It wasn’t because Mua said or did anything special. He had said nothing, made no movement. Yet Jieon could sense that something was wrong.
Is what I said terribly rude to a Grim Reaper? While he was gauging the situation with such absurd thoughts, Mua opened his mouth.
“Now that I hear it, you’re right. Even if I had known, I wonder if anything would have been different…”
Jieon felt his heart sink. Not because Mua was angry or showing displeasure. Rather, it was the opposite. The low voice sounded so sorrowful that it seemed like Mua would burst into tears at any moment.
Startled, Jieon turned his head slightly to look at Mua. His face reflected in the car window had an indifferent expression, yet it didn’t feel indifferent at all.
“Do you have memories from when you were human?”
Jieon asked very carefully. Actually, what he really wanted to ask was something else. What happened back then, what kind of story could there be that makes you occasionally wear such a heart-wrenching expression? That’s what he wanted to ask.
He just had a strong premonition that he shouldn’t ask carelessly, so he couldn’t bring the question out of his mouth.
Mua didn’t answer for a long time. In the quiet space, only the breathing of the two could be heard.
How much time had passed? Shin Mua spoke.
“It was a hundred years ago.”
“Ah…”
Just the fact that Mua had opened his mouth brought an inexplicable sense of relief, and Jieon unconsciously let out a small exclamation. Mua continued speaking without regard for his reaction.
“As if I could remember.”
But at that moment, why did Jieon’s ears hear different words?
“It’s something I don’t need to remember.”
As if I could forget. Even if I wanted to forget, it’s something I absolutely cannot forget.
Why did Jieon feel like he had heard such an answer?
“I’m tired. Let’s go quietly.”
Mua closed his eyes. An inexplicable sadness filled the quiet space, and Jieon drove the car silently, feeling melancholy from an emotion that wasn’t even his own.
***
“…?! Hey, are you okay?”
Jieon, who had returned home, was startled when he saw Shin Mua suddenly stagger and grabbed his body while asking.
Mua, who couldn’t steady himself even while leaning against Jieon’s chest as if momentarily dizzy, held his head and shook it.
“This thing called motion sickness is truly annoying.”
The grumbling voice was no different from before, as if he had never been sorrowful, so Jieon looked at his face with some relief.
“That’s what I’m saying, eat more. Seriously, you never listen to what people say.”
“Your manner of speaking gets worse with each passing day.”
“It’s not like you’re some annoying seven-year-old. If you don’t want to hear about manners from someone who throws tantrums about not eating?”
“Good grief…”
Mua was at a loss for words. When this guy died and came to the Afterlife, he’d be the type to shed tears like chicken droppings while begging “Grim Reaper-nim, please spare me just once,” yet here he was lecturing him about being seven years old. It was so absurd he was dumbfounded.
He glared at him, annoyed at losing the verbal battle, when suddenly his stomach churned again and his vision spun.
“Ah…”
“Hey, hey! Are you seriously getting malnutrition again?”
Jieon, who had been consciously picking a fight wanting to somehow clear the heavy atmosphere, frowned again and approached in surprise at Mua’s dry heaving.
“I’ve been forcing myself to eat things I didn’t want to because of that, so that can’t be it.”
“Even if it’s not that, maybe something else is wrong…”
Mua bit his lips tightly and waited for the unpleasant nausea to pass. He couldn’t completely deny Jieon’s words, because while it seemed like motion sickness at a glance, it felt strangely different.
A sensation more unpleasant and alien than motion sickness. Not simply a physical problem, but as if his soul was being twisted.
Mua barely suppressed the urge to lie down on the floor right away and looked around.
Sangmyeong had said he felt a strange energy in this house. He had kept trying to find the source but hadn’t discovered it yet. It might still be remaining in this house, affecting him.
Just how deeply had it been hidden and how many layers of barriers had been put up that neither he nor Sangmyeong had found it yet?
“Let’s go in and lie down for now. Your face is white as a sheet right now.”
Jieon, who had no way of knowing Mua’s inner thoughts, led him to the room. Mua didn’t refuse his touch.
If it were up to him, he’d want to turn the entire house upside down right now, but at the moment, he couldn’t even properly put strength in his legs. More than anything, he didn’t want to tell Cheon Jieon, who had suffered for several days, that there was bad energy in this house or whatnot.
I’m in deep trouble myself, so who am I trying to be considerate of?
Mua thought self-deprecatingly like that, but in the end kept his mouth shut and returned to the room as Jieon led him, lying down on the bed.
‘You bastard, you always talk so irritatingly. You think I don’t know you secretly try to help poor humans somehow?’
He suddenly remembered the old man pointing a finger at him once. At the time, he hadn’t even half-listened, dismissing it as nonsense, but he thought that perhaps he really was being soft. It was an unwelcome realization.
***
“What could possibly be here?”
That night, Cheon Jieon was playing detective, something that was completely unlike him. After meeting even a shaman who regarded Shin Mua as a real Grim Reaper, he had reached a point where he couldn’t ignore his words that he had only half-listened to before.
Not long ago, when Shin Mua kept rummaging around the house, Jieon had confronted him asking why he kept snooping around everywhere. Shin Mua had said that an evil energy was residing in this house.
He said that because someone had cast a spell to prevent Grim Reapers from properly using their power, it was nearly impossible for the Afterlife to search around him.
Jieon had scoffed. He even threatened that if that were the case, it was actually a good thing so don’t even think about removing it. Then Shin Mua raised his eyebrows high as if he were some village school teacher and went on a nagging spree.
How bad it was for a corrupted energy to reside near a human and how immature Jieon was for not knowing this, how the thing couldn’t have just disturbed the energy of the space, how it must have definitely cast an improper spell on him—he got so angry going on and on.
Eventually, Jieon raised both hands and feet in surrender to the endless nagging bombardment and stuck out his tongue telling him to do as he pleased. That was purely to turn away from the tiresome nonsense, and certainly not because he thought there was any merit to his words and accepted them.
But why was it that those words came back to him now and wouldn’t leave his mind? In the end, Jieon was in the middle of the night looking around his room this way and that, searching for anything suspicious.
“This is ridiculous, really…”
Jieon, who suddenly felt his own appearance was too laughable, plopped down on the bed with a sigh. To put it crudely, what the hell is all this?
That wasn’t the only problem. Mua’s words that the people around him were suspicious also grew larger and kept pressuring Jieon. What was especially painful was that his uncle, who had blindly believed in shamans’ words and been obsessed with superstitions from long ago, kept coming to mind.
Jieon, who had lost his parents when he was young, had grown up following his uncle Yangseon like his own father. It was Yangseon who had listened to his worries during his school days, who had supported him when he decided to step back from the succession dispute, who had taught him even trivial things like how to tie a necktie—it was all Yangseon.
That’s why Jieon felt not just frustrated but resentful and wronged by this current situation. If he had to believe one of two people—Shin Mua or Cheon Yangseon—it was natural to believe his uncle. Yet he felt like an unfilial person for constantly retracing his uncle’s actions and suspecting him.
More than anything, what made Jieon even more unbearable was something else. Once the seed of doubt sprouted, things that he had let pass without suspicion because of his absolute belief that “Uncle would never do bad things to me” began to come to mind in succession.
When Mua pointed at Suchan, Jieon had defended Suchan without a moment’s hesitation and still didn’t suspect him at all even now. But why couldn’t he have that same kind of trust in his uncle?
“No way… No. That can’t be. How could he do that to Father, of all people…! It doesn’t make sense.”
Jieon tried to drive out the unsettling thoughts from within himself, repeating the same words as if casting a spell on himself. Humans are supposed to be creatures who know gratitude. To suspect his uncle who had looked after him since childhood because of a few words without evidence.
“No. That’s not it, really.”
Jieon disciplined himself, muttering to himself several times. Sadly, it was useless.
***
“Are you sick somewhere?”
After sharing breakfast together, which had now become routine, Mua asked upon seeing Jieon suddenly toss some pills into his mouth. Jieon, who had swallowed several pills with water, answered curtly.
“No.”
“If you’re not sick, why are you taking medicine?”
“It’s a rut suppressant.”
“Ah…”
“Oh, you didn’t even know I was an Alpha.”
Come to think of it, if he really had no memory, he wouldn’t know about secondary genders either. Sure enough, Shin Mua’s eyes shook violently as if he hadn’t thought that far.
“Th-then I… am I perhaps an Omega?”
