[POINT OF VIEW: LEO - FIRST PERSON]
Lee Jung-jae's sad, understanding smile was a clearer answer than any words. For a moment, on that balcony suspended over Seoul's sea of lights, I felt a strange connection. He understood it. He understood the survivor's burden, the compulsion to return to the fire not by choice, but because peace felt like a lie.
I felt strangely exposed, as if this actor, this man who played heroes, had looked directly through my armor of chaos and sarcasm and seen the broken machinery underneath. It was uncomfortable. So I did what I always do when things get too emotional: I changed the subject, steering the conversation towards a harder, colder logic, a terrain where I felt safer.
"But the other one," I said, my tone shifting, the philosophical melancholy evaporating and being replaced by something sharper. "The childhood friend. The traitor. Number 218."
I saw a change in Jung-jae's expression. Empathy gave way to professional caution. He was back to being the actor discussing a character. "Sang-woo," he said, his voice quiet. "He was a good man who made terrible choices in an impossible situation. The pressure, the debt, the shame... the game brought out the worst in him, as it did in so many others."
I scoffed, a short, humorless sound. "Impossible situation. Terrible choices. Those are pretty words they use to justify weakness and betrayal. For me, it's simpler." I leaned against the railing, my eyes fixed on the darkness. "He made decisions. Choices. He chose to betray Ali, a man who trusted him blindly. He chose to let Sae-byeok die when he could have helped her. And he chose to try to kill you in the final game. In my world, choices like that have tangible consequences. They're not solved with an honorable suicide so the hero can take the money to your mother and thus ease his own conscience."
I paused. "That's... poetic. Touching. But it's ineffective justice. It doesn't send the right message."
Jung-jae looked at me, his curiosity overcoming his caution. "So, what would you have done, Leo? In that final situation?"
I turned to look at him, and he must have seen something in my face, because his expression changed again, this time to one of genuine uneasiness. I let my face relax, let the clown mask fall away completely, revealing the cold calm beneath. It was the face I put on before entering a tomb, the face I had when I knew violence was the only solution.
"I wouldn't have killed him in the glass bridge game," I said quietly. "I would have won the game. I would have taken the money. And then, when he felt safe, when he thought he had left the horror behind, I would have found him. And I would have given him a Colombian necktie."
[POINT OF VIEW: GROUP - THIRD PERSON]
The conversation on the balcony had become so intense that it had attracted the attention of the rest of the group. They had moved closer to the open door, listening in silence, fascinated by the strange communion between the actor and the adventurer. And they heard Leo's last sentence.
"A... Colombian necktie?" Min-jun asked innocently, his voice breaking the silence. "Is that a luxury clothing brand? Like Brioni or something?"
The question, so pure in its ignorance, made Leo's explanation a thousand times more horrifying.
Leo turned slowly, his eyes sweeping over Jung-jae and fixing on the group. His expression was distant, clinical, like a professor about to explain a difficult concept to a class of slow children.
"No," he said, his voice flat and devoid of all emotion. "It's not a clothing brand."
He stepped into the living room, moving to the center of the room. Everyone instinctively took a step back. "It's a post-mortem execution and mutilation technique. It became popular during 'La Violencia' in Colombia in the 1950s. Cartels and paramilitary groups used it to send a message. To instill terror."
He paused, letting the horrible definition sink in. Ho-yeon's face paled. Mr. Choi looked like he was going to need his cardiologist again.
"It's reserved for certain types of people," Leo continued in his eerily educational tone. "Snitches. Traitors. People who talk too much or who break a code of trust. It's a symbolic punishment. A visual warning."
He saw their confused and horrified faces, and seemed to misinterpret their reaction. He didn't think they were horrified. He thought they didn't understand the procedure. And his brain, with its need to explain patterns and systems literally and without social filters, took over.
"I see you don't understand," he said with a sigh of impatience. "Look. It's a fairly simple process, mechanically speaking."
And then, the demonstration began.
[POINT OF VIEW: JO YU-RI - THIRD PERSON]
Jo Yu-ri watched, paralyzed by a mix of fascination and a horror that rose in her throat like bile.
Leo stopped in the center of the Persian rug, turning the luxurious living room into his anatomy class of terror.
"First," he began, his voice as calm as if he were explaining how to assemble IKEA furniture. "You need a knife. Very sharp. A six-inch blade is ideal." He raised his empty right hand, holding it rigid, the edge of his palm extended as if it were a knife blade.
"You make a deep vertical incision here," he said. And with terrifying clinical precision, he brought the edge of his hand to his own throat. He tilted his head back, exposing his neck. And then, slowly, he traced an imaginary line from below his chin to the base of his collarbone.
A collective gasp swept through the room. Helena, who had been watching with a grim expression, stepped forward, her body tensing.
"It's crucial," Leo continued, completely oblivious to their reaction, "to cut through the trachea and vocal cords, but it's important to try not to immediately sever the carotid arteries. For the optimal... visual effect, the subject needs to still have blood pressure."
Yu-ri's blood ran cold. He was describing torture with the detachment of a chef explaining a recipe.
"Then," he went on, his face a mask of academic concentration, "through the open wound..." He paused, and then, with his other fingers, mimed the act of reaching into the imaginary wound on his own neck. "...you grasp the base of the tongue. It's slippery, so you need a good grip. And then, you pull."
He made a forceful pulling gesture downwards.
"You pull it out through the neck opening, letting it hang over the chest." To illustrate, he let his own tongue hang limply from his mouth, his eyes still fixed on them, vacant and explanatory. "And there you have it. A necktie. A very clear visual message for anyone who finds the body. The man lying here... spoke when he should have been silent."
He stood there, in the middle of the room, head still tilted back and tongue out, a grotesque statue of his own lesson in brutality.
The world seemed to stop. Mr. Choi finally fainted. Min-jun doubled over, retching. Ho-yeon and Jung-jae were white as paper, staring, too horrified to move. Even Helena seemed shaken, a deep sadness in her eyes at seeing the coldest manifestation of the monster she had helped mold.
And in that silence of paralyzed horror, one person moved.
Jo Yu-ri.
The paralysis broke, replaced by a wave of fury so white-hot it burned away all fear. It wasn't just horror she felt. It was indignation. Indignation at his absolute and total inability to comprehend the limits of human decency. Indignation at having brought such darkness into their home, into their sanctuary.
She marched directly towards him with the determination of a guided missile. He remained in his demonstration pose, a monument to madness.
She didn't slap him. She didn't hug him. She did something much more effective.
She reached out, grabbed Leo's ear between her thumb and forefinger, and twisted. With all her might.
[POINT OF VIEW: LEO - FIRST PERSON]
The pain was sharp, surprising, and absolutely humiliating.
"OW! OW, OW, OW, OW, OW!" I shrieked, the air leaving my lungs in a squeal. The clinical professor vanished in an instant, replaced by an eight-year-old whose playground bully had just discovered his weak spot. My tongue snapped back into my mouth. My head straightened. "Yu-ri! Let go! Let go, let go, it hurts, it hurts!"
"You callous, sociopathic, empty-headed fool!" she hissed. She wasn't shouting, but her voice was concentrated venom, filled with a fury I had never heard from her. And she started pulling me, dragging me by the ear. "What is wrong with you?!"
"It was a demonstration!" I tried to explain, as I shuffled across the room, hopping on one leg to try to relieve the pressure. "I was just being didactic! I thought you didn't understand!"
"WE ALL PERFECTLY UNDERSTOOD THAT YOU'RE A BARBARIAN!" she hissed, pulling harder. "You don't explain drug cartel mutilation techniques in a living room! And you definitely, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, demonstrate them on yourself like you're some damned YouTube tutorial! There are limits! Even for you!"
She dragged me to the nearest sofa and shoved me hard, making me flop onto the cushions. She loomed over me, her index finger pointing at my face.
"Sit down!" she ordered. "And don't move. Don't speak. Don't breathe too loudly. And don't mention anything more graphic than a Teletubbies episode. Understood!?"
I sat there on the sofa, rubbing my red, throbbing ear, feeling everyone's gaze on me. I looked at Yu-ri. She was no longer the scared K-Pop idol. She was a force of nature, a valkyrie of common decency. And she had put me in my place in a way that neither bullets nor tasers had managed. She had humiliated me with a simple ear pull.
And I looked at her, her face flushed with anger and concern, and despite the stinging pain in my ear, I couldn't help but feel a strange, warm pang of... something.
Helena watched the scene from across the room. She didn't intervene. She just watched, and for the second time in two days, a genuine, complex smile played on her face. Perhaps, she thought, she had finally found the only antidote to Leonidas's chaos. It wasn't the pills. It wasn't the tasers. It was a furious pop star with a strong sense of propriety and very little patience for murder demonstrations.
I slumped into the sofa, utterly defeated. The man who had just calmly described how to pull a man's tongue out through his neck had just been neutralized. By an ear.