"You should kill yourself, right this instant."
Ryu Tae-Min’s boss had been on his third rant since this morning, and Ryu had finished pretending to listen or care after the first thirty seconds.
"Yes, boss..." He barely registered his words and replied mindlessly.
"Like, do you even understand how unacceptable this is?" the boss barked, making Ryu irritated by the voice.
"Three reports pending, Tae-Min, three. Even interns are better-" Suddenly, he paused for a moment, his voice flaring even harder, "Tae-Min, look at me."
Ryu, who was distracted by the wall behind his boss, rotated his head back to him.
His dark circles had their own dark circles, and he was bobbing his head like a broken spring.
"Sorry, boss." His voice, deadpan again. "But you forced so much work on me-"
"’Sorry’ won’t fix a damn thing, Tae-Min." He cut him off before he could finish his sentence.
"Won’t happen again, boss."
"It has already happened three times."
"Then, it won’t happen again again, boss boss."
Thwack!
His boss threw a clipboard with papers at him angrily.
"Leave! I should either see the reports on my table by Monday or your resignation letter."
He waved him off with a disgusted swipe. "Useless waste of oxygen."
Like a mindless zombie, Ryu offered one more limp apology and shuffled out.
The second he reached his cubicle, he dropped his polite, tired look and clicked his tongue in annoyance.
’I wish I could fucking kill you, boss.’
He grabbed his jacket, no longer limp like before, and stormed out to the balcony with a half-empty cigarette box in his hand.
The pleasant evening wind made him feel a lot better than the constrained cubicle he was in.
Putting the cigarette in his lips, he took out his lighter.
Flick!
Flick-Flick!
Flick-Flick!
It was dead.
Just as he was about to curse the entire lineage of his boss to hell, a small flame appeared near his cigarette.
It was a lighter, although not his.
Ryu tensed, slowly turning his head towards the uninvited guest.
An unfamiliar, tall man, dressed in the same corporate attire as everyone else in the building, stood next to him.
"Thanks!" Ryu thanked him as he puffed the smoke from the cigarette.
But the tall man just smiled politely and lit a cigarette for himself, too.
"Has your thirst for revenge subsided yet?" He asked, making Ryu stiffen at his words.
"Pardon?" Ryu said, his brows furrowed.
"Revenge." He stated, "You know, murdering folks that you don’t like."
"Ah!" He chuckled, "I don’t think killing my boss here is an option for me."
"So you were considering the option here?" He turned around, his face still adorning a polite smile.
"Are you from the Human Resources department?" Ryu inquired, puffing his cigarette again.
"Killing 23 people wasn’t enough for you?"
"..."
The atmosphere became eerily silent, winds swaying their hair gently.
"I don’t know what you’re talki-"
"I am not from the police, Ryu Tae-Min." He cut him off in the middle.
Ryu maintained his poker face as he tended to leave.
But he was stopped immediately.
"You might wanna look at this video before you leave, Tae-Min."
[Bang!]
The video showed a young man with a sniper rifle, firing towards a random guy with a neck tattoo.
Even without turning around to look at the video, Ryu could immediately discern this distinct sniper rifle shot sound.
After all, guns in general were completely banned for civilians in Korea, much less this sniper.
But just to be sure, he turned around and looked at the phone.
"4k, by the way."
And sure enough, it was a clear video of him taking the shot.
"Damn, AI is crazy good nowadays." He said, laughing it off.
"Where is this camera that recorded it, even fixed at? Air? How did it get such a clear zoom in the scope?"
"That’s magic."
"That’s AI." Ryu chuckled as he tended to leave once again.
"Would you say the same thing about these photos?"
The man said as he whipped out a tablet from his pocket and started sliding his hands across the screen, changing photos.
These ranged from him buying rifle parts from different underground resellers to downright stabbing of a guy in the crowd.
Every single one of those 23 murders he was talking about.
Ryu’s eyes widened, his breath hitched.
"H-How di-"
"How?" The man chuckled, silently snickering after that.
"I was there from the start, Tae-Min."
Ryu frowned harder, "What do you m-"
"Man, you were such a hassle."
"What do you mean!?" Ryu snapped, shouting at the man, who was constantly cutting him off and not answering him.
The man’s smirk did not falter. "Isn’t it funny that every time you made a mistake, it vanished somehow?"
"You were not alone, Tae-Min, you never were."
"I was always there."
The man inched closer as he put down the cigarette.
Ryu’s head rattled, his instincts wanting him to escape, but his body didn’t listen.
It was as if he was glued to the floor.
He lost the sensation in his body, the cherry of his cigarette reaching his fingers.
His mind was replaying every single person he had killed in revenge, and imagining this man always around him.
"Who are you?" His voice cracked, a shiver running down his body.
The man tilted his head, a knowing smile forming over his face.
"A messenger..." His face was now mere inches from Ryu’s, "From a God."
Ryu’s face turned ugly, and the fear he was feeling subsided a little.
A nervous smirk adorned his face to cope with the fear he was feeling.
"What kind of God sends someone to clean up after a murderer and blackmail them for it later on?"
"The kind that enjoys irony." He replied calmly, "Tell me, Ryu Tae-Min, why did you kill those 23 men?"
Ryu clenched his teeth, his trembling eyes glaring daggers at him.
"You’ve been following me for years; you must know why."
"2022 Guryong Terror attack, 38 deaths, and not a single investigation from the Blue House. It was suppressed heavily."
"Your family was included in that death toll, am I right?"
Ryu bit his lips hard, some unsavory memories pouring into his brain.
His eyes were a clear yes for him.
"So you took matters into your own hands, finding the group who did it. Turns out to be a bunch of Sun cultists, and you decided to retaliate like a vigilante."
"If you are here to arrest me, do it," Ryu sounded frustrated and defeated, "If you are here to kill me, just pull the trigger already."
"I told you already," the man said softly, "I am not against you."
"Then what’s your purpose of coming here today and threatening me like this!?" He shouted, but nobody in the office noticed it. "What do you want from me?"
"I want to offer a deal you can’t refuse."
"You make it sound like I have much of a choice here." Ryu scoffed.
"C’mon," the man rebuked, "Do you really take me for such a person?"
The silent wind became the loudest thing there in the silence that followed.
That’s exactly the type of person he thought he was.
He had no cult tattoo, so it didn’t look like he was here for revenge.
Why else would he come here and threaten him like that?
And that was when the strange man reached into his pocket and took out something.
A photograph.
A photograph that made Ryu breathless.
A photograph that blurred his vision.
Three people, clad in tattered clothes, were chained and performing menial chores.
A middle-aged man, a middle-aged woman, and a girl in her late teens.
It was his family.
The cigarette slipped from Ryu’s fingers and was extinguished completely soon.
"This is the deal I am offering."
"That’s... not possible," Ryu said, his eyes blurry.
"Tell me, Tae-Min, did you ever receive their bodies?"
Ryu staggered back, his back hitting the railing.
"You’re lying," he said hoarsely, but he couldn’t refute his words. "You must be lying."
"You say I’m lying, but your eyes don’t, Tae-Min." He stepped ahead again, "You want my words to be true, don’t you?"
Tears welled up in Ryu’s eyes as he was on the verge of breaking down.
His body slumped against the railing, looking up at the sky, trying to hide his face.
But he bit on his lips and got back.
Now wasn’t the time to be sobbing like that.
"Are they really alive?" His eyes had a totally different light this time.
The man nodded at his question, "If you want to save them."
That’s when he asked the question he meant to ask from the start.
"Tell me, Tae-Min, what can you do to get your family back?"
Ryu didn’t even think once, as a word came out of his mouth instinctively, "Anything."
"I’ll do whatever it takes to get them back."
The man smiled again, but this one felt genuine and... warm.
"Good."
Snap
Ryu barely had any time to register his words when he suddenly found his guts lurching upwards, and his organs trying to escape.
’Huh?’
It took him 2 seconds to realize the situation he was in.
’Am I falling?’
He found himself falling from the 56th floor.
He looked up, only to find the man standing there, with the same expression as before, as he got smaller and smaller fast.
"Good Luck!"
He heard these words from tens of meters away, as if he whispered them to him.
He was accelerating at speeds he had never experienced.
"What the fuck."
These were his last words before his body slammed against the hard concrete.
Bang!
’It fucking hurts.’
Ryu groaned as he felt his consciousness slipping into the darkness.
A plethora of screams and shouts entered his ears, but he couldn’t make out those muffled voices.
And the last thing he saw was God’s messenger somehow appearing in front of him... watching him die.
’It’s like magic.’