Chapter 8 - The Locked Room

Choseon was a prostitute who had only recently put her hair up and entered the trade.

Naturally, she was still young and firm. By contrast, that bitch Aeng-Aeng, whom Machil bedded every payday, was the cheapest prostitute at the Bongyang Inn. He did not sleep with her because he liked her. His pockets were shallow, leaving him no choice.

'Today's different.'

With his purse this full, he wanted to bed a woman of somewhat “higher quality” for once. The money he had now should easily buy him a night with Choseon.

In his mind, he was already slapping Choseon's firm buttocks. His groin stirred of its own accord.

Afraid someone on the street might notice, he paused to calm his excitement before hurrying toward the Bongyang Inn again. Perhaps because of his anticipation, his steps felt several times lighter than usual, and he arrived in no time.

"Welcome! Well, if it isn't my friend! It's been a while."

The waiter at the Bongyang Inn recognized him and offered a warm greeting. He called every regular either “sir” or “my friend.” “Sir” meant a customer who looked important; “my friend” meant an ordinary fellow he need not take too seriously.

Machil knew this perfectly well, but he chose not to care. He knew just as well that nowhere else would he receive even that much respect.

"Fetch Choseon for me."

"Choseon? Not Aeng-Aeng?"

"That's right."

The waiter's eyes narrowed. Naturally, Machil knew exactly what that look meant.

"I've got money. Here."

He tossed the waiter the leather pouch with all the money in it. It contained his entire month's wages—and, of course, the money Horse-Mute Sam had given him.

The waiter caught the pouch and peered inside, looking a little surprised.

"You didn't steal this, did you?"

"You little bastard!"

"Well, if you didn't, that's fine. Why get angry over a little question? Go wait in the room at the very end of the second floor. I'll send Choseon right up."

An inn normally provided food and lodging, but the Bongyang Inn was a little different.

It sold pleasure as well as those two necessities, doing business in partnership with the red-light district behind Fengyang's bustling commercial streets.

It was not alone. All the nearby inns operated the same way, and the arrangement had revived businesses that had been on their last legs. The authorities knew perfectly well what was going on but turned a blind eye. After all, many of the establishments' best customers were officials. They were receiving handsome bribes, too.

Money and women.

In any world, the two went hand in hand. Put another way, no matter how low his station, a man with money could have a beautiful woman, if only for a little while. That was the essence of the world.

Whether the money was found, stolen, seized, boiled, or earned—it made no difference where it came from.

Money bore no name tag. Money was simply money.

The waiter was soon grinning as he ushered Machil into the Bongyang Inn. Whether Machil had stolen the money or not, all he cared about was making a sale. If Machil was hauled away afterward, that was none of his business.

Offended by the waiter's tone, Machil nevertheless went upstairs without arguing further. The waiter told another member of the staff inside to send Choseon to Machil's room, then returned outside.

In that brief interval, a new customer had arrived at the entrance.

"Huh? You're..."

The new arrival was a man the waiter had seen once before. He looked considerably better now, but was still shabby. He was a man from the very bottom of society, whose name... or rather, whose nickname, was familiar to practically everyone in Fengyang.

"Sosam?"

Looking thoroughly cowed, Sosam glanced around him before bobbing his head.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

The waiter had already heard the rumors and knew Sosam could not speak. He had asked deliberately, knowing there would be no answer. Someone like this loitering near the Bongyang Inn might put off the other customers, so he meant to drive him away before that happened.

All this unfriendliness naturally rested on the assumption that Sosam could not possibly be a customer.

But apparently today was a little different.

Sosam—or rather, Dong Bongsu—gave a vacant smile and handed the waiter a pouch containing a few copper coins. Then, drooling, he spoke.

"Ae... Ae..."

The waiter immediately understood what he meant. He snickered.

"Little bastard. So you're a man after all. Go on in."

One corner of the waiter's mouth lifted as he gestured toward the entrance.

"Wait in the second room from the end upstairs. Aeng-Aeng will be along soon."

Without any more mumbling, Dong Bongsu stepped inside the Bongyang Inn. Watching him go, the waiter casually muttered,

"Look at it this way, and Aeng-Aeng's a pitiful bitch, too. She's making every halfwit in Fengyang a brother-in-cunt."

Of course, the waiter could not see the white-toothed smile on Dong Bongsu's face.

TAP TAP TAP.

Dong Bongsu reached the second floor and entered the second room from the end.

It was none other than...

the room next to Machil's.

● ● ●

Meanwhile, Machil and Choseon were together in the room at the end of the hall. Machil's attention was entirely occupied.

A shadow slipped up behind him, but Machil never noticed. He had no attention to spare for anything else.

Choseon was equally distracted. Neither of them noticed the shadow's presence.

Slowly, the shadow raised a length of cloth held between both hands above Machil's head. Then, in an instant—

"Ghk!"

Before Machil could realize what was happening, the shadow looped the cloth around his neck and twisted it tight.

Machil's eyes widened. Only a fragment of a cry escaped him. His hands, which had been gripping and moving Choseon's buttocks, seized his attacker's hands, but his strength was not enough.

His bloodshot eyes rolled upward until their dark centers disappeared. His whole body shook with the terror of approaching death.

As a result, Choseon was moving toward climax even faster.

Machil's lower body, trembling at tremendous speed like a vibrator, drove her into a frenzy.

"Aaaah! Ah..."

Choseon did not know that these movements were his final rally before death.

At last, her eyes lost their focus. That was how extraordinary Machil's final trembling was.

Soon, the violent trembling stopped. The shadow immediately pressed a knee into Machil's lower back, moving his body to conceal what had happened from Choseon.

The shadow—Dong Bongsu—kept up the deception. Machil's neck was already broken, but Choseon remained unaware that he was dead.

Leaving Choseon to scream in ecstasy, Dong Bongsu stared into empty air as though checking something. For a little while, intercourse between his knee and Choseon continued uninterrupted while he remained that way.

A short while later, Dong Bongsu finished his inspection. He unwound the cloth from Machil's neck and wrapped it around Choseon's.

CRACK.

With that brief sound, her slender neck broke, leaving her head hanging limply.

"Ghk."

Choseon was truly an unlucky woman. If Machil had not acted on an unexpected whim today, the woman who died would have been Aeng-Aeng instead. With one last strangled cry, Choseon departed this world.

Her only consolation was that she lost her life just as she reached the Western Pure Land.

Who knew? Perhaps she would remain in the Western Pure Land and enjoy eternal happiness.

Dong Bongsu stared into empty air, checking something just as he had after killing Machil. He was checking for a change in his experience.

The experience bar had changed. Only a tiny amount, but a yellow gauge had unmistakably appeared within it. It was scarcely more than a speck, yet he could spot it immediately because there had been no change at all before.

Insects and rats gave no experience.

Humans, however, were definitely different. Had today's murders produced no change in his experience, Dong Bongsu's subsequent course would have been entirely different.

Of course, there was a problem: the amount of experience was far too small. Consequently, he had failed to determine whether the amount varied with the victim's strength. That was why he had left a gap between killing Machil and killing Choseon.

Choseon, at least, had been granted a blissfully unwitting departure to paradise.

SWISH, SNAP, RATTLE, TAP...

The sounds of work continued for a while.

Dong Bongsu hung the two bodies from a beam supported by the pillars beneath the roof. Now their deaths were suicides. In fact, he could have put the bodies in his Inventory and disposed of them elsewhere, but he had chosen to make them look like suicides instead. He judged that this would cause fewer complications.

Once he had finished, he approached the wall. A cloth handsomely embroidered with a tiger-stripe pattern hung over it like a blind.

SWISH.

Dong Bongsu drew the cloth aside, revealing a wall of wooden posts lined up like this: 111111... The posts stood side by side, supporting the beam, which in turn supported the inverted-V-shaped roof. Most houses in Fengyang were built using this sort of assembly construction. Grooves were cut into the wooden posts at various points so that the pieces interlocked as they were stacked together. In a house built this way, removing a post or two would not bring the roof down.

As if to prove it, the very last post was missing. In its place was an opening large enough for a person to pass through.

How on earth had that happened?

By ordinary means, removing just that single post was impossible. An assembled house was like an intricate Lego structure. Removing a piece from the middle without first dismantling it piece by piece from the top was exceedingly difficult.

But...

Dong Bongsu was no ordinary person.

Half human, half character.

He could accomplish things that no one else in this world could.