There Are No Humans in the Monster Company

The air was saturated with the unbearable smell of gunpowder and the nauseating stench of charred proteins.

The only sound echoing through the dark hallway was the ragged breathing behind a gas mask.

[Team Leader, we’ve finished preparing to enter the second floor.]

The voice of one of the team members, transmitted over the radio, sounded like mechanical noise mixed with static.

“Wait.”

I signaled the team to stop as I firmly adjusted my rifle.

My instincts, sharpened through countless operations, warned me with the familiar scent of death.

What seeped through the gap beneath the VIP room door at the end of the hallway in the building occupied by unknown terrorists wasn’t merely the smoke of gunpowder.

It was a damp, nauseating sensation, like that of a swamp.

“I’ll go in first. Cover me.”

I left the team waiting at the corner of the hallway and advanced alone toward the door.

With every step, my boots splashed through a viscous liquid.

The instant I gripped the doorknob and pushed the door open, absolute darkness poured outward.

When the beam of my tactical flashlight tore through the blackness and swept across the room…

I saw them.

My teammates were hanging upside down from the ceiling, embedded within masses of red muscle tangled together like a ball of thread.

“…Team Leader?”

The head of the youngest member of the team, hanging at the front, turned toward me at an impossible angle.

Crack.

With a horrifying tearing sound, his neck separated from his body, and his head fell heavily to the floor.

It rolled until it stopped against the tip of my boot.

His lifeless eyes slowly regained their shine as they stared at me.

A black liquid began to pour from his wide-open mouth.

“Why were you the only one who survived?”

“Why were you the only one who survived?”

The pool of blood beneath my feet trapped my ankles and began dragging me into the darkness.

“Haah…!”

I bolted upright as if propelled by a spring.

My vision flashed while a sharp ringing pierced my ears.

The sensation of my teammate’s head striking the tip of my boot still felt horrifyingly real.

I frantically looked around.

But this place was neither the bombing scene filled with corpses nor my familiar apartment.

Clank… Clank…

A dull vibration traveled from the seat into my body.

‘Where am I…?’

Beyond the window there was nothing but thick fog, preventing me from seeing even a few meters ahead.

The only visible thing was a set of railroad tracks that seemed to stretch into infinity.

‘…What the hell is this?’

I looked down at myself.

I wasn’t wearing the comfortable clothes I’d gone to bed in.

Nor was I wearing the Shadow Shell.

I was dressed only in an ordinary, unremarkable suit, just like the day of the interview.

But the strangest thing was the people sitting around me.

Dozens of men and women occupied every seat in the train car.

Yet none of them showed the slightest sign of life.

They remained perfectly motionless, staring straight ahead with vacant eyes.

Whenever the train shook, every one of them tilted their heads at exactly the same angle, as though they had rehearsed the movement.

“Excuse me.”

I carefully shook the shoulder of the middle-aged man sitting beside me.

There was no response.

His lifeless eyes stared unfocused into space, and his lips remained motionless, as though they had been sealed shut with glue.

‘Is this a dream? But it feels far too…’

At that moment, a loud burst of static erupted from the speakers on the ceiling.

[Next station: Filleted. Filleted.]

The mechanical announcement continued.

It was an excessively polite and professional announcement, which made it all the more unsettling.

As soon as the announcement ended, the door leading to the next train car burst open.

Creeeak—

With the agonizing screech of metal scraping against metal, three monkeys appeared.

Or rather…

If those creatures, walking upright while dragging grotesquely long arms across the floor, could even be called monkeys.

The first had empty eye sockets; where its eyes should have been, there were only two black holes.

The second had the place where its ears had once been covered with festering scars.

And the third had its lips completely sewn shut with thick wire.

The passengers remained motionless, like mannequins.

The monkeys slowly walked down the aisle, producing a horrifying scraping sound.

The eyeless one sniffed the air.

Then it grabbed a young woman sitting directly behind me by the hair.

“Aaah…!”

Before she could finish screaming—

The three monkeys raised a rusty kitchen knife.

Slash—

The cold, wet sound of the blade sliding through flesh resembled that of an expert filleting a massive fish.

The woman’s head flew off as a spray of blood splattered throughout the train car.

At the same time, the back of her suit split open with a perfectly vertical cut.

From that opening, her skin and muscles began separating into paper-thin slices.

‘…!’

From her shoulders down to her thighs, strips of flesh cut to exactly the same thickness began piling up in the air.

Without touching a single bone.

Only the red muscle fibers and layers of white fat were being meticulously separated with perfect symmetry, while enormous quantities of blood flooded the floor.

‘…What the hell…?’

The scene of a living person being turned, in just a few seconds, into a perfectly prepared fish ready to be served on a table.

Together with the blood, paper-thin slices of nearly transparent flesh splattered in every direction.

None of the other passengers even blinked.

Each time their heads tilted with the train’s rattling, those pieces of flesh seemed to dance suspended in the air.

The smell of blood completely filled the train car.

The faster those creatures worked, the higher the level of blood rose across the floor until it reached my shoes.

‘I’ve got to get out.’

But where?

I couldn’t stand up.

It was as if my body had fused with the seat.

The only thing echoing through the car was the chilling sound of the knife separating flesh.

The overwhelming metallic scent of blood numbed my sense of smell.

I bit my lips so hard they began to bleed.

The sensation of my dress shoes soaking in that crimson pool was unbearably real.

[Next station: Minced. Minced.]

As soon as the announcement ended, the earless monkey pulled out a heavy hammer.

With one of its grotesque arms, it struck the head of the elderly man sitting across the aisle.

Crack!

Without even being able to scream, the old man’s skull caved in all the way to his shoulders.

But they didn’t stop.

Each time the hammer came down.

Bones were pulverized.

Muscles were crushed.

Entrails burst open, covering the floor.

Like machines simply carrying out a predetermined process, they continued pounding him over and over until it was impossible to recognize his original shape.

“Ugh…!”

I fought with all my strength to suppress the nausea.

Small chunks of minced flesh floated across the blood covering the floor.

[Next station: Dismemberment. Dismemberment.]

This time it was a sharp surgical scalpel.

As though they were sculpting an exquisite work of art, they began removing the passengers’ eyes, tongues, and ears one by one.

The eyeballs, cleanly extracted from the roots, rolled across the floor of the train, while the tongues, severed with flawless precision, writhed atop the pools of blood.

Even as parts of their own bodies were being removed, the passengers continued staring straight ahead with vacant expressions.

Though blood poured from their mouths, ears, and empty eye sockets, all they did was sway their heads to the rhythm of the train.

‘A nightmare? A paranormal phenomenon? Or…?’

The instant that hell of blood and flesh reached its climax.

One of the monkeys, after sniffing the air, walked toward me.

But instead of a scalpel.

It was holding a massive Chinese cleaver.

“Wait…!”

The gigantic blade sliced through the air and descended into my field of vision.

Slash.

I felt an icy cold pass through my neck, and my vision spun one hundred and eighty degrees.

Just as my head, severed from my body, fell into the pool of blood on the floor.

Everything was swallowed by an eerie silence.

“…Hah!”

The moment my head touched the floor, I jolted upright.

I instinctively reached for my neck, where I had just been decapitated.

The wound burned.

But my skin was completely intact.

However, I didn’t have time to feel relieved.

Because this wasn’t my apartment.

Nor was it the Extraction Room.

‘…Where am I now?’

The moment I opened my eyes, my vision was flooded by a sea of deep purple.

The walls were decorated with the mounted heads of animals and unknown Dimensional Entities.

Some even appeared to still be alive, radiating an unsettling glow from their eyes.

Beneath my feet wasn’t an ordinary carpet.

It seemed to have been woven together from fragments of Dimensional Entity skin.

It was a deep violet color.

Every step on it felt disturbingly soft.

As if trying to erase the metallic stench that had permeated the train car, a sickeningly sweet fragrance forced its way into my lungs.

“It seems you had a pleasant dream.”

The moment I heard that voice in front of me, it felt as though my heart dropped to my feet.

Someone was waiting for me, sitting with his legs crossed on a purple velvet sofa adorned with an extravagant golden frame.

An extremely tall and slender man, nearly two meters tall.

No…

Something in the shape of a man.

He wore an immaculate purple suit of the finest quality.

But coarse brown fur covered the hands protruding from his sleeves, just like the back of his neck.

All ten of his fingers were grotesquely long.

And behind his trousers, a constantly swaying tail protruded.

‘…A monkey?’

But the fur and the tail were the least important things.

What completely paralyzed my mind was his deformed head.

Four pale hands sprouted from his temples.

The upper two covered his eyes as though trying to tear them out.

The lower two pressed tightly against both ears, as though trying to crush his eardrums.

He had sealed away his own sight and hearing.

Only that enormous mouth, split all the way beneath his ears, remained exposed.

The corners of that mouth began to twitch.

Then they slowly curled into an unpleasant smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jeong Haeil.”

That voice could not belong to a human being.

It was an unbearable mixture of metal scraping against metal and the wet panting of a beast.

It didn’t sound as though it came from air expelled through lungs.

It was as if the words emerged directly from the opening of his torn lips.

The fingers growing from his temples gently gripped around his eyelids.

He couldn’t see.

He couldn’t hear.

And yet.

That monkey-shaped monster smiled in exactly the direction where I was sitting.

My heart pounded so violently it felt ready to shatter my ribs.

Reason screamed desperately for me to run immediately.

But my body reacted before my mind.

‘He knows me.’

I dug my fingernails into my thighs until they hurt, forcing my mind, already on the verge of collapse, to regain its composure.

As though he had sensed my desperate struggle to survive, his lips twisted once more like a coiling serpent.

A horrifyingly wide, unnatural smile that exposed his reddish gums and razor-sharp teeth.

He leaned forward slightly before speaking in that metallic voice.

“I am Director Won, Head of the Management Support Division of Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts.”

…Director Won.

From somewhere deep within my memory, Executive Director Gu’s voice resurfaced like an echo.

A man aligned with Executive Director Ahn’s faction.

The very one who saw me as promising prey.

One of the true heavyweights of Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts, someone whom even Executive Director Gu had warned me to be careful of.

And now.

He was sitting before me, as though he had been sculpted from blood.

The sound of my heart, racing from fear and tension, seemed louder than the rattling of the train.

“It seems the other employees have already told you about me.”

Director Won’s torn lips trembled slightly as he spoke quietly.

The twenty fingers covering his eyes and ears contracted for only a brief instant before relaxing once again.

“I didn’t bring you here because I had any particularly important business with you.”

One of his long, fur-covered hands extended toward me.

“I simply wanted to have a little conversation with you. Besides, I have a proposal to make.”

The word proposal mixed with the damp scent of blood as it entered my ears.

I ran a hand across my face.

My palm was still covered with warm blood and sticky bits of flesh.

‘…A proposal?’

I suppressed a sigh as a wave of exhaustion enveloped me like a fog.

I forced my blood-soaked eyelids to remain open.

And without looking away, I continued staring fixedly at the lips of that monkey-shaped monster, unable to find even a pair of eyes to meet.