Study Your Prey
A young detective led me out of the interrogation room. The instant the heavy door slammed shut behind me with a metallic clunk, the pressure that had been crushing my entire body vanished as if it had never existed.
I'd pulled it off.
I kept the act going all the way through the station lobby — shoulders hunched, playing the terrified civilian. The face of the woman who'd been interrogating me just moments ago lingered behind my eyes.
Oh Sae-ah.
The memory of those blade-sharp eyes sent a chill crawling down my spine.
A low growl rumbled up — not from my throat, but from somewhere deep inside my right arm. Something was scraping against the inside of the seal. One of the things I'd locked away in that arm back in my middle-school chuunibyou days was whispering.
It had been a very long time since I'd last heard the Zodiac Killer's voice.
The old detective I could write off. But that woman had been picking up on something the entire time. That gaze of hers, like she was seeing straight through the performance, straight through the mask.
Huh...
Back in middle school, I'd comforted myself with a little piece of personal lore — I was a better human than the rest of them, because I never unleashed the demons in my right hand. It was all just a game. A setting I jerked off to in my own head.
And now that game had become real. It was keeping me alive.
Inspector Oh Sae-ah... an unexpected variable.
She's ignoring the obvious suspects — the loan sharks — and zeroing in on me. A man with nothing on him.
The loan sharks Park Kyung-chul had borrowed from. The rival outfits that had been circling his karaoke territory like sharks. Motive to spare. Or the other nightlife operators who'd been running illegal businesses under his protection, only to get a knife in the back. Motive overflowing.
And yet Oh Sae-ah's eyes had been locked on me.
I walked through the crowd with no destination. My mind was a blank white field, and my right arm throbbed with a sinister ache.
How do I get out of this?
No answer came. My head felt scoured clean. The demons sealed in my right arm were all howling at once — and then, as if a switch had been flipped, the howling cut off. From the center of that sudden silence, a single law surfaced, cold and primitive as a reptile's brain.
A successful predator always burrows into the habits of its prey. That merciless truth.
How do I get out of this?
The Zodiac in my right arm answered the question with something like a sneer. His voice was cold and dry, leaking through like a broken radio.
Getting antsy, are we.
Like an amateur.
"......"
His languid voice rolled through my skull.
I stopped walking. The city's noise receded. The faces of people streaming past blurred into a smear of background.
Slowly, I turned and looked up at the police station I'd just walked out of. In the lazy afternoon sun, the gray concrete building looked like the skull of some enormous beast.
Oh Sae-ah.
What kind of person are you? What do you eat? Where do you sleep? What are you afraid of?
I started walking home, sorting through my thoughts. The whole way up the stairs of the old villa, my head was full of that woman. When I reached the third floor, the familiar stale, cool air of the hallway greeted me. I stopped in front of my own door, but my eyes drifted naturally to the one across from it.
A cheap plastic nameplate. The number 302 stamped into a featureless steel door.
Oh Sae-ah's place.
Right across the hall...
What a vicious coincidence, I thought, punching in the passcode and pushing my door open.
Inside the dark room, Park Ajeong was staring blankly at the TV. Her gaze shifted toward me. The blue light from the screen painted her empty face like a ghost.
"How'd it go?"
She asked. There wasn't a shred of emotion in her voice.
"Eh... nothing much? The woman across the hall seemed pretty suspicious of me, though."
I answered offhandedly, kicking off my shoes.
"That Oh Sae-ah woman, or whatever her name is?"
"Yeah."
"When you went to the station, you stuck to the script I gave you, right?"
"Yeah."
Park Ajeong answered shortly, never taking her eyes off the TV. I sat down on the edge of the bed and opened my mouth like I was asking for something perfectly ordinary.
"Ajeong. Suck my dick."
There was no desire in my voice, no heat. Just a dry, everyday tone — the same way you'd ask a waiter for a glass of water.
Park Ajeong was silent for a moment. On the TV, a man and a woman in some trashy soap opera were slapping each other across the face and screaming.
"After this."
She answered without looking away from the screen.
"That shit actually interesting?"
"Just want to know what happens next."
Her voice sounded less like she was talking to me and more like a kid waiting for the next scene of a show. I didn't say anything else. I just watched her profile for a moment, then stood up and dropped my pants and underwear.
The TV flashed. A loud sound effect filled the room. Park Ajeong's eyes stayed locked on the screen. But her hand started moving, completely independent of that vacant stare — fumbling through the air the way you'd grope for a stuffed animal in your sleep, until her fingers found my cock and closed around it.
Park Ajeong's hand was cold. No warmth. No desire. Just the motion of confirming the texture of something familiar. Her fingers worked me with a lazy, mechanical rhythm. She was still watching the fake emotions of the people on TV.
The woman on screen wailed.
"How can love change like this?!"
Her hand kept moving at a steady, mechanical pace, completely unrelated to the line. The brush of her thumb across the head of my cock sent a jolt through my hips.
My patience ran out.
I couldn't wait anymore. I grabbed the wrist of the woman still staring at the TV and pulled her onto the bed. She came like a feather — no resistance at all — and collapsed onto the mattress. Even then, Ajeong craned her neck to keep her eyes on the screen. Like she refused to miss an important scene.
She shifted, settling into a comfortable position. At the same time, the white cotton shorts she was wearing — and the white underwear underneath — rode up over her thighs. Every movement was practiced, economical, stripped of anything unnecessary.
I settled between her legs and hooked the thin white shorts and the panties underneath them aside. The light from the TV cast a strange shadow over her spread-open pussy. I spat a thick wad of saliva onto that hole, then pushed my cock in without hesitation.
A wet, sliding sensation as I sank in. Her insides were hot, but there was no life in them. Just an empty, warm cave. The slick mucous membrane, coated in wetness, clamped down on me like a living thing. A filthy, wet friction sound, and a pleasure that felt like it was boiling my brain climbed my spine.
Her vaginal muscles convulsed on their own, greedily tightening around me as if responding to the movement. The gap between her numbness and this primitive sensation wrapping around my hips — that disconnect only made it hotter. I didn't think. I just fucked her like an animal, hips moving on instinct alone.
Someone was screaming on the TV. Instead of ragged breathing, the room was full of the actors' overblown sobs. Through my panting, Park Ajeong's voice cut in. Casual. Ordinary. Like she was changing the channel.
"Don't feel like cooking dinner. Can I just make ramen?"
I didn't stop moving my hips.
"Hah... hah... do whatever you want."
A wave of pleasure surged toward the top of my skull. I whispered against her ear.
"More importantly, Ajeong..."
She cut me off before I could finish. Still watching the TV.
"You can come inside today."
That was the starting gun.
"Yeah."
With that short reply, I let go of the last thread of reason and emptied everything into the deepest part of her.
A moment later I collapsed on top of her, spent. The actors' noisy lines were still circling in my ear.
As if nothing had happened.
I slurped a mouthful of noodles, realizing that if you can actually cook, even the same instant ramen tastes a little different — and Ajeong dropped a line out of nowhere.
"Oh, right. The electric bill came."
"Electric bill?"
"Yeah."
She blew on a steaming clump of noodles and tossed an envelope at me. I stopped mid-chopstick. The figure stamped on the yellow notice — maybe forty bucks — felt somehow unreal.
Come to think of it, I'd forgotten that living requires money. Murder, cops, Oh Sae-ah — caught in that massive vortex of events, I'd completely blanked on the most basic laws of survival. Electricity bills. Rent.
I'd figured I'd be caught within a month. Instead, the cops in this country were taking their sweet time coming after me. Thanks to their incompetence, I'd been handed a longer stretch of free time than expected.
And that freedom had a price.
The money I had left was almost gone. I'd quit the convenience store gig with a single text a while back, and I'd blown through whatever cash I had on the assumption I'd get arrested anyway. Not that I'd spent it on anything impressive. Mostly just ordering as much fried chicken as I wanted...
At this rate, never mind "learning" Oh Sae-ah — I wouldn't even make next week's rent. I'd get kicked out.
I set down my chopsticks and spoke to Park Ajeong, who was still glued to the drama.
"Oh, right. You said you'd give me five million if I killed your dad."
"Oh, that?"
"Yeah."
"Sorry. I was lying."
She said it so casually, popping a piece of kimchi into her mouth.
"Hah?"
"Think about it. I ran away from home broke and moved in with some random thug whose name I didn't even know. Where the hell would I get money?"
She explained it like she was teaching a complete idiot something painfully obvious.
Ah. Now that she mentioned it, that... actually tracked.
All the strength drained out of me.
"Haa, fuck... guess I should look for a part-time job or something?"
Dismemberment murder. Assassinating an active-duty cop in the street. And now I was going to be a convenience store clerk...
That's fucking hilarious...
I let out a dry little laugh without meaning to. Park Ajeong stopped her chopsticks and looked at me. Then she said something completely out of left field.
"Why don't you just do what you're good at?"
"What I'm good at?"
Instead of answering, Park Ajeong jabbed her chopsticks through the air with a little poke. For just that instant, something different flickered in those empty eyes.
"...You want me to become a hitman? Are you out of your mind?"
My voice cracked on its own, the sheer absurdity of it. Instead of answering, Park Ajeong lifted a steaming clump of noodles with her chopsticks. She blew on them once, then slurped them into her mouth. And then, still chewing, without even looking at me:
"Why not?"
...Is that how it is?
Hmm.
I'd think about that part later. What mattered right now was that the woman across the hall had been staring at me like she was ready to tear my throat out.
That look in the interrogation room today. She'd seen something behind the mask. She was different from the other idiot cops. Until I cut that hunting dog's leash — or threw her a different piece of meat — there was no next move for me.
I shoved the rest of the bloated ramen into my mouth. I couldn't taste it. My head was full of one thing only: how I was going to learn Oh Sae-ah.