Chapter 150
Chapter 150
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 150
Chapter Title: The Ending (2)
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The man and the woman were married.
They left their small apartment for a house filled with sunlight, and within the woman’s womb, their child was stirring.
Everything was perfect.
Except for one single problem: the man's dangerous profession.
“Still no progress with work?”
the woman asked, her face etched with worry.
The man, looking haggard, was sifting through files late into the night.
“Yeah, this guy is just too meticulous.”
The file contained information on an infamous, bizarre serial killer known as the ‘Umbilical Cord Collector’.
The man added with a troubled expression,
“Just when you think you can forget, another one like him pops up.”
“It’s a grim world.”
“Which is why I have to work even harder.”
The man smiled faintly and rose from his seat.
He embraced the woman and whispered in her ear,
“I have to protect you and Ann.”
The woman silently hugged him back.
Outside the window, pure white snow was piling up softly.
On some unknown winter day, the two were still each other's support.
* * *
With every case file I found, I learned more about the man named Olson Rick.
To summarize what I gathered from the case files about Olson Rick:
He was born after enduring eleven months in his single mother's womb, but she died before his umbilical cord had even detached.
Worse, because his mother gave birth alone, he was left unattended for nearly a day before being miraculously discovered and sent to an orphanage.
His life afterward was no different from that of an ordinary person, with the notable exception that he worked as an obstetrician.
What was also noteworthy were the sporadic signs of psychopathic tendencies found in various records.
Olson Rick's methods were quite cunning.
He would observe the patients he met at work, searching for his prey, and over a long period, he would build intimacy with them, positioning himself as a kind helper.
His crimes were committed when the pregnant women were near full term; he would kill the mother, remove the baby via cesarean section, and then collect the umbilical cord.
The doctor-patient relationship, his seemingly benevolent impression and reputation, and even his race as a white man in the context of the early 90s—all these factors diverted suspicion away from him.
The records, enhanced with profiling, offered a sliver of understanding into his bizarre umbilical cord fetish and his life, and this was all manifested in Olson Rick's domain.
This place, vaster than any part of the Hell of Slaughter I had walked through before, was a continuous series of horrific sights.
Befitting his moniker, the Umbilical Cord Collector, the space was adorned with umbilical cords dangling from the ceiling like a child’s mobile, and at the end of each hung the crouched corpse of a woman.
No, could they even be called corpses?
No matter how I looked, they were alive, pulsating.
The moment this became a certainty was when:
—Kyaaaaaaah!!!
As the man drew near, the women dangling like mobiles shrieked and lunged at him, trying to kill him.
The man dealt with them skillfully, as if this were not the first time.
*Crunch!*
The process almost seemed like a mechanical, repetitive task.
In dispatching them, the man showed no emotion, no anger, no remorse.
It was clear the man had visited this place many, many times.
Thus, his emotions had been worn away.
This impression deepened as we passed through the outskirts, the central area, and then into the core.
Just now, the adolescent Olson Rick, whom I had set as the Chapter 11 boss, died from a bullet lodged in the massive maw on his face.
The man ripped the umbilical cord connecting to his body and tossed the corpse into a corner.
Chapter 12, which I classified as the period of his crimes.
The gatekeeper was an Olson Rick in the form of a giant serpent; the gray scales covering its body were, upon closer inspection, individual scalpels.
Tearing off a scale revealed an umbilical cord wrapped tightly around its entire body.
The man handled even that with expertise.
He gouged out its eye, aimed the gun barrel inside, and scrambled its brain with a bullet.
And so, the mechanical journey came to an end in Chapter 13, which I had designated as the final chapter in the game.
The scenery changed.
At the end of the hellish landscape, peace existed in a grotesquely twisted form.
—Hello?
It was a quiet, warm park, a shaded bench under a tree where a sliver of peace resided.
The surroundings were warped, with distorted perspective and spatial sense, but that spot alone retained its normal form.
The man’s breath hitched.
I, too, drew in a sharp breath.
—Out for a walk, I see?
—Ah, Doctor.
Conversing in front of the bench were Olson Rick and,
‘…the woman.’
the woman from the photograph, the man’s wife.
* * *
The final chapter tells of Olson Rick’s death.
It revealed who his final victim was—the one who led to his demise—and showed the process of how he approached her and how the crime was committed.
In a world completely twisted, only the place where the woman stood was whole.
The man panted, chasing after the place where she was.
In chronological order, the final story of the man and woman unfolded.
—A daughter? Did you hear that?! Our baby is a girl!
—Ann, Ann would be a good name.
—If it were a boy, it would have been Rick.
A scene of her, now with the belly of an expectant mother, rejoicing after hearing the baby’s gender.
—I worry because the baby’s father is a detective. I’m always afraid he’ll come home injured….
—Haha, when I saw him before, he didn’t seem like the type to get hurt easily.
—That’s why I’m even more worried! Doctor, that man doesn’t take care of himself at all!
A scene of the woman confiding her worries about the man to Olson Rick.
—You’re nine months along now.
—I’m worried. I just hope they catch that killer soon.
—…He’ll be caught soon. Your husband is doing his best, after all.
A time when the entire region trembled in fear of the notorious Umbilical Cord Collector.
A scene of her, as time passed and she neared full term, pouring out her anxieties.
The turning point was right then.
When the man’s regret began, when the tragedy began, when the end drew near.
—But he’ll be caught soon.
the woman said with a smile.
Her face was full of trust in Olson Rick.
—My husband was so happy, he said he’d finally caught a lead. That bastard’s finished now! Our Ann will be safe too!
—…Is that so?
—Yes! My husband was blaming himself, saying it was too late. But isn’t it a relief that there won’t be any more victims?
—Right. I was also hoping for a time when my patients would be safe.
As that conversation passed by, the man could no longer walk and fell to his knees.
Beneath the face cradled in his hands, his breath was thin, visible between his clenched teeth. His jaw trembled.
…Yes, it was that one sentence.
The reason the woman became Olson Rick’s target was solely because of that one sentence.
Only after coming to Hell, only after arriving here, would the man have realized it and fallen into self-blame.
Of course, this conversation was something he could never have known unless he was in Olson Rick's domain, recalling the events from his perspective.
In truth, it was no one’s fault.
The man didn't know Olson Rick was the Umbilical Cord Collector, the woman didn't know, and the world didn't know.
And yet, there is one reason he blames himself.
It is the nature of the human species to dwell on the possibility of ‘what if’.
He was a man who could do nothing but blame himself for his loss.
Meanwhile, the space shifts again.
Olson Rick prepared for his final crime in a place known only to him.
The scalpels and various tools for erasing human traces were all gone.
As if he sensed he would be caught after this crime.
At last, the final moment arrived.
It was midday, at the man’s house.
Olson Rick paid a visit.
—Doctor…?
It was a moment that starkly revealed his psychopathic tendencies.
With nowhere left to retreat, Olson Rick sought to make the man miserable.
Instead of making plans to recover after seeing his own downfall, he chose to uproot and destroy everything.
*Shunk—!*
A scalpel pierced the woman’s chest.
The man screamed.
The man pulled the revolver from his coat and aimed it at Olson Rick.
But he couldn’t fire.
—Don’t move. You don’t want this woman to die, do you?
Because Olson Rick had taken the still-breathing woman as a hostage.
He cautiously backed away from the man.
If this continued, Olson Rick would escape.
That couldn't be allowed to happen.
The moment he knew he was being pursued, and now that his face was revealed, he might commit more crimes, faster, out of desperation.
A choice.
Sacrifice his wife to capture Olson Rick here and now.
Or let him go and ensure his wife's safety.
Choosing the latter would mean turning a blind eye to future crimes.
It was a trolley problem.
One precious life versus a faceless multitude.
The man could not bring himself to make a choice.
Etched on the man's retina was the sight of the terrified woman.
That was all he could see.
The strength in the hand holding the revolver seemed to drain away.
The urgency of the situation, the storm raging within the man—as an observer, I could not fully comprehend it.
One truth.
All I knew was the action he ultimately took.
*Bang—!*
The fired bullet pierced both the woman and Olson Rick.
The man’s face, turning deathly pale, silently revealed that his shot had been an accident.
—Anna!!!
Olson Rick’s twenty-first victim.
The name of the woman, the man’s wife, was Anna.
* * *
And so, the story of the man’s life came to an end.
What happened afterward to the man who killed both his wife and Olson Rick, I do not know.
Nor do I know what became of the child in her womb.
However, by piecing together what I did know, I could make an inference.
About the path the man had walked after falling into Hell.
The Hell of Slaughter is a place without permanent death.
One dies and dies until they are worn down and spiritually perish, but their soul and body wander forever in a twisted state.
So, what would the man who fell into Hell have done?
‘He must have killed Olson Rick. Over and over, until that bastard could no longer be called Olson Rick.’
He would have exacted his revenge.
Circumstantially, this also fits with why the man knows this domain so well.
However, the answer the Hell of Slaughter gave to his revenge could not have alleviated his guilt.
Even if he killed him so many times that Olson Rick was no longer that name, the fiend was still alive.
Now, without even the awareness that he was the one being subjected to revenge.
Doesn't killing Olson Rick become meaningless then?
If so, what meaning could there be in continuing the revenge?
The emotions, tangled with self-loathing and rage, lost their way.
After a long journey, those wandering emotions must have returned to the point where the shot was fired.
A hole was bored through the man's heart, and now, only regret and emptiness passed through it.
“…So what’s the ending of this game?”
Han Seo-rim asked in a hesitant tone.
“You have to have an ending, right? And the protagonist came all this way because he knows how to get it, doesn’t he?”
“Right.”
“You said it was suicide, so whatever happens, he kills Olson and then himself….”
After mulling it over for a moment, Han Seo-rim asked carefully,
“…Isn’t that too bleak? If he just stays dejected until the very end.”
She had a point.
And, Han Seo-rim had nothing to worry about.
“I told you.”
The man commits suicide.
But it wasn't a death of crumbling under the weight of regret.
“The man dies smiling. In a way he never knew was possible until then.”
The man's suicide was, for lack of a better word, a final rest.