044. Where the Mermaid's Tears Flow [3]
"Ahem. So you're Lee Jin-ah..."
Even with the thrill of that two-billion-won contract still humming in my chest, I resolved to start with conversation. The client's request was to persuade Lee Jin-ah into lifting the curse herself—there was no reason to treat her as an enemy. But...
"Tch!"
Before I could get another word out, she lunged at me.
Whum!
For all her delicate appearance, Lee Jin-ah closed the distance with inhuman explosiveness and drove a fist straight at me.
BOOM!
A sonic crack split the air—the kind even a heavyweight boxer couldn't produce—and a numbing shockwave grazed my cheek.
"Hey, can't we just talk—!"
I ducked under the blow and opened the distance, trying to restart the conversation, but she wasn't having it.
"You think I'll just take this lying down!?"
Muttering something incomprehensible, she chased me down in a series of flows that looked straight out of Chinese martial arts cinema.
Bam! Boom! Bam!
Every punch broke the sound barrier. This was the level of a grandmaster straight out of a wuxia novel. She wasn't using a shred of sorcery—just fists—but even so, she outclassed Giselle and Shin Han-hee by a mile.
So this is why they say everything changes the moment you hit Gap-rank.
Granted, Gap-rank was roughly A-grade; of course she'd be this good.
But Lee Jin-ah had overlooked one thing.
"I did MMA too, you know!"
I slipped the fist aimed at my temple, closed in, and went for the takedown.
"Ugh!"
SLAM!
I hoisted her up and drove her into the ground, then locked in the mount position. For all her striking prowess, she'd clearly never trained grappling a day in her life—she couldn't mount the slightest resistance.
"Kgh...!"
Still, I couldn't afford to relax. My opponent was a psychic. The fists were strictly auxiliary; her main weapon would be sorcery. I kept one eye on her hands and even held back from pounding away at her but—
For some reason, Jin-ah did nothing but struggle to escape. No sorcery at all.
What the hell?
Then—
GWOOOOOOM!
A nearby stone wall rippled like a wave and surged toward me.
"Tiger-Summoning Rite!"
GRROOOOAAAR!
Wang Lingguan, summoned without my even leaving the mount, whipped his sword in a ferocious arc and split the wall of stone in two. It hadn't been Jin-ah's sorcery—which meant Jin-ah had an ally.
"Quite the talent, for one so young..."
And the ally who appeared was—someone I never expected.
"You're..."
The old woman with the deranged look who had shown up mid-filming. But the woman before me now bore no trace of madness whatsoever. She was speaking with perfect lucidity.
"That was... an act?"
But why?
"...That child is my disciple. What could such a frail creature have done that you persecute her so? Would you not release her at once!"
Tense as she was at the sight of Wang Lingguan, the old woman still demanded Jin-ah's release.
"Your disciple? Then are you aware of what your frail disciple has been up to?"
"...What?"
I laid out everything Jin-ah had done, sparing no detail. As she listened, the old woman's initially proud expression slowly crumpled—until, by the time I reached the curse she'd spread through her victim's bloodline, her head was bowed so low she couldn't meet my eyes.
When the story was done, she let out a long sigh.
"Haah... Jin-seol... how many times did I tell you never to do such things..."
"Th-that's...!"
"Enough. No excuses... So tell me, young Taoist—what do you intend to do with this child? Surely you don't mean to..."
The old woman's voice trailed off, as if she half expected me to kill Jin-seol outright.
"I'll have her lift the curse with her own hands, then take her to my client so she can apologize."
"...You will not be taking her life, then?"
"Look at this face. Do I look like a man who kills people?"
"......"
Hey, old woman, why'd you suddenly clam up right there?
But her silence didn't last long. The old woman gave a slow nod.
"...Then this old woman shall interfere no further."
"Master!"
"Where do you find the gall to raise your voice at me! I took you on as a student out of the bond I held with your mother—not so you could go committing atrocities!"
"Ugh..."
Having chilled the air with that rebuke, the old woman asked one last thing.
"My name is Kang So-hwa. Might I ask the young Taoist's name?"
"Kim Yi-yeon."
"Such attainment at so tender an age... And that valiant friend of yours—is he a guardian deity? I confess my envy. In my youth I hungered for a guardian deity of my own and tried to summon one more times than I can count. Every attempt failed."
Kang So-hwa gazed at Wang Lingguan with undisguised admiration, then went on.
"Master Kim... you are a soul far too precious to be claimed by an early grave..."
"...An early grave?"
"So I beg you, young Taoist—take your companions and leave this island before tomorrow night falls."
"What's that supposed to—"
"That is all I have to say. Farewell."
With those words, Kang So-hwa vanished as abruptly as she had appeared—leaving behind only an ominous question, and a disciple left utterly dumbstruck.
My head was still spinning from Kang So-hwa's parting words, but I decided to handle what needed handling first.
"Now then—your master's given her blessing, so time to lift that curse, no?"
I said, still straddling her.
"I-I can't!"
"Tsk~ I don't discriminate against women. Keep stonewalling and I'll have no choice but to attempt my persuasion [pounding]."
"It's not that I won't, I can't! I'm a victim here too, a victim!"
"Huh? Pulling the victim card now? Guess it's real persuasion [pounding] time, then."
"No! A real victim, I swear! I got thrown under the bus! My client stabbed me in the back! Believe me, if it were up to me I'd curse that client into the next century—but I can't!"
"......Start talking. Everything."
With persuasion [pounding] loaded and ready, I dug into the full story. Boiled down, it went like this.
Lee Jin-ah—or rather, Lee Jin-seol—was a mercenary psychic, a fixer who took any job, dirty or clean. One day, a commission came in: curse Choi Sun-woo and keep him bedridden through the general election.
So Jin-seol had approached Sun-woo—lonely, mid-separation from his wife—worked her way close, and, more easily than expected, talked her way into living with him.
"Men, honestly~ I'm more than twenty years younger than him, and he swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. He's the one who proposed moving in together."
With cohabitation achieved, placing the curse should have been simple. It should have been.
"Whether some ancestral spirit was guarding him, or he was carrying a protective talisman or something, the curse just wouldn't take. So I kept escalating the power, and..."
That was why the curse on Choi Sun-woo had been absurdly strong for political sabotage. After cranking the curse's potency higher and higher, Jin-seol had finally succeeded. The problem was that from the very day she reported her success, her own condition began to deteriorate.
And someone as versed in curses as Jin-seol knew exactly what that meant.
She had been cursed herself.
"Job's done, so now they're cutting their loose end—damn it... Right now I'm stretched just suppressing the curse they threw at me. Thanks to that, forget lifting theirs, I can't use any other sorcery at all... Sounds like an excuse, I know, but if it weren't for that, that fight would've gone very differently."
"Wow. That really does sound like an excuse."
"Damn...! Look, until my own curse is broken, I can't undo the one on Choi Sun-woo either! The only reason I came to this island was to ask my master to break it! But she's been busy, so..."
"Then... what if I break it for you?"
"What?"
"If I lift the curse on you, will you lift the one on Choi Sun-woo and meet him face to face to apologize?"
Jin-seol considered it for a moment, then nodded.
"...Fine. I'll lift it. I'll apologize in person, too... as long as they don't try to kill me."
"No need to worry on that front. There is 'absolutely' zero chance Choi Sun-woo will kill you. Consider the deal struck."
I rose from the ground and pulled Jin-seol to her feet.
"...Cooler about this than I expected? What happens if I break my word once the curse is gone?"
"Then I'll have no reason to hold back my 'persuasion.'"
For the record, that persuasion would not involve anything as soft as pounding.
"...That's a first-rate threat. Fine, whatever. I'm well and truly sick of clients who backstab me and play innocent anyway."
Having said her piece, Jin-seol hesitated, then asked:
"But did Sun-woo really only ask you to lift the curse? No revenge, nothing else on the side?"
"That's right. He said all I had to do was find you and talk you into undoing it."
"...What the hell is that eunuch bastard actually after?"
Jin-seol clicked her tongue. I had my own suspicions about what Sun-woo's true purpose was. But I didn't share them.
Telling that story was Sun-woo's job, not mine.
Afterward, I booked a room for Jin-seol in the hotel where the film crew was staying. I didn't restrain her or anything. We'd struck a fair deal—and besides, neither of us could leave the island until the boat came tomorrow anyway.
Then I headed back outside and continued surveying the island. The original goals—wrap the Psychic Society shoot and find Jin-seol—were done, but something kept nagging at me.
The absurd number of water ghosts infesting the sea. The psychic Kang So-hwa, pretending to be a madwoman. The warning to leave before tomorrow night. All of it felt like some collective omen of disaster.
And after combing the island, I confirmed my instincts hadn't lied.
I found it while scanning the horizon from the island's highest point, the summit of the mountain at its heart.
"...What is that?"
North of the island, over the boundless open sea—something was there. What it was, I couldn't say. From one angle it looked like a mass of black smoke, swollen and roiling. From another, it resembled a black heat shimmer, wavering above the waves. The only thing I knew for certain was that it was deeply ominous, secretive, and sinister.
Just seeing it from this far away set off a warning in my skull far louder than the one that had rung when I met Saire, the high demon. And worst of all, the thing was inching closer to the island.
"...Is that thing going to make landfall once tomorrow night passes?"
"...That..."
At that moment Fey spoke up, as if she might know something about the presence.
"Do you recognize it?"
"Nay, I do not. But this much I know."
"What?"
"That thing is no creature of this world. Likely, it is a thing come from the 'Outside.'"
"...The 'Outside'?"
"I crave thy pardon, but beyond that, even I cannot say."
And there Fey frustratingly cut herself off.
"Are you perhaps playing hard to get, angling for a formal contract?"
"Hard... to get? I know not what that means, but We do not stoop to such petty tricks... It is simply that We lack the power to explain the 'Outside' to a mortal such as thee."
"...I see."
So instead of resolving my questions, I'd only managed to grow them. I finished my survey of the island.
And in the course of it, I discovered traces of some ritual, concealed by sorcery in spots all across the island.
"An incense burner and candles, tea and fruit... and this is a Daoist scripture..."
It was classic Daoist ritual work. Guessing who'd performed it wasn't hard.
"It's Kang So-hwa."
She'd recognized Wang Lingguan as a guardian deity at a glance, and the sorcery she'd attacked me with had been a form of Daoist arts, too. Yet I'd sensed no doryeok from her—which meant she'd skipped the cauldron-refinement path entirely and built her power purely on spiritual energy through the talisman school.
There were five such ritual sites on the island in total.
"What is this ritual for?"
Back at the hotel, I put the question to Jin-seol, who was idly sipping coffee in the café. But—
"I don't know the details either."
"Liar. Your spiritual signature was all over the ritual sites."
"I really don't know! Master said the ritual had to be finished before she could break my curse, so all I did was lend a hand. And seriously—what could I even do, when I can barely use sorcery because I'm too busy blocking a curse?"
She didn't seem to be lying. So I changed the question.
"That thing to the north... did you see it?"
"That thing? What thing?"
"You know. Way out in the northern sea, the—"
"A waste of breath. This child is a capable enough psychic, but she is no more able to behold an unmanifested being of the 'Outside' than any other mortal."
I'm sorry—there are anomalies even psychics can't see?
While I was still reeling from Fey's remark—
"Um... excuse me."
Park Do-jun, spotting me from the café entrance, came over.
"Mr. Park Do-jun. What can I do for you?"
From the way he'd hurried over, he'd apparently been looking for me.
But why?
Things between Park Do-jun and me were awkward, to put it mildly. Well, understandable—his whole worldview had collapsed overnight, so confusion was only natural. For all I knew, despite experiencing the real thing firsthand, he might still be denying that the mystical and the anomalous existed at all. Perhaps that was why he'd been pointedly avoiding me for the entire shoot.
Yet now he looked at me with an earnest, almost desperate face.
"Would you have a moment to talk?"
"Sure, no problem. Hey—you. Get lost to your room."
"Excuse me? I was here first!?"
"Tsk~ Do I really need to resort to 'persuasion'?"
"Damn it...!"
Jin-seol shot me a bitterly resentful glare, then soon retreated to her room. And so Park Do-jun and I sat facing each other across the café table. An awkward silence stretched between us—until Do-jun was the one to break it.
"Master Kim... how did the legend of Yeoindo strike you?"
"Sorry?"
The question came so far out of left field that I tilted my head.
"Well... I thought it was a rather distinctive legend."
An island where mermaids and humans once lived side by side. The sinister being that came to its shores. That thing that appeared to the south, probably. The woman who sacrificed herself to give the mermaid her power, and the mermaid and the villagers who answered the woman's dying prayer and rose to fight. And the island that won the battle at last and reclaimed its peace.
Distinctive, yes—but a genuinely moving tale.
Of course...
...if the whole story were actually true.
Because that was the thing: I was doubting this legend, right now. Every anomaly I'd uncovered on this island had been warning me, in one way or another, that something was hidden beneath the tale.
And I wasn't the only one who'd reached that conclusion.
"...When I first heard the legend of Yeoindo, I dismissed it as nothing more than a quaint folktale... But no matter how I turned it over, something kept snagging in my mind. So I did some digging on my own—into related tales, the neighboring islands, and the stories passed down in Taean."
And in the course of researching the legend, Park Do-jun had unearthed something unexpected.
"Do you know what the people of the other islands in these waters, and of Taean County, used to call the sea around Yeoindo?"
"Hmm? It's an island of mermaids, so... Mermaid Sea? Something like that?"
Do-jun shook his head. Then, slowly, he spoke the name aloud. The one name no Korean—elementary schooler included—could possibly fail to know.
"Indangsu. The people called the waters surrounding Yeoindo Indangsu—the very sea from the tale of Sim Cheong."