What Is Needed for Recovery
Sorcery is a truly strange discipline. It is the oldest power known to humanity, yet the least systematized. Despite being the most widely practiced force in history, it remains the most incomprehensible. Always… Perhaps this mysterious art, possibly employed since the dawn of mankind, possesses far too few records to be called a proper study, yet it is far too intimate with human existence to be dismissed as anything else. Like a mirage blooming in the desert, its substance clearly exists somewhere, yet it cannot be grasped. Approach it, and it scatters like haze, dissolving into light at the tips of one’s fingers.
One thing, however, is certain: this peculiar discipline has fascinated countless people. It wears the face of good, the face of evil, the most familiar of faces, and hides itself more secretly than anything under the name of esoteric teachings. It bewitches and bewitches again, walking hand in hand with humanity across the ages. That was why Jinseong had become enamored with sorcery. Perhaps sorcery itself was the very purpose that defined him, the sum total of his life.
The world of magic he had fallen into—beginning with a curse he stumbled upon on the internet during middle school while enduring relentless bullying—had been more captivating and beautiful to him than anything else in existence. The spell involved carving vegetables into a crude human-shaped doll, smearing it with the target’s blood, and performing a simple ritual. Even calling what he had seen online a “curse” felt too generous; it was far too crude and unsystematized to deserve the name sorcery.
Most people laughed it off as a ghost story hastily invented by someone who enjoyed scary tales, thrown together in thirty minutes. But Jinseong, worn down by the bullying, decided to try it anyway. He summoned the courage to punch the ringleader, bursting his nose, and smeared the blood on the doll. His first act of sorcery, performed with such hard-won bravery, naturally failed.
No matter how mysterious the discipline, a spell thrown together on a whim was unlikely to work. As many had suspected, it was indeed a fake curse fabricated by one person. This counterfeit magic—advertised as “a spell to screw over someone you hate”—possessed no real power and left Jinseong only with bitter frustration.
Yet that very frustration called something forth in him. For the first time in a long while—perhaps the first time in his life—he had found the courage to throw a punch. He had struck hard enough to fracture the bully’s nose. In exchange, he received a savage beating that left his entire body covered in deep bruises and a hairline fracture in his left leg.
After paying such a heavy price, discovering the sorcery had been fake was unacceptable. Following the incident, Jinseong began scouring the internet for anything labeled as sorcery. Necromancy practiced for fun, every sinister Japanese curse he could find, ghost stories involving shamanism, childish “letter spells”—countless tales flooded his mind.
It was around then that Jinseong learned to wield genuine curse magic. Among the urban legends, a rare few were real, and his broadened eye could now distinguish them. True sorcery resembled the fake versions but differed in crucial ways. The rituals were indeed performed, yet they were absurdly simple. No vegetable dolls or straw effigies were required—a store-bought human-shaped figure sufficed. Neither the target’s blood nor the caster’s was necessary.
Fifty thousand won. With nothing more than that and minimal effort, Jinseong could cast the spell. He bought a doll, some ink, and well-prepared pork. That was all. The doll, its body wrapped in pork, was abandoned deep in the mountains to rot alone. Strangely, as the meat decayed and turned black, no insects approached. Not a single maggot appeared where they should have swarmed. Flies sensed the stench but could not land, circling the spot like satellites.
Those flies became like hungry ghosts, drawn to the scent yet unable to touch the meat itself. In the end, unable to abandon their obsession, they fell to the ground one by one, starved. The fallen flies piled into a black mound, forming a shape around the rotting doll. Though too distorted to be called a perfect circle, the connected, angle-less black figure became a fence that enclosed the effigy. Protected within that boundary, the doll continued turning pitch black.
When every part except the sorcery inscription had become completely black, when only the inscribed portion retained a reddish, blood-like hue and formed a bizarre shape, the curse activated.
First, the ringleader of the bullying suffered an accident, tumbling down the stairs. It was a common childhood mishap, and he escaped serious injury. Yet a hairline fracture appeared in his leg, requiring hospitalization. Then, inexplicably, a severe infection developed at the site.
The boy who had led his gang in viciously tormenting others proved extraordinarily sensitive to his own pain. His parents, unable to endure his tantrums, arranged for pain-nullifying magic and strong analgesics. But that kindness became poison. Unable to feel pain, he never noticed the infection. Since it began as a simple injury, he never bothered to examine the area closely. The infection hid its symptoms until it grew as serious as cancer. In the end, he underwent major surgery: a scalpel cut into his leg to scrape the infection directly from the bone. The aftereffects of such an operation at a young age were inevitable. It was perfect karmic retribution.
Second, the ringleader had accomplices—three boys and one girl. They had tormented Jinseong when he was already depressed from losing his parents at a young age. Their bullying had been so insidious and violent that his resentment was only natural.
The boys contracted food poisoning. After eating school lunch, only those three in the entire school showed symptoms and were rushed away. At the hospital they writhed in agony. When their stomachs rebelled and they vomited, what emerged were grotesque creatures—spiders and earthworms. They suffered terribly. Constantly hungry yet unable to eat real food, they endured on intravenous nutrients until the illness passed. The memory of the pests they had expelled haunted them, eventually causing eating disorders. This, too, was karmic retribution.
Third, tormenting the mind can be more devastating than tormenting the body. The curse visited the girl with equal fairness. It arrived under the name of hormonal imbalance and shattered her social relationships. Excessive testosterone caused facial hair to grow, broadened her shoulders, and covered her face in acne. Thick, curly hair sprouted on her legs. Eventually the children mocked her as “the hairy one.” The power of hormones granted her superior physical ability, but for a girl who preferred leading others in malicious acts rather than achieving anything meaningful, it was the most horrific outcome imaginable.
Thus every action exacted its due price, returning as retribution in the form of a blade named curse.
And finally, Jinseong paid for his sorcery by having half his stomach removed. He had not known that such a price was required, especially for curse magic, where both the cost and the backlash had to be carefully considered. It was a tragedy born of ignorance. Yet even after half his stomach suddenly began to rot, even after the surgery that cut it away, Jinseong could not break free from sorcery’s allure. Perhaps the very fact that he had lost half his stomach bound him to it even more tightly.
At first glance, the price of sorcery resembled gambling, which only deepened its hold. To have inflicted such torment on five people with only half a stomach—truly, he was lucky. In poker terms it was a full house; in lottery terms, second prize. Especially since he had cast the curse without much thought yet paid so little, no words fit except that he had been extraordinarily fortunate. Even simple curses often backfired and killed the caster. The usual price was several times the power of the spell performed.
Luck followed him again. When such incidents occurred, investigations naturally looked for supernatural retaliation. Five children injured, all connected to Jinseong—he naturally became the prime suspect. But the sorcery he had found and used left no traces. Unlike other curses that left deep residual echoes, this one caused only minor injuries and trauma before most evidence vanished. The low-ranking civil servant handling the case, lacking both skill and motivation, failed to detect anything and closed it as coincidence.
What happened to the ringleader was rare but not unheard of. What happened to the girl, while unusual, had precedents. After all, many female Olympic athletes exhibited high testosterone. As for the boys’ hospitalization, rumors spread that the known delinquents—already involved with alcohol, cigarettes, and even glue—must have taken drugs or eaten something strange. Later, when Jinseong himself was hospitalized, whispers suggested a curse, but the price he paid seemed far too small compared to their suffering. Combined with the enormous stress he had endured from constant bullying, the matter was concluded as stress-induced illness.
He had been lucky in every respect. It was almost as if sorcery itself were trying to draw him in.
Those who form a connection with sorcery must all be like this. No, all karma in this world approaches and connects exactly like fate. That is why it is called a vocation.