A Curse That Dries Up the Family Line

"S-so, how much do you need?"

ClapClapPark had initiated the seonjesi himself.

Ordinarily, the unspoken rule of the seonjesi was to shout 'Nimseon!' first, but I'd decided to skip the pageantry today. With Tsukumo Momo missing and no telling what state she was in, there was no time to waste. So without further ado, I held up two fingers.

"No more, no less—just this much, sir. It's the exact amount I took for saving Chaser, after all."

At the words two million won, ClapClapPark flinched like he'd been struck.

"...That seems a bit steep... I mean, how could..."

"You heard the call yourself—Tsukumo Momo is missing. Time is of the essence, which means I don't have the luxury of haggling. I'll take a yes or a no. Nothing else."

"Uuuuuugh...!"

ClapClapPark clutched his head and groaned in anguish.

There it is. It's his own life on the line, and he's still such a notorious cheapskate.

Granted, ClapClapPark was a fairly successful streamer in his own right, if not quite on Momo's level. And yet here he was, writhing in agony over a measly two million won...

"Fine, twenty million won! It's a lot of money, but it's cheap compared to the price of a life...!"

"I'm sorry, what?"

I went blank for a moment and stared down at my own hand, index and middle fingers still raised. So ClapClapPark had looked at this and read it as twenty million, not two? And now he'd accepted the deal?

...Why? Seriously, why?

Honestly, I was flabbergasted. What on earth did this man trust about me that he'd casually torch twenty million won on the spot? If I were in ClapClapPark's shoes, I'd have taken that money to a genuinely gifted shaman rather than gamble it on a self-proclaimed Daoist I'd met yesterday...

But that was that, and this was this. If the boss—my client, rather—thought so highly of me, then meeting those expectations was simply the decent thing to do.

Tap.

I placed a hand on the shoulder of the visibly anxious ClapClapPark.

"From this moment on, consider yourself aboard a very large ship. Sit back and relax."

"M-Mr. Kim Dosa...!"

"Didn't I tell you? I'm a man who delivers value for the money."

"Th-then right now, we should—!"

"Yes. Right now. Please start with the transfer."

"..."

"Payment in advance, of course."

And so the boss—my boss, that is—wired over twenty million won in one lump sum, taxes included. The way ClapClapPark—no, CEO Kim Han-soo—glared at his account balance as it plummeted did sting a little, but hey, cheap compared to the price of a life, right?

That's right, twenty million is a bargain for him too...

Kim Yi-yeon assumed Kim Han-soo was glaring at him for getting swindled, but the reality was different. Kim Han-soo was a fraud of a shaman, yet even a fraud knew a fair amount about the world of Korean shamanism. Which meant he knew something for certain: even the most capable mudang in the country wouldn't take this job for twenty million won.

Strictly speaking, money wasn't the issue. The problem was that shamans specializing in this kind of exorcism were vanishingly rare in Korea.

People are fond of saying that the native Korean spirit is one of han—of grief and resentment. Accordingly, the standard practice is to listen to the laments and life stories of restless souls and vengeful spirits, and either guide them to peace personally or invoke the power of the gods a mudang serves to release them. In other words, Korean shamanism favors comforting, coaxing, and soothing over confronting anything head-on and beating it out the door.

The problem was that whatever had attacked ClapClapPark, Tsukumo Momo, and Chaser was precisely the kind of thing such indirect methods had no effect on.

It tried to kill me in the most naked, obvious way possible.

There had been no grudge in it. No emotion of any kind. A condition had been met, so it would kill. That was all—a mineral, mechanical hostility, nothing more.

Certainly, there are many kinds of gut rituals, and there must exist rites—and mudang—who deal with phenomena like this professionally. The trouble, naturally, was that Kim Han-soo had no idea who any of those rare exorcism specialists were.

Which meant the choice had been made for him from the very start.

"So you're saying this isn't simply the work of an evil spirit or a vengeful soul?"

"Yes—well, er, that's my personal assessment, of course..."

I nodded at Kim Han-soo's words. He had a point. The human souls and the other, more sinister aura that had hung over the mansion. The swarm of black insects that had attacked Lee Ha-ram and Kim Han-soo. Though their numbers had been few, there was something fundamentally alien about them, something that set them apart from the spirits of the dead and the hair-wraiths I'd encountered so far.

Just then, a message arrived.

I let out a breath of relief at Choi Eun-ha's message—just as my phone rang. It was Chaser, Lee Ha-ram.

"I heard the news, Master! Momo-chan's been—she's missing...!"

"Yes. I'm on my way to her apartment right now."

"D-do you think this is connected to those black insects from the mansion?"

"Quite possibly. Thankfully, you seem to be fine, Chaser."

"Y-yes, sir! All thanks to you! I figure it gave up on me after I gave it such a bitter taste of you when it tried to ambush me—probably why it's leaving me alone."

"We'll see."

"Master, is there anything I can do to help?"

I was about to say no, then changed my mind.

"Could you gather everything you can on the mansion we visited—and on its owner?"

"Leave it to me! Information gathering is my specialty."

"Then I'm counting on you."

"We're here."

By the time my call with Ha-ram ended, the Ferrari Kim Han-soo was driving had pulled into the parking lot of Tsukumo Momo's officetel.

"Aaagh, my back..."

"Haha, everyone says that their first time."

When I got out of the Ferrari and headed for Momo's room, Choi Eun-ha was already waiting at the door.

"Y-Yi-yeon, oppa!"

"Eun-ha. Walk me through what happened."

"Well, you see...!"

Choi Eun-ha's explanation went like this.

Tsukumo Momo had returned home after our collab, and vanished mid-broadcast while recording her after-experience review.

"Oof, that was my first time at an abandoned house and it was sceeery! But being with all of you gave me the strength to keep going! Thank you, my Momotomos~!"

The broadcast had gone smoothly at first. The trouble started after she'd finished her review, when—loath to just end the stream—she started idly chatting with viewers while playing League of Legends.

"Huh? Huhhh? Huhhhhh?!"

Out of nowhere, Tsukumo Momo began making strange sounds as her virtual avatar started twisting its head in grotesque, unnatural ways.

"A—aaaaaaah, aaah, aaaaahhh."

Within moments the avatar's eyes rolled back, and then—head lolling—it simply stopped moving. By the time her manager, watching the stream in horror, rushed over, the soundproof booth was empty. So was the room. So was the apartment.

Checking the timestamps showed it had happened at roughly the same time Kim Han-soo had been attacked. The panicked manager called around everywhere, and that was how the news reached Choi Eun-ha.

"What about the police? Did anyone check the nearby CCTV?"

"They did come, but... they just left without doing anything..."

"What?! Why?! It's not like she's an adult man—she's a woman who vanished in the middle of the night!"

"They investigated seriously at first, but the moment they found out Momo's a streamer and that she'd visited an abandoned house yesterday, they said it hadn't even been twenty-four hours and left..."

"What a disgustingly convenient situation..."

I had a rough idea of what was going on. The police were treating Tsukumo Momo's disappearance as an extension of the abandoned-house experience stream.

Paranormal activity strikes DURING abandoned house review stream!

Doesn't that YouTube thumbnail practically write itself?

"What about her parents?"

"That's the thing... Momo's family situation is complicated. Her father's in Japan and her mother's in the States, so nobody's been able to reach them yet..."

"...Let's look around her room first."

"Yes!"

Tsukumo Momo's room was utterly ordinary. The jirai-kei fashion she wore on camera was pure persona, apparently—the room wasn't even remotely pink.

"So this is Momo's room..."

"Is now really the time?"

"S-sorry."

Choi Eun-ha glared daggers at Kim Han-soo as he wandered around the room like a tourist, marveling at everything, utterly tone-deaf to the mood.

The same aura I'd felt at the Gangwon-do mansion. It was probably lingering around Kim Han-soo's own home in a similar form even now.

I organized the scattered fragments of information in my head. First, the governing premise: everything happening now was the fallout from that abandoned-house broadcast. Second, the notable detail: all three victims so far were broadcasters.

It could be coincidence, but instinct told me there was something significant about that common denominator.

They say a streamer's fate and a shaman's fate run along similar lines—could it be something like that?

It was nothing but a vague guess. But at the very least, I knew what had to be done right now.

"We're going."

"Wh-where?"

"That haunted house."

Because the vanished Tsukumo Momo would surely be there too.

"Uuuugh, I can't believe I'm coming back to this place..."

"That's why I told you to stay in Seoul—I said I'd let you keep the wooden sword and everything."

No matter how many times I told Kim Han-soo to stay behind, he followed me anyway. Thanks to him, at least, I got to ride along in his Ferrari.

Well, fine. Either way, what needed doing wouldn't change just because he was here.

Siiiick.

"Let's go in."

"Y-yes, sir!"

I led Kim Han-soo into the mansion, and felt the air inside churn and writhe. Rage, perhaps, at the meddler who'd interrupted the hunt returning? Or joy, at the escaped prey walking right back in?

"Uuuh... s-something about the house feels even more gloomy than before... are we, uh, going to be okay?"

Kim Han-soo felt it too, evidently, because he was trembling. I let his words go in one ear and out the other as I drew something from inside my coat and formed the Wisdom Fist Mudra.

"Om amoga Vairocana mahamudra..."

Chanting the Guangming Mantra, I unfurled the Vairocana Mantra Barrier. I had used it in this mansion before, but the circumstances were entirely different this time—back then, saving Lee Ha-ram, it had been a slapdash improvisation with no preparation at all. Now I had come fully equipped.

Sand poured from the inverted glass bottle in my hand and scattered across the floor at my feet. East Sea coast sand, hurriedly acquired before driving out to Gangwon-do.

I'd wondered who on earth would buy something like that on a secondhand marketplace. Turns out the answer was me. Who knew.

Of course, this was no ordinary sand. To be precise, it had been ordinary sand—until the drive to Gangwon-do, during which I chanted the Guangming Mantra 108 times over it, transforming it into the special sand needed to complete the barrier.

The great Silla monk Wonhyo said of the Guangming Mantra in his Yusim Allakdo: should sentient beings merely hear this mantra twice, three times, or seven times, their karmic sins shall be extinguished. Should sentient beings commit the ten evils, the five rebellious acts, and the four grave sins, and fall into an evil rebirth after death, chanting this mantra shall still grant them liberation. And above all: fill a vessel with earth or sand, chant this mantra over it 108 times, then scatter that sand upon a corpse, or over a grave, or atop a funerary stupa—and the radiance of Vairocana Buddha will reach all beings, extinguishing every sin and guiding them to the lotus dais of the Western Pure Land.

Those same principles applied to the Guangming Mantra Barrier, which took the mantra as its core—allowing the sand to serve as a medium and magnifying the barrier's power to its fullest.

As a rule of thumb, fraud-prone casters—mages, sorcerers, dharma masters—are weak when ambushed, but given time to prepare, their power ceiling punches straight through the roof.

A Daoist was no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠exception.

The sand scattered at my feet ignited into transparent flame.

"Wh-what the—?!"

FWOOOOOOSH!

"Consider the filth disinfected."

"Wh-what on earth was that just now...?"

"Follow me. We have a Tsukumo Momo to find."

But Tsukumo Momo was nowhere to be seen.

What? Was I wrong?

No—there was one more possibility.

The Inner Space.

The otherworldly domain an anomaly creates in order to trap its prey. But if Tsukumo Momo was inside the Inner Space, that meant the black insect anomaly hadn't been destroyed.

The black insects weren't the main body? The insects are merely a byproduct of the anomaly, and something else is the true core?

My heart wanted nothing more than to charge straight into the anomaly's Inner Space, but that was easier said than done. If the thing had intended to drag me in there, it would have done so the moment I disinfected the entire mansion with the barrier. By the nature of such a barrier, if the other side has no intention of drawing me in, then I can't simply reach into its Inner Space either.

If I at least knew what the anomaly actually was, I could work out an approach...

While I searched the mansion with growing impatience, I stumbled upon a strange room.

"This is..."

A fairly large room, roughly seven pyeong. The odd thing was that it had no windows at all.

"What was this room for?"

I examined it thinking it might be connected to the anomaly's main body, but no meaningful clues turned up.

"C-could it be that the mansion's owner imprisoned someone in here?! And that person died, became a vengeful spirit, killed the owner, and is now cursing everyone who...!"

Kim Han-soo offered a fairly plausible hypothesis, but hmm...

"If that were the case, the door lock would have been rigged so it couldn't be opened from the inside."

"W-would it...?"

Vmmmmmm.

Just then, my phone rang. Chaser.

I looked over the photos the deceased tipster's friend had taken, which Lee Ha-ram sent over.

"Now I understand. Why it only attacked the broadcasters."

And only then did it become clear why, of the eight people who joined the abandoned-house stream, exactly three—three broadcasters, specifically—had been singled out for attack.

"What? Really?! But there doesn't seem to be anything ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠special in these photos..."

"What's in the photos isn't what matters."

"What do you mean?"

"What matters is that a photo was taken. By Park Gil-su, the mansion's owner who died under the curse. By the tipster's dead friend. By Tsukumo Momo. By Lee Ha-ram. And by you, Kim Han-soo—every last one of you."

"Y-you don't mean...?!"

"That's right. This anomaly attacks anyone who takes a photograph."

More precisely: because Park Gil-su had taken photographs here, the anomaly indiscriminately attacked anyone who performed the same act. The three broadcasters hadn't taken photographs—they'd streamed live—but the anomaly had evidently classified that act as photography all the same.

Viewed that way, it also explained why Chaser alone hadn't been attacked when he returned home. Ha-ram had triggered the photography condition too, streaming live at the mansion—but after being bewitched by the in-yeong and separated from the group, his stream was forcibly cut off, apparently by some paranormal interference. In other words, his total exposure time was comparatively short.

Tsukumo Momo and Kim Han-soo, on the other hand, had kept filming the entire time, protected only by the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wooden sword. Which meant they'd spent hours wagging a plump, juicy backside right in front of a starving beast, teasing it without end.

"Um, you said it outright earlier—that this is a curse. So then... have you figured out what the curse actually is?"

"Yes."

"F-for real?!"

Come to think of it, the clues had been more than sufficient all along. A curse manifesting as black insects. A curse that killed the owner of the house. A curse that remained in the house after its owner's death, and persisted still. Combining those three threads, the curse's true identity was as clear as day.

A curse that dries up the family line, cutting off its seed.

"Gu Poison."

"......!"

"G-Gu Poison, as in...!"

Kim Han-soo and Lee Ha-ram on the other end of the line both sucked in their breath in shock. That alone told you how infamous—and how vile—this particular curse was.

My heart wanted to give them a moment to collect themselves, but there was no time for that.

"Ha-ram, I'll text you a list of items from here on. Prepare them and come to the mansion."

"Don't tell me, Master—... Understood!"

Ha-ram answered with a voice brimming with fighting spirit.

"Wh-what are you planning to do...?"

Faced with Kim Han-soo's bewildered question, I shrugged, as if the answer were obvious.

"A Daoist, a mudang, and a ghost hunter, all gathered in one place—there's only one thing left to do, isn't there?"

Exorcism.

As of this moment, we exorcise the Gu Poison.