Does he simply dislike all Purifiers? A few days ago, during the conversation with the Elders in the recovery room, Sim Seowoo had thought everything had been settled — and yet Cheon Yijae still seemed to be rejecting that conclusion.
Just then, Do Seonhwa came rushing toward them from behind, out of breath.
“Sojunim! I told you, you can’t just barge into the training room like that — what on earth are you doing, interfering with the Guiin like this……!”
The look of distress on her face told him that Cheon Yijae had likely brushed off the objections of everyone around him and forced his way into the training room. She seemed to have been stomping her feet outside before finally following him in.
Cheon Yijae answered in a blasé tone.
“Interfering? The word doesn’t even apply unless there was purification happening in the first place. I’m simply advising this person that they don’t seem to have the talent, so they should go find something more suited to them.”
“There’s no way the Guiin lacks talent!”
“And yet they can’t even erase a curse of this caliber, and have been struggling with it for days? The last time was clearly just a fluke. It’s a stretch to call talent what amounts to purifying twice — Heun has a reputation to uphold, after all. I’m sure the Purifiers over there would agree.”
Cheon Yijae shot a glance toward the Purifiers, and Do Seonhwa made a bewildered face. Not having heard the prior exchange, she could only be confused — but on the other hand, the faces of the Purifiers had gone white as a sheet.
Only now could they piece the situation back together.
“Guiin? Wait — is that person, by any chance, from Do Seonhwa’s group?”
“If that’s the case……”
The minds that had seized up the moment the unexpected Sojunim had appeared now churned rapidly. A Purifier personally taught by an Elder. A being that Do Seonhwa addressed with honorifics and tended to carefully. And now, standing right beside them — even the Sojunim.
The Purifier at the very front stammered, mouth flapping open and shut, before arriving at a shocking conclusion.
“……Sojunim’s…… dedicated…… Purifier……?”
The words fell out in pieces, awkwardly. As though they had spoken an impossible combination of words, the Purifiers exchanged bewildered looks with one another before letting out a collective sigh.
“Oh my……”
“Good heavens……”
Sim Seowoo watched with curiosity as the Purifiers’ atmosphere shifted in an instant. They even threw looks his way that were almost pitying — as though they were looking at the most uncomfortable person in the world.
“To think they’d try to attach a Purifier to the Sojunim based on a little talent shown by an ordinary person who knows nothing……”
Even the content of their whispers had shifted in his direction. As though apologizing for the misunderstanding they had harbored earlier, some even dipped their heads slightly.
What kind of existence is the Sojunim within Heun, exactly?
Sim Seowoo fixed a curious gaze on the organization’s successor. Being this close, he could examine his face in finer detail.
Cheon Yijae, seen for the first time in about five days, seemed somehow sharper than before. Whether he had lost weight, his jawline had grown even more defined, and his overall demeanor had been honed to a finer edge.
He was summoned by the Vice-Leader and left — I wonder if that meeting wasn’t particularly pleasant. As Sim Seowoo studied his face piece by piece, Cheon Yijae happened to turn his head at that very moment, and their eyes met dead on.
“……!”
Their noses had nearly touched.
Sim Seowoo hadn’t expected them to be this close, and he pulled back slightly, startled — but Cheon Yijae reacted far more dramatically. His whole body jolted as though he had been shocked, and he even stumbled back a full step, which left Sim Seowoo feeling oddly unsettled instead.
No, what — there’s no need to recoil like that.
On one hand it was absurd, but on the other, his gaze snagged on Cheon Yijae’s widened eyes. The existence that had been so languid, almost nonchalant, even while fighting the malevolent spirit — that same person was now startled enough to widen his eyes over nearly brushing against him. It was a little unexpected.
Staring into those re-colored eyes, Cheon Yijae sharply turned his head away. Covering his lower face with one large hand, he shifted to the side — and at that moment, Do Seonhwa arrived close by.
“I’m so sorry, Guiin. You must have been in the middle of concentrating……”
“It’s fine. I was actually about to take a break anyway.”
Sim Seowoo answered evenly. After all, purification hadn’t been working for hours now, so the situation was genuinely one where Cheon Yijae’s claim of interference was a bit of a stretch. On top of that, the Purifiers’ whispering had already broken his concentration long before.
Also, having sat in one position for a long stretch of time, his body ached, and he needed to stretch every few hours. To prove to Do Seonhwa — who was apologizing far more profusely than necessary — that he truly did intend to rest, Sim Seowoo set down the brush and took off his gloves.
“There’s no need to keep apologizing, since I’ll just rest for a bit and then continue……”
But the very moment he placed the gloves on the desk, Cheon Yijae’s expression scrunched up.
“What’s there to rest and continue for. If it’s been like this for days already, it’s clearly not going to work — why not just give up?”
He had been well-behaved while his hand covered his mouth, but the moment he moved it away, the mocking remarks poured out in a torrent. As though the brief silence had been spent gathering the energy to pick a fight, the sharp taunting didn’t stop there — he even reached out and snatched up the old wooden box.
At the sight of what looked like he was about to throw away the Elder’s assignment, Do Seonhwa gasped in shock, and Sim Seowoo rose to his feet.
“Have you lost your mind? Did everyone calling you a prodigy and praising you go to your head? All of that is nothing but a scheme to attach a Purifier to me — so snap out of it and leave. That side has no talent whatsoever, so the faster you give up and get out——”
“That — you’re not supposed to touch it with bare hands.”
Cheon Yijae was mocking him, but Sim Seowoo’s gaze was fixed solely on his hand. From the moment Cheon Yijae had touched the box, a dark, murky mist had begun seeping out through the gaps of the lid.
On top of that, the tips of Cheon Yijae’s fingers around the box were blackening, as though rotting — and Sim Seowoo quickly extended his hand.
“It might hurt you, so be care——”
His first thought was to get him to drop it, and so he moved — but the moment his hand made contact, Cheon Yijae flinched, jerking his arm to the side. Startled by the sudden entanglement of their fingers, he moved sharply.
“Don’t touch me.”
But that reaction had been so abrupt that the wooden box slipped and fell. The unexpected drop caused the old latch to click open, and the lid flew wide.
WHOOSH!
The wooden box that the Elder had warned him absolutely never to open burst open, and something pitch black shot out like a bullet. That lumpy, misshapen form flew directly toward Sim Seowoo.
A single, bloodshot eye, enormous and embedded into it — it was unmistakably a malevolent spirit.
Is it retaliating against me because I kept touching the box this whole time? A grudge over the noise? Sim Seowoo watched in a daze as the fist-sized malevolent spirit expanded its body in an instant — and then
CRUNCH!
He witnessed it get crushed and burst apart in one go. The red malevolent spirit that came from Cheon Yijae’s outstretched hand — the one categorized as a Jaegui — swallowed it whole in a single motion, and the sound that accompanied it was chillingly reverberant. Not only that, but the Jaegui even chewed through and shredded more than half of the wooden box itself.
Thud, thud……
The sound of the debris hitting the ground rang through the space with an unsettling weight. It had all happened in the blink of an eye. A malevolent spirit had burst from the cursed wooden box, Cheon Yijae had dealt with it — and not just dealt with it, but destroyed even the source. All before the malevolent spirit could reach Sim Seowoo.
“Huh……”
“I, in here, a Jaegui……”
The Purifiers inhaled sharply in shock. It was a brutal method. The atmosphere in the room was too charged with Cheon Yijae’s presence for anyone to dare open their mouth in protest at the Sojunim’s use of the fearsome Jaegui in a space that was supposed to be kept clean.
Cheon Yijae irritably ran his fingers through his hair, teeth gritting as he muttered.
“Are you out of your mind? Why would you shove your hand out in a situation like that? A curse like that can barely do anything to me anyway — don’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
Even if the intent had been to stop him, reaching toward a cursed object with bare hands was dangerous. And considering that Cheon Yijae dealt with malevolent spirits and therefore had a degree of immunity to spiritual miasma, Sim Seowoo’s concern had been, in a sense, meaningless.
“You don’t even understand the danger properly, so what are you going to purify——”
“Ah — Guiin! There’s blood on your hand……!”
Cheon Yijae was in the middle of berating him when Do Seonhwa suddenly cried out, startled. Her eyes went wide as she noticed the blood running down Sim Seowoo’s hand.
“Ah.”
Only then did Sim Seowoo let out a quiet sigh and look down at his own hand. During the scuffle with Cheon Yijae, his index finger had been cut — likely grazed by a splinter on the old wooden box.
Cheon Yijae also noticed the wound and paused, going quiet — but Sim Seowoo’s gaze had already moved on to somewhere else. From the start, he had been looking not at his own hand, but at the wooden box.
And at Cheon Yijae’s fingertips, which had gone white.
“……The purification worked.”
The blackening that had been eating into his fingertips had cleared, and the wooden box had returned to its original color. The box that had looked charred and dark all over had changed to a soft, warm brown. It was surprisingly hard to believe that this had been its true color all along.
