Chapter 8. The Locked Room
Choseon was a young courtesan who hadn't been doing up her hair for long.
Naturally, she was still young and firm. Compared to her, the yapping bitch Machil held every payday was the cheapest courtesan at Bongyang Inn. It wasn't because he liked Aeng-aeng—his pockets were light, so he had no choice but to pick Aeng-aeng.
'Today is different.'
This time, with his pouch fattened up, he wanted to hold a more "high-quality" woman.
With the money he had now, he figured he could easily buy a night with Choseon.
In his head already, he was slapping Choseon's bouncy ass. His loins tightened on their own.
Afraid people on the street might notice, he calmed his excitement for a moment, then hurried his steps back toward Bongyang Inn. Maybe because of the excitement, his steps felt several times lighter than usual, and before long, he arrived at Bongyang Inn.
"Welcome. Oh, hyung-nim, it's been a while."
The waiter at Bongyang Inn recognized him and greeted him warmly. For any regular, the guy would call them either "lord" or "hyung-nim." "Lord" meant a customer who looked important, and "hyung-nim" meant an easy, so-so customer.
Machil knew that well, but he didn't bother caring. If it wasn't here, he knew he'd never be treated like "hyung-nim" anywhere anyway.
"Call Choseon for me."
"Choseon? Not Aeng-aeng?"
"Yeah."
The waiter's eyes narrowed lazily.
Of course, Machil knew exactly what that look meant.
"I've got money. Here."
He tossed over the leather pouch full of money. Inside was all of this month's wages.
And the money Ma-a-sam had given him too.
The waiter caught the pouch, peeked inside, and looked like he wanted to make him wait.
"…You didn't steal this, did you?"
"You little bastard!"
"Ah—if not, then fine. Why get mad over something like that? Then go to the very last room on this floor. I'll send Choseon right over."
An inn is supposed to provide lodging and meals, but Bongyang Inn was a little different.
This place sold lodging and food—and also prostitutes. It was doing business in cooperation with the red-light district behind Bongyang's busy streets.
Not just here—every inn nearby was doing business like this. Thanks to that, these dying inns all came back to life. The authorities knew perfectly well what was going on, yet they looked the other way. Because many of the main customers here included officials. And along with that, the bribes were thick, too.
Money and women.
No matter what world you went to, those two moved together.
In other words, if you had money, even someone of the lowest status could possess a pretty woman, even if only for a little while—that was the essence of the world.
Whether it was money you found, money you stole, money you took by force, money you borrowed, or money you earned. Whatever kind of money it was, it didn't matter.
Money didn't come with a name tag.
Money was just money.
The waiter immediately broke into a greasy grin and let Machil inside the Bongyang Inn. Whether Machil had stolen the money or not, as long as business got done, that was all that mattered. Even if Machil got arrested after finishing, it wasn't any of his concern.
Machil felt annoyed by the waiter's tone, but without arguing further, he went up to the second floor of the guesthouse. The waiter told another waiter working inside to send Choseon to Machil's room, then came back out to the front.
And in that brief moment, a new customer was standing at the entrance.
"Huh? You are…?"
The new guest was a man the waiter had seen once before. He looked a bit more put-together now, but he was still a shabby-looking man. In Bongyang, if you lived here, you'd know—if not his name... then at least his nickname—the very lowest kind of human.
"Sosam?"
Sosam looked around with a face tightly crumpled in fear, then nodded.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
The waiter had already heard the rumors, so he knew Sosam couldn't speak. He asked on purpose, knowing he wouldn't be able to answer. If someone like this loitered around Bongyang Inn, other customers might get uncomfortable, so he intended to chase him off in advance.
All this unkindness came from the obvious judgment that Sosam couldn't possibly be a customer of Bongyang Inn.
But.
Maybe today was a special day.
Sosam—no, Dong Bong-su—let out a silly smile and handed the waiter a pouch with a few coins inside. Then, drooling stringily, he said,
"A… ae... ae..."
The waiter understood right away what he was trying to say.
Snicker.
"You little shit—so you're a man too, huh. Get in."
With one corner of his mouth lifted, the waiter jerked his hand toward the entrance of Bongyang Inn.
"Go to the second-to-last room at the end of this floor. Aeng-aeng will be along soon."
Dong Bong-su went inside without any more mumbling. Watching his back, the waiter casually tossed out a line.
"Looking at it like this, even Aeng-aeng's a pitiful bitch. She's turning every kind of idiot in Bongyang into hole-brothers."
Of course, the waiter couldn't see the face of Dong Bong-su smiling blankly.
Tap tap tap.
Dong Bong-su went up to the second floor and entered the second-to-last room at the end.
That room was...…
Right next to the room assigned to Machil.
***
"Huff, huff."
"Ahh…!"
Machil's lower body was moving fast. Matching his rhythm, Choseon moved with him. When Machil slapped Choseon's ass, Choseon lurched forward for a moment, then came back again.
Smack.
A sensual sound of flesh hitting flesh.
Machil became the pestle, Choseon the mortar, and the millwork continued. Machil's tightly enraged yang thing disappeared beneath Choseon's buttocks, then appeared again, over and over. Each time, Choseon arched her waist stiffly as if she'd lose her breath, letting her heated moans spill freely.
"Ha-aaang!"
As time passed, Machil's movements grew more and more violent. Now, anyone could see he wasn't far from the climax.
Slide.
Behind him, a shadow was approaching—but Machil didn't notice at all. With paradise right in front of him, how could he spare attention for anything else?
"Huk-huk! You like it? You do, right! You like it so much you could die, huh?"
"Y-yes! Ahh! More, more!"
Choseon was also on her way with Machil to the Western Pure Land. At times like this, even if the heavens and earth collapsed, you wouldn't know. She, too, didn't notice the shadow at all.
The shadow slowly raised the cloth it held in both hands over Machil's head. And then, in a single instant!
"Ghk!"
Without giving Machil any chance to react, the shadow wrapped the cloth around his neck and twisted.
Machil's pupils dilated. But only a single grain of a scream leaked out. His hands, which had been gripping and turning Choseon's hips, grabbed at the shadow's hands—but it wasn't enough.
Machil's bloodshot eyes rolled upward until the black of his pupils vanished. His entire body trembled with fear of death. Because of that, Choseon was rushing to climax even faster. With Machil's lower body shaking at ultra-high speed like a vibrator, Choseon completely lost herself.
"Aaah! Ah...…"
Choseon didn't know that was the motion of the dying flash. At last, the strength drained from Choseon's eyes. Machil's final trembling was that intense.
His violent shaking stopped.
Immediately after, the shadow pressed Machil's waist down with a knee.
And began the exact same thrusting recoil Machil had been doing.
"Ahh—!"
Choseon's body heated up again.
The shadow's knee-driven recoil formed a beautiful harmony with Choseon's ass. When his knee drove forward, Machil's waist drove forward, roughly pounding Choseon's lower body.
"Aaah!"
The shadow—Dong Bong-su—didn't stop moving his knee. Machil's neck was already completely snapped and no longer doing its job.
Even so, his yang thing was different.
A hard, rigid iron spike.
It was literally an iron club. Rigor mortis hadn't set in yet, but the stiffness brought on by death was a perfectly firm phallus.
Choseon couldn't help but go mad.
"Ah! Kyaaah! I'm gonna die!"
Leaving Choseon to scream in ecstasy, Dong Bong-su stared into empty air. It was as if he were checking something.
Even in that state, for a while, his knee and Choseon's coupling didn't stop.
Some time later.
"Aaah!"
Right at the moment Choseon trembled violently, feeling a climax she'd never experience again in her life,
Dong Bong-su finished what he was checking, then loosened the cloth around Machil's neck and wrapped it around Choseon's neck.
Crack.
With a short sound, her slender neck lost its place and dangled limply.
"Ghk."
Choseon was a woman with no luck, even to the end. If Machil hadn't suddenly taken a pointless whim today, the one who died wouldn't have been Choseon—it would've been Aeng-aeng. With a heated, dying scream, she departed this world.
If there was any mercy for her, it was that she lost her life at the moment she reached the Western Pure Land.
Who knows.
Maybe she'd remain there and enjoy eternal happiness.
Dong Bong-su stared into empty air again, checking something just as he had when he killed Machil.
He was checking the change in experience.
On the experience bar—there was a change. It was tiny, but clearly, the bar had a yellow gauge filled in. It was almost dust-level, but because there had been no change at all until now, he could tell at a glance.
Insects and rats had no experience.
But.
Humans were clearly different. If there had been no experience change from today's murders, Dong Bong-su's future course of action would have been completely different.
Of course, there was also a problem. The amount of experience was far too small. Because of that, he failed to confirm whether the amount of experience differed depending on strength or not. The reason he left a time gap between killing Machil and killing Choseon was to check that.
Thanks to that, Choseon could achieve rebirth in paradise, though.
Whirrrk, rip, scrape, thud...…
Work noises continued for a while.
Dong Bong-su hung both corpses from the beam supporting the roof and pillars. Now the two of them had "committed suicide." In truth, Dong Bong-su could have put both bodies into his inventory and dumped them somewhere else, but he chose to process it as a suicide instead. He judged it would leave less trouble afterward.
After finishing, he approached the wall. A cloth embroidered with a stylish leopard pattern hung down like a curtain.
Rip.
Dong Bong-su pulled the cloth aside. A wall of wooden pillars connected in a row, 111111 ... in shape, appeared. Those wooden pillars stood aligned like that, supporting the beam, and the beam in turn supported a ceiling shaped like '人'. In Bongyang, most houses were built as prefabricated buildings like this. It was a construction method designed by carving grooves into wooden pillars and stacking them up so they interlocked organically. In houses shaped like this, even if one or two wooden pillars were removed, the ceiling wouldn't collapse.
As if proving it, the very last wooden pillar was missing. In that place, instead of a wooden pillar, there was a hole large enough for a person to pass through.
What on earth was going on?
By normal means, it was impossible to remove just that single pillar. A prefabricated house was like a precise Lego block set. Unless you dismantled it piece by piece from the top down, removing one from the middle was truly difficult.
But...….
Dong Bong-su was not an ordinary person.
Half-human, half-?
Even if it was something no one here could do, he could accomplish it.