Pain
Listening to the voices from inside the container, Yurin clenched her fists so tightly her nails bit into her palms. Blood welled up between her fingers.
The helplessness of knowing Seon-a had been kidnapped and that she alone could do nothing. And those words — Seon-a offering his body to Minji.
It was agony. It was resentment.
The world seemed to collapse around her, and before she knew what she was doing her feet carried her toward the container. Her steps quickened. Then she was running.
She would beat those stalker and scavenger bastards into the ground and take Seon-a back from Minji.
In the chaos of a situation far from normal, her disordered mind fed her the wrong decision. Properly, she should have kept watching what the scavenger crew was doing, reported to the people who would be deployed when something happened, and provided solid information. Then, once the Hwaryong Guild members arrived, she should have entered the container with them and subdued the suspects. That would have been the right call.
But the thought of Seon-a ending up in someone else's arms instead of hers left Yurin unable to hide her agitation. She stepped inside the container.
And seeing her lover on the verge of being violated, she cried out.
"Yurin!"
But Seon-a had already stripped completely bare — not a scrap of cloth left on him. Minji was in much the same state, only her skirt remaining; she had hold of its waistband, about to pull it off.
"You fucking bitches!"
At the sight of them, Yurin hurled a curse she almost never used in front of Seon-a and swung a fist at the woman in the black suit.
The suited woman dipped her body and slipped the punch with ease, then drove her left fist into Yurin's lower abdomen.
Yurin crumpled to the container floor, clutching her gut. The pain was so immense that her brow knotted tight; she couldn't rise, her whole body shuddering.
"Who the hell is this one? What do we do with her?"
Seon-a understood everything at once — Yurin's sudden appearance, her charging the women in suits, and the very real possibility that Yurin might die.
He dropped to his knees before the stalker, bowed his head, and shouted in desperation.
"She's my girlfriend. Please, spare her. I'll do anything. Please…"
The woman spoke in a voice bright with excitement, as if something entertaining had just fallen into her lap.
"I'm not gonna kill her. I was gonna send photos and video anyway — now she gets a front-row seat. Lucky her."
The stalker ordered the scavengers to haul the fallen Yurin up by force and turn her to face Seon-a's direction. Then, wearing a sadistic expression, she addressed Yurin.
"From now on your boyfriend's gonna get raped. How's that feel? I always sent the other girls photos and videos, so I never got to hear a review. This time I've got a proper audience who can answer me."
"Answer well and I might even stop."
The curl of her lips made it obvious the offer was a lie — bait meant only to watch Yurin's reaction. Yurin seemed to know it too; she didn't beg.
"Go fuck yourself, you bitch."
Instead she snarled rough curses, as if she meant to tear the woman apart with her teeth.
The stalker spoke as though Yurin's defiance had angered her.
"Hey — hurry up and fuck him. Wreck that cock until it's ruined in front of his girlfriend. Do it right, or I'll kill Seon-a, you, and this bitch too. Your call."
Under the stalker's threat, Minji looked at Seon-a as if she had no choice left. Seon-a nodded.
"We don't have a choice if we want everyone to live… This is the only way."
Then he looked at Yurin.
"I'm sorry, Yurin."
Minji aligned herself over Seon-a's waist and began to lower herself down.
Yurin thought.
About why she had never Awakened.
She had been afraid that if she became an Awakened, Seon-a would look at her the way one looks at a monster.
From daycare through elementary, middle, and high school, she had secretly used violence — fists to discipline anyone who tried to approach Seon-a, keeping them from even getting close. Even with an ordinary person's strength, violence had always been the easiest tool for someone who had trained her body in the Hwaryong Guild's sparring halls since childhood.
She believed that Seon-a had set her straight, and that because of him the "Park Yurin" who could get along with others without relying on that tool had been born. Never cursing in front of him, never showing her violent side — that had been the self she shaped to match what Seon-a wanted.
Once she became an adult, the things violence could accomplish shrank drastically. Society was no longer just teachers, friends, seniors, and classmates from high school; it was tangled up with countless people. Those stronger than her were everywhere, and as an ordinary person who hadn't even Awakened, she ranked among the lowest of them.
So now, as an adult, drowning in the self-loathing of being unable to protect Seon-a with violence, she had tried to protect him with the power of money instead. Using money, through a private investigation agency, she had threatened Minji with her younger brother as leverage.
But she had slammed into the reality that, before true power, the power of money was always pushed aside.
She hungered for strength more than ever — and yet she feared the look on Seon-a's face when he would stare at her in terror after she gained it.
That was Yurin's true heart.
From around the age of twelve until now she had worked hard, and still she had never been able to earnestly wish for an Awakening. The desire to look good in Seon-a's eyes. The limits of the power she could possess. And the substitutes that might replace that power. Those three things had locked together, and all this time Yurin had only been searching for situations where she didn't need to Awaken — for means that could stand in for Awakening itself.
What she had just realized was the insight that came when something precious to her stood on the brink of being destroyed.
After her thoughts settled, she could not have said how much time had passed — only that her body felt different. Light, and yet heavy. Right now, she felt as though she could crush the scavengers gripping her from either side without effort. As though she could move with instantaneous reflexes and explosive speed at will.
Yurin simply did what her heart told her to do.
The stalker had left the lovers to it and was watching the two of them have sex. At first, right after Seon-a and Minji joined, both of their faces had been twisted with pain — but soon pleasure seemed to take hold, and the woman began to hungrily take the man, slamming her hips up and down in a frenzy.
Curious what expression the girlfriend would wear while watching that, the stalker glanced at Yurin.
But Yurin kept her eyes closed and said nothing.
Running from reality now too? Looks like she's completely lost it.
Then Yurin's eyes opened, and the stalker felt that something was wrong.
It was the same sensation she got looking at the more powerful Hunters belonging to the Daesan Group — the feeling of standing before a great beast that could swallow a small person like her in a single bite.
The danger was so sharp she started to tell the two scavengers to deal with the woman.
But it was already too late.
The scavengers seemed to sense it as well and moved to attack at once — only for Yurin's hands to close around each of their throats. And crush them.
A sound that should never come from a human neck rang out through the container.
Yurin had wrestled between the self Seon-a wanted and her own violence — and to protect him, she had abandoned the self he wanted.
The soft, gentle Yurin Seon-a had wished for would no longer exist.
Even though she had just killed people for the first time, that bitter thought rose first.
From the unconscious that had blocked her Awakening, she had discarded something useless — and yet the most precious thing of all.
There was no taking it back. No undoing it.
All that remained was deciding how to kill that stalker bitch.
Seon-a and Minji had been moving together, each carrying a private guilt. Seon-a felt the shame of having tried to use Minji, and the dread of committing this betrayal in front of Yurin. Minji, forced to take Seon-a against his will before his lover's eyes, felt a rush of excitement — and for the first time recognized the trash that lived in her own nature.
Forcibly violating a man who had a lover, right in front of that lover. Even if he was a man who had once confessed to her, this had crossed a line.
They had been moving together for some time when it happened.
Yurin seized the throats of the two thugs in black suits and crushed them outright.
Seon-a stared in horror.
Yurin wasn't an Awakened… was she?
The stalker saw it too, recoiled in shock, and tried to bolt out of the container.
Yurin's body moved with terrifying speed — so fast that even watching it felt like a video sped up several times over. It was the kind of power unique to the Awakened.
And then, in an instant—
She kicked the stalker's legs out from under her.
Below the knees, the stalker's legs looked hollow. What should have been there was gone. Both calves had been driven into the container wall.
The stalker foamed at the mouth, thrashed like a madwoman, and blacked out.
Then Yurin came forward — to stand before Seon-a and Minji.
Her breathing was rough. She made no effort to hide her excitement.