A chill settled over the rooftop.
At Chang-ho's message, the whole team froze, staring only at empty air.
"That's filthy work."
"I told you, didn't I? That's how this business is."
As Chang-ho said, if they killed Hye-ri, the source of the obsession, this aberration would be easily exterminated.
But Jae-hwan couldn't bring himself to follow that order.
"I don't think I can do it."
"Is that so?"
Turning his head, Chang-ho looked straight at Jae-hwan.
"Orders from the top are absolute. Even so?"
"Yes."
"Pretty firm. Do you feel some kind of kinship with the victim?"
"Maybe."
"Well, I figured you would. Then..."
Having finished talking, Chang-ho quietly took a pair of gloves out of his jacket.
"Team Leader, why the gloves...?"
"What else? Can't leave fingerprints. If you two won't do it, I'll have to."
Without even turning his head, he walked toward the stairs.
Jae-hwan hurriedly blocked Chang-ho's way.
"No, wait a minute. This isn't right."
"What's not right about it? Move."
Flustered, Jae-hwan blurted out to the impassive Chang-ho.
"Our mission is to kill aberrations and protect people! And you're going to kill the victim?! This is absurd..."
"What are you talking about?"
Chang-ho looked at Jae-hwan with unreadable eyes.
"Our mission is to kill aberrations. Whatever the sacrifice."
"That's..."
At that, Jae-hwan forced down the rage welling up in him and went on.
"That woman is an innocent victim. She's in the same position as me. But just because there's an easier, faster way, a person has to die? I can't accept that."
"......."
Jae-hwan's strong protest stirred up tension.
And after a brief silence.
"How many guys do you think have said the same thing as you?"
"A lot, obviously."
"Then how many of them do you think survived?"
"......."
"Get it? I can't stand to watch that anymore. So this is better."
Clenching his fists, Jae-hwan held down his rage.
There was certainly some sense in what Chang-ho said.
But Jae-hwan didn't want to admit it.
Because Kim Hye-ri carried the same pain as Jae-hwan.
"Give me just one day."
"Are you serious? Even though you could die?"
"I don't care. Even if I die, if I die that way, at least I won't be ashamed to face my sister."
"Fine."
Chang-ho let out a low sigh.
In Chang-ho's eyes was a turmoil that hadn't been there before.
"You're still young."
"Sorry? Well, I guess I am."
"I mean mentally, kid. Then one day, exactly. I'll make up some excuse for the brass. Tomorrow, no exceptions."
"Thank you."
"But do you have a way to lure the thing out? It has to be dealt with by today, no matter what."
"Ah, I've got that all figured out."
As he finished speaking, Jae-hwan smiled.
***
"I bought everything you asked for."
"Thanks, Senior."
"By the way, can this stuff even be expensed? I think you're the first guy to buy flowers on the corporate card."
"Well, the Team Leader would know."
Jae-hwan warmly greeted Ji-yeon, who had her arms full of flowers.
Ji-yeon spoke to Jae-hwan indifferently.
"But I don't know if this'll work."
"Come on, if you say that now..."
As if he'd overheard them, Chang-ho came back and naturally joined the conversation.
"Fake or not, it's a hospital visit. Something this showy might draw the aberration's attention."
"Right. The thing will definitely mistake me for someone close to Ms. Kim Hye-ri. Then we just wait, ready, and crush it. We become the bait. But what's that in your hand?"
"Orange juice. It's a hospital visit, after all. You can't just show up with flowers, can you?"
"You didn't just grab it as an extra while you were buying cigarettes?"
"I said no, you punk."
With everything prepared, the team stopped chatting, then immediately opened the door and stepped into the hospital room.
"...Huh?"
At their unexpected appearance, Kim Hye-ri stared at the team wide-eyed.
"Long time no see. Has it been about two hours?"
"You people... why are you here...?"
Her already pale face turned even paler.
Deliberately ignoring Hye-ri's reaction, the team gave her the bouquet, the juice, and the rest.
But after a long stretch of building up an awkward visiting atmosphere.
In a resigned tone, Hye-ri quietly spoke to the team.
"You're all going to die now."
At Hye-ri's feeble warning, Jae-hwan was struck by an indescribable feeling.
The Hye-ri before him had lost everything and was utterly broken.
Even so, she was worried about them.
Without knowing that until a moment ago, the team had been about to kill her.
"......."
Overcome with guilt, Jae-hwan couldn't say anything.
Chang-ho spoke to Jae-hwan in a cold voice.
"That's enough. Let's go."
"...Okay."
The moment the team was about to leave.
Jae-hwan looked back at her and left her with some last words.
"I'll be back."
Hye-ri looked at Jae-hwan with eyes full of despair.
***
An abandoned construction site, without a soul around.
"The sun's going down. Get ready."
Chang-ho's indifferent remark rang out across the empty lot.
"Keep your backs together. And watch the mirrors."
To prepare for an opponent that could ambush them from behind at any moment, the team had hastily brought in mirrors.
But how well such preparations would hold up in a real fight was anyone's guess.
The team waited, still unable to let their tension slacken.
And so a long time passed.
The darkening sky suddenly began to turn the color of blood.
"It's here."
"Yeah. Looks like last time was just the opening skirmish. For the other side, too."
At some point, a giant eyeball had risen in the red sky in place of the moon.
"Watching everything, is it? A fitting look for a stalker aberration."
The moment Chang-ho finished his brief assessment, the giant eyeball fixed its gaze on the team.
In response, they too leaned against each other's backs and took a defensive stance.
"Be careful. The thing will definitely come at us from outside our line of sight. So all we can do is watch each other's backs."
"I know."
Ji-yeon took Chang-ho's warning calmly.
'With last time's experience, I won't go down so easily this time...!'
Remembering the last battle, Jae-hwan gritted his teeth and looked around.
But the aberration didn't easily show itself.
And so a little time passed.
Squelch –
The aberration's claws burst up through the top of his foot.
Instead of going for a decisive blow, the aberration had chosen to ambush him from beneath his feet, where no eyes could reach.
"What...!"
Bearing the pain, Jae-hwan pulled his foot free.
At the same time, the aberration began slowly crawling up out of the ground.
"...Don't come, don't come, don't come near her, Kim Hye-ri is mine, no, Kim Hye-ri is me!!!"
With the grotesque sound of bending joints, the aberration spat out incomprehensible words.
'Damn! I have to get out of the way...!'
But because of the wound to his foot, Jae-hwan couldn't flee the way he wanted to.
Seeing Jae-hwan's condition, Ji-yeon rushed over.
She quickly shouldered him to the ground, then barely blocked the aberration's attack with her baton.
Not missing the opening, Chang-ho charged in and brought his baton down on the aberration.
Wounded by the baton's blow, the aberration writhed in pain and began to scream.
"AAAAAGH, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts!!! How dare you wound me, wound Kim Hye-ri? I'll kill you!!"
'This son of a bitch, not content with stalking her, does he actually think he's Kim Hye-ri?'
Jae-hwan clicked his tongue at how thoroughly the aberration had lost its mind.
Next, the aberration swung its arm wide and shook off Chang-ho, who had been clinging to it.
The aberration lunged at Jae-hwan to finish him off.
Jae-hwan quickly made a shield of blood and barely blocked the attack.
He soon turned the shield into a noose.
But the aberration slipped out of the noose by a hair's breadth.
Having failed in its first ambush, the aberration quickly hid itself.
"It got away!"
"I know! Then next is... gahk!"
Before they could even grasp the situation, the aberration's second ambush came.
The second target was Chang-ho, who had attacked the aberration directly.
This time, with the team watching the ground and their backs, the aberration attacked from above.
Struck, Chang-ho bled from the shoulder and slumped to the ground.
Ji-yeon then quickly rushed in to cover Chang-ho.
Jae-hwan, also heading toward Chang-ho, discovered something new.
'Its wounds are all healed...?'
At some point, the aberration had healed all the wounds it had received.
Jae-hwan began to ponder the aberration's unexpected regenerative power.
The thing recovered from its wounds every time it hid.
Then fighting a war of attrition with it here was meaningless.
"Team Leader! It recovers from its wounds every time it hides! We have to stop it from hiding again!"
"Yeah... so that's how it is!"
Hearing that, Chang-ho smiled a smile whose meaning was hard to read.
Another attack from the aberration.
Chang-ho took it head-on.
"Team Leader...!"
The aberration's claws pierced right through the middle of Chang-ho's torso.
"Urgh...! Now, grab it!"
Chang-ho shouted, seizing the aberration's arm that had run through his body.
He'd chosen to sacrifice his own body to hold the aberration in place.
Not missing the opening, Ji-yeon quickly managed to smash the aberration's head.
The moment Jae-hwan, arriving right after, was about to deliver the finishing blow with a sword made of blood.
"No...! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!!!"
The aberration cut off its own arm to break free of the hold, then vanished out of sight again.
"Damn...!"
"Team Leader! Your wound?"
"Cough, I'm not okay, you punk... urgh..."
Ji-yeon hurriedly began to heal Chang-ho's wound.
Going by the pattern so far, the thing would surely reappear after regenerating its lost arm.
And it would never fall for the same trick twice.
Before the team got hurt any further, Jae-hwan tried to think of a solution somehow.
'But I just can't find an answer... hm?'
The sky he'd absently looked up at while thinking.
There, the aberration's eye still floated, as if mocking the team.
'...That's it.'
There was something Jae-hwan had been wondering about for a while.
How could the thing, hiding in another space, accurately perceive their positions and attack?
It seemed that eye wasn't just decoration.
Jae-hwan gathered up his blood and made a sleek spear.
He seemed to have used too much blood, because he began to feel a little dizzy.
"Don't waste your strength now. There's no telling when or where it'll come next."
Jae-hwan gave the worried Ji-yeon a confident smile.
And then Jae-hwan hurled the spear with all his might at the giant eyeball.
Squelch –
The flying spear buried itself deep in the dead center of the eyeball.
The eyeball floating in the air burst, and unidentifiable fluids poured out.
Then came a tremendous scream from the aberration.
"AAAAAAGH! My eye! My eye!! Kim Hye-ri's perfect eye! AAAAAH!!!"
The hidden aberration burst out of the ground and began rolling around.
A hole had been punched through its rotted right eye, and blood was spurting from the hole.
Ji-yeon and Chang-ho quietly approached the aberration, batons in hand.
"...We got it."
"Yeah. Let's finish it."
The two of them beat the aberration mercilessly.
Thwack, crack, crunch.
They heard bones breaking and muscles rupturing, but the two didn't stop the violence.
In the end, after a long beating, the aberration finally began crumbling to dust bit by bit.
Just like before, the aberration returned to human form, if only briefly.
But no one in the team showed the aberration any sympathy.
"Uaah... I'm..."
"Any last words before you die?"
"I'm... Kim Hye-ri..."
"...How tiresome."
Chang-ho finally clicked his tongue at the stalker's obsession.
"No. You're just a stalker."
Unable to watch any longer, Jae-hwan cut into the aberration's lament.
"You're the trash who killed Kim Hye-ri's lover, friends, acquaintances, and family."
"Ah... uaah..."
"So just die already. Do your whining in hell."
With its delusion denied to the very end, the aberration faded away in agony.
In the end, the aberration met its lonely end under their cold glares.
***
"You went?"
"Yes. It's all over."
"Where's the Team Leader?"
"He stayed behind for a bit to erase memories."
After visiting the psychiatric hospital where Kim Hye-ri was admitted.
Having finished his real hospital visit, Jae-hwan was talking with Ji-yeon on the HQ rooftop.
"We finished one."
"Yeah. There'll be plenty more like this. Brace yourself."
"I'm braced for that. But..."
Ji-yeon quickly caught the words Jae-hwan couldn't finish.
"It's the higher-ups' order that's bothering you, huh."
"Right."
Jae-hwan let out a long sigh.
"I know our lives were in danger. And that there could have been bigger sacrifices. But... how can they so easily order us to take an innocent victim's life?"
"You won't understand now. But someday you will. Though you won't really want to."
Ji-yeon answered Jae-hwan's question as calmly as she could.
Jae-hwan couldn't react to that at all.
Because Ji-yeon looked so bitter as she said it.
Feeling disillusioned, powerless, and stifled, Jae-hwan looked up at the sky.
'I'll probably have to live like this my whole life. Exterminating aberrations is fine. But when I think about someday getting innocent blood on my hands...'
As Jae-hwan sank into gloom.
A scene flashed through Jae-hwan's mind.
Hye-ri's gentle smile when she heard the stalker had been exterminated.
When she finally regained her peace, Jae-hwan felt a sense of accomplishment and relief.
Who would have thought someone else's happiness could be a greater reward than anything else.
'...Ha. Yeah, who cares? This is enough. From now on, I just have to do my best. Higher-ups' orders or whatever, I just have to save the people right in front of me.'
Smiling without realizing it, Jae-hwan finished making his resolution.
As Jae-hwan was lost in the afterglow.
"Hey."
Two men they'd never seen before approached the team.