Chapter 1: A Clean Image
It is said that when a dying person’s final wish remains unfulfilled, their soul can never find peace. But human beings are strange creatures — our desires are never truly satisfied. We work so that we can live better lives, yet perhaps no one can remain happy by living an honest life forever. In this cruel world, sometimes we are forced to become cruel ourselves. But who could have imagined that my own cruelty would one day bring me so close to death? Let me tell you my story in a little more detail.
My name is Ven. I am a successful artist, but no one except me knows the secret behind my success. I have done many good deeds in my life, but I have committed even more sins. Even as a child, I witnessed things that could become a lifelong trauma for anyone. One evening, my mother and father began arguing. I never paid much attention to their fights, because arguments were a normal part of life in our home. But that night was not an ordinary night. While my mother was eating, my father stabbed her to death. His anger had completely taken control of him. I could do nothing but watch from a distance, and I was terrified.
At the age of seven, I witnessed something I should never have seen. I saw my mother’s blood after she was killed by my own father, and from that moment, something inside me began to change. What I had witnessed slowly turned into a desire for revenge. I lived two different lives — one for the world and another inside my home. After my mother’s death, my father never paid any attention to me. I had been angry with him since childhood, but I was too powerless to do anything. So, I painted. I dreamed that my name would not become famous because of my father; I wanted people to know me as an artist. Whether I was at school or at home, I spent most of my time painting. I was also good at my studies and was the top student in my school. In front of my teachers, I acted innocent and harmless, but deep inside, I was a monster.
This happened when I was in the twelfth grade. There was a troublemaker named Eun-woo who constantly harassed me at school. No matter where I went, he would find me and beat me. He locked me inside washrooms and took my money, but I remained silent and endured everything. One day, I was painting when Eun-woo came over and tore my painting apart. He threw all my colours onto the ground and destroyed them. The desire for revenge grew even stronger, and then an idea entered my mind — one that could finally calm the fire burning inside me.
The next day, we had Physical Education before lunch, and all the students went to the playground to play. After spending some time there, Eun-woo and his group went to the washroom, as usual. That was what they always did. They would disappear in the middle of the period and use drugs inside the washroom. No one ever said anything to them, and they would usually return to the classroom before the next period began. But that day, none of them returned. They were absent for the entire day, and everyone assumed that they had skipped school and gone somewhere else. However, during lunch, one of the students entered the washroom and saw a foot sticking out from the shower room. Someone was lying on the ground. The student screamed, and within moments, the entire school knew what had happened. Eun-woo and his group were dead. They had died after being electrocuted in the water.
The school declared it an accident and compensated their parents. The case ended there because the school did not want its reputation to be damaged. Today, eleven years have passed since that incident, but no one knows that it was never an accident. It was murder, and I was the one who did it. I had already decided that I would not give them an easy death. Before the Physical Education period, my homeroom teacher had called me to meet them, and during that time, I cut the wires connected to all the water heaters inside the shower room. Many students entered the washroom after me, but none of them used the shower room. Eun-woo and his group were the first. When they discovered that the water was cold, they turned on the heater, and after that, they could neither scream nor move.
I had taken the lives of nine boys at once, because the fire of revenge inside me could only be satisfied after their deaths. I was the top student in my school and also the class president, so no one ever suspected me. I continued to maintain the image of an innocent and harmless student. Destroying evil is extremely difficult, so why not destroy the people who carry that evil within them? That was exactly what I did. I freed the entire school from Eun-woo and his group. After that, no one troubled anyone anymore.
After finishing the twelfth grade, I completed my graduation in Art and Modern Design. After that, I took several courses related to art, painting, and design. My father had also been an artist, and his paintings were famous throughout the world. But I wanted to become even more famous than him. I knew one thing: as long as my father was alive, I would never be able to surpass him. So I had to remove him from my path as well. I hired an S-Ranked assassin and had him killed during his own success party.
No one truly belongs to anyone in this world. People are already struggling to carry the weight of their own lives, so how can they possibly solve the suffering of others? That is why everyone looks after themselves. If I wanted to become famous, I had to create my own path, and so I did. After my father’s death, I received enormous sympathy from people, and that sympathy helped promote my paintings even more. I told people that my paintings made me feel connected to my father, and with words like those, my paintings became even more famous and even more valuable.
But those moments of happiness did not last long. Whenever someone tries to rise high enough to reach the sky, they eventually become a painful sight in the eyes of others. The same thing happened to me. I had climbed so high that people began plotting to bring me down. I have committed so many sins that perhaps a separate place has already been prepared for me in hell. So whenever someone stood in my way, I removed them — sometimes by threatening them and sometimes by killing them. I did everything so carefully that no one ever found out.
I erased every piece of evidence and continued living before the entire world with a clean image, but one night, while I was returning home, someone crashed a truck into my car. I was thrown out of the vehicle. I was still breathing, but I had no idea for how long. Slowly, I began losing consciousness as my breathing became weaker. In those final moments, I saw everything — every good deed and every sin I had committed — and then my breathing stopped.
But something happened. Something that completely changed who I was. My eyes opened inside a hospital, and no one knew who I was. It was as if I had never existed before. Then I heard a strange voice coming from inside me. It felt as though someone else was breathing within me, along with my soul...
To be continued…
