The Story of Those Left Behind (2)
With that final, broken sob, Hyuntae had collapsed — and now, waking, he felt the full weight of it. Seona was gone. Truly gone from his side.
Perhaps it was that strange, hollow lightness of acceptance that did it. He had fallen into something closer to a faint than sleep, yet when he stirred he felt as though he had rested properly for the first time in ages. Night after night he had tossed and moaned, fretting over his son, never managing real rest — but after this single stretch of oblivion, his heart felt, if only a little, quieter.
Sensing that her husband had woken, Mina came from the bathroom with a towel and gently wiped his tear-streaked face. Then she held out the clothes Seona had worn.
A tremor ran through Hyuntae's hands as he took them and clutched them to his chest, searching for whatever warmth his son might once have left in the fabric. The sight of him was almost too pitiful to bear.
When the shaking in his hands finally stilled — when it seemed he had gathered himself enough to speak — Mina said,
"Honey… I found a camcorder in here that Seona and Yurin used. It looks like they recorded a lot of memories together. Let's watch them with the in-laws."
"Hhk… All right. Just… just give me a moment…"
His body had almost nothing left in it. Whether from the aftermath of fainting or pure exhaustion, his legs would barely hold him. Mina supported her husband as he struggled upright, and together they made their slow way toward the living room.
There, on the sofa, Yura and her husband had also given out. They lay on their sides now, fast asleep, worn down by everything they had endured.
Seeing them, Mina murmured to Hyuntae,
"The in-laws must have been through a lot too. They're asleep. We'll watch once they wake up."
"Yeah…"
His voice was barely there.
"Honey, are you hungry?"
"No… I don't want food at all."
She had asked because, after even a little sleep, his condition seemed somewhat improved — and she had hoped that a man who had barely managed gruel for nearly a month might finally have his appetite back. He himself felt nothing of the sort.
"Then I'll bring some tea."
"Please…"
At least his throat was dry. When she offered tea, he accepted.
They drank in silence. Part of it was the wish not to wake Yura and her husband, but more than that, both of them kept looking around the room — taking in the space where Seona and Yurin had lived, turning every object over in their minds, thinking of the people who were no longer there.
They sipped and sipped. Time slipped past. The light from outside faded, and the room began to darken.
Around then, Yura and her husband stirred on the sofa.
Mina had deliberately left the living-room lights off, afraid of startling them awake. The darkness only drove home again that the true owners of this house were gone. Both Hyuntae and Mina felt their throats tighten with fresh grief.
From the gloom came the soft sound of Yura rousing her husband. The two of them sat up, blinking into a darkness too thick to navigate, waiting for their eyes to adjust before they dared move.
Mina spoke into the dark.
"Are you awake?"
"Yes, we are. Is your husband all right?"
Yura's voice carried the worry of someone who still remembered Hyuntae collapsing earlier.
"He's much better. Thank you for asking."
Though the question had been directed at Mina, Hyuntae answered himself. It was his own body they were asking after; speaking for himself felt easier.
Talking in the dark was awkward enough that Mina rose and switched on the lights. Brightness flooded the living room, and some of the heavy sorrow seemed to lift with it.
"I found a camcorder in the master bedroom that Yurin and Seona used," Mina said carefully. "There seem to be quite a few recordings. Would you like to watch them together here in the living room?"
"Yes… If those are the children's last images, I want to see them."
Yura and her husband answered in low, still-groggy voices, barely risen from sleep.
Mina began searching for a cable to connect the camcorder to the living-room monitor. They must have watched footage on that television often; the cable was right there in the first drawer of the TV stand.
On the screen, the camcorder's date range ran from the day Yurin had come to their house talking of marriage all the way to the day before the wedding. Everything from the last time the two sets of parents had seen the couple up through the days near the ceremony would be on those tapes.
"Which one should we start with?"
Mina asked the in-laws gently. These were precious memories of not only her son but Yura's daughter as well; asking Yura's preference felt only right.
"I'd like to see them all, even if only a little of each — from the very first recording to the last."
Some clips ran three hours; others stretched to twenty-four. Yura wanted every one of them.
They started the first video. Seona appeared, sitting on the bed. Then Yurin's voice came through, and they realized she was the one holding the camera.
A bad feeling settled over them at once — a gut certainty that they should not keep watching.
Suddenly Mina remembered the haunted, tormented look Seona had worn the night he stayed over at their house, and again on the day of the formal meeting between families. Why those moments should surface now, when she had thought them unrelated, she did not know.
It did not take long to understand that they were connected to everything on this camcorder.
The lens drifted from Seona on the bed to a cluster of pills laid out in front of him, then back to his face. It was not hard to guess that he was meant to swallow every one of them.
Yurin's voice. Then questions directed at Seona. Whatever he answered clearly displeased her — her tone spiked with sudden fury, and the camera was set down and locked in place on the desk they had seen earlier in the master bedroom, aimed at the bed.
Seona seemed to understand what was coming. Tears welled as he begged her to stop, pleading that he didn't want this.
Then the woman who had been holding the camera — Yurin — cursed, crossed to the bed, and closed one hand around his throat. With the other she scooped up every pill and forced them savagely into his mouth.
What followed was beyond anything they could have prepared for.
Yurin began to rape him.
When he struggled, she drove a fist into his stomach. His body convulsed and went still — and over that limp form she forced herself onto him, the camera capturing every raw, merciless detail. Seona's face, streaked with tears as he was violated without pity, filled the frame completely.
"Ah… Aaaaaah! No — Seona — aaaaagh!"
The shock was absolute. Hyuntae began to scream like a man gone mad.
Even as he thrashed and howled, the noise might as well not have existed. Yura and her husband sat frozen in place, faces blank with the sheer impossibility of what they were seeing.
Then Hyuntae made a short, strangled sound as if the air itself had been torn from him — and fainted again.
It had been only a few hours since the last collapse. Mina checked her husband's condition in a panic, then half-carried him back to the master bedroom and returned to the living room. Someone should have stopped the video, but none of them had the presence of mind for it. Mina had come out intending to shut it off — and then the next sequence began, and her hand simply stopped.
Yurin kept going. Seona's cries — whether moans or screams, it was impossible to tell — tore through the speakers as the assault continued without pause.
Only then did Yura and her husband seem to come back to themselves. Yura rose from her seat, dropped to the floor in front of Mina, and began slamming her forehead into the ground, apologizing over and over.
"I'm sorry. I raised my child wrong. I'm truly, truly sorry…"
She wept and drove her head against the floor with each word of apology — but Mina was already past the apology. What she needed to know was what the rest of those recordings held.
Please don't let them all be like this.
Leaving Yura where she was, Mina picked up the remote and began scrubbing through the first video, jumping from moment to moment. Seona's face, broken and vacant. Scenes of him being used while unconscious. All of it, preserved without mercy.
He climaxed again and again in quantities that should not have been possible, and every release looked like pure agony. The pills forced into him earlier had clearly been a cocktail of aphrodisiacs, date-rape drugs, narcotics, and potency enhancers. No matter how many times he spent himself, it never subsided — and his screams only grew more raw with pain.
Watching the way Yurin handled him, Mina thought: this was not a lover. This was someone toying with a sex slave, a plaything.
The taste of blood filled her mouth. Without realizing it, she had bitten through her own lip.
Yura's husband could not watch any longer. He hung his head and wept quietly, the way a man weeps when he understands another man's suffering in his bones.
Hoping against hope, Mina opened the next file.
Yurin raping Seona again.
Nearly every recording that followed began the same way — with drugs. Footage of Yurin milking him by hand for twenty-four straight hours. Clips that looked like experiments in how long she could keep assaulting him. Videos of her stripping him while he slept peacefully and forcing herself on him without warning. Recordings of her dosing him and then measuring his length and girth with a tape measure. Clips of her choking him and releasing him, over and over, after the drugs had taken hold.
In one, the terror was so complete that Seona — already knowing what was coming, even before the camera started — fled the bed and clawed at the doorknob, trying to get out. The door was locked from the outside. He scratched at it like a trapped animal, nails splitting, screaming that he didn't want this, while Yurin laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world, dragged him back onto the bed, and raped him.
Every clip was a catalog of perversions no ordinary, sane human mind would invent.
And as the dates grew more recent, Seona's addiction became visible. He began asking for the drugs himself.
The camcorder held nothing but Yurin feeding narcotics to Mina's son and raping him with open, sadistic pleasure. Fifty-four files. Roughly forty-four days — a month and two weeks of this.
Why she forced herself to watch even brief snatches of every single one, Mina could not have said. She only knew one thing with absolute clarity:
Even before the Gate took him, Seona had already been living in hell.
The guilt and regret hit her like a physical blow. If she had never given her blessing for the marriage — if she had seen how much he was suffering and stepped in more forcefully — would any of this have happened? The thought left her hollow.
Yura's husband sat with his head bowed. Yura herself kept driving her forehead into the floor until blood matted her hair. They, too, must have been in agony. Watching their own daughter drug a boy and rape him without mercy was a shock beyond measure — and there were fifty-four of those videos.
If Seona had not been a healer, the footage made clear he would have died dozens of times over in the course of those assaults.
That was the sin of the parents who had raised Yurin. The sin of failing to teach their daughter properly. A sin that, as parents, they would have to atone for.