Chapter 3
003 – A Truly Terrifying Story (3)
#Warning! There’s a startling illustration ahead, so beware!#
Today, I left my room to buy chicken breast and a protein drink again.
Tap, tap, tap-.
The see-through girl I’d identified as an ‘imp’ hurried out after me.
For the record, an imp is a ‘little devil.’
If demons like the Marquis of Hell, dukes, and Paimon are tigers, then little-devil imps are more like cats.
Which makes her a perfect fit, since all she does is steal from convenience stores.
Anyway, I’d wondered if the imp would stay cooped up at my place, but it looked like she planned to follow me around.
Could that cause problems of its own?
For now, I headed to the convenience store.
Then I paid for my chicken breast and protein drink.
Beep, beep.
“Honey, what’s the occasion? You’re buying two of each today. Getting some for tomorrow, too?”
The convenience store owner chatted with me casually, then asked in a knowing tone.
I glanced at the ‘imp,’ who was hiding behind me and staring at the snack display.
Sway, sway-.
Her arrow-tipped tail wagged from side to side like a dog’s.
If the owner had seen that, she surely would have said something, but since she hadn’t─.
‘As I thought, only I can see her.’
When I stepped out of the convenience store, the sun was dazzlingly bright-.
So what now?
Did I have to keep dragging this strange imp around with me?
If this kept up, my food expenses would double and my Engel coefficient would go through the roof.
Maybe I should look up ‘how to get rid of a demon that’s latched on to you.’
Thinking that, I returned home, only to find the college girl from across the hall standing outside my door.
She looked about twenty.
She was a foreigner with slightly dark skin and a slim, pretty face. Most of all, she had a large chest.
For the record, she was wearing a sleeveless top that showed off her cleavage.
“Hellooo.”
A woman spoke to me in a slightly halting voice.
She’d moved in across from me nearly six months ago, but this was the first time she’d ever spoken to me.
My tension shot up in an instant!
“Ah, y-yes.”
“I’m Ming. I live across from you. There’s a sauce jar in my place that I can’t open. I was wondering if you could help me….”
A sauce jar? I guess all sorts of things can happen in life.
The woman, who’d introduced herself as ‘Ming,’ opened her door and went inside.
I waited for her to come out with the sauce jar, but from inside the open doorway, a cheerful voice called, “Come on in─.”
Even if we were neighbors across the hall, was it really a good idea to casually invite a man inside?
If she were my younger sister, I wouldn’t let her do that.
Thinking that, I stepped inside her apartment─.
“Urgh, uugh─.”
I couldn’t help gagging.
The entire floor of her apartment was covered in something that looked like ‘bright red blood.’
Her bed, window, wallpaper, bathroom door, balcony, and refrigerator were all splattered with a bright-red liquid. It was enough to drive me insane.
Splash-. There was so much red liquid on the floor that it came up over my feet.
I was standing frozen in the entryway, wondering what on earth had happened, when Ms. Ming gave me a bashful smile.
“…Heh, it’s pretty messy, isn’t it?”
No way in hell could you just pass this off as ‘messy’!
This place wasn’t just wrecked. It was completely trashed!
“Why aren’t you coming in? Is something wrong?”
But Ms. Ming kept urging me to come inside.
Her expression and gaze seemed oddly cold.
At that moment, I felt a strange pressure and sensed that something ominous would happen if I stayed there. I had no choice but to take off my shoes and step inside.
Squish, squish-squish-.
Fortunately, I had slippers on, so I wasn’t barefoot.
“This is it. It’s a Thai sauce. Sriracha….”
“…Ms. Ming, are you from Thailand?”
Trying not to be overwhelmed by the wretched atmosphere of this strange room, I blurted out whatever came to mind.
Maybe she liked my question, because Ms. Ming smiled broadly.
“Yes, I’m from Isan. Have you heard of it? It’s famous for its food.”
“No…. More importantly, hngh—ha! There, it’s open.”
“Wow, that was fast! Men really are strong. Just look at the veins on your hand.”
Ms. Ming poked the back of my hand with her finger.
At that moment, it felt like electricity raced from the back of my hand all the way to my tailbone and the top of my head.
Goose bumps spread from the back of my hand across my skin.
“Oppa, let’s be friends from now on, too. What are you doing tonight?”
She chuckled softly, her eyes narrowed.
Even though I was a hopeless novice who’d never had a girlfriend by the age of twenty-five, I could tell this was seduction.
If this had been me yesterday, I might have fallen for it.
But today, I could feel the strange ‘imp’ watching me from behind. More than anything, I wasn’t thick-skinned enough to fool around in a room splattered with blood.
‘This situation is seriously messed up!’
So I hurriedly retreated to the entryway.
All I could think about was getting out of there.
“I’m sorry, but I already had dinner yesterday!”
“What? What you ate yesterday was yesterday’s dinner─.”
“Take care!”
Dash, dash, dash─.
After making my escape, I returned to my place and slammed the door shut.
I even latched the bolt, which I hardly ever used.
# # #
Before I knew it, evening had come.
Swoosh, swoosh─.
The imp was in the bathroom, playing around by turning the shower on and off.
She seemed to like the shower.
“Bori-bori, you could break it, so stop.”
I told the imp to stop.
For the record, ‘Bori-bori’ was the name I’d given her.
She reminded me of Bori, the border collie I used to have.
She was twice Bori’s size, so I called her Bori-bori.
Maybe she understood what I meant, because Bori-bori came out of the bathroom and curled up in the corner again.
Grrrrrrrr-.
Her stomach growled loud enough to make its presence known.
“Is it dinner time already?”
I opened the fridge.
Ever since Bori-bori arrived, the food I’d stocked up on had been disappearing twice as fast.
The wages I’d earned working at the restaurant were nearly gone, too. This was a serious problem.
Swoosh─.
Even then, I could still hear the sound of running water.
“Bori-bori, you should’ve turned the water off before you came out. The water bill doesn’t pay itself.”
I went into the bathroom to turn it off.
But the shower wasn’t running at all?
The imp, Bori-bori, only tilted her head at me, too.
“Huh? Then what is it?”
Swoooooosh-.
Where was that sound of running water coming from?
Wondering what on earth was going on, I listened carefully and walked around, trying to find the source of the sound.
Then I realized it was coming from right outside my apartment, in front of the entryway.
Rattle-.
I opened the door and stepped outside, and my brow immediately furrowed.
Swoosh─.
Bright-red water covered the floor of the villa, flowing along the ground.
And the water was gushing out from beneath the door of Unit 302—my next-door neighbor’s apartment.
“Ugh.”
It smelled nauseating.
There was a horribly pungent, fishy metallic smell, just like blood.
The situation was clearly not normal.
Gush, gush, swoooooosh─.
The bloody water gushing from the apartment across the hall looked ready to flood the whole building, so I slammed the door shut for now.
Gush, gush-.
But opening the door must have been a mistake. The bloodlike liquid had already started seeping through the gap and soaking my shoe rack.
“Aah!”
Flustered, I shoved some rags into the gap beneath the door.
Even so, they weren’t enough to hold back the surging blood. Just as the back of my head started tingling, the imp Bori-bori, who’d been curled up in the corner, lifted her head like a meerkat.
“……!”
Pat, pat, pat-.
She bounced toward the shoe rack, dipped a finger into the red water, then drew a circle, a triangle, and something like a geometric equation on the front door.
It was about thirty centimeters in diameter.
“Huh?”
The moment I saw it, blood dripped from my nose.
Like the relief you feel when a nosebleed finally breaks after a long headache, a remarkably refreshing sensation filled my head, too.
It felt as if a corner of my brain I’d never used before were being stimulated, warming up and opening.
The meaning of the shapes Bori-bori had drawn in my mind rearranged itself like the stars of the solar system lining up, bringing a single word, a concept, into focus before my eyes.
“Sealing.”
Sealing.
It meant firmly locking something so that it couldn’t come in or go out.
What would happen to a door with that meaning written on it?
“Ooh?”
Astonishingly, the surging blood came to a complete stop.
My front door had literally sealed off the flood of that strange bloodlike liquid!
“Whoa, what was that?”
Just a moment ago, I’d felt as if I’d fallen into hell, but now, for some reason, I felt fantastic.
And the name I’d searched so much yesterday—‘sorcerer’—settled even more clearly into my heart.
“The magic of sealing!”
I tried drawing the shapes Bori-bori had made on the front door onto the hole-riddled fly screen, too.
The mosquitoes that had been flailing their needle-like proboscises in a frantic attempt to get through the gaps in the screen all flew away, buzzing as if they were terrified.
“It works!”
This feels amazing!
I can’t believe this is actually real!
Am I a real sorcerer now─!?
Right as I was celebrating,
Knock, knock-.
━Mr. Yuseong, it’s Ming. I made something with the sauce you opened for me earlier. Would you like to try some?
A slightly halting voice in Korean came from beyond the door.
It sounded like Ming, the woman from across the hall.
I remembered that a fountain of blood had been gushing out of her apartment.
Honestly, the situation was far from normal, and I wasn’t an idiot, so I came to a conclusion.
‘The woman across the hall is suspicious!’
I crept as quietly as possible toward the shoe rack.
And the moment I looked outside through the peephole on the door─.
‘Eek!’
I screamed before I could stop myself.
That wasn’t just Ms. Ming.
A woman with blood all over her face was staring at me with eyes that were entirely black, without a trace of white, and flicking a tongue that looked longer than the span of my hand.
It was evil Ming.
From her lips came a soft, seductive voice that didn’t suit her at all.
━Mr. Yuseong, please open the door.
She kept calling my name.
Ha Yu-seong. But there was something strange….
“…I never told you my name, Ms. Ming. How on earth do you know it?”
━…….
…………….
It’s long.
The silence.
Time felt as if it were melting like sugar heated over a flame and sticking to my body.
Beep, beep-beep-.
Instead of answering, I soon heard the sound of her pressing the door lock’s buttons.
It suddenly occurred to me that my fingerprints were clearly visible on the keypad.
I’d been too lazy to wipe them off.
What would happen if she managed to open my door?
‘No, even if I didn’t wipe off my fingerprints, how could she guess the code?!’
Ding-dong-. But I heard the door lock click open after the correct code was entered.
How on earth?
At that moment, a scene came to mind.
What if she’d been watching through the peephole of her own front door as I casually punched in the code when I came home─!?
Brrr─.
Clack, clack-clack-.
But the door didn’t seem to open. All I could hear was the doorknob being twisted wildly.
Soon, a shriek like rusty metal scraping against a wall joined the beautiful voice beyond the door.
━A barrier? Heh, I vaguely realized earlier that you were a sorcerer, but you’re better than I expected. Maybe I can suck out some of your essence for a change.
I let most of what she said afterward wash over me, but the word ‘barrier’ pierced my ears.
A barrier, like the kind you see in manga?
Why was there one on my front door… Ah!
It looked like the magic circle for ‘Sealing’ that the imp Bori-bori had drawn on the door had become a barrier!
If it hadn’t been there, by now I’d be….
The thought sent a chill through me so intense it felt like my blood had turned cold.
“Pii-bbeop.”
Just then, the imp Bori-bori spoke for the first time in a while.
But before I could even wonder what that word meant, Bori-bori strode up to the door and let out a menacing growl─like a furious wolf.
And─.
━Huh? Aaaah!!!
A sharp scream came from outside the door.
Then I heard something tumble over with a crash, clatter down the stairs, and disappear into the distance.
If it wasn’t just my imagination….
Bori-bori seems to have chased off crazy Ms. Ming and saved me!!!