The Wicked Are Not Forgotten (2)

In the clubhouse overlooking the golf course, Oh Jinseok burst into another booming laugh.

"Haha! This is why, when you've got money, you've got to cling to life and live as long as you damn well can!"

The finest wine brimmed in the glasses on the table, and young women giggled shrilly at his side. An expensive belt gleamed across his gut, and a diamond-studded golf driver dangled from his hand — the same hands that had buried five hundred people, still clenched around wealth and pleasure.

Even now the victims' families were living on, gnawed at by trauma, and he laughed as if none of it touched him. As if nothing had happened at all. All that filled him was the arrogance of a man certain he still had years and years left to enjoy.

"Come on — another round!"

Brimming glasses struck with a bright chime, and the night sank deeper.

The car slid along the road. The chauffeur kept his attention quietly on the wheel, while in the back seat Oh Jinseok sagged, soaked through with drink.

"Getting old, am I? How much did I even drink to be this far gone already..."

He mumbled it through a thickening tongue, and before he knew it his head had dropped, eyelids sinking heavy.

When he opened his eyes, he was sitting in a luxury lounge. Black suits, glittering chandeliers, a piano drifting soft beneath the talk — a familiar opulence unfolded in front of him.

"What? Was I dreaming?"

Oh Jinseok muttered. His body still swayed with the drink, but everything around him was sharp to an uncanny degree. The table was already heaped with food: tenderloin steak, smoked delicacies, a fine salad. The moment he picked one up, his face went the color of clay.

A severed finger.

He was certain he had speared an hors d'oeuvre with his fork. What he held was his own finger. Blood streamed down it and pooled on the plate.

"AAAAH—!!"

He looked at his hand on instinct. The little finger was gone. Blood poured, and a pain so fierce it bored into his brain — and the people in the lounge went on laughing and talking as if nothing at all were wrong. The young woman seated beside him even dipped the severed finger in her wine and bit off a mouthful.

"Delicious, Chairman."

"Wh-what...?!"

His shout scattered into the empty air. The people around him did not stop laughing. No — the sound was growing more grotesque.

And then Oh Jinseok's arm dropped clean off. Blood fountained up, and he thrashed in agony, and not a single person reacted. As if nothing had happened. Instead his family appeared, and his acquaintances, and they tore into his flesh and ate. His mother. His wife. His son. Even his grandchildren.

"Grandpa tastes awful! He reeks!"

"Rotten on the inside, this one — but we still shouldn't be picky, should we?"

"No — stop! Stop it, you crazy bastards!!"

His scream rang hollow, and then countless hands ripped him to shreds.

He gasped awake. His heart slammed against his chest. He looked around, and it was not the luxury lounge. Marble floors, low lighting, glittering display windows — the department store he himself had raised, preserved exactly as it had stood in the nineties. The Luxury Department Store.

"...Wh-where is this. Was that a dream?"

The air felt too thick to breathe. Employees in black suits appeared one after another, but their faces were wrong. The eyes were empty — dull glass-bead pupils, clouded as if exhaustion had worn them out.

"Welcome, Chairman. Will you be ignoring safety again today?"

"The ceiling will be coming down again today, won't it?"

The words were polite. The tone was warped past recognition — each sentence starting low, then climbing to an unnatural pitch at the end, as if several people were speaking at once and their voices had been stacked on top of each other.

"...Crazy bastards."

Oh Jinseok stepped back, and the employees tilted their heads in the same instant. Even the angle was identical, as if they were a single body.

The employee who had spoken smiled, cold, and pointed into the store. Every mannequin turned its head at once to look at him. The creak of necks rotating lodged itself in his ears.

Oh Jinseok ran like a man gone mad. Just as the employee had said, there was no exit. The escalators ran on without end, and climbing them only delivered him back to the same floor. Every display window was nothing but a picture, and when he drew close, the self reflected in the glass was laughing — alone.

"Stop!! I said stop!!"

The employees closed in, faces blank, and the mannequins inside the displays began to move as well. Creaking joints. Twisted fingers. Eyes with no focus. All of them, as one, reached their arms toward him.

"F-fuck!!"

Oh Jinseok ran, screaming as if he were vomiting blood. But though he fled for days on end, it was the same lobby. The same store. When hunger had nearly driven him insane, he took a shard of glass and opened his own throat, praying with everything he had that all of this pain would finally end.

But.

He opened his eyes to the department store again. The floor still glittered. The employees were still smiling. The mannequins were still moving.

"...It's a dream."

Only then did he understand. This was not reality. A dream — and a nightmare that did not end. The understanding was worse than the pain, because it meant there was no way to wake.

That was when it happened.

With a roar the ceiling split — BOOM—!!! Rebar gave way, and concrete poured down like a waterfall. His whole body was crushed and buried under the wreckage. Flesh tore. Bones shattered. He did not close his eyes. The pain did not end.

When he opened them again through that horrific agony, it was still the department store. The ceiling was cracking and swaying once more.

Collapse, and burial. Torn apart. Bursting open. Screaming. Waking again.

An eternal loop.

His eyes rolled back. His lips trembled. Every time he cried out, the lights of the department store flashed and flickered, and the employees were still whispering, all of them wearing that same smile.

Dozens of voices. Hundreds. Layered together, they rolled through the store like an echo.

"No...! Please, stop...!!"

The moment his knees hit the floor —

BOOM—!!

The ceiling came down again. This time glass and rebar rained like a storm, and his body was pulverized to pieces. It collapsed again. He was buried again. Dozens of times. Hundreds. His sense of time had already crumbled. He knew it then, in his gut — that he would die in this place forever, and come back, and suffer.

In that moment.

Oh Jinseok screamed and opened his eyes.

"AAAAAH—!!"

The back seat. His whole body was soaked in cold sweat. With hands that would not stop shaking, he clutched his own face and told himself, over and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over, that he was awake — and still he could not believe it. His arms were fine. His legs were fine. There was no blood. But the sensations were still vivid: the pain of flesh tearing away, the pressure of concrete crushing him down, even the screams that had split his ears.

Gasping, he looked out the window. Neon smeared past. An ordinary road, a scene where nothing was wrong.

"Chairman, are you all right?"

The chauffeur asked it, worried. Oh Jinseok bit his lip and looked up toward the front seat. The nape of the man's neck was perfectly, unnaturally straight. A chilling suspicion reared its head. The chauffeur slowly turned.

The open mouth was split all the way to the ears. From inside it came a wet, crunching chew.

An eyeball. Still bloodshot, still rolling.

"Fuck — it's another dream!!"

Oh Jinseok shrieked, kicked the door open, and threw himself out.

Thud—!!

"Chairman? Chairman—!!"

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠instant he hit the ground, his scream snapped off in the empty air.

This bastard really was a legendary-grade idiot. For fuck's sake — what a loser.

It moved through me like current under the skin, a clean thrill spreading all the way to the bone. Honestly, I was a little disappointed. I'd hoped he'd last a few days. I wanted to watch him get crushed, torn open, screaming — the whole thing repeating, over and over. This dipshit couldn't even manage that. He planted his face in the pavement and died.

A laugh got out of me. The ones I'd wrecked before had at least thrashed to the bitter end. Watching them struggle and struggle and finally break was, if nothing else, worth looking at. Not even lasting an hour? Wasn't that a bit much?

Jinseok.

Then again, that was exactly why. Spout some bullshit about how safe it all was, then abandon the staff, the customers, every last one of them, and run.

That was when a new post went up on With Crime. My eyes went to it on their own.

Short captions hit one after another. Names, faces, even what they'd been up to lately — all of it laid out and organized, as if someone had tossed me a message meant for my eyes alone.

"Who is this?"

I muttered it, glaring at the monitor. I was certain of one thing: I was the one who had just ground Oh Jinseok down with a curse, and not a minute ago. And a list of the executives goes up, timed exactly to that? Too precise. The grain of the information was different. This wasn't an article some reporter had written. It felt like someone had pulled internal documents with their own hands and thrown them at me. The photos were recent, and the short notes attached to them were anything but ordinary.

Every one of their personal details, every photograph, laid out in a row. Wow. These sons of bitches had been living just fine. They'd smashed other people's families to pieces, and they were still living the same gilded lives of corporate royalty, untouched.

My blood was boiling. Honestly, until now, casting the curse with my own hands and confirming the result myself had been satisfaction enough. This one, I couldn't be satisfied with. One boss dying doesn't end it. The day the Luxury Department Store came down, it wasn't only customers and employees buried under that ceiling. Their families were buried with them.

The ones who should have been put in the ground were the bastards responsible — and there they were, plastered across With Crime. Rolling around just fine in their lavish houses, overseas, "doing business," even stirring up fresh trouble.

It was sickening. An iron taste lingered in my mouth. I'd been clenching my teeth so hard the blood had burst. I burned every face on that monitor into my eyes, one by one. One by one, I was going to make them regret even the fact that they were still breathing.

The moment he confirmed the sentence, the mouth of the man before the monitor slowly curved. It was the result he had wanted. A little sooner than expected — all the better. He stared at the screen with a blank face, eyes burning. Tap, tap. His fingertips drummed the desk as he set his thoughts in order.

A long breath slipped out of him. He lifted his head and etched the remaining faces into memory, clear and exact.

If my guess is right, this list will soon be rewritten as a record of the dead.

He had been waiting, more desperately than anyone, for an ending that would teach a real lesson. Under the name With Crime.