My Land Is a Gold Mine — 3
"A public-interest tip-off?"
"Yes."
I nodded slowly.
It wasn't as if I could tell them that a shaman named Jo Eun-sun seemed likely to harm them, and that I needed them to lie low for a while.
Luckily, Seongdo Construction's redevelopment project had been suspended over corruption charges, so all I had to do was claim I'd been the one to report it.
And since I was the one who'd brought that project to a halt in the first place, it wasn't even a complete lie.
"There was a lot of corruption at that redevelopment site across the street."
"You're the one who reported it?"
My father asked, looking straight at me.
"Yes. If corruption is rampant before a single shovel even hits the ground, it's bound to lead to shoddy construction. And if a flimsy, boneless apartment block went up in the same neighborhood, I figured the damage could spill over onto our building too."
"Well, sure. Property values could have dropped."
My mother's eyes lit up as she took both my hands in hers.
"Yoonho, you saved so many people."
"Huh? Construction hasn't even started yet."
"Imagine an apartment built with shoddy work. Most people put their entire life savings into a single home. If it can't be sold and can't be torn down, they end up trapped — unable to live, unable to die."
I thought of all those news stories about shoddy apartments — mold blooming black across the walls, concrete cracking apart.
The residents fought to block the final inspection, the construction company insisted they should pass it and offered only patchwork repairs. An apartment built wrong from the ground up was never going to be fixed by a slap of antimicrobial paint.
An urban eyesore. Someone's entire life savings. A neighborhood burden. And the culprit who would soon have countless victims weeping tears of blood.
Mom praised me for averting a catastrophe.
"Most people would see trouble coming and pretend they never noticed, just to avoid getting dragged into it. But you did something truly remarkable. Goodness, how did our son turn out so brave and kind?"
"But Yoonho, you were mostly in Ugok-ri. How did you even find out?"
My father asked, as if he could no longer hold back his doubts.
"We live right across the street and didn't notice a thing."
"I was in Seoul briefly at the end of last year, remember?"
At the time, my parents had been off vacationing at a resort in Da Nang. I'd welcomed the New Year alone in an empty house.
I'd gone hiking to watch the first sunrise, so I casually mentioned hearing about it through a former colleague from the bank where I used to work.
Please, please let them believe me...
"Oh, I see. Of course, of course."
Mom nodded emphatically, the kind of person who would believe me even if I told her car wheels were triangles.
"Our Yoonho, how did you grow up so wonderfully? I'm so proud of you."
"By the way, did Seongdo Construction find out you were the one who reported them? Why else would they tell you to travel somewhere in such a hurry?"
"Yes."
Jo Eun-sun had probably already caught on.
Seongdo Construction's CEO was nothing more than a puppet she pulled the strings of, so it was only a matter of time before he knew, too.
"They're likely to come looking for my parents or cause trouble. There's a quick way to deal with it."
"Oh?"
"Yes."
"Also — I'd been planning to send you both on a filial-piety trip for Parents' Day this year."
I shared the itinerary and accommodation details the travel agency had emailed over with my father.
"I bought the package on sale with a booking. No extra charges at all — just go and enjoy yourselves to your heart's content."
"Oh my, isn't this the luxury hotel from that movie?"
"It says the Eiffel Tower in Paris is visible right outside the window. That must have cost a fortune."
My father stepped closer to me and asked carefully.
"But what will you do while we're away? I may be retired, but my old subordinates hold high positions now. Shall I ask them to help you?"
"No need, Father. I've already got a plan. Don't you worry."
At my insistence that I wanted to repay them properly for once, my parents finally agreed to go.
Dad canceled his badminton club and Mom her art class, grumbling that they'd have to miss this week, and packed their bags.
"Well then, we're off."
"Yoonho, take care of yourself. Call if anything happens."
"Don't worry about a thing."
I called a taxi and had my parents driven to Incheon Airport.
Then I quietly asked the bodyguard Moon Sung-il had assigned to keep a discreet eye on them the whole way.
By the time I'd seen my parents off—
Zii-ing. Zii-ing.
A call came in from Moon Sung-il.
"CEO Kim, our report says you ran into Jo Eun-sun of Boram Private Loans at a department store. There was apparently a confrontation — are you all right?"
One of the bodyguards must have reported it.
"Of course I'm fine."
I laughed as I added,
"You know the old saying — whether a rope is long or short, you only know once you've stretched it across the beam. Turns out it fits perfectly here. Jo Eun-sun is quite the hand with talismans and tricks using wandering spirits."
"And now that you've stretched the rope, she turned out to be nothing special?"
"Exactly."
"That's our CEO Kim for you."
Abe — the Japanese onmyoji who had unraveled the barrier near Hwacheon's Chilseongru.
When I mentioned that I had easily subdued Jo Eun-sun, the very woman who had killed Abe, Moon Sung-il made no attempt to hide his delight.
"She won't be the type to simply take it lying down, though."
"She'll stage an elaborate gut ritual to fire off a curse at me. For that, she'll need my saju — my birth date and time — my personal effects, things like that."
Firing a traditional death-curse required the target's birth date, their name, and things like hair and nail clippings.
Since my hair and nails wouldn't be easy to come by, she would come here — to my parents' home — and try to gather things like my underwear.
"She'll probably send people to my parents' house to collect my belongings — my underwear, my toothbrush, my razor. Childhood photos of me, too."
"It's dreadful just to imagine it — laying all of that out and performing a ritual to curse you."
"Isn't it just."
Which was why there was something I urgently needed.
"We have to prepare. I need to gather the victims of Boram Private Loans."
Before Jo Eun-sun could fire her curse, I had to gather the resentment and hatred of her victims.
Moon Sung-il answered my urgent request promptly.
"Secretary Yoon has set up an online forum. We gave the order this morning and twenty people have already joined."
"Good work."
The more victims, the better — but what mattered more was how deep their grievances ran.
And to judge that, I needed to know their actual cases in detail.
"Have them post the full details on the board — tell them that even if Boram Private Loans comes after them for defamation, they'll get pro bono legal defense. That's what I'll use to blast Jo Eun-sun away."
Not entirely clear on what exactly I was planning, Moon Sung-il simply replied,
"I'll hurry them along."
"Thank you."
The moment I hung up with Moon Sung-il, Abe drifted silently to my side.
[Are you going to fire the curse rebound?]
I smiled gently.
'I am.'
Yeolsal — the curse rebound.
It meant taking a death-curse exactly as it was fired and reflecting it back at the sender at two or three times its original strength.
To make a rebound possible, you needed a resentment and a curse more powerful than the one being hurled at you.
Only then could you catch the incoming curse and drive it back into the very heart of its sender.
'I never imagined I'd come to know things like this.'
It seemed that when I'd sent the shaman ghost — the one who had unknowingly dragged me into that gut ritual near the GukSadang shrine on Mokmyeok Mountain — off to the afterlife, I had absorbed the knowledge of how to fire a rebound along the way.
[Master, I've recovered my memories from when I was struck by the curse.]
'Oh?'
[She held a war-general's blade in both hands and danced, offering up living creatures as sacrifices. She killed each offering in the most agonizing way she could, and hurled their resentment at me.]
'That's horrifying.'
Jo Eun-sun's grudge against Abe alone would have been far too thin a fuel to fire a death-curse.
So instead, she had stabbed and slashed living animals, amassing their pain, their bitterness, and their hatred, and launched it all as a curse.
'Do you remember where she performed the ritual?'
[I believe it was Achasan. Yes! That's it! You could see the Han River, and behind us there was a city called Guri.]
'That's right — Achasan.'
For now, it seemed clear that the tutelary shrine where Jo Eun-sun performed her rituals was on Achasan.
I would have to pay it a visit as soon as possible.
'Do you remember where the shrine is?'
[There should be a house on Achasan owned by Jo Eun-sun. On the mountain behind that house stands an enormous poplar, one worthy of being called a sacred tree.]
I immediately called Secretary Yoon and asked him to look into the property owned by Jo Eun-sun.
I went out to Achasan, then returned to my parents' house.
Because once night fell, the people Jo Eun-sun sent would come here to take my belongings.
There was also a chance she might send someone all the way to Ugok-ri, so I called Chai as well.
I told him that if any strange person showed up in the village, he was to call me right away.
In the middle of my call with Chai, No. 1 briefly possessed him to whine about when I was coming back.
[Boss! You left the house and forgot all about me? I'm dying here — No. 1 is dying!]
No. 1 was throwing a full-blown tantrum.
He declared that if I didn't come down to Ugok-ri by tomorrow, he would possess Chai and come find me himself.
"I'll come back tomorrow morning with good news and lots of tasty food. So stay out of trouble until then. Got it?"
[Why are you being so sweet? What are you plotting?]
Leave it to No. 1 — the sharpest-nosed evil spirit around.
"Today, I'm firing a curse rebound."
[A rebound? You mean bouncing a curse right back at them? I wanna do it! Me too, me too! At least let me watch.]
"I'll let you watch the next one. I've got a lot to prepare right now, so I'll talk to you later."
'Let's take a look, shall we?'
I went into my old room and switched on the computer and printer.
Then I connected to the online forum for the victims of Boram Private Loans.
In just that little stretch of time, more victims had joined.
Just as I'd asked, Moon Sung-il had apparently relayed the message well through Secretary Yoon.
Case after case of victim accounts had been posted in long, detailed threads.
The tears of a father who'd needed emergency money to pay for his sick child's treatment.
The story of a restaurant owner who'd borrowed money to renovate his shop, only to have the entire deposit — his life's savings — stripped away.
A college student who'd taken out a small loan wailed that he'd been blacklisted for credit and could no longer even get a job.
I printed out the posts and stacked them up neatly, then began writing talismans on the backs of the pages alongside Abe.
After that, I gathered every new story as it was posted and kept up the same work.
"That's done."
When it came to gathering resentment, this much was more than enough.
I called Hyeoncheol.
"Hyeoncheol, could you give me a hand for a bit?"
With Jeong Hyeoncheol — the head of the Violent Crimes Unit at Mapo Police Station — now on board, every last piece was in place.
And then, at last, night fell.
Beep-beep-beep-beep!
Someone was punching in the code at the front door.
Naturally, a tone chimed out that the code was wrong.
Once more.
And then — crackle! — came the sound of a high-voltage current discharging.
Beep-riiing!
The front door swung open. They'd simply smashed the keypad altogether, by the look of it.
Without even turning on the lights, I heard a man's footsteps pass through the entryway and into the living room.
"So which one's Kim Yoonho's room?"
"Not that one?"
There were two men, and they reeked of cigarettes — smokers, presumably.
They must have slipped something like toe-covers over their shoes, because their footsteps made no sound at all. The men slipped into my room and began rummaging through my things.
"Why is there only one pair of boxers? Took everything down to the countryside, I guess?"
Yep. That one's yours to take. I left it there just for you.
"What else were we supposed to grab, besides the underwear?"
"Photos! We're supposed to take Kim Yoonho's photos."
"Here they are!"
The men pulled my photographs out of the album I'd left sitting under the desk.
The moment they were gone, I called Hyeoncheol right away.
"Hyeoncheol, those intruders just left my room. There's a camera in the elevator, so they'll have taken the stairs."
"We're watching the apartment entrance. Don't you worry."
When I slowly walked out of the apartment, a red moon hung in the sky. It was a night made for nothing if not a curse rebound.
"Abe — let's go!"