Chapter 69. Bad Man
Normally, when novels describe waking up in the morning, they say you wake to warm sunlight tickling your face and birds chirping, but I woke up to the amplified voice of the old man shouting about buying broken computers.
Still, I felt as refreshed and clear-headed as a novel protagonist.
It was the same feeling I’d had as a kid, when I’d been burning with a high fever for days, then it broke overnight and I woke up feeling clean and light.
Every single cell in my body felt energized.
“Ughyagyagyagyagya.”
Still in bed, I stretched my arms and legs out long and made a sound.
When I checked the time, it was 7:00 a.m.
I took a strawberry milk out of the fridge, sat on the rooftop bench, and looked up at the sky.
Then I reviewed what had happened last night.
Reviewing is important.
Anyone can make mistakes.
But what makes people foolish is repeating the same mistakes.
And that’s because they don’t review.
If you look back thoroughly, carve the lesson into yourself, and adjust your behavior, you don’t have to repeat the same mistake.
What I lost last night.
The 22 billion won I’d raked in through sheer luck over the past few months—gone in a single night.
What remained was 210 million won.
Since I’d originally had 180 million, it meant I’d made 30 million in the meantime.
On the other hand, what did I gain?
Emotions.
I felt emotions.
Rage, madness, greed, emptiness, a sense of kinship, joy.
Jealousy?
Was it jealousy?
It seemed like it might be…
Either way, someone who feels emotions to this extent can’t be a psychopath.
I had become normal.
My emotions last night had no problem at all. It simply proved that my threshold was higher than ordinary people’s, so I responded only to bigger stimuli.
If I paid 22 billion won and gained human emotions, that wasn’t such a bad trade.
It was a shame that my goal of becoming the motel owner had collapsed right at the finish line, but it didn’t matter. Hadn’t I assumed it would take about thirty years anyway? I hadn’t lost my original money, and it had even increased by 30 million.
It might feel like hollow self-justification, but it was better than clinging to what I’d lost and getting trapped in useless emotions like last night.
The strawberry milk was sweet.
With my usual smile, I tried making my brain secrete dopamine.
It felt different, so I went back inside and watched my smile in the mirror.
It was different.
No matter how hard I tried, my usual smile always carried a faint unnaturalness, but the smile in the moment dopamine was secreted was perfectly identical to a normal person’s.
From the medical books I’d read, the hormone associated with happiness was said to be serotonin…
After releasing a bit of this hormone and that, I got a rough sense of it.
Dopamine linked to pleasure and joy through impulse, excitement, and passion, while serotonin stimulated a sense of happiness.
If I secreted hormones to fit the situation, I could feel the same emotions as ordinary people.
That was worth paying 22 billion won for.
While I was practicing emotional expression through hormone secretion, I realized it was nearly time to go to work.
9:47 a.m.
When I came down to the counter, Chanhyeok hyung was staring at his phone with bloodshot eyes.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t checked what happened to that coin—whether it was Ssa-ni or Sseo-ni.
“Hello!”
At my refreshing greeting, Chanhyeok hyung didn’t even turn his head, just kept staring at his phone.
“What happened with the coin yesterday?”
Of course, I already knew the outcome, but I asked with an innocent face like I didn’t know anything.
I wanted what happened last night to remain a secret only I would know until I died.
“I’m going crazy, Chan. It went up to 3.5 billion won yesterday, then it dropped back to ten million won! I should’ve sold then!”
A faint emotion rose up.
This was joy.
His misfortune became my joy.
Recognizing the feeling clearly, I immediately secreted tiny amounts of serotonin, endorphins, and dopamine, artificially amplifying it.
“Really? Wow, that’s amazing!”
“Are you trying to piss me off? I just lost 3.5 billion won!”
Ah—
This wasn’t the time to feel joy. I messed up.
I secreted oxytocin to calm the joy, then released a hormone called catecholamine while trying to feel sadness.
But sadness didn’t come easily.
It seemed I’d need steady practice.
“But isn’t it almost 10:00? Don’t you have to sell?”
The time was just past 9:50 a.m.
“What are you talking about? It’ll pop again! Even if it’s not 3.5 billion, it’ll go up to 300 million at least.”
With bloodshot eyes, Chanhyeok hyung stared as if he could bore a hole through the screen.
I stopped paying attention to him, checked the room status, and started confirming the room keys.
At that moment, my telekinetic barrier covering the Republic of Korea detected the presence of monsters.
Three monsters were entering the country on an airplane.
I’d leave that for later and deal with it in the evening.
Killing something definitely gave me pleasure.
I didn’t even need to manually adjust brain hormones to force joy like just now—it activated automatically.
Ordinary people seemed to have that function operating by default. I was just slightly lacking in it. In that case, I could manually secrete hormones.
At that moment, Room 102’s door flew open and Bella came out, yawning lazily.
Judging by her pig-printed pink tracksuit, she didn’t plan to trade coins.
“Coffee. One cup.”
Bella flopped into a chair at the counter and told me.
As I made her a mix coffee, I looked at her.
Up until last night, I’d felt a love-hate emotion toward her. Normally, I was incapable of feeling affection for anything at all, but Bella was someone who made me feel both affection and hatred at the same time.
Because of Bella, we stopped a nuclear bomb, and we rescued Cheolmin hyung.
And because of her, I blew 22 billion won.
We’ll call it even, Bella.
Since thanks to you I learned what emotions are, I’ll even be grateful.
“Chanhyeok, what are you doing? You still haven’t sold the coin?”
“Huh? Should I sell?”
At Bella’s question, bloodshot-eyed Chanhyeok hyung asked blankly.
“I told you to sell before ten! It’s almost ten right now!”
“There are still a few minutes! Isn’t it going to go up?”
At Chanhyeok’s answer, Bella clicked her tongue.
“Is this motel built on bad land? All the employees are idiots.”
Seeing Bella with her feet up on the office desk, sipping mix coffee, the anger I’d relieved through monster hunting yesterday tried to rise again.
But I suppressed it, secreted hormones, and smiled brightly as I said to Chanhyeok hyung,
“If you listen to Bella, rice cakes fall into your mouth even in your sleep! Sell fast!”
Bella looked at me and said,
“Not ‘lying down’—it’s ‘even in your sleep.’ Idiot. Did you really take an IQ test? Feels like you got scammed somewhere.”
The anger I’d been pressing down deep surged from my heart to my head.
I hurriedly said,
“I’m going to the bathroom, Chanhyeok hyung.”
I went into the staff restroom inside the lobby, opened the small window, and flew to the plane carrying the monsters that were entering the country.
When I repelled the light like last night, my body became a human-shaped black shadow floating in broad daylight. I flew alongside the plane in the sky and tried to find a way in, but I didn’t know how.
Do I have to break down all my body’s molecules and pass through the plane’s hull molecules?
Ah… that feels like a bit much.
To relieve stress, I needed to see the despair on their faces when I pulled out their heads, so doing it from far away would feel bland.
I flew to the window by the seats where the monsters were sitting.
They noticed me floating outside in midair and flinched in shock.
Seeing monsters that eat people get startled wasn’t even funny. Just like last night, I slowly pulled out their heads.
As always, tough, runny-snot-like strands of blood dangled on and on, as if refusing to let go of the head. Flinging heads into space is the best part, but that wasn’t possible inside a plane.
So I applied pressure to their heads and crushed them.
The old man by the window had the hardest head, so it took the longest to burst.
Watching them in pain as their heads were compressed, I felt the anger from earlier—hard to control—die down.
The three corpses turned into ash and fell onto the plane floor, and the passengers who saw it screamed.
When I checked the time, it had been 48 seconds since I said I was going to the bathroom.
Shorter than cleaning a single room.
I shouldn’t go over one minute.
If it went over a minute, people might assume I’d gone for a big dump.
I flew back and returned to the bathroom attached to the motel’s first-floor lobby.
As the anger subsided, I felt refreshed.
“I sold everything.”
When I checked the time, it was 9:54 a.m.
After I dealt with the three blood fiends who were about to enter the country, Chanhyeok hyung had liquidated all the Ssa-ni coins.
“It’s 12.5 million won! I made 2.5 million won!”
“Oh my god! Jackpot! Then it’s because of me, so buy lunch!”
“Should I? Hahaha! Bella, what do you want to eat?”
Chanhyeok hyung was a strange person.
Just a moment ago he looked like he was about to die, and now he looked genuinely happy.
Bella said that Chanhyeok hyung was her ideal type.
But I felt displeased.
The two of them going to eat alone!
Could this be jealousy?
Probably not.
But one thing was certain: I couldn’t just let Bella off the hook like this.
Just earlier, I’d planned to magnanimously forgive all of Bella’s sins, but now my mind had changed.
I wanted to see her suffer.
I wanted to see her worn down by regret and pain, desperately clinging to me.
Fine.
I should change my life goal.
Becoming the motel owner was an ultra-long-term goal, so I’d push it down the priority list for now, and make my number one goal this: make Bella want me desperately, then dump her miserably.
To do that, I had to make Bella fall in love with me.
Bella said she liked someone social, altruistic, and kind.
Now that I could control hormones at will, I could perfectly act social.
Acting like an altruistic, kind person was easier than earning 30 billion won.
I’d act as her ideal type, and I’d also provoke just enough jealousy.
Looking close with another woman.
I’d go down those two routes, seize her heart completely, then reject her cruelly.
A damp, sinister joy surged up.
This, too, was a natural emotion.
“We’re back.”
As I was making that vow, the motel door opened and Cheolmin hyung, Lauren, and Chaerin—who’d been busy all night—came in.
Chaerin looked fine, but Cheolmin hyung and Lauren looked pretty tired.
Then Chaerin flinched in shock when she saw me.
She couldn’t even properly look me in the eyes.
The woman who always seemed detached, as if she had no interest in worldly affairs, who loved to stare up at the sky, was now trembling all the way down to her legs in panic.
I knew this symptom.
This was the classic look of a woman in love.
Up until yesterday, the immature me hadn’t realized she’d had feelings for me this whole time. But now that I’d evolved by learning human emotions, I could instinctively tell that Chaerin liked me.
Sorry, Chaerin, but I’d have to use Chaerin as a tool for revenge against Bella.
Ah… is this a violation of professional ethics toward a long-term guest?
“We’re back, Younger Brother.”
“Yes. You look tired—get some rest.”
Unlike usual, I gave Cheolmin hyung a smile enhanced with hormones.
Maybe he sensed something had changed, because Cheolmin hyung tilted his head, and I could see Bella staring at me.
“Chaerin, you worked hard too!”
Unlike the smile I’d shown Cheolmin hyung, I gave Chaerin a warm smile with affection mixed in, and put my hand on her shoulder. She flinched and trembled, making it way too obvious how much she liked me.
Starting today, I was a max-level social, good man on the outside—while inside I was a man burning with revenge.