A Debt from a Past Life
"W-what are you talking about?"
The flustered woman stepped closer to Park Su-hwan and asked again. It was absurd.
He's spying on me? Impossible.
It was a gift from her boyfriend, something she treasured so much she always kept it with her. The doll he claimed he had chosen himself, thinking only of her.
"You already know. You know exactly what I'm saying."
"..."
"I don't like repeating myself."
The bloodshot intensity in the shaman's eyes sent goosebumps racing over the woman's entire body.
The moment the reading began he had transformed, and now he had become someone else entirely—as if he were swapping one mask for another.
That uncanny shift terrified her. Thoroughly cowed, she even found herself apologizing without thinking.
"I'm sorry. So..."
"Keep your voice down."
Park Su-hwan suddenly stood, switched on the television, and turned the volume up high. Even he had no idea why he was doing it.
What the hell is going on!
He had simply wanted the TV on all of a sudden. His body no longer felt like his own. That alien sensation made it hard for Park Su-hwan to gather his wits.
Right. I get it.
This was Divine Possession. A deity had descended into his body—no other explanation made sense. And thoroughly at that.
No mere stray ghost could manage something like this. The shrine was packed with every kind of object for driving evil spirits away.
Who are you? Just who...
But no answer came. Perhaps that was only natural. This presence had never answered him even once. There was no reason it would start now.
In the end Park Su-hwan gave up trying to understand. As always, he surrendered his body to the mysterious being.
"Crazy bastard."
That was when it happened. Looking toward the outside, Park Su-hwan let out a hollow laugh of disbelief.
"Look at him, ears all pricked up."
He wiped every expression from his face and glared in one direction—the spot where the woman's boyfriend was almost certainly waiting. The sheer murderous intent, as if he wanted to tear the man apart, made the woman clamp her mouth shut.
"Huh..."
A reaction like that left no room to call it a lie. He genuinely despised the boyfriend.
"But that can't be true. He's so good to me. You saw it yourself. It's impossible."
The woman shook her head hard, rejecting Park Su-hwan's words. She could not believe her boyfriend had hidden a spy camera inside the doll.
"Hey."
"Yes?"
"Then want to bet me? Whether there's a camera or not."
"..."
"Go home right now and split open that damn doll's belly. But if you do..."
The woman swallowed dryly, her gaze locked on the edge of Park Su-hwan's lips.
"He'll notice."
That was true. If he was watching through a camera, the moment she cut the doll open her boyfriend would realize his crime had been exposed.
"Then what do I do?"
The woman pleaded, on the verge of tears. She could no longer dismiss the shaman's words as nonsense.
Just as he had said, she had recently received a ladybug doll as a gift. Throughout the entire reading he had never once mentioned the doll. This could only be explained as genuine spiritual power.
"Well. You should've been better."
"What? How good I am to him? Everyone says I'm devoted. I waited through his military service and packed him lunches every single day."
But the answer that came from Park Su-hwan's mouth was unexpected.
"In a past life."
"...!"
"It's a bad karma. Between you and that bastard."
"Bad karma?"
That she and her boyfriend had been bound since a previous life—and that the bond was a vicious grudge—was something she had never dreamed of.
"You were the lady of a noble house, and you beat that slave to death."
Park Su-hwan's low whisper cut straight through the blaring television and lodged in her ears.
"So of course he'd harbor a grudge."
"H-huh...!"
The shocking words made the woman's breathing turn ragged. Wasn't this saying the karma of a past life had come full circle?
"Th-that's impossible. But that wasn't me who did it."
Park Su-hwan sneered as if the protest were ridiculous.
"That was you, and this is still you."
The woman of the past life and the woman of the present were not the same person. But that did not mean they were different people either.
"There's a term called Wonchin Chaeju. Know it?"
"...No. First time I've heard it."
"It means a foe from a past life comes into this life to collect the debt and blocks your path. Just like that bastard right next to you."
Fear beginning to take hold, the woman dropped to her knees and clung to him with a desperate face.
"Then what should I do? Please tell me. Okay?"
"What do you mean, what should you do."
Park Su-hwan spoke as if it were nothing at all.
"If you committed a sin, you have to take the punishment."
That was how you unraveled the tangled thread.
Park Su-hwan sealed his lips tightly. After those final words, the itch inside his mouth was gone.
Ha. Stir up huge trouble and then just run off?
Left to him now were the noisy television, the tearfully pleading woman, and the peeping tom waiting outside.
If you start something, you ought to finish it before you go, right?
Park Su-hwan swallowed the sigh rising to his throat.
Come to think of it, it always went like this. The presence would spit out shocking words on a whim and vanish, leaving the entire cleanup to Park Su-hwan alone.
For sins committed in a past life, one is punished in the present. By the logic of cause and effect, the woman ought to accept that karma willingly.
But did that mean he should simply leave her to be tormented by this psycho of a man? At the very least, he could not stand by while something was happening right before his eyes.
"Deliberately spill food on the doll or pour broth over it and toss it straight into the washing machine. It'll break then. It's a machine, after all."
In the end Park Su-hwan offered the woman a solution, still maintaining that razor-sharp aura as if a god were still riding him.
"Y-yes! I understand. I'll do it the moment I get home."
The woman nodded madly, as if she had seized a lifeline.
The next solution was...
A safe breakup. This was a man who had hidden a camera inside a gift doll. If she suddenly announced a breakup, retaliation was certain.
Ah.
A good idea came to him. She had said it was a long-distance relationship.
"Use being busy as an excuse and gradually drift away."
Then he won't get suspicious and will simply fall away on his own.
Ever since the Register of Life and Death had come into his possession, strange things had been happening at Park Su-hwan's shrine. One of them was that the offerings placed on the altar spoiled unusually fast.
Even though it was a basement that stayed fairly cool even in summer, nothing like this had ever occurred before. The peaches in particular turned mushy and began rotting almost immediately.
"Ugh..."
Park Su-hwan clicked his tongue at the burst, mushy peaches. The waste was painful.
He was already stacking expensive peaches into a tower for offerings; the loss was no small thing. If this kept up, he might have to remove peaches from the offerings entirely.
- Kang-kang!
Seeing the peach in Park Su-hwan's hand, Baekya hopped in place and thrashed about. He clearly wanted it.
"No. This one's rotten."
The fruit flies circling the offerings drew a sigh from him unbidden.
- Kang-kang!
"I said no."
Only at times like this did the little guy pretend not to hear. Normally he understood perfectly.
If Park Su-hwan ignored him any longer, Baekya would keep Kang-kang-ing and raising hell. The more he dealt with the pup, the clearer it became that his stubbornness outstripped most humans'—never less.
How can he still want more after eating them every time? Why does he love peaches so much? What's so tasty about them?
"Wait a second."
But since he had to put fresh peaches on the altar, there was none to spare for the pup. Instead he planned to shut him up with the snacks the landlady had given him.
Park Su-hwan opened the drawer beneath the altar and took out dried duck meat. This, too, was one of the snacks Baekya went crazy for.
- Kang-kang!!
"Like that? Wait a bit before eating."
Park Su-hwan pulled a sheet of paper from the notebook on the divination table—the montage of the grim reapers' faces he had drawn. He held it up to Baekya's nose and asked,
"What did I tell you?"
- Kang!
Baekya barked vigorously, as if he understood.
"I told you to bite them the second you see them. Got it? That's a promise."
Only then did Park Su-hwan toss a piece of dried duck. Baekya snatched it from the air like a seal.
"Nice."
The way he chomped and swallowed with sharp smacking sounds was thoroughly competent.
That was how Park Su-hwan was training Baekya, following methods he had seen online.
- Knock-knock.
Someone knocked on the shrine door.
"Hm? Who is it?"
Park Su-hwan checked the clock on the wall. He did have a client scheduled today, but he had not expected them this early.
The voice that answered, however, belonged to an unwelcome guest—the peeping tom with the ladybug doll from the other day.
Why is he here all of a sudden?
It was not the sweet, gentle voice he had used calling his girlfriend. It was a low, gravelly tone that raised goosebumps on the back of the neck just hearing it.
"It's me. The boyfriend who came for a reading with Ha-young."
Despite the casual self-introduction, Park Su-hwan felt an instinctive sense of dread. A strong conviction rose in him that he absolutely must not open this door.
- Rattle.
"Could you open the door for a moment?"
The expected demand. Park Su-hwan barely suppressed the tremor in his voice as he spoke.
"I'm sorry. I'm currently purifying myself and praying, so I cannot admit outsiders. Please visit again later."
"Just once. Please?"
"I'm sorry."
"It's strange, you know. Ever since the reading, Ha-young seems different. Like she's trying to put distance between us. Huh?"
"..."
"Open it. Open the damn door! What the hell did you say to her!!"
- Rattle, rattle!
The man began shaking the doorknob roughly. It felt as if he might smash the door in at any second.
Hiiiik...!
He needed to call the police—right now. He had known the man was crazy, but he had not expected him to be this sharp as well.
As he frantically searched for his phone with trembling hands—
"Open it right now!! Open!!"
That was when another voice came from outside.
"He's got a knife! This crazy bastard!"
"What the—! Let go of me!!"
- Thud! Smack!!
Dull impacts and the sounds of a scuffle followed immediately.
"Master! Are you all right?"
Ah... The clients scheduled for today had arrived even earlier.
The rookie officer Yoon Ji-ho and his potbellied superior.