## Chapter 11 – Discovery
In the quiet office, I take off my gown and toss it haphazardly into a corner.
A lone laboratory,
The gown, illuminated under the flickering light, is stained with the nosebleed I had.
“How am I supposed to wash this again?”
The thought of removing the nosebleed from the gown makes my head ache.
I take out my phone and search for laundry methods to remove blood.
Lately, I’ve been getting annoyed more often, and maybe that’s why I get nosebleeds frequently.
I sometimes think, “I’m tired,” but I don’t dislike it.
I think having more work is a good thing.
Because it’s an act for humans to develop themselves,
Having a lot of work is a good opportunity to develop further.
“……….”
I put down my phone.
I lift my head and stare at the constantly flickering light, and it seems to calm me down.
“Aaaargh!! You fucking bastards!”
Sometimes, lately, an unbearable anger comes over me.
I knock over everything on my desk.
No one is diligent.
No one whips themselves.
Why? Why? The people and society of today are steeped in peace, selfishness,
And arrogance.
Yet they don’t know it.
They’re busy passing on their mistakes and responsibilities to each other.
“…Ah, again…”
A nosebleed flows from the opposite side of my nose, which I’ve blocked with tissue.
I guess I’m still lacking.
To get so angry just because I got a little scolding from my boss.
I take out an already blood-soaked handkerchief and block my nose.
“Okay, no need to get too angry, we’re going to change the world.”
I look at the white flower in the case on my desk.
“I will, for sure.”
…Anyway, when am I going to clean all this up?
————————
I look at the flower that has finally bloomed on my desk.
Awesome, it really grew in just a week?
I put down the spray bottle and marvel a little.
It feels like just the other day that this sprout came out of this pot, but it’s already blooming.
“…It was just the other day, wasn’t it.”
It really hasn’t been long since the sprout grew,
But it bloomed like this in just a week.
I let out a dumbfounded laugh, pick up the pot, and head to the refrigerator.
Then I open the door to the freezer, put the pot inside, and close the door.
It’s the method Chae-yoon told me about.
If there’s no way to propagate it over time, it starts scattering its petals.
Since parasitic life forms that have no way to absorb nutrients will die soon,
Freezing them like this puts them into hibernation to maintain their life activities, or so she says.
‘You can take them out and use them one by one whenever you need them.’
“Like it’s some kind of tissue…”
While retorting to Chae-yoon in my head, I unpack my bag,
And head to the convenience store where Seo-hee works, next to my studio apartment.
To find this woman who I haven’t been able to contact for a week now.
The last time I went to see Seo-hee after school,
It wasn’t her, but some middle-aged man standing there.
‘Seo-hee quit…’
She quit.
I can’t get in touch with her, and I don’t know what she’s doing.
If I knew her house, I’d go look for her, but she said she lived with her friends,
I’ve never heard any more information than that, so I can’t even go look for her.
So what I’m doing now is just waiting endlessly.
If she lives around here, maybe I’ll run into her.
Thinking that, I tried walking and running, but then I decided to just sit down.
“Ah.”
“Huh?”
I was just sitting on a bench waiting when I really ran into her.
I was so flustered that I made a dumb sound, but Seo-hee didn’t seem to be,
She waved at me with a really happy face and greeted me.
“I was going to look for you anyway.”
“Where have you been? What were you doing that you didn’t answer your phone?”
“Ah, well, my phone broke.”
“How come?”
“I was earning some money…”
How on earth does earning money break your phone?
I look at Seo-hee with a dumbfounded and bewildered expression,
She hesitates and takes out a white envelope from her arms and gives it to me.
“The compensation for my friends hitting you last time.”
“No, that’s…”
“Just take it.”
I’m the one who should be paying the compensation.
She gestures for me to check it quickly.
There are a lot of things I want to say, but
I can’t help but open the envelope and check the amount at her urging.
“…What is this?”
“It was a little hard.”
“What the hell have you been doing?”
I open the thick and heavy envelope and see a wad of yellow bills,
A bundle of bills in a bag that I’ve only seen in noir movies.
There was about 5 million won in the envelope.
Originally, Seo-hee’s job is a convenience store part-timer.
Even if she gets paid a lot, 1 million a month would be the limit, right?
5 million in a week?
“How is it, do you like it?”
“….”
Seo-hee is like a proud cat who wants to be praised, showing off.
But what I’m worried about is something else.
“You didn’t do anything conspicuous…”
We may be being followed by a group whose identity we don’t know.
I was going to meet Seo-hee to teach her that she should never do anything careless like simply handing over evidence…
“Don’t worry, I didn’t do anything conspicuous.”
“Then where did all this money come from?”
“My friends helped me a little.”
————————
“This is where ‘Kim Seo-hee’ is staying.”
Yeah, no doubt, I’ve checked it over and over again, so this is definitely it.
“…I’m Kim Seo-hee, and the friends I live with here are 3 people,
Jung Ha-eun, Lee Soo-ah, Lee Yoon-seo, and Kim Seo-hee, these four have been friends since high school…”
I memorize this ‘information about the body’ over and over again.
I naturally go up the stairs, and on the 3rd floor, I enter the right door,
I enter the door lock password without any problems.
I open the door and go inside, and as always,
I raise my voice and say hello.
“I’m home.”
“Seo-hee, Seo-hee~ You’re home?”
“…Where are the others?”
“Huh? They all went to school? Are you going to go straight to bed now? You’re tired from working the night shift.”
“……..”
This woman is definitely Lee Soo-ah.
Are the other two at school?
“Why are you spacing out?”
“…You’ll be useful.”
“Huh?”
According to the information I saw in the head of the ‘Seo-hee’ host, what I need right now is funds, money.
I can use this woman enough.
I hide one hand behind my back and slowly approach Soo-ah.
“Um.. what’s wrong..? Honestly, you’re a little scary…”
I get closer and closer to Soo-ah, who smiles awkwardly and steps back.
In the hand behind my back, I lengthen the fingernail of my index finger long and thin.
And in an instant, I stabbed it into her neck.
“Agh?!”
It’s a nerve toxin. It creates toxins in the body,
Then it makes the fingernails like syringes and injects them into the opponent.
“…Ah…ah…uh..?”
Soo-ah, who quickly opens her mouth and drools with a blank and foolish expression.
It slows down the movement of the brain, degrading physical functions and slowing down thinking.
“…Lee Soo-ah?”
“…Eh….uh…ah..?”
I pass by Soo-ah, who has lost strength in her legs and is sitting on the living room floor, and go into the bathroom to wash my hands.
“..There’s plenty of time, so I’ll take my time and touch you.”
I lengthen all the fingernails on both hands to make them like needles.
And I put them into her head one by one.
Soo-ah’s skull is easily pierced like pudding and quickly reaches the brain.
“Ack?! Uh….eh?”
“It doesn’t hurt, does it? Nerve toxin, it also has an anesthetic effect.”
I ask Soo-ah, who is shaking all over like an electrocuted fish, probably because of the tube touching her brain.
I know she can’t answer.
“Sorry, but you’re going to have to work for us.”
Her eyes roll back and she drools, and the pajama pants she’s wearing are wet along with the floor due to incontinence.
“I’ll finish it soon, wait.”
“Ah♡ Hagh?! Ehehe?♡!”
I delicately touch her head.
She’s moving too much, next time I’ll have to tie her up or hold her down.
I continue to gradually correct and overwrite the information in her head.
Every time, she twitches as if electrocuted and shows a different reaction, so it’s fun, so I deliberately stir her brain a little harder.
“Kahaak…! St, stop, aah?!♡”
“So what’s your role?”
“I’ll do anything for Seo-hee.
Even if it means selling my body, I’ll earn money every day♡?”
“The work you used to do doesn’t make money, and if you get caught, it’ll be a hassle, so break up with your boyfriend.”
“Yes, I understand.”
I stir Soo-ah’s head once more, who is drooling and spacing out in front of me with 10 tubes stuck in her head.
“Ahet♡? Ah…ah…♡”
I can feel joy and ecstasy in Soo-ah’s expression as she twitches and spews saliva.
“Good girl, it feels so good to listen to my orders like this.”
“Listening to Seo-hee’s orders…feels…good…aha…♡”
“Good, then what are you?”
“I’m, ah♡ a whore, eugh, am…♡”
“Good girl.”
I stimulated her head once more, and Soo-ah’s voice, which was somehow broken, was quietly buried in the room of this small building.
————————
“..Something like that, a few more people..”
“In the process, your phone broke because of a woman who resisted?”
I looked at Seo-hee nodding in front of me, and I was so dumbfounded that I covered my face with my hands and burst out laughing.
“Then you should just buy a phone instead of giving this to me.”
I said that and handed her the wad of money.
“There’s one more.”
I saw Seo-hee take out another wad of money from her arms, and I froze in that state and burst out laughing again.
“…How many people did you make like that?”
“My three friends, a friend of a friend, a friend of that friend…”
I stopped Seo-hee, who was slowly counting the number with her fingers while staring intently at the sky, and continued to speak.
“That’s enough now, don’t increase it anymore. Madam Kim.”
“…Madam?”
I grabbed Seo-hee, who tilted her head as if she didn’t understand,
First, I decided to go downtown and get a new phone.
————————
“…Senior, I’ve identified the point of loss of the experimental material.”
“………..”
“When I checked the wind direction that day, SungHwa University is the most likely.”
“………”
“…Senior?”
“Ah, sorry, I was thinking about something else for a moment…haha..”
“Ah, no, should I explain it again?”
“No, I heard everything.”
I tried to lighten the somewhat dark atmosphere with a joke, but it didn’t really work.
I cleared my throat once and
I gave instructions to Ms. Min-jeong.
“Then we should have a meeting, a meeting!”
I wave goodbye to Ms. Min-jeong, who bows to me and goes to prepare for the meeting.
She’s really one of the few diligent and hardworking people here.
“SungHwa University…”
The experimental subjects that survived on those petals probably weren’t many, so
I think there won’t be many individuals that have successfully parasitized the human body…
“I can’t think there aren’t any.”
It’s never bad to be careful, so safety first as always.
“………”
Damn, damn, son of a bitch.
More, more dirty.
