#088
The shaman stared intently at her great-grandchild. Even after observing for a long time, she couldn’t see a clear future for this promising talent. This was because while accidents and disasters were clear, achievements and hopes were not concrete.
Moreover, her grandchildren, the three siblings of the BK Group, all had various flaws. They either pursued only honor and power, were too selfish, or didn’t particularly care about anyone.
“Do you still want to do it even though you might die?”
“I might not die, right?”
“Even if it’s not just you getting hurt, but the whole family falling apart?”
“If a company can collapse from just this, wouldn’t it be better to close the business quickly?”
“…”
“Now, please tell me how to do it.”
Gyo-ha was an especially difficult child among the three grandchildren. It wasn’t easy to understand a seven-year-old who, when asked what they wanted, replied “fateful love.” Not only that, but he was also fearless to a fault.
Having strong energy is positive only to a certain degree; most people would wither away standing next to him. To put it metaphorically, he was like a walking sun. He seemed fine from afar, but get too close, and you’d burn to death. The fact that not a single evil spirit had ever been attracted to him, despite the shaman’s keen eyes, was proof of this.
In a way, Sung-ha hitting the back of Gyo-ha’s head when they were young was a form of self-defense. Jung-hye, being the oldest sister with a significant age gap, was fine, but Sung-ha, who was closer in age, instinctively avoided Gyo-ha. He sensed that his brother could burn him to death if he wanted to.
The shaman, fearing that one of her grandchildren might die, tried to send Sung-ha abroad. She was unnecessarily harsh and spoke harshly to him. But it was Gyo-ha who suddenly left for overseas. It wasn’t even forced. Gyo-ha left without a second thought.
Until then, the shaman thought it was for the best. With Gyo-ha gone, Sung-ha would cause less trouble, and the BK Group’s business expansion went more smoothly than before Gyo-ha’s departure.
However, life doesn’t always go as planned. Gyo-ha returned to the country covered in all sorts of magical devices. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that these weren’t even from America. One was over 20 years old, while others seemed to have been acquired very recently.
She had always suspected that this boy would do something big someday, but this was too much. The shaman avoided the innocent gaze asking if she had any solutions. Thinking about it again, she couldn’t tell if he was an enemy or her grandchild… She really couldn’t figure it out.
“Who’s this person you need to save? Bring him here first.”
“…”
“I need to see with my own eyes to know the condition…”
“Grandmother. Please don’t be surprised.”
Hwi-kyung, standing quietly next to Gyo-ha, awkwardly rubbed his cheek.
“That person is right next to me now.”
“What?”
“But it seems only I can see him.”
“That person is only visible to my eyes. Only I can see him…” What kind of ballad lyrics situation is this? Even 90s music video content would have been more plausible than this.
In front of the dumbfounded shaman, the shameless Gyo-ha, and the bewildered Hwi-kyung standing behind, the system window flickered as if showing off its existence.
* * *
If you don’t eat or drink but don’t feel hunger or thirst, can you call that being alive?
Hwi-kyung hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for over ten days. Apart from not needing to, there was nothing he could properly eat. He was gradually losing his physical force.
Things he could hold were disappearing, and sometimes he would pass through closed doors. If he tried to grab something forcefully, he could somehow manage, but it felt like all his energy was drained afterward.
Of course, Gyo-ha was an exception to all of this. Gyo-ha was the only one Hwi-kyung could properly touch and converse with. Moreover, because the system window’s text would restore when he moved too far from Gyo-ha, he couldn’t separate from him.
Unfortunately, if they went back to the beginning, they would have to start everything over from Gyo-ha’s return to the country. Using this as an excuse, the two stayed together all day. To others, it would look like Gyo-ha was alone, but Hwi-kyung was always by his side.
“Aren’t you bored?”
“I told you not to talk to me outside. It looks weird to others.”
“What’s wrong with looking weird to others?”
“If you don’t want to look like you’re talking to thin air, be quiet.”
While Gyo-ha was concerned about Hwi-kyung’s physical condition, he couldn’t hide his curiosity. When he suggested testing various things and started touching different parts of Hwi-kyung’s body, even Hwi-kyung was really troubled. He could feel everything Gyo-ha touched.
Even when told not to touch, Gyo-ha would make up all sorts of reasons to keep touching Hwi-kyung. When he slipped his hand under Hwi-kyung’s clothes to test if he could remove them, Hwi-kyung reflexively kicked Gyo-ha.
At least at that moment, it was fortunate that he could exert physical force on Gyo-ha. Although Gyo-ha whined about being hurt, he didn’t give up and clung to Hwi-kyung. Clearly, it was Hwi-kyung who had become some formless entity clinging to Gyo-ha, but Gyo-ha seemed more like an evil spirit.
Thanks to this, Hwi-kyung didn’t have much time to be bored. The two mostly stayed inside the officetel, and outings like today were rare. Hwi-kyung watched all the dramas he couldn’t see properly while working. He began to understand why Gyo-ha liked media so much.
It felt strange to have leisure and rest time after so long. Even before meeting Gyo-ha, he had been lying down doing nothing, but Hwi-kyung didn’t know how to rest, so he really just stayed still. It was ten days of being no different from a corpse, just not in a coffin.
You can ■ into a new ■■ as much as you want.
Your wish is ‘to get a good ■■’.
Continue to fulfill the ■■ you have achieved.
Whenever Hwi-kyung had some mental space, the system window consistently showed its presence. Although there were still many broken characters, it wasn’t to the extent that he couldn’t understand what it was saying.
It was surprising how shameless it was, still recommending employment after putting a person in this state. Judging by the message to continue fulfilling the wishes achieved, it seemed the system window wanted Hwi-kyung to work without rest.
But Hwi-kyung had no intention of searching for a new job. First of all, he couldn’t enter a workplace in this state, and for now, he didn’t want to do anything. Humans weren’t machines that could operate 24 hours a day. If they could be restarted just by applying some lubricant, movements like the Luddites wouldn’t have happened.
So Hwi-kyung rested as he pleased. As long as Gyo-ha was beside him, he didn’t return to the starting point. Even when the system window continuously displayed the “Insufficient Proper Conditions” window, he felt no particular emotion seeing it.
Wandering outside wasn’t as bad as expected either. Having no physical form meant not being affected by others’ gazes. Hwi-kyung, who had always focused on what was visible, relaxed quite comfortably when he no longer received others’ gazes. It was the first time Gyo-ha saw Hwi-kyung sitting in a posture bad for his spine.
Rather, Hwi-kyung was now anxious about something else. It was because Gyo-ha’s goal had become the eradication of the system window.
“Mr. Lee Gyo-ha.”
“Yes.”
“Are you really going to do it?”
“Do what?”
“Getting rid of the system window.”
Thinking of Ok-ja, they had no choice but to accept Gyo-ha’s help. Moving to the fifteenth iteration, Ok-ja had forgotten about Gyo-ha. In this situation, there was a limit to how much Gyo-ha could help Ok-ja unilaterally.
Even pretending to be an insurance company and changing Ok-ja’s hospital room to a private one was incredibly difficult. Without Hwi-kyung, Ok-ja was suspicious of everything. When she questioned whether they were pretending to be an insurance company only to bill her later, she seemed like a completely different person.
So no matter how dangerous it became for Gyo-ha, Hwi-kyung had to ask for his help. If no one else, he had to protect his grandmother.
But as time passed, his hesitation grew. What if Gyo-ha really died trying to save him? Unfortunately, Hwi-kyung couldn’t even follow Gyo-ha in death. If something happened to Gyo-ha because of him, he would have to watch it happen in this state.
“Are you worried about me?”
“Of course.”
“It feels nice to be worried about.”
“…”
“I’ll be fine, really. It’s better to try something when there’s a way, rather than not doing anything, right?”
The shaman taught Gyo-ha basic exorcism techniques. She said it was usually used for dispelling minor spirits and might not affect stronger entities, but Gyo-ha didn’t pay attention to such warnings.
“Honestly, I feel sorry for you.”
“About what?”
“Even though I didn’t know it, you kept regressing because of me.”
“But you didn’t want to regress either, right?”
“And now you have to take risks because of me.”
“It’s worth the risk.”
“What makes it worth it?”
“Because I like you.”
“…”
“Taking risks for someone you like is worthwhile. At least for me.”
The “method” the shaman taught involved the rescuer invading the subconscious of the rescue target and removing what had settled there first. It sounded simple and crude just hearing about it. The problem was that invading someone’s subconscious was impossible unless they were very close.
If it were easy, the shaman would have directly dealt with the strange thing that attached to Ji-ae. If only there weren’t issues like accidentally driving someone mad or the person entering falling into a coma… If only there weren’t such problems.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
