After descending the stairs,
Brian returned the key to room 304 to its original place.
He didn't hurry to leave but instead, holding a screwdriver, lifted the reception desk's blinds to watch the movements of the eyes, confirming that the other person wasn't feigning sleep, before quietly departing.
Back in the car,
Brian took off the items on him and packed them neatly.
While recalling all his actions just a moment ago, making sure nothing was missed,
he waited for the feedback from Golden Finger.
This was also an experiment for him.
The wound inflicted seemed simple,
but even if Andres was on the surgery table in a hospital right now, his chances of survival were next to none.
He was as good as dead!
Yet, when Brian had left, the other man was still alive.
Brian couldn't accurately determine the time of the man's death.
If Golden Finger could still provide real-time feedback, then it would mean that the mechanism to determine when an obsession is fulfilled belongs to a set of rules and doesn't rely on Brian's perception.
It also meant that Brian couldn't exploit the system by tricking it with self-suggestion as a loophole.
...
Regarding killing,
Brian felt no discomfort in his heart.
On the contrary,
when he drove the screwdriver into the target's carotid artery, Brian felt an oddly satisfying sense of euphoria surge from his head to his feet, almost making him shudder with pleasure.
It was a delightful feeling.
But this wasn't the euphoric sensation brought about by the Gift from the deceased.
It was more like... the relief a cranky person who quit smoking feels when they finally give in to their nicotine cravings after a long period of resistance.
It was eerie.
In fact, this wasn't Brian's first kill.
He had killed someone for the first time when he was eight years old.
And not just one person.
But back then, he reacted with nausea, fear, and had nightmares for a long time.
This time, however, it was a completely new sensation.
Killing, but feeling very satisfied...
...
"Could it be that I'm a natural-born psychopath?"
Brian chuckled, dismissing the thought, took out his cellphone, and calmly estimated the probable time of the target's death.
As for the reactions after Andres's corpse was found in the hotel tomorrow...
Brian didn't care.
In the absence of the Heavenly Eye system and concrete evidence, the police generally start their investigations by examining the motive, the victim's relationships, and so on.
Between Brian and the target,
they were strangers, without any direct or indirect connections, favors, or grudges.
Even if the detectives racked their brains, they wouldn't suspect him.
This was also why the most difficult cases to crack are those that are random acts without any apparent reason, involvement, or eyewitnesses.
"Almost time."
Brian murmured softly.
A few seconds passed,
and a familiar feeling spread through his body.
This was the Gift after the completion of an obsession!
Andres was dead!
While Brian was pleased, he also felt a tinge of disappointment.
This meant that the criterion for determining the completion of an obsession was probably rule-like.
He couldn't exploit any loopholes.
...
The Gift this time was still a physical Enhancement.
However, its intensity was much weaker compared to the last Gift.
Brian guessed that this might be related to the intensity of Andres's obsession before his death.
For the sake of her children, a single mother's obsession with protecting them before passing would naturally exceed another's vendetta obsession.
With mental preparation this time,
Brian, although thrilled, didn't lose his focus.
That came as a relief to him.
Otherwise, if one day he was in danger and the Gift arrived,
spacing out for a few seconds could prove fatal.
Now, Brian didn't have to worry about that anymore.
...
A few seconds later,
the Gift ended.
Brian sat in the driver's seat and moved his body lightly.
After two consecutive physical Enhancements,
Brian felt as if his once riddled body had shed an enormous burden; he not only felt relaxed but also full of energy as if he had returned to the robustness of his eighteen-year-old self before he started juggling part-time jobs.
Beyond that,
The body, originally fatigued from being on edge, had also returned to its best condition after the Enhancement.
This meant that the Gift of body enhancement came with the added function of recovery.
Brian's imagination ran wild.
Did this mean that if one day he were severely injured or even lost a limb, he could rely on this miraculous ability to heal?
If so, that would be incredibly awesome!
...
After calming down,
Brian first drove to the suburbs, dug a hole, and threw in everything he had used that day, including the outer clothes and trousers, set them on fire, and waited until everything was buried as ashes before returning home.
Back at his place,
Brian took another shower, changed into pajamas, and started testing his current physical condition.
The result was somewhat disappointing.
There had been a qualitative change compared to before.
But he hadn't truly returned to his state at eighteen.
All he could say was,
he had gone from being in a seriously depleted state, with a body full of holes, on the verge of sudden death, to a sub-healthy state of a typical 23-year-old young man.
"It seems that the feeling I had before was just an illusion of strength produced after my body had recovered," Brian thought, feeling a bit let down.
But the feeling wasn't strong.
At the Forensic Bureau, what was most abundant?
Dead bodies, of course!
Great fear lay between life and death.
Brian wasn't worried at all that he would lack obsession in the future.
As long as he gave himself time to develop,
Brian dared not think about how strong he would be later on.
By then,
threaten me?
...
He had to work tomorrow.
Today, he had gone through too much.
Even though Brian's body was much healthier now, his spirit was utterly exhausted.
He set his alarm clock, brimming with expectations for a brand-new life, and quickly fell asleep...
...
"Where am I?"
Brian looked around at the white space in confusion.
Wasn't he supposed to be sleeping?
Just as Brian was puzzled,
two points of light appeared out of nowhere before him.
Along with the appearance of the light points, there was a moment of enlightenment: he was now in his Spirit Space in the form of a spiritual body, and the two light points were fragmented memory segments from moments before the death of two people who died after their obsessions were fulfilled.
Brian casually crushed one of the light points.
The next moment,
several fragmented scenes appeared before him as if a movie was playing:
A not bad-looking woman, disheveled and overweight, was yelling at a man with one hand holding a cigarette and the other pulling at the man's hair.
The man was forced to look up, eyes closed, fists clenched, silent.
A thought crossed Brian's mind.
The man was Andres, whom he had just killed.
The woman was Andres's wife, also one of the victims tonight.
Sadly, the memory had images but no sound.
Thumbs down!
As the first scene shattered,
a new one appeared:
A soap opera was on the TV, Andres's wife, draped in a blanket, holding unfinished leftovers, head tipped back, asleep on the couch.
Andres, wearing white gloves with a bloody hammer in hand, his face red and drunken, came in from outside.
He walked straight behind the couch, eyes slightly bloodshot, peeked over, looking down from above, his eyes locked onto his wife with whom he once shared many happy memories.
Andres's wife, as if sensing something, opened her eyes in confusion.
The next moment,
Andres's arm holding the hammer lifted high and came crashing down...
The scene cut off there.
Brian clicked his tongue.
The killer really was that guy Andres!
From the two clips,
it seemed that in the marriage, Andres was the one being oppressed.
Tonight, the couple had argued over something,
And Andres, in a fit of rage, went out to drink and, under the influence of alcohol, committed a crime of passion.
But why did he kill his neighbor, who was a single mother?
From the sight of Andres walking into the room with a blood-stained hammer, it seemed he had first killed the neighbor and then returned to his own home to kill his wife.
With curiosity,
Brian crushed the remaining light point.