Hell by the Name of School [6]
“That heaven-defying bastard Lee Jin-seok...!”
In a hidden underground chamber beneath the President's private residence, Baek Gong-ju stood before a freshly uncovered altar, snarling through clenched teeth.
After the Paranormal Administration Bureau had rejected her request to deploy to Seonhwa High, she had resolved to pour herself into the one role she still held: the spiritual protection of the nation's key figures. It was, she told herself, the least atonement she could offer for failing to save those children.
And in truth, the spiritual defense of VIPs was a matter of grave national importance. Hostile states weren't the only threat — even among allied nations, curses flew back and forth beneath the table, launched at one another's leadership. Factions splintered even within a single friendly government, each scheming to curse its rivals and engineer a more favorable political climate for itself.
Steeling herself with that sense of duty, Baek Gong-ju began a fresh sweep of the protective wards around every designated figure — and perhaps it was that solemn diligence that paid off. She uncovered a trace of sorcery so deeply buried that she had never once noticed it back when she first overhauled the Bureau's entire protection system.
And the source of it was none other than the President himself.
At first, she blamed herself, assuming the President had come under attack during some lapse in her vigilance. But the further she traced the residue, the more the whole situation stank.
President Lee Jin-seok had once had a son and a daughter-in-law — until they died in an accident not long ago, leaving behind a daughter. And so the President had doted obsessively on Lee Min-hee, his last living blood relative. That, at least, was what Baek Gong-ju had believed. It was what the entire public believed.
It was a lie.
Lee Jin-seok cherished Min-hee because she was the third living sacrifice lined up after his son and daughter-in-law.
Daesudaemyeong — the Life-Swap.
A forbidden sorcery that prolonged one's own life by feeding it the lives of others. President Lee Jin-seok had been burning his own son, his daughter-in-law, and his granddaughter as sacrifices to fuel it. All that doting on his granddaughter had been the tender affection of a man cherishing his last bullet shield.
Lee Jin-seok had always possessed undeniable political talent, but at his age his health was failing badly — and that frailty had been a major liability in the presidential race. Then, mere weeks before the election, his health recovered with a swiftness so unnatural it defied medicine. Riding his existing popularity, his approval ratings soared, and Lee Jin-seok became the first president in South Korean history elected from a third party rather than one of the two dominant ones.
And a few months after his inauguration, his son and daughter-in-law died in an accident.
The President didn't waver so much as a hair. He threw himself into the duties of state with unwavering dedication — and his approval ratings climbed even higher, the public moved by a father who governed on despite his grief.
The truth hidden beneath that stoic facade was nothing short of obscene. The life that should have ended — Lee Jin-seok's own — had been passed on to his son's family through the Life-Swap. And as if that weren't enough, he was now hoisting his own granddaughter onto the sacrificial altar to stave off his next bout of illness.
“That murderous piece of filth... no wonder he kept dodging every attempt I made to meet him...!”
Baek Gong-ju ground her teeth as she stared at the residue of the sorcery performed inside the presidential residence. It was then that NIS agents, who had been covertly guarding the President's home, came crashing in — far too late. They skipped the clichés entirely; no 'Freeze! Move and I shoot!' Just guns, drawn and rising.
But the moment their fingers touched the grips —
“Sleep, you brats.”
Her voice, thick with spiritual power, dropped every last agent where they stood. Baek Gong-ju stepped over their prone bodies, pulled out her phone, and called the Director of the Paranormal Administration Bureau.
“It's me. Where is that bastard the President right now? What...? Why is that man at Seonhwa High—!?”
“So that's it... that's the wish Min-hee begged from her demon?”
“Yes... I don't really understand what it means, but... you know what it is, right, Mr. Kim Dosa?”
“Roughly.”
The wish Lee Min-hee had made to her 'demon' was this:
'Sever the sorcery binding my grandfather and me — and kill him.'
That was all.
And the sorcery performed between Min-hee and Lee Jin-seok had been the Daesudaemyeong — a heretical art of the same breed as soul-roping or solitary poison, grafting the life of the living onto one fated to die. Min-hee had summoned a demon to break it, and that was the root of this entire catastrophe. As for why she had dragged Yu Min-seo into the ritual, the answer was obvious. A contract with a demon is a jungle of scheming and treachery, and Min-hee had figured that if she wedged Min-seo into the middle of it, she could shove the price onto someone else.
“So why did you go along with Min-hee's proposal?”
“...Th-that's...”
“I won't get angry. Just tell me the truth.”
“I didn't think the ritual would actually work! This stuff is superstition, right? N-no, not that I thought you were a fake, Mr. Kim Dosa... it's just, they say a ritual works better if the person casting it is having their birthday... m-my birthday is October 12th! So I did the ritual on the night of the 12th, going into the 13th, and...”
“I said I won't get mad. Breathe. Take your time.”
“So... so...”
Min-seo's voice was thick with tears now. And at last, she let out the real reason.
“...She said if I did this for her, she'd stop bullying me.”
“......”
The silence that followed was not anger at Min-seo. It was pure, corrosive disillusionment — aimed at Lee Min-hee, that vermin in human skin.
'You insane brat. You were terrified of being sacrificed by your own grandfather, so you tore open this hell — and now, because you don't want to pay for it yourself, you dump the price onto Min-seo?'
Blood really could not be hidden. In the end, everything Min-hee did was no different from what Lee Jin-seok had done. Not one bit.
'Well, that explains why the anomaly suddenly started swallowing people again.'
The President had come. Everything that happened at Seonhwa High had been bait scattered by the demon to secure its contract. It was an absurd plan on its face — and yet, precisely as the demon intended, the President had come to the school and been swallowed into the I-myeon.
'Which makes the real question: where is the President right now?'
Two possibilities. Either the old man was hiding behind some sorcerous means of self-preservation — or the demon that Min-seo and Min-hee had contracted was hiding him.
More precisely, this thing was closer to a Monkey's Paw. It granted exactly what was asked — and never, ever kindly. Ask for money, and it kills your family so you collect the insurance. Ask for your dead family back, and it raises them exactly as they died, shambling and rotting. If it had secured Lee Jin-seok yet still refused to close the contract, then the demon had some scheme of its own buried underneath.
'But to shatter the I-myeon, the contract has to be dissolved one way or another.'
On that point, he already had a plan in mind. No guarantee it would work — nothing close to one hundred percent — but the odds were there.
'And if it fails, I've got a cruder option in my back pocket.'
The real problem was what came after dissolution. Min-hee had made the wish, but Min-seo had carried out the contract. Which meant that the instant the deal was complete, the price would land squarely on Min-seo. It would be easy to assume the people sacrificed at the school had been the payment — but no. Those deaths were nothing more than necessary expenses incurred in the course of fulfilling the contract. If anything, the demon might bill for extras. The true price would be collected, guaranteed.
The lucky part was that he'd already worked out a solution for that, too.
Yes — I've always been a man who plans ahead. A man who delivers value for the money.
That left one final problem. The contract was complete, and it would be lovely if the demon simply packed up and went home...
'But there's not a chance in hell of that, is there.'
The powerful anomaly that had annihilated Jung Seong-ho's advance team had to be this demon. When interference threatened its contract, it had rushed out and wiped the obstruction away. The open question was why it had never shown itself when he interfered... but that could wait.
“Do you happen to know the name of the demon you contracted with?”
“I'm sorry... I just did exactly what Min-hee told me to...”
“I see...”
...It would've been nice to at least know the demon's name before I had to fight it.
Vrrrm.
“Hm?”
His phone buzzed, sudden and jarring. Startled, he pulled it out and checked the screen. ...There was a text message waiting.
“...How?”
No form of communication functioned inside the I-myeon. Nothing — except spirit communicators and Dongbin's Dao Study Room. So what was this text?
Warily, he opened it. The message contained nothing but a URL to an unknown site. And beneath the address, after a single empty line, sat one short line of text:
“......What the hell is this now?”
Just in case, he pulled open his Wi-Fi window.
Wi-Fi Network Detected
- A lifeline. With my compliments.
“Do I trust this or not? Ha...!”
He let out a hollow laugh, then tapped the address.
And then...
Salomon's Encyclopedia of Anomalies
'Damn it... when is the contract actually going to go through?'
Lee Min-hee sat gnawing at her nails, burning through the minutes in a froth of anxiety. She hadn't expected her ritual to kill this many people, either. She felt guilt over it — a genuine twinge of remorse, even.
But since it had already come to this, the least the contract could do was go through cleanly. Right?
'Die already, you disgusting old man.'
At the mere thought of Lee Jin-seok, Min-hee's already vicious eyes turned venomous. A worthless piece of trash who had offered up his own son and daughter-in-law as sacrifices — and was now reaching for his granddaughter as the next one.
'Gang-jun! And you, daughter-in-law! This is your chance to serve a great cause! Lend me your strength! Grant this father the chance to change this nation!'
That face was still vivid in her memory — the pious, earnest expression he'd worn, cobbling together lofty rhetoric to appeal to the greater good. He had performed the Life-Swap ritual without ever once telling them how dangerous it was. And the three of them, taken in by his desperate sincerity, had joined the ceremony.
The result, everyone knew.
'You think... you think I'm just going to roll over and die for you?'
Shattered by her mother and father's deaths, Min-hee had spent an entire year preparing all of this — living in constant dread of the day she, too, might be laid on her grandfather's altar like her parents before her. Using her position as the President's granddaughter, she had quietly gathered information and assembled the ritual, piece by piece. Plenty of people had died as a result — but as long as she survived, what did it matter?
'Then why is that bitch Yu Min-seo still alive?'
If Min-seo ever went around blabbing about what really happened, Min-hee's position would become very awkward indeed.
'Persistent little... what if she's the last one standing? Do I have to kill her myself?'
What Min-hee didn't know was that the demon had deliberately spared both of them — the proxy and the assistant to the contract. Because if the two principals of the pact died, the contract would terminate automatically. The survival of the group they belonged to hadn't been luck at all; it was precisely because the two of them had been inside it.
“...Damn it. My hands are shaking.”
Anxiety, maybe. This was exactly the kind of moment where a cigarette would hit the spot...
“......I need some air.”
Min-hee glanced around, then slipped out of the temporary command post. The anomalies inside had been exterminated single-handedly by that monster, Kim Dosa or whatever his name was, and the students weren't targets of the I-myeon's mutation anyway, so nobody moved to stop her. A few other students had already ducked out for a breather as well.
'Killing that many monsters all by himself... is that guy even human?'
Out loud, she cursed Kim Yi-yeon up and down like everyone else — but Min-hee had watched his fight.
'Is that what they call national-power class? No... Special Grade?'
A class apart, standing above the ranked tiers entirely. Special Grade. The term for the psychics at the very summit — the so-called peak, the ones wielded like national arsenals.
What would happen if he found out the truth of what she'd done?
'...N-no way. He wouldn't actually kill me, right? I'm the President's granddaughter...'
This, from the girl who had tried to have that very President killed. She was remarkably good at stupid thoughts.
Tsk.
“Hoo...”
At the corner of the schoolyard, Min-hee lit a cigarette and tried to steady her nerves. She was about halfway through it when —
“Huh!?”
A silhouette was sprinting toward her from the far side of the field.
“Damn it...! I thought all the monsters were dead!?”
She whirled to bolt for the command post — then froze as she realized the figure wasn't a monster at all. It was a person. And a silhouette she knew quite well.
“Lee Jin-seok...!”
Her grandfather. The President of the Republic of Korea.
“Heeek! Hiiiiiik!”
At that moment, a hulking man of inhuman proportions came hurtling after him. Skin the gray-blue of a corpse, flesh torn and ruptured all across its body. This time there was no mistaking it — this was a real monster. And it was hunting Lee Jin-seok.
“K-kill it! Please...!”
Min-hee, instead of running, stood frozen and watched the chase unfold. Then Jin-seok's eyes met hers. He opened his mouth to scream —
“Help—!”
In that instant —
FWUMP!
The corpse-giant pounced. Lee Jin-seok was pinned beneath its body like a frog in mating season, and from beyond the shadow of that massive back, flesh and blood sprayed outward in a wide crimson arc.
Watching it, Lee Min-hee shuddered with ecstasy. Then, heedless of who might see or hear her, she screamed at the top of her lungs.
“AHAHAHAHA! He's dead, he's dead! Finally dead! That rotten old bastard is finally dead! I'm free now! FREE! Finally! The contract is complete! FINALLY!”
Like a madwoman, she clawed her hair into disarray and howled.
“You said the contract... had been completed.”
At first, she didn't even register the voice.
“Huh?”
The corpse-skinned giant rose to its feet and stepped aside. Standing there was not the shredded corpse of Lee Jin-seok — it was Kim Yi-yeon, drenched in the blood and gobbets of flesh he had ripped from the jiangshi's body.
“...How?”
Min-hee asked, her face slack with disbelief.
But Kim Yi-yeon's eyes were no longer on her at all. The target of his roar was not Lee Min-hee, either.
The target of that spiritual pressure, crashing down like a hammer, was not Min-hee —
— but the true architect of this entire catastrophe. The author of this hell.
Lord of twenty-six legions of the Inferno, the Noble Prince of Wishes.
The seventieth of the Seventy-Two Demons of Solomon.
In that instant, cracks spidered across the I-myeon that had swallowed Seonhwa High whole.