Karma Exists
Karma exists. Just as the saying goes—you reap what you sow—the sins a person commits always find their way back somehow.
Put another way, karma is like a magnet. The harder you try to push it away, the more fiercely it pulls you in. Like a man trying to outrun his own shadow.
“...”
Park Su-hwan stared blankly at the spot where the reapers had vanished. Though it was the height of summer, a chill still hung in the air around him.
“Well...”
He spat the word out as if it had cost him something. He had always known he would run into the reapers eventually.
After all, he had not only stolen the ledger—he had been throwing the heavenly order into chaos ever since.
That was why he had made his own preparations.
First, he had deliberately narrowed his own range of movement. He had realized something early on.
Namely, that the Samchasa—who claimed they could track the aura of the lost ledger—could not actually find the ledger when it was inside the shrine.
He had no idea why, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was that he had secured a perfect hiding place.
Whenever he had no choice but to go out, he never forgot the charm pouch stuffed with every protective remedy he could pack.
Lately, to throw their investigation into further confusion, he had even made a point of opening the ledger far from his neighborhood.
And yet every one of those efforts had come to nothing—with a single sudden encounter.
“I should’ve just run the second I—”
No. No, that was wrong.
Su-hwan shook his head hard, rejecting the thought. If he had tried to flee, the situation would only have gotten worse.
He was no Hong Gil-dong.
They had been right behind him—and then they had simply appeared in front of him, just like that. On top of everything, some invisible force had pinned his feet and choked him.
Just thinking about it brought a fresh cold sweat.
“Haa… I should’ve just pretended I didn’t see them from the start.”
In his panic he had locked eyes with them.
All those years of playing the fraud shaman, and he had been more confident in his acting than anyone. He never imagined he would make a mistake even a beginner wouldn’t make—and at the most critical moment, no less.
Up to that point, it had still been salvageable. He had believed he could talk his way out of it somehow.
So he had worked his mind desperately and set his mouth running.
Ignoring the reapers even after seeing them, he claimed, had been out of consideration—so as not to interfere with their work. Recognizing them at all, he insisted, was only natural for a man who served the Jade Emperor himself.
Was Okhwang Sangje some roadside spirit you stumbled over in the gutter? If a man served a deity of that caliber, of course he would be able to recognize a few reapers.
That was how Su-hwan had convinced himself he could deceive the Samchasa—how he could deceive Ganglim Doryeong. He had never imagined a secret that absolutely could not be exposed would come spilling out.
They can sense the ledger’s aura on me…
After all the gleeful mischief he had been working with the thing, it was hardly surprising. The moment he heard those words, he had wanted nothing more than to drop everything and faint on the spot.
Truly. From the bottom of his heart.
But the thought of being dragged straight into the Underworld snapped him fully awake.
What rose before his eyes was a horrific future: being torn limb from limb in Myeong-gye as the price for stealing the ledger and for Cheonki Nuseol—for leaking heavenly secrets.
While he hunted for any way to break through the crisis, he saw Ganglim Doryeong eat the apple the reaper himself had dropped.
Every scrap of folklore tied to reapers flashed through his mind like lightning. And so Su-hwan painted the big picture.
Just like the rabbit in the tale of Byeoljubu, who survived by claiming he had left his liver back on land.
In exchange for the apple that had been eaten, he threw out a condition Ganglim Doryeong might actually accept.
Come to my house at midnight, he had said, and look for the ledger there.
In a way, you could say he had only postponed the beating he was due to take. No—more accurately, it was better than that.
The name and birth time he had given Ganglim Doryeong had been pure nonsense he had spun on the spot.
He felt not the slightest guilt over lying to a reaper. For a man who made his living with his mouth, lying was daily routine; even after death, his mouth would be the last thing to stop floating.
Nothing much would happen to that Kang Tae-jun fellow either. Unless something extraordinary occurred, reapers could not simply drag a living person off to Myeong-gye.
“Hoo…”
Only then did the fact that he was still alive sink in. He let out a long breath of relief and rose unsteadily to his feet, limping.
That was it.
The rabbit had tricked the turtle with a lie—that his liver was still on land.
Su-hwan had reassured Ganglim Doryeong with a truth—that the ledger was at home.
The foolish, stupid turtle had believed the rabbit’s words and let his guard down.
Overconfident in his own power, Ganglim Doryeong had heard Su-hwan’s proposal and let his guard down the same way.
“Oh—oh my!”
The landlady came running in a single bound. She hurriedly brushed the dirt from Su-hwan’s clothes.
“What happened? Did someone hit you?”
“No. Just… something came up. A little something.”
It was a lie. A little something? He had run into the reapers and gotten thoroughly wrecked. But he could hardly tell the landlady the truth.
“This is what you call ‘something came up’…?”
She looked him up and down with suspicion. The hanbok that was always so clean had been crumpled and soiled.
He looked no different from a man who had been beaten and come home. And now that his leg was fine, too.
“Be honest.”
“I f—”
“Don’t you dare say you fell.”
“...”
Lately they had grown so much closer that it had become hard to hide anything from her.
How am I supposed to explain this…
After a brief struggle, Su-hwan opened his mouth.
“I ran into someone with bad blood between us and we had a bit of a scuffle. As you can see, I’m not hurt, so please don’t worry.”
“Aigoo! I knew it! You’re sure nothing’s bruised? You’re so skinny and frail—where would they even hit you?”
“...”
Su-hwan was no longer sure whether she was taking his side or not.
“...I’m fine.”
His chest still throbbed a little from where Monthly Messenger So-hee had stomped on it, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle.
“Hold on.”
Her gaze landed on the swelling at Su-hwan’s throat. Her expression turned grave.
“Don’t tell me someone choked you.”
“Ah—no.”
Su-hwan answered calmly as he adjusted the collar of his hanbok. He hadn’t realized the red marks were still there.
“We just grabbed each other by the collars and tussled a bit.”
“Hmmmm…”
“It’s true. Do I look like the kind of person who just takes a beating wherever he goes?”
“That’s true enough.”
“I didn’t expect you to agree that fast.”
The landlady shook her head and let out a long sigh.
“Aigoo. Mutual combat, so you can’t even report it, huh? My heart just aches. You went out so happy about the department store, and look at you.”
“I’m really fine. You don’t have to worry so much.”
— Kang-kang!
Baekya was at Su-hwan’s feet, tail wagging, rubbing against his legs. The puppy, still being ignored, started barking up at him.
“Oh—right.”
Su-hwan belatedly stroked the little head.
“If you say so, I guess that’s how it is. He really likes you, doesn’t he? How well have you been treating him?”
“Uh… well?”
Su-hwan was puzzled too. He genuinely could not understand what Baekya found so appealing about him.
I don’t think I’ve been especially affectionate…
He had simply thought that a speechless animal would feel miserable if it didn’t get fed on time, so he always piled the dog food up like a mountain. Of course, his own laziness about having to refill it every time played a part.
And occasionally he would peel a peach—the fruit Baekya went wild for—or toss him a few snacks. He cleaned up the mess quickly because he hated the smell, and very occasionally played with him. That was about it.
Hearing this, the landlady tilted her head.
“That’s not treating him like a pet—that’s treating him like a master. No wonder he likes you so much.”
“Me? He’s just a pain in the neck. Absolutely not.”
Su-hwan waved both hands in denial and opened the shrine door—a silent signal that he was going in now.
The landlady gave a short laugh.
“All right. Go on carefully. If anything hurts, go straight to the hospital.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Su-hwan bowed his head and stepped into the shrine. Baekya slipped in right behind him.
“Hwaa…”
The moment the door closed, the tension he had been holding snapped, and the strength went out of his legs. Relief washed over him—he was finally somewhere safe and familiar.
…I really thought I was going to die.
— Kang-kang!
Baekya wagged his tail and whined, trying to climb up onto Su-hwan’s knees. The little one who normally read the room with uncanny speed seemed, for some reason, to be playing the charming puppy today.
“I’m tired.”
Even so, Su-hwan stretched his legs out so the dog could climb up comfortably.
Tonight at midnight, the reapers would not come here. He had left them no real information at all.
Even so, the unease would not leave him. Su-hwan waited for midnight with his eyes wide open.
“Ha!”
Monthly Messenger So-hee snorted. Pointless work once or twice was one thing. The repeated misery had finally scraped her patience bare.
“You’re saying he’s here? The guy we met in Seongnam—in Incheon?”
She glared at the scene before her and snapped at Ganglim Doryeong.
“Wahahaha! Congratulations on your son’s new job!”
“Thank you!”
“I knew you could do it. I believed in you!”
A warm little family was throwing a party to celebrate their son’s employment. Sitting in the middle of the table in a party hat was a man—Kang Tae-jun, the name the ledger thief had claimed as his own.
“Honey, should we turn the air conditioning up a bit? It’s getting cold.”
“I was just about to. We can’t have our Tae-jun catching a cold. Hoho.”
Among the countless Kang Tae-juns written in the ledger, the one whose four pillars of destiny matched what the thief had recited was right here. But there was not a single hair of the ledger thief in sight. The bastard had lied to their faces and run.
“We should’ve just grabbed him and worked him over right then…”
“I didn’t see this coming either.”
No—to be honest, he had been a little suspicious. But that desperate expression had fooled him. He had let his guard down, thinking the man wasn’t even worth a single punch.
He never imagined that the pathetic creature begging for his life would have the guts to lie straight to their faces and escape. The bastard was bolder than he looked.
“Still, I couldn’t exactly refuse the request. Who knew he’d realize that? Tch.”
Ganglim Doryeong offered a careful defense.
“Right. And who told you to just pick up food that fell on the ground and eat it? This is why you’ll never live out your natural lifespan—aaaaargh!!”
“You’re going to live at least another five hundred years. It’s a little early to be saying things like that.”
“Doryeong!!”
Unable to take any more, Monthly Messenger So-hee roared.
“Don’t worry too much. We’ll find him soon enough.”
“How?!”
“You heard it yourself—the ledger’s aura is on him.”
As long as he kept the ledger with him, that aura would only grow clearer. In the end, time was on their side.
“He’s a rat in a jar now.”
And once they caught him, they would wring every last answer out of him. There was so much about the bastard he wanted to know.