The Serial Killer's Origins
Seo Chae-hyuk was born forty years ago at an obstetrics clinic in Jinju.
His father, a professor at a nearby national university, had held enormous expectations for his son. His mother, who had graduated from a prestigious university and supported her husband while raising their child, also cared for Seo Chae-hyuk with love.
Yet a single human’s genetic flaw could not, unfortunately, be resolved by parental affection alone.
“My child… killed the rabbit we were raising.”
A doctor who was both Seo Chae-hyuk’s father’s friend and a child psychologist asked the boy various questions during the consultation with his parents. When asked about the rabbit’s size, how long they had raised it, and what he had felt when he killed it, eight-year-old Seo Chae-hyuk answered with wide, round eyes.
“Was it wrong that the rabbit died? Then what about cats?”
Swallowing dryly at the sight of those innocent eyes that showed no understanding of what was wrong, the doctor recognized the condition he had only read about in overseas papers—antisocial personality disorder. Seeing it in reality made him feel the boy should be isolated from the world immediately, but he remembered his duty.
“Mrs. Chae-hyuk’s mother, mental illness is like physical illness. With proper care and education, one can live normally among others. Make sure he takes his medication and continue caring for him as you have been.”
Even now, terms like psychopath and sociopath were relatively familiar to the public, but at the time Seo Chae-hyuk’s mother struggled to accept that her son suffered from a mental illness. Of course, even today few parents readily accept that their child is a psychopath. Having received a relatively high level of education, she faced reality with cold clarity.
While driving from Seoul to Jinju, Seo Chae-hyuk’s mother glanced at her son sitting in the passenger seat with his seatbelt fastened and silently repeated a mantra in her heart.
I can raise him well. I can raise him well. I will raise him better than anyone else.
Young Seo Chae-hyuk watched his mother with a faint itch at the corner of his mouth. He was observing her expression with interest when misfortune struck them both without warning.
A drowsy driver on the opposite side of the highway crashed through the guardrail and slammed directly into the car carrying Seo Chae-hyuk.
KU-KWANG! KWANG! KWANG—CRUNCH—
With a tremendous roar the vehicle spun several times before flipping over and crashing into the end of the road. Hanging upside down in his seat, Seo Chae-hyuk barely managed to turn his head toward his mother. His mother, covered in blood, also looked at her son with worry. In the frantic moment she had turned the steering wheel toward herself to protect him, her body had been crushed and broken in countless places.
“Ch-Chae-hyuk-ah…”
Negative emotions—unease, worry, pity—flickered across the mother’s eyes. Young Chae-hyuk stared quietly at that gaze. He could see it, yet found it difficult to identify the emotion. The sensation of pressing down on the rabbit he had raised until it stopped twitching remained vividly in his mind. Somehow, that same sensation felt alive in this full-grown adult woman as well.
Awe.
For the first time in his life, Seo Chae-hyuk felt awe. He felt emotion. The bright, burning spark of life just before it extinguished shone brilliantly in his mother’s eyes.
“Son. My son…”
Seo Chae-hyuk reached out to feel that sensation, and his mother summoned her last strength to grasp her son’s hand.
Tremble—
The dying human’s tremor was felt in full. Chae-hyuk kept his eyes wide open to the very end, watching his mother die so he would not miss that beautiful moment.
Afterward, unable to bear his wife’s death, Seo Chae-hyuk’s father hanged himself. Because he had done so in his study, the first to discover the body was once again young Seo Chae-hyuk. Looking up at his father with his head bowed and tongue hanging out, Chae-hyuk tilted his own head far back.
Beautiful.
The emotion he had never felt no matter what he saw, heard, ate, or smelled surged powerfully when facing a human’s death. Above all, the sensation of being alive. That feeling struck Chae-hyuk with tremendous force.
After his parents’ deaths, Seo Chae-hyuk inherited a vast fortune and grew up without hardship. He decided on his career path relatively early and, at a young age, created a masterpiece that marked a new chapter in Korean sculpture. After earning his master’s and doctorate in Germany in his twenties, he returned to Korea and walked a smooth path under the sponsorship of a major corporation.
Upon seeing his works, the public praised him with every possible accolade:
“An artist who expresses human despair through sculpture.”
“Seo Chae-hyuk’s sculptures, where terror and beauty coexist.”
“Seo Chae-hyuk depicts the extremes of human emotion.”
His sculptures were hyper-realistic works that meticulously portrayed humans in states of terror or rage. They created the illusion of having been taxidermied at the very moment of death, steeped in despair. The first work he unveiled was his mother. The second was his father. For the third, he lured a sixty-year-old homeless man from Seoul Station under the pretext of a university assignment and completed the piece. The fourth was a talented but impoverished female senior he had studied abroad with in Germany. The fifth was a male student from an orphanage whom he met while lecturing after returning to Korea. The sixth was a child from the orphanage where his wife had regularly volunteered.
The most recent work he had been preparing was one he had put considerable effort into. Feeling a sense of boredom, Seo Chae-hyuk had allowed himself a bit of greed. After six months of thorough preparation in his workshop in Paju, he quietly captured his prey. The seventh work was a single mother who worked as a cashier at a nearby supermarket. The woman in her thirties had a six-year-old son. Her eyes resembled his mother’s greatly.
“P-Please spare me.”
Watching her clasp her hands together and beg as if in prayer, Seo Chae-hyuk felt that familiar sensation for the first time—the strange excitement he had felt while watching his mother die. Each time the well-sharpened sculpting tool pierced a vital point, bright red blood spurted forth.
“I… I have a child. Please… spare me.”
Even at the very end, her tenacious maternal love that worried about another’s life more than her own. All of it made Chae-hyuk feel alive. After finishing the cleanup, Seo Chae-hyuk carefully wrapped and stored the sculpting tool he had used this time. Later, when making the plaster mold, he removed the vinyl and inserted the blood-dried tool. It was his own monument. The gushing sulfate minerals enveloped Chae-hyuk’s pitch-black madness in a pale white, just like his mother’s touch.
Seo Chae-hyuk brought the completed sculpture home and placed it in the center of his study—the spot visible from his desk. For a while, this work would satisfy his creative desire. Chae-hyuk slowly stroked the white cheek. The characteristically cold texture of plaster felt exactly like the texture of a body drained of all its blood.
“Thank you for giving birth to me, Mother.”
Client ‘Serial Killer’ experience completed.
Cleaning completed.
Request reward of 150,000 won and Smileage points have been issued.
Points provided according to adjusted notes.
Points awarded: 1,000p
“This crazy…”
Kang Tae-san hurriedly turned off the flood of app notifications and immediately opened the call screen.
Ring—
The first ring had barely sounded before the other party answered.
“Yes, this is the 112 emergency hotline.”
***
A few days later, a breaking news report appeared.
The police had been tracking the Paju cashier disappearance case and had already identified a man captured on a parked vehicle’s dashcam as a suspect. Upon receiving a report that a man who had been hired to clean discovered suspicious items, officers arrived and handed over blood-stained sculpting tools found inside a broken plaster statue to the forensics team. When the DNA from the tools matched DNA from the missing cashier’s home, a warrant was immediately issued. Along with the informant’s testimony and an anonymous tip, police discovered another sculpting tool after breaking a plaster statue displayed at the school and another purchased from a foundation. Identifying the victims was not difficult. The anonymous informant had even provided the victims’ identities.
“Oppa. Are you home?”
Tae-san answered So-yeon’s call just as he stepped into the house.
“Yeah. I just got in.”
“Ugh. Things have been crazy because of that Seo Chae-hyuk guy lately. They say they found the fifth victim too? Apparently his first murder was in Germany twenty years ago. He’s got some nerve.”
“Ah. I see.”
Kang Tae-san decided to keep quiet about having cleaned that house and about having only just finished giving his final statement at the police station today, worried his sister might fret.
“I’m finishing practice early today. Can I come over? Let’s have dinner together.”
“Sure. Is there anything you want to eat?”
“I’ll order delivery. Don’t even think about cooking and making it a hassle.”
“Ahem. Got it. Come safely.”
Right after finishing the cleaning at Seo Chae-hyuk’s house that day, Tae-san had immediately reported the case to the police. He went to the station in person, submitted evidence, and gave his statement. From Seo Chae-hyuk’s perspective, it would have been easy to identify Tae-san as the informant. For his protection, Tae-san had been kept in a safe house until the arrest.
“Phew, I’m exhausted.”
Dark circles hung heavily beneath his eyes from constant nightmares. As he rubbed his roughened face, Tae-san flinched. The sensation of Seo Chae-hyuk touching the plaster sculpture had surfaced in his mind. He quickly grabbed an Oronamin F from the fridge and downed it in one go, then immediately opened the app and accessed the Smile welfare mall. He wanted to purchase items he hadn’t been able to order while staying at the safe house.
◈ Original Price: 2500p → 625p
◈ Next week the price will rise again.
Tae-san immediately used the 1,000p Smileage he had received as a reward to purchase the Memorial Box.
Purchase completed. The item will be delivered shortly.
Remaining Smileage: 390p
When he pressed “Yes,” congratulatory emojis burst across the screen along with a thank-you message.
Ding-dong—
Just like before, the doorbell rang within minutes. When he stepped outside, there was no delivery person in sight—only a single box waiting. The difference this time was its size.
“What the—why is it so big?”
Kang Tae-san grunted as he carried the box that stood as tall as he did inside. To deliver such a large piece of furniture in just a few minutes and without a single sound—Smile was truly a company that defied common sense. Once unwrapped, the box revealed a disassembled modular steel storage unit. After thirty minutes of struggle, consulting the single A4 instruction sheet from every angle, Tae-san finally assembled the steel cabinet.
“Hmm. How do I use this?”
The finished storage unit looked like a large steel wardrobe, just as described in the product listing. Yet it was merely an empty space with no hanging rod or dividers, making it awkward to call either a wardrobe or a storage cabinet. The instructions only explained assembly; there was no usage guide.
Tae-san opened and closed the door to check if it worked properly. The moment he swung it open again—
Whoosh—
An unknown energy enveloped him. He could feel it swirling around his body like a tangled thread. All the negative emotions and memories within him became entangled and were sucked into the Memorial Box like debris into a vacuum cleaner.
Inside the cabinet, something resembling a dark-red spirit writhed.
Thud!
Tae-san instinctively slammed the door shut. At the same time, he felt the terrible sensations that had been tormenting him disappear completely. The memories that had plagued him with nightmares had instantly receded into the depths of his mind. It was as if he were looking at neatly arranged books on a shelf. If he tried to recall them, vivid scenes would surface, just as one becomes immersed in a story while reading. But those memories no longer tormented him. The boundary between reality and memory had become clearly defined, like the line between a book and the real world.
“The welfare mall items really do work.”
Yet thinking about how the arbitrarily changed “notes” had subjected him to horrific nightmares still made his blood boil.
I’m never cleaning for Smile again.
Kang Tae-san made the vow again and again. Of course, that vow did not last long.