Chapter 02

“…Urgh-”

Jun-gyeong opened his eyes with an animalistic groan.
The peach-blossom fragrance that had brushed past his nose was gone, replaced by the metallic stench of blood.
And he was cold. More than anything, his chest felt bitterly, painfully cold.
Jun-gyeong instinctively felt around his chest.
His hand found a cheap shirt soaked through with blood and a deep stab wound beneath it.
He tore off the blood-soaked shirt clinging to him and pushed himself upright.

“…What is… ngh-”

Then something appeared before him.

[Help me.]

Jun-gyeong’s brow furrowed at once.

“What are you…?”

A person had suddenly appeared before him.
A translucent book materialized between them.

Jun-gyeong raised his head and looked at the man staring back at him.

“…Are you a soul?”
[Help. Please.]

Jun-gyeong turned his head.
A face stared back from the dark glass window.
Kang Jun-gyeong frowned and looked again at the soul standing a step in front of him.
The face before him was identical to the one reflected in the glass.

“Hah. So you’re a soul who only just died. I understand that you still have attachments to this life. I suppose it’s because your funeral hasn’t been held yet. I’ll see that it’s done properly. A soul that lingers too long in this world will eventually become an evil spirit. Hurry and move on to the afterlife.”

But driven by whatever attachment still bound him to this world, the soul fell to his knees before Jun-gyeong.

[Don’t do that. Help. I’m begging you.]
“I don’t have the power to bring you back to life.”

Apparently, this man’s soul had departed and Kang Jun-gyeong’s had been placed inside the body in its stead.
There was no way to return the body to him now.

[No. I’m not asking you to save me. I don’t know how you ended up inside there, but I know I’m already dead. Not me. Save her. Please. I’m begging you.]
“…Her?”

In that instant, countless memories came surging into his mind.
He understood immediately.
They were the memories and knowledge of Han Jun-gyeong, the soul standing before him.
He couldn’t understand all of it at once, but he grasped at least why he had been lying here in such a miserable state and who the woman this soul was talking about was.

Suddenly, pain seized his back, and crimson karmic flames erupted around his body.
The flames instantly enveloped the stab wound over his heart.
At the same time, fresh flesh began knitting itself together, closing the wound.
Once the injury had healed, the crimson flames slowly crawled upward and covered his face.

Ssshhh-

The crimson flames vanished, leaving behind a red Ghost Mask covering the lower half of his face.
It resembled the face of a dokkaebi.
At the same time, another book opened before him.

Fwoosh-

Jun-gyeong stared down at his unfamiliar palm, breathing heavily.
One percent.

“I see. So this is how it works.”

The book was transparent, yet perfectly visible to his eyes.
The Dokkaebi Eyes were Heavenly King Chiwoo’s gift, while Necros had fashioned them into the form of a system.
When Jun-gyeong touched the writing, the book faded away like a mirage.

Frowning, he looked around.
Blood was splattered across the floor, where two cold corpses lay.
And there, kneeling before him, was the soul of Han Jun-gyeong, still bound by bitter regret.
The book that had appeared between him and Han Jun-gyeong manifested again.
Its contents, however, had changed.

“I see. Very well. Wait here. I’ll take care of it.”

His gaze followed the droplets of blood scattered across the floor.
At the end of the trail stood a sturdy, expensive-looking door embossed with the word VIP in gold.

All at once, the events of that day drove themselves into his mind.

Corona, an upscale room salon in Cheongdam-dong.
A luxury establishment where spending a million won per person was nothing unusual.
It wasn’t members-only, so anyone could come and go, but after four in the morning, no new customers were likely to appear.
The shell he now wore belonged to a man named Han Jun-gyeong, a third-rate thug called in whenever trouble arose here to clean up the mess.
Tonight, too, he had rushed over after receiving a call from the woman in the room at the end of the hall.
But before he could save her, he had been stabbed to death.

Still unaccustomed to the body, Jun-gyeong staggered forward.
A loud voice came from behind the closed door.

“Hehe, stay still, bitch! Your precious oppa’s already outside getting a tour of Hell!”

From the voice alone, Jun-gyeong could tell at once what was happening inside.
Still unsteady on his feet, Jun-gyeong forced himself forward, opened the door, and stepped into the room.

Beneath the enormous chandelier at the center of the room, expensive-looking sofas lined the walls in a U-shape, with a large marble table between them.
And atop that table was exactly the scene Jun-gyeong had expected.

Greed stained the man’s gaze.
The hand pressing down on the back of the woman’s neck was so tense that the veins stood out, and he was so consumed by his arousal that he didn’t even notice Jun-gyeong enter.
The book opened once more before Jun-gyeong’s eyes.

“So this is what he meant when he said I’d understand once I came down here.”

Jun-gyeong swept the writing away with another motion of his hand and looked at the scene before him.

The woman stared blankly at the ceiling with unfocused eyes, as though she had given up resisting.
And over her loomed a man filled with greed and karmic sin, strangling her.
Jun-gyeong’s anger began to boil.

The chandelier crackled and flickered.
But the thrill of murder and his arousal over the woman had already melted every brain cell he had, leaving him completely oblivious to it.
He was entirely consumed by groping the woman before him.

“Hehe. Finally learned to behave, huh? Should’ve done that from the start.”

The man’s lust-filled laughter rang through the room.
The unfocused eyes of the woman lying helplessly atop the table met Jun-gyeong’s at the doorway.
The man she had thought was dead was standing there, drenched in blood.
For the briefest instant, shock flashed through her eyes.

POP! CRACK!

The wall lights suddenly burst with a series of sharp pops.
Only then did the man sense something was wrong and turn toward the door.

“Huh? What the hell? Han Jun-gyeong? You bastard, you’re not dead yet?”

The man awkwardly straightened up while fixing his waistband.

But Jun-gyeong was no longer seeing the reality before him.
His wife’s hand, already cold.
The sight of the king panting over her.
The hellish scene he had relived endlessly for the past thousand years in Avici Hell was unfolding again here in the mortal realm.

CRK-

A grinding crack came from Jun-gyeong’s clenched fist.
The man snatched up the sashimi knife he had tossed carelessly onto the table and turned toward Jun-gyeong.

“Haah. You pain in the ass. Should’ve just died the first time. Fine. I’ll make sure you’re dead this time.”

He strode forward confidently and thrust the sashimi knife toward Jun-gyeong’s throat.

Jun-gyeong had known how the attack would come from the moment the man started toward him.
To his eyes, the path of the knife was clearly drawn as a red line.
Jun-gyeong moved his head slightly aside and let the blade pass.
Then he opened his hand, planted his palm over the man’s face, and seized it.

GRAB!

He couldn’t put as much strength into it as he’d expected, but even this was more than enough.
A light tap behind the man’s heel sent his legs flying into the air.
Jun-gyeong drove the man’s head straight into the floor.

BANG!

A tremendous crash echoed as the back of the man’s skull struck the floor.

“Graah!”

Jun-gyeong immediately raised his foot and brought his dress shoe down hard on the man’s groin.

THUD! THUD! THUD!
“AAAAARGH!!!”

Blood rapidly soaked through the man’s pants as he screamed and rolled across the floor.
Yet not a trace of emotion showed on Jun-gyeong’s face.
He nudged the trembling man with his foot.
The man looked up at Jun-gyeong, his eyes glazed with agony.

“S-Spare me. I was wrong. Please… spare me.”

Without answering, Jun-gyeong grabbed him by the hair and hauled his face up.

“Please. Stop. Please.”

The man begged, but Jun-gyeong answered with his fist.

THUD!
“Urgh… stop…”
THUD!
“Hurk!”
THUD!
“Ple…”
THUD! THUD! THUD!

The man’s face became a bloody mess, but Jun-gyeong’s fist didn’t stop.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

“…Stop. You’re going to kill him.”

At the sound of the woman’s trembling voice behind him, Jun-gyeong finally stopped punching.
As Jun-gyeong steadied his breathing, the Ghost Mask covering his face dissolved into red smoke and vanished into the air.
He turned toward the woman.
She seemed too shaken even to pull her disheveled clothes back into place. She collapsed onto the sofa and searched for a cigarette with trembling hands.

Click. Click. Click.

She tried to light it, but her violently shaking fingers kept slipping uselessly over the lighter wheel.
Jun-gyeong quietly walked over and picked up the gold-plated lighter lying on the table.

Ting. Click.

The lid flipped open with a crisp sound, and a flame sprang to life.
When Jun-gyeong held the lighter toward her, she stared at his bloodstained hand for a moment before placing the cigarette between her trembling lips.

“……”

She took a deep drag, then slowly exhaled a long stream of smoke.
Her eyes were still trembling like aspen leaves as she looked at Jun-gyeong and asked quietly,

“Who… are you? Are you really Han Jun-gyeong?”

Jun-gyeong silently met her gaze without looking away.
There was neither contempt, sympathy, nor pity in that deep, subdued gaze.
His eyes were veiled in mist, as though the person before him weren’t even alive.

They were nothing like the eyes of the pathetic Han Jun-gyeong she knew, always nervous and servile, constantly clinging to her and begging her to cosign for him.
Hye-ju felt as though her heart had dropped into her stomach and forced herself to look away.

“…He didn’t get that far. You came sooner than I expected.”
“…I see.”
“……”

A short, dry response.
The fingers holding Hye-ju’s cigarette trembled faintly.
The man standing before her was unmistakably wearing Han Jun-gyeong’s body, yet the presence he gave off belonged to someone entirely different.
There were the fists that had beaten Park Tae-sik, a hardened veteran of the underworld, like a dog, and that chilling manner in which he now regarded her.
She stared at Jun-gyeong, every muscle tense.
None of it made any sense, but right now, even more frightening than the blood-soaked scene around her was the unfamiliar pressure radiating from Jun-gyeong.
Hye-ju swallowed hard and pointed toward the floor.

“What… are you going to do about that?”

Park Tae-sik, who had lost consciousness, was beginning to writhe across the floor like a snake.
Without a word, Jun-gyeong picked up the sashimi knife from the floor and walked toward him.
Hye-ju’s eyes widened.

“…Hey. Han Jun-gyeong. What are you…?”

Before she could finish, Jun-gyeong moved.
His knife plunged deep into the man’s body, then was ripped out without mercy.

“Hurk!”

The man’s body convulsed as he sucked in one final, ragged breath.
Unable to breathe it back out, he choked and gurgled as his body trembled, then slowly went still.