Chapter 92. Punishment.
Chapter 92. Punishment.
I had been told it was clearly rape.
"Rape... I hope I misheard you."
"Yes! It's chaos right now. You need to come out immediately."
"I apologize. I was just so dumbfounded..."
I thanked him for the report, quickly dressed, and sent him off with word that I'd head to the assembly hall right away. As we changed, we talked among ourselves.
"R-r-rape... Sihu, what on earth happened..."
"The bastard finally crossed a line he never should have crossed."
Once everyone was dressed and we stepped outside, Kkamangi—who had arrived at some point without my noticing—climbed onto my shoulder. When we reached the assembly hall, the entire group was already gathered there.
"What in the world is going on at this hour?"
The chief secretary had apparently been roused from sleep, and he began his briefing with his hair still standing up in a mess.
"A researcher working late was heading home. He followed her, abducted her, and attempted to rape her."
"The son of a bitch has finally lost his mind..."
—Craaack...!
Something that should never have happened in my group had just occurred. Fury turned into action instantly, and my grip alone crushed the armrest of my chair to splinters.
The one bit of luck was that it had remained an attempt. The woman's father had found it suspicious when his daughter didn't come home, tried calling her, and when she didn't answer, went looking in person. When she wasn't there either, he reported it to the guards on duty.
Since the container houses were shared with other people, the perpetrators had dragged her to a secluded spot for the crime—but fortunately, they were caught just before it could take place.
"Where are the victim and the bastards?"
"...The perpetrators are already bound. As for the victim, right now..."
He glanced up. She was probably up there trying to steady herself. The older women in our group—my mother-in-law and Mrs. Im Ji-hye—were looking after her, I was told.
"The crime itself failed, but given that most of her clothes were torn when she was found, the psychological trauma appears to be severe..."
As we were talking, my mother-in-law came down from the upper floor.
"Son-in-law... she says she'd like to speak with you..."
While she was relaying the message, another person came down—the woman who had nearly been raped.
"I want to say this while everyone here is gathered together."
She was strong and unbowed. Normally, when something like this happened, a person would be paralyzed by extreme trauma...
She explained everything that had been done to her. She said that for a while now, he had been showing off his supposed closeness to me, making light physical contact, and habitually engaging in sexual harassment and molestation. And then tonight, after she turned down his offer to have a drink, this had happened.
"I never believed for a second that trash like that was really an acquaintance of the Representative."
"..."
"Even if he actually were an acquaintance, you wouldn't have given him any special treatment."
She seemed to have poured out everything she had to say. I let her have some water and looked toward the chief secretary.
"Where are those sons of bitches right now?"
"In the materials warehouse we aren't using..."
I didn't hear the rest. I rose from my seat and headed straight outside. Startled by my movement, everyone else scrambled to their feet and followed. We walked in silence until, before I knew it, we were standing in front of the warehouse.
"They're in there, right?"
"Yes! They're tied up so they can't run!"
I went inside and checked their faces. They had clearly been beaten in the process of being subdued—they were covered in wounds here and there.
"Ohhh... you've come, have you? This is all just a misunderstanding, you see...!"
"Talk."
"That bitch is putting on a show to screw us all over!!!"
At those words, my expression turned murderous and I shot Min-cheol a look.
"Go shut the door."
Sensing that the situation had taken a dangerous turn, Min-cheol sprinted over, slammed the door shut, and even latched it.
Once the door was locked, I stood there quietly listening to their bullshit. That she'd seduced them first, that they'd been played—none of it was worth hearing. I struck the head of the man standing next to the one who was acting as the ringleader.
"That doesn't match the victim's account."
"It's all lies, you see..."
This time I struck another man in the head. After seeing that, the ringleader—maybe he'd finally cracked—smiled faintly and spoke to me.
"My friend, are you afraid of killing people...?"
"..."
"To possess such immense power and yet fail to wield it righteously! Someone like you needs me at his side!"
He had finally lost his mind—he was spouting utter nonsense. The expressions on my people's faces said they were looking at a madman.
"Taking out the trash is always a bit of a pain. When you clean it up, it's sticky or dirty and gets all over your hands, right? I've cleaned up more trash than you could ever imagine, and no matter how many times you do it, it's always just as much of a hassle."
I'd killed so many by now that I could stack their corpses into a tower. To be honest, at this point, killing a scumbag like him meant nothing to me at all.
And in my eyes, he saw a certainty—calm, utterly unshaken, completely indifferent. So this time he changed his approach and began to beg.
"P-please... at least spare my life... the woman came out unharmed in the end, didn't she?"
"You're going to make an excellent example for our village."
We left them there, blubbering with tears and snot, and stepped outside—after securing the warehouse door thoroughly so they could not escape, of course.
"Gather everyone in the open area tomorrow morning."
* * * * * * * *
Everyone assembled in the open area first thing in the morning. Because the summons had been so sudden and without prior notice, the crowd was buzzing with murmurs.
"Last night, a deeply disgraceful incident occurred: a rape."
My voice passed through the microphone and reached everyone through the speakers. The murmuring noise stirred by the shocking news fell silent. At my gesture, the perpetrators, looking utterly ruined, were dragged forward one by one, bound with rope.
I read through the documents I'd received the night before, tossing each sheet out in front of me as I finished.
"Extortion... assault... sexual harassment... well, fuck, that's quite the list..."
As I read out the details, the victims who had suffered these things firsthand listened, trembling with rage. The fury spread to everyone who picked up the scattered documents and passed them around to read. On top of that, the testimony of the woman who had nearly been raped, and the accounts of the people who had discovered the crime, left absolutely no room for denial.
"Last chance. I'll let you offer a final rebuttal. Bark."
With everything already exposed, they had nothing left to say. They simply hung their heads and waited for the verdict.
"If you can't do it yourselves, I suppose I'll have to help you out."
I stepped behind one of the other men and, at an angle the people in front couldn't see, pushed my hand into the back of his head. My hand slid in without any resistance at all, like dipping it into water. In that state, I stroked his brain.
- Mind Control
The man's eyes grew hazy, and he began vomiting out every single thing they had done. Using their feigned connection to me to incite others, the assaults, the extortion, and finally, the attempted rape. This was the detonator. The rage that had been spreading through the crowd finally erupted.
"Banish that trash immediately!!"
"Kill them!!!"
"Drive them out!!"
Having spilled everything, the man whose eyes had now returned to normal began to vomit from the wave of dizziness that hit him. He threw up all the food in his stomach, and then he started throwing up blood—mixed with what looked like fragments of his internal organs.
"I will personally escort these individuals outside."
I wrapped the ropes that already bound them around their necks, stringing them all together like sausages. Then I walked at the head of the line and dragged them out myself, like animals being led to the slaughter. Once we'd gotten considerably far from the village, right into the middle of the road, I cut all of their ropes.
—Boom! Boom!! Boom!!
I started making noise, smashing every car in the vicinity to pieces. A moment later, a staggering number of zombies began to swarm in from all directions.
"What are you doing? If you don't want to become zombie chow, run."
* * * * * * * *
"Huff, huff...!"
"Boss, what do we do now...!"
Looking around, I saw that everyone else had already become zombie food. In the chaos, about four of us had survived.
"That son of a bitch... stealing away all the people I worked so hard to look after, and then doing this to us?"
—Thud! Thud! Thud! Crash!
"Boss...! They've broken through the door!"
"Jump out the window!!!"
I grabbed the shoulder of one man who was making for the window and shoved him straight into the mass of zombies.
'Huuurk... I can't die here...! You bastard... no matter what it takes, I'll have my revenge!'
A day passed, and the sun was already high in the sky. For some reason, the zombies pursued us everywhere we went. I glanced sideways at the two men who were already exhausted beyond their limits.
—Graaaagh!!!
The zombies swarmed in. I used the two of them as bait and locked the door from the outside.
"B-boss...! Gyaaagh!!!"
"Y-you son of a bitch—aaagh!!"
The sounds of crashing objects, the wet noise of flesh being torn—after enough time passed, everything went quiet. Judging from the situation, if I used the window to climb upward, I could probably escape safely.
"H-heok... I'm someone who isn't supposed to die here!!"
My eyes closed from the crushing exhaustion built up from all the running. I fell asleep for a few hours, and when my eyes opened, I instinctively scanned my surroundings. Fortunately, the door was thick enough that the zombies hadn't even thought about coming in.
—Creeeak...
I carefully opened the window and climbed up using the pipes. Luckily, the zombies had only come up as far as the floor we'd been on—this place was clean. Even better, when I rummaged through the drawers, I found a few snacks, candies, chocolates, and the like left behind.
I ate them to replenish my strength, then wrapped books and paper around my arms and secured them tightly with packing tape.
"First, I need to get into another group... and then, somehow, attack their village... they've got plenty of supplies, so I can use that to..."
I couldn't help it—my imagination was already filled with the screams of that so-called Representative and his officers. And when I thought about those two bitches he kept around him, my lower half stiffened and stood at attention.
"Kh-hehe... I'm alive... I survived...! No matter what it takes, I'm going to have my revenge...!"
"I wouldn't count on that revenge, though."