A Wish on the Monkey's Paw
When the harvesting puppet finally fainted, all that remained was an ownerless mountain. On the second floor and even the third, not a single person was left who could oppose him. Jinseong moved as though taking a casual stroll, killing the unconscious loan sharks one by one. The cat clutched in his left hand opened its maw like a living thing and harvested heads exactly as before. In this manner he reached the president’s office on the third floor.
“Huff… huff…”
The third-floor president lay on the ground, gasping for breath in the same manner as the second-floor one. A wet crunch rang out as Jinseong fed the prone man’s head to the cat. He then tore off one of the president’s arms and pressed the fingerprint against the safe. The lock beeped, recognized the print, and opened with a heavy clunk, revealing thick stacks of green and yellow bills before his eyes.
“Heh heh heh. This place truly overflows with fortune.”
Bills. More bills. So many bills. The great King Sejong and the benevolent Shin Saimdang smiled at him from the notes; how could he not feel joy? Unlike banks, these loan sharks would not have recorded every serial number, and when Jinseong examined them he sensed neither energy nor lingering thoughts. There was no fear of being tracked by any ability. In other words, every note before him could be used as clean, untraceable funds.
Om.
Jinseong levitated the money filling the safe into the air, then curled his body into a tight crouch. At his incantation the bills rushed toward him as though drawn by powerful magnets. The moment they touched the surface of his black carapace they slid inward, slipping into every crevice like water. His crouched form swelled like an inflating water balloon. By the time nearly every bundle had vanished into him—save for a few stray stacks—his body had become a colossal mass.
Well over a hundred kilograms of hulking flesh, with the previously shrunken hump protruding once more, presented a sight that instinctively inspired revulsion. The insect mask he wore, now streaked with what looked like mold against its glossy black surface, only heightened the filthy effect.
“How heavy.”
The weight of the golden slime that had burrowed into his body. The layered stacks of bills packed between carapace and skin. Jinseong found the sensation truly satisfying. He left the room and descended to the second floor.
“Are you enjoying a pleasant illusion?”
He approached the man standing in the hallway, which was now covered in white mold. The man’s eyes were unfocused, staring into empty space—whether from hallucination or shock, it was impossible to tell. White mold-tinged saliva had run down his chin all the way to his neck.
Jinseong placed a hand on the man’s head.
“You performed admirably.”
The shadow snake that had been writhing across the man’s face darted onto Jinseong’s hand the moment it rose, moving like a loyal hound answering its master’s call. It swam across the back of his hand for a long moment before sliding beneath his thumbnail, where it curled up and vanished.
“Therefore, I shall ensure your success.”
Do not feel burdened. This is both a bonus and a severance payment.
With those words Jinseong cast another spell on the man, then vomited an extremely compressed mass of bills directly into his mouth.
“Urk! Urgh!”
Even in his dazed state the man instinctively sensed that what was entering his throat was no ordinary substance. He retched continuously, yet the bundles forced down by Jinseong ignored his feeble resistance and kept sliding in. When not a single bill remained floating in the air—
Tap. Tap.
Jinseong left the hallway with the same tiny footsteps he had used upon entering. The only differences were that the man now wore the expression of a controlled marionette, Jinseong’s own body was massively swollen as though he had devoured a feast, and an unconscious stranger was now draped over his shoulder.
Nothing more. Only those things had changed. There was nothing strange about it.
“Wh-where…?”
The man woke in his own room with a headache that felt as if his skull were cracking. The moment he tried to sit up, a stabbing pain like an awl drilling into his brain assaulted him. His entire body felt sore and strangely itchy.
“I… I definitely led the sorcerer to…”
He desperately searched his memory. His last recollection was guiding the sorcerer to the president’s office. At the time the sorcerer had seemed pleased by the chair, so the man had resolved to buy him one if everything went well, and then… and then…
What happened after that?
Everything afterward was gone. His memory had been completely erased, as if he had drunk until blacking out. The man wondered whether he had actually gotten drunk and whether the headache was a hangover. He rose from the floor.
“Huh?”
The dizziness that hit him the instant he stood forced him back down. It felt exactly like seasickness. His stomach churned and something surged up his esophagus.
“Urk!”
The urge to vomit was impossible to suppress. He ended up retching right there on the floor without even reaching the bathroom. Convinced he must have been drinking, he lifted his head slightly to look at the savory pancakes he had prepared earlier.
“What the hell is this?”
What he saw were bills covered in sticky fluid. Crisp ten-thousand- and fifty-thousand-won notes—looking as though freshly withdrawn from a bank—carried a sour stench that proclaimed they had come from inside his own body.
“Urgh!”
The number of bills increased with every heave. Each time he vomited, tightly compressed notes that looked like small beads shot from his mouth. The instant they hit the floor they unfurled as though freshly ironed, wrinkles vanishing completely. After the process repeated several times—
“How… how much is all this…?”
At a glance it looked like tens of millions of won.
“Why was this money…?”
Why had tens of millions of won been inside his stomach? Why were the bills coming out when he vomited? The man stared blankly at the money.
How long had he been staring? The man finally recalled the sorcerer’s ominous words and realized the money was a gift the sorcerer had given him.
A faint headache pricked his skull. I have to go. The realization brought with it the urge to return to his workplace. He did not think the sorcerer would be there, yet instinct whispered that the answers—answers about the money he had received—lay in that building.
Obeying his instincts, the man burst out of his house and headed for work.
“Why are there so many cops?”
As he approached, he saw police officers. A great many of them, enough to surround the entire building. The man sensed that something had gone terribly wrong. Yet the yellow police tape prevented him from taking even a single step into the workplace he had attended until recently. All he could do was listen to the conversation of what appeared to be detectives inside.
“There really are insane bastards like this in the world.”
“How many people is this…?”
“Wow, this crazy son of a bitch. He’s vicious. Not a single soul or spirit remains. What the hell did he do to be this thorough?”
“Fuck, and what’s with this cat? Did it get struck by lightning just for hanging around these vicious pricks?”
The voices of officers who were presumably on the second or third floor echoed loudly in his ears as if whispered directly beside him.
“Senior! Look at this!”
“Jesus fucking Christ. He wrote it in blood?”
This is both a bonus and severance pay.
I have eradicated from the roots all pro-Japanese collaborators, anti-national traitors, and advocates of the conquest of Korea.
The man realized his sharpened hearing was another gift from the sorcerer. Thanks to that gift he understood the cursed reality before him and dimly grasped what kind of massacre had taken place inside the building.
Unfortunately—far too unfortunately—he had realized it.
“This… this crazy…”
He understood that the sorcerer had completely upended his life.
“I see.”
Whether that change pointed in a good direction or a bad one, he did not know.
“You have labored greatly to remove the evils of society. The divination revealed an auspicious day.”
Yet the man could instinctively sense that he would now live an upright life.
Because he never wanted to meet the sorcerer—or anyone like him—again. The mere thought of living similarly and then encountering such a monster, or someone like him, was too terrifying to endure.
The thick smell of blood rising to his nose triggered another wave of nausea. Before he could vomit on the street, he turned and trudged back toward his room. On the way, whether from a sense of injustice or sheer disbelief at his current reality, his mouth moved on its own and spat out a lament.
“Fuck… I wished on a monkey’s paw.”