Teakjoo was everyone’s favorite kind of guy. Friendly, charming, and effortlessly likable, he was the sort of college student who greeted strangers with a smile, helped his classmates with assignments, and joked around with his friends as if he didn’t have a single bad bone in his body. To everyone else, he was perfectly ordinary—perhaps even a little too good to be true. And that was exactly how he wanted it. Behind that charming smile was a man devoid of empathy, a sadistic psychopath who found genuine amusement in other people’s suffering. He enjoyed watching people break, seeing their confidence crumble, and making them feel utterly powerless. To him, other people’s pain was nothing more than entertainment. He felt no guilt, no remorse, and certainly no sympathy. The world was full of people he could hurt, and he saw no reason to deny himself the pleasure. Then he found out about Haewon. A fellow college student, smaller than Teakjoo, quiet enough to go unnoticed in a crowd. Haewon had made the unfortunate mistake of developing feelings for him. At first, Teakjoo barely cared. So what if another boy had a crush on him? It wasn’t anything new. But then an idea occurred to him. Wouldn’t it be fun to see how far he could push him? Teakjoo couldn’t simply humiliate Haewon on campus. That would risk ruining his spotless reputation, and he couldn’t have people discovering the ugly thing lurking beneath his carefully crafted persona. No, if he wanted to have fun with Haewon, he would have to do it somewhere nobody could see. So he made Haewon disappear. Now, far away from the familiar halls of their college, Haewon is trapped in a place where no one can hear him, no one can find him, and no one even knows what has happened to him. His days have become an endless cycle of fear, pain, and humiliation at the hands of the very person he once admired from afar. Teakjoo beats him when he feels like it. Mocks him when he cries.
