The Ultimate Mask He Wears

sometimes you just have to be done

Sometimes you have to play the role of the fool, to fool the fool who thinks they're fooling you.

It was early in life when Dongsik realized he was nothing like the other kids his age. He was not the most expressive, he rarely talked, and was barely excitable. Emotions were a foreign concept to him and every so often he was labeled as a very well-behaved child. There was a time their neighbors were all praises for Dongsik's calm, gentle demeanor and his parents had been proud. Rightfully so. That was until he stabbed his classmate's hand with a stolen pencil in 6th Grade when the poking and pushing became too much. There had been no witnesses in the boys' bathroom - Dongsik had checked the stalls firsthand - save for the boy who wailed like a pig.

Dongsik had been careful in his handling of the makeshift weapon, not leaving evidence even at age twelve. He spent most of his time in the adult section of the public library, poring through books on Crime & Thriller, Psychology, Criminology, and anything that struck his fancy. Books that people say shouldn't interest someone his age but that eventually and ultimately gave him the idea to enact his revenge. He came up with a plan and executed it accordingly.

For the first time, Dongsik felt the stirrings of emotion that he would later learn was called satisfaction.

However, it was too late when Dongsik realized the walking annoyance of a boy was the Mayor's son. No matter how much his father swore up and down that Dongsik couldn't even hurt an ant, the squealing pig of a classmate did not stop screaming for Dongsik to be kicked out of school.

Knowing that it was futile to reason with people in power, his family moved to Seoul.

On her deathbed, Dongsik's mother made him promise that he had to fit in, to always keep his head down and never retaliate, terrified as she was of what her son could do and the consequences he might face if she wasn't there to keep him in line. She'd been the only one Dongsik felt something close to love, made him feel protective, a welcomed deviation from the steady, cold indifference that was his only companion for as long as he could remember. He had listened to her request to an extent, perfecting the doormat persona that she so desperately wanted for him. But the violence? It was the only other thing in his life that made Dongsik feel somewhat alive. His mother was asking for the impossible.

As a compromise, Dongsik always took into account her fears and worries whenever he was on a hunt. He'd never been careless and was always prepared, ever-filling his curious mind with valuable knowledge. Dongsik liked learning, absorbing information like a sponge. He also kept himself in shape, continually training and strengthening his body to hold down struggling prey and incapacitate with ease, hiding sleek muscle and sharp form under baggy clothes and a calculated hunch whenever he was out in the open.

His mother's life lessons for her young psychopath son had done their part in ensuring he didn't end up behind bars in his teenage years, was able to pass his Psych Eval and got accepted into military service undetected. Dongsik was far from the neophyte he was fifteen years ago. He's an experienced killer and no one has connected any murders to him yet. No incriminating DNA samples at the scene of his crimes either. He was done being bogged down by her dying wish.

It had been useful to hide behind the mask of the pushover, cementing the persona in the eyes of his colleagues before moving onto another company, then circling around to squash the insects, months or years after he took himself out of the picture so no one would ever consider him as a possible suspect. But at 34, Dongsik was tired of the life of mimicry his late mother had imposed on him, stuck in one city for over twenty years, sifting through the dross each day when he wasn't locked up in his apartment. The occasional hunts he carried out over the years - that always ended up as a missing person's case because Dongsik made sure there were no pieces left to find - just weren't cutting it for him anymore.