Chapter 54 : General Store
Chapter 54: General Store
“When I talked about revenge, they said this.”
Inside a research lab completely wrecked and shattered.
Baek Woohyun, standing on the floor where blood had pooled thickly, spoke in a whisper. It was a tone more like muttering to himself than hoping for someone to hear.
In reality, he hadn’t brought up the conversation for dialogue. This was closer to an act of humming before a moment he’d dreamed of.
“That revenge doesn’t give birth to anything. That even if I use all my strength to get revenge, nothing will remain for me.”
“─! ──!”
Baek Woohyun lightly shook the dagger completely stained with blood. Drops of blood that hadn’t dried yet fell drip by drip from the dagger that had turned bright red.
Those things that had been someone’s life touched the face of the gagged man kneeling, and that fact seemed to reach the man as deep terror.
Looking at how he writhed while letting out cries that didn’t become language with his eyes wide open.
However, the man’s anguished writhing couldn’t stop Baek Woohyun.
After all, when hundreds of security guards and dozens of Etinels couldn’t stop him, how could writhing a bit now make Baek Woohyun give up his revenge?
The man’s actions brought no change in the desperate situation and only drained his strength.
“…Stupid talk.”
Swoosh!
“───!”
The dagger slowly dug into the man’s shoulder blade and moved leisurely between the muscles.
In the terror of flesh being carved away and pain that seemed like he’d faint, the man writhed roughly. But since his hands and feet were bound, all he could do was squirm like a bug.
Baek Woohyun, moving the dagger, didn’t care at all what reaction the man showed. He merely sliced off the man’s flesh with care, with the attitude of doing what naturally had to be done.
Even while performing such a cruel act, his voice remained terribly calm.
“People who take revenge have no intention of leaving anything behind from the start.”
“──!”
“They take revenge intending not to leave anything behind, but revenge leaves nothing behind? Ha, not even funny.”
“── ─!”
“You see. From the beginning, I had no intention of leaving anything behind. You should lose as much as I lost. That’s fair, right?”
Baek Woohyun’s hand movements were delicate, and therefore all the more cruel. It meant he was carefully and meticulously removing flesh from a living, breathing person.
His skill at carving flesh was so perfect that the man was still alive even with one arm completely filleted.
Though he was trembling while showing the whites of his eyes, unable to endure the pain, the fact that he was still alive itself was clear.
And around that time, Baek Woohyun, who had withdrawn the dagger, looked down at the man quietly.
He looked at the man’s face that had gone beyond pale white to deathly black as if checking an artwork he’d waited a long time for, then said.
“Shin Sua. Remember?”
“──!”
“Ah, the gag. Right. I’ll remove it. Answer me. Do you remember the name Shin Sua?”
“-Ptooey! I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“……”
Baek Woohyun thrust his face at the man.
His two eyes were burning brilliantly white even within the shadows.
“Don’t know? You don’t know Shin Sua?”
“That’s right, you bastard! I don’t know! Whatever it is, you got the wrong person-! Aaagh-!”
“You don’t know, you say….”
Stab!
“Aaaaaaagh!”
As the blade dug into his body, the man screamed.
The cry that had been blocked by the gag now echoed through the completely destroyed research facility.
Baek Woohyun no longer spoke. He merely silently carved away the flesh of the man’s other arm, piece by piece, with care.
By the time the opposite arm was also completely down to just bone, he who had withdrawn the dagger asked.
“Shin Sua. Remember?”
“…Don’t know…. I… don’t know….”
“Hmm- I guess you guys need to be asked like this to remember. Test Subject No. 142. Ring a bell now?”
“Test… subject…?”
Did it mean he was a researcher to the very end?
Hearing the term test subject, the man trembled faintly and showed a reaction. As if rummaging through the distant past somewhere.
But that was only for a moment. Soon the man buried his face and let out a giggling laugh. A laugh that seemed both tinged with madness and like he’d given up.
Even before the bizarre reaction, Baek Woohyun silently waited for the man’s answer, and soon the man glared straight at Baek Woohyun and spat out.
“…As if I’d remember each and every test subject. You fucking idiot.”
“I see.”
Baek Woohyun, who nodded, raised the dagger.
Scrape!
“I knew you’d say that.”
“Aaaaaaagh-!”
Within the echoing screams, the fallen flesh and flowing blood mixed turbidly.
It was the process of one human being dismantled piece by piece while still alive, and proof demonstrating how tenacious life could be.
Thus, when time passed and Baek Woohyun, now alone, stood up, before him lay only a lump of meat that had once been human.
“……”
Baek Woohyun looked down at his blood-soaked hands in the chilling silence.
His hands were full of sticky redness, as if proving he had literally dismantled a person. It was a trace that would never be erased even if washed away.
However, for him, this alone could never become an unpleasant brand. It would be the same even if he recalled it again after a very long time.
His future self might suffer under the weight of the specter clinging to and hanging on his body, but he wouldn’t regret killing those who had to be killed.
After standing still for a while, he searched his pockets. It was because, having achieved to some degree the revenge that had been his long-held wish, he suddenly felt the urge to smoke.
Since his whole body was covered in blood anyway, his expression changed oddly as he searched his pockets without caring whether it got on them or not.
It was because he couldn’t find the cigarettes he’d been using for quite a long time. Even though he’d clearly smoked one before entering this place.
‘Where did they go?’
The answer to the question came quickly.
There had been no cigarettes in his pockets from the start.
‘There weren’t any?’
It was naturally so.
Unlike ‘over there,’ ‘here’ couldn’t have cigarettes like extreme poison made by mixing numerous drugs.
In a world where supernatural abilities don’t exist, cigarettes made more potent by mixing and condensing various drugs wouldn’t be cigarettes but merely painless suicide tools.
‘Ah.’
When he realized that fact.
Baek Woohyun finally awoke from the deep dream.
“……”
Baek Woohyun, coming to his senses, looked up at the ceiling while lying still.
The ceiling with beige wallpaper felt quite familiar now. As if proving quite a bit of time had already passed since returning from ‘over there.’
After lying there for a while with an expression showing what thoughts he was having, he soon let out a turbid sigh.
Eventually, when he dragged himself up, what entered his eyes was the connection device shoved in one corner.
Though not the ‘over there’ world, a passage to a very similar virtual world.
Looking at the connection device with a hardened face, he slowly stepped into it. Hoping the thing he desired right now would be in there.
“Hey, now that I think about it, that thing this time-“
“Let’s go one more round!” “Should we go watch the baseball game tomorrow?”
“I have plans this weekend.”
Murmur murmur.
“……”
Shortly after, Baek Woohyun stood before the scenery of ‘Seoul,’ a city somehow different from reality yet similar to the place ‘over there’—Seoul.
As if proving the popularity of the national game ‘Reverse Planet,’ the city was filled with numerous presences. Some would be NPCs, but most appeared to be players.
After watching them pass by in front of him laughing and chattering, he soon moved his steps, but toward the outskirts, not the city center.
The reason he chose the opposite direction even though the Otherworld Management Bureau was toward the city center was simple.
It was because the place he intended to go this time was a dark place that surely existed in the city, a place like the source of illegality.
It was a movement to go to that place called the ‘underworld,’ regarded as disagreeable yet quietly hushed over.
If he had planned to go to the Otherworld Management Bureau from the start, he wouldn’t have come out to the city like this.
The place where he was when he just logged in had been the Otherworld Management Bureau.
“……”
The question might arise whether there was an underworld in Seoul where illegal acts were committed, and the answer to that was “yes.”
It was a completely natural thing, like shadows being created where there’s light, and a coin having heads and tails.
It was merely hidden in dark places not easily found, and because the higher-ups hushed it over, it hadn’t been revealed on the surface.
‘It was this way.’
Baek Woohyun advanced without hesitation, recalling memories with the ‘over there’ world.
Since the underworld was base from birth and hid thoroughly, the majority might not even know of its existence, but to him, who had lived in the underworld since ‘over there,’ it was a completely irrelevant story.
Walking for quite a while like that, at some point he felt gazes watching him amidst the alleyways that had become complex like spider webs.
It was clear proof he’d entered the right path.
How long had he moved while receiving gazes boring into his every move?
The place he finally reached was in front of a pawn shop that looked closed at a glance. With only an iron door firmly closed without a single window.
Approaching without caring about the outward appearance, he activated the iron door’s locking device, and after the device turned on silently, he finished inputting the ten-digit password.
Click-
Then it unlocked with a heavy sound.
Baek Woohyun naturally pushed open the iron door and entered inside. It was a skilled entrance as if he’d come several times already.
In reality, he had come here often—though that was a story from ‘over there,’ but anyway. Because this was a place that played a very important role in the underworld.
A low voice was heard almost simultaneously with him stepping into the pawn shop.
“An uninvited guest, I see.”
The owner of the voice wasn’t visible, being behind a partition made of iron bars.
Moreover, the voice heard was considerably modulated, making it difficult to even distinguish gender, let alone age range.
It was a disguise showing the will to absolutely never reveal one’s identity.
……Though it had no meaning whatsoever to Baek Woohyun.
“Yet you know the password- Quite curious. Haha. What brings you here?”
“I came to buy something.”
“Hmm-“
The other party made a sound as if intrigued and spoke again.
“An Otherworld Management Bureau agent came here to buy something…. Very interesting.”
The other party’s intention in suddenly exposing Baek Woohyun’s identity was clear.
It would be a warning not to try anything funny since they knew this much about Baek Woohyun who had suddenly barged in.
However, Baek Woohyun just shot back indifferently.
“Since when did the ‘General Store’ start choosing customers?”
“Haha, indeed so. You’re right. The ‘General Store’ has always sold whatever goods customers desired. Whatever it may be, or whoever it may be.”
The owner of the General Store, which handled all goods in the underworld, laughed loudly as if they’d been hit.
Certainly it was as Baek Woohyun said.
The General Store merely sold the goods customers wanted.
Without caring who the customer was, why they wanted it, whether it was illegal or legal.
Because that’s what the General Store was. Those who would sell anything—goods, people, or anything else—if they could sell it for money.
“Then, customer, what do you need that brought you to the General Store?”
“Black Devil.”
“……”
The General Store owner was silent for a moment.
That’s how unexpected Baek Woohyun’s request was.
Black Devil of all things.
Why would an Otherworld Management Bureau agent be looking for that item even called ‘comfortable death’?
“That’s…. surprisingly unexpected.”
“Don’t you have it?”
“Of course we do. This is the ‘General Store,’ after all.”