Qualifications of a Parent
Flap.
I took off my coat and draped it over Kang So-hwa's body. Then, with the Vairocana Mantra Barrier, I burned the body together with the coat. Where the transparent flames had passed gently on their way, not even ash remained.
"...She's gone, then?"
"Yes. She was only kept alive in that state because of that monster to begin with. By the way, you're not filming this?"
Unexpectedly, PD Choi Ji-hoon hadn't shot this scene at all.
"What do you take people for! I'll stake my life on a broadcast, sure, but I don't treat the death of the deceased as content!"
"Oh, so you do have a line you won't cross?"
I found myself looking at PD Choi in a slightly new light. Of course, that line didn't seem to be a standard anyone else would recognize — just one he'd drawn for himself — but still.
After cremating Kang So-hwa's body, I walked over to Soda and Jin-woo, who had collapsed where they sat, utterly spent.
"Are you all right?"
"...Do we look all right?"
"Hahaha... Kim Do-sa did all the heavy lifting, and here we are crumpled on the ground. It's embarrassing..."
Soda glared at me through a hoarse throat, and Jin-woo scratched at his head with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
"You both did well." Anyone who could carry a ritual song all the way to the end while staring down a monster of at least genius tier wasn't ordinary either. Come to think of it, that's exactly why they're top-tier idols in Korea.
Next, I checked in with the rest of the party over the [Coil Temporary Channel].
"Everyone safe?"
Fortunately, everyone had come through unharmed. I'd been worried they might run into the transformed villagers along the way, so it was a genuine relief.
"By the way, PD Choi — how exactly did you get here?" Whatever his passion for leaping between monsters in pursuit of footage, the practical question was how he'd punched through a village full of transformed townspeople.
"Heh, that camera Cosmos supplied wasn't the only support they gave me."
I see. So they'd handed him some kind of countermeasure against anomalies.
"Out of curiosity, where is that supplied equipment now?"
"Broke. That's how I ended up like this."
Hmm. In that case, did the fact that the four of them hadn't been mauled by the villagers owe something to PD Choi's own efforts?
"...Let's just call it even for you promoting the [Society for Paranormal Studies] and the [House of Blood]."
"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means exactly what it sounds like."
After that, I rejoined the rest of the party at the ritual site. And Lee Jin-seol, who had arrived last, looked around and noticed Kang So-hwa's absence. She asked in a grief-stricken voice,
"Master... is she gone?"
"She is. I'm sorry."
"...No, don't be. I'd more or less sensed she had no intention of living past this whole affair... You're not the one who owes an apology."
Even as she said it, her heart clearly wasn't at peace, and Lee Jin-seol clenched her fist tight.
When Kang So-hwa had transformed into that half-human, half-fish form, Jin-seol hadn't shown the slightest shock or revulsion. She didn't even know the full circumstances of the island or of Kang So-hwa herself — and to keep her composure through all that could only mean the bond between master and disciple ran very deep indeed.
As we made our way back down into the village, we found townspeople who had reverted from half-fish back to human. With the False Dragon King dead, the 'grace' it had bestowed — however much the beneficiaries disagreed — must have vanished along with it.
"Y-you...! What happened here!? What did you do to the Dragon King!?"
The village chief, whose limbs Sugawara Ryuko's shikigami had snapped like twigs, jabbed a finger at me. Thanks to the regenerative power that came with his half-fish transformation — the same Kang So-hwa had possessed — he had healed, and reverting to human in that state had left his arms and legs perfectly whole. What a tragedy.
"Can't you infer it from the situation? I sent him off to the great beyond, nice and clean."
"Th-that's insane! Y-you! You madman! Yeoin Island survived on the Dragon King's grace alone! If he's dead, how are we supposed to live—!"
Kang So-hwa had said it herself: the False Dragon King brought prosperity to Yeoin Island in exchange for sacrifices. But the prosperity she spoke of surely wasn't limited to the material abundance of good catches. Playing at being a god, it must have doled out all sorts of other boons besides — as gods who feed on human sacrifice invariably do.
"And why exactly should I care about any of that?"
"Wh-what!? You insolent little—!"
While the chief and I were trading barbs, the villagers gathered around one by one, encircling me with sickles and hoes. Last night's standoff at the hotel, faithfully reenacted. Honestly, it wasn't even funny. It was bad enough that they'd thrown their own neighbors into the sea, but they'd sacrificed out-of-towners who'd come for the festival, too. Murderers, one and all — and how could they be this shameless about it...
"Heh heh. Murderers? Who? Us? Mind your words. The sacrifices walked into the sea of their own accord, answering the Dragon King's call."
"Bullshit. Who was it that chose the sacrifices? By any criminal code, every last one of you is guilty of instigated murder."
"Hahaha! And how would you prove it?" The chief's lips curled into a thin, fish-belly smile. "Even if you could, the dead don't testify."
"Ah. Going the murder-and-bury route, I see."
Truly remarkable — with ordinary tourists staying at hotels and lodges all over the island, how did they declare something like that so brazenly? To be fair, in their half-fish forms it might have been a different story, but human villagers brandishing hoes and sickles wasn't the least bit threatening.
'...Should I just kill them?'
Frankly, these people could die — no, even if I killed them with my own two hands, I doubted I'd feel a shred of guilt. If anything, leaving these bastards alive would be the thing I'd feel guilty about later. But... as it happened, it looked like I wouldn't need to dirty my hands after all.
"U-uh? Ch-chief...?"
"M-my teeth...!"
"Eehehehehahaha!?"
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
Teeth came raining down from the mouths of every villager surrounding us.
"UWAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"My teeth! My teeth!"
Mouths stained scarlet with blood, the villagers scooped their fallen teeth off the ground, tears and snot streaming down their faces. But the abnormality didn't stop there.
"U-uwaaaaaaah!"
"Wh-what's happening!? What is this!?"
Their bodies began to shrivel, and before long their limbs rotted clean away and dropped off. In an instant, the villagers were legless, armless larvae, crawling across the dirt. And then...
Crack. Squelch. Creak.
Their necks melted away, the boundary between head and torso dissolving. The eyelids vanished, and in the seam of fused flesh where neck and body had been, a crescent-shaped slit opened — gills. Fins sprouted along their backs and bellies, and from the stumps where their legs had fallen away. All of these horrific changes took less than a single minute.
Flap. Flop.
Fish wearing human skin — no, human-faced fish — writhed on the ground. A fitting end for the filthy zealots who had borrowed prosperity at the price of human lives.
"A-aaah... aaah!"
"A-aaaaah! Aaah!"
Even reduced to that shape, their human vocal organs were still alive, and the human-faced fish shrieked screams that could not be called words.
After forty years of atonement and vengeance, Kang So-hwa had been forgiven by her daughter. But on this island, nowhere, no one remained who would ever forgive these people. And — to state the obvious — fish cannot live on land.
"A... ah."
"......Ah."
With short, rattling breaths, the human-faced fish expired one by one. I walked up to the one that had been the village chief — still flapping, stubbornly clinging to life — and spoke to it.
"You really did carry a mermaid's bloodline, it seems."
"......Ahh!"
With that final rattle, the last survivor's breath went out. And with the chief's death, the human-faced fish corpses began to rot in seconds. Less than ten seconds later they had decayed down to the bone and vanished entirely, leaving nothing behind but the peculiar fishy stench. The wretched end of humans who had styled themselves heirs of the mermaids.
No — come to think of it, had they ever truly been human at all? Heirs of mermaid blood, yet living their whole lives in service of an Outside monster that devoured mermaids. Perhaps the people of this island had long ago ceased to be either.
"Well. That was a clean aftertaste."
But even with the case closed, the aftermath remained. The ruined island needed dealing with, as did the ordinary tourists who had witnessed everything. It goes without saying, perhaps, but while I might personally handle a genius-tier monster, the cleanup after an incident of this scale was beyond any one person. And that kind of aftermath work was the Paranormal Administration Bureau's bread and butter. Even the Administration, oddly subdued in its activities lately, wouldn't dare sit this one out.
Just as I was reaching for my phone to call Yoon Soo-ah...
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.
Multiple helicopters were sweeping in from the far edge of the sky.
"What is that?"
One look at the emblems painted on their hulls told me exactly where they'd come from.
"Cosmos."
The world's dominant corporation, armed with spiritual science technology beyond anything modern civilization could explain — and shameless bastards who'd plaster their logo across a person without so much as asking.
The helicopters touched down on the island, and out came armed soldiers wielding guns of a most unusual design. Their movements were anything but ordinary — they'd have made US special forces look like amateurs.
"Alpha Team landing. Securing safe zone."
"Delta Team landing. Measuring the site's spiritual environment. Confirming the disappearance of code OV0012, which was approaching the Taean coast. Verification required on secondary anomalies arising from the high-grade anomaly."
As Cosmos's private forces seized control of the island with flawless precision, a man in a suit who appeared to be in charge approached me.
"A pleasure to finally meet you. Hwang Young-gyu, section chief of Cosmos's Anomaly Countermeasures Division. I enjoyed the broadcast. When this affair spiraled far beyond what we expected, I confess I wondered what on earth we'd do... but who could have imagined you'd subjugate a genius-tier anomaly single-handedly."
I hadn't expected Cosmos to barge in quite this abruptly. But since they'd been trying to use me all along, a meeting like this was bound to happen sooner or later. The real question was what kind of relationship I would build with Cosmos going forward.
Exploiting me the way they had was outrageous — but this was the world's top corporation. And not just any corporation: an endlessly suspicious one, armed with inexplicable spiritual technology and a private army to boot. It had numerous psychics on staff, with no fewer than two confirmed Special-Grades among them. Antagonizing them would be sheer lunacy.
Then, become their ally?
'They're far too slippery for that, frankly.'
Back when I knew nothing, the Paranormal Administration Bureau had been my first object of suspicion — a descendant of a colonial-era organ under the Japanese Governor-General, oppressing psychics on the back of state power. The impression of an evil organization ran deep. But the more I learned, the clearer it became that the Administration was a gang of bumbling amateurs, and the one worth truly watching was Cosmos. Without understanding their blatant aim of ripping the existence of anomalies and mystery into the open, getting too close to them was a losing move. In other words: neutrality, at a careful distance.
That was the best play.
"Hope you enjoyed the show. Subscribe to Kim Do-sa's channel, hit like, ring that notification bell — and while you're at it, rewatch the latest video twenty times, won't you?"
"Yes? AHAHAHAHAHA! Wonderful. If that's all it takes for cordial relations with you, then by all means."
Well, look at that. This Hwang Young-gyu fellow was, for some reason, buttering me up quite openly. Men in suits never offer kindness without a reason — which meant that Hwang Young-gyu, or Cosmos behind him, wanted something from me.
...In that case, there was no need to stand on ceremony.
"From the look of it, the cleanup is yours to handle. Shall we take our leave, then?"
"If that is your wish, I'll have a helicopter up immediately."
"Sounds good."
Soon we were boarding the helicopter Cosmos had prepared. It was no small medevac-style craft, either — a massive transport helicopter resembling a Chinook, roomy enough for my entire party and the film crew besides.
The helicopter lifted off, and the image of Yeoin Island began slowly to recede.
Then, as we cruised along at cruising altitude...
"Huh? What? What could you possibly want to say to me at this point?"
Lee Jin-seol had answered a call from someone, and an argument broke out. The war of words between Jin-seol and the caller dragged on for a long while, until finally—
"Fuck off! I don't consider a backstabber human! What? You regret it? Bullshit — you go do the regretting yourself!"
Beep.
"Who was that?"
"The client who stabbed me in the back. He insisted he'd never done any such thing, babbled excuses that didn't hold an ounce of water, and then at the end — get this — told me it was my last chance, and that if I didn't want to regret it I should return his fee. What a joke, right?"
Ah, right — that commission was still open, wasn't it? Hmm. I really should clear up the misunderstanding soon. But whatever the circumstances, in this matter I was an outsider. I'd leave the choice in her hands.
It was perhaps thirty minutes after Jin-seol's call ended that—
"Uuurgh!"
Lee Jin-seol suddenly began vomiting blood.
"Ugh!? Uuurgh! Don't tell me this is—!" She grimaced in pain. And I, realizing at the same moment what was happening to her, grimaced too.
Someone had laid a curse on Lee Jin-seol.
Swipe!
She yanked a handful of talismans from her coat and crammed them into her mouth. But her attacker's curse was far from weak, and she retched the talismans back up in a fresh spray of blood.
"Damn it all—! Who the hell—"
"Your client, I'd wager. So that's what he meant by 'last chance.'"
Truthfully, failing the commission was insult enough — and on top of it, he'd been slapped with the 'slander' that she'd tried to throw him under the bus, so of course he'd be boiling over. It's human nature: when someone hates you for no reason, you want to hand them a reason.
I swiftly assessed Jin-seol's condition. A second curse layered over the first — her already weakened body was screaming. The volume of vomited blood was alarming, too. She'd already bled heavily holding off the False Dragon King's attacks; add today's to that, and she had easily lost more than a liter. Even now, a steady stream of blood kept flowing from her eyes, nose, and ears.
Psychics are still human. Losing this much blood is dangerous. For Lee Jin-seol, doubly so.
"We'll transport her to the nearest hospital at once." Hwang Young-gyu issued the order to the pilot. Meanwhile, I spoke to Jin-seol.
"Give me your hand."
"What?"
"If you don't feel like dying, hurry up!"
"U-uh... right...!"
Through her hand, I poured a powerful surge of Do-ryeok into her body. Its dense yang energy scattered, if only temporarily, the curse her client had sent flying at her. It was no true purification, but it bought us time.
"Hngh!"
Jin-seol writhed in agony — but pain was better than dying. Yet the curse her enemy had unleashed was no ordinary one, and a faint trickle of bleeding still continued from her seven orifices. At this rate, she would bleed to death before I could finish dispelling it. Saving Lee Jin-seol meant one thing: a transfusion, immediately.
"What's Ms. Lee Jin-seol's blood type?" Hwang Young-gyu, evidently catching on, asked the question himself.
Pale-faced and gasping, Jin-seol answered.
"...O. I'm O type..."
"Understood. Then I'll contact the hospital ahead and have O-type blood standing by—"
"She's not O type."
"Huh?"
"I'm sorry?"
Jin-seol, Hwang Young-gyu, and the rest of the party all stared at me in astonishment. After a beat, Jin-seol demanded, utterly dumbfounded:
"Are you kidding me? I'm O type — why are you going around telling people I'm not?"
"Jin-seol. Have you ever received a transfusion in your life? No — don't bother answering, you haven't. If you had, you'd have known long ago that you're not O type."
"Wh-what is that supposed to mean...?"
Leaving the flustered Jin-seol behind, I took out my phone. Right now, there was exactly one person in all of Korea who could save Lee Jin-seol's life.
I called Choi Sun-woo.