Oh Jung-shin's Shock
Rembrary hid behind a tree and watched Sa Gam-jae and the old monk bicker.
His heart pounded. Were the two of them fighting right now?
"You expect me to believe *that*?"
"And if I don't, what will you do about it, Abbot?"
"Why, you—!"
"You'll have to walk this road with me one way or another, so why pick a fight before we've even started?"
"What are you even doing here?"
"I have an idol I'm responsible for."
"What? You expect *me* to believe that?"
"Shall I show you a business card?"
Rembrary, who had been peering intently at the scene, let out a small gasp of awe.
That 'energy that felt just slightly like divine power, yet not quite' — the one he'd sensed on his way here — was emanating from the monk. Was that power simply another form of divine power?
Then what was that strange aura Sa Gam-jae was giving off? It lacked the wickedness of demonkin races, yet it seemed to travel a path entirely different from divine power as well.
Coming to this temple was the right call after all.
Rembrary swallowed dryly and gripped the cracked bark of the dead tree tight.
He had no idea what was what, but it seemed that in this world — devoid of both divine power and magic, so achingly bland — something familiar was finally about to unfold.
"Yeon-woo."
Just then, Sa Gam-jae suddenly called his name.
Did he notice I'm hiding? Rembrary's eyes went wide with alarm.
"Do you perhaps have an idea who he is?"
But hearing the question that followed, he realized the name had been tossed out for the monk's benefit, not his. It was Sa Gam-jae asking the monk about *him*.
Why me all of a sudden? Rembrary looked at the monk, bewildered.
The monk wore the same expression: Why him, out of nowhere?
"You mean that guest who said he wanted to take vows in the future?"
"Yes. Didn't he strike you as a little... off?"
"A bit... eccentric in temperament, I suppose."
"No, I'm not talking about his personality."
"Then what?"
"You noticed something unusual about him the moment you laid eyes on him, Abbot. I'm asking whether you sensed anything of the sort from Yeon-woo as well."
The fingers clutching the tree tightened. Mouth half-open, Rembrary stared at Sa Gam-jae. Just as this side had found his identity suspicious, Sa Gam-jae had been eyeing him with doubt all along.
So that's why he kept giving me those strange looks. He found me suspicious.
What on earth is his own identity, then?
I'll have to ask the monk about it later.
The monk seemed to know Sa Gam-jae well, so surely it would be fine.
Having settled on a short-term plan, Rembrary turned his attention back to the conversation between Sa Gam-jae and the monk.
"Well. I thought him a guest with unusually clear eyes, but beyond that I noticed nothing strange."
"Not even the slightest thing that bothered you?"
"Aside from his temperament, not particularly..."
"I see."
Sa Gam-jae let out a sigh and sank into a pensive frown, while the monk scowled.
"What's going on? Is someone after that guest this time?"
"Nothing of the sort."
Sa Gam-jae's crisp answer was followed by the soft curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth. And then his eyes — which had been fixed on the monk — flicked briefly toward Rembrary's hiding spot.
He flinched at the thought their gazes had met, and Sa Gam-jae spoke.
"Yeon-woo. Did you hear all of that?"
Woo Yeon-woo is a total bastard.
Oh Jung-shin nearly wept at the sight of the toilet bowl, which even in daylight had been dark as the abyss of hell, and which at night he couldn't distinguish from the footstool.
Telling footstool from toilet required turning on his phone light, but doing one's business one-handed while holding a phone was no easy feat.
In the end he clamped the phone between his teeth and switched on the light — and the instant he did, the bugs of early summer came swarming in from every direction toward the glow.
Oh Jung-shin let out a silent scream, killed the light, and promptly burst into tears.
The one silver lining was that the cameraman, whom he'd expected to find the whole thing entertaining, was hopping around shrieking in terror right alongside him.
At least come over here and hold my phone for me.
That would have been an excruciatingly mortifying situation in its own right, but the footstool and the toilet were so indistinguishable that he couldn't think anything else in the moment.
Eventually, groping around in the dark, Oh Jung-shin found the footstool and planted his feet on it, finished his business in tears, then hurried out of the stall and washed his hands.
Wiping his hands roughly on his pants as he left the bathroom, he finally felt the fear ebb somewhat.
That loyalty-free son of a bitch. Just wait until he needs a favor from me someday. I'll show him exactly how I feel about it.
Oh Jung-shin grumbled to himself, fuelled by revenge fantasies against Woo Yeon-woo, while keeping his phone flash on its dimmest setting.
Damn it, where's the path again?
But as he swept the light this way and that in search of the way back to the main hall, a strange sound drifted over from somewhere not far off.
"Yeon-woo? Yeon-woo! Yeon-wooooo!"
It was a voice calling for Woo Yeon-woo.
Oh Jung-shin's fear came rushing back and seized him by the throat, shaking him like a rattle.
He swallowed hard and stared toward the source of the sound. Why were they looking for Woo Yeon-woo here? Woo Yeon-woo hadn't even come along — so why was he hearing someone call his name?
He had a vague memory of stories like this. A voice calling you to follow it, only for there to be no person at the end of it — just a baby. Or a baby that paid you money with a deep, manly voice, or threatened you into raising it. Something like that.
An unidentifiable ghost story, cobbled together from half a dozen urban legends, whipped through Oh Jung-shin's head.
"Looks like Yeon-woo's gotten lost?"
The cameraman — who had abandoned Oh Jung-shin earlier to flee the swarm of bugs — sidled up belatedly and asked.
"Don't be ridiculous."
So the terrifying sound wasn't something only he could hear, apparently.
Half-relieved, Oh Jung-shin felt his irritation surge back. He glared at the cameraman, then swung around and took the path in the opposite direction.
The voice was coming from the side opposite the main hall. Even if the call for Woo Yeon-woo wasn't a phantom, Oh Jung-shin had zero intention of going over there to look for him. Hadn't Woo Yeon-woo abandoned *him* alone out here too?
He'd wait at the main hall, and if the man didn't show up after a good long while — well.
He'd tell the others, and they'd search on their own.
But before Oh Jung-shin could take more than a few steps, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Son of a bitch. The camera.
The cameraman was filming his every move. Every bit of him ignoring the voice calling for Woo Yeon-woo and simply walking away.
He'd only just finished scrubbing his soiled image clean with that whole "slave and dog" variety-show storyline, and he could not afford to ruin it here.
Damn you, you cursed camera, Oh Jung-shin ground his teeth — but in the end, he walked toward the sound.
How long had he been walking?
The voice calling for Woo Yeon-woo had faded away sometime in the meantime.
Oh Jung-shin checked over and over that the cameraman was keeping up behind him as he trudged on through a forest where he couldn't tell front from back.
"Ugh, it's so dark I can't find the path at all."
The cameraman, who had at first trailed along in silence, began to grumble as well.
Oh Jung-shin seized the opportunity to ask quickly.
"Should we just head back to the main hall for now?"
"Let's go as far as that spot up ahead first."
"Where's 'that spot'?"
"I saw it earlier while we were walking around. There's some kind of sacred rope strung up — a geumjul. There was a clearing right before it."
"If there's a rope up, doesn't that mean keep out?"
"I'm not saying climb over it, just get close. Why? Remember the Sing Sing Sing Sing penalty? Yeon-woo didn't have a shred of fear back then. He might have wandered over there out of curiosity."
So the bastard who went off out of curiosity gets to be left lying around wherever his curiosity dumped him? Oh Jung-shin cursed inwardly, but walked in the direction the cameraman had pointed.
And then — "Yeon-woo?" — that same voice rang out again, this time from very close by.
Startled, he flashed his light, and a yet another cameraman — shading his dazzled eyes with one hand — came pushing through the underbrush, asking, "Are you looking for Yeon-woo?"
It was the other cameraman, the one who'd stayed behind at the main hall to film the 108 prostrations.
"It's Oh Jung-shin."
Relieved it wasn't a ghost, Oh Jung-shin answered quickly, and the man asked with a ghost-pale face:
"Have you by any chance seen Yeon-woo?"
"No. Why?"
"We were walking together, and then he just — vanished."
"I'm sorry, what?"
Oh Jung-shin looked at the cameraman with a doubtful expression.
He remembered how his own cameraman had bolted the moment the insect swarm appeared. Naturally, suspicion bloomed: It's not that Yeon-woo suddenly disappeared — you just wandered off somewhere alone and came back.
Unaware of what Oh Jung-shin thought of him, the cameraman spoke anxiously.
"It was somewhere around here. Not long after Oh Jung-shin left, Yeon-woo suddenly said he'd follow after him. He was heading toward the bathrooms just fine, and then all of a sudden he stopped, tilted his head around like he was searching for something, and changed direction. I followed with the camera, and then he was gone mid-way."
"Gone? Gone where? Did you catch it on camera?"
"That's the thing... I stumbled over something for a second and the lens happened to be pointed down — and right at that exact moment, he disappeared..."
Oh Jung-shin belatedly realized the gravity of it and asked, alarmed.
"Shouldn't you be searching for him?"
"I *was* searching."
"No, I mean shouldn't you round people up and search properly? There are steep drop-offs all around here, aren't there?"
They weren't sheer cliffs, but there were plenty of spots that came close to a precipitous slope.
The cameraman pleaded in a fretful voice.
"Then I'll go gather the others — could you please stay here?"
Oh Jung-shin opened his mouth to say he'd go round people up himself, then simply nodded.
There was no telling where Woo Yeon-woo might pop out from, so at least two people needed to stay here — and he had zero confidence in finding his way back through the dark alone.
"Aigoo, this is a real problem."
As the cameraman who'd been filming Yeon-woo dashed off somewhere, the one assigned to Oh Jung-shin muttered worriedly.
"Tell me about it," Oh Jung-shin murmured, scanning the surroundings — then suddenly frowned. "Huh?"
"What is it?"
"Didn't you just hear something?"
"Huh? I didn't hear anything at all?"
"No, somewhere around here—"
Oh Jung-shin muttered as he walked on.
"Hold on a second. Bugs."
The cameraman followed him, then stopped for a moment, switched off the camera, and thumped the body of it to shake off the bugs clinging to the lens.
Oh Jung-shin marked his position and walked a few steps ahead.
Then he bumped into something, cried out in shock, and stumbled backward.
Rembrary whipped around to stare at Sa Gam-jae in shock.
Sa Gam-jae was looking directly at him and smiling.
That smile was so unsettling that for a moment Rembrary wavered — should he simply turn around and pretend he knew nothing?
But fleeing was unbecoming of a High Priest.
In the end, Rembrary clasped his hands behind his back and stepped slowly out from behind the tree, returning an equally knowing smile.
The monk, apparently unaware Rembrary had even come this far, started in surprise and muttered:
"How did the guest get in here? Surely the rope barrier—?"
He spoke as though Rembrary had crossed somewhere he could not possibly have come.
It was only then that Rembrary noticed his cameraman had, at some point, stopped following him. Apparently there had been some manner of barrier, which he'd blundered straight through. He had no idea at which point the barrier had been, but in any case, there was no need to explain such things one by one.
A High Priest's composure was born of judicious secrecy. So instead of explaining himself to the monk, Rembrary tossed back the very same question Sa Gam-jae had asked.
"Abbot. I have a question of my own."
"Your manner of speech—?"
"Do you know what my manager truly is?"
The monk's pupils trembled. His expression said: You two are always joined at the hip — why are you both asking me the same question?
Sa Gam-jae narrowed his eyes at Rembrary, then turned to the monk with a word of advice.
"Don't tell him, Abbot."
So the monk does know something!
"Tell him, and I'll go straight down this road to fetch your little protégé."
At that added threat, the monk's doubtful expression turned to one of fear — of profound displeasure, it seemed.
But displeasing as it was, Sa Gam-jae's threat worked magnificently.
The monk pulled a face so fearsome it looked as though he might pluck Sa Gam-jae bald on the spot, but in the end he flared out his sleeves, wheeled around, and stalked off to somewhere.
"Abbot?"
Rembrary moved to hurry after him, but Sa Gam-jae blocked his path with a shit-eating grin.
"Yeon-woo, do give the poor Abbot a rest. He's up in years — push him too hard and he might keel over."
"You are a truly irritating creature."
"You could always just ask me directly who I am. Wouldn't that be simpler?"
"I asked you before, and you didn't answer."
"Ask me again."
"What manner of being are you?"
"That's a secret."
"You are a rotten wretch, Gam-jae."
Having hurled the insult, Rembrary spun sharply around in the direction he'd come running from.
Sa Gam-jae tailed after him, snickering all the while.
Then, all at once, Oh Jung-shin's face materialized right in front of him.
What now? As Rembrary scowled at him, Oh Jung-shin let out a strangled, cut-off scream — "U-, AH?"
Wondering what was wrong with him, Rembrary watched as the man gaped, stared at him, and stammered out:
"Wh-where have you been? Where did you come from?"
"What nonsense are you spouting, sunbae?"
"You just came out of thin air!"
— The End of Chapter 75: Oh Jung-shin's Shock —