The guy who rarely showed expressions was flustered, and somehow finding it satisfying, Jieon deliberately didn’t give him an exact answer and enjoyed his reaction. It was quite amusing to see his face turning red and pale, wondering what he was thinking.
In fact, Mua was extremely flustered. Secondary gender—why hadn’t he thought about such an important issue until now?
After all, once you leave a human body, you become free from secondary gender, and Mua had even been a beta when he was human, so he hadn’t considered the assumption that he might have become a trait-bearer at all.
An alpha from such a wealthy chaebol family would never have married anyone other than an omega. Just as Mua was at a loss about what to do with this terrible feeling, Jieon, who had fully enjoyed watching him, confirmed that the housekeeper wasn’t there and opened his mouth.
“Why do you look so scared? You’re not an omega, you’re a beta.”
“…Beta?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that really true?”
“Why would I lie to you?”
“Phew…”
Mua openly let out a sigh of relief and stroked his chest. Being human was already annoying enough, and if he had even been a trait-bearer on top of that, just thinking about it gave him goosebumps all over. He was already troubled by being vulnerable to stimuli felt in a human body, so being swayed by hormones was out of the question.
“But you really hate being an omega? What were you when you were human?”
“It’s so long ago it’s meaningless, but even then I was a beta.”
“Ah, so that’s why you were so shocked. Don’t worry. It’s a contract marriage, so it would be troublesome for both of us if you got pregnant or something. I contracted with Shin Mua because he was a beta too. Though I lied to Grandfather and said he was an omega.”
Only then could Mua properly understand the situation. From Cheon Jieon’s grandfather’s perspective, he would have desperately wanted a great-grandchild, so he couldn’t have said he would marry a beta.
Since the family wasn’t even decent and if he said he couldn’t have children either, it would be even more distasteful. Since they weren’t even truly in love, there was no need to build one more barrier.
“Anyway, I absolutely don’t want to see you panting, so make sure to take your medicine properly.”
When the relieved Mua narrowed his eyes and warned him, Jieon’s brow furrowed sharply.
“What kind of way is that to talk? Does someone think I want to pant in front of you? How absurd.”
“Why don’t you take one more pill while you’re at it?”
“That’s not how it works!”
Jieon yelled loudly. It was a noisy morning that had become all too familiar now.
***
“Grandma, is this really right?”
Standing in front of a car with the trunk packed full of luggage, the shaman Seoran muttered gloomily. There was no one around, but it was fine. Seoran hadn’t said it to a person anyway.
“That’s true, but… I’m scared, you know.”
Her naturally fierce upturned eyes drooped down completely. But she couldn’t whine any more than this. Woldeok Grandma, the deity she served, was whining even more severely.
“Ah, seriously! Grandma, you always said you were the strongest and to come at you with everything, but what is this! You’re just a coward!”
It was such disrespectful language that other shamans would have fainted in shock if they heard it, but between Seoran and her deity Woldeok Grandma, it was an extremely ordinary conversation. The one called ‘Seoran-mu’ was a young shaman who had just turned twenty-six.
But she was definitely not someone to be taken lightly just because she was young. The fact that she came to serve Woldeok Grandma, who had risen to the position of a deity from being human, meant she was no ordinary person, and her personality was unbending, so she was always arguing even with the deity she served.
“Okay, okay. Just go. Just go and that’s it.”
Seoran got into the driver’s seat, sighing deeply. She had come all the way here and set up a shrine because she hated the mess in Seoul where scammers posing as shamans ran rampant. It was annoying and irritating that she had to go back to that complicated city because of some bastards.
“But Grandma, are grim reapers that frightening even to you? Like you said, it’s not even Lord Yeomra, right?”
Seoran asked as she started the engine and pulled out the car. How should she put it—it was like meeting a character from an oral folktale she’d only heard about in words.
She had heard it enough to have it drilled into her ears when learning under her godmother. That grim reapers were one of those existences you should absolutely never go against or oppose. However, Seoran, who was still a young shaman, hadn’t had a chance to properly experience that power, so it didn’t feel real.
Moreover, that ‘Mua’ who had come to find her seemed to be in a state where he couldn’t properly use a grim reaper’s power, yet she hadn’t expected Grandma to tremble and prostrate herself so flat like that.
“Okay, okay. I’ll be careful. As if I would dare crawl all over even Reaper-nim.”
You’re the kind who would do exactly that, which is why I’m saying this!
Seoran drove to Seoul while listening to Grandma’s nagging that continued to warn her even though she said she understood. Anyway, if she listened to Grandma’s words, fortune would come even in her sleep.
***
‘You must put this in Jieon’s pillow.’
‘I hope Cheon Jieon is completely ruined.’
‘There’s only one chance. Failure is absolutely unacceptable. Act carefully.’
‘In the end, this will all go according to my will.’
.
.
.
“Huk…!!”
Mua gasped for breath roughly and bolted upright in bed. Because air suddenly came in, a cough burst out. Covering his mouth with both hands, sweat dripped down below Mua’s hands as he kept coughing.
He felt chills and his vision spun around and around. It was hard to tell if it was because of lack of breath or because of the scenes he had seen in the dream.
No, was it a dream? Was it reality? A dream disguised as reality? A memory in the form of a dream?
His head was too dizzy. However, one thing was certain—there was something he needed to check right away.
“Ugh…!”
When he urgently stepped down from the bed, his body rolled onto the floor as it was. As he tried to move his body in a panicked state, it didn’t respond as he wanted. But he couldn’t delay. It was dark all around, but he didn’t even have time to check what time it was.
“Cheon Jieon!”
Mua, who had practically crawled to Jieon’s room, called his name like a scream and flung open the door.
“Wha, what! Who is it!”
Jieon, who had been sleeping soundly, was startled awake and sprang up from the bed. It was truly like a bolt from the blue.
“Shin Mua? What the hell are you doing right now…!”
Jieon, who confirmed that the person barging into his room was Mua, muttered with an absurd expression. However, Mua approached the bed regardless and grabbed the pillow with his hand.
“What are you doing!”
“Let go of this!”
“Why are you with someone else’s pillow…!”
No matter how much he tried to stop him, it was useless. Mua began to tear open Jieon’s pillowcase like a madman, pulling out the stuffing and rummaging inside.
“Hey, why… why are you doing this…”
Jieon’s voice trembled. Right now, Shin Mua looked like he was half-possessed by an evil spirit.
In the middle of the night, suddenly waking up—he was already flustered, but seeing Shin Mua rampaging made his blood run cold. Over the image of Shin Mua rummaging through the pillow, the scene of a dark shadow reaching out its hand toward him overlapped.
“Here… it should definitely be here…”
Whether Jieon was trembling in fear or not, Mua muttered while holding the destroyed pillow in his hand. They definitely said the pillow.
What was strange was that he had already examined Cheon Jieon’s pillow before. Inside a pillow was one of the good places to hide a talisman. There was no way Mua hadn’t looked there.
But there was nothing there. Even as he was yelled at by Cheon Jieon, ‘You crazy bastard, stop it already!’, he searched thoroughly under the blanket and sheets, but no talisman or anything came out.
“Was it just a dream…?”
Mua muttered to himself and soon shook his head. It wasn’t a dream. Mua could feel it. That was part of ‘Shin Mua’s’ memories.
“They definitely said to put it in the pillow…”
Mua’s thoughts, as he kept fiddling with the pillow, soon turned to the pillow stuffing.
“Could it be…”
Before long, Mua began to tear at the pillow roughly.
“A knife, do you have a knife!”
“A knife?”
Then, when the cloth wrapping the stuffing wouldn’t tear easily, he reached out his hand to Jieon, who was watching from the side with a terrified face, and asked for a knife.
Jieon froze for a moment, looking at Mua’s hand extended toward him. He knew all too well what it meant to put a knife in that hand. The past days of writhing in pain kept appearing and disappearing before his eyes.
“What are you standing there for?”
Then, Shin Mua’s voice was heard again. The two people’s eyes tangled in midair.
Who was the Shin Mua before his eyes right now? Was he that Shin Mua who had threatened Cheon Jieon by hurting himself with a knife? Was he Shin Mua, who had lost his memories and even lost himself, and who might return to his former self at any time?
Or was he the grim reaper who had collected the souls of the dead in the Afterlife for a hundred years?
Jieon closed his eyes briefly and exhaled deeply. Though no one had set a deadline, he could feel that the time had come when he needed to firmly decide the course of his actions.
Moments when he had been deceived by Shin Mua, who cried and begged, saying he would never do it again, that he would really do well, flashed through his mind.
Sweeping away the memories that swirled like cursed visions, Jieon finally opened his eyes again and soon brought a knife and placed it in Shin Mua’s hand. What decision Jieon, who was directly handing him the knife, had made at that moment was something no one could know except himself.
Mua, who received the knife, tore the cloth wrapping the pillow stuffing without hesitation. When he removed all the stuffing inside and turned the cloth inside out, talismans covering the inside of the cloth revealed themselves.
