Necessary and Unnecessary
The front door clicked shut. Once again, the room was left with nothing but the murmur of the television and air thick with dust.
Alone in his apartment, she stared into empty space for a moment, then reached for a pack of cigarettes that had been tossed carelessly aside. She clamped the filter between her teeth and hunted for a lighter. A click, a hiss — an orange flame flickered across her vacant eyes, then vanished.
"Hahh..."
A pale, murky plume of smoke drifted lazily from between her lips. No ashtray. She just flicked the ash onto the floor. When Lee Doyun came home, he'd catch the smell and lose his shit — that much was certain. His nagging — Don't smoke in the house — seemed to linger at her ear, but she didn't particularly care. That was Lee Doyun's problem, not hers.
She simply stared at the fake tragedy unfolding on the TV screen, slowly drawing the smoke in and letting it out. The most peaceful face in the world.
"...Should I have gone with him?"
Park Ajeong murmured it around a long white stream of smoke. It wasn't regret, exactly. Just a dry voice, as if she were reviewing one option among several.
Lee Doyun's face surfaced in her mind. A strange man who could drive a knife into a human body without so much as blinking — and yet folded the moment you pushed him to his face.
Park Ajeong's highly functional brain began replaying that day's memories frame by frame, without a single error.
Park Ajeong stubbed out what was left of the cigarette. Things were starting to get a little annoying.
Oh Sae-ah. She was a clear threat. How was Lee Doyun planning to handle that woman?
Unless he had a reason, Lee Doyun would simply leave Oh Sae-ah alone. The operating principles Park Ajeong had pieced together so far boiled down to two things. Is this person necessary? And, Is this person unnecessary? Both conditions had to be met at the same time. He had to need them — and society had to not need them. Only then would he release his own restraints.
The Kim Sung-jin job had made Lee Doyun's mechanism crystal clear. Necessary to Lee Doyun because of the money. Unnecessary to society because he was a drug-dealing piece of trash. He would kill Kim Sung-jin without a second thought.
But Oh Sae-ah? Killing her was clearly necessary for their own survival. But was she an unnecessary human being? No. She was a capable cop, a functioning part of the social system. The Lee Doyun she had come to understand was the kind of man who would picture the option of killing Oh Sae-ah to eliminate a threat — and then never actually go through with it.
The footage in Park Ajeong's head rewound a little further. The day she and Lee Doyun first met.
From that day on, Park Ajeong observed him and studied him — for survival, for a purpose. And she built a role for herself that fit his rules. By cooking his meals, doing his laundry, cleaning his place, and taking care of his sexual needs, she made herself a woman Lee Doyun needed. And she became the one who found the people society didn't need and brought him contract killings.
It was also the process by which she made herself into someone society no longer needed.
The first time she took a job through social media, it was a kind of gamble. The moment she stepped into crime herself, she would no longer be an ordinary member of society. She would become an unnecessary criminal — someone his rules would allow him to dispose of at any time. He never laid a finger on the version of herself that had become necessary to him. In that moment, she gained certainty about the principle behind Lee Doyun's actions.
A kind of dark hero. By his own account, a chuunibyoBlack Flame Dragon fanatic. Whatever he was... Lee Doyun was someone she needed.
The complicated thinking was over. She sprawled back as if nothing had happened and picked up the TV remote again. On the screen, the same noisy drama was still playing. Until Lee Doyun came back, she had nothing to do.
The drama ended, and a supermarket commercial came on. Pork belly sizzling on a grill, browning to a mouthwatering finish. Park Ajeong watched the screen and murmured.
"Maybe I'll grill some meat today."
She clicked off the TV and got to her feet. A big payday was coming soon. A little luxury like this would be fine, she thought, the idea passing through her like a breeze.
Oh Sae-ah was curled up on the sofa in her own apartment, the heavy blackout curtains drawn. With the midday sun shut out, the room was as dark as the dead of night. In her hand was a sleek black vibrator. The only sounds circling her ears were a low, bee-like hum and her own stifled breathing.
The cold silicone head pressed against her most sensitive place. A dizzying vibration rode her nerves, spreading from deep in her lower belly through her entire body. It was an act of force — using this primitive pleasure to wipe clean a mind that felt ready to burst from the stress.
The closer the pleasure climbed toward its peak, the more ironically vivid they became: Lee Doyun's vacant, stupid eyes, and Park Ajeong's hollow face.
Right at that moment, her phone went berserk on the table, vibrating and shrieking. It was Chief Park.
Every sensation in her body went ice-cold in an instant. Oh Sae-ah swallowed a curse, shut off the vibrator with a trembling hand, and answered. Her voice was startlingly calm. Startlingly even.
Oh Sae-ah hung up and headed straight for the bathroom. She wiped her still-slick pussy with a dry towel and dressed without wasting a second. The moment she shrugged on her worn leather jacket, the languid haze of a moment ago was gone without a trace. It was a detective's time again.
By the time she opened the door, her mind was already racing toward the new crime scene. Her footsteps quickened as she stepped out — and even then, her gaze flicked once, sharply, toward Unit 301 across the hall before dropping away.
She took the old apartment building's stairs two at a time and slid into the black sedan waiting in the lot. The engine growled to life. In the brief second the car rolled backward, her eyes lifted to the third-floor window as if by some prior arrangement.
Park Ajeong was leaning her arms on the windowsill, exhaling a faint thread of cigarette smoke. Same as always. Staring off into the distance with those empty eyes.
Oh Sae-ah clicked her tongue and put her foot down. The black car pulled out of the lot and headed for the new crime scene. In the rearview mirror, the old apartment building vanished fast.
Out on the main road, Oh Sae-ah stopped at a red light, waiting to turn left. Her head was a mess of fragments from the case she'd just been handed. Her gaze drifted, unfocused, across the scenery beyond the window.
A bus pulled up at the stop right beside her. The doors hissed open, and a few people stepped off. And among them, a figure far too familiar locked into her field of vision.
A black hoodie. Slumped shoulders.
Lee Doyun.
Her mind went ice-cold. Over Park Ajeong's hollow face — the one she'd seen smoking at that window barely a minute ago — the image of Lee Doyun stepping off the bus superimposed itself. Scattered points snapping together into one terrible line.
A new murder. And the two of them, appearing near the scene as if they'd planned it.
Oh Sae-ah's grip tightened on the wheel without her meaning to. Her knuckles went white. A short honk from behind finally snapped her back. The light had already turned green.
She bit her lip and hit the gas. The car snarled and leapt forward. Destination: a fresh murder scene. Her eyes went to the rearview on instinct.
In the mirror, two monsters receded, fast.