Deception
She needed to pass the location to the agents being dispatched from the Hwaryong Guild, but more than that, she was worried about Seon-a.
A fragile young man who had only just become an adult had been kidnapped, and there was no telling what they might do to him. She was already in the taxi she had called earlier, racing toward him.
Five minutes had passed since Seon-a's location stopped moving on the lover-tracking app.
It was not hard to guess that the thugs who had taken him had reached their final destination.
A search of the map showed a stretch of stacked container warehouses right along the coast.
It was the kind of place that kept turning up in the news as the starting point for drug deals, human trafficking, and every other sort of crime—the kind of place Scavengers liked to use.
Judging by how easily they had lifted both Seon-a and Min-ji earlier, they were Awakened.
And given that they were doing something as illegal as kidnapping, they had to be Scavengers.
She had the taxi stop a short distance away, then carefully approached the container warehouse where Seon-a was likely being held and sent the location by message to the branch manager of the Hwaryong Guild who would be coming out.
She could have simply waited for backup, but the thought that Seon-a might already be in danger made her slip behind a container instead, watching and listening.
It was pitch dark, and the place was so empty that not even a single sound should have been audible—yet voices carried from inside the container.
In a situation where anything could happen, she pressed her ear close and began to listen to the conversation coming from within.
Her head was spinning and her body felt cold.
She was trying to pull herself together, but it was as if a fog had settled over her mind.
Choi Min-ji was piecing together what had happened just a little while ago.
She and Seon-a had bought coffee at a café and then headed somewhere secluded.
Seon-a had said he had something to tell her and led her there, and once they arrived he spoke.
He had drawn a deep breath, then looked at her face and said,
"I'm sorry, Min-ji. For dragging you all the way out to a place this dark. But there's something important I only want to say to you."
So it hadn't been her imagination after all—at least part of it had been real.
In a trembling voice he continued,
"I think I like you."
Whether Yurin was cheating or not, she didn't know.
But that Seon-a liked her—
That, it seemed, was an undeniable fact.
"..."
Even so, she couldn't answer.
She didn't have it in her to snatch away a close friend's boyfriend.
The woman named Choi Min-ji, who had lived twenty years as herself, simply did not have the confidence to steal another woman's man and love him.
Her relationships with both friends.
A crossroads where choosing one connection meant cutting the other deeper.
She couldn't answer.
If she rejected this confession, Yurin would remain her friend. But would Seon-a still be able to stay her friend after that?
She had left that difficult choice hanging and kept her silence.
Then, suddenly, the sound of running footsteps had come from somewhere, and both she and Seon-a had been kidnapped.
The image of Seon-a with tears in his eyes and a startled expression was still vivid.
By the time she came to inside this container, enough time had passed that her eyes had grown somewhat used to the darkness.
A soft groan came from beside her.
It had to be Seon-a, kidnapped along with her.
Worried about him, she called his name in a small voice.
"Seon-a, are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
It seemed nothing had happened to them after the kidnapping earlier.
But it was too soon to feel relieved.
Footsteps sounded from outside.
Two sets of footsteps.
They had to be the thugs who had taken them.
Lee Seon-a confirmed Min-ji's safety and felt a measure of relief.
He still didn't know what the thugs who had dragged them here wanted, but so far nothing had actually happened.
It was a faint hope, yet the possibility that they might get home safely had appeared.
That hope barely had time to form before the sound of someone opening the container door came from outside.
Three silhouettes entered the dark container, shining a light ahead of them.
One was the woman in sunglasses and a black suit who had kidnapped Min-ji earlier. Another woman dressed much the same. And one more—decked out in expensive-looking luxury brands, a woman who looked completely out of place in a crime scene.
"Looks like you brought them properly. Just finish the job and the request is done."
The woman in luxury brands spoke.
When she finished, she walked over to him, grabbed his chin with one hand, and lifted his face while he lay there.
"My pretty one, do you remember me?"
"Who are you?"
He genuinely had no memory of this woman.
We seem like complete strangers. What's going on?
The woman who had placed the current request was Kim Su-a, granddaughter of the chairman of the Daesan Group and a third-generation chaebol.
The Daesan Group ranked third in the Korean business world, a conglomerate with countless subsidiaries that accounted for roughly eleven percent of the nation's GDP—its industrial reach both broad and deep.
Raised as that chairman's granddaughter, Kim Su-a had a nasty hobby.
A face made prettier through multiple plastic surgeries (though the work showed a little), luxury goods covering her body, foreign cars—
She used wealth and looks to snatch men who already had lovers, toy with them, and throw them away.
In short, she made a hobby of affairs and man-stealing.
With her particular gift of gab and her fortune as bait, she would sink her teeth into a man, play with him, and discard him.
Every time she made other women watch their own men licking and sucking another woman's cunt—or sent them the videos—Kim Su-a's chest would tighten and excitement would race through her whole body.
From netorare, where she swallowed a man's cock with her own cunt, to gangbangs where she summoned multiple women to torment that cock without rest until it was raw and ruined, and in the worst cases she would drug the man and pass him around for dozens of hours among the invited women while taking photos and videos.
There was only one reason Kim Su-a had set her sights on Seon-a.
Normally she never used methods this forceful.
Instead she would approach men who already had women, exchange numbers in secret, flaunt her wealth, and seduce them—over and over.
Thanks to the plastic surgery, her looks were guaranteed, and until now not a single man she had targeted this way had failed to fall.
Except for one: Lee Seon-a.
A man who did not fall for a body draped in luxury brands and jewelry, or for looks that left most women in the dust.
Lee Seon-a.
Their first meeting had been when Seon-a was still a high-school student.
He had been waiting outside a department-store restroom for his girlfriend, holding her bags for her.
A consideration for his girl that set him apart from ordinary men.
He had felt different from the others.
That was when she first spoke to him and tried to seduce him.
Just get the phone number and the game was over.
But Lee Seon-a had said he had a girlfriend, that he couldn't, that he was sorry—and he hadn't even accepted her number.
It was the first time a man had ever refused her goodwill.
The girlfriend he had been waiting for came out of the restroom and called the boy's name.
"Lee Seon-a, what are you staring at again?"
So the boy's name was Lee Seon-a.
She never forgot that name.
Even after she got home, even long after time had passed, the pounding and complicated feelings in her chest refused to fade.
She used a private investigator to find out where Lee Seon-a lived, and from then on she kept trying the same seduction methods as the first time.
Methods that, with every man except Seon-a, had succeeded one hundred percent of the time.
Yet with Seon-a they never worked even once.
Even the last attempt that could be called a confession—right in front of the movie theater earlier—had failed.
If she couldn't have him, then crushing him was the right thing to do.
This time she intended to use a somewhat stronger method than she had ever used before.
He was a man she was going to toy with and throw away anyway. The moment he fell for her was thrilling, but the moment that excited her most was when, after she had him gangbanged into a wreck by multiple women, he looked at her with unfocused, dazed eyes and asked, "Why?"—that was when she came alive.
And then the Scavengers had brought her excellent news.
They had brought the woman who had been with the man.
Probably the girlfriend she had seen with Seon-a every time.
The thought of raping Seon-a right in front of that woman already had liquid starting to trickle down between her thighs.
Once everything was finished she would sell him into the Chinese human-trafficking market. Looking forward to a grand time, she had brought every drug she had ever used while violating men: narcotics, adrenaline shots to keep him from passing out, aphrodisiacs, even livestock-grade erectile stimulants meant for cattle.
This time, even if he died, she didn't care.
By tomorrow he would no longer exist in this country anyway.
Seon-a thought the woman currently gripping his chin and lifting his face was insane.
Stalkers had latched onto him a few times before, but his mother—a B-Rank Hunter—had stepped in personally and had them hauled down to the police station.
But this was the first time anyone had actually kidnapped him.
On top of that, she was acting as if she had known him for a long time.
Not just a stalker—was she a complete psycho?
While he was turning it over in his mind, he realized her features looked similar to the woman he had seen in front of the movie theater earlier.
"Is this because I didn't give you my number earlier?"
"That's right. And it goes back further than just now, too."
The woman confirmed what he said and spoke as if similar incidents had been happening for a long time.
Honestly, he couldn't really remember.
"Before I take you, how about we say hello to the girlfriend next to you as well?"
The moment she finished speaking she walked slowly over to Min-ji and kicked her square in the chest.
"Hup—! Cough, cough."
She had been conscious; the kick forced a choked sound out of her along with a cough full of pain.
"What do you want? I'm not Seon-a's girlfriend."
The stalker who had kicked Min-ji looked at him and said,
"So when you met in high school you just swapped girls? What a complete slut. I had you all wrong."
He couldn't say a word.
Right up until the kidnapping he had been confessing to Min-ji. If he flatly denied it now, he could already picture the look she would give him.
Even in a moment this dangerous he still had to worry about how he looked—he really was trash.
"Then what is this girl to you?"
He was about to answer when Min-ji cut in first.
"We're just close friends. Nothing more than that."
Seeing how hard it was for him to speak, she had answered for him.
Even in a situation where no one knew what that answer might bring, Min-ji's upright nature remained the same.
It only made him feel more wretched.
"Oh, is that so?"
The woman sounded surprised.
"With a pretty face like that I figured you'd at least be two-timing. Boring."
"..."
Come to think of it, he hadn't said anything about breaking up with Yurin and then meeting someone new.
Judging by Min-ji's silence, she clearly believed he had confessed in order to two-time.
Even in front of strangers and criminals, she had kept her mouth shut for the sake of his honor.
"Then since you don't know each other, can't you let Min-ji go?"
Hoping against hope, he asked them to release her.
It was obvious they had kidnapped her because of him. If Min-ji got hurt or something worse happened, the guilt would crush him even more.
That last scrap of conscience was dismissed at once.
"No. Now that I think about it, this bitch has something she needs to do for me."
"Originally, you see—"
The stalker suddenly continued, moving toward a corner of the container.
She carefully opened a box. Inside was a woman he had never seen before.
Eyes closed, face deathly blue.
Anyone looking would have known she was a corpse.
"I had prepared a really filthy, disgusting bitch to rape you.
Looks like they didn't manage her properly—she died yesterday, they said."
She finished speaking and looked at him with a lewd glint in her eyes.
"So I was going to have these problem-solvers enjoy themselves in her place,
but there's a much better woman here for the photos, isn't there?"
The stalker ran her gaze up and down him with a nauseating expression, as if she were licking him.
Twisted, distorted desire plain on her face, she said,
"Min-ji, was it? Seon-a called you that earlier, right?"
"..."
Min-ji stayed silent.
She understood perfectly well what this woman intended to make them do.
Refuse and they might die. Agree and she would be forced to rape Seon-a.
Rape a man who had only just confessed to her.
Everything Min-ji had lived by—her values, her character—would never allow such a thing.
But Seon-a broke the silence for her.
"Min-ji... if it's you, it's okay. No—I'm glad it's you."
Startled by his words, Min-ji looked at him, then turned to the stalker and said,
"Then I'll do it. Once it's over, you'll let us go unharmed, right?"
The stalker answered,
"Depends on how you do."
Once it was finished she would ship the man off to China and kill the woman.
Kim Su-a turned her face toward the door so the two of them couldn't see and wore a low, filthy smile.