The House That Settled Its Karmic Debt
"Thank you so much for having me over today, teacher!"
"No, I should be the one thanking you for the ride."
Lee Ha-ram, hands on the wheel, bowed his head. Once we'd gotten close and he'd learned I was a year younger than him, we'd agreed to drop the honorifics.
"Oh, Ji-soo texted. Says you abandoned her and went off to Ggidam without her again? Guess she really wanted to tag along."
Choi Eun-ha, sprawled in the back seat, spoke while tapping away at her smartphone.
Lee Ha-ram and Choi Eun-ha. They were the assistants for this shoot. Ever since the Gidok case — partly because of the broadcast we'd done together — I'd been keeping up my friendship with the three broadcasters. Tsukumo Momo and Kim Han-soo had wanted to come too, but as befitting genuinely famous YouTubers, they both had schedules and couldn't make it.
"By the way, whatever happened to that USB?"
"I'm ashamed to report, teacher, that I've dug up absolutely nothing so far."
"Is that so?"
The USB from the Gidok jar had produced nothing at all when plugged into a computer. I'd handed it over to Lee Ha-ram, whose knowledge in that field ran deep, but so far he'd had no real results either.
One thing's for sure — it's no ordinary USB.
"Ah, isn't that the building over there?"
Just then, Choi Eun-ha — who'd been glued to her phone — pointed out the window. There stood a massive mansion, the kind you'd expect from some famous black-comedy film about a poor family latching onto a rich household. And that place was...
[My dead son is trying to kill my wife and me. Please help.]
...the home of the story's sender.
"We've been expecting you."
When we arrived at the mansion, uniformed staff came out to greet us. It really hit home, in a way, that we lived in entirely different worlds.
"Whoa, that's the first house I've ever seen in Korea with actual hired staff."
"Same here."
But there was something else bothering me far more than that. It was the strange atmosphere hanging over the mansion. It wasn't the same ominous, sinister energy that had soaked into the house where Gidok was buried. It was more like... a peculiar sense of being pulled by some invisible force.
"So it's neither a simple illusion nor a staged trick, then?"
"Teacher, we're starting the shoot!"
"Right."
We had already cleared filming the exorcism process with the story's sender in advance. Escorted by the staff to the drawing room, we found that people who'd arrived before us were waiting there — other exorcists the sender had called in.
Have I grown too, then?
Ever since I'd read Tsukumo Momo's energy, I'd become able to sense people's auras without even trying. And the yellow-haired foreigner and the woman in modernized hanbok sitting in that drawing room both carried auras that were, at a glance, nothing like an ordinary person's. These were the first other psychics I'd ever met besides myself.
"Oh, a newcomer has arrived."
"Another exorcist, you mean? I don't recognize your face."
They struck up the conversation first. What was I supposed to answer? Yoon Soo-ah of the Paranormal Administration Bureau had warned me: in the world of psychics, a talented newcomer only gets used or trampled. In other words, the moment you look weak, it's over.
"I do not speak with those weaker than me."
An instant, indescribable silence settled over the room.
"...Ha! You're a funny one, aren't you?"
"...How arrogant."
The atmosphere turned icy, but frankly, this was exactly what I'd wanted. Rather than chumming around awkwardly and letting my inexperience show, it was far safer to keep a clear distance. At least that way, no one would catch on that I was a rookie who'd entered the world of psychics less than a month ago.
"Sit down."
Mustering as much gravitas as I could, I took a seat deliberately apart from the foreigner and the hanbok woman.
"...Whoa, that power struggle is no joke. Do you two know each other?"
"Nope. Exorcists beneath my standards aren't worth remembering individually."
At my deliberately audible remark, the faces of the foreigner and the hanbok woman twisted. Hmm, was that a step too far?
Just then, a staff member led one more person into the drawing room.
"Huh?"
The problem was that the face was extremely familiar.
Yoon Soo-ah — what is SHE doing here!?
Just then, our eyes met. For a heartbeat I worried she'd recognize me, but it was needless anxiety. After all, when we'd met, Yoon Soo-ah had been blind in both eyes and deaf in one ear. Meaning she'd never seen my face and had barely heard my voice. As if to prove my theory, she turned her gaze away from me and slowly surveyed the people gathered in the drawing room. And as her eyes passed over the foreign man and the hanbok woman, both of them frowned.
"What's a Bureau dog doing showing up here?"
"Have you come to nitpick over something else pointless again?"
"...I am here on personal business today, not Bureau business."
That exchange alone was enough to tell me the psychics and the Paranormal Administration Bureau did not get along. Just then, Yoon Soo-ah looked at me and spoke.
"I don't recognize that gentleman's face..."
I debated how to answer, then ultimately decided to keep up the attitude I'd shown the other psychics. In other words, the arrogant hidden-master persona.
"Does the Paranormal Administration Bureau presume to manage every psychic in the world? Or is there some obligation binding me to answer obediently if you ask? How unpleasant."
At my bristling response, the foreigner and the hanbok woman looked at me with widened eyes.
"Whew, not bad, huh? Standing up to the Bureau that boldly..."
"I'll concede the audacity, at least."
Damn it, did I overplay it? I still didn't have a good grasp on the distance between psychics and the Bureau. It clearly looked like they weren't on friendly terms, but still...
"...That was not what I meant to say. It's only..."
Yoon Soo-ah paused for a moment, then turned to Lee Ha-ram.
"That man with the glasses — what exactly is he filming?"
"Sorry? Ah, that's..."
"I gave permission for it."
While Lee Ha-ram was still flustered, a man with a deep, stately voice entered the drawing room. He had neatly kept curls, rimless glasses, and wore a black turtleneck with jeans — a look that evoked the former CEO of a certain fruit-themed company. This man was Yoon Chang-sik, the big-spending viewer who'd dropped a million won on me in a single donation.
"Uncle..."
Uncle? Oh, right, come to think of it, they share the same surname — Yoon. So when she said "personal business," she meant family. Yoon Soo-ah drew close to Yoon Chang-sik and whispered, low enough that no one around could hear.
"Who is that man? I distinctly heard you called exorcists to perform the exorcism for your nephew..."
"They call him Kim Do-sa. An exorcism YouTuber who's gotten very famous recently."
"A-a YouTuber!? Are you serious? Why would you bring in a charlatan like... If you need exorcists, Giselle Breed or Shin Han-hee over there should be more than enough. And I'm here too? And above all — a YouTuber? Does that mean he's going to post footage of Si-woo's exorcism online?"
"That's the plan."
"...Uncle, are you in your right mind?"
"Perfectly. Are you worried as a Bureau employee? Don't be. You know better than anyone that spiritual phenomena don't properly show up on camera."
"That's not what I mean...!"
"Then let's end this conversation here."
Yoon Chang-sik pushed Yoon Soo-ah aside and looked around at the people gathered in the drawing room.
"I gave advance notice, but let me confirm once more. Mr. Giselle Breed, Ms. Shin Han-hee — will filming be all right?"
"By all means. Us freelancers live on name recognition."
"No objections."
Giselle Breed — the blond foreigner in sunglasses — and Shin Han-hee in her sleek modernized hanbok both waved it off with a shake of the head. Even so, they shot me bewildered glances, as if my earlier attitude and my supposed profession of YouTuber simply refused to fit together. Whatever the case, I maintained my arrogant front from the start. The water was already spilled — all I could do was push through to the end.
"First of all, thank you all for gathering here. You've no doubt heard the circumstances already, but allow me to explain once more."
With the introductions settled, Yoon Chang-sik began explaining why he'd assembled the exorcists.
Yoon Chang-sik and his wife Yu Mi-ra had married young, but for a long time no child came. When their son was finally born, they named him Yoon Si-woo. The couple raised him with utter devotion. But heaven is indifferent — one day, their treasure was caught in an accident and taken from the world without ceremony. The death of a beloved child. It was pain enough to bring the sky crashing down — but the true suffering had only begun.
A few days after Yoon Si-woo's funeral, strange things started happening in the house. It began with poltergeist activity — objects toppling or shattering though no one had touched them. A voice none of them recognized drifting from empty rooms. Nightmares and phantom whistling. And eventually, his wife Yu Mi-ra began wandering the house in the dead of night as if sleepwalking. Every manner of haunting had broken out under that roof. And while chasing after his wife, who roamed the halls alone at night like a sleepwalker, Yoon Chang-sik saw it.
"It was... it was unmistakably our dead son, Si-woo. Si-woo was there, in the darkness...!"
Seeing that figure, Yoon Chang-sik understood. Every haunting in the house was the mischief of Si-woo, who had died too young and could not pass on. And then he agonized. Should he leave Si-woo as he was, or send him peacefully on his way? Yoon Chang-sik chose the latter. He called in a shaman and held a cheondoje — a rite to guide a soul wandering the nine springs into the beyond. And that was where the real trouble began.
Swish.
Yoon Chang-sik rolled up his sleeve and showed his arm. A wound that looked serious at a glance was carved into it.
"From the day of the cheondoje, the hauntings began to carry open malice."
The wound on his arm had come from the chandelier falling in the mansion's main hall.
"I suppose the rite angered my son... I beg you. So that my son need not suffer any longer in this world — and so that the child cannot commit the sin of harming his own parents — please, put Si-woo's soul to rest."
Head bowed, Yoon Chang-sik looked around at the exorcists gathered there.
"To whoever lays Si-woo's soul to rest, I will pay thirty million won as compensation."
"Well, it's hardly a difficult task."
"I will do my utmost so that this pitiable soul may sleep in peace."
With the first two invited exorcists declaring themselves, the natural next turn was mine.
"A simple commission. So simple there was no need to call this many people, myself included — a waste, really."
"What?"
"...Your arrogance exceeds all reason."
At that, Giselle Breed and Shin Han-hee bristled. Playing the arrogant hidden master had done a number on my speech, but this much I meant sincerely. Any ordinary ghost or evil spirit was a one-hit kill with a blast of Daoist power anyway. Giselle and Shin Han-hee were exorcists famous enough that even Yoon Soo-ah recognized them, so they could easily banish an evil spirit or two.
Just then, Giselle Breed glared at me and spoke.
"You've got some confidence on you. How about a little wager?"
"A wager?"
"Yeah. Me, Shin Han-hee, and you — each of us puts up ten million won, and whoever puts Yoon Si-woo to rest first takes it all. That's forty million, plus the thirty million fee. Fifty million total."
Just who does this foreigner think ten million won is, some neighborhood dog's name...
"By all means."
But no taking it back now. A man who's committed to a persona has to see it through to the end.
Tch, something about this feels wrong...
...Regretting the overdone act was already too late.
"You agree too, miss?"
"Allow me to teach you the virtue of humility."
And so, the exorcism wager between three psychics began without warning. Giselle Breed and Shin Han-hee, declaring they'd show me what they were made of, scattered to opposite ends of the mansion. Yoon Soo-ah, barred from the wager as a Bureau employee, set about laying her nephew to rest in her own way. When everyone had gone and only we remained in the drawing room, I let out a sigh over a start that had gone wrong from the very first stitch. The one saving grace was that Yoon Soo-ah hadn't seen through my identity, at least?
While I was grinding my teeth over it alone, Choi Eun-ha asked, sounding genuinely impressed.
"Whoa, Yi-yeon, you must be somebody in the industry, huh? That nerve was insane."
"Con somebody? Oh, I con people plenty."
Though "conning," of course, meant lying well.
"So why aren't you moving, Yi-yeon? That's ten million won on the line. You have to win!"
"Are you an idiot?"
"Where's this attitude coming from?"
"It's obvious where a child's soul would be, isn't it?"
"What?"
I walked over to Yoon Chang-sik and asked.
"Where is your wife right now?"
For little kids, mom always comes first.
***
Where Yu Mi-ra was — the room of the dead Yoon Si-woo. According to Yoon Chang-sik, ever since their son's death, Yu Mi-ra had been hollowed out like a person who'd lost her soul. She tended the rooftop garden, or spent her hours in her dead son's room.
"You two wait outside."
Yoon Chang-sik had gotten his wife's consent for filming, but I had no intention of doing something that cruel to a mother who'd lost her child.
Knock, knock.
"I'm an exorcist here on behalf of your son. May I come in?"
"...Come in."
At that drained, lifeless permission, I opened the door.
Blue wallpaper, toys of every kind, a bed shaped like a spaceship, a picture of a happy family hanging on the wall — and several varieties of potted flowers set by the window. Yoon Si-woo's room remained exactly as it had been while the boy was alive. And in one corner stood a woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in black — clothing that brought mourning garments to mind.
Yu Mi-ra.
Yu Mi-ra set the picture frame in her hand back in its place and turned to look at me. I met her gaze and scanned the room.
Was that a swing and a miss?
My guess — that Yoon Si-woo's soul would be beside his mother, Yu Mi-ra — had been wrong.
"May I ask you a few questions?"
Swallowing my disappointment, I pressed on with the conversation. Failing to locate Yoon Si-woo's spirit stung, but argue as one might, no one knew the child better than his mother. It was more than worth talking to her.
"Yes..."
"Thank you, then..."
And so I asked Yu Mi-ra about the hauntings that had followed her son Yoon Si-woo's death. She answered every question dutifully. But how to put it — there was no heart in any of her answers. No, to put it more precisely...
She doesn't approve of this whole situation.
"Madam — do you, by any chance, not wish for your son Yoon Si-woo to be exorcised?"
"......!"
My question must have struck the mark, because Yu Mi-ra's eyes flew wide open.
"H-how did you...?"
How, she asks — when this woman wears her displeasure on her face for all the world to see? But... damn it, this is a problem...
Yoon Chang-sik wanted the evil spirit Yoon Si-woo exorcised. But his mother, Yu Mi-ra, wanted him left alone. With the parents at odds, whose tune was I supposed to dance to?
CRASH!
Just then, a tremendous shattering sound rang out. Wondering what on earth had happened, I went out and found Giselle Breed and Shin Han-hee standing in the second-floor corridor, its railing smashed to pieces. And besides the two of them, one more figure stood in the corridor. A giant so grotesquely tall his head brushed the ceiling — and headless. No, not a giant. An evil spirit.
"My, that's quite the distinctive look."
First the hair spirit, now this — were all evil spirits just born in whatever variety-show shape they pleased?
"Ha, they said the Korean market was heating up these days. Now I see why."
Giselle Breed grinned at the spirit and stretched out his hand. An invisible force reached out and bound the evil spirit's body. Giselle Breed, it turned out, was a psychokinetic like Yoon Soo-ah. He moved to seize the spirit and crush it outright. But...
"Ugh...!?"
The giant spirit was simply too strong. Giselle Breed threw every ounce of will into crushing it with his telekinesis, but the strength was draining out of him instead.
"Allow me to help."
Just then, Shin Han-hee drew ritual bells from her collar and began to ring them. After a long stretch of ringing them in a trance, a red serpent slithered out from her collar, stretched long and low, and sank its fangs into the giant spirit's throat. His strength had given out, but the giant — still caught in Giselle Breed's telekinetic grip — had nowhere to run and was forced to surrender his neck.
Tremble, tremble, tremble.
Whether the snake had injected venom, the giant spirit shuddered violently — and moments later dissolved into mist and vanished. At the end of a desperate struggle, Giselle Breed and Shin Han-hee had laid the giant to rest together, and now stood panting for breath, trading glances.
Not bad at all, actually.
You're one to talk.
And then the two of them turned to look at me, arriving belatedly on the scene.
"A step behind, weren't you?"
"For one who talked so big, your feet certainly are slow."
Under the gaze of the pair — practically shouting how do you like our skills now? — I couldn't manage anything but an awkward smile.
If Yoon Soo-ah recognized them on sight, that means both of them are exorcists with real names in Korea...
And yet...
Why are they so weak?
Just then, Yoon Soo-ah — arriving late to the scene herself — looked at the two of them with startled eyes and said:
"As expected of Giselle Breed and Shin Han-hee. Practitioners well worth the Paranormal Administration Bureau's attention..."
And what's that supposed to mean?
