“Right…. He was originally a Taoist, after all. Aside from the First, both the Second and Third were human-born.”
“Princess Chalma of the Lower Realm was also an Immortal who originated as a human.”
“Yeah. Humans really did end up ruling all of the Three Realms.”
“Seems that way.”
Dojin couldn’t tell whether he should feel proud or bitter.
Iri stretched his legs out from the stiff, uncomfortable chair.
“The fact that young students spend an entire day sitting in chairs like this is impressive. They really do put a lot of effort into education…. You get what you work for.”
Didn’t Master feel uneasy about a single race ruling the world?
Then again, in Dojin’s opinion, even if fox yokai or dokkaebi ruled the world, Iri would probably just say, ‘That’s impressive,’ and move on.
For Iri, it didn’t matter who ruled—as long as the world was peaceful.
“The problem is that retrieving curios has become difficult these days. In the past, if someone picked one up by chance, all I had to say was, ‘That’s a curio, so please return it,’ and that was that. Nowadays, I have to erase memories too—it’s a hassle.”
Dojin’s eyes widened.
“This kind of thing happened even back then?”
“It happened from time to time.”
Iri smiled faintly, recalling the distant past.
“Things like the ‘Jo-Horongbak’ and the ‘Golden Ruler’ all ended up in human hands and even remained behind as folktales.”
“Holy shit. Those are both insanely powerful curios.”
The ‘Jo-Horongbak’ was a gourd-shaped curio—put in a single grain of rice, and it would swell into a ladleful. It was a curio the Wia used to stockpile food. The ‘Golden Ruler’ was a golden measuring stick; if you measured the length of a dying life with it, the illness would be cured and the person would revive almost immediately. It was usually rented out to clinics, and even now, it was still there.
Dojin raised his eyebrows as if he couldn’t believe it.
“You’re telling me you just asked for them back and they handed them over? Without using any of your mysterious powers, Master?”
“Yeah.”
“No way. Even if humans were uneducated back then, they still would’ve had greed. There’s no way they’d just give them up. You gave them something in return, right?”
“It’s true. The person who found the ‘Jo-Horongbak’ said they were already satisfied since it had made them wealthy, and returned it. The one who found the ‘Golden Ruler’ said people around them kept praising them as an Immortal, and it was too much pressure, so they returned it.”
“Wow…. If I didn’t know that Immortals can’t lie, I’d never believe that.”
Accustomed to modern greed, Dojin shook his head as if it was impossible to accept.
“It really was an innocent era.”
Having actually lived through that time, Iri couldn’t quite agree with calling it ‘innocent’. It was an era when, if famine struck, humans would eat other humans…….
It was only a few hundred years ago, yet so much had changed.
The human world had always been changing, but the magnitude of change over the past hundred years far surpassed that of thousands of years before it.
Humans who lived barely a hundred years and devoted themselves to education would adapt well to these changes generation after generation—but could Wia, who lived for a thousand years, truly adapt?
Iri believed that this curio recovery incident had also stemmed from the Wia’s inability to adapt.
The Fire Cat probably hadn’t imagined that humans wouldn’t return it. The Fire Cat was 300 years old—three centuries ago, humans would have used it a few times, realized it didn’t belong to them, and returned it.
That said, it wasn’t like the Wia could be educated either. Their ways of life were all different, and uniform education like humans had wouldn’t work on them.
For some reason, Iri felt like incidents like this would only become more frequent in the future, and that worried him.
After waiting a little while, the bell announcing first-year lunchtime rang, followed by a thunderous roar of cheers. Dojin looked out through the hallway window and exclaimed in awe. The sight of students charging down the hall looked like a herd of African buffalo. Iri let out a short laugh.
“Second- and third-years won’t be able to focus on class when they hear that.”
“Yeah. That’s why when I was in second year, our school just unified lunchtime for all grades.”
“Wouldn’t the cafeteria run out of seats?”
“Seats somehow appear. Plus, it was an all-boys school—those guys inhale their lunches like water.”
The sound of rapid footsteps thundered closer, and the door burst open. A tall, bob-haired female student entered with her eyes blazing, immediately bowing deeply to Iri.
“Hello! Immortal Iri! It’s been a long time!”
“Uh…. We saw each other the month before last, didn’t we?”
“Yes! We met on February 1st, Lunar New Year, so it’s been fuck—ah… no. I mean, it’s been a very long time! Have you been well?”
“Yeah…. You’ve been doing well too, right?”
“Yes! Thanks to you, Immortal, I’m in great health!”
At her booming voice, Iri’s delicate eardrums cried out in pain. Dojin, who had carefully locked the door, clicked his tongue.
Everyone in Dojin’s family knew about Iri’s Curio Rental Shop and the existence of the Wia. They also vaguely knew just how extraordinary Immortal Iri was. At first, they thought he was just a powerful shaman and called him ‘Teacher’, but once they learned that the Heaven-and-Earth Divine Spirit people prayed to was actually Iri himself, they started calling him ‘Immortal’.
Dohui was born into a family that already called Iri Immortal, so even as a baby who didn’t know what an Immortal was, she grew up with the word constantly on her lips.
When she was younger, she’d follow her older brother to the rental shop every day after school to play, but fearing that it might stir pointless aspirations in a child with no spiritual sensitivity whatsoever, Iri stopped letting her come around once she reached upper elementary school.
Dohui cried for days out of disappointment, and her parents, worried she might cry herself breathless, even set up video calls with Iri. Whenever that story came up, Dohui would cringe and call it a dark chapter of her life—even though it was only five years ago.
“Hey. Don’t mess with my Master—just hurry up and write this.”
“What is it?”
“A letter. Copy exactly what’s written here. Don’t throw in dumb jokes.”
Frowning, Dohui read Dojin’s letter.
“What is this? Is this handwriting? Is this even Hangul? Did you secretly learn yokai script or something?”
“Shut up and just write it. We don’t have time. Master, we don’t have time, right?”
“It is urgent.”
“I’ll write it right now!”
Dohui grabbed a pretty pink pen she’d prepared.
“Jaeho?”
Tilting her head, Dohui didn’t ask anything else and focused on writing.
Iri found Dohui admirable for not asking about the circumstances. At seventeen, it would’ve been natural for her to boast about knowing someone this special, or that yokai truly existed—but Dohui was a remarkably tight-lipped child.
Still, it’s better to maintain the gag order.
A simple spell was placed on Dojin’s family to prevent them from revealing the existence of the Wia to outsiders. Even drunk or off guard, they might accidentally let something slip, so it was best to keep it active.
Standing beside his sister with arms crossed as if supervising her, Dojin suddenly scowled.
“What’s wrong with your handwriting? Don’t mess around—put some effort into it. We’re being serious here.”
Dohui snapped, lifting her head.
“What are you talking about? I’m writing very seriously. Did you not know your own sister’s handwriting looks like this?”
“That’s your handwriting?”
“Yeah.”
“…….”
Dojin glanced at Iri in a panic. When Iri leaned in to look, Dohui’s handwriting was only slightly better than Dojin’s.
They really were siblings….
“Wh-what should we do, Master?”
“We’ll have to find another way. Dohui, thank you. Go eat your lunch.”
“Wait. As long as the handwriting is pretty, right?”
Dohui shot her hand up. When Iri nodded, her eyes sparkled.
“I’ve got a friend with amazing handwriting. We can just ask her to write it without the name Jaeho. I’ll call her right now.”
“Wouldn’t she have gone to lunch already?”
“She eats bread in the classroom. Ah—she’s probably sleeping. One moment.”
Dohui jumped up and ran out of the science lab. It looked like she was going to fetch her friend. In the meantime, Dojin erased the parts reading [To Jaeho] and [DJ] from the letter, and Iri cast a spell to make the two of them invisible.
“Huh? What is it? What’s going on?”
“Just come for now.”
“The science lab? Huh? It’s open?”
“Hey. Hurry—.”
Dohui flung the science lab door open, briefly looking confused at the empty room before naturally seating her friend. The friend wore glasses and had long bangs. Her name tag read [Oh Mina].
“I’m trying to confess to someone, you know. My handwriting’s trash. Write the letter for me.”
“Dohui. When are you going to fix how fast you fall for people? Who is it this time?”
“That’s a secret. Just hurry and write it.”
“First chocolates and Pepero deliveries, and now ghostwriting letters….”
Her friend sighed as if dumbfounded, but still obediently picked up the pen. It seemed like similar things had happened before. Having unintentionally glimpsed his little sister’s love life, Dojin grimaced in disgust.
“Who did you take after to fall so fast? Your own brother’s been into the same person since he was a kid.”
“…….”
“Your own brother likes that one person so much he’s never even dated, and you’re already acting grown-up at that age.”
“Dojin.”
“What, are you embarrassed again?”
“No, it’s not that…….”
As Dojin looked at him with a sly grin, Iri pointed somewhere.
Behind Mina.
When Dojin focused his gaze there, he could faintly see something.
“Uh…?”
It shimmered like a translucent veil—residual traces of a spell. It wasn’t a perfectly executed spell like the ones Dojin used; it looked more like an amateur’s attempt that had accidentally succeeded, leaving behind a lingering mark.
