Worse Than I Could Imagine
The worst exceeds my imagination.
The puppet theater that should have been filled with children's delighted laughter was drowning in nothing but screams.
Even those screams had died. Under the threat of the villain who had stormed the theater—So Gang-seok—parents now clamped their hands over their children's mouths, desperately smothering every sob. The more they did, the harder the children who couldn't understand what was happening tried to cry. A vicious, tightening cycle.
"Waaaaah!"
A little girl, maybe eight or ten years old, finally burst into loud, wailing sobs.
So Gang-seok clicked his tongue at the almost scream-like crying and issued an order to one of his men.
"She ignored me. Smash that brat's skull in."
"Yes, Boss."
The villain answered respectfully and started toward the girl. Her parents went deathly pale and begged.
"W-wait, please! Our So-hee is still so young—she just made a mistake! P-please, spare her!"
"Please, I'm begging you! Our So-hee, please let her live!"
They pleaded pathetically for their daughter's life, but the villain kicked them aside without a shred of mercy.
"Ah!"
"Kyaah!"
The parents screamed as they went down. The villain tore them away from their child and raised his fist over the still-sobbing girl named So-hee.
"Fuck, this brat is so goddamn loud. Split that mouth open and die already, you little bitch."
And then someone who couldn't watch any longer stood up.
"Damn it! Stop—"
Whether he was a hunter or simply a man overflowing with a sense of justice, the person who rose from his seat to save the girl never finished his sentence.
His head vanished without a trace.
The man's body, neck cleanly stripped of everything above it, crumpled lifelessly to the floor. Screams nearly erupted again—but the crowd clamped their hands over their mouths, survival instinct crushing the sound before it could escape.
So Gang-seok watched it all with a look of deep satisfaction.
"Yes. This silence. A puppet theater that was so noisy with brats, now this quiet… isn't it wonderful? Hahaha!"
The way he spoke—as if this situation genuinely delighted him—made everyone present shudder.
They'd been told never to think of villains as human. The reality was even more horrific than they could have imagined.
A wet, sickening crunch.
"Kyaaaaaah!"
"So-hee! So-heeee!"
The girl named So-hee's head burst under the villain's descending fist, brains spraying as she was reduced to a grotesque corpse.
Her parents, shrieking in anguish at their daughter's horrific death, met the same fate—their skulls crushed by the villains' hands until they, too, were nothing but ruined bodies.
"Boss, they ignored your orders and made a racket, so I took care of them."
"Good work. Last time you were slow about it, but it looks like you're finally learning to handle things on your own."
"Yes. I'll work even harder going forward."
The villains showed not a shred of guilt after slaughtering an entire family. The remaining parents clamped their children's mouths even more desperately, frantic to keep any sound from escaping.
This is horrific.
Baek Seo-jun watched it all and shuddered.
People being slaughtered so casually, so mercilessly!
It was a world apart from anything he'd read in a novel. Words on a page were one thing. Watching people die in front of him, their bodies torn apart in the most gruesome ways, was something else entirely—something unspeakably terrible.
And his father, Baek Hyeong-won—the strongest person in this room besides the villains themselves—was clutching his younger brother Baek Seo-jin, eyes darting around as he calculated how to protect only his wife and Seo-jin.
Kim Yu-jeong, too, had eyes only for Seo-jin. She didn't even glance in Seo-jun's direction.
It was only natural for people to treasure their family above all else. But that family did not include their eldest son, Baek Seo-jun.
So it starts here, too.
Baek Hyeong-won and Kim Yu-jeong. Those two had never once shown him affection.
They hadn't abused him outright, but beyond providing the bare necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, they had given him nothing. And even those necessities came with overwhelming discrimination.
He owned exactly one change of clothes, and he'd been dressing himself since the moment he could move his own hands and feet. Baek Hyeong-won and Kim Yu-jeong were considerably wealthy. Seo-jin was always dressed in clothes worth hundreds of dollars at the very least, and if he wanted something, they would pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into it every year to get it for him. Seo-jun's clothes, by contrast, were secondhand rags that cost less than ten bucks a piece.
Food was the same. Seo-jin was always served gourmet meals, while Seo-jun had to eat in the cafeteria with the household staff. The Baekho Guild might have been a subordinate guild of the Kangin Guild, but it still ranked among the top ten in South Korea. The fact that the guild leader's own son, from the age of four or five, was eating off a cafeteria tray alongside the janitors—not even the hunters—naturally sparked gossip.
After that, Seo-jun was banned from the cafeteria and permitted to buy boxed lunches that cost less than ten dollars. Since those lunches had to be delivered, the delivery fees ate into the budget, and the quality of what he ate dropped even further.
As for sleeping—there wasn't even a bed for him. Most nights he laid a thick blanket on the floor and slept there. His so-called private room was nothing more than a small storage closet in the mansion.
He had grown up under that blatant discrimination, but Baek Seo-jun had never harbored any deep resentment toward Baek Hyeong-won and Kim Yu-jeong. He didn't think of them as his parents to begin with. Once he was old enough to become independent, he could simply live his life without ever associating with them again.
That was what he had thought.
A catastrophe like this had never entered his calculations.
This wasn't in the original story.
So Gang-seok had appeared in the original novel Seo-jun had read in his previous life. But nowhere in Seo-jun's memories was there any mention of Seo-jin encountering So Gang-seok as a child.
Did something I did cause some kind of indirect butterfly effect?
The question crossed his mind, but right now, figuring that out mattered far less than figuring out how to survive this.
"Well then! Now that all those noisy mouths have shut up and every~one~ is nice and quiet, I'll grant you a special mercy!"
So Gang-seok spoke with a beaming smile.
"If anyone starts making noise, it might ruin my mood—so you'd be wise to act smart while I'm still in a good one. Do that, and everyone here except one person will get to live."
The words except one person snagged, but the people in the room clung to the hope that they themselves might survive.
So Gang-seok's words probably aren't a lie.
In the original story, So Gang-seok had been a deranged, murderous villain—but he had never broken a promise to spare someone. He actually despised breaking those kinds of promises, saying it ruined the fun. Humans were more entertaining when they still had hope of surviving. A complete lunatic, through and through.
It was a vicious method.
He was telling parents to sell their own children to survive. Even parents with multiple children would never be able to do something like that—hand over their own child.
"All right then. Parents who will offer up a child, raise your hands."
And then something beyond imagination happened.
"H-here! Right here!"
Baek Hyeong-won and Kim Yu-jeong threw their hands up in a frantic rush.
Baek Seo-jun's face twisted in a way no ten-year-old boy's should have been able to.
"Oho? If it isn't the guild leader of the Baekho Guild?"
So Gang-seok recognized Baek Hyeong-won and smiled with genuine interest.
"Y-yes! We'll offer Seo-jun! So please, let me, my wife, and Seo-jin leave here safely!"
"What are you doing! Seo-jun, go! Quickly!"
Baek Hyeong-won pointed at Seo-jun with a groveling attitude, and Kim Yu-jeong even shoved him in the back.
"Father. Mother."
Seo-jun called out to the two of them in this utterly unbelievable situation.
But the moment he spoke their names, both of their faces twisted with irritation.
"What are you waiting for! Get over there already!"
"You're telling me to go die?"
Seo-jun asked, incredulous, staring at the parents who were rushing him toward his death.
He may not have thought of them as his parents, but they were still bound by blood. And they were handing him over to a villain so that they and Seo-jin could survive. It was so absurd he almost couldn't process it.
Seo-jin was looking around, clearly unable to understand what was happening. The fact that this six-year-old little brother somehow looked contemptible to him right now—maybe it was because the situation he was in was just that outrageous.
They're going to sell me so they and this kid can live.
Baek Seo-jun had endured years of discrimination without ever hating them for it. Now he stared at the two of them with genuine loathing.
Why did he have to sacrifice himself for these people and die like a dog?
What crime had he committed that he had to die here?
"Oho, now this is a scene I didn't see coming!"
So Gang-seok was watching with rapt fascination. Even for him, this was a spectacle he had never imagined unfolding—and that was precisely why he was enjoying it.