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Most of the time, my job was a sick joyride.
A serial killer once told me that his murders were a metaphor. A metaphor for how cruel, revolting and unfair life could be, even towards people who didn't deserve it.
Another one described the massacre of his family as a lesson - pain was the only thing that he knew how to teach them.
Sometimes it was hard to tell which one of the words in my head were mine and which ones were theirs. It was a compulsive endeavor, to try to unwrap the logic behind a killer's reasoning, fueled by my intertwining emotions and unfathomable hatred for people who hurt other people, but sometimes, they were stronger than I was. The knots in their heads were too complicated and twisted to undo. That was when strange doubts started creeping up from the back of my mind and I didn't always realise they got implanted there by someone else.
I wanted to understand the mind of a serial killer, but at the same time - I didn't. Every new interview, made it a little harder to keep believing that human nature was fundamentally good. There wasn't supposed to be such thing as a person that was born to kill or a victim that deserved to die, but sometimes, events aligned like it was fate. The outcome seemed inevitable and it made sense why things ended that way.
Park Sooyoung was a whirlwind of cherry-scented perfume, hushed gossip and bright-eyed gazes. She was always full of stories about the wild things that kept happening to her and the sound of her laughter was as captivating as an unconditionally happy song from the radio. My personal favorite tale was one where she described how she followed a cat from the subway station. The animal lead her to its secret underground bar, where it supposedly prepared her the best cup of coffee that she ever tasted and told her about how difficult it was to run a business when no one took you meowing seriously. One time, she said that she fell in to a well somewhere in the middle of Seoul and stayed there for three days before I came around and saved her, but the two of us didn't even know each other back then.
She had no reason to care about my existence and yet she kept searching for excuses to talk to me. That early afternoon, she was smacking the top of my head with a rolled-up magazine and glaring at me over the top of the mug that she was holding to her lips. Without the paper to block the strong sunlight, it didn't take long before I began to wake up from my sleep. I caught a whiff of her cherry perfume and I instantly knew that it was her, even if my gaze still needed some time to focus on her face, shadowed because of the rays of light that were shining through the window behind her. '' This is not what I had in mind when I told you to take the newest copy of our magazine and go to the break room! I mean, seriously? Putting it on your face, so that you can sleep in broad daylight? Even after I marked the exact page with my article on it? I wanted you to read it and tell me your opinion about it! ''
Instead of smacking me once again, she tossed the rolled-up magazine on the coffee table and sat on the second sofa that we had in our break room. Steam was rising from the cup that she was trying to balance in her hand, along with her phone and a pack of slim cigarettes. A wave of curses rose from the bottom of her throat when she nearly spilled the scalding liquid on her leg. The corner of my lips twitched in amusement as I watched her kick her heels off her feet and rest her legs on the small table in front of her. '' Since when are you a tea person, Sooyoung? ''
