#068
With hands on hips, it seemed they had come to complain about the noise again today. It appeared that the usually quiet Hwi-kyung’s small commotion from arguing with Gyo-ha since morning had bothered them.
The neighbor was momentarily speechless upon seeing Gyo-ha open the door. While Hwi-kyung was a fairly tall adult male, Gyo-ha was 9cm taller than him. Gyo-ha nonchalantly looked down at Hwi-kyung’s neighbor.
“What’s the matter?”
“There’s been a racket since morning.”
“…I don’t think there was much noise.”
“Do you know how thin these walls are? We can hear almost everything.”
“……”
“Do you know how sensitive my child is?”
If the child is sensitive, shouldn’t they be taught to be more resilient? How will they survive in this harsh world…? Gyo-ha decided to drive away the next-door neighbor before Hwi-kyung could rush out to ask what was going on.
“So the problem is that the walls are thin and don’t block sound?”
Hwi-kyung might think he’s crazy, but Gyo-ha decided to buy the villa to resolve the neighbor conflict. Unless redevelopment was approved, they couldn’t demolish and rebuild the building, but they could at least reinforce the wall thickness.
“What the… Never mind, just call the young man next door. I’ll get an apology from him.”
“Apples are for Snow White.”
“What?”
“The young man next door is moving out today.”
“What did you say?”
“I said he’s moving out.”
With those final words, Gyo-ha slammed the front door shut. It was indeed the right decision to come early in the morning to whisk Hwi-kyung away.
“Who was that?”
Hwi-kyung poked his head out of the room, stuffing essentials into an old suitcase. Gyo-ha just shrugged as if nothing had happened.
“They said a delivery person got the wrong apartment number.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Shall we go if you’re all packed?”
Although Hwi-kyung had finished packing his suitcase, he hesitated to leave. Gyo-ha, regardless of Hwi-kyung’s hesitation, snatched the suitcase and strode towards the front door.
Thus, an acceptance necklace… no, an officetel access card was placed in Hwi-kyung’s hand.
“The color is different from the one I received before.”
“Ah, that was a temporary access card.”
“…And this one?”
“It’s a card for household members.”
Lee Gyo-ha seemed to have made up his mind. He had even given Hwi-kyung a card that was only issued to household members. Unlike Hwi-kyung, who was worried about the deposit and remaining monthly rent, Gyo-ha was elated at the thought of finally living with Hwi-kyung.
“But where are we going now? This isn’t even the direction of the officetel.”
“To get our compatibility checked.”
“What?”
“To meet a shaman.”
“Why on earth?”
For once, the word “why” came from Hwi-kyung’s mouth instead of Gyo-ha’s. Hwi-kyung stared at Gyo-ha with his mouth slightly open, too dumbfounded.
Regardless, Gyo-ha was smoothly merging onto the highway like a best driver. The toll gate chime sounded cheerful, as if announcing their departure from Seoul.
“There’s something I want to confirm.”
Hwi-kyung, who had never even met a psychological counselor, was unlikely to have sought out a proper shaman. Unlike Gyo-ha, wasn’t he someone who found novels about regressors uninteresting and quit reading them?
Gyo-ha decided to take Hwi-kyung on a tour of shamans. To find the other pieces of the scattered jigsaw puzzle, they had no choice but to hit the road themselves.
* * *
“Get out!”
Salt and red beans flew at their backs. Gyo-ha wondered if the salt the shaman was angrily throwing was sea salt or table salt.
But unlike Gyo-ha, who was curious about the type of salt, Hwi-kyung’s complexion worsened by the minute due to the shaman’s cold treatment. This was the third time they were being thrown out, so he couldn’t just laugh it off.
The two’s tour of shamans started like child’s play. The first shaman they visited casually let Hwi-kyung into the shrine, and mesmerized by Gyo-ha’s promise of ample payment, even wrote them a talisman.
The second shaman was similar. Saying that Hwi-kyung’s fate was harsh, the shaman insisted they needed to perform a gut (shamanistic ritual) immediately. But even to Hwi-kyung, who had little interest in shamanism, this shaman seemed like a mere con artist.
When they visited the third shaman after lunch, the shaman was terrified upon seeing Hwi-kyung and bowed. Then, surprisingly, they gave them money and begged them never to come back.
Thanks to the second shaman, Hwi-kyung thought the third was also a deranged pseudo-shaman. After all, the shamans Hwi-kyung had encountered before hadn’t shown such extreme reactions.
As expected, the fourth shaman calmly read the compatibility between Gyo-ha and Hwi-kyung. Modern shamans were said to be more open-minded, and they didn’t seem to mind reading the compatibility of two men.
However, things went awry with the fifth one. The shaman was terrified upon seeing Gyo-ha and fainted in front of Hwi-kyung. Only after a young girl called the “spirit daughter” called an ambulance could the two reach the last shaman’s house.
The sixth shaman, commonly known as the Plum Blossom Fairy, was renowned for her abilities in the Ilsan area. Rumors said she served a mountain spirit, and her spiritual power was exceptional as she had only recently become a shaman.
As if to prove the rumors about her abilities weren’t false, the shaman was standing in front of the entrance before the two arrived. This was almost prophetic.
However, the Plum Blossom Fairy immediately threw salt and red beans as soon as she saw the two. She practically poured salt on Hwi-kyung in particular. As a result, Hwi-kyung was driven out without even getting to state his birth date, let alone receive a fortune telling.
Gyo-ha brushed off the coarse salt on his suit jacket. Despite being driven out, he wasn’t in a bad mood. This confirmed that there was indeed something attached to Hwi-kyung that even real shamans couldn’t handle.
“They use sea salt.”
“……”
“I guess they use coarse salt, not table salt, to drive away ghosts.”
Unlike Gyo-ha, who was satisfied after identifying the type of salt, Hwi-kyung still looked dumbfounded. They had met six shamans, and half of them had driven him away, so it was understandable to be shocked.
“Why was I driven out?”
“I’m curious about that too, but since they won’t accept us, we can’t ask.”
“Can’t you ask your grandmother?”
“I’d like to, but I can’t get in touch with her.”
What an unhelpful person… Hwi-kyung inwardly criticized Gyo-ha. Then again, Hwi-kyung didn’t have the confidence to face the fortune-teller grandmother again right now. He had fainted upon encountering her at the concert hall, so there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
Gyo-ha clicked his tongue briefly while examining the talisman the first shaman had written. Unlike the second shaman who was obviously a fraud, this 800,000 won talisman felt fake to Gyo-ha, though it wasn’t as blatant.
Not all shamans would be genuine, so the half that had accepted them were likely to be frauds. Gyo-ha separately categorized the contact information of the shamans who had fainted or driven them away in front of Hwi-kyung.
“My grandmother said that something is attached to you.”
“Like a ghost?”
“Something similar, I guess?”
“I’ve never seen anything like ghosts though.”
Hwi-kyung had never experienced sleep paralysis in his life. He wasn’t the type to be scared of ghost stories either. He was quite a realist to believe in superstitions, and even when he first regressed, he thought it was a sci-fi problem. In other words, a scientific approach came first.
He had pondered the physical mechanics of time travel, but he never imagined that he was regressing because something was attached to him. To begin with, Hwi-kyung was a non-believer and didn’t believe in ghosts or gods.
But suddenly, something is attached to him? It was nonsense. Hwi-kyung had even been baptized in the Catholic Church during his military service for the promise of an extra bread ration. He was generally a non-believer, but if a ghost was attached to him, it should have fallen off during his military days. Even if it was in a water bottle, holy water should be effective, right?
“There’s something attached to you besides a ghost. The system window.”
“……”
“Maybe what I said before could be true. That the system window is originally some kind of divine being?”
No matter how much he brushed off, the coarse salt on his body kept coming off endlessly. He felt like a human salt flat. Moreover, his head stung where he had been hit by what seemed to be raw red beans.
Hwi-kyung suspected that Gyo-ha had lost his mind from being beaten with salt and red beans. While it was true that the system window was a strange entity, the speculation that it might be a god or ghost didn’t resonate at all with the realist Hwi-kyung.
“Well, let’s say the system window is a divine being.”
“Okay.”
“Why me specifically?”
That’s the question.
Gyo-ha answered with a blank expression, “I don’t know either?” Hwi-kyung decided that the fourth shaman who had said their compatibility was “very positive” was also a fraud.
