Find Her [3]

I met Giselle at a café near Hongdae.

"It's been a while. Good to see you're doing well."

"You too."

After a brief greeting, we got into Giselle's car and headed for the client's house.

"Read this file on the way over. It's the info I dug up over the last few days."

"Not bad."

"Told you, didn't I? Even without telekinesis, I can still be useful!"

Giselle declared this with a triumphant grin, and I snorted at this unexpected side of him as I opened the file.

The politician who had hired Giselle was named Choi Sun-woo.

A former lawyer and sitting member of the National Assembly, forty-two years old. Notable points: despite coming from a minor fringe party, he'd been elected on unusually high approval ratings and was now aiming for a second term. Oh, and he'd made a few TV appearances in the past under the title Lawyer, Blood Donation King!

Family situation: married eight years, one son, but currently living separately from his wife and child.

A divorce suit was in progress as of now.

"So the mistress wasn't the cause of the divorce, which means he started dating her after the separation? Still, picking up a mistress mid-divorce-suit. Bold man, I'll give him that."

"Kekekeke! Guess he got lonely without the wife~."

The rest of it was fairly unremarkable, so I skimmed through until I hit the section on the vanished mistress.

The mistress's name was Lee Jin-ah. Age twenty.

She'd met Choi Sun-woo at a bar he frequented, they'd grown close fast, and recently moved in together. But less than a month into cohabitation, she vanished as if she'd simply evaporated.

"Hold on, twenty!?"

A twenty-two-year gap. That's practically a father-daughter relationship. Come on, this is a bit much even so.

"That's not a thief, that's an outright robber."

"Well, he is a high-and-mighty politician, isn't he? It's a world of Celestial Dragons."

Giselle gave a mocking little smile.

"Sure doesn't look like the Celestial Dragon is enjoying the view from behind, though."

Choi Sun-woo had tried to track down the missing Lee Jin-ah, but it was a dead end — because her name, her age, her address, every last thing about her was fake.

"Of course it was. An election's right around the corner. Calling the cops to hunt down a girlfriend twenty years younger? That's just announcing you want to lose."

"Thanks to which, we're getting paid for free."

Giselle smirked, corner of his mouth twitching upward. And it wasn't just the election — pulling a stunt like this in the middle of divorce proceedings was extremely dangerous too.

Even mid-suit, the marriage itself was still legally intact. Taking on a new lover and bringing her into the home in that situation was a violation of fidelity obligations and the duty of good faith toward the marriage — highly likely to work against him in court.

"I don't know... something about this guy just rubs me the wrong way."

The more I learned, the less I wanted to do the job. If the pay hadn't been so outrageous, I wouldn't have given it a second glance.

"I'm enduring this for the 900 million."

"Hey, it's 800 million! 800!"

"Save that talk for after you actually earn it. Don't tell me you're trying to squeeze an extra hundred million out of me for a little file digging."

"Huh? Ah, well, I mean—"

Seriously? Does this guy have any conscience at all—

"Ugh...!"

A sudden chill ran down my spine. I scanned the car's interior and located the source of the unease.

"Can't I keep this?"

"Water? Uh, sure, drink up."

I pulled the 500ml bottle out of the cup holder by the gearshift, rolled down the window, and dumped the whole thing out onto the road.

"Wh-what are you doing!?"

"A nasty stalker's latched onto me lately."

"A stalker? Since when?"

"Recently. It's exhausting."

"Ah... hang in there. I mean, Doctor Kim, I did notice your channel's blown up recently. That broadcasting-station incident went properly viral, didn't it?"

Giselle nodded along understandingly, then asked in a conspicuously casual tone.

"So, uh... streaming money good?"

"Not bad."

Truthfully, "not bad" was underselling it. The YouTube revenue was decent, but the donations were where the real sweetness was.

For my current flagship content — reading viewers' fortunes — a custom had sprung up where people donated a minimum of 100,000 Butter each, claiming it was a "fortune fee," even though nobody asked them to. I'd told them to stop, but the viewers wouldn't listen, and it had been a real worry.

So I'd even consulted the Big Three of streaming about it.

'What if people get intimidated and stop submitting requests?'

But all three reactions were identical.

'No way that happens.'

'Why are you even worried about that?'

'Master, you worry about the strangest things.'

Just as they said — I'd been worrying over nothing. Whether the custom was a bad habit or not, participants kept flooding in, and my live-donation rankings had climbed pretty high as a result.

If the channel just kept up at this level, I figured I could pay ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠off the debt that bastard of a father left in my name within a year.

"Whoa... that much, huh?"

Giselle looked at me with naked envy, then asked in that same too-casual tone.

"By any chance... if I ever started streaming, could you help me out? Ah — nothing grand, just, like, a collab stream now and then..."

"You? But your ability's way too overt, isn't it?"

Broadcast anything as visible as telekinesis, and blurry or distorted footage or not, nine times out of ten the Paranormal Administration Bureau would come down on you.

"That's fine."

"Why?"

"Geez, Doctor Kim, you're quick with the mystical stuff but slow on industry news, huh?"

"Stop stalling and spit it out. You've got five seconds or there'll never be a collab between us."

"I-I'll talk! I'm talking! So, uh... it seems the Paranormal Administration Bureau's situation isn't looking too great lately."

According to Giselle, the Bureau had all but suspended its outside operations — everything except the spiritual defense of high-ranking government officials and the exorcism of high-priority anomalies.

And the biggest cut of all was, supposedly, the enforcement of secrecy around mysteries and anomalies. In other words, the suppression of psychics.

"I don't know the details myself, but word going around is that it has something to do ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with Cosmos."

The image of Baek Gong-ju's assault on Cosmos flashed through my mind. Had something gone wrong after that? I'd ask Yoon Soo-ah for the full story later.

While we talked, we arrived at Choi Sun-woo's house — mansion, rather — an upscale standalone estate in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam. Compared to Yoon Chang-sik's place it felt a little lacking, but given the land prices here, this one might actually be worth more.

"A pleasure. I'm Choi Sun-woo."

And so I finally met the client himself.

Between the overlapping election and divorce suit, and the first impression of a lecherous middle-aged man obsessed with a young woman, I'd expected something sleazy — but he was remarkably clean-cut. Well-groomed for a man in his forties, and above all, his face had a kind, honest air about it. His unusually long, meticulously manicured nails were particularly striking for a man.

That aside, though, Choi Sun-woo's condition was a little odd.

He looked exactly as he had in the old news footage — the picture of aging gracefully. Except his complexion was poor. And not for health reasons. For spiritual ones.

'Something's gotten its hooks into him.'

A curse-type anomaly, a spirit, whatever it was — he had definitely come under spiritual attack, or was under attack right now. Though it must not have been a particularly severe assault, since aside from his bad color he looked perfectly fine.

It didn't seem serious enough to warrant alarm, so I decided to move on to business.

"Where should I even begin... I've given you the broad strokes, but you'll need the details as well..."

What came out of Choi Sun-woo's mouth matched Giselle's research to the letter. He'd met a girlfriend during the divorce proceedings and moved in with her — and then she'd suddenly vanished. Given his circumstances he couldn't go to the police, so he wanted us to find her discreetly.

When he finished, I asked the question that had been nagging at me the whole time.

"Why hire a psychic for this instead of a private agency or a detective?"

"Because I trust people like you far more than people like them."

Choi Sun-woo beamed and launched, without warning, into a glowing endorsement of psychics. No — judging purely by his tone, this went past praise into outright worship.

"The value of psychics is beyond measure! Military, economic, medical, and on and on — truly limitless! Hiding and oppressing such people no longer fits the reality Korea faces. The time has come for our treatment of psychics to change!"

Honestly, I hadn't expected to find a public official this friendly toward psychics. Having seen an organization like the Paranormal Administration Bureau, I'd assumed everyone on the government side was hostile.

Although — sweeping "the government" into one lump aside, factions within it would naturally split on the issue.

"So I'm in a wonderful mood today, having met the famous Doctor Kim himself."

Choi Sun-woo smiled brightly — not sounding insincere at all — and produced a single sheet of paper.

"If it's not too much trouble, might I have an autograph—"

"Ah... I, um. I'm sorry. I don't really do autographs and such..."

"Oh — of course? Yes, writing one's name does carry shamanic significance, so you'd be reluctant to do it carelessly. I completely understand."

"Yes..."

I'd lived this long, and now a sitting member of the National Assembly was asking for my autograph.

Gripping my drifting consciousness back into line, I pressed on with the questions.

"Do you have any guesses at all about why Ms. Lee Jin-ah disappeared?"

"None. Not the slightest... the very day before she vanished, we had a happy dinner together at my usual fine-dining spot. There was no discord, no trouble of any kind..."

I see...

"Mr. Choi Sun-woo, first of all... would you permit us to look around your home?"

"I'm sorry — the house?"

"Yes. If we knew Ms. Lee Jin-ah's — your lover's — real name, even that would make things easier, but since we don't, I intend to examine the traces of her life here and look for leads."

Choi Sun-woo fell silent for a moment.

What was that? Something he didn't want seen?

"If you'd rather not, we could—"

"No, no, not at all. If you wish to look, look to your heart's content."

"Thank you for your understanding."

There were a few sour notes, but I had permission, so we began our tour of the mansion. The house was so large that even a cursory walk-through took considerable time.

"Whoa. So rich people really do have a dedicated library."

Proving it wasn't mere decoration for show, the desk was stacked with worn English-language originals that looked recently and heavily read. It was a study that screamed social elite, never mind the politician part.

'A guy this sharp chasing a girlfriend twenty years younger... something stinks.'

So even a man this brilliant can't beat his own libido!?

I also found a binder of the countless blood donation certificates that had gotten Choi Sun-woo on the news, all neatly organized. Plenty bore recent dates too — apparently he still donated regularly, even as a sitting politician.

And so, after turning over the mansion corner to corner for a good while...

We searched Lee Jin-ah's room too, but found nothing of consequence. All that remained now was the master bedroom.

"If there's anything you need to tidy up, feel free to do so while we look elsewhere..."

"No, no. You should see it exactly as it is — every hour counts in finding Jin-ah."

Despite the time I'd deliberately offered him, Choi Sun-woo didn't touch a thing and showed us the room as it stood. Out of respect for that sincerity, if nothing else, I combed the bedroom thoroughly.

I opened the closet and checked the hanging clothes, inspected the en-suite bathroom, and rifled through the shelves and dresser drawers.

And yet... something was off.

The bedroom was missing the one thing it absolutely had to have.

I had just enough time to register my confusion.

"Giselle, stand on the other side. I'm flipping the bed — catch it."

"What—"

I ignored the startled Giselle and lightly flipped the super-king-size bed.

"Hey, what the— hold on a sec—!"

Giselle caught the incoming bed with his telekinesis. A single pillow he failed to catch dropped right beside his head.

"UOOOOOOOOOO!"

With a thunderous battle cry, Giselle lowered the bed to the floor with his power. Super-king with the frame — that's easily 200 kilos. Not bad.

"You absolute lun—! I said hold on—!"

Giselle's words died in his throat.

Because he'd seen the countless talismans plastered to the underside of the bed.

"Well, well. What have we here?"

The talismans beneath the bed were varied — but the one that stood out most was the talisman called [Blood-Extension Charm].

It was one of the talismans that had once been stuck to the Solitude Jar. On its own it had no special effect — a support charm that granted a bonus effect to whatever sorcery it was used with. And that bonus effect was an extension of the sorcery's range. Specifically, its reach across bloodlines.

The other talismans were all the same — every one of them carried the creepy sort of effects you'd find in a curse kit.

These were surely the groundwork — and based on them, someone had evidently performed a curse ritual. The motive: the election, or the divorce?

Only now did I understand why Choi Sun-woo's complexion had been so poor. Except—

'For a curse that elaborate, he's in remarkably good shape...'

Judging by the traces left behind, this curse was overkill for mere election-sabotage work. The candidates themselves might fight like their lives depended on it, but from the psychics' side of things, nobody wants their colleagues in the trade fighting to the death —

'Go too far and even the Paranormal Administration Bureau moves.'

And yet this sorcery wasn't WWE. It was a bare-knuckle UFC. The will to kill the target was soaked through every stroke of it.

The problem was that despite that, Choi Sun-woo's condition was far too good.

His current state was barely different from back when Choi Eun-ha had a dead woman's suicidal spirit attached to her. Low energy, poor digestion, heavy shoulders.

But exactly that much and no more.

"...Let's go out and talk for now."

The moment we sat facing each other in the reception room, Choi Sun-woo asked.

"...Was this Jin-ah's doing?"

"Going by the evidence, she's the only possibility."

"......"

"Don't worry too much. It'll take some time, but I believe I can dispel it."

It was a fairly potent curse, but nothing like the Solitude that had latched onto me in that abandoned house. Above all, I'd grown a great deal since then.

"Come to think of it — is your son unharmed? From the curse's structure, it spreads to blood relatives."

At those words, Choi Sun-woo's expression froze for an instant. But only a blink.

"...I saw nothing especially wrong with him."

"Is that so?"

Given how well he was holding up, could he perhaps be carrying a defensive charm of some kind he hadn't mentioned to me?

"Well then, about the dispelling — this, too, runs rather expensive—"

"W-wait, just a moment!"

"Yes?"

"If... if you lift this curse, what happens to Jin-ah? I might be misunderstanding, but they say that when a curse is dispelled, it returns to the caster, don't they...?"

'Dig two graves when you curse another.'

Just as the old saying goes, dispelling a curse sends it back to the one who cast it. The user of that Solitude in the abandoned house had probably wasted away or died somewhere too.

"I can't promise she'll die or not — but either way, it won't be pretty."

"I-is there no way to keep Jin-ah from being harmed?"

"I'm sorry? That would be... if the caster herself undoes the curse, then it's fine—"

The problem being that said caster had vanished. Or rather, had laid the curse and slipped away.

"...Double."

"I'm sorry?"

"I'll pay double the fee. Find Jin-ah, and persuade her to lift the curse with her own hands."

"What do you mean you're not doing it!? Double! It's DOUBLE! 2 billion!"

"It's suspicious. Way too suspicious."

"Suspicious? What's suspicious about it!? I guess this Lee Jin-ah woman must be that great! Great enough to love even under a curse! It's true love! Yes, that — what's it called — pure love! That's what this is, pure love!"

Election-related or otherwise. A woman who deliberately cursed him to death. Who even endangered his own family. And he loves her?

That's not pure love. That's just a lunatic.

And above all—

"Lee Jin-ah was never Choi Sun-woo's lover."

"...What?"

"Think back to Choi Sun-woo's bedroom."

At my words, Giselle, hands on the wheel, scrunched up his face in thought. But—

"The bedroom? What about it? It was clean and nice."

"Wait. Are you... a virgin?"

"Wh-what, what!? No! You insane—! For your information, I! Back home I'm famous as the Super Bat—!"

"Then how do you not know this?"

This bastard's lying.

Otherwise, if a hopeless single guy like me noticed it and he didn't, that defies explanation.

"What don't I know, exactly?"

"Think. A politician mid-separation over a divorce suit, with an election imminent, takes a lover, brings her into his own home to live with him. What's the obvious purpose?"

"What? Well, that's... you know..."

Giselle coughed into a fist and made a certain gesture with his fingers.

"How vulgar."

"You're the one who asked, Doctor Kim!?"

"Well, vulgar or not, that's the correct answer. But remember — we turned that bedroom inside out, and nowhere in it was the single most essential item for that purpose."

"Most essential item...?"

"Condoms."

"...Huh?"

Something finally seemed to click, because Giselle tilted his head. But he hadn't given up on arguing his case, and hastily piled up excuses.

"Th-that could just mean they went raw because they were planning kids! Or she was on the morning-after pill, or he got snipped, or—"

"Fine, the condoms could slide. But not a single tissue box by the bed? No matter how you slice it, that's unnatural. And do you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"Choi Sun-woo's nails were pretty long."

Lee Jin-ah had been gone for less than a week. But ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Choi Sun-woo's nails were far too long to have grown in a week. At that length, it meant no relations for at least two weeks.

"And there was only one pillow in that bedroom in the first place, remember?"

She had her own separate room, granted — but that's no reason to sleep apart on the nights you're together, is it?

"...Oh! No, wait, then... then something's seriously wrong here."

"Yeah. Very wrong."

During the exact period when a man should be most careful about women — election, divorce suit and all — he takes a lover and moves her in. Yet despite that, zero sexual relations? And on top of that, the lover was in fact the one who cursed him, with a vicious curse that spreads to his blood relatives — and the cursed party couldn't care less, fussing only over the lover's safety?

Wrong was too mild a word for how wrong this was.

"And the clues are too thin."

The real reason I'd torn the mansion apart was to sense any residual psychic impressions left in the house through techniques. But there was nothing. Not one trace.

Which meant—

"Whoever did this is a serious professional. I'd put her at Grade-A at the minimum."

"Grade-A..."

"The situation's fishy and the evidence is missing? This is a waste of time. I'm out."

Thud.

I stepped out near my stop and made my declaration.

"Doctor Kim! You're really not doing it!? 2 BILLION! Two billion! Hey! If you won't take it, I'm pocketing all of it! HEY!!"

Giselle leaned out the passenger window and roared after me, but I ignored him and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠went my way.

And so life returned to normal. Losing out on 2 billion stung, so I resolved to work that much harder instead.

"Thank you for the 100,000 Butter donation! Wait — another 200,000 Butter!?"

Between sorcery training and streaming, what I'd come to feel was this: Giselle was right — the Paranormal Administration Bureau seemed powerless, because psychic and occult streamers had multiplied practically overnight. Many of them didn't even bother hiding that they were the real deal.

"The skill level across the board is mediocre at best. Shin Han-hee and Giselle really were top-tier, huh?"

It wasn't just the streaming scene, either — the whole world was swept up in a massive psychic-occult boom. And amid that social atmosphere, a strange rumor was making the rounds.

The rumor in question...

Riiiiiiiing!

Right then, the phone rang. The caller was PD Choi Ji-hoon of The Psychic Society.

The White Whale incident had apparently left quite an impression, because whenever PD Choi Ji-hoon called, he insisted on florid honorifics.

"Please, I'm begging you, just talk normally. It's suffocating."

"How could I—!"

"Keep it up and I'm hanging up."

"S-sorry! Casual! I'll be casual!"

"So... what can I do for you today?"

"Well, The Psychic Society has officially been picked up as a regular series!"

"Really?"

...The Paranormal Administration Bureau really must be in bad shape. Otherwise there's no way they'd leave a show that sat at the center of an anomaly incident that swallowed fifty thousand people alone long enough to get a regular slot.

"So for the premiere, we were hoping you might appear as our psychic expert! And of course! Since we're inviting the real deal like yourself, Doctor Kim! We've prepared compensation worthy of that!"

"Hmm..."

I deliberated briefly, but accepted before long. Having once tasted the thrill of going mainstream on terrestrial television, I couldn't refuse the temptation.

'Come on, what are the odds something happens again?'

I wasn't some CoX or KimX. There's no way trouble follows me everywhere I go.

"Thank you so much! I'll send the shooting schedule, location, and all the other details by email! The format changed quite a bit when we got the regular slot, you see? Best to look it over in advance."

"Understood."

After the call, I checked my brand-new work email. The materials PD Choi had mentioned were already waiting.

"Fast worker, this guy."

With the regular pickup, The Psychic Society had abandoned the studio-ghost-story format for on-location visits to famous psychic or occult hotspots. In other words, it would now be a live showdown between the scientific and occult camps, fought on the ground.

"Hmm, I'd rather not do anything too intense, but..."

Fortunately, the location and story behind episode one didn't look particularly dangerous.

"This much should be—"

And so, as I flipped through the location-scout photos the network staff had sent ahead... I spotted a face I never expected among them.

"...What are you doing there?"

Caught small in the corner of one of the scout photos was Lee Jin-ah — the woman who'd cursed Choi Sun-woo and fled.

I checked the location of The Psychic Society's glorious regular-series premiere once more.