“The videos from the bathroom. You saw them, didn’t you?”
“Hey. No big deal,” Officer Lim said, raising his hands and chuckling. “It’s just a few videos. And that’s all confidential. No one will ever know about them. It’s not like you hurt anybody.”
+
There was a story Junyoung’s mother had told him when he was a child. A woman, wanting to be beautiful for her boyfriend, had decided to get plastic surgery, only to have her face marred by a careless surgeon. When she woke up, she found that her mouth had been cut from ear to ear. The bloodied lacerations would not heal no matter what she did, and her boyfriend, appalled by her appearance, ran away, never to be seen again.
Distraught, the woman wandered through Seoul, searching for him, wearing a red mask to hide her wounds. If she encountered any strangers on the street, she would approach them to ask, “Do you think I’m beautiful?” If they said yes, she would take her mask off, slowly, revealing her terrible smile. “Then I’ll make you just like me,” she’d respond, before cutting their faces open with a knife.
After first hearing this story, Junyoung had been unable to sleep. In every passing face, he saw the woman’s red mask, her bleeding mouth. In his nightmares, he saw her floating toward him, ghostly in the moonlight, a sharp blade in her hand. He would wake from these night terrors sweat soaked and trembling.
As an adult, the nightmares returned, but now it was Dahye he saw, her expression chilling, her laughter in his ears. He would try to run from her, only to find that his legs were no longer working. Her pupils glittered at him, red as the mask, like blood. His screams were caught in his throat. He made no sound as she sliced his mouth open, the blade sawing through his flesh.
+
Summer turned to fall. The leaves on the trees began to change.
The reporters had stopped calling. A movie director had contacted Junyoung in the hopes of writing a script based on his story. Junyoung continued to have nightmares of Dahye. Sometimes he would hear water dripping from the faucet in his bathroom. No matter how tightly he closed it, it leaked constantly.
Once, while taking the subway, he thought he saw her sitting across from him. He clutched onto the railing, feeling as though his blood had turned to ice. But when the woman turned, he saw it wasn’t Dahye, but someone else entirely.
At his mother’s urging, Junyoung returned to work. On his first day back, he stood outside of the building, remembering all the times he had watched Dahye walk through the doors, her face serious, the snail-shell bun bouncing at the back of her head. How much he had loved her then. How much he had cared for her.
Taking a deep breath, Junyoung made his way to the basement. As soon as the doors opened, he was startled by a raucous noise. His coworkers were standing and cheering for him. Junyoung flinched, startled, as a broad figure approached him. It was Mr. Choi.
“Junyoung!” he said in his booming voice. “Good to see you! Come to my office—we have a little gift for you.”
Junyoung passed familiar faces, all men, all happy and smiling, patting him on the back, murmuring notes of congratulations. The fear he had been feeling was swept away, replaced by pride. Mr. Choi held the door open for him and gestured toward the chair in front of the desk.
“Take a seat.”
Junyoung looked around in wonder. It had seemed so long ago that he had been sitting here in this office, relishing his victory over Kangmin. The glittering glass trophies were still on the shelf, the light piercing through them. It was beautiful.
On Junyoung’s side of the desk, there was a small box. Mr. Choi pointed at it. “That’s yours,” he said.
“Mine?”
“Yes. It’s a gift from us to you.”
It was heavy. He struggled to open it as Mr. Choi watched patiently. When Junyoung finally managed to get it out, he saw that it was a glass trophy, just like the ones on the shelf. The gold plate at the bottom readEMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR.
He held it up to the light, marveling at its beauty.
+
His life returned to normal. The nightmares came much less frequently. The movie director had stopped calling. The leaves fell from the trees, and winter came, the first snow blanketing Seoul in white. Junyoung read through the old articles that had been posted about him again and again, checking daily for new comments. People dubbed him the savior of men, a knight, a champion. Occasionally, there were negative responses, and a particularly terrible one left him riddled with anxiety for weeks:
CHO JUNYOUNG IS A DISGUSTING PIG!!! They
should have killed him instead. That poor girl
deserved better.
Pig. Junyoung shuddered at the word. Right away it evoked images of Dahye and the sound of her voice whistling past him, singsong, lilting, terrifying in its playfulness.
He managed to shake the image out of his head. “It’s probably one of those crazy feminist bitches,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.
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