Straight to Hell
“Wh-what did you say? Again! Say it again!”
Barely conscious after surgery, Kwon Ha-sung had to hear the news like a bolt from the blue from his doctor.
“Your right shoulder was crushed, so we put a metal pin in. Your left rotator cuff is completely torn as well. I’m sorry, but… you’ll have to give up baseball.”
“That’s…”
Unable to believe it, Kwon Ha-sung tried to tear at his hair. But both arms were wrapped tight in bandages, so he couldn’t.
“What the hell do you mean! That’s impossible!!”
“Sir, you mustn’t move. Please calm down!!”
“H-Ha-sung! Steady yourself!!”
His parents rushed in, pale with shock, and pinned both his arms. But he showed no sign of quieting down.
“How many years have I poured into baseball! And now you’re telling me to just quit!! Next year I was supposed to— hic, haah…”
“You’ll tear the surgical sites open if you keep this up!!”
“Aaaargh!! Aagh!!”
The more he forced his arms to move, the more horrific the pain became. Yet Kwon Ha-sung only thrashed harder, refusing the reality he could not accept.
“How could I!! After everything I’ve done!!”
“Ha-sung… hic, sob…”
Crushed under despair that pressed down on his entire body, Kwon Ha-sung broke into tears. Seeing their son collapse like that, his parents pulled him into their arms and began to wail with him.
In that same moment, a different kind of hell was unfolding in the next room.
“Shut up!!! Aaaaaaah!!!”
Crash!!
Baek Yoon-seul hurled the hand mirror she was holding to the floor and screamed.
“This can’t be real! It can’t be!!”
Her entire face was hideously wrapped in bandages. The beautiful looks she had always flaunted no longer existed. And they never would again.
“We did everything we could to restore the collapsed nose and cheekbones… but unfortunately, some aftereffects from the surgery seem unavoidable.”
“So you’re saying she has to live the rest of her life with those hideous surgical scars? On her face, no less!”
Baek Yoon-seul’s mother asked, her face drained of color by rage and terror. The doctor lowered his head with a helpless expression.
“We’ll do our best, but completely erasing the scars is still difficult with modern medicine. I’m sorry. Still, the surgery itself finished successfully.”
Baek Yoon-seul’s accident had been far more severe than anyone imagined. When her face scraped across the asphalt, fine stone fragments and debris had buried themselves deep into the flesh.
So before the doctor could even stitch the torn skin, he had first had to dig out every single embedded piece one by one.
“Then you’re telling my daughter to live the rest of her life wearing those disgusting scars? On a girl’s face!!”
“Wh-what am I supposed to… Mom. Haah, waaaaah!! I wanted to be an idol—with a face like this I can’t do anything anymore. Hic…!”
“Yoon-seul! D-don’t cry!”
In the end Baek Yoon-seul’s mother, unable to watch any longer, burst into tears herself.
“Fix my daughter’s face properly right now. Otherwise I’ll bury you under a medical malpractice suit!”
“Mommm… waaaaah! It’s all over!! Everything’s ruined!!!”
Eyes rolling back, she grabbed whatever she could reach—flower pots, anything—and flung it all. The hospital room turned into pure chaos in seconds.
“Nurse! Sedative!!”
“Look at my pretty girl’s face… what are we going to do. Aigoo!”
That was when it hit her. Baek Yoon-seul’s mother suddenly remembered the one thing she had forgotten.
That shaman bastard. That shaman bastard had said it. If they apologized, he would help them keep their lives!
Had he known something like this would happen? Was that why he’d stood there so boldly? That crazy son of a bitch!!
Terror flipped into pure hatred in an instant. Yet there was nothing she could actually do to Park Su-hwan.
If she went around claiming a shaman’s curse had ruined her daughter, the only one people would call insane was herself.
“Aaaaaah!!”
Her legs gave out and Baek Yoon-seul’s mother crumpled to the floor. Like a madwoman she pounded the hospital floor and shrieked.
“It’s all that bastard’s fault! That unlucky bastard! My daughter’s face! Our Yoon-seul’s face!!”
Park Su-hwan was scattering the red beans and salt Choi Young-gam had given him around the shrine, muttering for the Grim Reapers to stay away, when his phone vibrated in his pocket.
The caller was Choi Hana. Expecting her call, Park Su-hwan answered.
“Hello.”
“Was this what you meant by karma coming back around, Oppa?”
“No greeting first?”
“Yes, yes. Have you been well? More importantly, school is a complete mess right now.”
“Whoa. So the rumors already spread?”
Park Su-hwan immediately knew what she was talking about.
“Yes. Kwon Ha-sung’s shoulder is completely destroyed—baseball’s finished for him. And Baek Yoon-seul’s face got horribly disfigured in the accident.”
Exactly as expected. The prophecy written in the ledger had come true without a single word out of place.
Of course, if Park Su-hwan had given them a proper warning, things might have turned out differently. But he had no reason to. Those two had shown not even a flicker of remorse right up to the end.
See? You should’ve apologized when I told you to.
Maybe then their lives would have taken a slightly different path.
“Does it bother you?”
“No.”
Choi Hana answered firmly.
“Just like you said, Oppa. It’s karma.”
“Right. And this is only the beginning. Tell them not to die. Even after death, their luck won’t be anything comfortable.”
Exactly. The misfortune Park Su-hwan had seen for Kwon Ha-sung in the ledger was only just starting.
And though Choi Hana didn’t know it, the parents she had prophesied about would never escape that same cycle of misery either.
“They won’t even get a trial in the underworld.”
Park Su-hwan’s voice dropped low. He recalled the moment he had confirmed Kwon Ha-sung’s name in the world of the ledger.
Back then the bastard’s name had been written in bone-chilling red ink. And beneath it…
The moment he read those words, Park Su-hwan had felt a chill of pure dread race down his spine.
A wretched end that stripped away even the barest chance at a defense. The price for laying hands on a child of the gods could not be escaped even in death.
And Baek Yoon-seul’s fate would be no different.
“I’d like that, but… I can’t exactly tell them not to die.”
“Why not?”
“They dropped out.”
“What? Then what about the school violence committee?”
“They’re not students anymore, so the school says it can’t punish them.”
“Ha. Pulling one last trick right to the end?”
“That’s part of it, but they were probably also scared of how the other kids look at them. They lived on nothing but their own pride, after all.”
She was right. Those two would never be able to hold their heads up anywhere again.
“Right—what about that teacher bastard?”
“He quit. And word of this whole thing spread so wide that no one touches me anymore. They’re terrified of getting cursed and ending up like Baek Yoon-seul or Kwon Ha-sung.”
“That’s good news… though I wonder if it might block your path somehow.”
“It’s definitely a good thing. I never had a single friend anyway. Oh, right—Grandpa wants you to come by the hospital. He’s furious, asking if you just took the Byeokjomok and wiped your mouth clean.”
“Old man. I saved his life—isn’t that enough? He’s got a lot of demands. I’ll drop by soon.”
“Okay. And Oppa, thank you. Really. For Grandpa and for me. Later I’ll buy some fruit to offer to the General.”
“Forget fruit—our General likes pork belly. Bring meat. Got it?”
Park Su-hwan spoke in a deliberately solemn tone, then hung up.
Meat my ass. I’m the one who’s going to eat it all.
He brushed the salt from his hands and looked around. Peach branches and Byeokjomok hung at all four corners and over the entrance.
Good. Perfect. With this much, even the Grim Reapers won’t find me easily.
Especially that piece of Byeokjomok blackened by three lightning strikes—even someone with zero spiritual power like Park Su-hwan could tell it looked genuinely potent.
Knock knock.
“Come in.”
A young woman opened the door and stepped into the shrine. Finished with his cleaning, Park Su-hwan took his seat and arranged his face into a solemn expression.
“Hello. I have an appointment for today.”
“Have a seat there. What could be so urgent that you came all this way?”
Their eyes met, yet he was not dragged into the world of the ledger. Park Su-hwan caught the faint ring mark still lingering on the woman’s finger.
Tch. Obvious. Another reunion job.
“That bastard of yours is a real piece of work.”
“H-how did you—?!”
The woman startled and hurriedly sat down. And so, once again today, Park Su-hwan’s fraudulent shaman act continued.
“Congratulations on your discharge, Old Man. Here’s a gift.”
The moment he heard Choi Young-gam had been released, Park Su-hwan raced straight to Mansindang, a bottle of pear extract from the neighborhood herbal shop in hand.
“Hmph. Showing up now?”
Choi Young-gam scolded him for not even showing his face when the discharge papers were being processed.
But Park Su-hwan had his own reasons. At the time he’d been busy making money by running scams—no, by reading fortunes.
“Were you planning to feed and house me, Old Man?”
“Why would I? What’s so pretty about you?”
“Then stop sulking.”
“Ah. Oppa, you’re here?”
Hearing Park Su-hwan’s voice, Choi Hana poked her head out from the inner room and came outside. She had clearly been in the middle of a meal; a smear of red seasoning still clung to the corner of her mouth.
“You’ve got something on your face.”
“Wh-where?”
Her cheeks flushed as she hastily wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Other side. There, it’s gone. How’s school these days?”
“Not bad. Except for the occasional kids whispering. But since they don’t actually touch me, I’m satisfied.”
Choi Hana was enjoying school life so peaceful it almost made all the years she had endured feel unfair.
“Thank you so much. For saving my grandfather too.”
Park Su-hwan made a face of pure disgust and dug a finger into his ear.
“Ugh… I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard that. Boring. So boring.”
“Shut it. Since you’re already here, eat something and then help out. Call it payment for the meal.”
Choi Young-gam cut in with a tongue click.
“What? I’m not eating and I’m not working.”
“Shut up and follow me. There’s tangsuyuk too.”
“I’m not even hungry…”
In the end, the crime of polishing off a double serving of jajangmyeon sentenced Park Su-hwan to hard labor—hauling crates and folding a thousand talismans.
“Haaah…”
I’m going to die of exhaustion.
Park Su-hwan headed home, shaking out fingers that felt like they were going numb and grumbling the whole way.
Working me this hard for one bowl of jajangmyeon—isn’t that just pure evil?
Darkness had already settled and the streetlamps were flickering on one by one. As he trudged down the alley, a man caught Park Su-hwan’s eye.
He was a young man built like a mountain, but his expression was far from good. Not angry so much as deeply sad.
Just as Park Su-hwan wondered what on earth could have happened to him, the ledger appeared and the entire world turned black.
Whoooosh!!
“Mommy, Mommy…!!”
Park Su-hwan stood trapped in the middle of a hellish blaze, side by side with a small child. The child covered its face with tiny hands and sobbed, huddled in a corner.
Any second now the roaring flames looked ready to swallow the child whole.
Boom! Crash!!
The ceiling caved in and burned pillars came crashing down.
“Hang on! Uncle’s going to save you!!”
At that moment someone burst through the wall of fire. A man in soot-streaked firefighting gear. It was the same large man who had just been walking with that gloomy face.