I'm an Only Child
"…Would you have a moment to talk?"
Park Su-hwan rose from the ground, casually ignoring the stares of people who were looking at him as if he were some kind of lunatic.
Hoo… This is seriously stressful.
His hanbok was filthy, but he paid it no mind. He dusted himself off lightly with one hand and muttered under his breath.
This was the first time since the delivery driver Kang Dong-hyun. Witnessing a person's death directly—especially a scene of brutal murder—was bound to leave a massive psychological scar.
The moment the knife sank into Yoon Ji-ho's neck, Su-hwan had squeezed his eyes shut and clamped both hands over his ears.
Even so, the desperate screams and shouts from that chaos had still reached him. They continued to echo in his ears even now.
"Talk?"
"…Yes."
The rookie police officer Yoon Ji-ho looked at Su-hwan with bewildered eyes. By meeting him today, he would escape the fate that had been waiting for him.
"Excuse me… young men?"
Just then, a cautious voice came from the grandmother in the wheelchair.
Ah. Right!
He had completely forgotten they had been on their way to the hospital.
"I'm sorry."
Yoon Ji-ho bowed deeply to the grandmother in the wheelchair.
"Nothing to be sorry for… My hospital appointment's almost here."
She clicked her tongue as she looked back and forth between the two of them.
"Come with me. There's something I need to tell you. Something… truly important."
Su-hwan's gaze lingered for a moment on the nape of Yoon Ji-ho's neck.
It hasn't happened yet. It still hasn't happened.
Get a grip.
After seeing the grandmother safely to the hospital, the two of them sat on a bench out front.
"Um… Are you sure you don't need to go inside yourself? You collapsed so suddenly…"
"I'm fine. It happens sometimes. You don't need to worry too much."
Su-hwan quietly studied Yoon Ji-ho, who still couldn't quite shake the concern from his eyes. He seemed like a police officer with a truly dedicated sense of duty.
If someone like this could hold the line without breaking, for years to come—how many lives might he save?
Just like the surgeon Professor Kim Jun-young and the firefighter Jung Jin-hyuk, whose futures Su-hwan had already rewritten.
"I'm sorry for holding you up when you're busy."
"Not at all. Listening to citizens is part of our job."
A man who had just collapsed had woken up and immediately clung to him with a grim face, insisting he had something urgent to say. How many people could simply walk away from a situation like that?
And for a rookie like Yoon Ji-ho, who had only just set foot in the field, ignoring Su-hwan was even harder.
"I'm a shaman, Mr. Yoon Ji-ho."
"…?"
For a second, Yoon Ji-ho's thoughts stopped cold.
Did I tell him my name?
"My name…"
"And one who only recently received the spirit descent, at that."
"…!"
People as upright and rigid as Yoon Ji-ho never opened their ears to unscientific nonsense. He had almost certainly never set foot inside a fortune-telling house in his entire life.
Which meant that to pull even a little belief out of someone like him, Su-hwan would need an outstanding performance.
"What a pity. Really."
Without giving him a chance to recover, Su-hwan launched straight into the act.
"Pardon?"
He didn't use his usual high-handed method of crushing the other person under pressure.
With someone like Yoon Ji-ho, a forceful approach would only provoke fierce resistance.
That conclusion came from years of hard-earned experience.
"To be fated for an early death at such a young age."
So this time, he planned a different approach.
You could say it was the warm sunlight that stripped the traveler of his coat, not the howling wind.
Su-hwan began dredging up every sad memory sunk deep at the bottom of his mind. Having lived a life that was anything but smooth, his eyes reddened almost at once. He looked ready to cry at the slightest touch.
"Heaven is truly heartless. Just when the flower was beginning to bloom…"
"What are you…"
Faced with Su-hwan's sudden change in presence, Yoon Ji-ho found himself speechless. The gently smiling man from moments ago was nowhere to be found.
"Aigoo… General. So that's why you drove me out of the house today. I understand now. That's what it was…"
There was only a man shedding sincere tears of pity as he looked at him.
"I-I'm going to die young? What?"
Yoon Ji-ho ran his tongue over his lips and spoke in a rush. Watching that anxious look, Su-hwan thought:
Just a little more. A little more should do it.
The wary suspicion that had treated him like a con man the moment he said "shaman" was already fading.
"You only started the job recently, didn't you?"
Yoon Ji-ho closed his mouth and silently nodded.
"Haa… No wonder."
"How did you…"
"The General told me everything. Aigoo. Now even your ancestors are here."
Su-hwan glanced past Yoon Ji-ho's shoulder, as if he could see an ancestral spirit standing right behind him.
"Is something… is something really going to happen to me?"
In the end, Yoon Ji-ho fell for Su-hwan's possessed performance.
"…"
The man who had been speaking as smoothly as flowing water suddenly clamped his mouth shut.
"What?"
"Speaking heavenly secrets aloud is normally forbidden… but you've accumulated so much virtue that even a blessing like this can come to you."
Su-hwan muttered to himself, then met Yoon Ji-ho's eyes. It was time to bring this performance to its end.
"On duty, protecting the people—martyred by a madman's blade."
"…?"
"Simply put, it means you'll die a pointless death under a knife swung by a lunatic. Mr. Yoon Ji-ho. That was originally your fate."
"You're saying… I'll be stabbed to death?"
"This Saturday. Nine-fourteen in the evening. Exactly then."
Yoon Ji-ho's pupils shook wildly. The prophecy was far more cruel and specific than he had expected.
"You'll be dispatched on a report of a suspected lovers' quarrel. Old pink-walled villa, unit 301."
The whole way here, Su-hwan had been turning it over in his mind.
Checking on the victim can wait for later…
What if, from the very beginning, he had teamed up with his pot-bellied superior and subdued the man first?
Then Yoon Ji-ho would never have died such a hollow death.
From the superior down to him—everyone had been careless. Everyone had let their guard down.
The man's build had been relatively small compared to theirs, after all. And they could never have dreamed a knife was hidden under the sofa cushion.
Su-hwan clicked his tongue without realizing it.
…Tsk. You shouldn't have given a psycho any time.
That was right. They should have slapped the cuffs on him immediately. On that bastard's wrists.
"No matter what."
"…"
"Subdue the man first. Under the sofa cushion…"
Su-hwan looked straight into Yoon Ji-ho's eyes and murmured in a low voice.
"That's where he hid the knife."
In that moment, Yoon Ji-ho realized one thing.
At some point, the tears that had been clinging to the shaman's eyes had vanished without a trace.
After washing his face, Park Su-hwan stared into the mirror and let out a heavy sigh.
Look at this. Honestly… I look like a complete wreck.
Just look at those thick dark circles and that hollow complexion. Anyone could tell this was a man who hadn't slept properly.
Kyaaaaaaaaaah!
N-No! Ji-ho!
"Haa…"
He hadn't slept a wink, tormented all night by nightmares of Yoon Ji-ho dying. The eardrum-splitting screams still seemed to ring clearly in his ears.
I took the bokchae properly, though…
Su-hwan pressed his throbbing temples and muttered.
Three chocolate cones from the ice cream discount shop, no less. He had thought that would be enough to spare him any nightmares related to Yoon Ji-ho.
But he had overlooked one fact.
The bokchae only kept him from fully merging with Yoon Ji-ho and feeling the agony of that horrific death firsthand. It did nothing to protect him from the mental trauma.
Come to think of it, this wasn't the first time. How many nights had he already spent lying awake after watching other people's deaths?
As long as he kept holding onto the Ledger, this would only get worse, never better.
Who in the world could watch other people die and stay completely sane?
Even that seasoned surgeon, Professor Kim Jun-young, had said that sometimes the faces and voices of patients he had lost still came back to him.
So what hope did an ordinary fraud shaman like Park Su-hwan have? Of course it was natural for him to be struggling with this right now.
But… even so, he couldn't give up the Ledger. He didn't want to go back to an ordinary life—and more than anything, he had already come too far.
Forget it. I need to get ready and head out.
If he kept dawdling, he might be late for his appointment with Lee Han-gyeol.
He grabbed the towel hanging on the wall, wiped the remaining water from his face, and left the bathroom. He headed for the old wardrobe standing in the corner of the kitchen.
"Let's see."
Hanboks and casual clothes were tangled together in a mess. It was a perfect reflection of a man who normally hated tidying up. Among them were the hanbok he had mended yesterday and a pale sky-blue one as well.
Honestly, if it had been any other clothes, he wouldn't have cared if they tore. But that one was precious—Choi Young-gam had bought it for him when he first started the fraud shaman act—so it was the one exception to his laziness.
What should I wear…
Normally he would have grabbed a hanbok without a second thought. For a working shaman, a hanbok was basically a uniform. The problem was that the place he and Lee Han-gyeol were going today was a church.
Just wear this.
After a brief hesitation, he changed into gray shorts and a T-shirt covered in meaningless English, then left the house.
When he arrived by bus, Lee Han-gyeol was already standing in front of the church.
"Over here!"
The kid waved cheerfully in greeting. Su-hwan answered with a lazy wave of his own.
"Ugh. It's seriously hot enough to die."
"Is that the first thing you say when you see me? Just complaining?"
Lee Han-gyeol had clearly gotten completely comfortable with Su-hwan by now. He shot back in a playful tone.
"What's the weather got to do with me? Aren't you hot?"
"It's bearable."
"I've only ever seen you in hanbok…"
Lee Han-gyeol gave Su-hwan's outfit a once-over. He had seen him in casual clothes before, but still—hanbok really suited him best.
"What, does it look bad?"
"No? But how did you even get the idea to ask a church for help?"
"I told you. When it's about surviving, what wouldn't I do?"
That was right. This place wasn't just some ordinary church to Su-hwan. It was where he had received enormous help in hard times—and where he had gone with his parents as a child.
It's been a really long time…
He felt guilty that he was only now getting in touch and visiting after receiving so much help. If he had to make an excuse, all he could say was that life had been too busy.
"Other shamans didn't help you or anything?"
"Hey. Don't even start. People in this business are even more stingy."
The two of them began climbing the steep hill, chatting about this and that.
"Really…? I thought they'd help each other out."
"There's a saying that generosity comes from a full storehouse. Everyone's too busy scraping by to feed themselves—who's going to help whom? That's why they were so cold to a newbie."
More precisely, it was because rumors had spread far and wide about some guy trying to make money with fake shaman work—but Su-hwan would never know that fact for the rest of his life.
"By the way, you really buttered the old man up well, huh?"
On the day Choi Young-gam had ordered a mountain of shaman tools and urgently called for help, Su-hwan hadn't wanted to run into Choi Hana—or more precisely, into Bari Gongju, the deity possessing her body.
"You heard about it?"
"Of course. He seemed completely taken with you. Why else would he tell me not to come around anymore?"
So he had introduced Lee Han-gyeol to Choi Young-gam, and as expected, the old man had taken a real liking to the kid.
"I-Is that okay?"
"Yeah. He's just threatening me to show my face. It's fine."
He didn't even bat an eye at Choi Young-gam's not-quite-threat. After knowing each other this long… something like that was nothing.
"Just do your job well."
"Yes! I won't cause you any trouble, hyung. I'll work really hard. Seriously."
Thanks to that, Lee Han-gyeol had secured a solid job at a shaman tool shop. And today he was even being introduced to the church that had helped Su-hwan most when he was at his lowest.
"Call me Teacher."
"Isn't that a little too stiff?"
So of course the kid couldn't help but show Su-hwan infinite trust and blind loyalty. He was the noble person who had changed his entire life, after all.
"Looks like you've gotten way too comfortable with me."
"I'm really grateful. You saved my life and even found me a job… I'll definitely repay this debt someday."
"Don't forget to pay back the money I lent you with interest, either."
At the church entrance, a familiar face was chatting warmly with a group of people. It was the deaconess he had known. Time had settled more heavily on her face than the last time he had seen her.
"Deaconess!"
"Oh my! Su-hwan!!"
She cried out with a face full of pure delight. In an instant, every eye in the group turned toward them.
"My, you've changed so much. You've really grown."
She welcomed Su-hwan with a brilliantly bright expression.
"It's been a long time. I'm sorry. I should have come to see you more often…"
She shook her head with a kind face.
"Mm. No, no. There's a saying that no news is good news, isn't there? I just assumed you were doing well."
"Is this the friend the deaconess has been waiting for?"
One of the people standing nearby chimed in.
"That's right. Seeing his face after so long puts me in such a good mood. Su-hwan. Why don't you introduce yourself to the sisters here?"
"It's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Park Su-hwan. Life's been busy, so I'm late coming to visit. It's been a really long time since I was last here."
Looking a bit sheepish, Su-hwan scratched the back of his head and introduced himself politely to the ladies.
"Oh, no… It's fine. When you're busy, that happens."
"That's right. You need the free time to be able to do these things."
They were nodding and each adding a word of their own when—
"Oh."
One of the ladies paused as if something had just occurred to her, then her eyes went wide as she stared straight at Su-hwan.
"Su-hwan… Would your mother's name happen to be Kim Hyun-seo?"
"Oh! Yes, that's right. You knew my mother?"
"Oh my goodness! Heavens! Of course I did! So that little scrap of a boy has grown up this much? And your mother—is our Hyun-seo doing well?"
"Well…"
Completely missing the awkward look on Su-hwan's face, she kept talking.
"I truly respected your mother, you know. When I heard she was adopting a child, I thought it was so amazing. That's not an easy thing to do."
"…!"
"Don't you agree, Deaconess?"
The lady failed to notice the deaconess's face going deathly pale. She was too busy talking to a familiar face she hadn't seen in ages.
Adoption…?
"Adoption…?"
"Yes! If it was Hyun-seo, she definitely raised that child well. So would that make the child your younger sibling?"
My mother adopted someone?
It was the first time in his life Su-hwan had ever heard such a thing.
"Ma'am."
"Hm?"
"I'm… an only child."