Bodies sprawled on the floor, hacked all over.
And bloodstains splattered starkly in every direction.
Jae-hwan's mouth twisted as he watched the scene.
Leaving the others behind, Chang-ho silently stepped forward and examined the state of the bodies.
"They haven't been dead long. Three days at most. Judging by the blood spatter, they were attacked from behind. Couldn't even resist, died instantly."
"There are an awful lot of wounds on them for that, though?"
"That's true. Looks like it didn't stop attacking even after it murdered the victims."
Chang-ho let out a small sigh and closed the eyes of the dead.
From behind the group, Ji-yeon appeared and began reciting the victims' personal details.
"Ages 56 and 58. A married couple. The husband was a salesman, the wife a homemaker. No criminal records. No history of doing anything to earn a grudge. Good reputations, too. They even had a loving marriage."
"That can't be all."
"Of course not."
Flipping to the back of her notebook, Ji-yeon went on.
"They had one daughter. Name, Kim Hye-ri. Age, 29. Occupation, office worker."
"Current whereabouts?"
"Unknown. HQ says they're looking for her."
At that, Chang-ho responded with a smile.
"Good. Then the daughter's our prime suspect. We search for her right away."
"...Sorry?"
Jae-hwan couldn't hide his bewilderment at Chang-ho's words.
"Wait, wait a minute. You suspect parricide here?"
"I'm not suspecting. I'm keeping the possibility open."
But Jae-hwan still seemed unable to even conceive of a daughter killing her parents.
Chang-ho sighed and elaborated for Jae-hwan.
"Even if the daughter isn't the aberration, we might at least turn up some evidence."
"That's true."
The moment Jae-hwan reluctantly accepted Chang-ho's point.
A sudden pain struck Jae-hwan.
Reacting to the pain, Jae-hwan slowly looked down at his own body.
A blade had pierced through his back and was jutting out of his stomach.
"What...!"
"Ambush! Move!"
Chang-ho quickly pulled Jae-hwan forward, yanking out the blade.
And Ji-yeon rushed to the wounded Jae-hwan and immediately began to heal the wound.
"Jae-hwan, did you see anything?"
"No, I got stabbed from behind...!"
Jae-hwan spat out his complaint along with blood.
"Put your back to the wall! Now! Cover your blind spot!"
Even as she was healing him, Ji-yeon immediately gave Jae-hwan orders.
But as if to mock Ji-yeon's warning, the second attack came right away.
Right behind Ji-yeon's back.
A rotted right eye.
And in contrast, an abnormally large left eye.
Like the last one, the aberration had a twisted human form.
"Senior! Behind you!!"
"Ngh...!"
The aberration's claws tore through Ji-yeon's clothes and back.
Even as she sprayed blood, Ji-yeon gritted her teeth and swallowed her scream.
At the same time, Ji-yeon shoved Jae-hwan away, shielding him from the aberration's attack.
Chang-ho, belatedly drawing his baton, struck the aberration, but in the blink of an eye the aberration vanished.
"Behind! Watch your backs!"
Catching on to the aberration's pattern, Chang-ho shouted a warning to the others.
Hurriedly healing her own wound, Ji-yeon nodded as if she understood.
At the same time, the team huddled together, back to back.
"Listen up. I told you aberrations each have at least one special ability. Looks like this one can teleport behind its target."
"Looks that way. Jae-hwan and I were both attacked from behind."
Having grasped the situation, Chang-ho quickly gave orders.
"Protect Ji-yeon! The thing's after Ji-yeon!"
"I'll... protect myself just fine..."
Ji-yeon swallowed a groan and began tending to her wounds.
It seemed the aberration intended to neutralize Ji-yeon, with her healing ability, first.
"And we retreat for now! It got the first strike in, so this is no time to engage!"
With the attacks continuing, there wasn't even time to heal their wounds.
Accordingly, Chang-ho judged that fighting would be difficult and ordered the team to withdraw.
"Then what do we do? Will that thing stop chasing us just because we get out of here?"
"It'll stop. That's how aberrations are. As long as we get out of this house, there won't be any pursuit!"
Chang-ho hurried toward the door.
But the door was firmly locked.
"Damn...!"
A hair-trigger situation, with no telling when or where the aberration would appear.
In that situation, Jae-hwan suddenly asked Chang-ho a question.
"Team Leader. What floor are we on?"
"Here? The 7th floor. Why?"
Jae-hwan drew out blood and made a sturdy rope.
"Hey, wait, hold on...!"
Ji-yeon, too, grasped the situation only then.
Using the rope, Jae-hwan tied up the team, himself included.
"Hold on tight!"
"To what?! What's there to hold on to?!"
Having fixed the rope to the steel door, Jae-hwan sprinted straight toward the window.
The moment the aberration appeared to deal another blow.
SMASH!!!
The sound of breaking glass rang out.
"YOU PUUUUUUUNK!!!!"
With Chang-ho's desperate scream, the team began to plummet helplessly.
Fortunately, the rope Jae-hwan had rigged did its job.
Just before slamming into the concrete ground, the team barely managed to stop.
"Uh... we've arrived."
"Where? Heaven?"
"Probably hell."
Jae-hwan sighed at the dazed Chang-ho and Ji-yeon.
"...If you had a better way than this, tell me."
"Hell if I know, you punk..."
"But why is the Team Leader so out of it?"
"...The Team Leader has a fear of heights. On top of that..."
"Ah..."
When he came to his senses and looked around, there were quite a lot of people.
Men and a woman in black suits, fallen from the 7th floor.
Two of them drenched in blood from head to toe.
Worse, Ji-yeon's slashed-up upper body was practically down to her underwear.
Just as Jae-hwan sighed and was about to take off his jacket for Ji-yeon.
"...Hey, you punk, Kim Jae-hwan!!!!"
A mountain of people whose memories needed erasing.
Chang-ho's furious wail rang out.
***
HQ, contacted by Chang-ho, soon passed on Kim Hye-ri's location.
But when they actually came face to face with Kim Hye-ri, the team couldn't say a word.
A gaunt frame and bloodless skin, in contrast to her neatly tied hair.
Kim Hye-ri, the victims' daughter, was clearly not well, to anyone's eye.
Because Kim Hye-ri, the daughter of the murdered couple, had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
"How long has she been hospitalized?"
"About three months."
The caregiver answered.
Kim Hye-ri hadn't said a single word for a while now.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Does she know about what happened to her parents?"
The caregiver hesitated for a long while before continuing.
"I told her they passed away, but she didn't say anything."
"Nothing at all?"
"Last time, she at least wailed, but now maybe she's given up entirely..."
"Wait, last time? Has something like this happened before?"
"Yes, that's right. Her ex, a close friend, a coworker, even her previous caregiver... She always reacted like that..."
"So that means they all died..."
"Ah, my apologies. This one's new."
Chang-ho cut Jae-hwan off.
"Team Leader? What are you..."
Chang-ho whispered in a voice only Jae-hwan could hear.
"Good digging, punk. But act a little. You're playing a cop right now, kid. What kind of cop doesn't even know basic facts about the people involved in a case?"
Jae-hwan nodded as if he understood.
"By the way, we'll need you to step out for a moment. We need to talk with her alone."
"It won't do any good. She doesn't talk at all anymore."
"That's fine. It's just a formality. Just for a moment, please."
At Chang-ho's words, the caregiver reluctantly left.
"Ms. Kim Hye-ri. I know you can hear me."
"......."
"We're here to help you, Ms. Kim Hye-ri. So we'd like your cooperation."
"......."
"...No reaction at all."
"Is that so? Can't be helped. I'll report to HQ, so you two handle this yourselves."
After Chang-ho left, Jae-hwan and Ji-yeon tried talking to her about all sorts of things.
But she likewise gave no answer.
And then.
"Don't you want revenge?"
At the word "revenge," her shoulders flinched for a moment.
"...fine."
"Sorry?"
"It's fine. It's fine now... They told me there's no way to catch the stalker..."
She went on, trembling with fear.
From the look of things, the stalker had eliminated the people around her one by one.
The moment Jae-hwan was left speechless at the aberration's horrific atrocities.
Ji-yeon pulled Jae-hwan aside and showed him her phone.
On it was a brief message from Chang-ho.
[Come to the roof.]
Leaving the terrified Hye-ri behind, Jae-hwan reluctantly walked away.
***
"So, find out anything?"
Having called the team up to the roof, Chang-ho blew out cigarette smoke as he looked at the sky.
"It's a stalker's doing. To put it briefly, this aberration seems to be aiming to murder everyone around Ms. Kim Hye-ri."
"So is that why she deliberately avoided talking with us? So we wouldn't become the aberration's targets."
"You could call it a stalker aberration."
Taking out his next cigarette, Chang-ho asked a sudden question.
"What do you think you'd do?"
"Do what, exactly?"
"About this situation."
"What's there to it? We track it down and kill the aberration."
Jae-hwan answered immediately, without the slightest hesitation.
But Ji-yeon caught on to Chang-ho's intent and asked a new question.
"That's not why you called us up here, is it? What did HQ say?"
"In a bit. You two get some fresh air too."
Ignoring the team's stares, Chang-ho looked off into the distance.
It seemed Chang-ho was about to say something unpleasant.
"What did HQ say?"
Ji-yeon asked again, persistently.
"......."
"Haah."
Soon after, Ji-yeon let out a long sigh, as if she'd caught on to something from Chang-ho's attitude.
"...What's going on?"
"What else? A job nobody wants. You, do you remember what I offered you when I first scouted you?"
"You said I'd see every kind of filth there is."
"Good memory."
Chang-ho looked straight at Jae-hwan and went on.
"So... it's time for some filthy work. It's an order from above."
"An order, meaning what...?"
Swallowing hard, Jae-hwan asked Chang-ho.
But instead, Chang-ho asked Jae-hwan an out-of-the-blue question.
"What ways do you think there are to kill an aberration?"
"Beat it to death."
"Not that, you punk."
Throwing away his second cigarette, Chang-ho reluctantly gave the answer.
"...You eliminate its source."
"Eliminate its source, meaning..."
"Exactly what it sounds like. Look at the last case. The thing was born from noise between floors. Right?"
"It was."
"Then the way to get rid of it without violence is simple. You get rid of all the noise between floors in the world."
"What kind of... That's ridiculous..."
"Right. It's ridiculous. That's why we don't often try this method. But this time it's different. This aberration's source is clear. So they want us to eliminate it."
At that moment, an ominous premonition rose in Jae-hwan's mind.
"...Don't tell me."
"The higher-ups gave the order. Eliminate Kim Hye-ri, the source of the aberration, and wrap this case up fast."