Hell's Cleaner
Doing someone else's dirty work for them.
It was never as easy as it sounded.
It wore on the mind terribly. Early or late, sooner or eventually, the gnawing certainty that one day you would be discarded like a used-up tool. That feeling could drive a person completely mad.
'If things go wrong and I'm the one who takes the fall, isn't that just too unfair?'
And so, Yoon Deok-soo had kept that fear at bay through 'evidence collection'.
Whenever people with plenty to lose asked him to do something, he gathered everything connected to it. Recordings, original CCTV files, transaction ledgers. He stacked up that and countless other materials, layer by layer, for well over a decade.
For the day the hunt ended and he found himself treated like a hunting dog past its prime. Maybe not enough to save his life, but enough to tear off an arm or two.
'Dying at the hands of a ghost would be even more unfair.'
And yet—who could have imagined he'd end up using that weapon like this?
It was something he couldn't have dreamed up, but this was unmistakably reality.
The father of the girl who died fifteen years ago had come back.
With eyes burning blood-red.
'Those bastards and their parents were the ones who actually killed her, so why do I have to die?'
The incident from fifteen years ago.
He remembered it with unusual clarity. Small wonder—it had been the beginning. The true start of 'this kind of life.'
"...Let me say it again. I only did as I was told. You'd know all about it yourself, wouldn't you, sir? What kind of people those parents were."
His tone, his voice, had grown considerably more respectful. He had to do something—anything—to stay alive.
"I've spent the last fifteen years reflecting, regretting so deeply. The reason I kept such dangerous evidence and records was because... because I hoped that someday a chance to atone might come. I've staked my life on it—"
Chatter, chatter.
A desperate scramble to survive.
Tae-jun neither cut him off nor listened. His expression gave nothing away; it was impossible to guess what he was thinking.
Which made it all the more unbearable for Yoon Deok-soo.
"Sh-showing you now."
A warehouse buried deep in the basement of the house.
Yoon Deok-soo punched in the passcode, and with a heavy clunk, the locking mechanism released.
Vrrrrrrrr...
The massive iron door swung open. Inside stood several bookshelves packed tight with documents, and a row of safes kept in storage.
"That incident should be... somewhere around here, I think..."
The most forgotten corner of the shelves. Yoon Deok-soo pulled out a few file binders from the dust-caked spot. The swirling clouds of dust alone spoke to the depth of fifteen years' time.
"Ah, here it is. On this USB, you'll find recordings of the conversations I had with those parents at the time. These documents are all the counseling records So-hee submitted to the school. And this external hard drive... contains the original CCTV footage still stored inside the school."
He remembered it well.
Back then, Daeha Middle School had refused to hand the CCTV footage over to Tae-jun. By the time he pushed the matter with legal grounds, every record had already been erased.
"Would you... care to take a look?"
"Can you play them?"
"There's a laptop..."
"Do that."
At Tae-jun's answer, Yoon Deok-soo hurried off and returned with a laptop—originally kept for reviewing the materials he'd secured.
"Then... I'll begin playback."
Several videos began playing on the laptop screen.
The setting, every time, was the small auditorium the six devils had used as their den. And it was the very place recorded in So-hee's diary as 'hell.'
"..."
For a long while after that,
Tae-jun could not tear his eyes from the CCTV footage on the screen.
Sadistic violence and relentless bullying. And his daughter, crumbling before it all.
He didn't want to miss a single moment.
'This bastard's completely lost his mind, hasn't he?'
Meanwhile,
Yoon Deok-sou, watching Tae-jun, began backing away in careful, silent steps.
What if he slipped out of the storeroom right now and locked the door behind him? That massive iron door wouldn't budge even under a sledgehammer. In other words, no ordinary means would get him out.
'Even if I hand over everything, there's no guarantee he lets me live. No—more likely he kills me anyway.'
Betting on a low probability?
Madness. Yoon Deok-soo had never once gambled that way in his life. He'd always bet on the sure thing, and that was how he'd made it this far, hadn't he?
'In that case...'
Strike first.
Now, while the man was lost in the scene of his daughter branded with cigarette burns and tortured with a hair dryer. Now, while he couldn't look away from footage of her beaten savagely and even sexually assaulted.
That was Yoon Deok-soo's only chance at survival.
'...Done!'
The plan went more smoothly than he'd expected.
He slipped out of the storeroom without a hitch. The iron door swung shut and the lock engaged.
And the man didn't react at all.
"Ha, hahaha...!"
The moment the door locked,
Yoon Deok-soo burst out laughing.
"Bet you're wondering what just happened? You're trapped, you bastard!"
This was a secret vault built with painstaking care. No route to the outside existed. Without the passcode, there was no way out, period.
"Ghost, zombie, whatever the hell you are! Get ready to rot in there until you fall apart!"
Having shouted that, Yoon Deok-soo hurried up out of the basement. Whether or not Park Min-ah was still in the living room, he grabbed a change of clothes and the car keys and bolted for the sedan.
'I have no idea what any of this is... but first things first. Run. Get as far away as possible.'
If the man were faking death, his face wouldn't look exactly as it had in life. But calling him a ghost or a zombie was too absurd. One thing was certain: he was dangerous.
So run. Because there was no telling how he might get out.
'He won't come after only me forever anyway. I'm hardly his final target.'
Even in the midst of it all, a fairly plausible guess.
Just as Yoon Deok-soo's foreign luxury car pulled out of the garage—
BOOM!
Something dropped out of the empty air with a dull thud, smashing half the front of Yoon Deok-soo's car.
An unmistakably human figure. It was Ki Tae-jun—the very man he'd sealed inside the underground storeroom moments ago.
"What the—how did you get out of there?!"
More astonishing still were the wings that had sprouted from his back. A single pair shaped as if sculpted from black shadow. They melted away, softly, a moment later.
"You son of a—"
He scrambled out of the car to flee, but it was pointless. The other one wasn't human.
CRASH!
Tae-jun seized Yoon Deok-soo by the collar and hurled him across the garage.
Ssssssssss...
Then he seared the Demon Brand into the man's forehead.
"I understand."
"Aaargghh...!"
"Not something a mere teacher could refuse, I imagine."
His memories were hazy, but Tae-jun, too, had once been human. He understood Yoon Deok-soo's position well enough.
But.
"So you'd better understand me."
He had graciously extended his understanding, after all. Now it was the other man's turn to return the favor.
"A father who lost his child just crawled back up from the pits of hell. Did you really think I could let any of you live?"
His side had its own 'irrefusable' business, didn't it?
"S-spare me! Please, please! I'll do whatever you want—anything...!"
Yoon Deok-soo thrashed and flailed. Ki Tae-jun took him by the throat and lifted him off the ground. Grip beyond human strength closed around his neck.
Crack!
That was the end of it.
He snapped the man's neck without a shred of hesitation. To Tae-jun's vengeance, Yoon Deok-soo was nothing more than a trivial insect.
Perhaps that was why no great satisfaction came of it.
"..."
Empty eyes.
Tae-jun gazed down at the soul stone Yoon Deok-soo had left behind. It wasn't a particularly high grade. Mid-tier, at best.
But Tae-jun had a plan. It had come to him the moment he saw the man's storeroom.
'I won't consume this soul stone.'
That had been his way until now. Growth had come first, so he had devoured every soul stone he found. But circumstances had changed.
'I need a way to move the materials.'
The sheer volume of them, and they had to be extracted without a trace. For this, something a little more special was required.
Tae-jun returned to the underground storeroom, soul stone in hand. The iron door that had barred the entrance was already shattered to pieces.
'In short—'
He set the mid-tier soul stone down in the very center of the room. Then, spattering his own blood over it, he began to chant. Not in any human tongue, but in the language of Hell.
Every demon of Hell could summon minions using a soul stone as the medium. Since most such summons were non-combatant, there had been no particular need—until now. But at this moment, things were different. The exact minion he needed existed.
Crunch, crrrunch...
The mid-tier soul stone, soaked in demon's blood, split open, and something came wriggling out. The thing—no, the creature—soon began to take on an enormous shape.
[...Kkeruk, kkeruruk?]
It looked just like a colossal silkworm cocoon. It had a vivid pink body and let out sounds far too adorable for a thing called "Hell's Cleaner."
"It's been a while, Ggomul-i."
Tae-jun called the giant cocoon "Ggomul-i"—an endearment he had carried with him for tens of thousands of years, all the way from Hell.
"I need your help."
Hell's Cleaner, aka Ggomul-i. The reason for the summoning was simple: he needed the creature's one-of-a-kind talent.
"Swallow everything in here."
At that command, Ggomul-i, just like an actual silkworm, began spewing out thread—coiling it around everything in sight, wrapping up the bookshelves stuffed with documents and the safes, and swallowing them whole.
"Don't digest them."
[Kkeruk, kkeruruk...!]
A short while later, Ggomul-i had devoured every bookshelf and safe in the storeroom. Tae-jun gave the creature's body a fond stroke and—
"See you later."
Dismissed the summon on the spot.
All he had to do was call it back in a suitable location and have it disgorge everything it had swallowed. He'd need another mid-tier soul stone, but prey like that was abundant enough.
'Time to get out of here.'
Everything that needed doing in this place was finished. There remained only the cleanup.
'Best tidy up after myself.'
In the living room, thrown into chaos only moments ago, Park Min-ah was still trembling with fear. Her eyes and ears had long since been sealed off by the shadow Tae-jun had spread.
Ssssssssss...
He drew back the shadow covering her ears first, then whispered.
"Call the police."
"...I'm sorry?"
"Tell them a man showed up, killed Yoon Deok-soo, and that the body turned to ash. They'll get the general idea."
Under normal circumstances, she'd have been dismissed as a lunatic. But right now, the whole of South Korea was buzzing over the Shadow incidents. Far from writing her off, the police would come scrambling over within twenty minutes.
"Can you do that?"
"Y-yes! I'll... I'll do it right away!"
Leaving behind Park Min-ah as she nodded her head furiously,
Tae-jun vanished into the darkness.
Along with an unexpected gain.