Chapter 60 – Hello, Mr. Kim Taek-yong

Without dropping his fake expression, the doctor continued to smile at me uncomfortably and spoke again. “I repeat, have you experienced anything out of the ordinary recently? An out of body experience, perhaps?”

I shook my head, my brain beginning to whirl like a dusty old desktop computer booting up for the first time in a while. “No, nothing like that.” I was trying to gauge what kind of answer this doctor was fishing for.

His beady eyes narrowed at my uninformative response, as his gaze burned into me like the afternoon sun on a black concrete road. “I see…”

“And have you experienced any dizziness since your incident? Headache, anything of that sort?”

I frowned. “Not really, no. On the day I passed out, I had an intense headache that morning. But nothing since I woke up here.”

“Hmm… I see,” he replied, busily scribbling some notes down on a notepad he brought with him.

“So can you let me off now?” I asked. “I need to go to work or at least call in sick, otherwise I’ll get fired…”

The doctor looked at me as if I said something entirely preposterous, before letting out a laugh. “Is that what you’re worried about?” he said with a spreading grin on his face. “Oh, please… you’re on national news, don’t worry about having to call in sick. And as for work, the governor has already contacted your boss. The governor is a good friend of his, you see.”

“And I presume you already know about the monetary compensation we have prepared for you? I’m sure you have no complaints with respect to the amount, no? If you do… we can come to an alternative arrangement.”

I shook my head. Definitely no complaints there. I had half a mind to try to bargain for a better deal, but something in the back of my head was telling me that there was something greater at stake here besides just money. I trusted my gut; sometimes, my subconscious picked up on clues than my conscious self overlooked.

“Good… good…” the doctor spoke absentmindedly as he flipped through the notepad to some hand written notes he had written prior to entering the room.

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat. “Have you experienced any nausea since you’ve woken up?”

I frowned. There was a strange pattern in this doctor’s questioning that I noticed–it was subtle, but I caught on to it. He never once asked about my conditions before the seizure. All of his questions were laser focused on how I was feeling after the incident… as if he wasn’t trying to diagnose the cause of the episode at all, but rather was digging for something else…

With that in mind, I answered truthfully this time but cautiously. Every word I spoke here would bear weight in the future. I needed to be careful. This was not a game anymore–this was reality. Every one of my actions had deep consequences here.

“No, I haven't experienced any nausea since I woke up,” I answered him truthfully, making sure to fix my gaze on the doctor’s face and examine his reaction for any possible tells on what exactly he was trying to get at, with these veiled questions.

“Interesting, interesting…” the doctor nodded as I spoke, jotting down a few more notes in his spidery handwriting.

“Can I ask why I’m being held here?” I said bluntly. “I don’t get it. Why is the SWAT team guarding me? What did I do?”

The doctor pushed up his glasses by the bridge and looked at me with a serious face. “I’m not authorized to give any information on that matter, Mr. Kim Taek-yong.”

“Now, Mr. Kim Taek-yong, I’ll be running some vitals.”

The doctor took out a stethoscope from underneath his white medical clothes, and motioned me forward.

“Breathe in,” he said in a low tone. I felt my heart beat increasing and tried to calm it down. If he noticed that my heart beat was abnormally high, he’d know I was nervous. And if that was the case, there was a possibility that he would suspect that I was lying to him.

“Now breathe out.”

I breathed in and out slowly, making sure to calm my nerves as much as humanly possible.

“Very good,” he said with that freakish fake grin on his face again. “Your pulse and breathing are normal.”

With that said, the doctor opened his bag and pulled out a strange device I never saw before. From the outside it looked similar to a temperature gun, but it was much, much larger than any temperature gun I’d ever seen in my lifetime, and I’d seen quite a few of those since the start of the global pandemic.

“What’s that?” I asked. The gun device he held in his hand looked like some sort of mad scientist’s experimental ray gun.

“Oh, this is for measuring your temperature,” the doctor replied, his smile widening in a way that made my skin crawl.

He pointed the strange device at my head and pulled the trigger, as a beep rang from the temperature gun.

“Hm… your temperature is normal.” I noticed a slight flash of disappointment on his face, which was quickly concealed behind his wide fake smile.

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With that said, he began packing up his bag and stood up. “We will resume our examination tomorrow. Once you are released, you will be expected to come in for an appointment once every week. Failure to do so will result in a felony charge against you.”

I groaned but nodded my head. There really was no legal protection available when the top brass of the country needed something done.

“Take this,” he said, placing a foil with several pills onto the counter next to me alongside a bottle of water. “Sleeping pills with an anti-anxiety effect. They will help with your nerves.”

My nerves.

Ah. So he did notice I was nervous when he measured my heartbeat.

I grunted in acknowledgement and sank back into the bed.

It was getting late today, so I laid down and tried to sleep as the doctor left the room, and the two SWAT guards returned to their original positions guarding the door. I didn’t understand how they didn’t get tired standing there all day, but then again maybe they were switching shifts with other guards. I couldn’t tell if they were the same guards or not since they were all heavily masked with respirators.

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That night, I had a fever dream. It started during that dark period in college, where my parents died in a car crash and my girlfriend broke up with me in the same week. I remembered limping down the rainy street at 3 AM, drunk out of my mind, when I ran into a group of gangsters. They were just standing in a small huddle on the side of the street smoking cigarettes. When they saw me stumbling down the street, the group walked over in a confrontational manner.

One of them flashed a switch knife for a brief second.

“Hey, kid. Wallet and phone. Hand them over.”

I remembered running as fast as I could in my drunken state, before tripping and falling to the ground as the gangsters caught up and laughed, kicking me in the head repeatedly.

They pinned me down and rummaged through my pockets, taking everything, including the keys to my dorm room.

I didn’t even go to the hospital after that night, despite getting a concussion. It was because I was afraid I couldn’t afford it. I was afraid the hospital staff would laugh at me for being poor. I was afraid that I’d see the faces of my dead parents again, if I went back to the hospital…

My thoughts were jumbled and cloudy in this dream.

Something flashed, and I was back on the ground again, being beaten senseless by those gangsters.

They flipped me over, and the biggest guy cocked his fist back and landed a punch right on my nose, breaking it instantly. Blood dripped down from my nostrils onto my lips, as I felt tears pooling in my eyes.

“Hey! Don’t kill him,” one of the gangsters said to the biggest guy.

And with that, they left me rotting on the ground as a bloody mess, with my pockets turned inside out and my only good jacket I had left ripped.

I was running.

Then I tripped again, and they descended upon me like vultures finding carrion.

Just make it stop.

Make it stop.

Make it stop…

The dream continued to play over and over again, like a broken record.

Thud.

A punch landed square on my jaw, fracturing it. It was the biggest gangster, the chunky one that pressed me down helplessly with his body weight.

A skinny gangster standing above me stomped downwards, hitting my thigh with his shoe, before wiggling it to wipe all the mud off on my clothes. Rain continued to fall, dripping down onto me from the sweaty bodies of my assailants.

I blinked back my tears and coughed in revulsion at the salty sweat infused rain that entered my mouth.

I was so fucking sick of this.

So… sick… of this shit…

A flash of life appeared in my eyes as the biggest gangster pulled back his fist yet again.

I raised my left hand, and a familiar black void instantly began to cover my entire arm.

“Huh?” the gangster exclaimed in surprise at the strange phenomenon.

Sshk.

I raised my left arm, catching the gangster’s fist in my hand. Immediately upon contact with my void covered arm, the big gangster with a bald head and baby fuzz moustache let out a howl of pain.

“Gagasdh!” he howled, with a completely garbled sound.

Red exposed flesh was all that remained of his chubby fist from where I grabbed it.

I swiped at his face.

My fingers sank into that overgrown man’s baby face, sinking right into his cheeks and through his jaw and nose. Three clear streaks of exposed flesh revealed themselves after my fingers passed through, as the big man’s eyes grew large in shock.

At this point, I knew this was a dream, but it was too cathartic to let go… just let it keep playing... just a bit longer….

I pushed the baby faced man off me with a heave, as he trembled in anaphylactic shock on the wet black pavement next to me.

The skinny gangster was next.

“Hey, what’s wrong bro?” he said when he noticed that the big gangster fell to the side. His skinny leg stomped down onto me again.

I lunged forwards towards him, wrestling him to the ground before plunging my left hand straight into his chest. Feeling that familiar beating sensation in the middle of the wet mass, I closed my fingers and burst his heart.

Blood dripped from my left hand as I stood up.

There were still two more gangsters, both slightly distracted. One was typing his phone, while the other casually puffed on a cigarette.

“What the?” the man on the phone exclaimed when he noticed that I overwhelmed his comrades. His eyes darted down to their mangled bodies, before tracing upwards and locking into mine. “You little shit!”

I uppercut him in the chin and threw my left hand forward, piercing right through that thick skull of his. The man dropped to the floor dead instantly.

Now it was time for the last one.

“Ah… aahhhhhh!” the last gangster shouted when he saw what I did to his group. “M-monster!” he yelled, as he began to run.

I ran faster than I ever ran before. The gangster almost made it to the side of the intersection.

Right before he could make the turn…

I caught up to him and tackled him to the ground. Mounting myself on top of his chest so he couldn’t move, I laughed at his misfortune.

“Not so tough now, huh?” I said in a maniacal tone.

“H-help! Someone, help me! This guy’s a monster!”

I laughed as I put my right hand on his face, and sank my index finger and thumb into his eyes.

The gangster screamed in pain, but that didn’t stop me. I reached down with my void covered left hand and patted him gently on his shoulder.

“There, there… don’t cry baby…”

The first pat left a palm sized imprint of disintegrated fabric on his shoulder. The second pat penetrated into his skin. The third pat went just a bit deeper, severing the tendon that held his shoulder to his neck.

I retracted my right hand, leaving his face a complete bloody mess and his eyes desiccated.

….

The harsh lighting of the hospital room was once again the first thing my brain registered.

Bzzt… I repeat, patient is shouting in his sleep… requesting further instructions…

To the right, one of the SWAT members spoke into his radio, reporting the situation to whoever was listening on the other side.

Squinting my eyes, I looked down the blanket and flinched. There was a torn patch in the white blanket they gave me. Although upon second glance, instead of torn, it was more accurate to describe it as melted…

Pretending to still be in the midst of a nightmare, I grabbed the hole in the white blanket fabric and tore at it, to conceal the anomaly. With a hard tug, I ripped the blanket in half.