Please Get Out of My House
The man's face went completely pale. Sure, the sunglasses covered the most important part of it — his eyes — but the emotion bleeding through them was still perfectly legible.
Cultivators weren't some breed of transcendent immortals, detached from ordinary concerns. At the end of the day, they were all just people. And I had been knocked about plenty among exactly those kinds of people — commoners, lowlifes, the whole unwashed lot.
Which is to say: I had gotten very, very good at reading what was going on inside a person's head.
"Take off your shoes. And also."
The man's gaze clattered its way downward.
Everyday work walkers.
"Uh, uh…? These are…?"
The woman's voice stammered and trailed off.
"We're s-sorry… um…."
The man cut her off before she could finish.
"What are you apologizing for, sprawled out like that! Hold on — you. Wait. What the hell are you?"
"What do you mean, what am I. I'm the owner of this house."
"No, that's not what I mean… you…."
He snapped his fingers again. Tap.
Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing.
I was still staring at the man's pallid face, and both he and the woman were still staring at me.
And the fact that these two had trespassed into my home wearing their shoes remained unchanged.
"What in the… why doesn't the… the perception-obscuring art work on you…?"
"Doesn't matter. Take off your shoes. And pay for the snacks."
The man swallowed hard. Behind the sunglasses, his eyes darted around the room in quick, nervous sweeps.
"Who… who are you?"
"The owner of this house. I told you."
"Not that… how can you… how are you not affected by the art? A guardian spirit? A yokai? Are you even… human?"
His hand drifted behind his back. I could see the shape of him reaching for a weapon.
"Answer me! Now!"
"I'm human, which is presumably why we're having this lovely little conversation. Which is also, you'll notice, why I've put up with you people barging into my house all this time. Hm?"
"All this time! You knew, all this time, and you just… pretended not to…?"
That's right. And if I were an ordinary cultivator, you bastards would already be headless.
The bewilderment soaked into their faces deepened several shades.
"Either be useful and get out, or stop being a burden to other people. Hm? You keep coming into my house and talking shit every single day — that's why I'm saying this to you now. Though frankly, none of you look like you're even capable of doing anything useful."
After all, these people had burned this many hours just trying to catch a single red mutt out there.
"Contact… contact headquarters."
The man said.
"There's a civilian here the perception art doesn't work on — call headquarters, now!"
Even as he shouted, he yanked something out from behind his back and whipped it toward my face.
Whoosh — I dodged with a sound to match.
A short wooden baton. But the way cursed energy clung greasily around its tip marked it as charged.
In fairness, the Association called it spiritual energy or dharmic power rather than cursed energy.
I've been contaminated by these bastards. Goddamn it.
Spending a few weeks around them will do that to you.
Granted, I had spent my life burrowing exclusively into arcane arts and Daoist techniques, but I had still been a cultivator. Meaning even my crude hand-to-hand arts could match — no, surpass — fighters of the lower realms.
The instant I evaded the swing, I drove a fist into the man's gut. He folded with a heavy whumph and crumpled to the floor.
"S-Senior…!"
The woman, who had been typing out her message, flinched and shrank back.
"Don't move."
I said.
"Actually, no. You kneel down too. Just because."
The woman looked up at me, her face drained white.
"Trespassing in a civilian's home wasn't enough, and now you try to attack me? You people are complete lunatics."
I sat on the sofa and lectured the two of them. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, so I decided to just say everything that needed saying and plenty that didn't. If I'd actually planned to keep tolerating this, none of it would have happened in the first place! Unbelievable.
"Wh-who… who are you… really…."
The woman asked, still on her knees.
"The owner of this house, you bastard."
"Yes, but — the owner, and…."
The man cut in.
"What… what you are… ngh… he'll have noticed I've gone silent by now. Stalling won't do you any favors. A retired shaman? A has-been?"
Sorry, but when you deliver a line while half-beaten into paste, it loses all its credibility.
I didn't bother answering. I was too busy going through the man's phone.
Messenger first.
The little "1" next to her messages kept disappearing one by one.
Hm.
ought to send a sticker too, I figured. I pressed the button, and up popped cat stickers, rabbit stickers, animal stickers of every stripe… what the… how is there this much cute in one menu?
I sent it, and it felt weirdly off somehow.
Hm.
Truthfully, I'd been planning to cover this whole incident up. But was that even worth it anymore?
I'd even considered a mind-manipulation art. The Soul-Bewitching Art, to be precise.
But I had my doubts that erasing just these two's memories would actually tie things up neatly. Use a trick like that — one that's all too easily branded a forbidden sorcery — carelessly on people whose reach I couldn't even guess…
Yeah. Not looking like a great idea.
A report would come in, contact would inevitably go dead.
Then they'd find this stretch of time suspicious, then the cover-up itself would get discovered, naturally.
And then I'd be dragged into an endless chain of Soul-Bewitching… sliding down into a bottomless pit… and in the end, I'd have to crush the pursuit entirely…
Hm.
Damn it all.
And above all — if I slapped these bastards upside the head to teach them a lesson, then wiped their memories right after, what would any of it have even been for?
In the end, I closed the messenger.
I poked around hoping to find some juicy office romance in the chat logs, but no such luck. Nothing but mind-numbing reports and work talk.
"So. Any intention of owning up to your mistakes?"
I asked, sipping my drink.
"'Stall and it'll go badly for you'? Are you kidding me? You're the ones who broke in here uninvited."
"Then, then why would you…."
"It's simple. Your people spent weeks rummaging through my house, and on top of that they ate my snacks. So yeah, I'm pissed. Any reasonable person would be."
"……."
"And that other bastard out there — the dog thing? Thing like that should've just been caught already. What's there to strategize over? Doesn't look like much of anything, honestly."
Setting the phone aside, I examined the artifact I'd confiscated from the man's hand.
Calling it a Dharmic artifact was generous, but it was at least shaped like one. They apparently called these things cursed tools… and what genuinely floored me was that I'd had to pretend not to know even that.
Seriously, damn it! Can you taste the quiet tragedy of my life?
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Why is this thing loaded with so much pointless cursed energy? Is it for subdual? Knock the brain loose for a second and knock the target out cold, that kind of thing?"
"……!"
Just as I was about to ask what they were looking so shocked about, it dawned on me that as of a few minutes ago, I had been a civilian as far as these two were concerned.
Hm.
But that didn't put out my fire one bit. I turned up the lecture another notch.
"Honestly, if the artifact refiners saw this, they'd have beaten you people black and blue. 'This is all the spiritual energy you can pack into it?'
I'm not exaggerating — that's the literal truth. Blacksmiths of that world were almost without exception eccentric to a fault.
Eccentric, or so mild-mannered they'd nod along to anything. The ones I knew, regrettably, mostly fell into the former camp.
"There were talismans in your pockets too. And those are, honestly, toss-away grade against anything serious. Every last one of them a mess. A mess, the whole set."
Talisman arts — the craft of fighting with inscribed paper. I knew my way around it reasonably well myself.
Seeing it all laid out like this, it really was rather pitiable. These people had scrounged together whatever workarounds they could, just to compensate for talent they didn't have.
The talent-hoarding bastards never needed any of that. Efficiency be damned, they just force-fed the thing raw dharmic power until it worked.
Truly the worst. Just looking at those insane talent-hoarders was enough to make it the worst.
If I'd been a true talent-hoarder myself, would those eccentric refiners have mellowed out a little?
Though I was never much of a munchkin to begin with — more of a cockroach, scratching out an existence one petty day at a time…
"You… who… who the hell are you?"
But at the end of it all, the winner had still been me.
"Like I keep saying… hm."
The owner of the house.
I draped an arm over the sofa's armrest and rested my chin on my hand. That winner was now sitting here agonizing over this. Ah, great. Now what? I did lash out in the heat of the moment, after all.
"Forget it. Just go. Even if I told you to keep quiet, you'd talk eventually. Do whatever you want about it."
"…What?"
"Are you deaf? I said get out."
I crushed the empty can in my fist. I'd thought I'd finished it, but a splash of leftover drink spurted out.
I tossed the can into the recycling bin by the kitchen. Nothing but net! Wiping my hand, I fished a snack out of the bag and popped it in my mouth.
"Not leaving?"
I said it again, to the two of them.
"They lost? To a civilian…? And wait — the perception-obscuring art bounced right off him?"
"…That's correct. He says he was with his junior at the time."
"And the Team Leader? What is the Team Leader doing right now?"
"Finishing up her report. As it happens, that window coincided with the dissection of the Kalpa-grade demonic beast."
The location: the Korea Shaman Association Seoul Gangseo Branch.
Choi Yoon-seok, the Branch Manager, listening to the report, let out a hollow, disbelieving laugh.
"Insane. Is he possessed by a demonic beast or something?"
"We inquired whether any retired shamans resided in the vicinity. From what I've reviewed, that remains the most plausible explanation…."
"What does he look like?"
"Somewhat long hair — ah, black hair. Eyes that sit narrow, close to a squint. A young man with… a snake-like face, would you say?"
Headquarters was in an uproar over the impending Kalpa-grade demonic beast situation in Japan. Walking along with one eye on his wristwatch, Choi Yoon-seok glanced over a document and asked again.
"The Gangseo area? But there's… no such shaman registered in Gangseo."
"…Then, as suspected…."
"No, don't overcomplicate it. We're leaving him alive for now, and he talks, doesn't he? Fine. Send the Team Leader of Team 4 over there."
"With respect, that seems inadvisable. He could be dangerous."
"She's cut her teeth in Japan for years. And one subdued agent makes every civilian a menace? At minimum, we should confirm his identity first, shouldn't we?"
The Operations Chief, who had been delivering the report, nodded.
"…Understood. I'll see the directive carried out."