I Have An Unrequited Love For A Murderer - Chapter 1

As of today, I have decided to put an end to my months of unrequited love. After class, I am going to confess my feelings to Ki Junghoo. My legs trembled in a sense of nervousness.

The table trembled along the legs, followed by the hands neatly placed on it. It was no exaggeration to say that my entire body was shaking. I couldn’t stop shaking even with the annoyed look the person sitting next to me sent. It was because the class would soon be over.

“Well, good work everyone. Then I’ll end the class here. Have a nice vacation.”

Once the professor’s words were over, everyone got up and headed outside as if they had waited for this moment. The old lecture hall was too small to accommodate 60 students. Seeing Ki Junghoo’s dark brown head leaving far away, I also hurriedly packed my bag and book and stood up. He was already gone when I was swept away by the crowd and finally managed to get out into the hallway.

“Oh….”

I sighed deeply in regret and stomped on the innocent asphalt floor for no apparent reason. Then I turned on the cell phone memo application and deleted ‘Plan A: Give the letter after lecture’. Plans B, C, D, and E were listed below. I stopped by a cafe on campus and went around the campus aimlessly with a vanilla latte. After looking around the places where Ki Junghoo might be, the last place I headed was the Art Museum. As expected, I saw the person crouching at the end of the building.

“Mimi yah.”

“Meow.”

The cat cried in response to Ki Junghoo’s voice calling for him. I took a step behind him. As soon as I tried to call his name, touching the confession letter I had put in my pocket, I heard a voice calling him from afar.

“Junghoo yah!”

I turned my steps toward Ki Junghoo naturally and headed into the art school building. When I glanced behind me, Ki Junghoo and his friend were having a conversation naturally.

‘I also want to be close to Junghoo like that.’

I envied his friends who called Ki Junghoo’s name in a friendly way.

“Junghoo yah.”

I put Ki Junghoo’s name in my mouth for no reason. He used to come into the art museum, look around the first floor, and check his appearance in the men’s bathroom. Of course, Ki Junghoo has long since left. I was so pathetic in the situation where I couldn’t confess and was at a loss. Sighing, I went to the place where Ki Junghoo had been sitting until now and called the cat.

“Mimi yah.”

“Meow.”

“Good boy, come here.”

Mimi [1] , short for the Beauty of the Art Museum, was so pretty that the name beauty was not at waste. Is it possible to get Ki Junghoo’s attention because he’s so pretty? For a moment, I was jealous of Mimi, who was loved by Ki Junghoo, but I stopped because I felt shabby being jealous of animals, not humans. I tickled the cat’s chin that approached him without doubt and muttered.

“Please wish me success in my confession today. If you go out with me, I’ll buy you 5,000 freeze-dried fish [2] .”

“Meow.”

I woke up after hearing an answer that I didn’t know whether he was rooting for the confession or talking nonsense. “Plan B: Meeting at a cafe inside campus and giving a letter,” “Plan C: Meeting in front of Business Department’s Building,” “Plan D: Giving a letter where Mimi is located,” and “Plan E: Meeting and giving a letter on the way” were deleted. All the things I’ve been thinking about all day last night were deleted, but it was fine.

Anyway, there will be an end-of-semester party with the business department at 8 o’clock today, so I could have waited and waited from 9 o’clock, and if the drinking party was over, I could have followed behind and confessed. Of course, there was no guarantee of success. To be honest, failure has already been expected. But I didn’t want to give up. Maybe today was the last chance to see Ki Junghoo.

“Good-bye, boys.”

Contrary to expectations that it would end at 10 o’clock, the business department’s end-of-semester party continued until the second and third rounds. Eta [3] was not nicknamed the Department of Alcohol for no reason. Although it was almost dawn, Ki Junghoo was able to head home more than an hour after the drinking session was over because he was taking care of his juniors and colleagues who were drunk.

I threw the coffee cans into the trash can to prevent falling asleep. I pulled down my hat all the way and followed Ki Junghoo. Unlike usual, he walked into a residential alley, not an officetel complex. He seemed to have found a new shortcut. It didn’t matter because it seemed like a better place to confess to a dark residential area without street lights than a crowded place.

Halt.

Ki Junghoo stopped in front of a house with a green gate that did not match him. Today was the first time I followed him to his house. It was amazing that Ki Junghoo lived in such a place. It was because I knew how expensive the clothes he was wearing were. As I peeped at the back of taking out the key and turning it, I rubbed the sweat soaked in my palm against my pants.

‘Now? Is it now?’

When I was about to take a step toward Ki Junghoo, measuring the timing to confess, a man pushed him through the door and escaped. His head was tightly covered with blue tape worn in the scatter and the arms were tied back.

A man who was obviously not normal ran and tripped on his own foot, and Ki Junghoo, who was pushed by the man, got up and approached the man. And watching them all, I turned my head around to understand the current situation, but I had no choice but to put a lot of question marks in my head.

‘What’s going on?’

At a time when the judgment was not immediately made, Ki Junghoo, who grabbed the fallen man’s back hair, hit the man in the face.

Smack!

A loud echo penetrated my ear to say that it was a sound made by a fist and face. The hitting sound did not stop, and Ki Junghoo crushed the man’s face with his fist as if he were venting his anger and banged his face on the floor. The man’s face quickly became covered in blood and changed into an unrecognizable state.

I couldn’t even think of reporting it. I couldn’t take my eyes off Ki Junghoo, who was beating a man to death with an expressionless face, completely different from the person I knew. Ki Junghoo, who turned the man into a blood cake as if he didn’t care if he died right now, took out a handkerchief and wiped his bloody right hand.

“Yah. Don’t make a fuss, damn it.”

Ki Junghoo asked while looking at the man in blood.

“Is it because you want to die here?”

“Argh…..”

The man flinched and shook his head. Ki Junghoo smiled satisfactorily and tapped the man’s head. It was his first smile here.

“Go in on your own. I didn’t hit your leg on purpose.”

“Argh….”

“Don’t be so mean, get up quickly. Do you want to crawl after your ankle is cut off?”

Ki Junghoo’s shallow speech made me unable to close my mouth. Ki Junghoo, who is kind to everyone and trusted by the professors, was a psychopath who beat people to death behind their backs. It was a fact that anyone who had ever talked to him would never believe. I couldn’t believe it either after watching all his crazy acts. I curled up as much as I could because I thought I might die if I was caught by him. I was going to run away once Ki Junghoo took the man in.

Then, I made eye contact with the man who was being dragged by Ki Junghoo.

“Ugh! Ugh!”

I covered my mouth and curled up more at the sight of the man who was screaming as if asking for help. I closed my eyes and ears tightly and thought to myself.

‘Please… Please, just pass by….’

“What?”

But when I woke up, Ki Junghoo was standing in front of me. Tears came to my eyes when I saw him standing crookedly, turning on his cell phone flash.

“Baek Yujin ssi?”

“Yes, yes! I was just on my way home… There was a strange sound so…”

“Your house isn’t here.”

Ki Junghoo’s words made my mouth shut. I thought I would be considered as just a passerby #1 from some group project to him, but I didn’t expect that he would remember my name and even my address. When I lowered my head, Ki Junghoo looked around, sighed deeply, and looked at me again. The way he looked at me was very different from before.

“Did you see it all?”

“Yes? Ah…. it’s… about that…”

I knew I had to say I didn’t know, but I couldn’t turn my eyes off the blood stains on Ki Junghoo’s cheeks and his clothes. He put his cell phone in his pocket and picked up a brick on the ground.

“Follow me, too.”

With the massive impact to my head and my sight darkening, I fainted on the spot.

***

1. 미술관 미묘 (The Beauty of the Art Museum) is shortened into Mimi by using the first ‘미’ ‘Mi’ of the two words.
2. 열빙 is freeze-dried fish for cats. They’re usually dried frozen mackerel or sardines.
3. 에타 is the short from for “EveryTime,” an online service for university students. It’s provided as an app to 400 universities where you can make timetables, post lecture evaluations and communicate in bulletin boards/forums.