LLU 75

The fantasy of a blue and red night rushing toward me appeared. Today would surely be the same.

It was already past ten o’clock in the evening. The kid I tutored today lived quite far from my house, so on the days I taught that child, I always came home late.

I could not be bothered to cook a meal or boil ramen, so on the way home I bought and ate two triangle kimbap. I rubbed my lukewarm, full stomach a couple of times with the palm of my hand.

The dull throbbing in my head would not go away. Lately I kept getting dizzy spells. Was it anemia? I was aware that I should eat meat instead of something like triangle kimbap, but today too it remained only a thought.

After changing clothes, I flopped down onto the bed. I should wash up and then lie down… but lately I had no idea why my energy was so low. Come to think of it, for several days now I had been completely lacking in energy, and even people around me had asked if I was sick.

It probably started after I saw my mother.

Regardless of my will, I frequently thought of the mother who had come and gone from the house.

Mother had vehemently denied it. She insisted that her appearance after such a long time had nothing to do with Choi Junghan. On that point, I did not suspect Mother. Mother could not lie.

And yet I could not shake the thought that Choi Junghan had sent Mother. Given his personality, he would not have ordered Mother to come and stir me up.

However… I kept getting the delusion that perhaps he had simply watched and done nothing while Mother, who had mustered the courage to come find me, did so.

…….

Soon I shook my head. I sank into deep self-loathing.

When I abandoned Choi Junghan, he also abandoned me. Whether Mother met me or not, Choi Junghan would not care. It was merely an arrogant delusion that made me feel pathetic, nothing more.

Even though my head thought that way, I had no idea why I kept forgetting that fact. When that happened, sometimes rage surged up. I wanted to scream at myself, asking what on earth I wanted.

“Ha….”

A deep sigh burst out. I wiped my dry face a couple of times with the palm of my hand. Just as I was thinking it was about time to get up and wash, and was about to rise from the bed—

…Had there always been a stain like that on the ceiling?

In the corner of the edge, I could see a very small, pitch-black dot.

In an instant, my breath caught in my throat. Without even breathing, I lay still and stared at that dot.

But soon I turned my head away. No, it could not be. I had probably become overly sensitive because I had been on edge lately. It was probably just a bug or a stain.

I really needed to wash now. Thinking it was no big deal, I was about to get up when I noticed a very small dot attached to the corner of the window frame on the bed.

“…….”

My head went cold in an instant.

I shot upright. Both the dot on the ceiling and this one on the window frame were things I had never seen before. They were in places that entered my field of vision every single day, so there was no way I could have missed them.

This was no longer a coincidence. My heart pounded so hard that my chest ached. My trembling finger cautiously reached toward that dot. The moment I touched the tiny dot with my fingertip, I realized it immediately.

It was the same thing Choi Junghan used to attach to my body.

The identity I had suspected from the beginning was correct. I jumped off the bed as if my body were on fire.

Like a madman, I looked around. Bathroom, shoe cabinet, kitchen—I searched every corner of my old and cramped house with trembling hands. And at every moment, I could not help but be horrified.

Pitch-black dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot.

A lump that had risen to my chest tightly squeezed my throat. My vision blurred, I stopped all movement, and sank down right there.

“Ha, ha, ha….”

Before I knew it, I was breathing heavily like a chased person. Even if billions of insects had swarmed the house, I would not have panicked this badly.

My heart pounded so violently that I wondered if I might die of a heart attack. I pressed hard on my chest with a trembling fist, but it was no use.

However, more than the fact itself that Choi Junghan had installed surveillance cameras to watch me, what shook me even more were the countless other questions.

When.

When on earth had he come into my house and done this?

Unless I had become a complete lunatic, unless all of this was an illusion or hallucination, I had never once seen these countless dots since moving into this house.

Then how did Choi Junghan attach cameras here?

The answer to the question of “how” was easy to find. In the face of the power and money he possessed, such a question was meaningless. Then only one question remained.

Why.

Why now?

This was him telling me to look. Had he not attached this many cameras in every place my eyes went? The number and locations showed absolutely no intention of hiding them.

On the contrary, he was revealing them. It was as if he wanted me to see with my own eyes and realize. That at any time he could install cameras in my house without my knowledge, place my entire daily life in the palm of his hand, and watch it.

That he was still infiltrating my life.

“Ha ha, ha….”

A hollow laugh leaked out.

Then what had I been doing all this time? What was the point of moving to Daejeon, to Gangwon Province, to places below or above? What was the point of not going to school and hiding my body? What was the reason I had lived holding my breath like a person who did not exist in the world, like smoke that would soon vanish?

During the one year that had passed since I left him at the movie theater until now, what exactly had changed in the relationship between him and me…?

An emotion whose reason I could not understand welled up at the corners of my eyes. I did not want to show Choi Junghan the tears streaming down. Roughly wiping them away with the back of my hand, I glared at the small lens watching me from the corner.

This made it certain.

Choi Junghan had still not given up on me.

At that moment, something inside me exploded. Like fireworks, sporadically and violently. An unbearable dull pain kept pounding my chest. I pressed my fist tightly against my chest and stared endlessly at the camera.

“…Fuck….”

A venom-filled curse slipped from my lips. I had no idea why the fact that he had not given up on me brought me such emotions.

Among the countless reasons I had decided to run away from Choi Junghan, the biggest and most important one had come back to life. The fact I did not want to face, did not want to know, did not want to believe.

I was afraid. Afraid that I might let go of the fragile thread I was barely holding onto. Afraid that instead of struggling to stand and bear the weight of life, I might relax and choose to fall into his arms. Afraid that in the end I might accept him.

Afraid that I, who had declared to Choi Junghan—who whispered that everything would become easier if I believed I loved him—that such a thing would never happen, might ultimately let him into my heart… .

The burning rage turned toward me. If I could draw a bowstring, I wanted to shoot not at the camera staring at me but at my own heart. An intense desire burned me hotly. The impulse that came from my overheated head had already far exceeded the limit.

When I came to my senses, I was standing in the kitchen holding a knife. Toward the camera he had attached to the kitchen wall, I raised my trembling lips in a smirk.

“…Are you watching?”

Even before attaching the cameras, he must have been watching me. Probably for quite a long time already. That conviction settled in. I spat toward him, who gave no answer but was surely watching me at this very moment.

“You’re listening right now, aren’t you.”

What I could not endure more than anything… was the fact that he had watched every detail of me spending the “blue and red nights” alone until now. The fact that Choi Junghan had seen everything—me crying while holding a knife, calling his name in a frenzy, losing my mind—drove me insane.

“You son of a bitch. Fuck, you leech-like bastard… you psycho bastard. You’re worse than an animal.”

My suppressed voice trembled miserably. I set the knife down so the camera could capture my appearance better and brought my forearm right up close to the lens.

“Look carefully. Watch, you bastard.”

When I rolled up my sleeve, the bandaged arm was revealed. I unwound the bandage and ripped off the adhesive bandage in one go. The yet-unhealed wounds were brutally embroidered across my forearm.

No one could say this was the forearm of a sane person. The overlapping and re-overlapping traces of self-harm made the arm utterly ruined, even grotesque. For some reason, looking at this scene that so clearly revealed my current state made me laugh.

I picked up the knife and without hesitation drew it across my forearm. Slash—the skin split and familiar pain enveloped my skin. I paid no attention to the intense, electric-like pain.

“Look! Look! You fucking bastard! Look at the ruined me that you destroyed!”

I drew once, twice, three times. The blood-soaked knife moved crazily across the skin. I screamed and spat curses at him.

“You ruined everything. You completely ruined my life. You son of a bitch, fuck, you inhuman bastard!”

The shrieking became the fuse for my mad actions. The bursting sobs egged on my wretched self. Until now I had been calling for him without even knowing he was watching. How desperately I had called for him—looking back, it was horrifying.

After slashing my skin countless times, I finally dropped the knife to the floor. My right hand trembled so much that I could no longer hold the knife. From my left forearm, which was even more tattered than usual, blood poured endlessly, soaking the floor. On the blood-pooled floor, I buried my face on my knees and cried.

The resentment did not release. With eyes filled with malice, I glared at my ankle. After running away from him, I had thought I had become free. Even though I had gone through something so horrific that I wanted to cut out that part of my life entirely, I had thought that with time I could forget him and live on.

But that was my delusion. Choi Junghan had no intention of letting me go. So I was back at square one. Within this endless cycle, I had wailed, raged, and hurt myself, yet in the end I could not escape.

I really could not live like this anymore. Whether I died or Choi Junghan died, one of us had to die for it to end—that premonition came to me. No, would it even end if one of us died? This tenacious ill-fated connection with him might bind my ankle like shackles even in another life.

My trembling hand, as if drawn by a magnet, picked up the discarded knife. I did not know the clear purpose, but my next action would surely harm me. With lifeless eyes, I looked over my body.

The forearm I had always used as an outlet for anger. The ankle that had been shackled. Or, finally, if I stabbed hard enough—perhaps the throat, where it might finally free me from him… .

“That’s enough now.”

At that moment, a soft yet firm grip took the knife from me. At the same time, the scent of cologne rushed in like an illusion.

The autumn when I was nineteen, the scent of him when we faced each other. The invader’s fragrance from when he tied my tie in the bathroom at our first meeting.

I dazedly looked at the man who held my hand and stopped my action.

Was it an illusion? Was it a fiction created by a brain soaked in the loneliness I did not want to acknowledge but which was actually the most desperate emotion? Was all of this actually a hallucination?

There were no cameras anywhere, yet I was seeing things; I was still alone in this house, yet I felt this man gently grasping my hand… .

It felt like being possessed by a ghost. Discovering traces Choi Junghan had left in me and facing the man who had never once come to find me during the countless blue and red nights that passed were problems on completely different dimensions.

I had to confirm. Whether he was real. Or whether my mental illness had truly deepened beyond recovery.

“…What are you?”

A cracked voice leaked out. Without answering, he lifted my gripped wrist and looked at my forearm. His eyes, loose yet sharp like a hawk’s, dug into the wound.

“I’m asking what you are. You fucking bastard.”

“Greetings come after treatment.”

A hard voice cut me off. Choi Junghan was holding a first-aid kit in his other hand.

Kneeling on one knee, Choi Junghan pushed the knife aside and opened the first-aid kit to take out medicine and bandages. When blood gushed from the open wound, he openly clicked his tongue. I silently entrusted my arm to him.

The man truly standing before me—was he real, not an illusion?