At four fifty-five, after the last car in the lot had left, I finally finished my shift. Thankfully, on my first day, not a single unfortunate incident had happened.
As I stepped upstairs, a message suddenly came through on my phone. It was from Kolnis:
"I had to head home first. After you're done, just go to Wiko's office, he'll pay you for today. Just for the first day though. After this, it's once every half month."
The message had been sent thirty minutes earlier, but because there was no signal down in the basement, I only received it now.
Following his instructions, I went to the manager's office, where Wiko tossed me a white envelope. At that moment, my hand trembled with emotion. It had been a long time since I'd held this much money in my hand.
A hundred dollars. My pay for today. Thank the heavens. I will use this money carefully.
"Hey, Hung, where do you live?"
Wiko asked out of nowhere while I was still admiring the portraits of two presidents in my hand.
"In District 11," I answered right away. "In about twenty minutes, I'll head to the bus stop and catch the first one back to Stop 31."
Wiko's eyes lifted slightly, the kind of expression that said, I see. Then he looked back at his laptop.
"If there's nothing else, I'll be leaving first then," I said, slipping the envelope into the pocket of my jeans. "Goodbye."
"See you. Come again on Wednesday."
Then he suddenly added, in a strangely cryptic tone, "Be careful on the streets at night. Especially when it's raining."
The moment I closed the door to Wiko's office, I looked toward the window. Outside, the rain was fierce, but not so bad that I had to stay here until it stopped completely. Besides, I had class tomorrow, so even if all my clothes got soaked through, I still had to go back to my apartment.
Picking up my black umbrella, I hurried out of the nightclub and into the pouring summer rain.
"It's freezing."
That oppressive gloom wrapped itself around everything again. Aside from the sound of rain and my own tired breathing, everything else was swallowed by silence. There wasn't the slightest trace of life anywhere around here. Even as I passed by the apartments in an old housing block, not a single light was on. It was as if the night wanted to drown everything whole.
It truly wasn't a pleasant feeling, as if something were trying to choke my throat and make breathing difficult and exhausting. The road ahead grew hazier and hazier, stretching on endlessly.
In the air, there was a faint metallic smell mixed with the scent of wet earth beneath the rain. It smelled like… rusted iron… a smell that was anything but pleasant.
Because there is only one thing in nature that smells like that.
Fresh blood.
Shff. Shff. Shff.
Amid the symphony of falling rain, strange scraps of sound rang out. It didn't sound like the wind at all. It was more like someone tearing a piece of cloth.
But whoever it was, I was already too lonely on this road anyway. If there were someone else walking it with me, what could be better than that?
Maybe I had guessed right. A few steps from the bus stop, there was a small figure sitting with her knees pulled close, staring down at the ground. At a glance, she seemed to be a slender girl wearing a dark, revealing dress. Her eyes were fixed on the rainwater flowing into a storm drain. For some reason, the sight reminded me of the horror film IT. Damn it, maybe I was more traumatized by clowns than I thought.
I deliberately stepped hard into a puddle to draw her attention, but things did not go the way I expected. There wasn't the slightest reaction on her face. Not even a little. All of her focus remained on whatever lay on the ground before her.
The closer I got to her, the stronger that awful smell of blood became. And then, I reached her side…
The horrifying truth slowly revealed itself before my eyes. Thick red liquid was sliding down the pale white skin of the young girl. It ran slowly from her wrist, mixed with the rainwater, then flowed along the stream into the drain below. In her other hand, she was gripping a box cutter, and there was still blood on it.
Shff.
Without warning, she raised the box cutter again and slashed hard across her left wrist once more. A wound on top of a wound, and the blood kept seeping out without end. Yet her face showed not even the slightest trace of pain. It was numb in a way that felt unnatural.
Suicide… she was trying to kill herself.
Hm. If I were going to kill myself, I wouldn't choose this way. I'm far too scared of pain. I had to say, I was honestly rather impressed by this girl's courage.
My reason told me, Step back.
But some supernatural force seemed to take hold of my body instead. Almost unconsciously, I reached out and touched her shoulder.
"Hey, miss. Why are you stabbing your—"
Shff. A flash of light whipped past my face.
A sudden slash. The blade of the box cutter missed my face by only a few millimeters. If I hadn't jerked backward in time, that strike would have buried itself right into my cheek.
Bang.
The slick street made me lose control of my footing, and I fell backward. My umbrella flew out of reach, taking away all my ability to defend myself.
The situation had become truly terrible.
That frightening girl slowly stood up and turned her face toward me. Her eyes were red, and the corners of her lips curled into an unbelievably terrifying smile. Only when she stood did I realize that not only her arms, but even her thighs were covered in cuts and bruises. But none of that changed the fact that she was an extremely dangerous and bloodthirsty creature.
"Found you." She pointed the box cutter straight at me and laughed.
Never before had death felt this close to me.
And in situations like this, there is only one way to deal with danger.
Smile confidently.
"Hey, miss. You shouldn't point a knife at a gentleman you've only just met like that."
But of course, things could never end that easily. The moment I finished speaking, the flash of the blade sliced across my face again, and this time it managed to leave a long mark near my temple.
You've got to be kidding me.
I never wanted to fight other people, especially not women. But right now, I didn't have many choices left, because I had no way of knowing what part of my face would come off with the next swing.
Bracing my left arm against the ground, I lowered myself and swept out with my dominant leg at her footing. Immediately, she staggered and lost her balance.
I couldn't afford to waste that moment. I threw out my arm, grabbed at whatever was within reach, then ran for my life.
"Is anyone there? Help me!"
I shouted with everything I had.
Hopeless. There was no answer at all. Completely hopeless. Somebody, anyone, look outside for once.
Even though I ran as hard as I could, my legs were no longer as quick as they had been before. The chance of escaping that insane girl was becoming more distant by the second as the sound of her footsteps drew closer and closer behind me.
The only way out of this was to face her.
Thinking that, I suddenly spun around.
But this time, I was one step slower than her.
Her rain-soaked black hair seemed to fly through the air. The girl's head rested lightly against my chest, and at the same time a sharp pain bloomed near my stomach.
A direct thrust.
I could not avoid it the way I had the last two times. It was so fast and so strong that by the time I realized what had happened, the box cutter was already lodged in my abdomen.
Mm.
I began thinking about everything I had done in my life. Truly, my youth had been short, but it had been worth living.
Father, Mother, I'm sorry for dying in a foreign land.
My eyes slowly began to close.
To be killed by such a beautiful girl… that was an honor, wasn't it? Could I at least count this as my final blessing?
And yet, when I opened my eyes again, the scene before me was not heaven. It was still the same cruel darkness. My face could still feel the cold rain, and my stomach no longer hurt.
I quickly looked down at where the knife had gone in.
By some miracle, the blade had pierced through my jacket but left no wound on my stomach at all.
My wallet.
Right. It had stabbed straight into my leather wallet and gotten stuck there. Oh, merciful heavens. After this, I swear I will place that wallet on my family altar and worship it properly. It had saved my life in plain sight. More than that, it had even taken the weapon away from her.
I yanked the box cutter out of my pocket and immediately threw it far away before the strange girl could stab me again.
After that failed attack, she remained collapsed motionless on the side of the road. Maybe the cuts on her wrists earlier had made her lose too much blood and pass out.
It was as if all the luck in my life had exploded at once in this one moment. There were far too many spiritual factors in this good fortune.
I stood up, brushed off my jacket, and looked down at the one lying on the ground.
The feeling was hard to describe.
It felt wonderful.
The feeling of a victor in a fight to the death.
And when I looked at the defeated one—a beautiful girl lying face-down at the roadside—blood from the cuts on her arms and legs had poured out so much that it stained an entire puddle red nearby. She was still alive, but only barely.
Even though she was someone who had tried to kill me, my instincts as a gentleman would not allow me to leave a beautiful wounded woman like this to die.
Or, to be more accurate, I could not let her die before I found out why she had tried to hunt down a man she had never even met.
Why had she tried to kill herself, only to end up in a miserable state like this?
This girl carried too many mysteries for me to kill her just yet.
Perhaps fate had caused us to meet.
In that case, I could not waste a connection ordained by heaven.
"Mm…"
While I was thinking, she suddenly began mumbling something under her breath.
"Hey! Don't die on me!"
I said it and moved closer, turning her onto her back so I could examine the wounds.
Even though they had been made by a box cutter, they were in dangerous places, so the bleeding was still hard to control. What surprised me was that she had still been able to move that much after losing such a huge amount of blood.
To stop the bleeding, I had to tear apart the shirt under my jacket with my bare hands and use the strips as makeshift bandages for her wounds. Infection be damned. Right now, stopping the blood mattered more than anything.
"Mm…" she mumbled again.
"Hang in there! I'm trying to save you here! Don't start saying your last words so early."
"Mm…" she groaned softly, then opened her red eyes wide and stared straight at me.
"Hurry…" she continued, her voice incredibly weak. "Bring me food. I'm starving… I don't even have the strength to stab you anymore."
Grrrrk.
Her stomach growled loudly.
Ah. So that was it.
So I had worried myself sick for nothing again.
The reason she had stopped trying to kill me was not because of blood loss.
It was simply because she was too exhausted from hunger.
Wait a second.
So my life was only worth as much as your empty stomach?
Once again, I had to seriously reflect on one thing:
The human digestive system is truly terrifying.
And from that night onward, my life changed completely.