The Next Life (다음 생에 만날래)

The Artefact

"Thank you guys for coming on such short notice. I know it's a Saturday, and you probably have other things on your plate."

"Of course, it's the least we could do for tormenting your place every other week," Seulgi responded.

"Speaking of tormenting the place..."

The pink haired girl gestured for us to follow her, and we did, around the counter and over to the back, leaving behind the light chatter of the morning crowd of customers.

Park Jin, or Lily as she'd introduced herself as, had contacted Seulgi just this morning while the seven of us had been discussing potential cases at our place. As the manager of the cafe where we frequented, she'd made pleasantries with some of us on several occasions, which was how she had Seulgi's number in the first place.

Lily led us into one of the rooms in the back of the cafe, behind the counter. The room, while having the same wooden flooring of the rest of the place, was sparsely decorated, with empty shelves propped up on the wall, and a single filing cabinet from which the white corners of papers stuck out. Against the far wall of the room was a desk supporting a monitor screen, its display split into four different camera views of the cafe.

"So, one of our employees had been acting weird, and she quit not too long ago," Lily started.

"Do you think that's why we haven't seen that girl you like in a while?" Wendy whispered to me.

"Son Seungwan, I swear to–"

"But the footage from two nights ago clearly shows Somi back in here. They forgot to lock up for the night, that's how she got in."

Lily's words wiped the smirk clean off Wendy's face.

With her back turned to us, Lily rewound the security footage back to two nights ago. I had to squint to make out anything in the footage at first, the darkness fuzzing up the view of the cafe. At first nothing seemed amiss, until a blur of motion broke the still image. The figure was clearly a person, who could be assumed to be Somi if we were to believe Lily's words. Though it was hard to make out what she was wearing, clearly it wasn't the usual top she wore while working.

Somi brisk-walked over behind the counter, cursing as she fumbled with the drawers. She muttered something under her breath, unintelligible with the audio quality. A loud noise drew her attention to the entrance. It was hard to say what the noise was exactly. Almost like the roars let out by horror monsters in old video games, when the hardware wasn't what it was today, heavily distorted by the recording.

Her chest rising and falling rapidly, Somi got up from her spot behind the counter, holding up an aerosol can in the direction of the entrance. She yelled something, which I could make out this time, albeit barely.

"I told you, I don't know who he is, just leave me alone!"

Her pleas were answered by the distorted low noise from before. In almost the blink of an eye, another blur raced across the cafe towards her. She let out a shrill scream that was cut off the instant the blur made contact with her. The video cut to static at the exact same moment, the buzzing sound filling the backroom of the cafe where we stood, neither of us speaking up.

As suddenly as it had started, the sound of static faded. The video feed returned, only to show Somi standing upright, looking directly at the camera, not moving a muscle. From past experience, there was one detail I was sure the others weren't seeing. Despite the near greyscale colouration of the video feed due to the lack of light, two flashes of colour stood out.

Her eyes glowed blood red.

The static returned, though not as strongly as before. Through the waning lines of static, Somi could be seen leaning over the counter with something in hand. It looked as though she was wiping down the countertop, as if nothing had happened. This continued only for a brief period, as the static soon overtook the video, before it cut to black.