Hello, Neighbor
A few days slipped by without anything of note.
In the beginning, the Mujin City police officer murder had briefly dominated the news. But with not a single new lead emerging, the world's attention cooled just as quickly. Now the television was far more interested in politicians grabbing each other by the collar and throwing punches than in the murder I had committed.
Thanks to that, our house—sitting in the eye of the storm—was strangely, unnervingly quiet.
When I got horny, I fucked Park Ajeong. I ate. I slept.
If anything had changed in that ordinary routine, it was just one thing.
Stalking.
A dismemberment killer. A cop assassin. And now, a stalker targeting the woman next door. I was evolving into a more complete criminal with every passing day.
A hollow laugh slipped out of me.
Today was no different. The moment I opened my eyes that morning, I groped the sleeping Park Ajeong's breasts as she breathed softly beside me.
Soft. Warm. What met my palm wasn't merely skin. It was heat that had been simmering under the blankets all night, a dense elasticity that seemed to push back against my fingers—like kneading a well-made rice cake, or running a hand over fine silk. A pleasure that lit up the most primitive corners of the brain.
At my touch she let out a small moan, shifting, waking. Without even opening her eyes properly, she got on her knees and bent forward, the motion practiced and familiar. Her vacant gaze flicked toward me for a moment, then she turned her face into the pillow.
I gripped her waist and started driving my hips into her exposed, generous ass without ceremony.
Thud. Thud.
The dull slap of flesh was the only sound in the quiet room. Park Ajeong still wasn't fully awake, and because of that her pussy was far tighter than usual, a dry, scraping friction dragging along my cock. That resistance—a stimulus bordering on pain—felt like it was burning every nerve I had.
I hit my limit fast. I pulled out and came across her plump ass, hot and thick. The cloudy fluid ran down over the flower tattoo etched into the small of her back.
I pulled a few tissues from the nightstand and wiped her down like it was nothing. The second the cum was gone, Park Ajeong collapsed onto the bed as if she'd been waiting for it, turning her back to me. She shifted once, then her breathing evened out and she was asleep again.
I stared at her back as she drifted off. There was no trace of the human who had just been tangled up with me. She was nothing but a doll with the switch flipped off—a silent object, curled on the mattress.
The sticky residue on my own skin suddenly felt unpleasant. I left her there and headed for the bathroom.
The face in the mirror was still that of a pathetic twenty-year-old. My head, though, was already packed with obsessive plans for the woman next door, who would be getting ready for work right about now.
A cold shower cleared some of the clutter. I toweled off my wet hair and pulled on the same dark hoodie and jeans as yesterday—clothes for becoming a shadow, designed not to be seen. Then I stood at the front door, pressed my eye to the peephole, and listened.
My phone read 6:27 a.m.
In three minutes, the door across the hall would open. For the past week, without a single exception, she had walked out of that door between 6:30 and 6:32 on weekday mornings. A human being as precise as a machine.
I held my breath.
Two minutes.
One minute.
Thirty seconds.
And at exactly 6:30, from across the hallway, came the click of a lock turning. Through the peephole, the door to Unit 302 opened and Oh Sae-ah appeared.
Sharp haircut. Black leather jacket. Once again, she looked like a soldier heading to the front.
Her gaze locked onto Unit 301—exactly where I was standing. Through the peephole, her sharp eyes loomed large. Separated by nothing but a thin steel door, I could feel her awareness, every one of her senses, stretching toward me. Like invisible gun barrels pressed to each other's foreheads. A bone-chilling moment.
Hunter and prey, their eyes meeting in the dark.
How many seconds passed? An eternity later, she turned without a shred of hesitation and disappeared down the stairs.
I pulled back from the peephole, exhaled, and timed it. The sound of her descending the stairs. The first-floor entrance opening and closing. A few seconds later, a car engine turning over. When every sound had faded and I was certain she had left the building, I opened the door and stepped out.
The hallway air was still, as if nothing had happened. I pulled my cap down low and followed her, dressed like anyone else.
I took the bus to a coffee shop near the police station—a corner seat by the window, with a clear view of the station building. I ordered a coffee and settled in to wait.
Watching the endless stream of people outside, I found myself thinking about my first murder. That bastard whose name I didn't even want to say. That piece of garbage, scattered in pieces somewhere in the tidal flats of Musan City.
Had anyone even filed a missing-person report? Probably not. A month had gone by without a word. A being so perfectly erased from the world that even his own parents weren't looking for him.
I let the thought drift and stared at the police station across the street. It would be a long wait before she came back out.
"Team Leader, I think this is our guy."
There was a liveliness in Sergeant Park's voice that hadn't been there in a while. The investigation board in the Violent Crimes Team 1 office had been reorganized around a new suspect.
A loan shark who had lent money to the victim, Park Kyung-chul. His alibi was incomplete, and the call records between him and the victim contained outright threats. The rest of the team was already locking onto the loan shark.
Oh Sae-ah knew, rationally, that it was the right answer. Motive was more than sufficient. The alibi was sloppy. Every circumstantial piece of evidence pointed to him as the killer. If she weren't the one in charge of this case—if she were a third party reading the report—she would have named the loan shark as the primary suspect without a second thought.
But something felt off.
She stared at the two photographs pinned to the edge of the investigation board. Park Ajeong and Lee Doyun.
Logically, they should have been off the suspect list by now. Park Ajeong had a perfect alibi, and Lee Doyun was just a timid, clumsy kid living under her thumb.
So why. Why did these two faces keep feeling like the key to everything?
She thought of what her senior had said last night.
Please. Don't go down the wrong track.
Her head pointed to the loan shark. But her chest—her instincts—were still aimed at Unit 301 of that rundown villa.
"Team Leader?"
Sergeant Park's voice pulled her back. Every pair of eyes in the conference room was on her, waiting for a decision.
Oh Sae-ah let out a long, slow breath. Then she forced her gaze away from the two photographs at the edge of the board.
A team leader couldn't operate on gut feeling. Evidence and facts. That was the only path she was supposed to follow.
"Understood."
She finally spoke. Her voice was as solid and unshaken as always.
"For now, let's put the loan shark, Kim Myeong-seok, on the suspect list and focus there."
The moment the words left her mouth, the stagnant air in the office came back to life.
"Yes, ma'am!"
The team members called it out and started moving with purpose. Sergeant Park picked up the case file with a satisfied look.
Oh Sae-ah watched it all. The entire team was moving in the right direction. She herself, though, still felt like she was standing alone in the middle of a labyrinth.
The sky outside the window began to bleed, as if someone had spilled red paint across it.
This was my third cup of coffee. My stomach burned, and my ass had gone numb from sitting so long. I'd been camped in that cafe until sunset when I finally caught movement.
A familiar black sedan. I watched Oh Sae-ah's car pull out of the police station and didn't move a muscle until it had completely vanished from sight.
So she clocked out, too. A perfectly ordinary fact that, for some reason, felt unfamiliar.
I stood up, my body stiff. The cafe was full of couples who'd come for dinner, their laughter filling the room. I used that sound as background music and walked out.
I headed home on public transit, resting my head against the rattling bus window. I hadn't done a damn thing all day, and my whole body felt like lead. The nightscape of Mujin City slid past outside. The only things floating through my head were the tiny fragments of data I'd collected today.
Left for work at 6:30 a.m. Got off at 7:15 p.m.
I'd gained nothing. I couldn't get inside the police station, and the hallway CCTV made breaking into Oh Sae-ah's place a non-starter. I just dragged my exhausted body off the bus and walked through the old villa neighborhood.
Guess I'll go home and fuck Park Ajeong.
I'd spent the whole day pulling this grand cop-tailing operation, and the conclusion was sex. I let out a little chuckle as I rounded the corner at the villa entrance.
And then everything stopped.
The laugh that had been about to escape went cold in my throat. My feet rooted themselves to the asphalt.
Beyond the corner, in the dark, Oh Sae-ah was standing there with a trash bag in her hand, looking right at me.
Instead of the combat-ready leather jacket, she was wearing a plain gray tracksuit. A bare face. Short hair left messy, no styling at all. Her appearance was ordinary. Her eyes were not. A gaze that seemed to see through everything about me—the me who'd been laughing to himself just a second ago.
The comfortable position of observer was gone.
How much time passed? She was the one who broke the silence. The corner of Oh Sae-ah's mouth lifted, just barely. It was less a smile than a twitch of muscle. She spoke first, in the perfectly ordinary voice of a neighbor.
"Hello."
I flinched and ducked my head, awkward.
"Ah—yeah... hello."
My vocal cords adjusted to a trembling frequency, like I was nervous. The perfect voice of a pathetic, shaking twenty-year-old loser. Even as I played the groveling act, my rational mind was reading her eyes. And her eyes, behind that greeting, were clearly saying this:
In that instant, my right arm went ice-cold and numb. The little game I'd set up in my right hand—the sealed demons—whispered.
I clenched my fist without meaning to. Oh Sae-ah watched me a moment longer, then continued. Her voice cut through the dark, clearer than any other sound, and drove itself into my ear.
"Do you have a minute? I'd like to talk."
A trap? Or was this just her way of investigating? I put the mask of the clumsy young man back on, the one I'd programmed in advance.
"...Huh? M-me?"
A stupid, stammering voice. Instead of answering, she jerked her chin toward a nearby twenty-four-hour cafe. Her eyes still looked like they could see through every last piece of me.
The demon in my right arm whispered Kill, and my reason screamed that this was a trap.
But there was only one predetermined output for the character called Lee Doyun. A naive twenty-year-old guy turning down a conversation with the hot older woman who lived next door?
Not a chance.
I swallowed a curse and put on the dumbest, most innocent face I could manage.
"Ah... yeah. Yeah, of course."
She said nothing and started walking toward the cafe. I let a little distance open up and followed. Behind her back, my right arm went cold and numb again.
Kill.
Kill.
The demon wouldn't give up. It kept whispering. It's just a goddamn roleplay setting, so stop actually whispering...
Fuck.
My reason screamed and thrashed. I clenched my right fist tight. The feeling of my nails digging into my palm was just enough to keep me grounded.
A moment later, we stood in front of the bright lights of the twenty-four-hour cafe. She opened the door without hesitation and walked in. I took a breath, put on the most clueless expression I could, and followed her inside.
Ding.
The bell rang, and I stepped back onto the testing ground where I would have to sit across from her once again.