Descent of the Demon Master

>“…F*ck!” Lee Sang-Yeop swore as an ominous foreboding suddenly crept into his thoughts.
He unhesitantly sprinted toward the bathroom.

“S-sir?! Please wait for me!” Kim Do-Hyeong quickly ran after his senior soldier.

Lee Sang-Yeop ran inside the bathroom and began pounding on the closed toilet cubicle doors.

'It can't be, right? Right?'

Loud protests came from beyond the closed cubicle doors without a moment's delay.
Lee Sang-Yeop quickly moved on from those doors and kept pounding away until he suddenly stopped in front of a particular cubicle.

Bang, bang!

Despite his pounding, no one answered.
This cubicle was located in the farthest corner of the bathroom, and its door was firmly locked.
No matter how hard Lee Sang-Yeop pounded on it, no replies came his way.

“Hah-ah…” Lee Sang-Yeop involuntarily shuddered at the ominous foreboding cackling at him, then reached up to grab the top of the cubicle door.
“Hey, Do-Hyeong! I'm going up, so help me!”

“…Yes, sir!” Kim Do-Hyeong also seemed to have realized something was up and quickly grabbed Lee Sang-Yeop's feet to provide support.

Lee Sang-Yeop let out a brief yell before pulling himself up to the top of the cubicle door.
He peeked his head over and looked into the cubicle's interior, and his eyes soon caught the figure of a limp human being 'standing' by the corner.
That wasn’t all, however, for he had also discovered a lengthy 'rope' of some kind visible above the limp, unmoving figure.

Lee Sang-Yeop urgently cried out as if he was screaming, “Hey! Someone, go and bring the medic over! Right now!”

“S-sir?”

“Hurry the f*ck up, will ya?! You dumb sh*t!” Lee Sang-Yeop landed back on the solid ground, his face utterly pale.
He began to viciously kick at the cubicle door.
“Aaaaah!”

Kim Do-Hyeong also realized the severity of the situation and began ramming against the door with his shoulder.

Boom! Bang!

Only after they viciously kicked and rammed into the door several times did it finally begin to creak off the hinges.
Lee Sang-Yeop backed off before performing a near-perfect flying kick to finally break the door down, then rushed inside the cubicle.
“Corporal Kim Hak-Cheol!”

Lee Sang-Yeop hurriedly grabbed Kim Hak-Cheol's limp body hanging from the wall and tried to lift it up.
Kim Do-Hyeong discovered the shoelace tied around Kim Hak-Cheol's throat, then quickly rushed outside the bathroom while crying out at the top of his lungs.
“Mediiiiiiiiic!”

***

One of the amusing things about humanity was that they couldn't remain uninterested in other people's misfortunes or accidents.
And Noh Su-Bong was getting a good lesson on that part of humanity right at this very moment.

“Where is the goddamn ambulance?!”

“It's on its way, sir!”

“Tell them to hurry up if they don't want to see a dead man when they get here!”

Kim Hak-Cheol was lying on his back, white foam bubbling out of his mouth.
A heavily-sweating medic was next to him, performing CPR as if his life depended on it.
And then, a large crowd of spectators surrounded them, even though none of those idiots could do anything useful in this situation.

Noh Su-Bong stared at this spectacle as if it was a scene from a film.
Was it because he was calm? Of course not.

No, this situation just didn't feel 'real' to him; that was all.
Why was Kim Hak-Cheol lying on the floor like a corpse? Did someone say he…
tried to hang himself? But, how?

Noh Su-Bong's back was now soaked in cold sweat.

'Just what…
What the f*ck is happening here?'

Back when Ju Yeong-Gi hanged himself, Noh Su-Bong was flustered, but he wasn’t scared.
He still believed the situation was still under control—his control.
Everything had remained under his control afterward.
Even after the investigation got underway, he easily escaped the net of suspicion and walked around unhindered as if it was the only outcome.

The hints of things going wrong first manifested themselves after Kim Hak-Cheol began having nightmares.
And now, this situation had truly escaped from his control as it rampaged around like a runaway train.

“Get out of the way!” The paramedics jumped out of the ambulance and rushed inside the bathroom with a gurney.
They quickly placed Kim Hak-Cheol on the gurney and carried him back to the waiting ambulance.
Noh Su-Bong stood there and etched this scene into his retina.

The spectators followed outside to crowd around the ambulance.
Noh Su-Bong was among them.

'Just what the hell is happening here? What is this?'

Even now, this whole thing didn't seem real at all.
No, it was like Noh Su-Bong was still dreaming up this whole thing.
Even as the ambulance's siren noisily blared in the air as the vehicle urgently accelerated away, Noh Su-Bong stood there and stared at this spectacle in a daze.

The ambulance gradually grew smaller in the distance.
Noh Su-Bong kept staring at this unreal scene, only for a faint little voice to sober him up and bring him back to reality.

“You’re next.”

That voice was hushed, soft.
Nearly inaudible.
It was so hushed that, at first, Noh Su-Bong mistakenly thought it wasn't coming from a human being.

He needed only a moment or two to figure out the meaning behind that whisper.
Chill ran down his spine, and he hurriedly spun around to look behind him.
“W-who was that?!”

The other soldiers stared at him with puzzled faces.

Noh Su-Bong hurriedly looked around and cried out.
“Which motherf*cer was it?! Who?!”

“What are you talking about, Sergeant Noh?”

“W-who was talking to me just now? Which bastard was it?”

“…Sir, no one was talking to you.”

“W-what? Didn't you hear that? Someone was definitely talking to me, goddamn it! Wait, are you all trying to mess with me? Is that it? You motherf*ckers! Do I look like a punk to you?!” Noh Su-Bong yelled at them with his voice thick with barely-contained madness.

The soldiers around Noh Su-Bong realized that something was wrong with him, and they began to distance themselves while frowning in disapproval.

“I said, who was it, you bastards! Answer me!”

Noh Su-Bong soon found himself alone in front of the barracks' entrance.
He raised his shaking hand to rub his pale face.

'N-no, it can't be.
I must have made a mistake.'

Indeed, that whisper had to be an auditory hallucination brought on by the shock of Kim Hak-Cheol's attempted suicide.
Yes, it was all because of how flustered he was.
After all, no one else heard that whisper, no? It simply had to be that.

Noh Su-Bong desperately tried to convince himself with that logic.

'…Kim Hak-Cheol said someone was dragging him away to torture him, didn't he?'

Kim Hak-Cheol kept saying that as he steadily lost his mind.
He said that every night, every time he fell asleep… He would show up.

“…F*cking hell! That doesn't even make any goddamn sense!”

Noh Su-Bong knew that didn't make any logical sense and that such a thing could never happen.
Kim Hak-Cheol had simply gotten crushed under the weight of his guilt over Ju Yeong-Gi's matter, causing him to see terrifying illusions.
In the end, he succumbed to the mental pressure and lost his mind, eventually hanging himself.

Looking at the situation this way made everything seem so crystal clear.
However…

However, just what was with this inexplicable anxiety gnawing at him?

Noh Su-Bong tried out to pull out a cigarette from its packet.
However, his hand was trembling so much that it made him lose grip and drop the cigarette on the ground.
He wordlessly stared at the fallen cigarette.

“I…
I don't know who you are, but…!” Noh Su-Bong chewed out those words while angrily crushing the cigarette with his foot.
“…I'm going to make you pay.”

Noh Su-Bong turned around and headed back inside the barrack, his expression stiff and determined.