"If you ask me who on this campus is most likely to commit murder, I'd have only one person in mind."
"And who would that be?"
"You."
Kim Miran has two goals in life: One, to get through her final year as a Criminology major and graduate successfull...
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Miran is sprawled on her bed, her eyes boring into the starch white ceiling of her bedroom. Because the shutters are down and the curtains drawn, the space is dark, and it stifles her senses, to the point that it is difficult to breathe. Memories have been resurfacing in her mind for a good part of three nights, and the concept of sleep eludes her.
Turning to her side, she studies the posters festooning every inch of space in her room, colourful images of Beyond The Scene plastered on the walls. Their happy smiles are a complete contrast to the emotions unfurling within her, and she feels a strange kinship with Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of her favourite novel.
Beside the vial of anti-depressants she has been consuming lies Miran’s phone, dead and forgotten on her bedside table; she cannot remember the last time she has plugged the charger into the socket embedded over it. On the far side of the room, innumerable objects are cluttered on her desk, her laptop buried underneath the mountain of books and notes strewn over the carved wood. Or is it jammed into the burrows of her bed? Miran cannot remember.
After Hong Chanbaek’s demise, Miran’s thoughts are plagued by the horrors she has faced as a fourteen year old. The pattern is repeating, people around her dying in a fashion similar to the serial killings eight years ago. But the killer is gone now. Why am I so scared?
She knows the answer to this, but Miran is terrified to acknowledge it. Her bleak thoughts follow the tangent, rolling towards everything that has happened two years ago. Lee Joonhyung’s face flashes before her eyes, and she squeezes them shut. My friends deserve to know the truth. Yoongi deserves to know the truth. But she doesn’t know how to tell him.
Her family is worried about her health, both mental and physical, and when her mother suggests that she spend a few days within the comfort and safety of home, Miran gladly accepts.
Burying her head deeper under the woollen quilt, she tries to stave off the November chill which seems to have permeated her very bones. The sheets of her bed rustle beneath her weight, and her eyes continue their roving over the semi-dark contours of her room.
The large bookcase which is positioned beside her wardrobe is stacked with paperbacks she has yet to touch, all her motivation subdued by the eternal temptation of lying around in bed and doing nothing. For a minute, she considers turning on the flat-screen tv implanted into the alcove between the shelf and cabinet. But the thought is extinguished by the chime of the doorbell.
Miran doesn’t stir; she knows Hongjoo will answer the door. It is probably her twin, who seems to have way too much free time on his hands, and has already visited her four times in the span of a single day. Or is it night now? Miran cannot remember.
But the bell keeps ringing incessantly, and when the door displays no signs of being answered, Miran groans, flinging the covers off of her and barrelling out of her room. She hops down the staircase, all the while wanting to return to the luxury of her bed even though it does not allow her any semblance of a reprieve. Judging by the soft, lilac hues streaking the living room as she passes it, dusk appears to have descended over the city of Seoul.
