Prologue: Payday
The instant those words lit up across my phone screen, my blood ran cold.
I'd told myself that once I turned twenty—once I was an adult—all of this would finally be over.
I'd been kidding myself.
When you really thought about it, the idea that this fucked-up bond, stretching all the way back to elementary school, would just snap clean the second I became a legal adult was pretty hilarious.
In the end, there was only one way out.
If it wouldn't end, I would have to end it.
Either I killed that bastard, or I died.
One or the other.
Whatever it turned out to be, the conclusion would be...
I didn't need to make any special preparations.
Ever since that fucked-up stretch of eighth grade when I'd sealed the Black Flame Dragon in my right hand, the simulation of this moment had replayed itself inside my skull tens of thousands of times.
It didn't need to be too short, and it didn't need to be too long.
Like a knight out of a fantasy novel. Like a swordsman out of a wuxia epic. Like the protagonist of a web novel.
I didn't need any of that.
No enchanted blade. No cursed legendary sword. No plus-ninety-nine enhanced weapon.
Fuck all of that.
There was only one thing I needed.
That was more than enough length to sever the tendon of this nauseating bond.
On my way to the front door, my eyes met those of the me hanging in the mirror on the wall.
An utterly ordinary—no, slightly pathetic-looking—twenty-year-old face.
This face might end up in tomorrow morning's paper.
Even knowing I couldn't hide, I pulled a black hoodie from the closet and yanked it over my head. I grabbed a cheap mask from the drawer and covered my face. I roughly followed some "How to Avoid CCTV" guide floating around the internet.
Even an elementary schooler would know this shit wouldn't work. In this day and age, what alley didn't have a camera? And if someone actually decided to catch you, what crime couldn't they solve?
This wasn't a struggle to escape.
It was just...
Just one last fucked-up ritual I was putting myself through.
One more day.
Just one more day.
That tiny desire to enjoy a world without that bastard in it.
Because of that worthless little craving, I followed the camera routes I'd burned into my memory on my daily convenience-store commute and stepped into the shadows. A distance that normally took five minutes, I started looping the long way around through unfamiliar alleys, hugging the damp walls.
Of course it took longer.
So what if I was a little late.
That bastard would definitely throw a shitfit about it—but did that even matter anymore?
Today, either me or that bastard. One of us was getting an ending.
Well. There was a 99.99 percent chance the star of that ending would be me, but that wasn't a bad conclusion either.
A twenty-year-old with a murder rap.
If that was enough to completely wreck that bastard's life, then my own life finishing out as a bad ending... wasn't that a decent trade?
I walked, and walked, and walked, until I finally arrived in front of the shitty little walk-up where that bastard nested.
I stuck a last cigarette in my mouth to catch my breath. Before lighting it, I looked up at the dead center of the building's entrance.
The CCTV's cold lens stared down at me as if it already knew everything.
I'd already known there were no blind spots on the way in. Which meant I'd also known that every last thing I'd done—hiding my face with a hoodie, covering my mouth with a mask, crawling through alleys like a dog, deliberately twisting my route—would all end in front of that lens.
I'd known.
Fuck...
A hollow laugh slipped out.
I'd done it knowing that. I just... wanted to stay uncaught, even for a little while. Even just for the time it took to get here.
Click. I flicked the lighter.
I lit the end of the cigarette and drew the last smoke in deep. Now it was time to walk in front of that camera.
I pulled what was left of the smoke all the way down into my lungs. The cigarette's harsh burn scratched at them, dry and sharp. A rush hit my head, and as the nicotine spread through my body, every nerve that had been wound tight went slack, like a rope coming undone.
Drunk on that feeling, I grinned up at the CCTV like I was possessed by the Black Flame Dragon of my chuunibyou days, and flipped it the middle finger.
Would the cops watching this footage later go, Damn, this kid's actually kinda cool?
That'd be nice, but... reality would just be, Some dumbass is acting out.
Yeah. Probably.
With those useless thoughts, I started up the stairs of the old building. One step. Another. My footsteps echoed off the damp landing.
Maybe it was because of all those countless fantasies in my head. My heart was strangely, unnervingly calm.
Unit 304.
I stood in front of the familiar iron door and punched in the familiar code.
Beep. Beep-beep.
With a cheerful electronic chime, the door opened without a hint of caution.
The air that rolled out was disgust itself. A vicious mix of cigarette smoke and sweat, plus the musty dust-smell unique to studio apartments.
And the source of that smell.
On a bed shoved against one wall, a pair of bodies were tangled together like animals. That familiar back, slamming its hips like crazy from above.
That bastard.
The bastard barely turned his head to look at me.
"Hah... hah... Oh. You here?"
Even with me standing in the doorway, he didn't stop thrusting. Like I was a piece of furniture. Like I was just part of the scenery in this room.
Well. It wasn't the first or second time I'd watched this guy have sex. I'd expected he'd be doing this anyway.
That said, the girl was different again.
Even though I'd opened the door and walked in, the woman pinned beneath him didn't scream—didn't even blink. She just rocked with the creaking of the bed, staring right at me. There was no surprise or shame in that look. Just irritation and boredom, like, The hell is this loser?
"Ah, fuck. Who the hell is this guy?"
A voice thick with annoyance. At that, the bastard paused his thrusting and turned his head.
"It's nothing. Just my wallet. Hey, 'Maggot,' the fuck you standing there like an idiot... for... huh?"
Why so surprised?
A loser getting revenge on a delinquent thug—that shit was everywhere in web novels.
I adjusted my grip on the old fruit knife I'd taken from the sink, still inside my pocket. No time for a scream. A place that wouldn't kill instantly, but would drain the strength from the entire body. The exact spot I'd stabbed countless times inside my head since middle school.
The dumbass on the bed, still too busy thrusting to grasp the situation.
I drove it in without hesitation, just below the ribs on the right side.
Thuck.
The short but sturdy blade punched through skin and muscle, and the sensation of tearing into a squelching liver traveled all the way up to my fingertips.
No scream came out.
"Khuh—"
With a sound like air ripping open, the bastard's body went rigid as a drawn bow. His eyes rolled back, and the force in his thrusting hips vanished like a lie. He collapsed right on top of the girl's body.
Blink. Blink.
My eyes met those of the nameless slut.
Was she going to scream?
Contrary to what I'd expected, the woman just looked back and forth between me and the bastard with startled eyes. Surprise. Shock. And something else, blooming very faintly.
I ignored that gaze, grabbed the bastard's dragon-tattooed body, spun it around, and dragged it onto the floor. He couldn't resist. No—he physically couldn't. All the strength had gone out of him like a lie; his limp limbs dragged helplessly at my touch.
"Khuh... kuh..."
Only a gurgling, phlegmy sound came out now and then. His unfocused eyes were full of terror and a pure, simple question: what the hell is happening? He was feeling the pain, but it was as if even the ability to express that pain had been cut off at the brain.
And so I dumped the bastard—who was becoming a living slab of meat—onto the cold floor without any particular care.
Oh. So this actually works...
It was something I'd seen on the internet, but it actually worked?
That said, why the hell was this guy shooting his load after getting stabbed? Did it feel that fucking good? That wasn't supposed to happen...
No. More than that—why was I so calm? Turns out I was a psychopath? A sociopath? Something like that?
Well, whatever. Both this bastard and I were getting an ending, so what did it matter now whether I was a psychopath or not.
I just stared down at his face as his pupils slowly dilated.
Fucking hell. He was so goddamn handsome...
This son of a bitch was good-looking, tall, came from a well-off family—so why the hell did he live like this?
Ah. "Lived" was the wrong word.
He was dying now.
I was staring down at him for a while when a trembling voice came from behind me.
"......Hey."
I slowly turned my head toward the voice. On the bed, a woman who'd barely covered herself with the blanket was looking at me with terrified eyes.
"Huh?"
"Are you... going to kill me... too?"
Ah. Come to think of it... what was I supposed to do with this bitch?
The end of my plan had been ridiculously simple.
Stab. Quietly watch him die. Done.
I'd known he'd be with a woman, but I had no plan whatsoever for what to do with her.
"......Dunno. What should I do?"
I asked it back, genuinely thinking it over. At my answer, the woman's ragged breathing stopped for just a moment.
"....Please... let me live..."
It was less a voice than a sound of air leaking from her throat. And with that sound, a hideously foul smell fouled my nose.
The smell of bowels letting go.
Ah. He's dead...
I turned my head to look at the bastard sprawled on the floor. I'd gotten distracted by that bitch and missed the most important moment—the instant this bastard's breath actually stopped.
"Tsk..."
I clicked my tongue in a short sigh of regret, then shifted my gaze to the nameless slut. She was still clutching the blanket, not making a single sound, staring at me.
"Hey. Think you could give me a hand?"
My voice was so calm it was hard to believe I'd just killed someone. The woman's eyes went wide, uncomprehending.
"...What?"
"Help me dispose of the body."
Once I'd been caught on the CCTV coming into the building, getting picked up by the cops was just a matter of time. So why was I trying to dispose of the body anyway?
Nothing special.
Just one more day. Just one more day of breathing easy in a world without that bastard. That one fucked-up craving.
So I was just going to try following a body-disposal method I'd seen on the internet. If it worked, I'd buy myself a day. If it failed... the ending was the same either way.
It was a post titled The Most Realistic Disposal Method. The author introduced himself as a "former fixer," but the odds were high it was just the delusion of some shut-in loser like me.
Anyway, the post emphasized exactly two things.
Blood, and smell.
Every piece of evidence starts with blood, and every suspicion starts with smell, it said. So the first thing to do was exsanguination—draining the blood.
With the woman's help that wasn't really help, I grabbed the bastard's limp limbs and dragged him to the bathroom. I dumped the corpse in the bathtub, pulled off the showerhead, and turned on the cold water. It was supposed to keep the bloodstains from spreading.
Next, the bathroom floor and walls, and the spot where the body had been. The post recommended bleach. Bleach interferes with blood-reagent tests and dissolves protein to eliminate the source of the smell—the cheapest and most reliable method, it said.
I pulled a bottle of bleach from under the sink and dumped it generously across the floor. The nose-stinging disinfectant smell mixed with the blood-stink into a whole new dimension of stench.
Finally, the corpse dumped in the tub. According to the post, you had to cut the carotid artery in the neck and the femoral artery in the thigh. That way, even with the heart stopped, gravity would drain as much blood as possible.
I crouched beside the bathtub, slick with blood and water, and looked down at the fruit knife in my hand.
That was as far as the internet knowledge went.
From here on, it was the real thing.
And.
It was... easier than I expected.
Killing someone, and erasing the traces. Maybe because I'd killed him over and over inside my head countless times? It was fucking smooth. Of course, my pathetic strength meant I struggled a bit stuffing the corpse into the tub, but thanks to my excellent "assistant," even that went off without a hitch.
Fitting a six-foot-one, muscular man into a single travel suitcase was over faster than I'd expected. Granted, it was a little chaotic with my nameless assistant puking her guts out beside me the whole time...
"Hah..."
When I zipped the last zipper, all the strength drained out of my body. I looked down at the suitcase sitting alone in the middle of the room.
In its own way... it looked pretty neatly put away, didn't it?
I wiped the beads of sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, and as the tension let go, a random question that had been circling my head popped out.
"Hey, so... do you just not have pubes? Is that a wax?"
"...That's what you're curious about? Right now?"
Yeah... even I thought that was pretty pathetic, but. Fuck. I'd been staring at a naked girl's pussy for over two hours... wasn't it okay to be a little curious?
"You crazy bastard... so what now?"
After two hours of carving up a corpse together, maybe the fear circuits in her brain had burned out. The nameless slut's tone had already changed. It was no longer the voice of someone trembling and begging for her life.
How to put it...
Ah. Yeah. That was it.
The way a mean girl talks to a loser.
But seriously, what was I supposed to do with this bitch? She was a witness, so... did I have to kill her?
I looked at her, genuinely considering it. When I stared, I saw her shoulders go rigid. She flinched for a moment, then, as if she'd made up her mind, slid down and crouched in front of me.
I just watched, thinking, What's this bitch trying to do?
The next moment, her hands went for my zipper. With a ziiip, my unimpressive dick was pulled out.
"...The hell are you doing?"
"Desperately trying to stay alive."
She didn't even look up at me. She spoke while looking only at my cock.
"......Hah?"
I wasn't exactly a normal guy myself, but... in a situation like this, wasn't the normal thing to cry and beg, or pass out from sheer terror?
But this bitch, in that short moment, had already finished calculating if I sexually satisfy this guy, I can live—and she was executing it without a shred of hesitation.
This bitch was a real fucking psycho too...
That said...
Sex...
Felt way better than I'd expected...
