The House That Repaid Its Karmic Debt [5]
I answered Giselle's pitch by tilting my head crookedly — the gesture that meant go on, keep selling.
Understanding the cue, Giselle launched into her explanation of Deva.
"Like I said before, Deva exists to fight for the rights of psychics. Not just in Korea — it's an organization of psychics who've been persecuted all over the world."
The whole world, huh. Bigger scale than I'd expected.
"And your goal?"
"I told you — advancing the rights of psychics..."
"You're not the type to miss the point of a question."
A bead of sweat rolled down Giselle's forehead.
"Let me say this up front so there's no misunderstanding — Deva is not some psychic-supremacist group."
Debatable. The moment an organization names itself Deva — literally 'heavenly gods' — the claim loses most of its persuasiveness.
"But as you know, the world is crawling with anomalies, and dealing with them falls on psychics. There's plenty of work to do, plenty of sacrifice demanded — so isn't it strange that our treatment never improves?"
Fair point. The problem was that 'better treatment' didn't seem to mean simply better pay.
"You're planning to reveal psychics and anomalies to the world? The Paranormal Administration Bureau won't just sit still about that."
"We won't need to lift a finger, because the Bureau and the Masquerade Alliance are both already losing that war. Even now, stories about every kind of anomaly keep trickling out to the public. The days of another Jinhyeon County tragedy staying buried are over."
"I see."
Damn it. What's a Masquerade Alliance? What's a Jinhyeon County tragedy? You nerd bastard — quit spouting jargon nobody can follow and attach footnotes!
I smothered the thought and shook my head.
"Whatever you say, my answer is NO. I can't stand belonging to anything — it's just how I'm built."
"But..."
"That's quite enough. When someone says they're not interested, pressing further is nothing but coercion."
At that point Shin Han-hee, who until now had left the negotiation to Giselle, stepped forward.
"Your choice will be respected. However, the later you join, the harder it will become to secure a favorable position in the new era that awaits."
"Thanks for the advice."
"Please accept this."
Shin Han-hee held out a business card with a QR code engraved on it.
"...I'll accept it gratefully."
"...We should be going as well. The Bureau's hound has caught our scent."
Giselle said it while looking over my shoulder. I turned — Yoon Soo-ah was walking toward us.
"So the Bureau can't even tolerate a few psychics trading small talk now?"
"...I have separate business with Kim Do-sa."
"Well, of course you do. Whatever threats the Bureau throws at Kim Dosa, ignore them all and follow your own convictions."
With that, Giselle and Shin Han-hee withdrew, trading places with Yoon Soo-ah as if on cue.
"So what's this business?"
"Those two behind you..."
"My assistants. Just state your business."
"...Very well. I'll be direct. Kim Do-sa — would you perhaps be interested in working with the Paranormal Administration Bureau?"
That made twice Yoon Soo-ah had come recruiting me. Once as Kim Ji-woo, once as Kim Do-sa. And once again, my answer was no.
"I'll pass. Like I said, belonging to any organization makes my skin crawl."
"...I see."
Soo-ah hung her head, disappointment written all over her face.
Contrary to Giselle's worries, there were no threats, no strong-arm tactics. But that was most likely because my persona was doing the heavy lifting. A mysterious heavyweight psychic of unknown background. If she knew I was actually a rookie of less than one month's experience, her attitude might shift — during the Corner Man case, the instant she heard the word 'newbie,' hadn't she practically begged me to accept the Bureau's protection?
"......"
Then again, this woman — same as back in the Corner Man's alley — simply could not hide her emotions, especially the negative ones. She wasn't a child. What kind of grown adult's eyes well up with tears just because she got turned down?
"Could you quit making that kicked-puppy face? You're making me look like the villain here."
"I-I'm sorry... then I'll take my leave..."
Soo-ah bowed deeply and departed.
"Ooh~ Yi-yeon oppa, you're blowing up in popularity everywhere!"
"You're an inspiration, Teacher!"
"Cut the crap and let's go home."
Bureaus, Devas — what a colossal pain. Why do I have to suffer for other people's faction squabbles...
Several hours after the visitors had gone.
"Good night."
Yoon Chang-sik gently stroked the hair of the still-sleeping Yu Mi-ra, then made his way downstairs. A new guest was waiting for him on the first floor.
A towering figure of over 180 centimeters in a sharp suit and dark sunglasses — Baek Gong-ju, the old woman impossible to forget after seeing even once.
"It has been a while, Mother. At your age, you still look so hale — it does my heart good."
"Spare me the empty pleasantries... From the look of things, the business was resolved without a hitch."
"Given how quickly you've come, I take it Soo-ah ran straight to you and tattled again. Honestly, that child — a grown woman, and still unable to cut the apron strings..."
Baek Gong-ju cut him off and drove straight to the point.
"You. Why did you stand by and merely watch while your daughter-in-law went astray?"
Kim Yi-yeon had deduced, almost perfectly, what had unfolded in the mansion after Yoon Si-woo's death. But almost perfect still left a few gaps. If Yoon Si-woo, bound to the artificially formed spirit seat, had been watching over the couple — why had Yoon Chang-sik taken a deep wound to his arm?
Because Yoon Si-woo had not protected him.
There were two broad reasons. One, Yoon Chang-sik possessed abilities that made such protection unnecessary in the first place. And two — the boy had resented his father for knowing everything Yu Mi-ra had done, and letting it all happen.
"I merely understood Mi-ra's grief. But there is a second child in Mi-ra's belly. As you well know, Taezagwi spirits commonly grow jealous of younger siblings — tormenting them, blocking their path. The child will be calling soon enough. It was time for this to end."
"Silver-tongued as ever. If you knew all that, you should have dealt with it yourself — why resort to using other people? In the end, you simply couldn't bear to hear complaints from your wife, so you propped up a scapegoat, didn't you?"
"You're not wrong."
So saying, Yoon Chang-sik brought Kim Do-sa — Kim Yi-yeon's face to mind. A man he had seen on YouTube and dismissed as nothing more than Scapegoat Number One. And yet that man had saved not only Si-woo, but the wounded heart of Mi-ra as well.
Perhaps that Kim Yi-yeon is the very one we have been waiting for...
Pushing aside the thought that flickered through his mind, Chang-sik smiled.
"Marriage is simply like that. Treat it carelessly just because it's familiar, and it falls apart overnight. Cowardly or not, this much effort is necessary. Ah — though I suppose you of all people wouldn't understand such feelings, Mother."
A faintly bitter smile touched Yoon Chang-sik's lips.
"You are the one who serves in the very Bureau that killed Father. Small wonder you wouldn't understand."
"...Even you know the Bureau's present position... It was a necessary choice for the sake of social order."
"Order? Hohohoho. And whose order might this 'order' be? The order of the vested interests who already have theirs, is it not? And they cannot even maintain that paltry order, can they? If another tragedy like Jinhyeon County were to erupt — are you confident you could stop it?"
Jinhyeon was the name of a city that used to 'exist' in Gangwon-do. A small city of twenty thousand souls, its dairy farms so flourishing that cheese, butter, and milk were its local treasures. But in today's South Korea, outside of a handful of psychics and the uppermost strata of society, no one knows the name Jinhyeon.
Because the city, and every one of its twenty thousand citizens, had been swallowed whole into the Inner.
And the Paranormal Administration Bureau had buried every last fact of it along with Jinhyeon and its people — erasing the name from records and warping the memories of all who remembered.
"The Bureau — no, the Masquerade Alliance — is what did that."
The Masquerade Alliance was a federation of the paranormal agencies of many nations.
"What exactly are you driving at? Or do you simply wish to mock me?"
"Seonhwa Specialized High School."
At that name, Baek Gong-ju's expression froze solid.
"How do you know that name..."
"The place that was recently swallowed into the Inner, along with three hundred students."
Befitting a famous private academy, Seonhwa Specialized High School counted many children of the powerful among its students.
"What is there to be so shocked about? The story was already spreading, whisper by whisper. Unlike the old days, the internet exists now — even information control has its limits."
"......"
"Has Lady Haegeum nothing to say? I merely ask whether her wise counsel has run dry."
Haegeum was the moon deity Baek Gong-ju served as a shaman. A divinity of exceedingly high rank, as befitted the moon — the very reason Baek Gong-ju was counted among the nation's top-tier psychics.
"......"
But Baek Gong-ju could not answer him.
At the sight of her silence, Yoon Chang-sik let out a great, mocking burst of laughter — and then spoke.
"She spoke to me. After so very long."
"Princess Sahui!?"
Princess Sahui — otherwise known as Princess Bari. The goddess revered as the ancestor of all mudang, and the very god Yoon Chang-sik had originally been fated to serve.
"What did Her Highness say!?"
"She said that the Hand of Heaven shall touch the earth no longer. It has been so long since I conversed with her that I wondered whether it was mere hallucination... but it appears she was real."
Baek Gong-ju glared at Chang-sik, who was beaming with delight, and lashed out.
"You wretched whelp... Don't tell me you've been gallivanting with those Deva hoodlums?"
"Of course not. My stake lies elsewhere."
Yoon Chang-sik handed Baek Gong-ju a business card.
"Th-this—!"
The instant she confirmed what was on it, Baek Gong-ju's brows knotted into inverted arcs and she rose from her seat.
THWACK!
"Gwakh!"
Her backhand sent Yoon Chang-sik's body flying across the room. Strength that defied belief — from an old woman. From a human being.
"Khhk, cough..."
"You disgraceful wretch! You are the shame of our bloodline! You who were meant to serve Princess Bari and bring order to Korean shamanism — know your shame!"
"Cough... k, kehehe... bullshit...!"
"Do you truly not fear karma!? Do you not know how miserably shamanism ends for those who spurn fate and refuse the god's descent!? You refused the descent and drew the Jade Emperor's wrath — when you die, you shall boil in the fires of sulfur!"
At Baek Gong-ju's scalding condemnation — curses hardly fit to be spoken aloud — Yoon Chang-sik laughed.
There was a time when his mother's curses like these had terrified him half to death.
But...
Remembering Kim Yi-yeon's words, they did not frighten him in the slightest.
Kim Yi-yeon, who had said that the afterlife exists for the sake of the living. And here was Baek Gong-ju, hurling the cruelest vision of the shamanic hells at her own flesh and blood.
Asked which of the two to believe, the answer was simple.
"The times have changed, Mother. Your era is already over."
Yes. What Kim Yi-yeon had saved was not only Si-woo and Mi-ra.
He had saved Chang-sik, too.
And that was why he could speak with his chest held high.
"An age of calamity is coming. But Heaven cannot reach out its hand — so there will be no savior."
"......"
"Which means if salvation will not come down from the sky, it will have to rise up from the ground — will it not?"
"...What exactly are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying that for the future's sake, you should stop hunting down and persecuting psychics for no reason. People like those who cure illness with psychic power, or those who read fortunes — the ones trying to open new doors through livestreaming. If they grow strong enough, they can stand together against the calamity to come, can't they?"
"Are you daring to threaten me?"
Ptoo. "That's not a threat. It's a request."
Crunch.
Yoon Chang-sik pushed his broken nose back into place with his hand as he spoke.
"In exchange for our Si-woo's life — surely you can grant me that much of a request?"
"......"
The official cause of Yoon Si-woo's death was a truck accident.
But the driver of that truck had been neither drowsy nor drunk behind the wheel.
He had testified that, at the moment of the accident, a disheveled woman in a kimono had appeared out of nowhere and wrenched the wheel.
The woman's name was Sugawara Himeko.
A Japanese Noroiya — a curse master — who had died battling Baek Gong-ju in the past.
Defeated, Himeko had left a curse behind as she died. A curse aimed not at Baek Gong-ju herself, but at her family.
Baek Gong-ju had of course learned of it in advance and laid wards — but the wards were imperfect. As a result, Korea's spiritual currents twisted, the incompletely warded curse stirred back to life, and it was that curse which had killed Yoon Si-woo.
"......"
"I will take your silence as you having heeded my request."
Without waiting for Baek Gong-ju's answer, Yoon Chang-sik climbed the stairs to the bedroom on the second floor.
Kim Do-sa — I have bought you time. How much you grow in the meanwhile is up to you.
"Aaah... I swear, it never gets old...!"
Streamer Tsukumo Momo was on her thirty-second rewatch of Kim Dosa's newly uploaded video.
Circumstances being circumstances, Kim Yi-yeon had hesitated to upload the footage of Yoon Si-woo and Yu Mi-ra... but Mi-ra had told him:
"It's all right. I'd actually be glad if lots of people came to know our Si-woo's story and honored him for it."
And so the video went up. Within three days, the footage of the mother and son's heartbreaking story had broken a million views. It caught the algorithm in full, and the view count was still climbing steeply even now.
An endless keyboard war waged through an infinite supply of burn accounts and alts.
"Hack, ptui! How dare they, without even knowing their place — against our Do-sa...!"
"Ugh... I wanted to be there too..."
Tsukumo Momo, still steeped in the afterglow of victory, soon let out a deep sigh. She should have been in that video as well. But a collab stream she had scheduled before ever meeting Kim Yi-yeon had tied her down.
"Next time I am definitely demanding he bring me along!"
Firmly resolved, Tsukumo Momo checked Channel Kim Dosa's growth metrics.
"Hmhm~ climbing nice and steady~."
Channel Kim Dosa had enjoyed its first big surge when the clip of the stalker's arrest went viral mid-stream. Now this latest video promised a second wind, and the channel's numbers were rocketing upward.
"Let's see — a few more videos and monetization will be no problem at all."
Just as she was happily tending Channel Kim Dosa's YouTube, a phone call came in.
"Ugh...!"
Her face twisted at the caller ID. Every instinct screamed to hang up — but then the calls would keep coming all day long, so she had no choice but to answer.
"What is it, Mom?"
The caller was Tsukumo Momo's mother.
Momo did not get along with her family. Her mother, most of all. The funny part was that Momo's mother also had a terrible relationship with her own side of the family.
Is that hereditary too? No, wait — at least I didn't go and change my surname like Mom did.
Half Korean and half Japanese, she had taken the surname of her Japanese name from her mother's side.
"What? A relative from your side of the family is coming? So? And you want them to stay at MY place? Mom, what the hell is this crap out of nowhere!?"
Momo scowled at her mother's one-sided announcement. But the moment she heard the name of the relative who was coming, her attitude flipped entirely.
"What? Ryuko? Ryuko's the one coming?"
Sugawara Ryuko was the only relative close to her own age — the one cousin on her mother's side that Momo was actually close with. The news that she was coming to Korea filled Tsukumo Momo to the brim with anticipation.
She didn't know much, but apparently her mother's family did something in the sorcery line. Shrine priests or shrine maidens, probably? Something along those lines.
I simply HAVE to introduce her to Kim Do-sa!
Tsukumo Momo beamed at the razor-sharp content she had lined up for streaming.
Quieter than I expected.
Honestly, I'd been a little worried after uploading the video of Yu Mi-ra and Yoon Si-woo. I had used the story of a Bureau employee's family on camera, so I half-expected some kind of reprisal.
But contrary to my worries, the Paranormal Administration Bureau stayed silent. Maybe Yoon Chang-sik had pulled some strings — or maybe they simply lacked the bandwidth to care about something like this.
Thanks to that, the video caught the algorithm and blew up — but my heart wasn't exactly at ease.
This feels uneasy.
From everything I'd heard so far, Korea's spiritual situation was in poor shape. Spiritual chaos, an overstretched Administration Bureau, and Deva standing in opposition to it all. The calm before the storm, plain and simple. Surface-level peace could shatter at any moment, and nothing about it would be surprising.
Anomaly incidents were running rampant all across Korea. And this was only what had leaked out past the Bureau's cover-ups — in truth, there had to be far more.
"Maddening..."
What a truly remarkable era to become a psychic, in every possible sense.
If I wanted to secure even a shred of safety, joining the Bureau or Deva would be the sensible move... but no matter how I turned it over, I had zero desire to do that. If anything, it made me angry — why on earth should I wedge myself between those two and tiptoe around their moods?
So what, then? How did a man survive this chaotic age on his own?
The answer was simple.
Get stronger.
Until now, I'd learned whatever sorcery the moment demanded, at the moment it was needed — pure stopgap measures, every one. But from here on, that had to change.
"Thanks to the streaming, I've finally got spare money and spare time..."
In that case, might as well start leveling up in earnest.