Work Text:
Swing out an arm to turn off the alarm. When your hand impacts, have your eyes open. Don’t peel them open one at a time, that is inefficient. Stare at the ceiling for two minutes and thirty-three seconds and allow yourself another fifty-two seconds to close your eyes and contemplate resting.
Open them again and with this final motion, start your day.
You change. You deftly tie that noose around your neck—even after all these years, you still need to look in the mirror to make sure the tie is fitted correctly—and as you do, remind yourself of the key facts of your miserable life.
You are a loyal employee of the government of the Republic of Korea. You are a monster and this is how you atone, this is how you help.
You are Song Taewon, but hardly anyone is close enough for that name to really matter.
You are Song Taewon, and you have three more minutes before you will be late for work.
You stare at yourself in the mirror for just fifteen seconds longer.
When you get to work, you do the nice, comforting routine you have set up for yourself. You close the door (gently), sit down (with care), and then catalog what is on your desk in this shoe box of an office.
And that is the first thing you’re not allowed to think about: the size of your office.
It is not that you don’t know why this is. Your office is small because there’s not enough space in this building for a separate office to be set up. And of course, the second thing you have to avoid: the reason why you have a separate office.
Once again, the answer is simple and if you were a better man, these answers would not bother you. Instead, it disturbs you that people are (rightfully) scared of you. It (you) maybe scares you just the tiniest bit.
So, back to the point: because you are weak, you should never, ever investigate this simple matter.
Without thinking about either of those things—and you really swear they’re not on your mind in the slightest even as the chair creaks ominously under your own weight—you finally begin the catalog.
On your desk: your work computer, the separate keyboard you type on (because keyboards are easier to replace when they are not connected to the computer itself), the mouse you use from time to time, a pencil, a notebook, and a paper towel roll.
That last item is more of a joke than anything. Back when you had a desk in the main room, and back when there was the still slightest bit of delusion that S-class Hunters could coexist with the rest of society, you came back from a mission sopping wet. It was you and Sung Hyunjae and you got thrown into a lake.
Sung Hyunjae killed the beast, he took the spoils, and your supervisor, with her teeth chattering half the time out of fright, reprimanded you for not being better. Then she dismissed you quickly and you were just creating a puddle in the middle of a hallway as other workers swerved around you.
“Hey,” a voice came. “Looks like you need this, huh?”
You don't remember who gave the roll to you. The person may not have even been an employee, just one of the temporary hires that were used for cleaning and custodial work.
But you took the paper towel anyway. The plastic was still on: the brand was better than 99% of other leading brands, with a better absorption rate than generic name brand. With this brand, you can pick up twice the spills with half the usage, and this line has a special durability for Hunter use specifically!
You opened it and used one sheet—very, very carefully tearing it off, mind you—to sponge off your face. That is, that was your plan, but your tug ripped across multiple sheets, not along the nicely perforated edge.
It was annoying, but it did get your face dry. The advertising team was not lying.
It's taken very careful movements since then, but now the paper towel roll is nice and neat on your desk, albeit slightly wrinkled from where the water fell on the roll and has since dried.
That’s it. That’s all that the man named Song Taewon has to his existence.
And now, with nothing out of place, you sit and wait.
It only takes a minute for the door to open and a stack of papers to be hurriedly thrown in.
A record.
Your name is Song Taewon, you have to remind yourself. You have a name and you are a person, too. Human? Debatable, sure. But a person? You certainly are a being and you have all the capacities and emotions and sensibilities that a human could have. That is what a person is, right? Maybe not human biologically but when it comes down to the feeling, to the core, to the soul…
Ah, you’ve never really been the philosophical type. You’re a thing, and you’ll leave it at that.
You're not really sure why this is something that you have to tell yourself. Even if you are a person, at this point in life, your personhood is not what people should remember, much less the shadows of humanity.
You are the giant, they are the ants, and it doesn't matter that both of you are living, breathing things if the giant crushes the ant, unaware.
It's not the giant's fault, it really isn’t, but the ants must be aware. The giant does not know how to control itself and even if the giant tries, it's so hard not to hurt those it can't even see.
You, Song Taewon, tries your—his—best to see. You are and he is careful before he—you?—steps and hardly argues when h—when told to do something in a different way.
Things seem illogical to you, but who is he to argue? He's not on the same level as anyone else, and so, the world does not work for you the way it should. You does not work in the way he are supposed to.
Blink, sigh, and let the futility of the exercise wash down and over. This is exactly why you shouldn’t fixate on these things, you dumb fuck. That pound of flesh in your head fixates and spirals because it can’t comprehend the simple message that it does not matter what you are.
The fact remains: you do not work in the way you are supposed to. So, it seems more wishful than anything else for you to force the name and identity of Song Taewon back onto you. Wear it like a coat, sure, because that’s what the world calls you.
But he is not you.
Not that anyone else notices. The world sees a child called Song Taewon transition into a teenager and then an adult and through that entire process, they call that body “Song Taewon.”
The other S-classes speak their names boldly. It is just you that has the splinters of a child in you, a boy who sticks his feet in the mud in a desperate attempt to not get swept away by the current.
Stupid fucking child. Half of mud is water. He’s being dragged along anyways, and just leaving desperate, useless claw marks behind.
The point, because you must always get back to the point: it would, at worst, be unfair to call yourself Song Taewon, and at best, it is entirely delusional.
But you do not work in the way you are supposed to and the world does not work for you the way it should. Take the name of Song Taewon, god fucking damn it and maybe your head can spin the right way around this time. Maybe you can finally be like everyone else.
Oh yeah, thought you were gonna forget about that, huh? The fact that others laugh at you. The big, bad wolf tied to a leash by the South Korean government. That's what it looks like because remember, it doesn’t matter if you’re a person or a giant or a thing if at the end of the day, everyone just sees a monster.
You don’t know what annoys you more. The perception or the assumption. Does it matter that you’re seen as the monster if they only see you chained by others?
That’s what they all seem to forget. Song Taewon chose this. At the end of the day, you, the man whose name is Song Taewon, walked in and signed your life to the government? You did that, no one else.
You suppose the metaphor would be a bit weird if the wolf turned himself in. You would rather there were no metaphors to begin with. Talking about giants and ants to others never ends well and honestly, wolves piss you the hell off.
Keep your head down, head up and eyes looking straight forward, head turned to the side and eyes looking away.
Just... do anything that does not require you to confront this and then maybe you'll make it through the day.
You make it through the day, because of course you do. You make it through many more days, because you're an S-class, a highly ranked hunter. There are so few things that can hurt you now, much less kill you.
These moments of… of distraction, of incapacitation, they’re nothing. You do them to yourself but here’s the thing: while you are an S-class and (can theoretically) harm yourself, you don’t belong to yourself. You haven’t for a while.
Despite it all, you persist. Your wishes have nothing to do with it.
You are normal again, or as normal as a thing can be, so of course, your mind starts to race. It’s an overeager beast—a wolf, if you will—and you keep taking strips from that pound of flesh to appease it.
It’ll catch up soon enough. It’ll take the meat and then your fingers and then your hand and then you and then—
Well, then it’ll all restart.
It is frustrating, those restarts. The wolf devours you and you lose time and then you blink and you’re back. You’re back in the office or the hallway or a dungeon or your shoe box of a home—sorry, it’s a shoe box of an office, your home is fine—and no one seems to notice that you weren’t there.
Worse than that is that there are a lot of people who would like to get stories out of you. After all, you don't have the same degree of freedom as the rest of the S-class Hunters. While the others may be bogged down by media appearances or by taking their breaks or doing whatever the hell they want, here you are, working. Always working.
So, Officer Song Taewon must have so many stories, right? Chief Officer Song, please tell us your stories!
Come on, Chief Officer Song. Come on, you dumb beast. People are waiting for an answer.
The problem is that you don’t have an answer, huh? Even if you sort away all the gaps, there’s, well, the rest. The things that you do remember.
Not many people like to sign up with the government. You understand why and do not begrudge people their decisions. After all, they are under your protection and it is unseemly for you to dislike some more than others. That could very well affect your performance.
Still, as you return to your desk (yet again), blood and guts still covering you (over and over again), you see the tall stack of case files (the stack that never decreases and that looks taller than before).
There's no sigh of resignation, there is no slumping of the shoulders, there's not even hesitation. You don't sit, just (very, very carefully) taking the oldest case file from the bottom of the stack.
There should be a better system for this, but the only thing everyone else does is leave the files on your desk. If there is to be a system, you would have to make it.
(You should be able to. This is your own goddamn job. You sit down at your desk long enough for you to finally find a way so that you don’t have to fear for the integrity of the stack each time you want to access a file.)
It’s three in the morning. Everyone else is already gone. Long gone. They must have added to the stack while you were on the last hunt.
It doesn't bother you. If it bothered you, you would be too busy thinking about how you wished you could be treated just a little bit—
It doesn’t bother you. It might bother someone else but you're Song Taewon (remember that), so you get the paperwork ready and embark on the next checkup, the next hunt, the next, the next, the next.
There are some times, when you’re very alone in the building and you’re just tired, that you think. You remember.
In these moments, you really wonder how anyone could look at you and call you Song Taewon. The child called Song Taewon is so different from the thing that is sitting in your chair now.
As a child, Song Taewon was actually rather loud. There was everything there for him in the world.
Good-hearted, was one teacher’s note, but rambunctious.
Needs to learn direction and obedience, was another teacher’s comment, but has a great enthusiasm to learn.
The brothers would do well to learn from another. That was a recurring comment.
You put your pen down and stare at the wall. You don’t think you’ve thought about your brother in years.
Still, it’s not like any of it matters. You’ve learned since then. All you know is direction and obedience. You think you’ve lost anything other than that.
There is no enthusiasm. There is no brother, no parents, no friends, no anything. It's you and the world and the world and you. You'd be okay with it if not for the fact that you're not even sure if the world likes you.
Oh god, you stupid, stupid fucking idiot. What was the rule about thinking, huh? The point is that you shouldn’t and you’re a dumb fucking beast anyways, there’s no reason for you to think.
You’re the ox in a field, plowing it, moving forward. Nothing else matters but going forward.
You get it? Do you get it—
Wake up and barely have a name. Wake up and it's already off to work. You’ve really fucked up this time and the loss of routine is your price. This is exactly why there are these rules.
Lose yourself.
Lose—
Fuck.
Time, like always, comes back to you in a burst, but your mind, this time, does not.
Things are supposed to settle. You’re supposed to forget about him and push it all to the back of your mind, and then you can be Chief Officer Song again. Chief Officer Song Taewon, who is an invaluable asset to the government of the Republic of Korea.
Just look and fawn over him! He’s handsome (in the supernatural way that all high-ranked Hunters are) and look at his work ethic! He gives his all to his country!
You’re not sure you remember the code to your apartment complex. You’re not sure you can pick out your house key from the meager three that are on your key chain.
Instead, you’re just in this shoe box of a home—sorry, office—day and night and night and day and the only breaks are when a dungeon needs to be specially cleared or the S-classes need wrangling or there’s something that only you, Chief Officer Song, can do!
S-classes, you think, are truly not that remarkable. Their strength can be supplemented by a group of well-trained A-classes and some specialty items.
Truly, S-classes are not that vital. They are, though, much more convenient.
And that’s the point, right? Remember, get to the point. The point, the subject, the focus of all of this being that you’re a tool that doesn’t know itself, that has some paltry facilities and uses it to prod weakly at the confines of its programming.
You do get upset at this comparison, at the metaphor, at the giant and the ants, at the wolves, at it all.
It’s stupid, all of it. You’re the one who threw it all the way and caged yourself in like this. No one is taking your choice from you and no one has taken your memory.
Because here’s the thing: you know your brother's name better than your own. That time in your life is bright and vivid and red. You can’t forget even if you wanted to.
There was a man and a woman, and from them came two boys. One of those boys is dead now. Another is unrecognizable.
Here’s another thing: your brother was not the better child. You used to read stories and you’ve seen enough of these family tragedies play out to know that it’s always the better, wanted child that dies.
You were the better child. You were kind-, golden-, good-hearted and all your flaws were brushed away by the fact that at your core, you were preferred.
No one remembers your brother. You know this, because for three months after your brother’s death, everyone stopped talking. Then, as if a switch was flipped, everyone was back to normal. No one spoke of the dead brother again.
Everything is different now, of course. If someone calls up your parents, they'll say that they have no children—no brother, because he wasn't a very good child and he died young, and no you, because you're a monster now.
You know your brother's name better than your own because you always knew, deep down, that he was the one who should have lived, not you. Your brother, who is named—
SONG TAEWON SONG TAEWON SONG TAEWON.
FAMILY NAME: SONG
GIVEN NAME TAEWON.
SONG. TAEWON. GET IT IN YOUR GOD DAMN HEAD.
The mirror is cracked underneath your fists and you wish you could release this damn anger somehow. Your thoughts are still screaming, unable to really think beyond trying to get your name to stick. And maybe it would have worked, if you had to actually punch the mirror to crack it.
Instead, you can just lay your palm on it, push the slightest amount, and there—cracks.
The world isn't built for you. You are not supposed to be here. None of the S-classes are supposed to be here, no Hunter really is supposed to be here.
This world is made of delicate material and every Hunter is a goddamn curse. You're really not sure how anyone can look at a Hunter and want to be one. You're really not sure as to why this had to happen at all.
Congratulations. The wolf bites your hand and won’t let go.
You lose time again.
Dumb fuck.
You blink and there’s a sheep in front of you. Your ears focus and from what you catch of the conversation, this is a gift.
A man whose name you forget every other minute is giving it to you, his eyes smiling but his lips in a straight line.
When you look up from the animal, the expression has flipped—a smile on his lips, but his eyes are cold and dead.
You think you've seen this before. You think that you don't know this person. You think that he's perhaps the only person you've ever known. Something about his face makes you want to reach out and—
You're not sure. Warn him? Kill him?
Your head, as always, is a mess.
The sheep spits on your clothes that are worth more than the creature's entire life and then promptly shits on the floor.
“You gave me a sheep with diarrhea?” you ask, your voice atonal, per usual.
A melodious laugh follows, but the man's mouth hasn't even opened.
Something settles in your chest. Some kind of relief, you think, or perhaps spreading anxiety.
When you look up, the man is gone. You know you’ll be seeing him again. There is a joint dungeon mission this weekend anyways and it’ll be his birthday in a few months.
So kind, for him to give you a gift when it’s not even your birthday. At least, you don’t think it is.
The sheep bleats pathetically and you are drawn back to the moment.
Where the fuck are you supposed to house a sheep? Your dingy apartment?
The sheep is eating specialty Napa cabbage out of a fancy bowl on your living room floor as you frantically search up what sheep can even eat.
The sheep looks content and you are about to be too when you read that cabbages can cause bloating and health complications in sheep.
You swear, switch it out for normal lettuce, and bulk order a lot of grass.
The sheep sleeps on your bed. You are annoyed for the minute it takes an urgent call from work to come.
Life, somehow, continues. It persists and so do you, and you don’t think you mind as much now that you have your little sheep.
The first thing that you do is move to a space that has a backyard for your sheep to roam. You’re not home enough to really appreciate the extra space, but Sung Hyunjae approves.
He’s a frivolous man, so you don’t take too much stock in his words. Still, you entertain the idea of hosting him, one day.
The dungeon goes well and you really have to start thinking about gifts for this ridiculous man.
You do other things instead.
For instance, one marginally bright day, standing in the backyard while your little sheep plays with its food, Song Taewon calls his parents.
You call your parents. You and him, he and you. It’s all the same.
The point being, Song Taewon's parents are called. They're asked about their child and the expected response is that there are no children. That’s what they always say.
This is what they say now: there was one son who died, many many years ago. It was a tragic death, but he was sick, you see. Such a poor child. What was his life even for? But it’s okay, because his parents loved him.
No word of a brother. No sign of an unnatural death.
You thank the now weeping mother for her time.
The sheep bleats at you. Its feed is empty.
You go to buy more food.
Two brothers on a hill. They both go up, one goes down, and the other dies on that hill.
Funny thing number one: dying on the hill. What hill did his—your—brother die on? Hill metaphorically and hill literally, because why did his brother have to die? You were just kids. And where is that hill now? The land has been altered so drastically that when Song Taewon, when you go to visit, can’t find it. If the place of death is gone, how did that child actually die? Was that child actually dead? Did you ever even have a brother?
Funny thing number two: if you asked anyone at the time, the right brother died. Song Taewon was the stronger child, so it would have been more tragic if he had gone. It's what everyone never said and what Song Taewon gleaned so clearly.
That’s not the funny thing, though. That’s just the set up.
And the punch line?
Everyone was mistaken. The wrong brother died after all.
There is a sheep and there is you and the sheep is not afraid of you. This is a novel feeling and perhaps it is tiring, to go straight from work and then into the countryside—where you’ve made your second move in the past few weeks—to where your sheep is, but you think it's worth it.
The sheep nuzzles its face into your hands and you think you could die here.
You always thought it was a stupid expression, counting sheep, but the few times you lay down and close your eyes, you do think of your little sheep. You imagine it with a herd. Perhaps there would be little lambs one day. Perhaps you might even get a herding dog, but you think you could manage the sheep just by yourself.
Besides, the priority is getting more sheep. Making a little sheep family, so that your little sheep isn’t so alone.
There are many steps until then, of course. You’re still learning how to take care of a sheep. How to shear it, how to manage its hooves, and in general, take care of its health. You have to be oh-so-gentle, but this time, when you move carefully, it’s not with an underlying frustration.
Your sheep just looks at you with trusting eyes. You could so easily kill it. It is so dependent on you. And yet, the sheep doesn't care.
Your entire life has been an exercise in not hurting other people. You could do well not to hurt animals as well, and this would just prove that—
Well, maybe, you're not a monster.
Sometimes you see your brother, or what killed him, in the corner of your eye. You can’t really tell the difference and perhaps the problem is the fact that you’re the only one who knows your truth.
If you ring up Song Taewon’s parents, they say their only son died of sickness. It’s what they still say. If you visit the town in which Song Taewon grew up, then there is a small grave present there now.
But there’s no hill. You’ve searched all over, and the hill of your memories—and you know it’s a hill and not a mountain, you know it’s a verified, certified hill—is gone.
There’s no hill, and maybe because the resting place is gone, that’s why his death lingers. If the crime scene is missing but the witness remains, doesn’t the crime live on, in the witness’s memories?
There is also the item that you SHOULD NOT THINK ABOUT.
But you’ll still think about it. It’s why you haven’t moved on ever, it’s why you keep losing time, and it’s the fact that his death haunts you because you were the one who was supposed to die. There’s a darkness in the corner of your eye that killed your brother, but it was never meant for him. It’s the shadow of the blade that hangs always above you, just waiting for the right time to fall.
You two looked very similar. You two were very close. It’s why it’s so easy to remember his name (but DON’T, DO NOT FUCKING DARE—) and maybe it’s why he died.
You and him went up that hill. He fell down and broke his crown and you’ll be tumbling after soon enough.
You hope so, at least.
Maybe then, you’ll be rid of his face. The darkness in the corner of your eye always congeals into his face, if you don’t pay it attention.
His face, which then always fades into the darkness until you’re left trying to run away from your own shadow.
If you work hard enough, maybe they'll forget. Maybe they'll all continue to look away when you lose time and then you can pretend for a little while longer that you're not just vile to the core.
You know this is true, because they already forget.
You lost your mind in a dungeon and the beasts you were supposed to retrieve alive and unharmed are destroyed. They had healing properties. Not even their bones and blood can be retrieved for that purpose.
People needed this. People are going to die because you couldn’t do this one job correctly. You, an S-class, are never really challenged anymore. None of these dungeons are hard.
It’s all your fault. You spend time with your sheep and pestering your not-parents and then you slip away from the giant-wolf-thing.
These are the consequences. You’re a fucking fool if you’ve forgotten.
No one looks you in the eyes as you apologize for your actions, they just assure you that bad nothing happened and that you're perfect.
Nothing, after all, can be ill when it comes to dear Officer Song. Here he is, the ultimate robot for the country. If it misbehaves, that is not the robot's fault. No, you just grin and bear it just as you grin and bear it when a computer runs too slow or a phone won't connect.
If you ask, if Song Taewon asks for the truth, do you think people will be honest? If you remind them that you are human too—
Except you're not, aren't you?
… Were you ever?
Maybe, just maybe, there was only ever one son.
Song Taewon hires a caretaker for his little sheep.
I think I want to die, you say. And then you correct yourself, because you know you want to die.
And then you correct yourself a second time, because you were raised to be—are expected to be, that is—polite, and since you’re just a fucking cog now, you must ask permission.
Oh, Supervisor-nim, am I allowed to die now?
As always, your supervisor (a new face every few months) trembles and replies something inane.
“You only get two vacation days,” she tells you now. “Only two. And they don’t carry over into the new year.”
You’ve learned a long time ago that the absence of a no does not mean a yes.
So, you stay there, rooted to the floorboards as the supervisor flees, forced to live on a few days more.
You open your mouth again: can I die now please?
The answer comes in the form of a cackle. You look for the source.
But there’s only you and a—your—his shadow in the room.
You take to carrying your desk around with you.
Not literally, of course. But the shadow keeps darting at your vision and the table holds most of your possessions. So instead of a table, you get a bag to hold the computer, keyboard, mouse, pencil, notebook, and paper towel roll.
The paper towel roll sticks out, slightly. It's not as if you have used it since the day you got it—and how did you get it again? Ah… no use in remembering.
Someone lets out a low whistle.
“Prone to accidents, huh?” a man says. Part of the custodial staff, with the badge of a temporary hire. Of course, the custodians were always the ones who got the most hurt. People always underestimated the danger in assuming a dungeon was cleared.
“Ah, I miss that brand,” the man continues. “They were really great, huh? Too bad they got discontinued.”
You, that is, Song Taewon, nods. The man leaves and you push the paper towel roll just the slightest bit deeper into your bag.
There's an expression that everyone thinks that they are the hero of their own story.
You know for certain that that is a lie. With any kind of proof, there need only be one counter example for it to be proven false.
Your proof? Your existence. Never once have you believed yourself to be good. The other S-classes like to say they always knew they were different and they always say it with an air of superiority.
You think you always knew you were meant to be something else as well, but you were the only one with clarity to know how evil this would all become.
Supervisor-nim, I have fulfilled my service. I can kill myself quite effectively, if you allow. This all depends on your answer. Please. It’s been years.
“There’s coffee on the second floor,” his supervisor says, not looking at him in the slightest. “Uh, should be free, on account of the holidays!”
Song Taewon goes to the second floor. There is no coffee machine, but a stack of filters.
He decides to take one of his two vacation days.
The sheep is dead. Here you stand, the giant, and there, at your feet, a dead sheep. A lamb to the slaughter, the victim of you, the wolf among the sheep. There's many metaphors that can be made about this but that doesn't change the fact that you are here and your sheep is too, but it is gone.
The wool is still soft, the body still warm and your hands feel so cold.
It really shouldn’t be this cold. You’re inside, because you always let your little sheep sleep inside, and the climate is carefully controlled so that your sheep neither freezes nor overheats.
You’ve checked the settings—it’s still the perfect conditions.
And yet, here your sheep still is: absolutely gutted. Not by any knife or a predator’s teeth. Just gutted completely through.
You sit there, and you're not sure for how long. Blood pools around the two of you.
You bury the sheep, because what else can you do? You bury it and the blood won't come out, not that you try all that hard. You just opened your bag, tore a sheet off, and sponged the floor until your fingers tore through the paper.
For as real as the situation is, you can't help but feel that it is an omen.
The smiling man visits again. He’s not smiling.
You don’t either.
You don’t remember how that conversation plays out. You don’t know why you follow him.
A birthday gift, that’s what you tell yourself. Though why you would give this man with a face of deceit a present, you don’t know.
You don’t question it. You’ve learned that by now. Not that it’ll ever stick but it’s fine. You’ve been through this before and you’ll go through it again, and it’ll never end.
Or perhaps, now, it just might.
You don’t remember how that conversation played out. You don’t know where you followed him to. You don’t know why you’re alone now.
Here’s what you do know: there is so much blood.
The droplets drip with the rhythm of a ticking clock or a fraying string and despite how long it’s been, there’s just more and more fucking blood.
You're really not sure how it can all come from one person. You’re not really sure how this could have all come from you. It’s not supposed to come from you. You’re not allowed to die. You haven’t gotten permission yet.
And so it stands, that you shouldn’t be dying now. You want to be, of course you want to be dead, but the situation, it’s wrong. It’s not supposed to happen this way. You fit into this scene badly. You can't be the person who dies.
Yet here you are. And the blood is not stopping.
One hand presses against the wound, but what can you do when the wound is too large, anyway? Your clumsy, bloodied hands have never been able to do shit and why would it be different when you're trying to help yourself?
You keep your hand on the wound, not to save yourself, but to try and keep the blood in. You're making such a goddamn mess. How can you expect to clean all of this up?
You reach back, wincing each time another droplet falls onto the pristine ground, and pull the paper towel roll from your bag. You try to rip a sheet off.
The perforated edge tears easily and then—
And then—
You stare at the half paper towel in your hand.
The panic and anger should be setting in by now.
Instead, you laugh.
&&&
When Song Taewon is found dead, murdered, there is a whirlwind of press. What do the other Korean S-class Hunters have to say about this? Where were the others when this happened, because who else could do this? Why is that Sung Hyunjae so suspicious and why do some sources even say—
There are many discrepancies about the way that the S-Class Hunter Song Taewon dies. But while images can mislead, they have not yet lied outright. And so, no one can deny the fact that Song Taewon's corpse was found with a wide grin on his face.
As the years pass, another curious fact arises. The man who charmed Korea with his sly grin is never seen smiling again.