Woo Jin-Cheol sometimes felt a sense of loss. A strange sense of loss, as though he had forgotten something important. But no matter how hard he thought, there was nothing he had forgotten. The harder he tried to recall what he had lost, the more he only discovered the empty space in his memory, and the emptiness only grew.
"Sir, what's got you looking so serious?"
The rookie detective handed him a steaming cup of coffee freshly dispensed from the vending machine and asked. Woo Jin-Cheol shrugged as if it were nothing and took the coffee.
"Thanks."
The rich aroma of coffee seeped into his nostrils, and only then did the hollow feeling in his heart feel a little less so. Woo Jin-Cheol, a fourth-year detective in the Violent Crimes Unit of the Criminal Investigation Division. His life hadn't been weak enough for a spring breeze to shake his heart, but this sense of loss that had suddenly begun three years ago had visited him often ever since. Whenever he confided in acquaintances about it, all he got back was a lecture about how he was old enough but had no family. Woo Jin-Cheol let out a bitter laugh, just like the aftertaste of coffee, and soon emptied his paper cup. They say a busy bee has no time to be sad, right?
'...Right.'
The best remedy for idle melancholy had always been work. Just then, as Woo Jin-Cheol stepped into the Violent Crimes Unit office, his eyes fell on the backs of four men sitting in a row. Woo Jin-Cheol crumpled the paper cup with one hand and pointed his chin at the four of them.
"Who are those guys?" "Ah... them? Well, you see..."
Hearing the unmistakable awkwardness in the rookie's voice, Woo Jin-Cheol strode over and stood in front of the men. Sure enough? The four men had gone deathly pale, as though they had seen something they shouldn't have, and they couldn't even make proper eye contact, their entire bodies trembling like leaves. Looking at their faces, Woo Jin-Cheol muttered to himself without realizing it.
"A shadow monster again..."
* * *
It wasn't uncommon for guilt-ridden turn-selves-in to come to the police station and confess their crimes. But. It was definitely not a common sight when terrified turn-selves-in begged and pleaded to be thrown in a cell as soon as possible. Yet. For the past several months, this uncommon situation had been repeating itself. And what they all said—
"The, the shadow... the shadow rose from the ground and spoke to me. It said if I didn't turn myself in within 24 hours, I would regret being alive... Officer, officer, I did it all wrong, so please, just put me in prison!"
This was the consistent testimony they gave before the detectives. As these incidents kept repeating, word came down from above to get to the bottom of it.
"So you're saying all of you saw this shadow monster?" "That's what I'm saying!"
Woo Jin-Cheol let out a sigh as he pieced together the confession statements, specifically at the section labeled "circumstances leading to the surrender."
'How am I supposed to report this?'
Just thinking about having to report shadow monsters and a 24-hour curse to the higher-ups was already giving him a headache. Just then. Tap, tap. A hand lightly patted his shoulder, and when he turned around, a senior detective was speaking to him.
"Jin-Cheol, leave the statements to the rookie and come to the conference room for now."
It was unusual enough that they'd need the conference room when violent crimes had dropped sharply thanks to the shadow monsters' impressive track record lately. What was going on? Leaving Woo Jin-Cheol's puzzled look behind, the senior headed into the conference room. After tilting his head, Woo Jin-Cheol soon got up from his seat.
"I'll handle it here, sir." "All right, thanks."
Encouraging the rookie who handled the menial tasks, Woo Jin-Cheol followed the senior detective to the conference room.
* * *
"Huh? Send the turn-selves-in away?" "Hey! Keep your voice down. They'll hear you outside."
Woo Jin-Cheol asked again, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"What on earth does that mean?" "I'm not saying send them away. I'm saying we put them outside and watch what happens when the 24 hours are up."
A fellow detective listening to the senior detective's idea furrowed his brow.
"Sir, those guys are just high on some new drug and talking nonsense. The monster thing is probably a side effect of that new drug." "But the drug test came back clean, didn't it? I drove all the way to the National Forensic Service to check the results myself." "That's..." "And does it make sense for a bunch of kids with no prior connections to all see the same thing and turn themselves in because of a drug side effect?" "..."
In the end, the fellow detective had nothing to say and fell silent. The detectives' meeting continued.
"It's been ages since orders came down from above to figure out the cause, and we haven't even gotten a lead. What can we do? We have to try something like this to squeeze out whatever clue we can."
Hearing this, the detectives who had initially been reluctant began exchanging glances and nodding. If they had all seen the same hallucination, then there might be something in their nonsense worth using as a lead.
"So we create a situation for them to talk nonsense." "..."
Woo Jin-Cheol, who had been silent, finally spoke up.
"But what if something actually happens?" "...?" "...?"
The detectives, who had their heads together, all turned their gaze toward Woo Jin-Cheol. Snicker, snicker. The corners of their mouths curled up slightly as they looked at him.
"Detective Woo, so you believe in ghosts and stuff?" "I didn't take you for that type. Our Jin-Cheol is more sensitive than he looks." "Ha ha ha." "..."
Of course, Woo Jin-Cheol didn't exactly take stories of shadow monsters at face value either. But. If everyone had seen the same hallucination, wasn't there likely a reason for it? For some reason, Woo Jin-Cheol felt a sense of unease, as though he had glimpsed a gaze from beyond the darkness in the turn-selves-in' testimonies. A feeling that something should not be disturbed. The captain, perhaps interpreting Woo Jin-Cheol's worry differently, patted his worried-looking shoulder and spoke.
"Nothing will happen. We'll take one turn-self to a quiet warehouse or somewhere and see what shows up. Plenty of fit detectives will be watching. How's he going to escape?"
The captain's eyes seemed to say, You don't actually believe in monsters or ghosts, do you? Woo Jin-Cheol reluctantly nodded. At that, the captain laughed heartily and continued.
"Let's say the monsters do show up after 24 hours, like those guys say, and they do something to them. Wouldn't that be something to be grateful for, in its own way?"
These were vicious criminals who had broken into homes where elderly people lived, committed robberies, and even beaten an elderly couple to death when they resisted. The captain declared, half-joking and half-serious, that such people should be torn apart by monsters rather than enjoying three meals a day in prison.
"So now we need volunteers..."
The captain looked at Woo Jin-Cheol and gave a sly grin.
"Detective Woo, feel free to sit this one out if you're not up for it." "......"
Anyone who had been in the workforce for a while would know that this was a polite way of saying you absolutely could not sit this one out. Woo Jin-Cheol pondered for a moment with an uneasy feeling, but soon answered.
"No. I'll go too."
* * *
"O-officers! Really, really, you can't do this! I'll die!" "Just stay still for a minute. We've got something to investigate." "I'm going to die!" "Hey, who's going to die? We'll be right here with you. Detective Kim, how much time is left until the 24 hours?" "About thirty minutes?" "Brrr, it's cold."
The detectives' breaths rose as white puffs of steam in the still-cold spring air. Inside a desolate warehouse in the early hours of dawn. The detectives were passing the tedious time watching for any change in the turn-self. Among them, only Woo Jin-Cheol stood guard with sharp eyes.
'It's different.'
Something about the air felt off. He had a vague feeling that something absolutely should not be approached was coming near. He wished this feeling would end up being nothing more than false alarm. Woo Jin-Cheol took deep breaths over and over to calm his increasingly quickening respiration. And like that, the time that the being called shadow had warned about slowly arrived.
"Uh... time's up?" "Is it?"
A detective checked his watch and stood up. Tick, tick. The 24 hours the turn-self had so desperately emphasized were passing. If one could call it natural, then naturally, nothing happened, and there was no sign of anything about to happen. The impatient detective glared at the turn-self, who had been trembling but now wore a look of bewilderment himself.
"Huh...?"
With no one watching, the detectives who had surrounded him all at once piled on.
"Hey, seriously, did all of you do some drug together or something?" "Stop beating around the bush and spit it out. Make our job easier."
The turn-self, who had been looking around and blinking, scratched the back of his head when nothing happened after quite some time.
"No, it's just... we definitely saw it that time. Actually, there were five of us at first."
When he got that far, Woo Jin-Cheol, who had been standing off to the side all this time, keeping watch, suddenly turned to the other detectives and shouted.
"Get out! Get out of there!"
What was he talking about? The detectives looked at Woo Jin-Cheol with puzzled faces, then all at once stumbled backward.
"Ugh!" "Guh!"
The detectives who fell to the ground went still, having apparently lost consciousness all at once, lying quiet and unmoving. Woo Jin-Cheol had started to rush toward his fellow detectives, but froze in his tracks. Reflected in his pupils were the monsters slowly rising from the shadows. He couldn't speak.
"Ah..."
The air was knocked right out of him. Those were not human. Human-shaped insects—where a person's head should have been on their necks, ant heads were attached instead. Shadow monsters.
'Three of those things, just like that...'
The turn-selves-in hadn't been hallucinating, nor had they been suffering from drug side effects. Every word of their testimony had been nothing but the unvarnished truth.
"Uwaaaah!"
The turn-self, now surrounded on all sides by ants, screamed wildly. The most desperate scream that could come out of a human mouth. It was a death scream. Without a moment's hesitation, the ants began tearing his limbs off and devouring him.
"Uwaaaah!"
The scream didn't last long. Where the ants had finished their meal, only a small amount of blood and a few scraps of flesh remained. Woo Jin-Cheol stared at the scene as though his mind had left him. Click. Two ants that had finished eating spotted Woo Jin-Cheol standing there in a daze and began to approach. Woo Jin-Cheol tried to turn and run, but his feet wouldn't move. His legs had gone rigid, and he couldn't budge an inch.
"P-please."
Just then. Behind the two approaching ants, a large winged ant stopped them. Turning them around by their shoulders, the large ant looked at Woo Jin-Cheol with a pleasant expression and smiled.
"......?"
An ant was smiling? No—setting aside the fact that an ant was smiling, how could he tell that its expression was a smile? Strangely, in this terrifying and fearful situation, Woo Jin-Cheol felt something like longing. As if there had been a time when he was familiar with situations like this.
"H-hey! Wait!"
But despite Woo Jin-Cheol's desperate plea, the ants silently slipped back into the shadow. By the time Woo Jin-Cheol ran over and stood on the spot, there was nothing left to find. The ants were gone.
"..."
Once again, Woo Jin-Cheol felt an inexplicable emptiness in a corner of his heart and slowly ran his hand over the shadow where the ants had disappeared. He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that.
"Mm..."
Hearing the groans of his fellow detectives, Woo Jin-Cheol finally came to his senses and rushed over to them.
"Hey, are you okay?"
But even as he waited for the ambulance he had called to arrive, Woo Jin-Cheol's gaze remained fixed on the shadow for a long time.
* * *
"Well done! Well done!"
The captain was livid. And understandably so. The turn-self had vanished without a trace, and the detectives who were supposed to have been guarding him had been knocked unconscious by something and couldn't remember a thing. The captain glanced at the two detectives who sat with their heads bowed and bandages wrapped all over them, looking pitiful, then shifted his gaze to Woo Jin-Cheol.
"Detective Woo, how about you?" "..." "You were the one who called the ambulance, right? Don't remember anything?" "...I'm sorry. When I came to, my colleagues were unconscious, so—" "Ugh!"
The captain clapped his chest in frustration and let out a sigh.
"Fortunately, it didn't reach the higher-ups, so keep your mouth shut about this. You three were injured during a follow-up investigation on the Guro-gu gang. Got it?" "Yes." "Yes, Captain."
The case was barely settled, and perhaps because of that, the Violent Crimes Unit was quiet for a while.
"Sir, you've been looking good lately. Has something good happened?"
The rookie detective handed Woo Jin-Cheol a fresh, steaming cup of coffee from the vending machine.
"I guess."
Woo Jin-Cheol shrugged as if it were nothing and took the coffee. But it wasn't untrue. After that day, after encountering those monsters, he strangely felt as if the empty space in his heart had been filled in a little.
'Something is there.'
Undeniably. The instinct of a veteran detective—or rather, the instinct of the human Woo Jin-Cheol—was clearly telling him something was out there. The rookie detective, who had been peeking at the notebook Woo Jin-Cheol had been looking at over his shoulder, widened his eyes.
"Huh? Huh? Sir, are you still investigating that surrender case? The captain said..." "I know. I'm just looking into it on my own."
Woo Jin-Cheol made the younger detective keep quiet and took a quiet sip of coffee.
"Wow... there are quite a few criminals who turned themselves in because of shadow monsters, not just in our precinct?" "So I've heard." "Hmm..."
Squinting at the contents written in the notebook, the rookie asked.
"Huh? But between late February and early March, the number of turn-selves-in dropped sharply?" "Why? Does something come to mind?" "Oh, nothing major. My aunt used to run a small book rental shop." "...And?" "I just remembered how she always used to complain that business was terrible at the end of February and the beginning of March because kids were going back to school and having enrollment ceremonies. Ha ha. Really nothing, right?"
Laughing and scratching the back of his head, apparently embarrassed, the rookie was startled when he saw Woo Jin-Cheol writing down what he had just said in his notebook.
"Sir?" "Just in case."
Back-to-school season, enrollment season. Those six plain words, with no embellishment, were added to Woo Jin-Cheol's notebook.
* * *
XX High School. The day before the new student entrance ceremony, during the busiest time, the principal secretly called the head of student affairs into his office.
"A problem child will be coming to our school tomorrow." "Excuse me?"
The principal smoothly slid over a student file he had prepared in advance. The head of student affairs glanced through the profile and tilted his head.
"Father is a firefighter, mother is a housewife. Grades look fine too—no major issues that I can see." "Oh, come on. Look at the disciplinary record below." "...!"
Expelled from home for two years during the first year of middle school. Naturally, middle school was cut short. But after completing the middle school curriculum through a GED exam, this student had applied to their high school?
'Not even a first-year high school student—a middle schooler who'd just graduated from elementary school ran away from home for two years?'
Instinctively sensing the arrival of a formidable opponent, the head of student affairs felt his eyes tremble. The principal's voice dropped.
"What do you think, sir? Can you handle this student?"
Slap. The head of student affairs closed the problem child's file.
"Don't I know why they call me the Cobra? Leave any problem child to me. I'll make sure to educate them so they can't cause any trouble."
His eyes were full of confidence. The principal nodded.
"Good."
Only after hearing the head of student affairs' assurance did the principal's face relax. Seeing the principal's expression, the head of student affairs also managed a slight smile. The battle was tomorrow. With the determination to seize control in one blow at the entrance ceremony, the head of student affairs' heart was racing.
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<Side Story> Beru's Memories
Keeeeeeeeeeee— Kiek! Keeeeeeh, kee-roo-rook, keeeeeeeeeh, keeek, keeeeeeeeeh. Kaaak, keeeeeeeee, kick. Keeeeeeeeh! Ki-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh~! Kieeeeeeeeeeeeeh! Kiaaak! Karrrrrrrrrrrr—! Kiak.
<Author's Note> Many readers requested Beru's memories, so I've put it together as a side story. Thank you!
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