Return (2)
Yulin offered no resistance as her mother Yura began to beat her without mercy.
She kept thinking of every moment Seona must have suffered the same way.
The fear of having every recording of what she had done to him exposed was starting to sink in. The fact that her own parents now knew she had treated another family's precious son like a toy — dosing him with every drug she could get her hands on and using him like a dog — was catastrophic. She remembered how she had taken him until he was half-dead, until his eyes rolled white and his whole body shook. She remembered the near-screams he made every single day. She had been so bewitched by how adorable he looked that it was as if a demon had possessed her. She had filmed herself pickling him in every kind of drug and then blackmailing him with those same drugs. She had choked him while she used him. Whenever he failed to get hard or ignored her orders while high, she had punched him in the stomach. She even remembered how much she had enjoyed watching him cry.
Fifteen years as childhood friends. The man she was supposed to marry. And she had done something that insane to him — and now it was out.
She was still trying to figure out what to do when Yura called Seona's mother, Mina.
"I am truly sorry. I'm calling about an urgent matter."
The word in-law no longer existed in Yura's mouth. The marriage registration Yulin had filed the day before the wedding had already been rejected — by Mina herself.
Mina was at the hospital again, nursing Hyuntae, who still could not get out of bed. In two months his weight had dropped another twelve kilograms. He could barely speak and could not eat, so they had finally admitted him. He spent most of every day lying still with a glucose drip in his arm. Watching him waste away day after day made her chest tighten until she could hardly breathe. He could not manage a proper meal anymore, and even walking had become a struggle.
The knowledge that Seona had been drugged in that hellish house, violated dozens of times by Yulin, and finally dragged off by monsters to be used — that was what was destroying them both. Why did something like that have to happen to their gentle boy? Why couldn't that bitch who deserved to be torn apart have simply died instead? If there was a god, she wanted to scream that the fate handed to her son was unjust.
And then the phone rang — from the parents of the very woman she had just been cursing in her head. They said it was truly urgent and asked her to come to their house at once. Urgent enough to leave Hyuntae? She called the hired caregiver and begged her to arrive a little sooner; the moment the woman walked in, Mina switched places with her. If this turned out to be some worthless conversation, they would regret it.
Mina headed for the house she had been invited to countless weekends back when she still worked at the guild. She remembered how tense she had felt every time she came. She felt that same tension now. If they tried the same useless talk as last time — apologies, offers of compensation — she was fully prepared to tear the whole place apart. She barely had enough hours in the day to care for Hyuntae as it was. Last time the couple had come to Hyuntae's hospital room, dropped to their knees, bowed their heads, and started talking about settlement money. It had been laughable. Could a family's life and health be traded for cash? She had not thought so. She had been so furious she had ordered them out on the spot. Whatever they wanted her for now had to be something else. Ordinarily the one apologizing came to the one who had been wronged — not the other way around. Surely they would not waste her time with nothing.
With that thought she opened the front door of the house where Yura and her husband lived. No one came to greet her, even though they had summoned her. From deeper inside she could hear a racket.
"You little shit, I'm going to kill you today. Are you even human? You piece of garbage — starting tomorrow you're off the family register, you hear me?!"
There was the sound of objects being thrown, and the sound of fists landing. No matter how angry a couple got, it was not the kind of noise two people made fighting each other. Yura might be an Awakened, but her husband was not.
Curious, Mina walked toward the living room — and found the bitch she wanted to chew to pieces collapsed on the floor, covered in bruises and soaked red with blood. Rage took over. She lunged and drove a kick straight into the girl's abdomen. Only then did Yura and her husband notice her arrival; both of them stared at her in panic.
"I— I'm so sorry. We didn't realize you were here…"
Even after Mina had just kicked their own child, they still spoke to her with careful respect.
"Ha. Fuck. You piece of shit who deserves to be ripped apart… Get up."
Yulin, a wreck, looked up at Mina. She seemed to know exactly why she was being beaten.
"Where is my son?!"
"I… coul'n… brin' him… back…"
Her jaw had been knocked loose by one of Yura's earlier blows; she could barely form the words.
"What? You couldn't bring him back? What the hell does that—"
It was obvious. She had abandoned Seona inside the Gate, fled, gone into hiding out of fear, and only now crawled back. To think she had ever planned to marry Seona to a creature like this… She must have been out of her mind.
Seeing that Mina had not fully grasped it, Yura spoke.
"Yulin… she says she entered the world where the monsters live, then fled back here. She says she failed to bring Seona with her when she ran…"
"So you called me over to brag that your daughter made it home? My Seona is still suffering right now — is that something a human being does?"
A grown woman, unable to hide her tears, sobbed the words in a shaking voice. She had finally learned where her son was, and there was not a shred of joy in it. All it did was deepen her hatred for the bitch who had left him behind.
After her mother Yura, Seona's mother Mina beat Yulin the way a dog gets beaten on the hottest day of summer. Even so, she had something she still had to do, and that was enough to make her endure every humiliation. Ninety-eight days of degradation in that place — and the agony Seona had suffered, was still suffering — if enduring this could free him from it, the price was cheap. She already knew monsters could take humans back into their own world. She would need the absolute strength of hunters like Yura and Mina. And to stand beside them, she herself would have to become a hunter. She was the only one who knew where Seona was in the Demon Realm she had experienced. Only Yulin could save him. The pain was unbearable, but that single purpose let her wait until both women's rage finally ran dry.
The succubus Miel was having far too much fun playing with Seona again today. Without Yulin around his reactions were a little duller, but that only made the best part sweeter: she would warp his memories, subject him to every kind of violation, and then restore them. The expression that crossed his face in that moment was something she had never seen anywhere else.
"Ah… no! Please… take it out. Ah… ah… Mom… Dad!!"
Only moments earlier she had painted her own face over the memory of the woman who was Seona's mother. She had rummaged through his mind for the adult he felt safest with, and the answer had been his mother. She made him call her Mom, mimicked the mother's mannerisms she had pulled from his memories, then — the instant he let his guard down — offered him a lap pillow, led him to the bed, tore every scrap of clothing off him, and took him right there. She would never forget that look. The face of a boy betrayed by the person he trusted most, tears streaming as he cried out—
"No, Mom… don't… stop… why… why? … hhngh… hhngh…"
—had been so arousing she dropped the mother act entirely and used him however she pleased.
"No!! Why… Mom would— Aaaaaaah!!"
When he started to break, she restored his memories.
"Miel…"
The way he ground his teeth and spoke her name as everything flooded back — that was the highlight of the game, its purest pleasure. Day after day she warped his memories and played with him like this. The sex he had had with Yulin had looked so entertaining in his recollections that she once made him perceive her as Yulin and took him that way too. There was no way to film it, but it had been satisfying enough. The Demon Realm had its own equivalents of narcotics; she mixed them with her saliva — which worked as both aphrodisiac and stimulant — forced them down his throat, and used him until he was on the edge of shattering. Watching him right before he blacked out, she finally understood why Yulin had hurt him so much. When Seona let out those desperate, sorrowful, pain-soaked screams and moans, he was truly beautiful — like the last flare of a flame just before it dies.
But the moment his mind began to crack, she had no choice but to put the memories back. If he broke completely, she would not be able to stitch his mind together again. Even with everything she had done so far, she could feel the seams fraying when she restored him.
If only I could record it somehow…
She was being as careful as she could, but someday he would shatter for good. It might still be twenty or thirty years away, but Seona would eventually break beyond repair — and Miel needed something she could revisit those memories with. Something like the videos Yulin had made every day while she used him.