Chapter Text
PRAISE FOR "THE GARDEN OF EDEN":
— “★★★★☆:
A thrilling tale of horror and suspense with a splash of romance. This novel will leave you on the edge of your seat, wishing to sink your teeth into more.”
— “★★★★★:
Perfection and chillingly brilliant: The Garden of Eden will leave you biting your nails and holding your breath until the very last page.”
— “★★★★☆:
Bone-chilling. The perfect example of how monsters can lurk in our every day life. How even strangers can be our own personal hell.”
— “★★★★★
The Garden of Eden will have you sleeping with your lights on and your doors locked. A nightmare that will linger with you long after you close the back cover.”
Just like the first page of a novel, the first written word, sentence, even paragraph on the page, life too waited for that hooking moment; the scene that would be the start of everything. Sometimes that start began seemingly far too late, the reality of life’s true trajectory starting halfway through a different series, written by a different author entirely.
It could be jarring, entirely stunting one on a path they had been so determined to follow to see through the end; and sometimes, the path they had wound upon was the one least expected.
And sometimes, just sometimes, books picked up right where that previous author had abruptly halted their work, like nothing had ever happened but the simple turn of a new page.
Yoon Jongwoo sat behind the deep Birchwood desk with anticipatory ease; his fingers drummed along its surface absently, a habit of never really being able to keep still always electrified in his veins, keeping at least one of his limbs moving at all times, whether he was talking or standing, sitting or laying down; even when he was doing something else, he was always moving. His system was always alert, always on edge —— as if something could be coming after him at any moment.
He knew he hadn’t always been like this, letting the words - which he had claimed in every interview, on the website’s biography, that they were fictional - do the talking for him, the fronting of the horrible mangled tangle of that time. And he profited off it, and in large amounts too, but it didn’t deter that it sat in the back of his mind like a flickering shadow under a street lamp, waiting for the bulb to burst.
But most of all he sat in the back of his mind, grin as sharp as the blade that had been stretched across his throat, like dentistry tools ready to yank his teeth out, root and all. Jongwoo always - especially at first - had been rather skittish since the aftermath, wondering when he would turn a corner and be dragged back.
But the last few months have grown easier, as time reassured him it was over. That he was safe. Some days of course were harder than others, but nothing denied the fact he was sort of healing from it all.
Hence where he sat now, watching the line of fans pouring out the entrance doors of the bookstore’s front like a winding maze —— all of them there to see him, to meet the author of their new favorite book. The thought of these people all having read his words and enjoyed them enough to meet him made his heart flutter in the ribbed castle of his chest.
“Are you ready?” A woman, older than Jongwoo by a few years of both age and experience in the field, nudged him; the back of her pen - the ironic shape of a stack of books, oddly pointed at the edges - stabbed into the cup of his shoulder, earning a frazzling frown from Jongwoo. He turned a bit to eye her fully, observing the excited anticipation that was brilliant across her visage. He looked at the shine dazzling across her cropped bangs and pinned back hair under the harsh illumination of the bookstore’s lights. She was leaning down a bit as she jabbed at him, trying to keep their conversation in their own space.
Offering a smile of his own he nodded, hoping his own enthusiasm mirrored hers then, as his hands fidgeted on the table. He felt his heart quicken underneath the polo he was wearing, collar flat and ironed like freshly inked pages. Like the pads of fingers drumming along wood.
Despite lacking a verbal cue, Jongwoo’s manager offered a toothy grin as she removed the pen from his shoulder, replacing it momentarily with the soft curve of her smooth palm; she patted the area a few times in an encouraging ‘You got this’ manner before sauntering away, using the retrieval of her hands to adjust the tie nestled underneath her suit jacket.
A palm moved to lay flat against the table as she left, a sense of relief flooding over Jongwoo; this was supposed to be an exciting night, one of celebration. It wasn’t rare he did meeting nights like this, but it had been the first since the announcement of the beginning scriptures of his sequel.
The Ruins of Eden.
From what he was told - informed by Eun-Sun - it had roused quite the stir. Jongwoo himself hadn’t seen it, not in his mental break from the online world, but he took her word over anyone else’s’.
It was funny, how Eun-Sun was his most trusted person as of right now, the core and surrounding electrons of his supporting nucleus. The difference almost a year can make. Not that it mattered, he trusted her more than he ever had ——
Dragging his palm across the wood of the table, Jongwoo couldn’t help but to note the sound of jewelry dragging across the wood as it pulled him from the safety net of his thoughts, the distinct tink tink of metal and hard-like rock.
Of bone,
gritted and sawed to the curving root to fit like pendants across the chain that always sat loosely dangled on his wrist.
Like a promise.
Like it was reminding him not to forget.
“Jongwoo-ssi!! We match!” The jingle of a similar sounding piece of metal chirped in Jongwoo’s ear following the cheery fan’s outcry; upon looking up, surely enough, she was wearing a similar fashioned bracelet, most likely made of stainless steel and a hard plastic.
Pieces of merchandise he had let happen, if along with the various other prices that, to most, would be nothing but reminder, a tasteless gimmick. But this? To him, it solidified something he kept in his mind each time he had meet-and-greets:
He held the original.
A seemingly normal - albeit in an abnormal oddity - piece jewelry, carved straight from the pages of his novel, allowed for him to continue to wear it: he was just promoting his own novel, right? What kind of author would he be if he didn’t indulge himself in the motifs of his novel, bringing it to life? A delicate bracelet, hand crafted. The bone scraping sound against the wood earlier lifted his hand then, his own hand giving a wiggle to showcase his bracelet with enthusiasm.
Although never mentioned, his had a different jingle to it, one that felt clerical to his ears, like a whispered endearing tone.
The jingle of human teeth.
And so, with that brilliant smile inlaid across the author’s tiers, showcasing his own brilliant teeth, the brightness in his eyes of a man who held a mirage to the public eye, it begun. And with it, as the discussions of his novel always brought, him.
“You killed them all, didn’t you?” Seo Moon-Jo’s words were accusatory in their suavely chiming way, the pelting of the rain to the roof harsh, a drumroll of a demanded encore to the performance of a closing act.
“I-I didn’t!” Yoon Jongwoo tried to retort back, head shaking feverishly as he thought thought thought, hands moving to press on either side of his skull, trying to squeeze himself from Moon-Jo’s grasp.
The dentist watched with an endearing glint to shadow casted hues, head tilting, waterlogged tresses dripping to the scuffing cement of the fourth floor . His eyes befell the bracelet adorning Jongwoo’s wrist, the human teeth jangling from their carefully closed perches along the rubbed circular chain. Despite what Jongwoo had said, Moon-Jo knew otherwise.
He ignored Jongwoo’s comment.
“You enjoyed it, didn’t you jagiya?” The taunting words of Moon-Jo only crescendoed into a reverberating boom against the walls as he grew closer and closer to Jongwoo, until he was close enough to grasp the aspiring author by his cheeks, a hand cradling either side; pinky fingers being used as leverage as Moon-Jo pushed away Jongwoo’s hands pushing at his skull.
Moon-Jo wanted to see the entirety of Jongwoo’s bruised face, in all its beautiful glory.
That was the thing about art, Moon-Jo had come to conclude: it cracks and frays over time, scuffing when it is adored over and over. His adoration for Jongwoo was overpowering, eroding what little foundation Eden had provided.
“Stop it ,” Jongwoo began to plead, yet made no move to push Moon-Jo’s hands away, his own shakily finding themselves topping over Moon-Jo’s instead, “you’re lying.”
Art needed precise care, a gentle touch of restoration to continue to make it look brand new again. A curator who would look after it for the entirety of their days. The bracelet, Moon-Jo thought, was his artist signature, the culmination of all he had been saving up for, for this very moment.
It was a token of a promise, bestowed upon the art of Jongwoo to eternally be the curator to restore him, to polish and chisel him out to the best he can be.
But most of all, in that dark, damped abandoned floor of Eden, juxtaposed by the harsh pelting of the night’s rain, illuminated by the sickly haze of the moon in the lens of the abandoned shower stall dividers that emphasized the foul aroma of rusty blood ——
It was a confession.
Jongwoo, truthfully, hadn’t noticed how much time had passed as he began meeting with people - fans, as he was still getting used to referring to them as such -, that by the time the line had dwindled to the second to last group, whom he was currently speaking to, he hadn’t even noticed the line having gone down —— or that it had been two hours already.
Which meant as he was talking to the second to last pair - a couple by the looks of it, both of the men enthused to be meeting Jongwoo - and Eun-Sun was discussing the rules with the last group, the sun had already set below the earthy bed of the horizon, nestling in the beckoning moonlight of the nighttime. The swirl of oranges and canary yellows and soft rosy pinks had begun to disperse as the ichor stained ivories and navy blues began to settle in in their stead; an inky curtain draw to the day. The stars were the encore.
Eun-Sun had been returning to her post a bit behind - yet still beside - Jongwoo, when he heard what the last group of girls were talking about as he awaited for the couple before him to pick their signing item of choosing.
“Did you see him?” The girl on the left hushed a laugh as she flicked at her short cropped obsidian tresses, “He looked just like him.”
Her words, vague and uncharacteristic, as if they were doing nothing more than speaking of a boy, earned a groan from the figure in the middle, whose eyes rolled with a prominent vigor. She was the tallest of the group, blonde highlighted tresses tied in a rigidly tight ponytail set at the apex of her scalp. The hair made her look even taller, Jongwoo thought.
“You can’t be serious, can you? A real-life man, looking like a beautiful antagonist out of a thriller novel? Come on, in your dreams.”
“But you saw him!” The first girl retorted, raising a hand - also adorned by a cheap rendition of a toothy pendant bracelet - as she smacked the shoulder of the taller woman.
“I did, you’re right, but that doesn’t mean anything!”
“You’re just in denial because you found the villain cute.” The third girl, furthest from the bracelet adorned girl, spoke up; there was a smug shadow to her visage as she looked to the middle girl, brows raised in a challenge.
Once again Jongwoo noted, the middle girl rolled her eyes, offering a sigh. He lost track of their conversation for a moment as the couple before him began talking again, their words louder and more present in the forefront of his concentration. Yet even as they talked, Jongwoo couldn’t get the girls’ words out of his mind. Couldn’t stop analyzing it as he smiled to the pair before him, as his torso leaned down over the desk to sign the book.
The Garden of Eden.
A thriller about a corrupt doctor, who manipulated and charmed his way through coercing the residents of his apartment building into a game of killing, and the protagonist, who did everything he could to save everyone, especially himself. Yet, in the end, had proved to worse than the doctor had been. A plot twisting novel. The book that offered more than it should’ve, but provided an outlet for Jongwoo. Inspiration that was raw, vulnerable.
He had tried to convince himself at first that it wasn’t about Eden - ‘the title was just a joke’, he used to tell himself - that he was just using some instances and characteristics to help enhance the plot he had already been working on prior to those gruesome events. A lie he used to convince himself of, until he had gone back through his manuscript, rereading this so called ‘doctor’ character.
It resembled nothing short of Seo Moon-Jo. All but his namesake.
But a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, wouldn’t it?
A part of Jongwoo hated himself for it still, for everything that happened in the walls of that residency. He hated who he had become, what he had given up to prove himself correct. Prove himself innocent. Prove that the blood that stained his hands was conducted by Moon-Jo.
Another part of him hated himself for changing Moon-Jo’s name in the novel.
“. . . ——Myung-Ki! How could you hate such a well written villain?”
Even hearing the name, the only true part of the fabrication in the grand scheme of things, made Jongwoo’s hands shake; the pen between his digits shook as he tried finishing his signature.
“Well-written or not, doesn’t mean who we saw was him! You guys are ridiculous.”
The pen smeared, then. Jongwoo ended his signature for the first time ever, with a drawn doodle of a smiley face.
As the couple left and the final group - the girls from earlier - approached the table, Jongwoo tried to push down the surfacing thoughts, the surge of repressed memories trying to claw their way from the volcanic remains of Jongwoo’s consciousness. He pushed them back into the rubble, kept the fire ablaze. He was overthinking it, letting it consume his thoughts too much.
When you start to think about it, about him, remember to ground yourself, Jongwoo.
Wise words from his therapist freshened his mind in that moment, the author offering a few glances to various objects around the room, counting them off in his head. Yet he was in the middle of counting between eight and ten, the culmination of a full grounding cycle, when he heard the final words that sent him tumbling over the edge. Words that, seemingly to anyone else, would be nothing more than wishful thinking, a personification of wishing to see your favorite character jump from the pages of your favorite book.
“The man was definitely him and I refuse to believe anything else! Seeing is believing, and I saw him!”
But it wasn’t quite the same, not for Jongwoo. Not when he knew the implication of the real-life version of that villain he had given such an enthralling aura to. Such a convincing one that, one might argue had been alive.
Seo Moon-Jo.
His own personal hell.
Was he alive?