Sunlight in the Dark Sin
“Chen Meilan, 25 years old. One year ago, due to alcohol abuse and failure to fulfill guardianship duties, she caused her one-year-old daughter to suffocate on vomit and die. The court sentenced her to two years in prison with a two-year suspension. After the verdict, she showed no remorse whatsoever and instead intensified her nightly binge drinking.”
Park Mo’s voice carried no trace of warmth as he spoke into the recorder, documenting Chen Meilan’s case. The recorder was an old-fashioned model, its metal casing ice-cold, the microphone grille fine and dense like a net that rejected all emotion. He always recorded the crimes before each “restoration”—not for evidence, but to remind himself: the world was broken, and he was merely the one responsible for patching it back together.
The basement air had been precisely stripped of moisture by the constant-temperature system, dry to the point of solidification. Every breath carried the cold bite of metal. There were no windows, only a row of shadowless lamps overhead, their cold white light flattening every shadow like an operating theater. The walls were medical-grade stainless steel, reflecting the light with an alienating sheen of purity. No dust, no odor—he had spent three years transforming this place into an absolutely sterile sealed space.
Park Mo stood before the operating table, fastening the last button of his black shirt with deliberate slowness. The collar sat flush against his Adam’s apple, the fabric’s friction against his skin ensuring absolute distance from any contamination. He disliked any unexpected contact, even the looseness of clothing. He donned a black leather waterproof apron that seemed to swallow light, then rolled his sleeves precisely two turns, revealing forearms corded with muscle. Cyan veins traced beneath the skin, visible from a distance like the corner of a marble statue—no pulse apparent, as if the blood had long been drained, leaving only a precision instrument.
He took out a pair of thick black latex gloves designed for tattooing. The gloves were cold and dull to the touch. He pulled them on slowly and meticulously, ensuring every inch of skin was sealed beneath the chilled rubber. To him, these were not mere tools but a barrier refusing any warm contact with the world. For twenty years, he had learned to keep everything potentially contaminating at bay—odors, sweat, body heat, emotion, desire.
He put on safety goggles. Behind the lenses, his gaze was calm as still water, undisturbed.
Lying on the table was Chen Meilan, 25 years old—a body so exquisitely curvaceous it was as if the heavens had personally spoon-fed her beauty. Full-breasted, tiny-waisted, with lines so lush and pronounced that they bordered on provocative, she bore no trace of exercise, yet her figure was naturally sculpted to the kind that would make roadside drunks whistle crudely as she passed. Even now, deep in drunken stupor, hungover and unresponsive, her body retained its lethal allure: breasts high and heavy, waist impossibly narrow, hips rounding into a perfect swell, skin pale under the shadowless lamps with an unhealthy pallor that did nothing to dim the innate sensuality. She was the kind of woman who could stand on any street corner and draw hungry stares without effort.
But to Park Mo, all of it only deepened his disgust. The more flawless the exterior, the more it mocked him—like a cruel irony. It encased the most rotten soul, the filthiest sin. That innate seductiveness wasn’t a gift; it was a second insult to the victim: a body meant to nurture life, yet used by her for indulgence, for drink, ultimately to destroy an innocent child with her own hands. He refused to linger on it, afraid that even that natural allure might contaminate his sterile world. In his eyes, she was not a woman—just a defective piece of flesh awaiting processing, its surface brilliance only highlighting the decay within.
He completed a clinical-grade intravenous line with lightning speed. Thirty seconds later, the breathing waveform on the monitor flattened into calm. To ensure the upcoming “reckoning” would not be disrupted by any physiological twitching, he took out a tube of heavy medical anesthetic cream. The ointment was milky white, carrying a faint medicinal scent—the only odor he permitted, because it was clean enough.
Expressionless, he spread the cream evenly across Chen Meilan’s abdomen. His palm pressed against that slender yet lax waist, steady as a block of ice. His fingertips, coated in ointment, slid downward without a trace of tenderness, invading the most hidden shadow at the edge. To him, this invasive application was merely priming a damaged canvas—devoid of desire, filled only with revulsion. His nostrils filled with the stench of her hangover, the sharp reek of cheap liquor mixed with the sour belch of bile. He frowned slightly.
Park Mo turned and walked to the triple-locked dark-gray safe. Two passwords, one physical key—the gears clicked dully as the evil sleeping within was awakened.
He removed a brown frosted reagent bottle. With extreme patience, he tore off a strip of translucent sealing film, stretching it to its limit with his fingertips. Unscrewing the frosted cap produced a crisp “creak-creak” that echoed in the small tattoo room. In that moment, the air held no pungent smell. This absolute “olfactory vacuum” instead brought a near-terrorizing sense of purity.
Inside the bottle were brilliant orange-red crystals, their color like a sunset on the verge of vanishing—yet colder and more invasive than any sunset. This arrogant, malevolent hue refracted unnatural metallic light beneath the shadowless lamps. It was the finest pigment Park Mo used when restoring Tang Dynasty frescoes—and tonight, his instrument of judgment.
He took a white porcelain mortar, movements steady. The stainless steel spoon clinked crisply against the crystals as he ground them—“creak, creak”—the moan of minerals being crushed. He added a trace of carrier solution; the dry orange-red rapidly bled into the liquid. This chrome salt solution appeared under normal light as a toxically beautiful amber, viscous and icy.
“Alcohol accelerates capillary dilation, so later, your skin will shed more tears on your behalf.”
He murmured to the unconscious woman, his voice devoid of temperature—like stating a chemical equation.
The tattoo machine emitted a fine, high-frequency buzz.
Park Mo switched off the main lights and activated a dim purple UV source. Under this eerie cold violet glow, Chen Meilan’s pale skin took on a deathly gray-white, while the mixture of chrome salt and latent tattoo fluid on the needle ignited in fluorescent reaction the instant it touched her.
Every needle penetration was fixed at exactly 1.5 millimeters.
The needle entered precisely, moving continuously; the ghostly orange-red began to develop beneath the skin. He worked with the reverence of restoring a priceless relic, yet also the detachment of dissecting a curse. As the fluid was injected, the outline of a curled, malformed fetus gradually formed directly above Chen Meilan’s uterus. The fetus twisted in extreme agony, head thrown back, limbs bent as if clawing and screaming through the belly.
At the center of that orange-red shadow, Park Mo drew a long, trembling “umbilical cord,” curving naturally across the abdomen with ritualistic grace, extending until it vanished into the ointment-smeared shadow at the end—like binding her forever to the life she had personally destroyed.
Exactly one hour—no more, no less.
Park Mo removed the sweat-soaked black latex gloves. Under normal light, Chen Meilan’s skin appeared unchanged. But the highly toxic chrome salt had already bonded irreversibly with her proteins, lying in wait.
Whenever this woman lifted a glass, the alcohol in her blood would act as a catalyst, triggering violent oxidation of the subdermal chromium ions. Pain like thousands of red-hot needles would erupt deep in her flesh, again and again, until she could no longer raise a cup.
“Since you couldn’t feed her, I’ll plant her back inside you.”
Park Mo regarded the body one final time, expertly sealing her into a custom transport bag. The long zip slid over her form without the slightest reaction. He watched the last trace of orange rinse away in the sink, a faint pathological relief finally surfacing in his eyes.
This was not crime. This was merely his professional ethics as a “restorer.”
The world was broken; he had to mend it piece by piece. With the most toxic hue, repair the filthiest bones.
Park Mo drove back to his professor’s apartment near Seoul National University, skillfully avoiding all surveillance cameras en route. At the campus gate, he lowered the window and offered the security guard a polite yet distant smile. His black electric SUV was coated in ordinary dust, allowing it to blend into any cheap neighborhood, but the interior had been completely customized—minimalist genuine leather exuding expensive, cold elegance.
He did not rest. Flashing through his mind was not Chen Meilan’s oily, nauseating body, but the wound he had personally implanted beneath her skin—one that would never heal. He initiated his mechanical cleansing routine: washing the car first, waiting for the ozone disinfectant to eliminate the last trace of alcohol odor, sniffing carefully to confirm only the sharp, dry scent of a photocopier room remained before heading upstairs.
Then he scrubbed his fingers repeatedly, hot water scalding the skin red. He stared at the faintly glowing knuckles in the mirror, confirming no residue remained. The black shirt worn during the tattooing was folded neatly and sealed in a garbage bag; he turned on the water heater as if the entire incident had never occurred.
Changing into deep-gray silk pajamas, he sat at the computer. Park Mo was satisfied with his current state. He had moved to the professor apartments near Seoul National University for quiet, convenience in work and teaching, and to indulge his grandfather’s vanity about elite circles. The larger properties in Gangnam were fine, but the old man’s social obligations always brought noise that gave him headaches, so he simply left those assets for the old man to manage—mutual benefit.
He opened the computer casually. Tomorrow was the first class of the new semester—a public lecture, no homework or exams required—but he still routinely reviewed the roster.
The mouse scrolled down mechanically.
“Park Fei.”
The name slid past, then he moved it back.
He paused on it for three seconds.
The scene from lunch in the cafeteria surfaced. He had been sitting at the next table, not intending to parse the surrounding noise, yet the conversation had still filtered in.
“…Choi Eun-ho is terrifying… The last tutor for his sister dropped out and ended up in the hospital, and she had to pay a huge penalty.”
“It’s fine, the pay is good, the work seems easy. It’ll help with rent and ease the burden on my parents. My little brother should be coming to Seoul National University next year too.”
The voice had been clear and refreshing, with a soft Jiangnan accent; the lingering warmth hadn’t registered much at the time. He only remembered how she sat—adjusting her half-skirt as she lowered herself, her T-shirt riding up slightly to reveal a patch of vivid red birthmark at her waist.
That birthmark was strikingly red, like sunlight reflecting off snow—almost offensively vibrant. In his consistently gray-white, sterile world, that red felt too abrupt, too… unclean.
Park Mo closed the computer, turned off the lights, and lay down.
He didn’t think it was anything significant. But in the last sliver of consciousness before sleep, he inexplicably thought of that Choi Eun-ho. That place—how could it possibly be easy?
That faint, wind-like concern brushed past once before sleep, then dispersed.
