I looked at Hwang Tiffany.
She looked at my bandaged hand.
She opened her mouth and told me that I deserved it for provoking Taeyeon.
In some ways, she was actually right as I thought about it.
From a disinterested view, Taeyeon hurt me, indirectly, but she hurt me.
But I am the one at fault for making her reveal everything that she knows, to make her bones bare.
And that wouldn't be enough, I would even force Taeyeon to dig out the marrow with her own nails and present it to me.
That is how much I wanted to know.
I wanted to know how this criminal thought, through and through.
People usually don't seep into the mind of a murderer; they believe it's too horrid to stomach, to bear.
The things beneath the surface are not bad; it’s all in your head to think that a murderer's motives are evil.
His actions are evil, but his thoughts may not be.
If he kills a man who has betrayed him, who is at fault?
If that man attacked him with the intent to kill, isn't it only natural to fight for the survival?
If he has killed a woman who was a traitor to another man, is he wrong?
Of course, you may answer that the woman doesn't deserve death for evoking the green jewel of envy within him.
But he feels that he must make up for the wrong.
Therefore, he is not wrong, he was just replacing what he thought was lost.
Justice.
An eye for an eye, isn't that what the Holy Scripture has taught us?
Yes, it was rather vague though, since now people use the ancient black and white to harm others.
And they still use the modern black and white to kill.
Killing for justice, they say, as they drive knives through the hearts of those who anger them.
What I believe is the most horrible of them all is not that they have strange mind games or bloody tricks, nor even the fact that criminals have sick concoctions.
It's that they look just like me.
A human, two eyes, a nose, two ears, and a mouth, two arms, two hands, two legs, two feet, a torso, and a head.
But it's what is lain inside the head is what really matters.
We thought we had a firm grasp on that concept, didn't we, Mankind?
We thought we knew how to be ourselves, we even preach for others to be themselves.
Until we had to hear what Hwang Tiffany had to say.
I think Kim Taeyeon was right.
She looks me in the eyes now as she says it.
I think Kim Taeyeon is right, she will always be right.
I love her.
That phrase echoed within my head, countless of times, over and over.
I love her.
Please, tell her that.
I love her.
I clenched my bandaged hand, so much so that it pained me more than that liquid burn.
Was that Hwang Tiffany speaking?
Was that the girl who was tortured by shots and syringes, now saying that she admires, and even loves her torturer?
Who was she, really.
I don't know, and even she doesn't know, all she knows after Liquid Knowledge erasing her memories is Taeyeon.
Taeyeon, Taeyeon, hated Jessica, Taeyeon, Taeyeon, unwanted Yuri, Taeyeon, Taeyeon, hated Jessica, Taeyeon.
She hated Jessica, she didn't want Yuri, she wanted Taeyeon.
Taeyeon was her mind; Taeyeon was all she wanted, all she desired, all she knew.
The more you can't have of something, the more you wanted it.
She wanted Taeyeon to smile at her like before, even look at her once, she wanted Taeyeon to touch her.
She didn't want to be rejected.
This isn't Hwang Tiffany, she isn't a girl who would fall in love with her evil against her, and we all know that.
What kind of human being loves those who have sold them to Hell's Gates?
But as she has said before, Taeyeon is all she knows.
Taeyeon is all she needs.
And then, she adds, that the Liquid Knowledge is an acid, so it was meant to scorch from the start.
It has the base components of any other chemical; it wasn't anything special within the foundation.
So anything could be the start of a Liquid Knowledge, anyone could have made it, so why must have it fallen in Taeyeon's hands?
When I asked her those questions, she quickly and flatly stated because Taeyeon wanted it to be.
Taeyeon wanted the Liquid Knowledge, therefore she got it.
Taeyeon wanted Tiffany and Jessica to suffer for her experiment, so she secured their fates also.
And she wanted Yuri to be her advocate for some reason, so she was employed.
It was all Taeyeon wanted.
It was on her own free will.
Many people say that you cannot get all that you want.
But Taeyeon only wanted three things.
Perhaps it was quantity over quality that God allowed her to use these things to her advantage.
And I hear all this from a woman who cannot think for herself.
But then again, I do not think for myself either.
As a reporter for the media, I just say whatever they want me to say.
All for pay.
All for what I needed, then I will leave; I will leave the гɑре, the murdered, and the tortured to themselves.
Because I am not them.
They cling to me at times, even the tainted air of the ghosts, begging me to save them.
Just because I wear a suit and a tie, staring at them as if I'm interested in their stories.
Only writing because I had to.
But I barely cast a gaze over the tortured souls, willing them somewhere else, telling them to go seek help somewhere else.
I'm not the president, or a lawyer, or a police man, I'm not even in the law enforcement.
I'm just a reporter.
And I will not bring you equality.
Now the tables have turned.
It is the tortured asking the reporter to leave her alone.
To leave her to go back to the way she thought she was meant to live.
To go back to Kim Taeyeon.
And stay.
Forever.
