When Joo Seolhyeon opened his eyes again, he was lying on a damp, cold floor.
“Are you conscious?”
Though his entire body ached and he couldn’t muster any strength, the worst was the headache that felt like his skull was about to crack. As he lifted his head while clutching it, he saw a middle-aged woman looking at him in a prison-like space without windows.
“Who…?”
Only a very faint sound escaped from his tightly locked, rasping throat, but the woman seemed to understand what he said as she wore a faint smile.
“I wonder.”
His vision was getting accustomed to the darkness, but her face was still blurry. Despite that, Joo Seolhyeon thought this face, which he was seeing for the first time today, seemed somehow familiar.
“People call me Jane, but I’m not sure if that’s my real name.”
It was suspicious that she gave a foreign name despite being visibly of the same nationality, and her claim about not knowing her own name was dubious. Joo Seolhyeon frowned and swallowed dryly. His throat hurt as if it were burning up, but his voice came out more easily than before.
“Where is this place?”
“A den of evil.”
Though they were conversing in the same language, for some reason proper information wasn’t being conveyed. Feeling uncomfortable with this strangely misaligned conversation, he now heard Jane asking him:
“So how did you end up here?”
Joo Seolhyeon thought of Jin Sohyeon, who was the cause of his current situation. He should be angry at the reality of her betrayal, but no emotional fluctuation arose. Rather, the more he traced his memories, the more his chest grew cold. He even questioned whether his love for her had been real. And when he tried to go back to memories before meeting her, the headache that had been persisting caught him. An extreme pain, like hundreds of mice gnawing at his brain, overwhelmed Joo Seolhyeon.
“Ugh.”
He had tried to say that he felt betrayed, but what came out was only a suppressed moan. Jane’s face darkened as she watched Joo Seolhyeon suffering, holding his head.
“As I thought, you’re like me.”
Jane spoke as if she had expected it, almost with a sigh.
“Don’t try to think. It’ll get a bit better.”
His head was already so painful that no thoughts were forming. Joo Seolhyeon looked at Jane, sweating coldly.
“What do you mean, ‘like you’?”
“That we’ve been brainwashed.”
Joo Seolhyeon had met Jin Sohyeon two months ago at an event hosted by the Esper Union. She showed interest in him, remembering his days as a pianist, and Joo Seolhyeon didn’t dislike her either. In his stifling reality, it was only natural to fall in love with someone who saw him for who he was. But to say it was because of brainwashing—a sense of emptiness washed over him, but more pressing was the question of who had brainwashed him.
“A person’s mind is very delicate and fragile like glass. If your mind was manipulated and brainwashed for years without you knowing, the aftereffects right now would be tremendous.”
Who could have orchestrated this? Who was backing Jin Sohyeon?
As he was thinking and racking his brain, Jane’s subsequent words made all his thoughts come to a halt.
“What are you saying? I only met that woman for a mere two months.”
“Just two months? And you’re suffering this much?”
Jane was startled, and Joo Seolhyeon found her reaction strange and asked:
“How long were you brainwashed to be so surprised?”
“Seven years.”
Joo Seolhyeon’s shoulders twitched. It was because the resentment contained in Jane’s single utterance was so deep that it momentarily sent chills down his spine.
“When I woke up in this place, I was so writhing in pain that I didn’t even know my nails were breaking. I was screaming like a madwoman, scratching the floor. It’s dark, but the bloodstains from my scratching are probably still on the iron door.”
Joo Seolhyeon reflexively looked around. A cold stone floor and walls randomly painted with cement. A cramped space that seemed to be about one pyeong (3.3 square meters).
The only exit from this sealed space was an iron door, firmly shut.
“I thought you must have been brainwashed for at least five years, but only two months? It’s strange no matter how I think about it.”
Through a palm-sized hole in the iron door, flickering light leaked in beyond Jane. But Joo Seolhyeon thought that faint light didn’t reach her at all. Jane’s two eyes were swaying darkly and emptily like a bottomless swamp.
“It could differ from person to person.”
Joo Seolhyeon tried not to get swept up in her words, looking elsewhere. No matter how much he was brainwashed, he couldn’t accept the fact that he had lived as someone’s puppet. Whether it was two months or five years, just the fact that he had been played in the palm of Jin Sohyeon’s hand was shameful and deeply wounded his pride. He managed to stand up by pushing against the wall with both legs.
“What happens to us now?”
Though his whole body still ached, it was gradually recovering. Even if escaping this place immediately was impossible, Joo Seolhyeon rolled his feet, using the wall as support to get his body in a state where movement was possible.
“We’ll become monster food.”
“Monsters? Is this a dungeon?”
“No, it’s an ordinary home.”
Joo Seolhyeon’s face contorted.
“Who on earth keeps monsters at home? No, in the first place, is the government just letting someone keep monsters that eat people as pets?”
“It’s possible, since this person oversees all the dungeons that appear in this country.”
At Jane’s words, Joo Seolhyeon could immediately recall who that person was. The state had abnormally concentrated authority over ability users to one side, and the one who stood at the top of that power was someone he knew well.
“You’re saying this is that person’s house?”
Joo Seolhyeon barely questioned, swallowing the name lingering in his mouth. But Jane couldn’t answer his question because she suddenly covered her mouth and lowered her head.
“Jane?”
Her face was completely hidden by her long straight hair that fell down. Joo Seolhyeon carefully called her name, but her shoulders, which had been trembling slightly, just shook more violently, and she didn’t lift her head.
“Hnngh, sob.”
As suppressed sobs leaked out, Jane’s body collapsed to the floor.
With each strike of her tightly clenched fist on the floor, her flesh was being pulverized, but she wailed, tearing at her chest like someone who couldn’t feel pain.
“…”
Joo Seolhyeon was considerably taken aback when the person who had been conversing normally until just now suddenly started crying like a madwoman. Frozen in place from the shock, he belatedly approached to calm her down.
Creeeeak.
Before Joo Seolhyeon’s hand could touch Jane, the heavy iron door opened.
“Drag her out.”
While Joo Seolhyeon was looking at the man standing with his back to the light, men who had received his orders rushed into the prison. Before he could stop them, Jane, limp and dropping tears, was dragged away.
“You look terrible, Jane.”
“It’s… you.”
Jane, who had been getting dragged away without resistance, lifted her head when she reached the man standing at the iron door. Between her tear-soaked face and disheveled hair, her intense eyes flashed.
“You finally did it!”
With superhuman strength that made it hard to believe she was the same woman who had been crying so hard she could barely hold herself up until just now, Jane shook off the men and grabbed the man’s collar. Even though his face was hidden in darkness, Joo Seolhyeon could feel the area around him instantly freezing. When the men tried to separate the woman, the man stopped them.
“It’s fine. Everyone step back. I’m a bit curious why Jane is acting like this.”
“You. What did you do to my son?”
She expressed her boiling anger with a voice that resembled a beast’s growl.
“You can’t remember your own name but remembered you had a son?”
“You beast, worse than an animal.”
“But I don’t understand. Why are you angry at me, huh?”
“Even if it costs me my life, I’ll never let you have your way.”
The man’s lips stiffened at Jane’s words, which she spat out like venom. Simultaneously, his hand flicked the air, and Jane was pushed away from him by an invisible force. Before she could be thrown to the floor, Joo Seolhyeon was able to catch her.
“Urgh.”
Something flowed down from her mouth, wetting Joo Seolhyeon’s hand. Though it was dark, Joo Seolhyeon could identify what it was. The pungent smell wafting up. She was continuously vomiting blood.
“Watch your mouth. It brings bad luck, you know?”
The man exhaled a deep sigh and looked at Joo Seolhyeon. Then he let out a short, derisive laugh.
“But it’s funny. The real killer is right here, yet she’s making such a fuss with me.”
Joo Seolhyeon wasn’t following the conversation between the two. Someone seemed to have died, and the man was speaking as if he had contributed to it. But he was absolutely certain he had never killed anyone in his life.
Joo Seolhyeon looked down at himself. Now not only his hands but even his clothes were getting wet with Jane’s blood, and her body in his arms was getting heavier. The man sighed again and entered the prison with long strides.
“And don’t be too angry.”
The man squatted in front of Jane, stepping on her blood, and spoke kindly.
“You see, I…”
Joo Seolhyeon could now see the man’s face properly. That face, smiling ear-to-ear, was the same face he had seen until that morning. It was the man who had handed him the contract termination documents.
“…came all the way here personally to send you to where that son of yours is…”
“PUHAK!”
Jane spat blood towards the man’s face. Since she was already nearly dead and limp in Joo Seolhyeon’s arms, the man couldn’t react in time, which was the problem. He wiped off the sticky blood flowing down his face with his hand.
“Disgusting.”
Jane grabbed the man’s arm.
“It’s not over yet. You have to grant my last wish.”
She said with a fading voice.
“Everything back to the starting point.”
* * *
As Joo Seolhyeon’s memory ended, I woke up from sleep with a scream. The scenes I had just witnessed floated vividly in my mind, terribly clear. My whole body was drenched in cold sweat, and my heart was beating madly as if I had just been sprinting with all my might.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
