Only "H" Remains
※ This episode contains depictions of blood and graphic violence. Viewer discretion is advised.
Agent Jang recoiled in horror and shook Horn.
"Hey! What's wrong with you?!"
Horn was past a simple nosebleed — he was hemorrhaging.
Agent Jang changed the target of his shouting.
"Something's wrong with Horn! Open the door and get the medical team in here, now!"
What the hell had everyone been doing while the kid got to this state?
It felt like his blood was boiling in his veins.
"Can't the surveillance team hear me?! I said open the damn door!! Something's wrong with him!"
No matter how loudly he screamed at the CCTV camera, the steel door stayed shut. He even kicked it, but the thick metal didn't so much as budge.
"Cough, cough."
"H! Hang in there!"
Somewhere in all of it, Horn had come back to his senses. Every time he coughed, a flood of dark red blood poured out of him.
"Just hold on. It's okay. The doctor will be here soon."
It was an enormous amount — enough to soak the entire mattress. At some point, Agent Jang's shirt had been drenched in Horn's blood as well.
Agent Jang patted the boy's trembling, pain-wracked body while racking his brain. The surveillance team would never just stand by and watch Horn die. That steel door should have burst open already, with staff pouring through it. That was the way things were supposed to go. Unless there was no one outside the door at all—
"...Huh?"
An unsettling premonition swept across his back. Agent Jang's eyes wavered faintly. No. That can't be true. He forced the thought down and swallowed dryly.
"Just wait a little longer. Just a little longer, and—"
"No one's coming, cough — no one's coming."
Horn answered through a spray of blood.
At that unthinkable reply, Agent Jang froze — and Horn let out a groan.
"Dying really hurts, huh. So Seok's hyung wasn't exaggerating."
"...What are you talking about?"
Agent Jang's voice shook.
"Your face looks so stupid right now," Horn said, laughing.
That playful laughter, so utterly wrong for the situation, only deepened Agent Jang's confusion.
"What do you mean, no one's coming? What are you—"
"Hurts so bad.... When is this gonna end."
"Tell me what you know. Then I can help you. Why are you doing this? Why would you die?"
Wait — is this my experiment camera?
At Agent Jang's question, Horn burst out laughing.
"Haha, that one was actually funny."
A glimmer of humor flickered across the boy's face, which had been contorted in agony. The sudden flash of life in him made Agent Jang cling to it desperately.
"Horn. You have to tell me what you know. That's the only way I can save you."
When Agent Jang kept pressing, Horn slowly lifted his head. His black eyes, today of all days, looked like faded glass beads.
"I killed them all."
"What?"
"I said I killed them all."
Horn gave a faint smile — one that looked relieved, yet somehow complicated underneath.
"Every single one of them. Not one left out."
At that same moment, a call came in to 119 emergency services.
"Hurry! Please hurry!! My husband — my husband is dead!"
"Please calm down. Who's dead, ma'am?"
"How many times do I have to say it?! My husband is dead! I woke up and next to me — hic—"
"A police officer has been dispatched. Please don't hang up. Are you certain your husband isn't breathing? Please check whether you can hear any breath sounds—"
"No, no!! You don't understand! He's dead! He's definitely dead!!"
A woman's terrified voice crackled through the receiver.
"He's all torn apart!!"
"...I'm sorry?"
"I don't know. Like he exploded or something — blood and flesh all over the room — God, please, please hurry!!"
She repeated herself over and over, as if her reason had completely come undone. She'd been sleeping beside her husband, and when she opened her eyes there was something next to her that looked like a lump — at first she didn't even realize it was him. Only after seeing the clothes, torn apart as if they'd 'exploded together,' did she understand what she was looking at. And so on.
It was absurd, nonsensical talk — impossible for a paramedic to believe. Ignoring the chill crawling up his spine, the paramedic passed the call to the field team with as detached an air as he could manage.
"You see everything in this job."
The man, who had forced a laugh for his coworker, lost that smile almost immediately. Because call after call with nearly identical content came pouring in, merciless and unrelenting.
The camera, beyond the paramedic's field of vision, swept through the city, illuminating everything: a commuter alley blanketed in blood and viscera; a bloodstain filling the back seat of a luxury sedan.
"KYAAAAH!!"
An ordinary morning commute had become an inferno of carnage. Screams rose from every direction as people scrambled in dazed panic. The camera drifted calmly through the terrified crowd and slipped into a single office building.
From the outside, it looked perfectly ordinary. But the lobby was filled with blood — deep enough to soak a person's ankles. Suits worn by people expecting a peaceful morning commute, lab coats and the like, lay shredded and submerged in a sea of red.
The camera lingered on the blood-drenched lobby, then rose in the elevator. With a cheerful ding, the doors opened — and the long corridor of blinding white light was no different from the lobby below. Splatters of flesh everywhere, everything drenched in blood.
The camera entered one room. It seemed to be a facilities-management office; monitors lined the walls. This room, too, was awash in blood and gore. An employee ID badge bearing the fresh-faced face of a young man lay on the floor, smeared with red. The monitors displayed CCTV feeds — the lobby, the elevator, every floor of the building. All of them a bloodbath. All except one.
The camera drew close to the only monitor on which movement was captured.
There, on the screen, were Horn and Agent Jang.
"You... killed them all...."
Horn gave a hollow little laugh as he watched the blank expression on Agent Jang's face.
"I never lied to you, did I? I still don't plan on running away."
But running away and killing are completely different things, aren't they.
Horn chuckled lightly. Every time he opened his mouth, dark red blood flowed out in clumps.
"...How did you kill them?"
"Yesterday I put it inside all of them. My blood."
From the investors to the executives, the field teams, the maintenance crews, the surveillance team. On the day of the demonstration, Horn had planted his own blood inside every single person connected to the H Project.
"I've been practicing splitting my blood down to the molecular level. Small enough that it feels just like air."
Compared to turning liquid into gas, putting blood inside a person's body was almost laughably easy. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears — there were plenty of ways in. So he'd placed his blood inside every employee, and then he'd simply waited. For the perfect moment.
"I wanted to kill them when they'd let their guard down completely."
Horn could feel each and every person carrying his blood. Someone leisurely buying coffee before work. Someone slipping into the back seat of a car as a secretary held the door. Someone ducking into an alley for a smoke.
"At a moment when dying should have been impossible. At a moment so utterly peaceful... that's how I wanted them to go."
Horn could feel them smiling. And every time he burst one scattered droplet after another, he could feel the chaos spreading around them too.
Only after bursting every last human being did Horn recognize that what he'd done had sprung from a thirst for vengeance. And the moment he realized it, Horn became happy — and unhappy at the same time.
Horn looked at the frozen figure of Agent Jang and smiled.
"Ah, my mistake. I didn't kill everyone. I spared one person."
A bloodstained finger stirred slowly. The boy's finger pointed at the man.
"You."
"......"
"It's inside your body right now too. Can you feel it?"
Horn scrunched his nose and grinned. At the same moment, Agent Jang vividly felt something moving in his gut.
"Oh, yeah. There it is."
"......"
"I put more in you, you know. I wanted you to die for certain — more than anyone else."
The boy's eyes, saying those words, were brimming with a sorrowful kind of mirth.
"Of all mornings — you had to show up at dawn today. I thought you'd come on purpose."
"I... I—"
"I know. You weren't thinking anything at all. That's why I didn't kill you."
"......"
"I'm such an idiot, honestly. Talking with you yesterday... it felt good. So I decided not to kill you. I just wanted to, that's all."
Agent Jang could only stare at Horn, his face still full of incomprehension.
Horn finally let loose the coughing fit he'd been holding back through the whole conversation. Blood mixed with saliva stretched down from his chin.
"You're... dying? What does that even mean. How can you die. Is that even possible?"
Horn flashed a grin, as if to ask how anyone could ask something so obvious. The sight of that playful smile on a face drenched in blood was profoundly grotesque.
"Everyone at yesterday's demonstration, every employee at our company — you think that's one or two people? Exsanguination, obviously."
"......"
"Honestly, I wasn't sure myself. I did survive getting my arms and legs cut off before."
Horn coughed again.
"But this power of mine — cough — who knows. Maybe every time I use it, it eats into my regeneration. The more people I burst, hah, the weaker my body got."
So I wasn't a perfect immortal after all.
Horn laughed playfully and wiped at his eye. His breathing was growing ragged.
Agent Jang seized the dying boy by the torso.
None of it felt real. His head swam as if he were dreaming. But he did everything he could. He charged at the steel door. Shoved it with his body over and over, kicked it again and again. There was a sound like a bone snapping in his foot, but he had no time to care. And still, the solid steel door refused to open — all the way to the end.
Helplessness.
In that moment, Agent Jang understood — perfectly — the emotion Horn had been living with for five years. Finally, more vividly than anyone.
It ended in tears.
Agent Jang clutched Horn and wept, apologizing over and over.
Horn, who had only been gasping for air, managed with great effort to open his mouth.
"Hyung...."
"What?"
"...Seok's hyung."
"......"
The boy's childish voice was harrowing. Agent Jang clenched his teeth and fought back his tears.
"I'm sorry...."
"......"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry.... I'm not Seok's hyung."
He whispered it endlessly, right into the boy's ear.
And then — he heard the faint sound of the other person laughing. He raised his head, and there was Horn, wearing a ghost of a smile.
"What are you... talking about. I was talking about... you, Yoseok's hyung."
"......"
"You said... I could call you... hyung."
Agent Jang — no, Jang Yoseok — slowly lifted the corners of his mouth. But unlike his rising lips, his eyes, fixed on the boy, were brimming with tears.
Jang Yoseok's tears fell onto Horn's cheek, and the tears that ran down pooled in the shell of the boy's ear.
"Yes. Call me... hyung. Whatever you, whatever you... want."
Horn stared blankly at the sight of Jang Yoseok forcing a smile. He thought he wanted to smile along with him. Strange — somehow, his face wouldn't do what he told it.
After a long while, there came the sound of a hand dropping onto the mattress.
"...Hic."
At the same moment, the man's sobs grew louder.
The camera that had held the two of them slowly drew away. The room held a mattress, a single corpse, and a man clutching the boy to his chest.
It was the same title they had seen at the start of every episode. The crimson lettering slowly trickled downward like falling drops of blood, fading away until — as always — only the letter 'H' remained. That lone surviving 'H' did not vanish until the camera spun 180 degrees to show the steel door, still firmly sealed shut.
And then, a black screen.
"......"
The viewers stared at the ending credits in silence. Even as the names of the director, the actors, and the production staff rolled down the screen one after another, no one could say a word.
The roughly two-minute credit sequence came to an end, and they were only just beginning to claw their way out of the tangle of emotions —
when the screen suddenly brightened.
"...?"
Several viewers who had been about to get up for the bathroom quickly sat back down. The screen still held the thick steel door. And then — weeeeng — with the whine of machinery came the sound of the door being breached from outside.
After a long, grinding effort, the steel door gave way, and people in white coats poured in. The camera swung another 180 degrees to follow them. They found two corpses — and one man who had lost consciousness.
One of the doctors drew blood from the unconscious man and fed it into a small machine. Every eye turned to it.
The moment the word Match appeared on the machine, everyone let out a sigh of relief.
"Haah, thank God."
"Strange. I heard the H Project subject takes the form of a boy...."
"Bad intel, probably. You can never be certain about another company's project data."
The woman declared flatly that since this man had passed the blood test, he was beyond doubt the subject.
"Right — we move before the other companies catch the scent. We're out in thirty seconds. Go."
"What about the body?"
"Leave it. We only take the man."
The people hurried about their work. The man who had transferred Jang Yoseok onto a stretcher asked a question.
"Doctor. Where do we take him?"
The woman smiled brightly.
"To our company's laboratory."
The camera lingered, one last time, on the unconscious face of Jang Yoseok. And over his face appeared the letter 'H' — the very letter that had vanished only moments before.
And so Killing Horn came to an end.