I'd used to stop the thing from drawing whatever was in its coat — up my arm, into my body.
"What the hell are you staring at, you bastard."
I spat the words through clenched teeth and, still gripping the thing, put my full weight into a spin.
With my back to the front door, I kicked it shut with my heel and immediately smashed my fist into its face.
Thud-thud-thud—
Grotesque scraps of flesh flew into the air as if a swarm of insects had been shaken loose.
"Urgh— wretch—"
Somewhere behind me in the kitchen, the vice president had collapsed and was openly retching.
I ignored everything happening around me and poured every scrap of focus into what was in front of me.
I wound up for another blow — then a surge of danger screamed through my skull, and I twisted my body and threw myself backward.
In the middle of a world that seemed to tilt in slow motion,
the broken candlestick in the president's hand carved through the air,
grazed my cheek,
and buried itself in the creature's chest.
I shoved the dazed president — still clutching the candlestick — hard to the side, yanked the kitchen knife from my belt, and drove it into the area around the hand still buried in its coat.
If I hadn't dodged, that candlestick would have gone through my skull — but I had no time to spare for the president right now!
A strange resistance transmitted through the knife.
It felt like cutting through old mud and suddenly hitting a hard stone.
The creature paid no mind to the blade lodged in its hand and wrenched the arm free by force.
The knife shuddered with that unnatural resistance — then something grotesque and dark-red spattered free as the creature raised the hand it had yanked from its coat.
Forcing the knife free had split the hand open from roughly the wrist all the way to the middle finger. The grotesquely splayed shape looked as if two smaller hands had been grafted onto the wrist.
A serrated, jagged dagger gripped between those twin hands slashed through the air — but I ignored it, seized the kitchen knife still half-buried in its body with both hands, and heaved upward with everything I had, driving my shoulder into the center of its torso and aiming for the candlestick already half-sunk in its chest.
The raised hand never got the chance to come down. The impact transferred through its body was too much to absorb, and it toppled with me, both of us crashing to the floor.
Thud.
The creature went still — but I yanked the kitchen knife free and slashed for its throat in one fluid motion.
Krk—krrrk-krk
For a moment, an incomprehensible gurgling sound rose from around its neck.
Then the thing became something like wet clay and slowly melted into the floor.
It turned to slime and seeped away between the cracks in the floorboards, vanishing from sight.
The chaos had passed. The only proof that the creature had ever been there was a faintly damp, human-shaped stain on the floorboards and the grotesque dagger lying where it had fallen.
I leaned against the wall and let out a long breath.
"—Wretch. Urrgh—"
But the faint sound of retching pulled me upright again, body heavy with effort.
I hauled the vice president up from where she lay trembling and heaving on the floor.
She swayed bonelessly, eyes half-rolled back. I studied that face for a moment, then slapped her across the cheek.
Only moments earlier she'd been drowning in rising nausea, unable to think — but the searing heat blooming across her face like a brand, paired with the nausea rapidly draining away, snapped her back to herself at once.
"Eh— ugh? Ah, yeah. What the— that hurt."
I gripped the babbling vice president by the shoulders.
"Get a grip. If it starts feeling like you're about to lose it the way you just did, slap yourself, pinch your thigh — do whatever it takes to stay lucid."
"Huh? Oh. Okay."
She held one cheek with both hands and looked up at me as she answered.
Pain this sharp should keep the madness suppressed for a while, at least.
Her eyes were watering from the sting, but what I saw in them wasn't contempt or anger so much as something like gratitude.
..
...
....Or maybe she just wants to hit me back.
I was still trying to parse the vice president's expression when I glanced toward the back door — and found that Yeom Sang-hyeon was already gone.
He must have made it outside safely.
I moved quickly to the kitchen window and peered out.
My head no longer ached the way it had at the start.
Murderers were still wandering here and there, drifting toward this place at random and at a leisurely pace — but thankfully, none of them seemed to have been drawn by the aggro.
Once I'd finished the quick check, I finally turned and looked at the president.
Still sprawled on the floor in a daze, he met my eyes.
Even his voice was shaking.
"I—I'm sorry. Th-that was—"
I sighed at the sight of him and answered.
"It's fine."
What I'd only half-suspected before, I now knew for certain.
First: those murderers weren't as strong or as fast as I'd expected.
Their hearing wasn't great either, and their bodies — if you could even call those things bodies — weren't particularly tough.
Second, though: simply being near them seemed to induce madness.
If several of them closed in at once, I thought, that alone might be enough to leave someone helpless and raving.
And of course—
I looked at the vice president, still holding her cheek.
Third: the rising madness, as long as it wasn't too severe, could be held at bay with pain.
But the way she kept faintly furrowing her brow even now suggested it was only being suppressed — not fundamentally resolved.
...My hypothesis was probably right.
...Or was she just wincing because it hurt?
I sent the vice president upstairs to the second-floor study, then took up positions with the president again, each of us watching a window.
As we scanned the outside, the president occasionally broke the silence with questions — whether out of boredom or something else.
What did I think this place was.
How I thought we'd ended up here.
That he was sorry about earlier.
And so on.
Short, tentative remarks drifting across the long silence, as if he were gauging my mood. I killed time with equally short, clipped answers.
Fortunately, everything so far was unfolding exactly as I'd intended.
I rolled my shoulder and pretended to watch the window, while keeping careful track of the president's reflection in the glass — the interior of the house mirrored there like a looking glass.
And then I saw it: the president's reflection, for a single instant, took on a chilling look in his eyes and reached a hand toward the window frame.
I was slowly tensing my body at the sight when—
From the second-floor study came the sound of a door bursting open, followed by a small shout.
"Translation's roughly done! Coming down!"
At the cry, I finally spun around as if I'd noticed nothing — and at the same moment, I saw the president drop the act and turn to face me as well.
In the silence of us simply watching each other, the dry sound of club members descending the stairs from the second floor layered over the quiet.