Page 76 of Molka
He kept none of his promises. He wasn’t kind to his mother. When she asked him tentatively about the dentist again, he shoved her away, anger flaring hot inside of him. “Why?” he thundered as she shook, cowering before him. “Who are you trying to impress?”
He did not delete any of the footage of Dahye. Sometimes, when he wasn’t sure if it had all been his imagination—when he wasn’t sureshehad been real—he rewatched the videos, remembering.
He snuck into the work restrooms one night to reinstall the cameras. When he went to observe the feeds, he found himself waiting, even as the stalls were empty, the lights flickering.
What was he waiting for? Dahye was dead, long gone. He had seen her broken body lying on the floor at his feet. He had read the articles about her funeral, which had been hotly protested by men’s rights activists. Her parents’ images had been splashed across the internet.
Still, he was haunted by her ghost. Sometimes, he thought he saw her on his screen, walking across the women’s bathroom with light footsteps, staring right up into the camera.
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“And then what happened?”
Junyoung was drunk. It was late in the evening, and he was at a bar near his apartment, talking loudly about Dahye. A small group had formed, and the faces were turned to him in rapt attention. He rejoiced in it.
He had told the story so many times now, each time embellishing it a little more, so that he now no longer remembered the truth. In this version, he had arrived just after she had cut off Hyukjoon’s member, and it lay bleeding on the floor as Junyoung fought the she-devil that was Dahye.
A stranger passing by overheard the last of his story and grabbed him abruptly, startling him. “Hey!” the man said. “I recognize you! Aren’t you the guy who killed that psycho bitch?”
“That’s me,” Junyoung said.
“You’re a hero!” The man gave him a high five.
When the crowd thinned, Junyoung stood up to leave, picking up his scarf. It was always the worst part of the night, returning home alone in the cold, listening to Dahye’s voice, twisting and snakelike, in his head.
Outside, he inhaled deeply, feeling the wintry air in his lungs. He still had a scar on his cheek where Dahye had cut him. He touched it gingerly, feeling the raised edges with the tip of his finger.
As Junyoung stepped off the sidewalk to head home, he heard a car approaching. Headlights bounced along the asphalt, and Junyoung quickly began to cross the street. He expected it to stop, but the car roared, speeding up. He halted abruptly in the middle of the road, eyes wide, the light blinding him—
There was a terrible sound as Junyoung felt himself being thrown into the air. He flailed as he slammed against the car’s hood, bounced, and landed in the gutter. Dazed, he looked down. His body was twisted, and his legs were facing the wrong direction. There was blood everywhere. And his feet—he couldn’t feel his feet. Pain, excruciating pain, crept up his torso, taking away all feeling in his arms.
Junyoung threw his head back and let out a wail as the car pulled up next to him. The driver rolled down the window and gazed down at him. It was a woman. Her face was familiar. She smiled.
Panting, Junyoung closed his eyes, trying to break through the cloud of pain. Who was she? His thoughts were disjointed and blurred, a strange sound cutting through them. Someone was humming. He turned his head, even though each movement brought him a new wave of agony, and saw a woman sitting next to him on the cold, hard ground.
Dahye. She had returned. She was staring, watching, eyes gleaming red. Terror eclipsed him. He had to get away from her, but his body—it wouldn’t move.
His only hope was the driver of the car, which was idling in the street next to him, smoke from the exhaust fanning out into the sky. The woman was still sitting there, watching him. What was she doing? “Please,” he whimpered. “Help me.”
“You’re going to die, Junyoung. All alone in the fucking street.” She gave him a look of pure contempt. “And then you’re going to burn in hell.” It was Dahye’s friend. The one he had followed around in Sillim. Bora?
Without another word, she sped away, disappearing around the corner. Junyoung let out a gurgling moan. He could taste something salty in his mouth, and his tongue poked into the empty spaces in his gums where his teeth had been only moments ago.
Someone else approached, and Junyoung let out another cry. It was a girl. She was dripping wet, and her skin was wrinkled and blue. As he watched, she sat down next to Dahye and took her hand. The two of them opened their mouths at the same time and began to sing, softly at first, and then louder andlouder until it was all he could hear. Their words rang in his ears as he took his final breath.
All pigs go to the slaughterhouse to die.
On the street corner, the red light of a camera blinked. Miles away, a security guard sat slumped in front of his monitor. He was fast asleep. Had he been awake, he might have seen the man—a national hero—bleeding out on the wintry Seoul street.
