Jesus Heaven, Nonbelievers Hell
"P-Please... spare me......"
"Believe in Jesus and you'll live. From what I've heard, everyone with some incurable disease or terminal illness believes in Jesus. If they pull through, it's a miracle. If they croak anyway, they go straight to heaven."
"I-I'm sorry, please forgive me just this once... guk!"
"Hey. Is Jesus your buddy or something? You gonna keep him waiting like this? They say just believing guarantees your whole fucking life. All your worries vanish, and you get a free ticket to heaven after you die."
"I'll believe! I'll believe!"
"Then sit your ass down there."
I sat one of the punks down in front of me and flipped open the Bible I'd swiped from Father Seong. I didn't know jack shit about their goddamn exorcism rituals, baptism ceremonies, or confession sacraments, but didn't every Jesus freak start by cracking open a Bible like this?
Or waving a cross around.
Figured either way, as long as it looked the part. I squatted down, placed my hand on the sniveling fucker's head—snot dripping from his nose—and got to it.
"Before you believe in Jesus, confess your sins first."
"...Huh?"
"Spit out every sin you've committed, you dumbass."
"Well... uh... I stole money from my parents' wallet!"
I could still see that black aura rippling off him. Anyone who doesn't truly confess their sins before Jesus deserves punishment.
"And furthermore... aaahhhhh!"
"Jesus doesn't even count stealing candy as a sin. Taking cash from your parents' wallet is about that level. I'm telling you again: confess your sins."
"Got it! Got it, so please stop with the head...!"
"You think this is the worst pain you'll ever feel? Fuck, if you don't believe in Jesus, you could suffer way worse. Your whole life goes straight to shit. Nothing works out, you waste away from petty illnesses, drop dead, and then at the gates of hell, horned demon bros politely escort you in for a full-course spin in the flames."
"I... bullied my friend!"
Whack! I backhanded the fool who still hadn't gotten his shit together, only confessing a fraction of his sins before Jesus.
"How'd you bully him?"
"Ugh... kgh! Beat him up, took his money, burned him with cigarette butts, stripped his pants in front of girls!"
"You're missing the big one."
That black aura oozing from you couldn't pile up from just that. I could see it. I'd been the bullied kid since childhood, so I knew better than anyone the weight of sins.
"I filmed him naked on video and spread it online... aaahhh!"
"Still missing the big one."
My fist slammed into the punk's face again, his nose bone twisting with a crunch, blood spraying like a fountain.
"We didn't really mean to do that either... ugh!"
"Confessing sins before Jesus means no holding back. Otherwise, he won't forgive you. No forgiveness means hell, no matter how good you live after."
Confess every last sin. Repent. And at the end, receive forgiveness. Then no matter if you're a motherfucking bastard or an orphan piece of shit, Jesus will embrace you with mercy and love, they say.
Without giving a single fuck about the victims' feelings, of course.
"I... drove him to suicide! Uhuhuhu...!"
"There, there, good job. Killing one person and still not learning your lesson, wandering night streets with these shitheads, causing trouble for others—sure, you could. Anyway, if you truly repent and beg forgiveness, Jesus won't send you to hell."
I gently stroked the sobbing punk's head like nothing happened and snapped the Bible shut.
"I'm no priest claiming to be Jesus's agent or servant, but as a sort of subcontractor, I accept your confession here and now, and I swear to be your witness for heaven's gates. You've fucked up your life royally, but as long as you believe and follow Jesus, you can kick those pearly gates open. You can strut right up to him and say you wrecked a friend and his family's lives, but you came back to his arms in the end. Amen."
"A-Amen......"
"Now you're a living son of Jesus. Pray only to him your whole life and live faithfully. I've sworn as your witness, so do you swear to live that way too?"
"I... swear."
"Good. Now I'll plant unbreakable faith in you."
I stripped the punk's wallet and smartphone of every personal detail.
"The day you break the oath you made before Jesus here, I'll come find you."
When I handed back the wallet and phone, he gasped, body trembling.
"My oath, your oath, the faithful devotion Jesus desires. You must never betray any of it, right?"
"R-Right!"
"Good. To remember this moment forever, let's chant a magic spell. Follow after me."
Ahem! Clearing my throat, I rasped in a gravelly voice.
"Su-ri su-ri neu-geum ma-su-ri."
"...Su-ri su-ri neu-geum ma-su-ri."
"Never let that spell break. Ever. And every meal, pray to Jesus properly. Even if you skip church weekends, send tithes and offerings to the pastor's account."
"......"
I stepped over the sprawled punks and slipped out into the dim alley.
It felt fresh, like I'd just express-shipped a lost lamb, confused in life's chaos, straight to Jesus COD. A sense of accomplishment, maybe—like my hands and feet were made for this shit.
Most subcontractor grunts see themselves as appendages to big corps and mid-tiers, viewing life bleakly. But I felt it: subcontractors had their own path.
But I'm still woefully short.
Recalling the exorcism Father Seong and Deacon Yohan performed on me, I knew the road ahead was long. They were true believers who'd devoted their lives to smiting evil for the great Lord Jesus in heaven. Even if their "choices" were basically ultimatums, they were faithful servants convinced salvation lay at the end.
I'd never understand their kind, even in death. But I had to respect their skill and faith.
What I needed was specialized knowledge, skills, and experience. No exorcist starts as one, and I wasn't an orphan from birth at eight.
I picked up basics on religion and history at the library, but to dive deep into this biz, I need advanced training.
And that advanced course? Trial by fire.
I hit the nearby PC bang, grabbed an all-you-can-surf plan, and parked in a dark corner, diving into humanity's vast info ocean.
Ghost hotspots, wild possession tales, mysteries pinned on demons. Exorcisms, wards, spirit tools, talismans, spells, curses (sunrise rice bullshit), necromancy, spirit channeling, ghost/demon languages, tuning spiritual frequencies, possession vs. mental illness, hypnosis therapy, energy healing, self-suggestion, dream interpretation, precog, astral projection.
Even sites blocked by Korean censors—I proxied through servers to scrape every scrap.
Sitting at a desk pounding a PC was second nature from office drone days, so the data haul never stopped.
Night shift clerk swapped to day, back to night, before the skipped-night cleaner reached my spot and straight-up asked if I was okay.
See the same guy two days straight, same seat, same pose, no games—just staring at browser tabs? Yeah, worry-worthy.
Then it hit me: over two days, no food, no water. Fresh off beating those punks to rags, looking half-dead, hunkered in the corner. Clerk was probably more alarmed than concerned.
Stinking, death-warmed-over weirdo glued to the PC all day. I'd wanna boot him too.
Good folks fulfilling their duties deserve heaven too, so I settled my overdue fees and bid the clerk farewell.
"Jesus heaven, nonbelievers hell. Believe in Jesus and make it to heaven, yeah?"
"...Uh, sure."
After swimming info seas for dozens of hours, gorging on rumors, toxic data, and maybe-true slop, I finally charted my course.
Hospital convenience store for incense sets. Daiso for a beatable pot and ladle. Night market for red beans and coarse salt.
Stuffed it all in a sack, cabbed to the redevelopment ruin.
Project greenlit but stalled by epic clusterfuck of corps, pols, and activist groups. Cabby kept asking if I was really getting out here. I paid silent and stepped off.
Chilly autumn night breeze whispered over me like 9:09 PM on September 9th.
Theory-armed or not, no practice means empty rattling cart. I strode into the eerie ruins, planting myself before a building once ground zero for construction vs. activist clashes.
Builders had gov permits to demo it; fake-green "citizen" grifters insisted no.
Digging deep into online rumor hell revealed the truth: this spot's purpose.
"Using some remote outskirts, far from the city's ten million souls, as a Spirit Burial Ground."
Like graves for human dead, places exist to landfill useless or harmful spiritual trash. Shamans, monks, sorcerers haul what they can't handle and dump it here—that's a Spirit Burial Ground. Korea's top ones: Jirisan or isolated isles.
I couldn't do lifelong ascetic grind like those Jesus drones denying human urges for the Lord. So to start even, short-term hell to match.
Jesus heaven, nonbelievers hell.
From the building front, I scattered beans and salt like crazy, clanging the ladle on the pot like a gong as I advanced. Lit every incense stick till the place reeked, tossing them everywhere.
Doing the absolute no-no here—bites incoming soon.
Wooddrack.
After chucking the last incense, my arm wrenched in mid-air, twisted at a grotesque angle like gripped by something unseen.