The First Revenge Mission

First revenge mission? Out of nowhere?

I sat blankly on the stairs, staring at the newly appeared mission.

Revenge.

There was something sweet about the word.

But no matter how I turned it over — revenge?

Was I supposed to get back at my uncle's family for everything they'd put me through?

If I hit the lottery, wouldn't the real revenge be never seeing them again?

For people who love money that much, the ultimate revenge is watching me live well once the lottery comes through and my life stabilizes.

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Even if my maternal grandfather had told me in a dream to help them, I wouldn't have. I'd have to be insane.

I'd already decided the timing of my revenge on the subway ride home.

After taxes, the amount I'd just seen would clear five hundred billion won at minimum.

Of course I'd keep every last won for myself.

Even if the stocks he'd marked only doubled, I'd be a hundred-billion-won rich man. What would those three uncles do if they found out I had a hundred billion?

They'd probably get so sick with envy they'd take to their beds.

Especially the youngest uncle — on a single income, with the child support both my parents had been sending now cut off, he couldn't maintain his current lifestyle.

My uncle and aunt clearly never expected Mom and Dad to cut the support so cleanly.

When the money that had arrived every three days stopped coming in December, the couple started fighting again, and my uncle took out his feelings on me.

How utterly clueless could people be?

They'd poured the four million won that arrived every month — two million each from my mother and father — into their own kids, funding a fancy kindergarten and a private elementary school they couldn't afford.

My uncle was an ordinary company employee, yet he drove a foreign car and played golf as a hobby. My aunt? She spent every day bouncing between the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sports centers and cafés in the nearby complexes, and she had a domestic mid-size sedan of her own.

Pathetic. As if Mom and Dad were going to keep sending that money forever.

That was why the way my uncle looked at me got even worse right around my eighteenth birthday. The child support cut off, his affair got exposed, and the whole household started coming apart at the seams.

Just a few days ago — right after the tuition money from Mom and Dad first arrived — he'd asked me for the first time:

Did the tuition come in from your mom and dad? How much have you saved up?

Why would my uncle ask how much I'd put away?

Of course I lost it. It was the first time I'd ever talked back.

And that night I got lectured until three in the morning — about how I didn't appreciate the grace of being raised, about how I was putting on airs over a few hundred thousand won.

And after all that, they still refused to give me my parents' contact information.

Afraid I'd call them myself.

I didn't even know what my own parents looked like. Forget phone numbers — the entire maternal side of the family had closed ranks and hidden every last photograph of my mother.

Once I was strong enough to go public about hitting the lottery, the first people I planned to tell were them.

And then I wouldn't help them at all.

Not helping relatives?

I'd carefully saved every scrap of evidence of the abuse, just in case that kind of criticism came pouring down. Once I made it, I was going to dump it all out in the open.

My little cousins? Affection for those spoiled brats? Not a chance.

Whoever said all kids are cute needed a few good punches. These ones just copied whatever their parents did — there wasn't a shred of warmth in them.

And it wasn't just the youngest uncle's family.

All three brothers were the same, and even my aunt had turned into a similar kind of person after she got married.

The cousins strutted around like they were the masters of the house just because they still had parents.

The only consolation was my aunt's twins. Those little ones still called me Oppa and actually stuck close.

People who never thought anything through.

If both of my parents had been sending money every single month without fail, didn't that mean they'd established themselves in America?

What were these people going to do when I went over there someday and told them every last detail?

If it looks bad after I check it out, I'll just pass. No penalty, after all.

Remembering that even my old laptop still had a USB port, I headed back down the stairs.

I opened the door and checked the shoes in the entryway first.

It was nearly nine, but the kids' shoes were gone. My uncle's shoes were missing too.

Just my aunt, then?

"I'm home."

I called a quick greeting toward the living room, then hurried into my room and locked the door. If I checked the USB right away she'd definitely barge in with a lecture, so I carefully hid the jumper in the wardrobe and booted up the computer.

Sure enough, the moment the boot finished and I connected to the browser, the door slammed open.

"Hey. Where the hell have you been?"

Her sharp eyes looked ready to cut me open. She hadn't even had time to dry her hair — wet hair, a white T-shirt, and shorts, thrown on in a hurry as she stormed into my room.

"Huh? There was a gathering for early-admission students, so I went to Sinchon."

"If you're going, you say you're going. If you're coming back, you say you're coming back. You tell people. Right?"

"I'm sorry."

She'd told me to let her know where I was going, then scolded me for telling her — for the past few months she'd been doing whatever she felt like.

I bowed my head once, then picked up the lease contract from the desk and held it out to her. If I wanted to shut down the lecture, I figured I should feed her some news she'd be happy about.

"What's this?"

"I signed a lease. A hundred thousand deposit, two hundred thirty thousand a month."

"What?!"

My aunt flinched.

She took the contract and looked it over, her eyes trembling.

Unexpected.

I'd thought she'd be overjoyed, but she looked almost panicked.

What is this? Did she contact Mom and Dad and tell them she'd keep me here if they sent money?

"A few days ago Uncle told me to find a place to move out to. I met up with some classmates and spent the whole afternoon looking around until I found a cheap one."

"You… haah. Fine. When are you planning to leave?"

"Around next week."

I could see her pupils shaking hard. She studied the contract a moment longer, then handed it back.

"No. Your uncle's on a two-week business trip, and the kids are at your grandfather's for the whole break. You have to at least say goodbye!"

Her voice spiked high.

The sound stabbed at my eardrums. I didn't want to hear it.

What fortune was I supposed to find by staying in this house any longer? I was done.

"I already paid the deposit and the first month's rent. I'll come by the day Uncle gets back."

I explained calmly, clearly, that there was no taking it back — and I watched the flush of excitement drain from her face as it returned to its normal color.

"…Fine. Whatever. Have you eaten?"

"I already ate."

Bang.

She turned and left the room.

Is she upset because she just lost someone to torment?

Click.

I carefully pressed the lock into place. Then I pulled the USB from the drawer and plugged it into the laptop.

Drive E appeared. I clicked it open — only two folders.

Death curse? Life insurance?

An ominous feeling.

Just from the folder names, my hands were already shaking.

Rage surged up my throat.

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The back of my head went dizzy, as if someone had just cracked me across the skull — everything went blank — and then a cool sensation washed through, and my mind settled into clarity.

I set aside the abstract, superstitious death-curse folder for now and opened the life insurance one.

Starting with Ohseong Life, there were four insurance contracts.

The policyholders were my three uncles and my aunt's husband.

The insured party was me. The beneficiaries were the eldest children of each household.

All of them had been taken out within the last month. A chill ran down my spine.

Those fucking bastards were actually going to kill me?

Hoo. Hoo.

I took deep breaths, forcing myself calm.

I dragged the folder into a compressed archive, saved it to email, and deleted it.

My heart was hammering.

My eyes burned as if the blood vessels were standing out.

And my hands wouldn't stop shaking.

A mere thirty thousand won a month?

Even if they didn't kill me themselves — if I died in an accident, that money went to the cousins?

I needed to get out of this house and cut all contact as fast as possible.

I'd call Ohseong Life first thing Monday and cancel every policy. I opened my phone, wrote "cancel insurance" in the schedule, and closed it.

Death Curse Ritual… after seeing the insurance, I really don't want to open this.

Once again that cool sensation cleared my head, and my heart settled. Only fragments of rage remained, making my mind even colder.

Click.

I opened the Death Curse Ritual folder after all.

Two subfolders appeared on the screen.

1994 and 2003.

I started with the more recent one.

A contract exchanged with a shaman appeared — and the target of the death curse was me. A ritual to have me killed.

Some kind of hex method, the shaman's handwritten contract guaranteeing I'd waste away and die within ten years at the longest.

Crazy bastards. Like that actually kills people.

I clicked through the photos one by one. All three uncles and my aunt's husband were there.

The aunts and my maternal aunt weren't in any of them. I was relieved, at least, that my maternal aunt was absent. Growing up at my grandmother's house, she'd been like an older sister to me. And Park Hyeon-ju, the woman who'd lived next door back then — my current aunt by marriage — wasn't there either.

She treated me like a stranger after she got married, but I was still glad she wasn't in the photos.

I snorted.

I still had a long way to go. Still craving a mother's love, still craving family affection.

The men in this family are greedy. Pretty much all of them. Even my aunt's husband turned out to be the same kind of person as the uncles.

I was less angry than when I'd seen the life insurance contracts. It was superstition, after all, and I'd already taken a massive shock earlier.

That blade of theirs probably isn't even fully sharpened yet.

A middle-aged man in multicolored ritual robes had his eyes rolled back, leaping barefoot across a row of blades. I flipped through photo after photo until I reached the last one — and a full-body chill swept over me.

That pure white Spirit Pill.

And the ecstasy of a soul expanding came flooding back.

Those fucking bastards. For real.

I felt no revulsion at having swallowed a Spirit Pill made from someone else's soul.

Of course not.

I wasn't the only victim.

People like that deserved to disappear — and even if I'd been chewing on their raw flesh, I would have done it with joy.

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A moment later the file vanished. I closed the image viewer and searched, but the file that had held the text was gone without a trace.

A different kind of chill ran through me, and then I felt gratitude toward the Constellation and Jini.

Ten years…

My head was a tangle of how to take revenge on these people. For now, I opened the remaining 1994 file.

Another contract with Gwanak Bosal — but this one was different.

What? You can steal someone's talent with a shaman ritual?

— Target: Kim Ian's fortune and talent shall be diverted to Jo Seong-cheol, Jo Na-jung, Jo Min-cheol, Jo Na-young, Lee A-reum, Lee A-hui, Jo Jeong-cheol, and Jo Na-hui.

Even the names of Na-hui, A-reum, and A-hui — who'd barely been born at the time — were on it. Every single maternal cousin, without exception.

If eight people were splitting it, what was even the point of the ritual?

Idiots.

Then Jini's earlier message — that the shaman could actually cast a real death curse — came back to me, and the rage surged up again.

I emailed the contract as well, then opened the image files. Flipping through them one by one no longer felt shocking.

Grandmother… damn.

I was asleep on the wooden platform in the yard of the family house in Goesan, and the shaman was circling around me, scattering something. The kids stood in a ring around us — my cousins. This time all three aunts and my aunt's husband were there too.

Even my grandmother was wringing her hands and begging. What a spectacle.

There are neighbors in the photos too. What did they tell them?

Come to think of it, I remembered them saying I looked sick and that we should hold a ritual.

A memory that had been sealed away — something I'd completely forgotten until now — came flooding back, and even the foggy, blank feeling in my head after the ritual was vivid again.

Holy shit. The shaman could seal memories too?

And sure enough, text appeared at the end.

A moment later, just like before, the image file vanished. And the instant I finished transferring every necessary file to email, the USB itself disappeared — and three objects materialized on the desk.

Huh. Impressive.

I glanced around. No one was there. I plugged in the new USB — one TXT file and one EXE executable appeared.

I clicked the TXT.

I didn't hesitate. The moment I ran the EXE, a black screen appeared and text scrolled upward in a frenzy for thirty seconds.

Then the USB vanished, and the normal desktop returned.

Is this supposed to be revenge?

Words like National Tax Service and tax evasion weren't enough to settle the rage boiling in my chest.

Fuck. Once I get the money, maybe a Joseonjok hitman…

I was so furious I was seriously considering a contract killing when the notification chime rang out again.