The Tiger's Song [3]
Kim Exorcist. His real name was Kim Gap-su.
He had started out as a perfectly ordinary small-time streamer.
"Goddammit, why do my views keep dropping?"
His subscribers and view counts weren't just stagnant — they were actively shrinking, while newcomers who'd started streaming long after him were rocketing up the charts. Kim Gap-su spent day after day stewing in that anxiety, until one day he stumbled across Kim Do-sa appearing in one of Tsukumo Momo's collab streams.
A loose, half-improvised roleplay — but a character with a strange, magnetic charm all the same.
Kim Gap-su felt it in his gut.
This bastard is going to blow up.
And in the same instant, he realized something else.
Wait. He's kind of... like me?
So Kim Gap-su made a decision.
I'm stealing that RP.
From that day forward, the channel Kim Gap-su TV was reborn as Kim Exorcist.
After that, everything fell into place with almost insulting ease. Just as Kim Gap-su had predicted, Kim Do-sa rode an unbroken wave of success — no, "as predicted" was underselling it. At some point, the name Kim Do-sa had stopped being a streamer's handle and become a genuine social phenomenon.
The Baekmul-eo Incident at the Paranormal Society. The fake Dragon King of the Woman-Island case. And then the Suicide Train on the Han River, on top of it all.
At first, the public dismissed it all as nothing more than a streamer's "concept." But with the fake Dragon King case, the people quietly thinking no way, right? began to multiply — and by the time the Han River Suicide Train rolled around, a great many of them had settled into conviction.
This man is real.
Amid a rising tide of bizarre incidents and a government that refused to respond — in fairness, the Supernatural Management Agency was responding, it was simply drowning — Kim Do-sa's stature climbed higher by the day. And naturally, the channel of Kim Exorcist, Kim Do-sa's copycat, grew right along with it.
Which, ironically, was exactly what planted the seeds of his ruin.
As Kim Do-sa's fanbase swelled, suspicion about his copycat Kim Exorcist swelled with it. Kim Exorcist, after all, had built "exorcism" into his channel's whole concept — being a Kim Do-sa knockoff.
Except...
Like I know the first thing about exorcism.
Kim Exorcist's "exorcisms" consisted entirely of touring famous haunted houses, buying a few talismans for a couple thousand won apiece, and waving them around in a convincing impression of a professional. To begin with, Kim Exorcist didn't believe in exorcism — he didn't believe in ghosts at all. He'd written off every last one of the strange incidents circulating through the public as mere superstition, the kind of rumor that thrives whenever the mood of society turns uneasy.
But with his viewers' doubts mounting, Kim Exorcist finally steeled himself.
If I want to keep milking this concept, I have to settle it once and for all.
That was when he happened to see the announcement for Kim Do-sa's live broadcast. Kim Exorcist did not let the opportunity slip by.
"Aaah, my bros! It's me, Kim Exorcist! Today I'm going to prove I'm no knockoff of Kim Do-sa! How am I gonna prove it, you ask? BOOM — a real man charges straight ahead! I'm going to meet Kim Do-sa face-to-face and come back with him saying, out loud, that I'm no fake!"
Of course, that was all a pretext. His real objective was...
Meet the guy, put on a little staged WWE-style drama, and quietly become friends with him.
The other man was a streamer too, after all — no way he'd torch the atmosphere of his own live broadcast with an actual fight. So Kim Exorcist, scheming away with that devious little plan, headed for Oido Station — and by sheer luck, found Kim Do-sa almost immediately.
This is it! My chance to burn myself into the viewers' memories! And hold on — is that Momo-chan over there!?
Standing beside Kim Do-sa was Tsukumo Momo herself, his long-time unrequited love. And next to her was yet another girl — a fellow YouTuber or maybe an employee, tiny and chick-like in her cuteness, radiating pure girl-next-door charm.
Any red-blooded man would have felt his shoulders square up on reflex.
But seriously, what is with Kim Do-sa? How does a guy like that keep surrounded by women? He's a do-sa, isn't he?
Sure, Kim Do-sa was taller than him, in better shape, and — marginally, very marginally — a bit better looking. But Kim Exorcist was hardly about to kneel for it.
And so, armed with that boundless confidence (source: none), Kim Exorcist marched straight up to Kim Do-sa.
But before he could get a single word out, Tsukumo Momo and Yu Min-seo stepped into his path.
"Is there something you need from our Kim Do-sa?"
Tsukumo Momo asked it with a smile. A smile that was, quite clearly, a smile — and somehow sent an icy shiver crawling up his spine. Kim Exorcist stammered before he could stop himself.
"Ah, that's, um..."
"If you have business with the master, please tell me instead."
Yu Min-seo followed, looking up at Kim Exorcist with eyes as flat and cold as a January wind, utterly devoid of feeling.
"Uh, um—!"
From a distance, the two of them had looked like a pair of flowers. Up close, they looked less like flowers and more like the guardian kings Vaishravana and Virupaksha planted at a temple gate, staring him down.
Wh-why are they looking at me like they're about to kill me!?
A prickle of dread crawled up the back of Kim Exorcist's neck, and he swallowed hard. But he couldn't back down now. Not with the 1,425 viewers watching him this very second!
"I-it's just that I run a c-channel called Kim Exorcist, I'm the Kim Exorcist of it, you see—! And p-people keep saying my concept is too similar to Kim Do-sa's, and that I started my channel around the same time, so there's this whole plagiarism controversy going! S-so I thought, this was the m-moment to sit down face-to-face and talk it out properly, and that's why I came!"
At that, Tsukumo Momo's eyes narrowed to slits.
He knows perfectly well he copied the concept, and he still has the gall to say it out loud.
"I'm very sorry, but Kim Do-sa is in the middle of filming at the moment. He's quite busy. If you have business with him, he'd like you to schedule a separate appointment."
"That's right. The master is busy."
"W-well—!"
Caught off guard by a reaction he hadn't anticipated, Kim Exorcist floundered — but he was desperate, too.
"K-Kim Do-sa, you coward, hiding behind a bunch of girls! If you've got any spine, you'll face me fair and square and we'll settle this with skill—!"
The moment those words left his mouth, both women's expressions went arctic. Tsukumo Momo's hand darted into her coat for a talisman, and Yu Min-seo began calling the fairy she was contracted to.
S-something's wrong with the air here—!
Kim Exorcist had not a scrap of spiritual sensitivity, yet even he felt it — something deeply, terribly off. And in that instant, Kim Do-sa was simply there, standing in front of the two women, as if he'd always been.
"Wha—!? When did he even get—!?"
"Cool it a little, would you."
I caught the talisman Momo was drawing out and burned it in my fingers, and forcibly sent Zephyrus, the fairy Minseo had summoned, straight back where he came from.
"That's mean, Master. I worked hard on that talisman~."
"You really didn't need to step in, Master..."
Watching the two of them stand there so utterly unbothered, I broke into a cold sweat of my own.
Minseo was a summoning-magic prodigy — the kind who drew genuine interest from the Great Demon and Solomon himself — and she'd been receiving hands-on private instruction from me this whole time. Momo, beyond my own teaching, had been squeezing in personal tutoring sessions with Sugawara Ryuko, a relative of hers and, by all appearances, a Special Grade in her own right.
The two of them were already at Eul-rank. In other words, on par with Giselle Breed or Shin Han-hee.
Their growth rate is insane. Honestly.
Not that I'm one to talk. Fast growth was all well and good, but the trouble with power acquired that easily is how casually people reach for it. If those two ever got serious, Kim Exorcist would be a corpse inside a minute. A light slap on the wrist I could let slide — but as their teacher, stepping in here was the right call.
Which left the question of what to actually do with this mess...
"You're Kim Exorcist, right? I'm Kim Do-sa."
"Ah — y-yes... yes, I'm Kim Exorcist."
All his earlier swagger had evaporated; his voice was trembling now.
"So what you're saying is, you want to hash out whose version is the original, once and for all?"
"Ah, yes? Ah... y-yes, exactly, that's what I meant!"
I'd gotten that far when something finally registered with me.
Huh. A crowd's gathered.
"That's Kim Do-sa, right?"
"And next to him — Kim Exorcist? The knockoff?"
"Chat, is that the Kim Do-sa? The one that's been everywhere lately?"
"YESSS, Kim Exorcist and Kim Do-sa in one shot, views incoming~"
A camera-toting streamer and two pretty girls mid-confrontation — of course people stopped to stare. And threading through the crowd were shameless streamers, lenses already out, hoping to leech views off my name.
Ugh. Not exactly thrilled about this.
Watching them film away with giddy enthusiasm put me in a strangely foul mood. Sure, I'd deliberately leaked the time and place to pad my viewer count — but this was pushing it. And more to the point...
I'm over here holding back the end of the world, working toward humanity's bright future, and you're going to parasitize me for sub count?
That was simply not acceptable. Deeply, profoundly not acceptable. And right then, a brilliant idea for correcting this unacceptable state of affairs bloomed in my head.
"You there. The streamers filming me."
I made a point of meeting each camera operator's eyes, one by one, as I spoke.
"U-us?"
"W-wait, us?"
Nod.
"Yes. All of you."
I beckoned the filming streamers over. Caught out, they glanced around sheepishly and drifted into the center of the crowd.
"Is everyone here to film me, then?"
"Ah... well, you see..."
"Eheheheh..."
Apparently even they were a little embarrassed about the view-farming, because they all suddenly developed an interest in their shoes. Such easy prey. They swallowed the bait whole.
"You've all come this far just to film me, so I'd wager you have at least a passing interest in the occult. In that case, you'll know of the Maneating Tiger of Bukhansan — one of Seoul's Four Great Urban Legends."
"Well, obviously..."
"Everyone knows that one."
Watching them nod along, I pressed on.
"As I announced in advance, I'm here to exorcise the Maneating Tiger of Bukhansan. But starting from absolute zero is... less than easy. So I'd like to enlist your help."
"Help?"
"But... we're not exorcists, though?"
"Nothing dramatic, I assure you. All I need is for you to dig up any information or leads connected to the Maneating Tiger of Bukhansan. And the person whose lead helps me the most gets to do a collab stream with me afterward."
"A COLLAB!?"
"A collab with KIM DO-SA!?"
The streamers' eyes flew wide open, and they scrambled to check my live viewer count. Thirty million— no, thirty thousand concurrent viewers and climbing. A monster of a channel! What kind of waterfall effect would a collab with this monster produce? Siphon it through a hot-chocolate-donation straw and you'd still gain thousands of subs, minimum.
"I'll do it!"
"Count me in!"
"I'll find you a lead, just wait!"
Right, right — they'd feasted sweetly on my face for views, so a little payment was only fair.
"Then it starts now! Send any leads you find to my business email!"
"On it!"
"Move move move!"
At the starting gun, the streamers scattered in every direction. I clapped a hand on the shoulder of the one man left standing there, dazed and motionless in their wake.
"Good luck to you too, Kim Exorcist."
"Huh? Oh... uh..."
"If you bring me the strongest lead, I'll personally explain to all my viewers that you're no copycat of mine."
"Ah — th-that's, um!"
"Hmm?"
"C-could we maybe skip all that and just do the collab...?"
"......"
"......"
"Sure. Fine. Why not."
"YAHHOOO!"
Kim Exorcist bolted off after the scattering streamers, faster than any of them.
"Haram, keep an eye on the inbox, and flag anything that looks like a decent lead."
—On it!
"Well, that just made the lead-gathering stage considerably easier."
"Wow... I can't believe you'd exploit it like that, Master. You're honestly brilliant..."
"Kim Do-sa does have a sneakily scheming side to him when you really look, doesn't he."
"They milked plenty of views off my face, so the least they can do is buy me dinner."
"But... is it really safe? They're ordinary people. What if the Maneating Tiger of Bukhansan marks one of them...?"
"View counts have always been earned with your life on the line."
"...That's fair."
And besides — I had my own reasons for trusting they'd come through it unharmed.
"Now then. Time to pay a visit to the little shrine where they've been keeping the tiger's spirit locked up."
Even if you ran a multi-account macro, at the end of the day the main account's income mattered more than the alts. We couldn't afford to sit around idle either.
So we made our way to the address a local had given us — and there it was, a real shrine hall, just as promised.
Tiger Wind Shrine
And from inside that shrine hall, the clatter of bells and the crash of instruments were ringing out loud enough to rattle the street.
Dum-chik-dum, dum-chik-dum.
Swish, swish, swish.
"Is that a gut ritual?"
"Looks like it."
Momo and Minseo peered curiously at the shrine hall mid-ceremony. Two months had passed since I'd entered this world myself, and even I had never once watched a shaman perform a proper gut. Curiosity got the better of me, and I leaned in to look as well — inside was the picture-perfect image that sprang to mind at the words "shamanic ritual."
A sacrificial table so laden it threatened to snap its legs, musicians hammering away at drums and gongs. And at the very center of it all, a mudang, dancing.
So textbook it was almost refreshing to see. There was just one problem.
I can't sense a single shred of spiritual energy.
The middle-aged woman dancing at the heart of the ritual carried no spiritual power whatsoever. Naturally, where there's no spiritual power, no god can descend. The entire ritual unfolding before us was a fake — a convincing exterior wrapped around nothing.
Kind of a letdown, honestly... hm?
Except there was one genuinely real thing inside that hall of lies. A man, standing before the dancing woman who was calling down a god that would never come, hands pressed together in desperate prayer.
A real ghost was riding that man.
The very ghost from the report — one dressed in Joseon-era hanbok. Only, its condition was stranger than anything I'd encountered yet: the evil spirit, shaped like a grown man, was speaking in a woman's voice through its mouth.
"Please, honey, please, honey — stop it, please stop! How could I leave Dasom behind and come—!"
The man saying it was ghost-pale, his whole body shaking like a leaf. Of everyone I'd ever seen possessed, he was in the worst state I'd witnessed since Choi Eun-ha.
Whether the fraud shaman knew or not, she kept dancing on, chasing a possession that would never arrive. That said, her complete lack of spiritual power aside, the form of the ritual itself was at least correct — so it was having some spiritual effect on the man after all. Music and dance, even stripped of power, carry an intrinsic occult weight; that much is inevitable.
The problem was...
The effect isn't good. It's bad.
The longer the shaman danced and the wilder the music grew, the worse the man's condition became — and the stronger the evil spirit feeding on him grew with it.
Leave him like this, and that man dies soon.
I weighed it for a moment, then stepped through the doors and into the shrine hall mid-ritual.
"Who the hell are you!?"
"Just a do-sa passing through."
"A do-sa?"
"It looked like someone was about to die if this went on, so I thought I'd butt in."
"GRAAAARGH! SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!"
At that moment, the trembling man's eyes snapped sideways in their sockets — and he hurled himself at the shaman.