72 – Dongmin Lee (7)
Dongmin Lee (7)
“What are you doing, come in.”
As I stared blankly at the mythical reptile-like narrow staircase leading to the basement, Kang Hae-rin nodded again.
“Didn’t you want to see it?”
Now Haerin is like a different person from Kang Haerin, who was happy to be by my side during the day, eating sunflowers together, and staring at my meal scene.
He looked a little tired, and he seemed a little disappointed with me for constantly doubting himself.
Even so, I had to do it.
Every night, I had to check the source of the auditory hallucinations that sounded like my sister’s voice, and I had to extinguish the embers of my doubts about Kang Hae-rin, even if they were weak.
I passed Harin.
From nob le mt l. co m
Just before stepping down the stairs leading to the basement.
For a very short time, I imagined that Haerin would suddenly insert a knife into my neck or snatch my neck.
‘Do you really doubt me?’
Kang Hae-rin climbed on top of me and slit my larynx or stabbed my eyeballs with a knife hidden behind my back.
I struggle in terrible pain, but I can’t push her away, and I slowly bleed and cool in Kang Hae-rin’s nest, where no one can hear.
“……..”
Of course, nothing like that happened.
Kang Hae-rin passed me safely.
jerk, jerk.
took the last step
Instead of the rusty, bare-framed, or cold air that often comes to mind when you think of a basement, it looked like a home at first glance.
There was a sink, a cupboard, and a cabinet on one wall, and in the center is what appears to be a dining table.
There was an exhaust fan above the sink.
On another wall, there were canned food, ramen, and other ingredients that could be easily eaten.
A refrigerator was, of course, provided.
Without saying a word, I approached the fan and raised my foot.
When I opened the frame, it came apart, and I put my hand inside.
The key was soon obtained.
“……”
Kang Hae-rin stood in front of the stairs, expressionless, arms crossed, watching my movements.
It was difficult to splatter blood and dispose of other appendages.
At least one trick is essential.
I lifted the rug on the floor.
Cleared some crushed blocks.
I couldn’t find it at once, but after trial and error, I found something that sounded particularly loose.
When I lifted it, a keyhole appeared.
Haerin Kang stood still.
I immersed myself in my work, constantly mindful of the possibility that she would suddenly strike me from behind.
“Would you like to leave if you feel uncomfortable?”
Haerin Kang asked.
It must have noticed my glare.
Well, considering the synchronization that is taking place between me and her, it is not strange that my anxiety is linked and transmitted to her every moment.
If so, I also thought that my thoughts, which had been suspicious of the basement from the beginning, had been thoroughly read.
But since we’ve come this far, we can’t stop.
I was embarrassed, but I pretended nothing was wrong.
“… are you okay. stay there.”
In the midst of this, I thought that Kang Hae-rin might lock the door as she left the basement.
It’s a chronic suspicious disease, but it can’t be helped.
Knowing vaguely creates more fear.
I know that if you are trapped here, you will never be able to open the door from the inside, because I was the one who imagined and gave every detail to the atrocities that take place here.
Click.
From nob le mt l. co m
Just before, it was equipped with a state-of-the-art security system with iris recognition and a keypad, but the most important torture chamber had outdated locks.
As I struggled to open the heavy iron door, Haerin came to my side to help.
Swoop- thump.
With her strength added, the door opened quickly.
“Look as much as you like.”
Kang Haerin said elegantly.
In the open interior, the difference between the stairs and the floor was so low that one had to stoop down to enter.
The fluorescent lights in the basement didn’t reach all the way down the basement, the torture chamber, so the inside was like a well.
Harin turned on the phone flash.
“Go in.”
Somehow minding that a smile hung on her lips, I headed down, down.
As soon as I got off, I attached myself to the wall on the right, took a few steps, and ran my arm over the appropriate spot.
The switch is touched.
Everything was as I imagined.
“……..”
After taking a deep breath, I turned on the light.
In that brief moment, an aggressive light flashed that destroyed the long-standing darkness.
It was yellow, the color of a light bulb.
I took a short breath.
“how is it?”
Haerin did not come down to the ‘torture room’, but smiled and said with only her face sticking out into the square hole.
As if it’s fun that I’m scared.
“Is your sister there?”
“……”
The ceiling of the torture chamber, half as wide as the cellar above, had an iron lock.
It was clear what the notebook described.
Maybe my sister was hanging over there.
I don’t know why he made me hang naked.
A short distance away was a chair that could be tied up and a bed that looked like an operating table.
Various tools were shining on the walls.
After looking around one by one, I went up the road.
“……..”
Kang Hae-rin now had her hands behind her back with a smile on her face, waiting for my reaction.
It would be correct to say, “I’m sorry for misunderstanding,” but my heart was beating so fast that it was frightening to do so all at once, and I was short of breath.
Like everything else, especially in one corner, a large furnace that seems to be connected to the outside.
When I opened it, there was no feeling of use, but the scenes described in the novel quickly passed through my head, making me nauseous and sick to my stomach.
my sister is not here
But I was shocked elsewhere.
Realizing that my expression was unusual, Kang Hae-rin stopped playing and asked me if I was okay.
I climbed up with her help.
As if I had returned from hell, the more I slammed the cellar door, the more the keypad sounded locked, I felt relieved that I was safe.
Before seeing the torture chamber, before seeing the basement, before seeing the basement, Kang Hae-rin’s house was a dangerous place.
But now this place is the safest for me.
‘It’s paradoxical.’
Exhausted, I sat down on the sofa.
Harin brought hot tea.
“… are you okay?”
she asked again.
“… huh.”
I barely answered and then said.
“I’m sorry for doubting you. I thought I should check here anyway. If you feel bad anyway.”
“Mmm.”
She shook her head.
“I think this is better too. I knew he was always suspicious of me. But it’s contradictory, even though I’ve never used it, I wanted to hide it because it’s a shameful place. This is a scary place.”
I sympathized with her words.
That place, complete with a process system for killing and processing people, was like a pit of hell.
In particular, the corpse that enters the furnace turns into powder and flows somewhere that cannot be found.
I haven’t written it out in detail up to that point, but I’m sure it will work somehow, as if the mansion was created in the air.
Anyway, I apologized to Harin again.
I forced myself to see what she was reluctant to do, but I promised that we would have a better relationship in the future because I had cleared my doubts.
For a moment, I had doubts.
If there’s nothing to hang on to, have you put in an iris recognition system and even changed the password on the keypad?
If he considered the torture chamber to be his ‘shame’, why didn’t he get rid of those horrible things earlier?
“……”
But once the doubts begin, there is no end.
In any case, there was no one in the torture chamber, and there was no feeling of use, so there was no problem.
Haerin must have been busy lately, so I concluded that the solution would have been to hide the torture chamber rather than get rid of it.
It wouldn’t normally take money, time, or even one hand to organize a room of that size.
She probably didn’t want anyone to find out about that room, where the intentions seemed impure.
“I’m sorry, grant me your wish.”
Kang Hae-rin playfully said to me as I sipped hot tea, feeling exhausted from the desolation of dawn and the experience of unintentional fear.
“… wish?”
“Sleep with me.”
she said with a laugh.
#
Haerin Kang’s bedroom.
Since I moved in, I’ve visited a few times, but it was a place that aroused admiration every time I saw it.
Like Haerin’s overwhelming personality, her bedroom had a unique design and interior.
The most notable thing is the bed.
The slightly darker red mattress was soft, but more than its color and texture, what grabbed attention was the huge headboard that extended all the way to the ceiling.
Unlike the modern bedroom interior, which is generally made up of white and gray tones, the bed that looks like a beating heart occupies the center of the room.
It seemed to shout that this was a ‘bedroom’.
Both the size and scale of the bed showed Kang Hae-rin’s earnest desire for sleep.
“The bed is pretty cared for.”
As I slipped under the blanket, Kang Hae-rin whispered to me with a languid expression.
Her hand beckoned me.
I slowly followed her into the bed.
“…red would be very irritating to the eyes, so wouldn’t it be better to change the color?”
I said, careful not to touch Haerin’s skin, and hiding a stiff voice.
“I already tried. Whether it’s green, black, sky blue, or white… I checked my falling asleep speed with a stopwatch, and even checked the content of my dreams, but nothing really changed, so I decided to make it my favorite color.”
“……..”
When I lay down on the bed, it was as if the mattress, following the shape of my body, wrapped around my whole body and sucked it in like a swamp.
I exaggerated it a little, and as soon as I laid my head on the pillow, I felt like I would fall asleep.
“You can’t sleep here…”
I muttered.
Kang Hae-rin turned off the light on the nightstand next to him.
All that was left was the bulb-colored lights on the headboard that reached our eyes and reached the ceiling.
It was a light that could be called a mood light.
She turned it off too.
“I’m already used to it.”
Haerin’s casual words made me feel even more heartbroken.
One of Kang Haerin’s symptoms is insomnia.
Even if you sleep, you wake up with a nightmare.
This is also the curse I placed on Kang Hae-rin from 『Journal』.
In addition to forcing me to open the basement at night, it was this guilt that compelled me to accept Haerin’s request to sleep with me.
I knew that if I had a physical relationship with Haerin, my obsession would intensify, so I kept my distance from her as much as possible, but today I couldn’t refuse.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay, it’s my destiny.”
“……”
I couldn’t even see Harin’s face, and I stared at the mood light on the headboard that had just been turned off.
It looked like a dead star.
Harin’s arm gently touched me.
I flinched.
Harin’s blanket smelled of rose herbs, and her flesh exposed on the arm of her one-piece nightgown was surprisingly soft to the touch.
“… Mi-I’m sorry, Haerin-ah, don’t do that yet, I’m not ready… I’m not ready. It’s okay to sleep together, but kissing might be okay, but if you sleep under the same blanket and kiss, you might want to do something else, and I’m ready for that right now… Because I couldn’t find my sister, so my heart… ”
It was not that I was a eunuch.
There have been many times when I have experienced something similar to s*xual harassment, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have s*xual desire.
If you are next to a beautiful woman like Haerin is.
“……”
After chattering for a while, I realized that there was no response at all, not simply listening.
Looking back, Harin was asleep.
Harin’s eyes did not shine in a darkroom-like space where the curtains were drawn and the light was completely blocked.
I could tell just by looking at it.
“…he said he was having such a hard time sleeping…”
I laughed out loud.
How the hell did you hold up all this time?
From nob le mt l. co m
Just by being by my side, Haerin fell asleep in a matter of seconds, as if hastening her delayed sleep.
softly.
The sound of her breathing was no different from that of a normal person.
I felt the tension melt away.
Haerin didn’t think much of it, but she was embarrassed that she overdid it by herself, so she laughed on her own.
“… If it’s something like this, maybe I can do something like sleeping together… No, I should.”
I closed my eyes while talking to myself.
And soon after, I fell asleep too.
It was a deep sleep without dreams.
#
Two days later, the detectives contacted me.
When I tried to contact them like that, people who had made all sorts of excuses said they would come this time.
Unwilling to meet Haerin and the detectives, especially Park Seong-gang, I said that I would go to a nearby cafe, but they stubbornly insisted.
Their vehicle pulled up in front of the house.
“Isn’t that a great house?”
Park Seong-gang stepped inside while saying something like exclamation, but his expression wasn’t like that at all.
After that, the categorical type followed with a slight limp.
“Oh, definitely. If it’s not the son of a rich family, it’s not a house for a 20-year-old girl to live in.”
“……..”
After passing through the garden and entering the living room, the two said a word about the peaceful atmosphere of the house, then looked at Haerin Kang and I in turn, and said this.
“Both of them look very nice.”
“…what do you want to say?”
I asked in a fit of fuss.
It was because I felt some thorny intentions toward me and Kang Hae-rin in their words and actions.
At other times, I would cooperate wholeheartedly, but recently my contacts were unilaterally ignored, so I didn’t feel very good with them.
But the provocations continued.
“You’re worried about your sister, right?”
Park Seong-gang walked up to me and asked.
“Because you look so happy.”