A Misfortune Without Hope
When he opened his eyes, what filled them was the spirit, swollen past any hope of seeing where it ended, and the sharp teeth lining its gaping mouth.
The sight froze Blow where he stood. Before he could so much as move, the thing swallowed him whole.
There was no pain.
He was only sinking, down into somewhere.
A misfortune without hope.
Those were the words that could sum up the life of Blow, flung into another world.
Unkempt black hair, black eyes, sallow yellow skin. A shabby figure that called to mind the lower classes he had once turned from in disgust, and bruises stamped over every inch of his body.
A sour, lived-in stench rose off him. Red broth had dried in streaks across the walls, and cockroaches waved their antennae as they scuttled past in front of him. A dry heave clawed its way out of his throat.
"Aagh!"
...Why? Why is my voice so thin?
Still unable to grasp what had happened to him, he looked wildly around.
The unidentified man who had been lying face-down beside him rose in a slow slide and stared down at him with an expression that said he might kill him on the spot.
"W-who are you?"
"Who? This little bastard doesn't even recognize his own father now?"
With the words, a hand broad as a pot lid flew straight into Blow's cheek.
Flesh met flesh with a savage crack, and he was slammed into the wall at once.
It was the first time in his life he had ever known the pain of bone breaking.
"Your father! Your own father! You don't know him?!"
Beaten to a pulp until he hovered on the edge of blacking out, he was finally forced to speak the words he had never once let past his lips.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
The kicks did not stop until he lost consciousness.
That was Blow's first memory of that world.
Five years passed.
Blow denied it.
Something had simply gone wrong with the summoning, he told himself. This hell he was trapped in was only a nightmare, and nightmares could be broken.
But the years went by, and the nightmare showed no sign of ending.
So he resented everyone he could remember. The spirit that had sent him here. His father. His mother. Jane. Herbena. His classmates, his teachers, even the household butler and the maids.
Every night he cursed them. Why would none of them save him from the hell he had fallen into?
And yet, once those five years were gone, he no longer had even the strength left to be angry at them.
He hated school. No one wanted him anywhere near them.
He could not like home, either. The father of this world was waiting there, and he used Blow as something to take his temper out on.
So after school he always drifted around the playground.
The children he met there for the first time treated him better than his classmates did. Blow built sandcastles with them and rode the seesaw and the slide. But when they said they had to go home for dinner and left, he was alone again.
Then he would climb to the very top of the jungle gym and look up at a night sky that held nothing at all, and he would remember the days when he had shone.
He missed them so fiercely it ached. The days when he had not been hurt. The days when he had not had to tremble with fear.
But those days felt as faint and far as the stars hung in that sky.
In this world, he was someone who had fallen all alone.
Another five years.
Han Ji-hoo—Blow Deblique of this world—had by now accepted, completely, who he was here.
That did not mean he was living well, or that he had adapted.
At some point the school had branded him a problem child, and because he hated it, he stopped attending properly. Strictly speaking, he showed up for the last period and went home after the closing homeroom. His teacher had said that if he did not at least do that much, they would only become a nuisance to each other, and Ji-hoo had agreed.
He would come back, set his bag down, and the same day would begin again.
"Go buy booze, you fucking little bastard."
"I'm underage! They won't sell it to me!"
"You little shit!"
Smack—
The defiance he had started the year before always ended the same way.
Then there was only one thing he could do. He picked up the money his father had flung at him—scarcely a couple of dollars—and went from shop to shop until one of them cracked and sold to him.
The house with the green gate. Every shop nearby knew his father's temper, and so they knew the son, Ji-hoo, as well. He had to walk somewhere a little farther from home.
The place he had managed to crack was an old convenience store about a twenty-minute brisk walk away. Unlike the stores of these days, it was always watched by an elderly man in glasses, planted behind the counter. Whether his eyes were bad or he simply could not be bothered, he never asked a single question when Ji-hoo set alcohol down to pay.
It worked yesterday. It'll work this time, too.
Clinging to that thin little hope, Han Ji-hoo stepped inside.
What met him instead of a greeting was the sound of two kids about his age arguing with the old man. Ji-hoo was not the sort to push into a thing like that. He walked straight past them and stood before the refrigerator.
Today, as ever, the colorful cans and the green-glinting bottles of soju seemed to welcome him. He was reaching, practiced, for the green bottle painted with bamboo when a voice flew into his ear and stopped his hand.
"I'm telling you, I left my ID at home. I already showed you the photo on my phone."
"Then go back and get it."
"How many times do I have to say it's far?! Just sell it!"
"Store policy. Nothing I can do."
The wrangling went on a long while, and in the end it was the boy who gave up.
"Ugh, you old geezer are such a damn stickler!"
Muttering that, he spat on the floor and walked out of the store.
Ji-hoo's position turned deeply awkward.
...I'll have to go somewhere else.
He let out a sigh heavy enough to cave the ground in, pushed the soju back into the refrigerator, and tried to slip past the counter with his head bowed low.
Then—
"Not buying anything?"
The words fell on him like a drop from the eaves, and Ji-hoo stopped dead.
"I... didn't really have anything to buy."
"Didn't you come for soju?"
What is he trying to do?
Unable to make sense of it, Ji-hoo finally looked toward the old man.
A brief silence passed. He did not know why, but moisture gathered at the corners of those dried, withered eyes.
"It must be very hard on you."
Was it shame at being seen like this? Was it because no one had ever comforted him before?
A tear dropped from Ji-hoo's eye.
Grandpa—the manager of the CS24 Haengui-dong branch—listened in silence to every story Han Ji-hoo poured out.
Then he said it would be better if the boy lived apart from his father, and asked whether Ji-hoo might work the night shift at the convenience store and stay at his place until he had saved a little money.
"I'd feel too guilty for that..."
"Then stay at a goshiwon nearby. One of those cramped single rooms. I'll take the rent out of your wages."
He could not bring himself to refuse even that. However things stood, sleeping in a storeroom was out of the question.
The two of them did not leave the store until past ten, after the next shift had come in. Saying they ought to eat, Grandpa dragged Ji-hoo to a gukbap house, the sort of place that served rice in a steaming bowl of broth. Cubed radish kimchi and cabbage kimchi came out, and something occurred to Ji-hoo. He spoke carefully.
"...What are you going to do?"
"About what?"
"My father."
"Where did you say the house was?"
"If you go, you'll only see something ugly."
"And if I leave him as he is, how are you supposed to live, scared out of your mind?"
At Grandpa's firm words, Ji-hoo added nothing more. He led him to the front of the house.
The house with the green gate. Just drawing near it made his heartbeat swell and his hands shake. Grandpa gave that trembling shoulder a gentle pat and went straight in.
"Wait here a moment."
Ji-hoo stood before the gate the whole time, rigid, staring at the house. A few loud noises came from inside. Then it went quiet, as if someone had cut the power.
...He isn't a man who goes quiet that easily.
Ji-hoo was fixed on the window, wound tight with the fear that something terrible had happened, when Grandpa came out through the gate with a blank face and spoke in a mild voice.
"Let's go. He won't trouble you anymore."
"......"
Could it really be this easy?
Grandpa's hand pulled him along, stubborn, and Ji-hoo let himself be led. He took one last look at that damned green gate, rusted and ready to fall.
Ji-hoo worked with everything he had.
Grandpa, the manager, was the first person to let him feel warmth since he had come to this world, and the single wish to repay that kindness was enough to snap his eyes open even in his sleep. He stocked the shelves and mopped the floors, and whenever he had a spare moment he went into the storeroom and took a meticulous inventory. He kept track of which foods and goods sold well and laid the notes out for Grandpa, and he searched through videos, turning over how the store might sell more.
He volunteered for the night shifts. Whenever someone quit without a word or ran off and left a hole, he came in at any hour to fill it. He did his best to meet every customer with a smile.
Before he knew it, people were giving him a thumbs-up and calling him quick and attentive.
"Nothing like the owner at all—tall and handsome!"
"Your grandson?"
"Want to work for me, kid? I'll add to your hourly."
Whenever customers said such things to Ji-hoo, Grandpa only smiled faintly, and said nothing.
And the more it happened, the little convenience store that had been quietly shrinking gained regulars, and the sales began to climb day by day.
For the first time since crossing into this world, Ji-hoo felt something like fulfillment. The more he felt it, the harder he scrubbed the floors and turned the goods so they faced the customers properly. To him, working as if possessed, Grandpa one day spoke with a note of worry in his voice.
"Aren't you working too hard? You'll wear that body out."
"Doesn't everyone live at about this pace?"
"You can't even bring yourself to say you're tired..."
"But you know it's pretty rough. Maybe because the neighborhood's a dump, there are way too many nightmare customers."
"I don't feel right, leaving so much of it to you. This is an age when you ought to be studying."
"It's fine. Around twenty-five I'll do my military service, then just run a few convenience stores... that's how I want to live. Just raise my hourly a little, please."
Ji-hoo, who had found a little ease by now, pinched his thumb and forefinger into a circle—the sign for money—and gave it a small shake. Grandpa shook his head, firm.
"Then I'd starve."
"We can't have that. Since we're on the subject, why not open a few more branches? I hear the other owners all do it that way."
"At my age? What for."
Grandpa waved it off as if he had no interest in such things. They looked at each other for a moment, and then a quiet laugh broke out of both of them.
Time passed quickly, and Ji-hoo reached the age when other people entered university.
Perhaps because he had settled fully into the work, he no longer thought of his body as tired. But the loneliness rooted deep in his chest seemed to grow heavier with every day. At times like that he would read the notebooks in which he had written down the people of his previous world—faces he could now barely even call to mind.
Jane. Herbena. His parents and siblings. His classmates...
Afraid of losing the notebooks, he had scanned every page and even converted them into text.
Another worry had found him as well. Grandpa, the manager, the only person he had in this world, was losing his strength day by day.
"Not working, I seem to get old even faster."
"You told me you'd never rested once in your whole life. Take the money you've saved and go traveling."
"How could I, when I'd be worried sick about the store?"
"I can do all of it. I'm already handling the orders and everything as it is... Have you had a checkup?"
At words so full of worry, Grandpa turned his eyes elsewhere, looking sheepish.
In the end he never went traveling, and he never got a checkup, either.
The days that had slipped past gathered and gathered, and then the phone rang.
"This is Han Ji-hoo, isn't it?"
The moment he heard the voice on the other end, he knew it was nothing good. He hurried to the hospital.
"I think you should prepare yourself."
Grandpa lay across the hospital bed, terribly thin beside the man Ji-hoo had first met, the wrinkles carved deep.
If I'd known it would come to this... I should have spent more time with him.
When Ji-hoo took that withered, skeletal hand, Grandpa opened his closed eyes the way a man lifts a heavy door.
"Ji-hoo."
"Yes, Grandpa."
"Sell the convenience store. Go to university."
"......"
The words were squeezed out with the last of his strength. They were not words spoken lightly.
Ji-hoo thought for a long while, then asked, quiet.
"...What do you mean?"
"Go somewhere. Meet people."
"......"
He could not answer easily. Even looking through the records of his days as Blow, pages he must have read thousands of times, the only ones who had ever given him their hearts were his parents from that other world, and Grandpa.
...Won't I only end up hurting people?
Caught in that thought, he hesitated, unable to answer. Grandpa, stroking his face as if to keep it, forced the words on.
"If it's a waste to sell the store, hire more kids if you have to... but go to university. Don't end up like me."
"...You have me."
Those were the last words he ever heard from the only adult he had met. Perhaps that was why they branded themselves into his chest, as if by magic.
There was no funeral. That had been Grandpa's wish. No other ties remained.
Until the body became ash, Ji-hoo did not shed a single tear. He only held the sight in his eyes.
On the way out he sold the convenience store at once, enlisted, and began to study. By good fortune he met a warm-hearted junior from a prestigious university—the man who had come into the unit right after him—and that junior taught him every basic he needed for the entrance exam. Grateful beyond what he could say, Ji-hoo bought him a car when he was discharged. The younger man waved it off, insisting he had only helped because he was worried and would not take it. Ji-hoo pressed the keys into his hand anyway and left. It was the least sincerity he knew how to offer.
Back in the world, he juggled odd jobs and spent one more year preparing for the national college entrance exam. In the end he was accepted to a perfectly respectable university, the sort no one would call a bad outcome.
The moment he saw the letter of acceptance, Ji-hoo clenched his fist. He printed it at once and went to the columbarium.
Flowers, framed photographs, letters. Beside niches crowded with so many things, Grandpa's held only an urn bearing his name, and a single photograph the two of them had taken, sitting there alone.
Ji-hoo held the letter up to the glass, so the man whose eyes had grown dim could see it clearly.
"...Is this enough now?"
He said it like a grumble, and the paper drooped weakly from his hand.
And then it seemed he could see it, right before his eyes—that faint smile Grandpa had sometimes given him, there and not quite there.
Plip. Plip—
Something that had hardened in his chest broke and ran, and the tears that had refused to come at the funeral fell to the floor.
"I'll come again."
He lingered there a long while. Only when he had barely gathered himself did he step outside.
Under a sky fierce and clear, without a single cloud, a white sphere the size of his own body was floating.
Ji-hoo's hands shook as he understood, in an instant, what it was. His first meeting with the spirit in nearly twenty-two years.
Huh?
As he stood there in a daze, the spirit opened its mouth once more.
And then Ji-hoo was swallowed.