Chapter 2 — Evil Spirit
It was past three in the morning.
There was hardly anyone on the dark streets.
It was so late that every shop had turned off its lights and closed for the night. Only the convenience stores remained brightly lit and open for business.
The convenience store located at a five-way intersection in a residential neighborhood was no exception.
"Please ring these up."
A woman placed some soju, beer, and a few simple snacks on the counter.
"Ah... yes."
The clerk answered her.
He looked to be in his thirties. His body was painfully thin, and his cheekbones protruded so sharply that his face almost resembled a skull.
The woman, dressed in a thin blouse and short skirt, always came around this time to buy alcohol and snacks.
Through the thin, almost transparent fabric of her blouse, the curves of her full chest were clearly visible.
She was not even wearing a bra, making what lay beneath the fabric plainly visible.
The clerk couldn't take his eyes off her chest.
"Are you not going to ring it up?"
The woman spoke irritably.
"Ah! Yes! It's fifteen thousand won altogether."
Seeing the displeasure in her eyes, the clerk hurriedly put everything into a plastic bag.
The woman paid by card, picked up the bag containing her alcohol and snacks, and left the convenience store.
There were quite a few women like her living alone in this neighborhood who came to convenience stores late at night to buy simple lunchboxes, alcohol, and snacks.
Most of them worked at bars and entertainment establishments on Rodeo Street in the downtown district.
Three in the morning the following day.
The same woman entered the convenience store again.
Just like yesterday, she bought soju, beer, and snacks.
Unlike yesterday, however, she was wearing a revealing camisole with thin straps and extremely short hot pants.
Her pale shoulders and navel were completely exposed.
Part of her full chest also rose above the top of the camisole.
The short hot pants exposed her provocative curves and smooth, firm thighs, stealing the clerk's attention once again.
"Mister! Ring these up!"
"Ah! Yes!"
At her words, the clerk hurriedly packed her purchases again.
The woman laughed as though she found his reaction amusing. She paid just like yesterday and left the convenience store.
"Slurp..."
Without even realizing it, the clerk wiped the saliva running from the corner of his mouth.
Once the woman was gone, he stepped out from behind the counter.
He entered the office at the back of the convenience store, opened the refrigerator, and took out a piece of meat wrapped in plastic.
He removed the wrap, picked up the meat, and began chewing it raw.
Blood had pooled around the uncooked flesh.
Every time he chewed, blood trickled down the corners of his mouth.
After finishing the meat, the clerk took out a cigarette and lit it.
"Fuu..."
He released a long stream of smoke and tried to calm himself.
It had probably started after he watched that movie.
It was a movie about a murderer.
During a war, three soldiers deserted the front lines and hid inside an isolated villa deep in the forest.
As deserters, they intended to remain there until the fighting calmed down.
Inside the villa were a young brother and sister who had been separated from their parents during the evacuation.
The soldiers locked up the children.
Every once in a while, they gave them some of the food stored in the villa while living comfortably themselves.
Then a problem arose.
A massive snowstorm made it impossible to leave the villa.
They became completely isolated, as though they had been shipwrecked on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean.
Food became the greatest problem.
Because of the brutal winter and heavy snow, there were no animals to hunt in the forest.
The food stored inside the villa had also run out long ago.
One day, when everyone was nearly starving to death, the soldiers took the young girl away.
Later, they returned with meat soup.
Unlike before, the soldiers treated the boy kindly and encouraged him to eat the soup.
The boy was starving, but he realized what kind of meat was inside.
He refused to eat it.
The soldiers then forcefully spooned the soup into his mouth.
The boy resisted, but he was no match for the strength of grown soldiers.
In the end, he ate the soup while crying.
Later, the boy escaped from the villa.
After growing into a young man, he tracked down all of those soldiers and killed them.
Then he ate every one of their corpses.
That was how the young man became a murderer who enjoyed the taste of human flesh.
Ever since childhood, the convenience store clerk had been unusually obsessed with food.
He ate two or three times as much as ordinary people.
Yet no matter how much he ate, he only became thinner.
The amount of food wasn't the problem.
No matter how much he ate and ate, his hunger never disappeared.
After watching that movie, the clerk began wondering what it would be like to eat a person.
He even started thinking that perhaps eating human flesh would finally end the endless hunger inside him.
As an experiment, he tried eating beef and pork raw.
It felt surprisingly satisfying.
After that, his desire to taste human flesh became even stronger.
And every night, when he saw the woman who came to the store at three in the morning, that desire continued to grow.
Jingle, jingle.
Hearing the bell hanging above the entrance, the clerk hurriedly came out of the office and returned to the counter.
Another woman entered the convenience store.
The clerk's narrow eyes widened.
He had never seen a woman so beautiful and voluptuous in his entire life.
Despite the early-summer weather, the woman wore a tight black leather jacket and matching leather pants that clung closely to her body.
She had short-cut hair, snow-white skin, vivid red lips, and a chest far larger than the woman who had left moments earlier.
Her long, straight legs were equally provocative.
The clerk's teeth began trembling from the overwhelming desire to eat her.
The woman in the black leather jacket approached him.
She leaned her face close to his.
"What is it? Are you dying to eat me?"
The fragrance of her skin and her warm breath filled the clerk's nose.
She smelled unbelievably delicious.
"Want to try taking a bite?"
The woman slowly lowered the zipper of her leather jacket.
The large chest that had been compressed beneath the jacket sprang free.
"Uuugh..."
As though hypnotized, the convenience store clerk began drooling and moved his mouth toward her chest.
His desire to finally do what he had only imagined until now overwhelmed his reason.
The woman giggled.
"Hohoho. How cute. I thought the wavelength of your soul energy felt strangely familiar. Looks like I came to the right place after all."
She suddenly grabbed the clerk's face with both hands.
"Aaaagh!"
The clerk screamed as her fingers crushed his face with terrifying strength.
It felt as though his head had been caught inside an industrial press.
The pain was so terrible that it seemed his skull might shatter at any moment.
The woman smiled.
"All right. This big sister Mongra, the Soul-Returning Explosive Ghost, has caught something that looks fairly decent."
"If any of you like this one, why don't you come out?"
Mongra stuck out her bright red tongue.
Something small and insect-like began crawling out from deep inside her throat.
But upon closer inspection, it wasn't an insect.
It looked like a tiny naked man.
Two horns grew from its forehead like a dokkaebi. It had sharp teeth and long, wildly disheveled hair.
