Red Dot - 72

– Day 6 –

It was a wise decision to leave Jian, who still didn’t understand the cruelty of humans, and the fragile Hwang Gyeong-oh behind. If they had been together, they would probably have been in a daze for hours, maybe even panicking and having nightmares day and night.

“Ugh…”

Unable to bear it any longer, Seo Chang-min turned his head with a contorted face. His tightly clenched fists were trembling with anger.

Through Chang-min’s effort to contain his rising anger, his strained voice flowed out.

“Is this also just ‘something we’ve seen before’?”

Chang-min, unable to decipher what was going on in his mind, turned to Kang Junseong’s back. Standing beside him was Do Hanseo, who had wiped away his smile but showed no emotion, even after witnessing the gruesome scene.

“…No.”

Junseong, who spat out a wavering voice as if it might break apart, kneeled down, resting one knee on the ground. As his body lowered, partially obstructing his view, Chang-min took another deep breath.

Where Junseong and his group stood was the living room of a high-rise apartment.

It was elegantly decorated, but at the moment, no one would spare a glance at such surroundings. The vivid stench of ‘human blood’ permeated the entire house, emanating from every corner. Even from the bodies of the three people they were staring at, there was a faint smell of blood.

Junseong couldn’t tear his eyes away from the three bodies filled with his sight.

A father, a mother, and a young man who had just entered high school.

The way the three dead bodies were arranged, leaning against each other in a triangle shape, was enough to raise doubts about the mental state of the perpetrator. It was even more unsettling to see their legs stretched out long and straight, as if meticulously laid out.

But the most grotesque aspect lay elsewhere.

With the mother and the young man.

Their heads were resting on their thighs. Whether to prevent their heads from rolling off or to hold up their chins with both hands.

Even their eyes, swollen with extreme terror, were wide open, protruding, and staring blankly, unaware of their demise.

It was evident to anyone that their deaths were not caused by the ‘deceased.’

The ‘mountaineer’ had sliced their throats like cutting meat, and to make matters worse, he had casually placed their heads on his palms as if offering a gift. It was a gruesome act beyond words like ‘sadistic.’

Junseong inflicted cold taunts on himself, fearing that his head might become a mess from the overwhelming heat. He struggled tirelessly to keep his dizzying mind clear.

A sight never seen before.

Facing a horrific event that he had never even imagined in his dreams, Junseong tightly clenched his trembling lips. He couldn’t take his eyes off the three gruesomely murdered bodies.

‘Why… Why in the world…!’

He questioned.

Originally, there was no reason for ‘someone other than zombies’ to attack this place.

Even if the outside was teeming with zombies, as long as they didn’t open the door, they could have lived here for days, even months. These people, who had ‘justifiable anxiety’ about the zombie situation, were fully prepared with stockpiled food and water filling a room, weapons as alternatives to rescue, and supplies to rescue themselves. The three bodies in front of him were the embodiment of their preparedness.

The only reason Junseong and his group had come to them was for one thing.

To obtain a ‘solution’ to resolve this zombie situation.

If not for that, there would have been no reason to visit this place. At least, he wouldn’t have wanted to see the face of the ‘director,’ one of the culprits who had caused the zombie virus outbreak. Whether he was living comfortably without any guilt or falling into depression due to guilt, it wouldn’t have mattered at all.

In the dream, after much ado, the solution they had finally reached, and the indispensable presence of the director to obtain it, could not be ignored. That’s why Junseong meticulously planned and repeatedly revised the plan over several chapters, calculating the right timing to bring the director out of the house and head to ‘that place’.

That day had come.

Just like the day when they finally succeeded in obtaining the solution in the last chapter, today, on the 6th day, he reached out to take a step to pull the director out of this safe zone.

However, what awaited them was nothing but the three corpses.

Junseong looked at the director’s corpse with a bewildered gaze.

Unlike the other two corpses, the director’s had no ‘head’. Horrifically, someone who had killed the director’s family had taken his head with them.

Though the exact process could only be speculated, it wasn’t difficult to guess why this had happened and who the perpetrator behind the killings was.

Even Hanseo, who had been quietly observing the situation, seemed to agree.

“I think I know who did it.”

While the other two looked bewildered, Hanseo’s calm gaze swept over the three corpses.

“Instantaneous. This guy knows how to use a knife.”

At Hanseo’s words, Chang-min stepped closer to the corpses. Though he had not wanted to look closely due to the horror, as he scrutinized the cut surface of the neck, he felt a surge of something boiling up inside him. Holding back his emotions, he looked closely and, indeed, the section where the neck was cut was not perfectly clean, but surprisingly neat.

‘But being able to recognize this…’

A chilling question enveloped Chang-min.

Whether he liked it or not, Chang-min had seen scenes of people dying or their corpses before. It was a natural part of being a current member of a special forces unit with many overseas deployments.

So, he could also recognize the shape of the cut section of the corpses’ necks.

Whether they were cut while alive, whether they died instantly, whether the person using the knife was skilled or inexperienced, whether they hesitated to kill.

As Chang-min saw it, whoever had cut the family’s necks was undoubtedly skilled and experienced in ‘murder.’ He didn’t think it was a word that should be associated with the killer, but if he had to express it, he was a veteran in killing people with a knife.

But the perpetrator didn’t use a heavy knife.

Although it was difficult to tell if the knife itself was very sharp, it was clear that half of the cut surface penetrated right down to the bone as if it had been done in one stroke. However, it would have been difficult to cut through the bone in one go, so the area near the neck bone was a bit messy. They then moved several times with force, eventually cutting through the neck bone and the rest in one stroke. If the blade wasn’t good, the flesh end would have moved to one side like it was following the wind, but there was no trace of even that kind of sharpening.

Given that the neck was cut like that, instant death was natural. The knife suddenly stabbed into the neck without even closing the eyes, and then the neck bone was quickly cut along with it. In a country like Korea where public safety is good, it would be difficult to find such an unhesitant killer’s skill in killing.

While Chang-min was looking at the corpse’s neck, Hanseo bent down and reached out towards the arm of the family’s male student. Touching the fingers, arms, shoulder joints, and the jaw of the detached head as casually as someone without any emotions, Hanseo said,

“It’s still stiff. It’s definitely him.”

At Hanseo’s words, Junseong frowned.

Everyone goes through the post-mortem stiffness phase.

Every nook and cranny of the body enters the post-mortem stiffness phase roughly around 12 hours after death.

The post-mortem stiffness begins to loosen roughly around 30 hours after death.

Since the indoor temperature was maintained at a suitable level, there would be little change in the typical post-mortem stiffness time, so even a non-expert could roughly estimate when they died. And based on that, they could also guess who did this.

The family died roughly within two days.

The only thing that could completely overturn Junseong’s foresight was a ‘variable’ with a similar foresight.

And Junseong and Hanseo had seen that variable move a rescue helicopter yesterday afternoon. Whether he was on board or not, I don’t know.

In conclusion, it was the bundle of variables, the boss of the long-term trading organization, who had caused this.

Chang-min had also heard about the long-term trading organization boss. He couldn’t help but know about the “reality” of the Inhan Hospital incident from Junseong. Even about yesterday, he heard about his sudden movement with the rescue helicopter.

However, Chang-min found Hanseo in front of him scarier than some unknown and audacious variable like the boss. It was simply unbelievable that Hanseo, a university student, could calmly analyze these horrific corpses.

Junseong, who had been staring at the corpses, staggered to his feet. Even though he had seen countless corpses of “mountain people” in his dreams, the shock he felt now, knowing this was reality, was something he couldn’t escape.

As if knowing that, Hanseo wrapped his arm around Junseong’s shoulder. Junseong, with his head throbbing as if he were addicted to the smell of blood, turned towards the entrance, wrapping his trembling head with one hand. Behind him, Hanseo with an expressionless face and Chang-min, filled with embarrassment, followed.

“It’s someone much more dangerous than we thought.”

Junseong uttered a sigh mixed with resignation.

“That person knows exactly why we need the director.”

He glanced over his shoulder for a moment. Junseong looked at the headless corpse sitting squarely in the living room among the three corpses.

It seemed like the variable knew why they took the director’s “head.”

The director’s head.

No, the director’s face was the key to unlocking the facial recognition system at “that place.”