LLU 35

If I smashed, wrecked, and tore apart everything in this place, would even a little of this directionless rage be relieved?

I wanted to wreck and destroy this neatly organized space as much as I possibly could. Since I couldn’t harm Choi Junghan himself, I at least wanted to utterly demolish his space. It might be futile, but doing that—even just that—seemed like it would let me breathe a little easier.

My trembling hands tried to lift the chair, but it was too much. In truth, even supporting my body like this was exhausting. The plan to hurl the chair and shatter the window had to be abandoned in the end.

Gnawing on rage that refused to fade, I picked up the items on the desk one by one and flung them. The lamp and pens flew in turn and crashed against the wall. I grabbed random books from the shelf and began tearing them all apart. I ripped them with all my strength, threw them to the floor, and stomped on them. Before I knew it, I was shouting and crying.

“Huff, …huff, heuk….”

My breathing tore sharply and raggedly. My chest shuddered like it was having a seizure. I had no idea what to do with this rage, this rage burning like wildfire.

The sudden catastrophe that had crashed into my life was far too overwhelming and heavy for someone as young and naive as me. Like an iron weight clamped around my ankle.

I lifted the back of my hand to wipe away the tears streaming shamefully down my cheeks. For a moment, my temporarily cleared vision caught something.

“…”

It was documents.

Placed neatly on the desk as if deliberately displayed for show.

He must have put them here for me to see. The premonition hit me immediately. If these had been related to his important business, Choi Junghan would never have left me chained here so defenselessly.

Irritation and defiance surged up. Fine, if he displayed them for me to look at, then I would look.

I caught my roughened breath for a moment. With hands trembling from agitation, I pulled the materials out of the document envelope without any hesitation and began to read.

The very first thing that caught my eye was a photo of an unfamiliar woman. Next to it was a neatly organized table with basic information: name, age, address, and so on. No matter how much I stared, I couldn’t place who she was.

I picked up the second photo. It was the same—personal details of another woman I didn’t know. I couldn’t fathom Choi Junghan’s intention in showing me these, but I couldn’t stop the vague anxiety rising within me.

The doubt intensified as I went through the third, then the fourth woman. And then.

“…Heuk.”

Forcing down my racing heartbeat that had begun to spiral out of control, I looked at the final photo… and it was my mother’s face.

What is this…?

Suddenly everything went dark before my eyes. My fingertips began to tremble faintly. I snatched up the earlier photos again and scrutinized them. They were just simple personal details, but since these photos were sitting on Choi Junghan’s desk, I had to find the common link between the previous women and my mother.

Yet no matter how much I looked, I couldn’t see it. Biting my lip, I tried to calm the sick churning in my heart. I thought and thought again. And not long after, I reached a conclusion.

It was a terribly unpleasant assumption, but… if these people were women who had passed through Chairman Choi.

My heart pounded like crazy. The immediate reason I guessed that was because all the women, including my mother, were around the same age. Their ages weren’t far off from what I knew of Chairman Choi’s age either.

Moreover, even from the photos, they were all attractive. When compared to my mother—who still got called “young lady” whenever she went out and frequently heard compliments asking if she had been in Miss Korea—they were in no way inferior. Strangely, they all had a similar vibe. Similar enough that grouping them together under the name of “preference” wouldn’t be forced at all.

There was no way Choi Junghan would have gathered information on completely unrelated women and placed it here. So why on earth had he put these here? Why had he wanted to show them to me?

To let me know that my mother wasn’t a special woman to Chairman Choi?

But I shook my head inwardly. My mother and Chairman Choi each had their own years lived, and both had children. It was natural that neither was the other’s one and only. This didn’t deal me any real blow.

He always only launched attacks that could make me stagger and collapse at any moment. A man who enjoyed cruel hunting would never bother with such a negligible strike.

Then, why on earth…

My questioning gaze sharply scanned the photos. After reading through their general personal information several times, I noticed there were additional documents tucked in the back that I hadn’t examined yet.

I pulled out the materials inserted inside the envelope. Resident registration copy, family relation certificate, and…

My hand examining the documents stopped.

Application for declaration of disappearance?

“…”

Death. Death. And more death…

The documents trembled so much before my eyes that I could barely read them. Uncontrollable shaking spread from my fingers throughout my entire body.

At that moment, the study door opened.

My gaze, fixed on the documents, turned slowly as if caught in slow motion. Slowly, even more slowly, at the end of my spinning vision, a demon-like human finally appeared.

“My ill-tempered kitten stretches like this, huh. Did you sleep well?”

Choi Junghan looked around the room and shrugged as if he couldn’t help it.

The smile on his clean, clear face was perfectly refreshing. But to my eyes, that smile looked exactly like the smile of a ghost that bewitches people and leads them to death.

“…Explain.”

The breath caught in my throat burst out roughly.

“This, …what is it, explain it.”

“Well. What does it look like to you?”

His voice was utterly nonchalant. My eyes glaring at him—smiling disgustingly—burned hot.

“You, …these, they’re women who passed through your father, right.”

“Hm, as expected, you’re smart. Go on.”

“Stop messing around!”

My screamed shout cracked horribly. The documents and photos in my violently trembling hands crumpled miserably.

“…Did, …did you do this? Or was it your father…?”

“What did I do?”

“Stop beating around the bush and talk straight, you son of a bitch! You put these here for me to see, didn’t you!”

The rage that had been heating my chest exploded. Unable to hold back, I tried to step forward and charge at him. But the moment I reached out to grab Choi Junghan by the collar, the shackle around my ankle yanked me heavily backward.

Clank! With a loud noise, I lost my balance and collapsed to the floor. My exhaled breath crushed pathetically. My head burned so hot it felt like it would burst.

Me, rolling at Choi Junghan’s feet wearing not even a thread, and Choi Junghan, arms crossed, looking down at me with keen interest as if watching a monkey at the zoo. I stared up at him with crazed eyes and shouted.

“Did you kill them, or did your father? Who made them disappear, these people!”

“Hmm.”

Choi Junghan stretched his lips into a long grin.

“I’ll give you one hint. My father may be a debauched man, but he’s not bold enough for that. He just plays with them easily, gets bored easily, and discards them easily. And afterward, he forgets them cleanly and heartlessly.”

“Then…, …it was you?”

It felt like someone was slicing my brain with a knife, back and forth. Holding back the violent trembling that shook my voice, I barely continued.

“You, these people… killed them?”

“Imagine to your heart’s content.”

Choi Junghan smiled faintly.

“People think and believe whatever suits them best. No matter what the truth is, they only look at the result.”

“There has to be a reason. Why would you… do this to innocent people!”

“Why do you think they’re innocent? To me, anyone who harms me is evil by definition.”

“Harm? Those people harmed you?”

A hollow laugh mixed with sobs came out. My empty chest heaved over and over.

“How could those people possibly harm a monster like you? Could they even? And even if they bothered your eyes, do you really think that’s… a reason they deserve to die?”

“What reason is there that it shouldn’t be?”

A calm, flat voice without inflection. At first listen, it seemed emotionless, but that voice hid a blade sharp enough to slice skin.

“I have no intention of tolerating vermin that crawl up without knowing their place.”

“…”

“A few months, at most a few years, and their affection cools off. With only that flimsy thing, they try to easily plunder what others have built. Because they coveted what wasn’t theirs, they simply paid the appropriate price. Isn’t cleaning up pigs that drool over what’s mine a natural thing from my perspective?”

He looked straight at me and said that. Watching him finish speaking with such composure, for a moment I couldn’t think at all.

Dizziness rushed in. My hands groped blindly at the floor to steady my body that felt like it would collapse.

Until now, I had always thought of Choi Junghan—seeing him, hearing him, pressing flesh against him—as not quite human. But now, I had to witness the complete collapse of the fundamental judgment I had unconsciously made about him. In truth, I hadn’t known a single thing about him.

Choi Junghan was not an ordinary “person.”

He wasn’t a demon-like being—he was simply a demon. Not lower than a beast, but a beast wearing a human mask. He wasn’t a person resembling darkness—he was darkness itself, so pitch-black it could blind you.

The rotten stench emanating from him didn’t come merely from a bad, violent personality. The smell that pierced the nose, infiltrated, and slowly gnawed away at the brain was none other than the scent of death.

“…So, you… personally made all these people like that?”

“It might sound unfair to you. People like me don’t get our hands dirty directly.”

Choi Junghan said in a gentle voice.

“But I can drive things toward whatever situation I want. Like a rabbit hunt.”

“Son of a bitch. You… you’re not even human. Psychopath bastard.”

The curse muttered in a fading voice sounded dazed even to my own ears. I knew well that such curses could no longer affect him even as much as a needle prick.

I had always been powerless before Choi Junghan, but at this moment, I was so helpless I couldn’t even twitch a finger.

“So, …why… show me something like this. Are you trying to blackmail me? To make my mother like that too?”

“Hm, it seems our Un’s filial piety is gradually running out.”

In his sweetly curved eyes, beast-like whites gleamed.

“People are selfish beings. In the end, they only see their own situation. At first, you thought you could endure someone like me as much as needed to protect your mother.”

“…”

“How was it after spending a few days with me. You wanted to throw your mother aside and run away, didn’t you. The happiness your mother—who suffered her whole life—might get for free late in life is no longer in your mind. You have to survive first. Right?”

Choi Junghan bitterly mocked the resolve I had once made—to endure my own discomfort for the sake of my mother’s happiness. I recalled the distant days when I had mistakenly thought we were sitting side by side at a game board.

But in reality, he wasn’t sitting at a game board—he was sitting at an experiment table. I was nothing more than a lab rat being subjected to varied experiments exactly as he intended.

Choi Junghan had cornered me and was quietly applying pressure. At first, he gave me only trials I could endure, enjoying the sight of me suffering.