L*st and Death

The route to their destination included two interim stops. Each stop was accessible only through rough, unpaved roads, and Siron, bouncing around in the backseat, was overwhelmed by nausea.

Both locations were overgrown with dense brush. Siron couldn’t see anything, but the sound of violent wind rustling through the undergrowth told him they’d arrived in some out-of-the-way patch of scrubland where no one could easily find them.

At the first stop, Johnson swapped out the car’s license plate and changed vehicles entirely. At the second, he simply switched cars again. Each time, Siron was transferred into another car while restrained, and each time he was re-bound from scratch, meticulously and with exhausting thoroughness. He cried bitterly every time.

His arms, wrenched behind his back, were numb from lack of circulation. The cloth over his face suffocated him, and his nose was so clogged with mucus he could hardly breathe. With even his mouth sealed shut by tape, dizzy spells assaulted him. Siron drifted in and out of consciousness until eventually, too exhausted to keep crying, he simply stopped.

They had finally arrived.

Johnson killed the engine. The moment of perfect silence that followed didn’t last. The man in the trunk had regained consciousness and was now screaming and thrashing. Johnson got out and dragged the man away. Siron could hear the sound of damp leaves and weeds being crushed underfoot, then faint footsteps disappearing. After a long pause, those steps returned. Twice, Johnson hauled away cargo from the car.

Where the hell is this? Why is it so goddamn quiet?

Left alone in the dark, Siron began to lose his grip on reality. Just like when the rapist had come at him, he half-expected Baek Kyung to appear from nowhere and slam a frying pan into Johnson’s skull. But no such miracle occurred.

“You waited long, didn’t you?”

“Mmmmph!”

Siron shook his head fiercely in protest, but Johnson pulled him from the car. Not giving him a chance to run, he easily hoisted Siron over his shoulder. With the other hand, he picked up something heavy—so heavy, in fact, that it momentarily affected his breathing. Siron didn’t even dare to struggle. Humiliated, he was carried off like baggage.

The walk dragged on. Siron still couldn’t see, but he could feel they were heading somewhere even darker. He heard the cries of wild animals, the scrape of loose stones rolling down steep ground, and Johnson’s increasingly labored breathing. They were climbing a mountain slope.

Siron’s body swayed with Johnson’s steps. The weight of his own body crushed down onto his stomach, slung over Johnson’s shoulder, and blood rushed to his upside-down head, making him dizzy. Still, Siron didn’t dare move—afraid Johnson might drop him and send him tumbling down the mountain like a corpse.

Eventually, they reached level ground. Johnson stood still for a moment to catch his breath, then resumed walking. He stepped inside a building.

The heavy door creaked open with a scream from its rusted hinges. The floorboards groaned as they passed over them and entered a room faintly warmed by heat. Still holding Siron, Johnson moved a massive piece of wooden furniture, rolled back a rug, and opened a wooden hatch beneath it.

Tightening his grip to keep Siron from falling, Johnson climbed down a ladder. He sat Siron down on a wooden chair.

Siron had been imprisoned—taken deep into the mountains, into a hidden shelter no one could find.

Scenes from every slasher movie he’d ever seen ran through Siron’s head. He had once watched those films fearlessly, enjoying the masked killers mowing down their victims. But now that he was the one tied up, he felt like he might suffocate from sheer terror.

At the same time, he had a bizarre surge of confidence that he could now play a minor horror movie victim with absolute realism. Even if it was just a ten-second death scene, he’d act it so well they’d never forget it. He prayed for a chance to escape, to put that method acting to use. But that fragile hope was crushed immediately.

When Johnson finally pulled the cloth off his face, Siron flinched at the sudden assault of light. Blinking through the pain, he gradually adjusted to the glow and realized what it was—a single orange-hued bulb dangling from a metal fixture in the ceiling.

“...What a mess your face is.”

Johnson frowned upon seeing him. He dampened the cloth that had covered Siron’s face and carefully wiped away the mess of tears and snot. Then he undid the bindings around Siron’s arms and massaged them, trying to restore circulation to the numb limbs.

Siron was disoriented. The gentleness felt like a lie—calculated kindness, meant to break down his defenses before betrayal.

Sure enough, Johnson brought his hands forward to cuff them.

“Mmmph! Mm! Mmmph!”

“You’ll want to hold still for this.”

“Mmph! Mmmph!”

Johnson forcibly pulled his wrists together and locked them into cuffs—not standard chain cuffs, but hinge cuffs that severely restricted movement.

Then he attached a thick chain—nearly the width of Siron’s thumb—between the cuffs and a steel ring embedded in the concrete wall. The chain was so ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) heavy it felt like an anchor pulling on his wrists.

Once Siron was fully secured, Johnson peeled off the tape over his mouth. It had been stuck so firmly, Siron thought his lips might come off with it.

“....”

Now that he could speak, he found he couldn’t. With his hands chained and the weight of that steel dragging him down, he felt like there was no way he’d ever leave this place alive.

But as the old saying went—even if you're caught by a tiger, you can survive if you keep your wits about you.

Siron forced tears into his eyes and pleaded with all the desperation he could summon.

“Mr. Johnson—no, Dr. Johnson, sir, please... Please let me go. I swear I won’t tell anyone. I’ll live quietly, I promise. Hngh... I can’t die here. My grandma can’t get around on her own, and my mom’s too sick to work. My little siblings and even our two cats are waiting for me at home. If I’m gone, they’ll all... Hngh... starve. I—I even volunteered for this trial out of desperation. Snf... I know I might look kind of spoiled, but I’ve really been through a lot since I was a kid. I’ve done every kind of job you can imagine... If I die like this, it’s not fair—sob—it’s too cruel. Please. Just one more chance. Please...”

He completely forgot that just hours earlier, over dinner, he had told Johnson he had no family in Baggers City.

Johnson listened silently, then replied with a flat:

“...Oh dear.”

Oh dear? That’s it? That’s all he had to say about my tearful Oscar-worthy performance?

“Snf... huhuh... sniff...”

Unbelievable. Siron finally accepted that Johnson was a true psycho with no blood or tears. His face crumpled, and he sobbed wretchedly.

Ignoring Siron’s breakdown, Johnson rummaged through a military-style duffel and pulled out a briefcase. Siron tensed—he thought a gun was coming next. But what came out was all too familiar.

“Let’s continue where we left off.”

“W-what?”

“Third round of the clinical trial.”

...This fucking lunatic!

Somehow, Siron completely forgot how hopeless his situation was. He thrashed violently, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“You fucking psycho! Let me go! I said LET ME GO!”

Johnson stared calmly down at the rabid, snarling Siron.

“Fucking maniac! I said let me—!”

Seeing that Siron had no intention of calming down, Johnson sighed, then raised his long leg and placed a foot on Siron’s shoulder.

“Huh? H-Hey—!”

Siron’s balance tipped. Still seated, he crashed backward. Everything slowed down as dread overtook him.

When he hit the floor, the shock reverberated up his spine and into his skull. More than physical pain, it was the helplessness and humiliation that overwhelmed him.

“Resistance is useless. ...But it does amuse me.”

Grinning like it was all a game, Johnson didn’t waste time. Kneeling, he wrapped a tourniquet around Siron’s upper arm and disinfected the inside of his elbow with alcohol.

A dead hush fell over everything—Siron’s gasping breaths, the room, the world. Johnson worked mechanically, drawing blood and dividing it into several sample tubes. Then he picked up another syringe and filled it with a new solution.

A transparent liquid formed droplets at the tip of the needle. Each drop felt like it would drown him.

Siron’s voice broke with fear.

“Hnnngh... Th-this isn’t really a clinical trial, is it? S-Scone Pharmaceuticals... it’s all fake, isn’t it?”

Johnson said nothing. He simply looked at Siron—drinking in his fear—and etched it into the cold blue of his eyes like a tattoo.

Siron couldn’t look away. Even now—especially now—those icy eyes drew him in.

“Are you afraid of death?”

You psycho! Who isn’t afraid of death?! Siron, fuming, imagined smashing Johnson’s skull like King Kong, but he couldn’t do anything. He needed to survive.

“Yes! I am! I haven’t done anything yet! I—I still have to act, and I—I need to send money back home. Oh, right! Jiyeon! I have to pay her tuition! And—and—”

“There’s nothing you’ll be able to do.”

“...What?”

Was that a death threat? Terrified, Siron couldn’t handle the silence. He asked, voice barely audible:

“W-why?”

“If this experiment works, you’ll spend the rest of your life on the run—with me.”

“O-on the run? From... who?”

Siron stammered like a fool. Johnson let out a laugh—too loud, too raw. A laugh that didn’t fit the moment at all.

“Ugh!”

Johnson’s laugh distracted him for a second too long. A sting bit into Siron’s arm.

“Ah! Stop!”

Johnson pinned his arm down and pushed the syringe plunger. Cold liquid surged into him, spreading unpleasantly fast. It moved like a virus through his veins, and Siron couldn’t hold onto coherent thought. This sensation was nothing like the last injection. It was on a different level entirely.

He felt like he’d left gravity behind, drifting in the sky, lost. Like he was spiraling out into the universe, sucked into a vortex.

His heartbeat, his connection to the real world, everything fell away. His mind couldn’t keep up.

Just before the darkness fully devoured him, a face flashed beneath the final flicker of his consciousness.

If I’d never met that bastard.

If I hadn’t trusted him when he was kind to me.

If I hadn’t followed him back to Korea!

Then he wouldn’t have been buried in debt, mocked by an entire nation, fled to the U.S., or landed in this godforsaken city. He wouldn’t have applied for that trial. He wouldn’t have met Johnson.

So really, it was all Baek Kyung’s fault. Because Baek Kyung had chosen hate over love.

And the last thing Siron saw before losing consciousness—

Was that bastard’s shameless face.

Even as he tried not to see it, the eyes inside him gazed back at Baek Kyung’s angry face, sorrowful and helpless. But like a book closing on its final page, that image slowly faded. Even the hate disappeared.

And then Siron Yoon lost consciousness entirely.

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