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Chapter Text

'Yook Dong-sik' was the type of name that only hardcore fans of bad horror books would know.

He was not, despite his father's claims, successful or popular in any way. His biggest achievement was an unexpected peak in sales of his first book, 'Red And Bloody' -the title was an invention of his sister, after he'd spent months ripping out his hair trying to think of one-, which turned out to be thanks to his family's aggressive promotion -they bought more than fifty of the books, and started offering one to every client that bought their special menu-.

He wrote, well, very bad books. As reviews on internet said, "did a fourteen year old write this right after seeing their first horror movie?", "the only thing going for this is the violence, and honestly I felt concerned for the author at some point. Have you considered seeing a therapist?", "the author's lack of confidence was so obvious I almost expected to see an apology in the conclusion", "the plot was shit but this guy's got a sick imagination".

He wasn't even sure anyone read the books completely. He knew his family didn't. When he asked them what they thought, they always changed the subject in very unsubtle ways.

The only thing going for Yook Dong-sik, the anxious analyst at Daehan Securities who wrote horror book as a hobby, was his online friend.

@directorseo.

"Online friends? Isn't that how you get murdered and stuff?", had said his sister when he mentioned it. "What if they ask to meet you?"

"I don't want to meet them", he'd clarified, embarassed. "It's just nice to talk t..."

"Honey, I told you not to leave the milk on the table!", his sister had suddenly said, talking to someone else on the other side of the phone. "No, it goes in the fridge, how many times do I need to tell you? Are you still a kid too? Hold on, I'm on the phone with my brother. Dong-sik? Dong-sik, what were you saying? Did you hang up?"

Director Seo was the only person he could actually talk to.

He presented himself as a fan first, commenting on Dong-sik's blog, asking about a possible sequel for one of his books.

Then they started chatting.

Then they exchanged e-mail adresses.

Director Seo never gave his full name, he didn't watch movies but he read lots of books, he copy pasted his favorite lines from Dong-sik's books and sent them to him, he presented himself as a fellow writer and he came up with gruesome scenarios that made Dong-sik shiver with anticipation as he scrolled down the e-mail.

"Dong-sik is talking to someone online", said his sister once to their parents, at a family dinner.

"Isn't that dangerous?", worried his step-mother.

"What kind of man hides behind a screen like that?", protested his father. "You should be meeting real people! At your age, I was already a father, but you don't even have a girlfriend-"

"I heard someone got scammed out of all their money because of a friend they made online", added his brother.

But all of that couldn't be true because his upstairs neighbour -that had read one chapter of one of his books once and was very admirative of him ever since- had many online friends he played video games with and he never got chopped up in pieces or whatever nightmare scenarios his family talked about.

'My family doesn't understand me', he'd write at 3 in the morning, eyes heavy with sleep and in an edgy mood.

'Mine doesn't either', would answer Director Seo. 'It's the curse of people like us.'

Director Seo was actually a director, but he never spoke of his job nor his colleagues, nothing that made him identifiable. Sometimes, while talking to him, Dong-sik felt as if he were communicating with himself, only a version of himself that spoke in a more calculated way, always writing so formally.

Director Seo's writings were much shorter than Dong-sik's, and put like excerpts from a diary. What Dong-sik's stories lacked in realism, he found in those e-mails, with ecstatic descriptions of violence that left him somewhere between intense excitement and extreme nausea. In exchange for reading these, he gave his own comments.

'You have more imagination from me', would acknowledge Director Seo.

'But your descriptions are way more accurate than mine', would regret Dong-sik in return.

'You'll get better at it.'

Director Seo's stories always ended with a new way of disguising the murder into a suicide, and he sometimes asked Dong-sik for ideas. He'd admitted before to having troubles describing emotions, and Dong-sik spent full hours crafting fake suicide letters, driving himself to tears -on one memorable occasion, his sister stumbled across a draft, leading to her kidnapping him and dropping him off at a therapist's office in the next hour-.

'You're the only person like me', wrote Director Seo.

And Dong-sik felt that it was true. While some of his friend's statements revealed a wealthy background and very high standards of living -which wasn't exactly his case-, he'd never, in more than thirty years of living, ever felt anything like this towards someone else.

"You're not in love with them, right?", worried his sister.

"Wh- what?", he sputtered. "What are you talking about?"

"Come on, you're looking at your phone and smiling. No new horror movie came out, so obviously it's that friend of yours. You're sure they're a good person, right?"

"Who is he in love with?", asked his brother, scrolling on his phone next to them.

"That online person-"

"I'm not!", hurried to say Dong-sik. "I'm really, really not-"

Was he in love? He hesitated for a long time whether to dedicate his last book to him, and decided against it, since he had no name to use for it, and 'Director Seo' felt so impersonal. He waited all day for a notification from him, pushing through lonely lunch breaks by reading over and over again the description of an old lady's murder by asphyxia. He even tried poking to get a name, a date, anything -despite his sister's comments, if anyone was begging for information, it really was him-, but with no success.

He accepted that he'd keep speaking to a faceless friend forever. And it was fine like this. He could go on and on about his problems, give advice and beam at the praise he received, which was more than he received out of real life anyways.

He accepted it, until Team Leader Gong died.

'I think I'm going to get fired', he'd said to Director Seo a few days before. 'I heard one of my colleagues talk on the phone about using me as a scapegoat. Our team leader is in on it.'

Director Seo Ji-hoon -who was quite definitely not his Director Seo and probably hadn't ever opened a horror book in his life-, Team Leader Gong, and the man he considered his only work friend, all worked together to frame him for their own mistake. What could he do against this? He was a powerless employee in a very big corporation.

'I wish I had the courage to kill them', he wrote, in an impulsive moment.

Director Seo's reply took a while.

'How would you kill them?'

He'd beat up Team Leader Gong to death. He'd put poison in Jae-ho's coffee, the same one he always asked him to bring in the morning. He'd hang Seo Ji-hoon.

All harmless fantasies.

"Did you hear?", whispered Mi-joo to Jung-ah, as he printed documents next to them. "I have a friend who works at the police station... he says Team Leader Gong was beaten up badly before he died..."

The printer started coughing out Dong-sik's paper, as he stood, completely frozen, in front of it.

"You shouldn't talk about things like that", protested Jung-ah, getting her own documents.

"Isn't it so scary though? The police is investigating it as a murder..."

"Huh?!"

The two women turned towards Dong-sik, confused.

"Dong-sik, is everything alright?", worried Jung-ah.

"Ah, yes", he managed to say. "I was just... shocked, I was shocked, that's it... yes."

With that, he ripped the papers out of the printer, hurrying away.

Team Leader Gong?

Beaten up before he died?

That was...

A hell of a coincidence.

Well, he reasoned, I couldn't be the only one who wanted him dead like that.

Still, he almost fell off his chair when the cops came in, ready to interrogate Team Leader Gong's colleagues.

His own interview went pretty fast: Officer Shim, the officer in charge, was quick to clock in his anxiety, and his growing nervosity as he was asked about alibis and relations to the deceased only looked like further proofs of very intense timidity.

He stumbled out of the room like a drunk man, glancing back worriedly: he couldn't've possibly killed Team Leader Gong just by thinking about it very hard, right? Right?

"Dong-sik, you're just coming out now?", called out Jae-ho.

Dong-sik gave a small nod.

"I put my files on your desk, can you take care of it? I have to go home, my wife can't pick up our kid today."

"Actually-"

"Thank you so much!"

With that, Jae-ho sprinted out of the office, leaving Dong-sik there, the only employee left.

He looked at his surroundings, most of the lights turned off, and sighed.

With Team Leader Gong's death, the charges against Dong-sik were gone, since documents were found in his briefcase detailing the Yuseong Biomed situation. Jae-ho and Seo Ji-hoon hadn't been implicated, so things just went back to usual, with the exception that all of Team Leader Gong's things had been removed, and a Mrs. Park had taken over.

Dong-sik sat down at his desk, giving the pile of folders a mournful look, before grabbing his phone instead, checking his e-mails.

Nothing.

Once the sky had gone dark and even the other departments had gone quiet, he finally set his pen down and moved the folders over to Jae-ho's desk, yawning as he stretched.

He gathered his things and finally made his way to the elevator, pushing the button, daydreaming of the leftovers he had in his fridge.

Ddu-du.

The elevator doors opened.

Dong-sik, head down as usual, noticed another pair of shoes as he walked in, and gave a small nod out of politeness. He pushed the button for the ground floor, even if it was already lit up, before going back to staring at the floor.

"Yook Dong-sik?"

"Yes?", he reacted, looking up to the other person.

He frowned, as he was standing next to a very tall man, in a very fancy suit, looking very much unfamiliar.

"Who...?", he started.

"Ah", said the man, his lips stretching into a very wide smile, as he extended his hand towards him. "I'm Director Seo In-woo."

Chapter Text

Director Seo...?

Instead of shaking his hand, Dong-sik almost broke his back bowing, before standing up just as fast.

"Good evening, sir", he hurried to say.

He heard Director Seo In-woo snicker.

"You don't need to greet me like this", dismissed Director Seo. "You're Yook Dong-sik, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"I read your books."

"Yes, sir- what?"

Seeing his surprise, Director Seo's smile only widened.

"You have a lot of imagination, Yook Dong-sik."

Dong-sik blinked.

Who even was this man?

He did know that the company was owned by Seo Chung-hyun, and that his two sons worked in it -thanks to his colleagues gossips, who always took a lot of pleasure in comparing the brothers, praising the older one who was so polite/handsome/nice, while the other was... well, was Ji-hoon-, but he never expected that one of them would be the kind of person to be interested in his books.

"Thank you, sir", he forced himself to say, even if he felt like he was hallucinating or something like that.

"How is work? Now that the Yuseong Biomed case is closed."

"You know about this too?", blurted out Dong-sik.

Director Seo In-woo tilted his head.

"Everyone in this company knows about this, don't they?", he asked. "And now that Team Leader Gong is dead, you no longer have to worry about this. Right?"

"Yes", said Dong-sik cautiously.

Why was he getting the feeling that he knew too much about all this? Well, it was probably because his brother was involved.

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened.

Dong-sik didn't move, waiting for Director Seo to go first, but he didn't. Instead, he looked at Dong-sik expectantly.

"Should we get dinner together?", he suggested.

"Wha- what?"

"It's already pretty late. I know a good restaurant near here. What do you think?"

It wasn't often that Dong-sik was invited to restaurants.

Actually, he almost never was. Jae-ho occasionally called him for drinks, but that was usually when he wanted something from him, and then he'd pretend to have forgotten his wallet or whatever, and Dong-sik would have to pay for the both of them. Even with work parties, people 'forgot' to invite him most of the time.

He stared at Director Seo as if he'd grown a second head.

The elevator doors started closing, and Director Seo's arm brushed against his as he clicked on the button to keep the doors open, before he leaned back, waiting for his answer.

"Busy", croaked Dong-sik.

"What?"

"I'm very, very busy", lied Dong-sik, "I, uh, I have plans already. Yes. Good night."

He started moving out, before remembering to give a short bow, and then hurrying out the elevator.

He heard the doors close again behind him, as he power walked towards the exit.

What had he just done?

Refuse to eat with one of his superiors?

Could he get a pay deduction out of this?

Why had he done this?

Well, Director Seo gave him the uncomfortable feeling... like he just knew something. And anyways, he wasn't completely lying: as soon as he walked out the building, his phone screen lit up, and a message from his older sister popped up: "can you babysit tonight? I'm meeting up with my friends and my husband is busy too".

That's how he found himself sitting in front of his nefew, imitating the sound of an airplane leaving the ground -whatever sound that was: he just did what he imagined that would sound like- as he tried to feed him jam.

As the baby refused to eat once again, spilling the contents of his plate onto the floor, he wondered once more.

Was it a coincidence that Team Leader Gong died like this?

His nefew wasn't too happy about being put to bed, but he finally closed his eyes as Dong-sik played music on his phone, clutching onto his teddy bear.

Dong-sik tip-toed out of the room, and allowed himself to fall onto the couch, checking his inbox.

One new e-mail.

He clicked on it, straightening up.

'I need your help', was the first sentence.

As he kept reading, his stomach dropped.

Director Seo -his online friend, not the odd man he'd met earlier- wanted advice on how to approach someone.

Once he got over his initial shock, he very much felt like curling into a ball and cry his heart out.

Approach someone?

'I'm very interested in them', had said the e-mail. 'But I'm not sure how I should go about it.'

Interested?

In someone?

First he almost lost his job, then his boss died, and now @directorseo was interested in someone. This month kept getting worse and worse.

How could he even give advice on this topic? He'd never approached anyone voluntarily. Jae-ho and Director Seo just kind of... appeared. He'd never had a girlfriend in his whole life. How could he even answer something like that?

He got out of the e-mail app, opening the search engine. 'How to get close to someone', he typed.

He clicked on the first article, accepting all the cookies before scrolling down.

'Learn about what they like', 'do little things for them', 'connect on what you have in common', 'show your interest and that you care about them' ...

He wrote a short message recycling all of that, and sent it without reading it over, before turning off his phone and letting out a pitiful moan.

Now his only friend might be interested in someone else.

As if his bad mood was somehow contageous, his nefew suddenly started crying, and Dong-sik got up, wondering when his sister would be back.

He was finally freed at 11 PM, heading straight to bed as soon as he came home, falling asleep immediately.

The next day started out great until he remembered about the last e-mail he'd received, and then at work he kept looking around, ready in case Director Seo In-woo showed up again. He did not. He didn't appear in the next few days either, and Dong-sik came to accept that it was only one weird meeting and that it probably wouldn't happen again.

On a saturday evening, he came to help out his father at the restaurant. After he'd spilled sauce on two clients and broke a glass, exhausted after his marathon of Saw movies, he was assigned to the counter, next to his brother, who was scrolling through social medias on his phone.

"Hey", called Dong-chan, as Dong-sik tried not to doze off. "Hey, someone mentioned you in an article."

"Mh?", reacted Dong-sik, attempting to repress a yawn.

Dong-chan held up his phone, and Dong-sik read the article.

Online newspaper publication. A body was found in a nearby river, cut into pieces, put in a bag. A fisherman found it early in the morning.

Dong-sik turned very pale at the news, feeling very nauseous and very warm all of a sudden.

"What-"

"Someone talked about you in the comments", added Dong-chan, clicking on the comments. "Look... 'woah this is so weird, the book I'm reading right now has something just like that... if any cop is reading this, please investigate Yook Dong-sik'-"

"What?!"

A few clients turned their heads towards them, and Dong-sik's dad glared at him.

"I mean they have a point", added Dong-chan, a bit too nonchalant about the whole ordeal, "isn't one of your books about something like that? 'Crime On The Lake' or something..."

"Murder On The River", corrected Dong-sik mechanically.

He suddenly grabbed Dong-chan's phone despite his protests, reading the post again.

Surely... surely... this was only a coincidence...

Right?

Chapter Text

He let out a grunt as he pulled at the bag, dragging it across the grass.

His car was parked nearby, and the area was quiet. At this time of day, no one wanted to hang around here, with the lack of streetlamps and cameras, making even the quiet river look threatening.

Just another effort, and he finally pushed the bag into the water, a loud 'splash' following, and he watched it float on the surface, before turning away, exhaling.

This had been an eventful evening.

Seo In-woo opened his car door, sitting down and starting the engine, driving back towards the city.

His body would be aching for the whole day after this. Dismemberment... he'd never done it before, but the whole thing had left him panting, even if switching to a chainsaw did help.

He let out a chuckle.

A couple years ago, his brother had bought him a crime novel as a stupid joke. In-woo had never liked birthdays, especially when they featured Ji-hoon: he'd planned on burning the book as soon as he left.

In the end, he took it without thinking while on his way to a doctor's appointment, and spent thirty minutes in the waiting room, flipping through the pages.

Yook Dong-sik's second novel, Murder On The River.

While the style was boring, the vocabulary was lacking, the plot was confusing, the murder itself...

He could almost believe that Yook Dong-sik really killed someone to write this book.

Then he bought another of his book. And another. And another.

With each book, the crimes got more clever and more cruel, and by the time Psychopath Diary came out, he'd grown obsessed over Yook Dong-sik's works.

"Are the books that good?", asked Mrs. Jo, as she came into his office one day to find him reading yet another one of them during his lunch break.

"The author is very imaginative", he'd answered. "What is it?"

"I came to give you the file you asked for."

She handed it over, and was about to walk away, before stopping.

"Have you considered contacting him?"

He'd looked up.

"What?"

"The author. He has a website, you could contact him."

In-woo slowed down as he came near a stop sign, his fingers tapping against the steering wheel.

It'd taken him too long to realize that Yook Dong-sik the author was the same Yook Dong-sik involved in the Yuseong Biomed situation, but now that he was aware, he had to make his move. Killing Team Leader Gong had been a reckless act, but he'd been hoping to send a signal with it. This was his second signal.

Yook Dong-sik wasn't a killer. That'd been a real disappointment, but the nervous man he spoke to at first, was nothing more than a writer with a wild imagination. Nothing like himself.

Yet...

"Are you going to move your car?", shouted a man at his window, as the cars behind honked, waiting for him to get out of the road. "You're blocking all of us!"

In-woo didn't bother glancing at him, starting the engine instead, ready to drive home and wash away the remaining bloodsplatters.

The medias were always big fans of bloody news, and he was relieved to find a big 'HUMAN REMAINS ROUND IN A RIVER' plastered onto the front page of the newspaper he bought. Dong-sik wouldn't be able to miss this. While it was already the second time that he didn't bother disguising a murder into a suicide, the anxiety of being discovered was nothing compared to the thrill of waiting for Yook Dong-sik's e-mail: although he had to wait another day, he finally received the notification that he had an unread e-mail in his inbox.

'Someone died, and it feels so familiar to one of my books, I can't believe it. Do you remember 'Murder On The River'?'

In-woo grinned, straightening up to prepare his reply, as he kept reading.

A sentence made his smile freeze.

'I'm afraid I might become a suspect.'