Back When I Briefly Served as a Heretic Inquisitor
"Wow, celebrities really are something up close. You're handsome."
The young man wasn't just easy on the eyes — he spoke pleasantly and smiled often, too.
Looking at him on the surface, it was impossible to believe that this was the same person who had twisted his school days into a web of lies and steered public opinion with them.
But you couldn't judge a person by their looks alone.
That had been just as true in his original world. There were men who looked like the fierce leader of a bandit gang but were angels once you got to know them, and there were tyrants with the faces of angels who had slaughtered tens of thousands.
Priests were no exception — the priest of the most impeccable conduct and burning sense of justice had once been badly misunderstood by believers because of his intimidating appearance.
Even so, Rembrary was confident that no matter how kind and gentle a face someone wore, he would never be taken in.
So long as he kept his guard up.
A faint smile touched Rembrary's lips.
"My thanks."
At Rembrary's casual speech, the smile drained from the young man's face just as quickly.
Hye-gyeol was the maknae of Wild Animal, and this young man had been his middle school classmate. Whether the two of them had ever earned the right to speak so informally to each other was another question entirely.
Still, he had done his homework on Hye-gyeol well enough to know that the two men in front of him were both older than he was. He also knew the age gap wasn't a large one.
And yet, out of nowhere, the man starts talking down to him? When he'd come all this way ready to play nice? The young man snickered inwardly.
He'd brought a voice recorder along on purpose, just for today.
He had no intention of picking a fight with the other members of Wild Animal — but if this was how they wanted to come at him, then he had no intention of not picking a fight either.
The young man deliberately kept his tone polite, ever mindful of the recorder.
"So, what exactly did you ask me here to discuss? I said it over and over on the phone, but all I want is an apology. Money, whatever else — I don't need any of it. Honestly, I think Hye-gyeol should have come to this meeting instead of Mr. Woo Yeon-woo and Mr. Han Jung-seo."
The young man wasn't the only one who knew how to work an angle.
The moment Jung-seo heard the young man's rambling preamble, he realized the man had a recorder on him too. There was no other reason to say things like "I said it over and over" or "I only want an apology, I don't need money."
"The company has never once brought up money."
Because it was true.
The young man flinched at Jung-seo's firm words, but didn't answer, just kept smiling. He seemed to be trying to paint a picture in which LLL Entertainment had demanded money and he was the one who'd refused.
Jung-seo furrowed his brow and was about to say something when Rembrary spoke first.
"Did Hye-gyeol truly break your leg?"
The young man answered instantly.
"Yes."
"Is that the truth?"
"It is. Haven't you seen the post I wrote?"
"Is it true?"
"I told you it is."
"Do you swear it before God? Is it true?"
"That's what I keep saying?"
"Then it is true."
As Rembrary fired off the same question over and over, then muttered this last part with a raised eyebrow, Jung-seo looked over at him, puzzled.
But Rembrary was lost in deep thought, stroking his own chin.
What he had just performed was called a True Bet — when he posed a question imbued with Divine Power in the name of God, the person being questioned was compelled to answer with nothing but truth.
The activation condition was to grant the speaker two chances to tell the truth before the bet began.
In other words, the True Bet commenced with the third question, at which point the speaker had to answer honestly — and any lie invoked Divine Punishment.
When someone lied, a mark appeared on their forehead, visible only to Rembrary, and once the mark appeared, Divine Punishment descended within a week.
Yet this young man had coolly insisted his words were true, and no mark of punishment had risen on his forehead.
Rembrary couldn't help but find it strange.
Did Hye-gyeol really break that man's leg?
Rembrary frowned, his expression grave.
But he couldn't bring himself to fully trust the young man just yet. There were loopholes even in a True Bet — a person could lie and still win the wager.
The condition was this: the speaker had to be genuinely unaware that their own words were false.
So Rembrary changed his line of questioning.
"Is everything you wrote in that post of yours true?"
"What are you doing right now? Is this why you called me here, to keep asking that?"
"Is it true?"
"Yes, it is. But shouldn't you be apologizing right now?"
"Do you swear it before God? Is it true?"
"Oh my god, YES! It's true!"
The instant the young man lost his temper, a small mark bloomed on his forehead.
That mark would automatically summon Divine Punishment once a week had passed — but before then, it could also be detonated early, at Rembrary's will.
And the longer it festered before bursting, the stronger the effect.
There was no reason to wait a week for this one, so Rembrary detonated the mark on the spot.
The young man grumbled and reached for his glass of water — and in that instant, the glass shattered with a sharp crack, spraying in every direction.
"Gah!"
The young man gasped and stared down at his own hand.
Water from the shattered cup ran in rivulets across the table and soaked into his clothes.
"Oh, come on."
Unable to even curse properly thanks to the recorder, the young man irritably ripped off napkins and scrubbed at his hand.
"What is with the cups in this place— ugh."
Jung-seo silently stared at the broken glass, then stole a sideways glance at his groupmate. Could it be...? A few psychic-power movies flashed through his mind. Telekinesis, or...
But he quickly dismissed the thought. Even so, that would be too much — healing powers plus telekinesis? That was absurdly overpowered.
With abilities like that, his member shouldn't have been an idol. He should've been out saving the planet.
No — even if he skipped the planet-saving, he should have become an athlete, or a doctor, or a practitioner of traditional medicine.
Stack that fraudulently handsome face on top of all that, and he'd have been even more popular than he was now.
And just as Jung-seo suspected, Rembrary could not, in fact, use telekinesis.
But when it came to the Divine Punishment dealt through a True Bet with Rembrary, there were no limits whatsoever.
So — he genuinely believes Hye-gyeol broke his leg. But he knows his own post was a lie...
"I hear Hye-gyeol shoved you, and that's how you broke your leg. Is that true?"
"Why do you keep asking questions? What is this, an interrogation? This is really pissing me off."
"Is it true?"
"I said it's true, didn't I? More importantly, where's my apology? Isn't an apology supposed to come first?"
"Do you swear it before God? Is it true?"
"Are you serious? They said you were a total psycho, but what kind of nutjob— AAGH!"
Mid-sentence, the young man shot to his feet and stared down at his chair.
Then, cursing under his breath, he clutched the back of his own thigh with his hand.
A moment later, his face contorted completely, he wrenched something free with all his strength. Lodged in it was a shard of the broken glass.
"What the hell is this—" The young man suddenly froze.
Glass shards could certainly have lodged themselves in his body when the cup exploded. But he had been sitting in that chair the entire time, never once lifting his backside from the seat.
And yet the shard had been found not on any exposed skin, but on the part of him pressed against the chair.
Once that fact registered, a chill crawled up his spine.
Only now did the young man remember that Rembrary's questions had all followed the same pattern.
Two questions. Followed by one "Do you swear it before God."
The young man stared at Rembrary, dumbstruck.
Rembrary smiled pleasantly and spoke again.
"According to Hye-gyeol, you were the one who cursed at his parents first. Isn't that right?"
"..."
The young man didn't believe for a second that the last two incidents had been Rembrary's doing — but just in case, he didn't answer.
Rembrary continued, unperturbed.
"Isn't that right?"
"..."
"Do you swear it before God? Isn't that right?"
"..."
The young man held his silence to the very end, and this time, nothing happened.
He breathed a sigh of relief — and then, all at once, grew terrified at the thought that those two freak accidents really might have been the work of this smug, dead-eyed celebrity.
He resolved to get out of there as fast as he could and opened his mouth to speak.
That exact moment.
One of his perfectly healthy front teeth snapped clean off, and blood dripped from his mouth.
His eyes bleared with terror, the young man sank back into his chair.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, but his legs had gone weak and refused to carry him.
Rembrary stared at him for a long moment, then smiled graciously and asked once more.
"Shall we start from the beginning? That post of yours — is it true?"
Terrified out of his wits, the young man finally spilled everything, exactly as it had happened.
Then, before Rembrary and Jung-seo, he took out the recorder he'd brought and handed it over. Jung-seo deleted the recorded contents and returned the device.
After that, Jung-seo recorded the young man's verbal apology on his own phone, had him write out a statement right there in front of them, and made him post a public clarification.
Even with a retraction now, the most vicious anti-fans would never believe it — but public opinion would at least split.
It stung, but with a new album on the horizon, they couldn't afford to let this blow up any bigger.
Suing him was the same story.
If the agency pressed charges, it would inevitably fall under defamation — and antis, in all likelihood, wouldn't care whether it was defamation for spreading false information or defamation for stating facts.
If there were no fans willing to fight the antis on their behalf, the antis' voices would easily become the voice of the general public.
Worse, they could twist the narrative: Hye-gyeol was never punished because this country punishes school violence so leniently.
So, much as it galled them, they were making the man refute his own words with his own mouth.
Fortunately, the young man was so shaken by the phenomenon he'd just witnessed for the first time in his life that he did everything he was told without protest.
Once everything was finished,
Rembrary made the young man swear an oath: that he would never breathe a word of today's events to anyone, and that he would never again tell lies about Wild Animal.
When all of that was done,
the young man stumbled off, trembling like a leaf.
Jung-seo, still in a daze, said quietly to Rembrary, "Draw the curtain halfway."
And when Rembrary drew the curtain, Jung-seo slipped a hand into his inner pocket and pulled out the recorder his agency's legal team had provided for him.
Only after deleting the recording did Jung-seo finally breathe a sigh of relief.
The audio of the young man confessing his wrongs was safely recorded on his phone. That was enough.
"Why did you erase that?"
"That one's got his whole breakdown on tape. I won't be able to piece together what happened just from that — but you never know."
"I see. Well done. Clever boy."
At Rembrary's praise, Jung-seo made a strange face.
"You are a genuinely weird guy."
"Am I not worthy of admiration?"
"Can I ask you one thing?"
"...Apparently not, then."
Rembrary sulked and took a sip of his coffee, which had gone watery and bland as the ice melted away.
"Ugh, this is pathetic."
Wrinkling his nose and smacking his lips in disgust, Rembrary drew a slight, nervous look from Jung-seo.
"Why didn't you use that on me?"
"Jung-seo, the coffee is bland. And use what, exactly?"
"That whole swearing-before-God thing."
"Hmm?"
"You made that guy swear never to tell anyone what he saw today. Why didn't you do something like that with me?"
"Ah. Ahh."
Rembrary absently took another sip of the watery coffee, spat it right back out, and lifted his head.
Jung-seo was looking up at him, eyes brimming with expectation.
Rembrary smiled awkwardly.
Why hadn't he used it? Because it would have been useless, obviously.
The young man had suffered through injury after injury at Rembrary's hands — a mangled palm, a shard in his leg, a shattered tooth — and each time, Rembrary had healed him afterward. Even the leg.
With all that pain, that terror, and that miracle laid out in sequence before him, the young man had leapt to the conclusion that Rembrary's demanded oath carried a curse of its own. Jung-seo would have assumed the same.
But a simple oath had no power at all.
There were oaths that did work, but those required extremely elaborate procedures and all manner of rare ingredients.
And yet...
Finding Jung-seo's eyes overflowing with hope, Rembrary gave him the answer he most wanted to hear.
"Because I trust you."
Believer No. 23's face flooded with emotion.
"...I'll juice some tomatoes for you today, too."