Rat Poison That Kills If Eaten #2
The night of the full moon, it was true that Seo Gaeul felt a little excited about going outside for the first time in a while. The past few days had been packed with fun events, so it wouldn’t be wrong to say she was floating higher than usual.
After all, she could lock that Yu Yeoleum in the basement and tease her, mock her, and look down on her to her heart’s content. Seo Gaeul had completely accepted that the male student who had kidnapped both her and Yu Yeoleum was no ordinary person. At the same time, she even felt a certain curiosity.
‘Isn’t it nice that I can make Ha Namjin do whatever I want? Who should I tell him to kidnap next? Or maybe I should make him do something else? Like drowning the guys I don’t like.’
Seo Gaeul’s favor toward Ha Namjin was less like a pure maiden’s first love and more like the joy a robber feels upon discovering an exceptionally sharp blade. Until now, countless men had flattered her as if they could pluck stars from the sky, but not a single one could actually do it. Yet with Ha Namjin, it seemed possible.
In other words, he would make an excellent capable servant. Master and servant. If that kind of relationship was acceptable, Seo Gaeul wouldn’t mind starting a special courtship with the male student named Ha Namjin.
But all those thoughts of hers had just been shattered to pieces by what happened moments ago.
“You son of a bitch! You crazy bastard! I’m really going to kill you! You fucking lunatic! Perverted psycho! Sociopath!”
Upon returning to the basement, Seo Gaeul spat out every curse she knew while condemning the male student. It was all because of the video filmed at the abandoned factory.
“Love’s Fly Swatter!”
Smack—!
Seo Gaeul, struck on the thigh by the fly swatter, leaped up like an animal that had been shot.
“Gyaak!”
She let out a truly pathetic scream and tumbled to the floor with a loud thud. The male student mercilessly beat her thighs, calves, and the soles of her feet with the fly swatter.
Smack—! Smack—! Smack smack smack—!
“You crazy son of a bitch! You fucking bastard!”
“Love’s Fly Swatter!”
Slap, slap—!
The stockings tore, and Seo Gaeul screamed like a madwoman, but the male student merely maintained a solemn expression, as if this were some sacred duty.
Until just moments ago, Seo Gaeul had believed she could perfectly control this male student, but that was clearly not the case.
‘This guy is just a crazy bastard!’
All her speculations and hypotheses about him were discarded. The male student before her was like a rugby ball—you could never predict which way he would bounce. He was a true eccentric.
“Aaaaaaaaagh! You fucking asshole! This is so annoying!”
Seo Gaeul thrashed about, screaming as if possessed by a vicious ghost. She wondered if she should just end this ridiculous farce and sever all these relationships.
‘Should I just break out right now!?’
But unfortunately, tonight was a full moon. The current Seo Gaeul didn’t have the strength to break the iron chains binding her hands.
“Gaeul, you need to use pretty words. I have a duty to raise you as an idol for the people.”
“Fuck off!”
Seo Gaeul was stubborn. She would rather break than bend; yielding was worse than dying.
“You think you can tame me? That will never happen! Hold me for a thousand years, ten thousand years! You’ll never be able to do whatever you want with me!”
She hurled words sharp as thorns at the male student. But none of them seemed to wound him at all. It was as if they went in one ear and out the other.
“You son of a bitch!”
Her frustration grew hotter, her head burning. Her eyes turned bloodshot with the stubborn pride of not wanting to lose to the male student before her. So now she simply shut her mouth completely.
Slap, slap—!
Even as the fly swatter struck her and chipped away at her pride, she didn’t let out even the smallest scream. That must have been the correct answer, because the male student finally put away the phone he had been using to record the video.
“Then let’s change clothes and go wash up.”
“…What? After all that, those are the words that come out of your mouth?”
The male student’s attitude flipped like the back of his hand, and Seo Gaeul could no longer hold back. She was also furious at herself for breaking the vow she had just made to stay silent.
“Ha Namjin, I really hate you. Stockholm syndrome? Fuck that. There is absolutely no chance I will ever come to like you. I sincerely want to see you die a miserable death. I mean it.”
“That’s fine. I’m not doing this to be loved by you. The only thing I want is ‘malang-malang.’ And it doesn’t matter if you hate me. Because I love you. That’s what matters.”
Some time passed after that—.
Yu Yeoleum glanced at Seo Gaeul as she entered the basement.
‘I wonder what kind of words she’ll use to scratch at me this time.’
But after returning to the basement, Seo Gaeul remained completely silent. The occasional rough, angry breathing suggested she was furious beyond words.
Yu Yeoleum examined Seo Gaeul’s appearance. Her hair was neat, and her white clothes looked freshly changed—spotless. She even smelled nice. Having used the male student’s bathroom herself, Yu Yeoleum quickly recognized the scent of shampoo and body wash.
She had gone for a walk, taken a proper bath, and come back clean. So what could possibly have put her in such a bad mood?
‘Did he do something perverted to her?’
Yu Yeoleum wondered if the male student, in the prime of his youth, had finally been unable to suppress his desires and laid hands on Seo Gaeul. It was a perfectly plausible hypothesis. In the adult videos she had recently watched, men were always portrayed as embodiments of lust.
“Ugh, that son of a bitch!”
At that moment, Seo Gaeul suddenly shot up from her seat. She began pacing back and forth, throwing punches and kicks into the empty air. Eventually her face turned bright red and tears even welled up in her eyes.
‘Tears? From that Seo Gaeul?’
They didn’t seem to be tears of sadness. It was closer to tears spilled because she was so angry she didn’t know what to do with her emotions.
Watching her, Yu Yeoleum genuinely felt a flicker of sympathy for a brief moment. Seo Gaeul was beautiful even to someone of the same sex, so those tears naturally shook the viewer’s heart.
But Yu Yeoleum quickly recalled that she was trapped in this place and suffering because of Seo Gaeul, and the feeling turned absurd. It was what people called schadenfreude.
Mocking Seo Gaeul wouldn’t improve Yu Yeoleum’s own situation, but strangely, watching the other girl suffer caused a peculiar sense of delight to wriggle and grow inside her.
And in that moment, she realized something.
‘If I use Ha Namjin, I can make Seo Gaeul suffer even more.’
At the same time, she felt a sense of wonder. As a fellow F-class student, Yu Yeoleum clearly remembered how Seo Gaeul had always been treated by the male students. Not only the students, but even the teachers had been desperate to show her favor and goodwill.
‘I thought Ha Namjin would be the same.’
The perverted criminal Ha Namjin who had kidnapped her simply because Seo Gaeul asked him to. She had assumed he would die for Seo Gaeul’s every word, but apparently that wasn’t the case.
In that instant, the entire hierarchy in Yu Yeoleum’s mind was redrawn. She had thought Seo Gaeul sat at the top of this basement, but in reality, the highest position belonged to the male student Ha Namjin, with herself and Seo Gaeul beneath him.
The realization felt as refreshing as finding a clear answer. Her mind felt cool and clear.
And Seo Gaeul. She imagined how she could repay the humiliation she had suffered today.
‘Should I break the chains and escape as soon as the full moon sets? Or just report him to the police?’
Seo Gaeul was fully capable of escaping this basement on her own. However, if she reported Ha Namjin, Yu Yeoleum—who was locked up with her—would also be discovered by the police and released.
The thought made Seo Gaeul extremely irritated.
‘If only Yu Yeoleum weren’t here!’
Seeing the Yu Yeoleum she had finally managed to capture and imprison walk free was even more unbearable than watching Ha Namjin sleep comfortably. Therefore, Seo Gaeul had no choice but to remain in this basement for the time being.
“Shall we check the internet news?”
Morning. As soon as I turned on the internet and searched for “Seo Gaeul,” the whole thing had exploded. It was all thanks to the edited video I had anonymously uploaded last night.
“This is rat poison that looks perfect to eat and die from.”
Over the past few days, the “Seo Gaeul Disappearance Case” had started to quiet down due to all the things happening, so I decided to stir things up again. By releasing a video showing Seo Gaeul’s current state, I was seizing control of the narrative.
1. Reveal all transaction records with Villains
2. Immediately release the new product Zero Cola Fresh this week
3. Change all beverage products to glass bottles
Even I had to admit these were outrageous demands. After the world ended, I had coincidentally obtained and drunk Zero Cola Fresh, and it was so delicious I thought I was going to cry. The problem was that the product had only been released about a month before the apocalypse, so there wasn’t much of it in circulation.
If I made them release it early now, I could drink as much as I wanted before the end of the world, right?
“Hehe, all those cola bastards are dead meat.”
Moreover, if every cola switched to glass bottles, the supply of bottle caps would increase dramatically. It was killing two birds with one stone. Even General Guan Yu visiting a water park wouldn’t have come up with such excellent negotiation terms.
“Father-in-law Seo Docheol, do you think you can endure without eating this medicine?”
I didn’t know about anything else, but from our last meeting I was certain that Seo Docheol truly cherished his daughter Seo Gaeul. That man would do anything for his daughter.
“Will he be able to swallow rat poison for the daughter he loves?”
Thinking that, I headed to the nearby police station. Everyone had come in early and the place was incredibly busy and noisy. Among them, Jin Ramen noona spotted me and waved.
“Little bro! Over here! Here! You came right on time! Ugh, damn, what the hell is this chaos from the crack of dawn?”
“Jin Ramen noona, what’s going on?”
“You didn’t watch the morning news? It’s because of the Seo Gaeul kidnapper! What a crazy bastard! Whoever it is, this is basically an open provocation, isn’t it? But he made a huge mistake. The culprit left a very obvious trace.”
Left a trace? Did I reveal too much that I like cola?
When I tensed up slightly, Jin Ramen noona—who couldn’t keep secrets when she was excited—spilled everything first.
“Zero Cola Fresh. That’s a product that hasn’t been released yet, so only the deepest insiders of Seonam knew about it. That means there’s a high chance this kidnapping of Seo Gaeul was done by an insider of Seonam.”
“An insider?”
“A familiar face. If we assume Seo Gaeul followed without suspicion because it was someone she knew and then got ambushed—it must be someone very familiar with the Seonam Group.”
As she spoke, Jin Ramen noona was replaying the video on her computer. The scene of Seo Gaeul getting hit by the fly swatter played without audio, so it was silent.
“She looks a bit thinner, but her health seems fine. Anyway, little bro, you’ll be taking the midterm exams with our ‘Yeongsa High Special Investigation Team.’ Got it?”
Finding the missing Yu Yeoleum and Seo Gaeul. That was the evaluation item given to me for the midterm.
“We’re going to meet Chairman Seo Docheol of Seonam right now, so don’t do anything weird or cause trouble. This noona will handle everything, so you just stay quiet.”
I was meeting Seo Docheol again already? Since I was curious how he would react to the rat poison I had prepared for him, I obediently nodded my head.