In truth, he was still uncertain about how to purify and wasn’t confident he could purify his curse, but even so, he had no desire to leave the storage building.
If he left, Cheon Yijae would be alone here.
Cheon Yijae always pointed out that Seowoo was reckless, but wasn’t he acting far more dangerously? The act of drawing up Ghost Energy regardless of whether his body rotted or not honestly deserved to be called foolish. Come to think of it, even when he’d been poisoned in the Guiyeok, Cheon Yijae hadn’t asked for help even once.
“What are you saying? You purify so strangely, and yet…!”
…If that was his criticism, Seowoo had nothing to say.
Sim Seowoo became a little solemn as he recalled the earlier purification. He’d always poured out too much purification power and upset Cheon Yijae, so it made sense that he couldn’t earn his trust.
Rattle rattle, Cheon Yijae struggled and the chair shook violently. Feeling his intent to somehow escape from his bound state and run away, Sim Seowoo tried to calm him down with an awkward feeling.
“I understand my purification is unreliable, but still, now I’m starting to get the hang of it a little…”
“No, forget it. Don’t come closer. Don’t touch—!”
The moment Sim Seowoo finally reached Cheon Yijae—CRACK! The front legs of the old wooden chair broke and the two of them tumbled to the floor together. He reflexively tried to catch Yijae as he tilted forward but got swept up and his body fell over.
CRASH!
However, just before Sim Seowoo fell, perhaps because the rope had loosened, Cheon Yijae pulled his arm free and embraced him. Thanks to preventing the collision with the hard ground, Sim Seowoo only ended up falling on his rear.
“Ugh…”
Though even that hurt a little, Sim Seowoo swallowed his groan. The sudden accident was as absurd as it was embarrassing. Just how much had he hated being purified to thrash about enough to break the chair?
Since it was largely his own fault for forcing his way closer, he first tried to apologize to Cheon Yijae and thank him, but—
“I—”
The moment Sim Seowoo opened his mouth, red energy spread widely before his eyes. As if reacting to his breath, several Jaegui rushed at him and swallowed the breath he’d exhaled. Next, they tore at his shirt buttons as if biting them open, and then pushed up his clothes, sliding them up—
“These crazy bastards.”
The moment Cheon Yijae spat out the curse, they disappeared. It took less than a second for the Jaegui to be forcibly drawn into his palm.
Sim Seowoo only blinked. Unable to easily comprehend what had happened in an instant, while he only rolled his eyes, Cheon Yijae hurriedly raised his upper body. Then he put both hands behind his back, summoned just one Jaegui, and quickly bound his own wrists. He forcibly held down the writhing thing to make it submit.
“I, damn it, told you not to come closer.”
Only after seeing him hurry as if restraining himself was the top priority did Sim Seowoo let out a small sigh.
“Ah…”
So the Jaegui were also stimulated and that’s why he’d refused his approach.
Well, he could have used the Jaegui to untie the rope and escape, but that seemed to be why he didn’t summon them again. Had the host become excited and been affected accordingly?
Perhaps the reason Cheon Yijae had devoured the wandering ghosts on the mountain wasn’t simply to draw up Ghost Energy, but to satisfy their appetite as a substitute in order to calm the Jaegui. Come to think of it, when he’d first entered the storage building, the way the Jaegui had rushed at him had also seemed strange…
“Haa, before you see something ugly, just leave.”
While Sim Seowoo was retracing his memories, Cheon Yijae, who had succeeded in tightly binding both wrists with rope, issued another order to leave. A rather cold gaze flew at him, asking if he now understood why he’d bound himself.
Nevertheless, Cheon Yijae’s actions as he retreated to a corner of the storage building seemed somewhat exhausted, so Sim Seowoo gazed at him quietly before suggesting as calmly as possible.
“How can you endure like this until the rescue team arrives? I don’t know if purification will work or not, but at least let me try—”
“…Did you completely forget everything you heard from me?”
Cheon Yijae’s voice cutting him off was extremely low.
“It hasn’t even been an hour. I said all that stuff to you about wanting to live normally, asking why you’re acting like your head is broken… After hearing such harsh words, do you feel like helping me? Normally, after hearing that kind of talk, you’d be so disgusted you wouldn’t want anything to do with me and would leave, wouldn’t you…?”
“…”
“Even in the Guiyeok, you purified and resolved the poisoning… But even after that, if I act that way, you’d find me ungrateful and disgusting. Right now there aren’t even other members around, so why are you so desperate to purify…? It’s not like there’s anyone pressuring you to purify me.”
Cheon Yijae uttered each word and syllable with force pressed into them. As if conscious not to let his voice lose strength and fall apart, he regulated his breathing here and there, and in the end threw out his words sharply.
Why would you bother going to the trouble for someone who had never once even said thank you, for someone who terribly devalued all your efforts?
Haa— Cheon Yijae tilted his head and let out a low sneer.
“Don’t tell me this is also because you’re not in your right mind?”
The light in the ash-colored eyes directed at Sim Seowoo was murky. With eyes faded as if torn by cold winds, wearing tattered ridicule, he mocked his opponent once more.
A heavy silence descended.
Since the space had been so noisy until just moments ago, the current stillness exuded its presence even more vividly. In the quiet standoff, Sim Seowoo calmly met Cheon Yijae’s gaze. As he only looked without saying anything, Yijae shook his head.
“…Isn’t this enough? You’ll find touching me unpleasant, so leave quickly.”
The order to leave fell again, sunken. Watching Cheon Yijae, whose energy seemed to have completely plummeted following his lowering voice, Sim Seowoo soon answered indifferently.
“If you’re bothered by what you said in the shelter, you could just apologize and say you’re sorry.”
“…What?”
At the extremely calm tone, Cheon Yijae’s face colored with bewilderment. However, seeing him ultimately not meet his gaze again, Sim Seowoo leaned his speculation a bit more toward being correct.
It seemed Cheon Yijae was quite conscious of having said those things.
Seowoo himself hadn’t made any mention of it at all, yet Cheon Yijae had brought it up first. Not only now, but a few minutes ago when he’d just entered the storage building, he’d also questioned whether Seowoo was acting this way because of resentment from that remark.
Sometimes a person’s questions contain their own thoughts.
In other words, Cheon Yijae had assumed those words would earn the other’s antipathy, and naturally thought the other would find him disgusting and leave. Moreover, he’d called his own remarks “harsh words” or “that kind of talk”—didn’t this also mean he himself recognized those words as such?
So he would be even more flustered by Seowoo’s actions of still approaching him.
“A problem that can be resolved with a single apology—how simple. There are so many more problems in the world that can’t be solved so easily.”
Though perhaps the difficulty lay in giving that apology. While Sim Seowoo suddenly gained enlightenment transcending worldly affairs, Cheon Yijae sighed.
Ha, letting out a sigh like a hollow laugh, he twisted the corners of his mouth.
“What nonsense are you talking about? Why would I apologize to you?”
“I mulled over what you said, Young Master. The words about how it seems like I’m following you because I want to die.”
“…”
Cheon Yijae’s mouth shut tight. Though Seowoo had only recited what he’d said verbatim, he fell silent with a seemingly flustered air, allowing Seowoo to organize his thoughts in the quiet environment.
That’s right, Sim Seowoo had clearly recognized when joining Heun that he would frequently face dangerous situations going forward. It wasn’t distrust toward the organization of Heun. It was just that his Spiritual Sight had opened and the background for his joining in the first place was because of the incident where he’d been threatened by a Hyeong Akgui that worshipped a Hyungsin.
[How dare a human who survived from that place and tarnished ‘That One’s’ special day!]
He’d nearly died for the reason that he was the only one who survived on the day the Hyungsin descended to this land again, marring the god’s perfect resurrection. And such murderous intent would be encountered even more frequently while being with Heun.
Though he’d judged that he should resolve that problem first if he wanted to live normally since he’d face similar situations even living alone and had joined for that reason, he knew full well how absurd and dangerous it was for someone who hadn’t even known of Heun’s existence until now to enter an organization that hunted Hyeong Akgui.
However, Sim Seowoo didn’t change his decision, and behind it lay a mentality that could calmly accept it even if he himself died. It was a detached mindset he’d gained after the incident where he’d nearly died after being offered as a sacrifice in a cult ritual. Don’t they say that when a person goes through something too terrible, they become indifferent to most things afterward?
In fact, Sim Seowoo was also aware that his ability to perceive danger was slightly lacking. However, his mindset resembled resignation that it didn’t matter if he got hurt, rather than optimism that he wouldn’t get hurt from such things, and more precisely, it was closer to the form that Cheon Yijae had pointed out: “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just died?”
Because all the people who had once formed Sim Seowoo’s world had died.
The parents he had loved and loathed had died that day, all the cult members who had tormented him had burned, and even the children he’d wanted to save had died.
The reality where only he had survived wasn’t very pleasant. Though it wasn’t a lie when he’d answered a counselor who once worriedly asked about his condition that it wasn’t bad, that didn’t mean it was good either.
Sometimes—no, often—he thought about what it would have been like if he had also ended that day. If so, he wouldn’t have had to live alone and suffer like this.
Perhaps it was because the paradoxical sweetness gained from resigning himself to die when he’d been offered as a sacrifice had been so great that his longing toward death continued even now.
However…
“What you said, Young Master, isn’t completely wrong, but there’s one thing you seem to misunderstand, so to correct it… It’s not that I don’t have a desire to die, but I don’t have an intention to die.”
Sim Seowoo had a clear goal: to keep his promise with the children.
‘Let’s all promise to live normal lives together!’
Since all the children he’d promised with had died, he felt a sense of duty that he had to live on their behalf as well. In truth, blindly trying to keep a promise with children he’d only spent three months with probably wasn’t normal either.
“This will probably also sound like I’m not in my right mind, but doesn’t everyone live a little strangely? In the first place, where is there a human who lives 100% in their right mind…?”
Don’t they say people originally live with something broken inside them? Having seen various aspects of humanity, Sim Seowoo had realized early on that there was no such thing as a perfectly normal person in the first place.
People experience countless things while living, and in that process, their minds can break down a bit. Like his parents. No, actually, when he recalled the cult they’d joined and the believers there, he even gained confidence that he was quite sane.
Anyway, the point was that since any kind of accident could strike like a disaster in life, it was better to accept the results rather than question why such things happened.
So Sim Seowoo had accepted that he’d just been damn unlucky, had happened to encounter many disasters, and as a result had to live with a broken head. Coincidentally, while fleeing from the cult, he’d actually been hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat, so he even had a history of his head being physically broken.
