-Are you almost here?
It was a trite question Ha Gangin had sent, naturally expecting either a quick reply or, at the very least, for it to be read.
But the “1” beside the message he’d left still hadn’t disappeared, even though ten minutes had already passed.
It had been closer to a one-sided notice than a proper plan, but the agreed time had already gone by.
No matter how long Lee Hoeseo usually took to get ready to go out, it was definitely strange that he still hadn’t even read the message.
‘Don’t tell me he went back to sleep?’
After erasing the roughly four possibilities that immediately came to mind, he took his phone out of his pocket.
“His number… here it is.”
He tried to contact him through his call history, but he couldn’t find it no matter what, so in the end he looked him up in his contacts and called.
— Du, du, du.
When he pressed the number dryly saved as “Lee Hoeseo,” an ordinary ringing tone flowed out.
‘Is he seriously sleeping?’
— Du, du, du.
‘He’s not the kind of guy who’d turn his ringtone off…’
— Click.
“The person you are calling is currently unavailable—”
— Ttiriring.
“Haah… What the hell is going on?”
In the end, having failed to get in touch, he put his phone back into his pocket and was about to leave the subway station when a good idea suddenly came to him.
‘Since I’m already out, I want to do something at least.’
It was already well past one-thirty and nearing two, and anyway, the one who’d wanted to go there first had been Lee Hoeseo, so there was no reason for him to go alone.
‘Since I’m out and it’s about lunchtime… maybe I’ll buy something to eat and drop by for the first time in a while.’
Ha Gangin tapped his transportation card at the ticket gate on the opposite side from where he had been standing and trudged down.
‘Oh, right.’
-What the hell are you doing that you still haven’t even read it? Wait there.
‘I’ll leave one last message.’
After leaving the message and walking the rest of the way down the stairs—
“The doors are closing.”
“Ah, shit—”
‘Nothing’s going my way. You’d better just be asleep…’
In the end, because he missed the subway by a hair, he had to take the next one, which arrived a full six minutes later.
— Rattle.
— Chiiiiik.
“We’re already here…?”
“I should’ve checked the navigation earlier… If it was going to be like this, I would’ve just run.”
Since it had been a while since he’d gone that way, he checked through a navigation app midway and found that there was only one station between the meeting place and Lee Hoeseo’s house.
Still, telling himself it was something that he’d at least checked before it was too late and avoided having to turn back, Ha Gangin consoled himself.
— Beep.
After tapping his card and exiting the gate, he sat on a bench for a moment and planned his next move.
“Mm…”
‘I can just buy some hamburgers or something.’
The answer came to him immediately, making it pointless that he had even started to think about it.
Once, when Ha Gangin had asked, “Why do you eat hamburgers but not pizza?” Lee Hoeseo had answered, “If I eat a whole slice, I’m still hungry, but it gets annoying to eat more, so I’d rather just eat a hamburger all at once.”
Even when they ate out, what they ate had almost always been either pizza or hamburgers, so without hesitation, he opened a delivery app and set the address to Lee Hoeseo’s house.
‘That bastard also doesn’t eat anything with chicken in it…’
— Ttiring.
After ordering two hamburger sets, Ha Gangin started walking again.
‘They say you give the ugly one an extra rice cake. You chopstick-looking bastard.’
He added the insult inwardly for good measure.
*
— Ttiring.
‘Urgh, uuuugh.’
Even when Ha Gangin sent his last message, Lee Hoeseo was still unconscious.
‘It hurts. It hurts, but my body won’t move.’
To be precise, it was more accurate to say his mind was awake, but his body wouldn’t move.
The sudden, severe exhaustion that had come without warning dozens of minutes ago had made it impossible for Lee Hoeseo to move even a single strand of muscle in his body.
‘What the fuck is this?’
Of course he couldn’t make any large movements, but let alone moving his fingers or toes, even rolling his eyes or opening them was impossible.
‘Augh, shit.’
Meanwhile, the sensation in his lower body was gradually disappearing, and Lee Hoeseo felt as if his consciousness kept trying to switch off.
Even his upper body, where his senses were still mostly intact, was not normal.
The places where he couldn’t feel pain had no sensation at all, like the forearm of someone who’d slept leaning to one side, and in all the other places, a sharp agony like being struck began to spread.
‘Blood… or something.’
On top of that, because there was a fishy, salty smell, Lee Hoeseo thought he must be bleeding from somewhere.
In truth, right now, all over his body, his internal organs were liquefying and flowing out as though pus were being squeezed from them.
‘Why is this…? What… is it?’
Along with the pain as if his muscles were melting, his five senses slowly fading away began to stir up a primal fear.
‘What… is it? Why. Why is this happening?’
— Ding-dong.
At that moment, through the only sense he had left, an irritating doorbell rang.
‘Who is it? Who? Who’s at my house right now, and why?’
There was no one who would come to his house.
He hadn’t ordered anything for delivery, nor had he bought anything, and if he had, Lee Hoeseo always kept the option on asking them not to ring the bell.
— Beep beep beep beep.
Furthermore, the source of that sound began entering the password with practiced ease.
He was afraid.
If his body had moved, it would have been a situation where he would have immediately screamed and backed away.
If that someone was an intruder with bad intentions, Lee Hoeseo’s safety probably could not be guaranteed.
‘Huh? Why? If they come in now? Hm?’
That was the greatest question.
Surely, no one but himself should have known the password to his house—so who on earth was the person opening it and coming in?
‘How…?’
— Piririk.
Someone accurately entered the short seven-digit password and unlocked the door.
‘Hiiii□k…’
Through the slightly opened gap in the door, he heard that someone’s voice.
“This bast… still… passw…□ □□□□?”
It wasn’t clear, but it was a man’s voice.
‘Wh□t do I…!’
“What? □…, …!?”
The unknown someone suddenly raised his voice, and then—
— Thud!
‘……!’
At the powerful impact that struck the crown of his head, Lee Hoeseo passed out just like that.
*
‘No matter how many times I see it, this building really is…’
It was a multi-family residential building with the appearance of a brick house, so old and worn that it was impossible to tell when it had been built. He pressed the bell for Unit 701, the only unit on the top floor.
— Ding-dong.
He waited for about three minutes, but there wasn’t even a sign of life.
Either no one was inside, or the person inside clearly wanted to disappear right where they were.
“Okay… so you’re going to pretend not to know even now, huh?”
Ha Gangin knew the password to Lee Hoeseo’s house.
Lee Hoeseo himself might have forgotten, but on the first day Ha Gangin had come here, he had personally said his own birthday was the password and had even told him the date.
‘Thinking about it now, I don’t know if that was an excuse to tell me the password, or if he just wanted to tell me his birthday.’
— Beep beep beep beep.
When Ha Gangin wasn’t in the chat room at the time he usually logged in because he had to go to supplementary classes at the academy, Lee Hoeseo often whined.
‘He was the type to get bored often, so, hmm.’
— Beep.
‘Probably the latter.’
When he entered # at the end, a cheerful unlocking sound rang out.
— Piririk.
“It’s open. This bastard really made his birthday the password…”
— Rattle, rattle.
“What? Is it caught on something?”
The door lock had definitely been released, but whether it was caught on something or the door itself was broken too, even when Ha Gangin pushed it with a fair amount of force, the door wouldn’t open.
— Thud!
Instead, from the space that should have been completely empty came a dull sound, as though something was there.
‘What the hell is it…?’
With no other choice, Ha Gangin decided to check inside.
“But at this point, didn’t he leave while I was coming…?”
Since the motion-sensor entryway light was off, he stuck his hand in and waved it around to activate it.
— Whoosh, whoosh.
‘Let’s see…’
“……!”
— Bang!
Blood.
And some kind of pale, watery liquid.
Lastly, collapsed at the center of it all was a little girl.
‘What… what is this?’
“A-a girl, there’s blood…”
Ha Gangin was half in a panic.
Under the entryway light emitting a faint glow, a large amount of bloodstains were splattered as if something had burst.
Whitish liquids with a texture that looked similar to human bodily fluids or internal organs.
And on top of that, a small girl who looked like the source of all of it.
Even the color of her hair, though stained red, was like the ash of charcoal left after everything had burned away, giving him a terrible sense of wrongness.
— Beep.
‘What the hell is this? What happened?’
At first, fear.
— Beep.
‘What if… what if I just killed that person by opening the door?’
Then, anxiety.
— Beep.
‘But in the first place… why is a girl like that in his house…?’
And then suspicion, questions—his thoughts continued in that order.
— Beep.
— Beep.
— Beep beep beep.
Finally, he pressed the password again in a rush.
— Ttiririk.
— Rattle.
Even so, what had to be done had to be done.
“First, let’s check if she’s alive.”
The state inside looked far more serious than it had at a glance.
Looking closely, the girl’s eyes were open, her pupils moving this way and that, and there was a small lump on her head.
“Hah, she’s alive…”
His relief lasted only a moment.
‘What do I do? Should I take her to a hos… pital? How am I supposed to explain the situation?’
Even so, he couldn’t just leave things like this, so he decided to take action.
‘Still, first I should call 119…’
— Du, du, du.
“Ah, th-this is □□□ District…”
No sooner had Ha Gangin finished the call than an ambulance came rushing over, and before he knew it, he ended up riding beside her as well.
“Um… Is this child in critical condition…?”
“That… we’ll only know after we run tests.”
When he carefully asked the man who looked like a doctor and seemed to have some idea, the answer he received was perhaps naturally an uncertain one.
In what felt like less than ten minutes, they arrived at the nearest university hospital, and Ha Gangin naturally ended up sitting in the waiting room.
‘What the hell happened…? And what was that A… something she was mumbling…?’
Had it been only about an hour since he had started sitting in the chair?
‘Ah, the hamburgers.’
He remembered the hamburgers that must have already been delivered and left behind.
“Kheup…”
‘You’re worried about wasting those even at a time like this? Get a grip.’
Just as Ha Gangin was beginning to fall into strange self-reproach, a nurse told him that, for some reason, the doctor wanted to speak with him directly, and Ha Gangin followed her.
*
“Um… Mr. Ha Gangin. The woman you accompanied here earlier…”
“…Yes.”
“Judging from the circumstances, she is the actual resident of the home that was reported today—in other words, your friend.”
“She is Mr. Lee Hoeseo.”
‘What?’
“…What did you say?”