Heavenly Business
Even after Taeseong and the political world had been utterly dismantled, time flowed on relentlessly. It had been quite a while since the barrier had come down. In the wake of the destruction, reconstruction had taken root, and the upended nation was slowly filling out with new flesh.
Just as people were finally catching their breath, a new business set its sights on that gap.
Cheonmyeonghoe began quietly around that time.
A gathering to uphold heaven's mandate. At first, it was on the level of a neighborhood lecture series. Heaven had chosen this country. We are the chosen people. They were words that didn't sound half bad. After all, heaven really was reshaping the nation.
Jeong Min-ho first heard the name in his apartment elevator.
It was Kim-ssi. The neighbor who'd tried to offer his passbook at the plaza last time, only for the Transcendent himself to say, "Don't prop me up." He'd returned to daily life after that. But that day, an unfamiliar badge adorned Kim-ssi's chest. A sky-blue circle with rays of light drawn inside.
"Min-ho, you free this weekend? There's a good gathering. Oh, no misunderstanding. It's not like the old stuff. We're not serving Him—we're just studying His will."
Not serving, but studying. The words had changed, but Kim-ssi's eyes were exactly the same as at that plaza.
Jeong Min-ho went himself that weekend. He had to see it to judge whether to pull him out.
The lecture hall was the district office auditorium. No white robes, no altars. Guides in suits, pamphlets as clean as publisher books. The lecturer was calm, like a current affairs panelist.
"Everyone. We are not a religion. He said Himself He's not an object of faith. We respect those words."
A rhetoric that started with negation. Jeong Min-ho found that more frightening.
"We simply ask. Was Taeseong's fall a coincidence? Was the National Assembly's purge a coincidence? It's design. He has a plan. And history has always belonged to those who read that plan first."
A graph appeared on the screen. Plausible arrows linking heaven's broadcasts to events. Like astrology in Excel. Yet the audience was being drawn in. In uncertain times, the promise of a plan was hard to resist.
"The way to join that plan is through the 'Fund for His Will'."
Applause erupted. Jeong Min-ho was one of the few not clapping.
Cheonmyeonghoe grew at a terrifying speed.
Forty branches nationwide within a month of founding. Every lecture packed. They never called the Transcendent a god. They called it His will. Dodging the ban on deification head-on while sucking all its benefits dry.
Even more cunning was that it passed through the Zone of Truth. The lecturers genuinely believed it. "I believe He has a plan" wasn't a lie. The schemers hid in the shadows, letting the implanted sincerity speak. A way to breach lie detectors with brainwashing.
Cha Pil-gu started digging into Cheonmyeonghoe. His old nose caught a familiar scent.
"Hyung, this is weird. A new group with forty branches in a month? Money was already flowing before donations even started."
Looking over Yuna's data, Cha Pil-gu pulled up a lecture video. He paused on one lecturer's face.
"Yuna, doesn't this face look familiar?"
"...Isn't that the panelist from the Taeseong whitewash broadcasts? The one you exposed back in the day."
"Right. That mouth is now selling heaven."
Cha Pil-gu's notebook opened again. Tracing the venue rental payments led to a familiar name. A Myeongjin Research subsidiary. The shadow from twenty years ago, the conduit the chairman had named in court, stood behind the sky-blue badges.
"These bastards... they've just changed stages."
Cheonmyeonghoe dipped its toes into politics too. Fielding "candidates aligned with His will" in the upcoming by-elections. The candidate's name was clean. No ties in ledgers or lists. The shadows raised fresh, spotless names in place of their dirty ones. Puppets who truly believed, safe even in the Zone of Truth.
When Han Ga-ram pointed out Cheonmyeonghoe's political meddling in the National Assembly, the counterattack began. Banners went up in her district. "Han Ga-ram defies heaven's will." Cheonmyeonghoe members held rallies outside her office. The identity of that business card from days ago revealed itself. Failed recruitment led to branding.
Standing before the banner, Han Ga-ram said to her aide,
"This is clever. It's not attacking Him—it's hijacking Him. Stealing His name to wield their own blade."
She recalled the convenience store clerk's words. Keep that card. Don't throw it away. She sent the card to Cha Pil-gu. As proof of the recruitment attempt. Another puzzle piece stacked in the old journalist's notebook.
The Kim household started crumbling after just a month.
The deposit money was gone. A secret 120 million won to the Fund for His Will, without his wife's knowledge. Promised tenfold repayment when the new era dawned.
When the Jeong Min-ho couple rushed over, Kim-ssi's wife was packing. Kim-ssi didn't waver even then.
"You'll understand eventually, even if not now. When the new era comes."
"Honey, that's our kids' college money!"
"That's why it's going to something better. A seat in the new era over tuition in the old one..."
Jeong Min-ho grabbed Kim-ssi's collar, then let go. That night, he met him alone. Hyung, why? Kim-ssi's answer shut him up.
"Min-ho. Know what I've been my whole life? Nothing. At the company, at home. But in Cheonmyeonghoe, I'm chosen. The lecturer calls my name. Calls me brother. There, I'm... somebody."
It wasn't logic. It was loneliness. And loneliness couldn't be filled with logic.
That night, Jeong Min-ho stopped by the convenience store, bought two canned coffees, and stood there a while.
"Clerk. When someone's lonely and falls into weird stuff... how do you pull them out? Logic didn't work."
"If they didn't fall in through logic, you can't pull them out with it."
"Then?"
"If there's a place that treats them more like a person than that one, they'll come out. Before Cheonmyeonghoe, where was that hyung somebody?"
Jeong Min-ho thought. Kim-ssi. Best in the neighborhood at tending the flower beds. Closest to the security guard, ten years as block captain.
"...In the neighborhood. Here, he was pretty decent."
"Then that's the place. The one to bring him back to."
The next day, Jeong Min-ho started small. He proposed flower bed maintenance volunteering to the management office, with a condition. Kim-ssi knows it best—let's ask him to lead. Kim-ssi was lukewarm but came down when he saw people fumbling in the beds that weekend. Not like that, he said, slipping on gloves.
For two hours touching soil, Kim-ssi didn't mention Cheonmyeonghoe once. No pulling—just reminding him of his old spot. It wouldn't happen overnight. But the dirtied gloves were a start.
Kim Jeongsang saw it all.
He knew Cheonmyeonghoe's architects. Those faces from the nameless back rooms. When they couldn't escape the light, they decided to sell it.
He saw their calculations too. The moment he declared "Cheonmyeonghoe is fake," they'd counter: Look, He acknowledges us. Denial or affirmation, both became ads. Silence let the impostors grow; stepping in lent them authority.
"Doing business in my name."
He set down the canned coffee. No anger. But this game wouldn't end by hanging people and dousing flames. Crush faith-sellers with force, and they grew stronger. It only made martyrs.
Cha Pil-gu found the silence odd too. Heaven had shone half a light on Taeseong; on Cheonmyeonghoe, not a word. Even with his name stolen. When Yuna fretted, the old journalist shook his head.
"It's not that he can't see. He's waiting. That guy's never been silent in vain. Silence always has a reason. When this silence's reason unfolds... Cheonmyeonghoe will too."
Kim Jeongsang knew that reason.
A trap baited with faith couldn't be broken with greater faith. It would only enlarge the trap. Its sole weakness lay inside. The mouths reading scripts. If one regained conscience, the trap crumbled from within. Things that became martyrs under his hand turned frauds under human tongues.
So he waited. But not idly. Moments of awakening conscience needed protection. He'd seen how shadows handled defectors—in Seo Ha-jin's alley.
The key to unlocking this trap was elsewhere. And that key was now walking out on its own feet.
The key's name was the lecturer himself.
The ex-panelist exposed for defending Taeseong. Three months as Cheonmyeonghoe's star lecturer. At first, he thought it was just script-reading work. Good pay. But it grew stranger. He dimly grasped his script-handlers' identities. More than that—the eyes he met after every lecture gnawed at him.
Eyes seeing a savior. He read others' scripts, but those eyes were real. And those real eyes had drained deposits, abandoned families. Because of his mouth.
That night, he resolved. He gathered three months of scripts. Confirmed the half-deleted author info in the files. Reread Han Bong-su's interview. Witness. He rolled the word on his tongue. Not a puppet—a person.
Resolution needed one more scene, really.
After last week's lecture. A middle-aged man approached for an autograph. Signing the pamphlet, the man teared up. Thanks to you, sir, my life has meaning for the first time. I gave the deposit happily. Sorry to my kids, but the new era will repay us all.
That sky-blue-badged man's face haunted his sleep since. Sorry to my kids, but. The line wouldn't leave his head. One line from his script had stripped some family's tuition. Their table. Their decade.
He stood before the mirror. The mouth that defended Taeseong. Sold heaven. Read others' scripts his whole life.
"...Time to speak my own words, just once."
He searched Cha Pil-gu's newsroom address. He'd go early tomorrow morning.
One thing he didn't know.
From the moment he touched the script files, the company's security logged it. And that log had already reached the nameless back room.
Midnight. A black sedan stopped silently before his officetel.
Two men got out. No entry records. Same ones from Seo Ha-jin's alley.
At that hour, the lecturer was stuffing the script envelope into his bag at his desk. His hand trembled on the envelope. But for the first time in ten years, he felt human.
Same hour. Kim Jeongsang paused while stocking shelves at the convenience store.
His gaze turned to an officetel across the city. Precisely, to the two men before one elevator.
"Knew it."
They pressed the elevator button.
The floor indicator began rising.