The two decided to leave the house for a while. They couldn’t stay in a place of such terrible curses. Seoran planned to conduct a purification of the house for a week.
Jieon had been thinking of moving elsewhere, but in any case, if they didn’t purify the house, someone who would live there afterward might suffer harm.
She said it was curse magic made so meticulously, layer upon layer, so thoroughly that it wasn’t at a level that could be solved with a single gut. She said they had to slowly take care to purify it several times over so no aftereffects would remain.
“Ha…”
Jieon, sitting in the car, grabbed the steering wheel and let out a long sigh. Mua watched him quietly and unconsciously opened his mouth.
“Still, you endured well.”
“……?”
“It must have been very hard and painful, but you endured well. Now that we know the culprit’s identity, from now on we just need to… resolve it well, don’t we?”
“What? Why are you being so kind?”
Jieon answered with a small laugh. He felt that Shin Mua was trying his best to comfort him, and laughter burst out momentarily. Perhaps it was an unexpected reaction, as Mua shut his mouth tightly.
“Shouldn’t you say something at a time like this? See, humans are originally all such selfish and vicious beings. This is why I hate humans, and so on.”
“Ahem.”
Mua turned his gaze away and just cleared his throat unnecessarily. Honestly, it was something he would say.
But there was something neither Cheon Jieon nor Mua himself knew. Though he always said with words that he hated humans and they were the most selfish and untrustworthy beings in the world, in truth Mua was a grim reaper who showed many warm sides when collecting human souls.
It wasn’t for nothing that the grim reapers close to Mua and Lord Yeomra all unanimously denounced him, saying that he only talks like that, but looking at what he does, you can’t say that.
Those who lived difficult and painful lives before dying, pitiful beings who died untimely deaths at a young age, parents who died before their children—whenever he faced unjust and miserable deaths, behind his indifferent expression, Mua was always in pain, hurt, and felt compassion for them.
Though he himself wouldn’t acknowledge it.
“Still… hearing you say that does seem to comfort me a bit.”
Jieon, who sighed once more, honestly opened up his heart. He had been such a disgusting person, someone he had only thought of as a truly hopeless madman. At this moment, Jieon was surprisingly relieved that Shin Mua was by his side.
In endlessly clumsy language, the words he spoke trying somehow to console him were unexpectedly comforting.
“Hmph, comfort my foot.”
Feeling awkward and embarrassed, Mua hurriedly feigned ignorance. Then, as if something suddenly came to mind, he turned his gaze to sneak a glance at Jieon’s face before opening his mouth again.
“By the way… do you completely believe my words now?”
Jieon, who had been driving out of the parking lot, glanced at Mua briefly, then turned his gaze forward again and answered in a low voice.
“Ha… I don’t know either. But it’s ridiculous not to believe now… Actually, though I pretended otherwise on the outside, I think I unknowingly believed your words…”
No matter how logically he thought about it, it didn’t seem like Shin Mua was acting. Though they still didn’t know exactly what ritual they had tried to perform, if they had prepared so meticulously, it must have been something they’d been working on for a very long time.
According to Seoran, curse magic this serious was also a burden on the one performing it. She said you couldn’t just keep doing it whenever you wanted.
She said that the shaman who completed this curse magic must have also paid no small price, and since the ritual had even failed, they must have suffered a blow that would be hard to recover from.
But Shin Mua, who had been their collaborator for a long time, exposed even this curse magic to save Jieon from danger and even revealed the fact that he himself had joined them? Now this had gone beyond the level of simply ‘pretending to have lost his memory.’
“I’ll just think of it as being deceived and try believing once, whatever.”
Jieon deliberately answered lightly as if joking. Right now, when he had to doubt even Yangseon, whom he’d trusted his whole life, he couldn’t even understand what it meant to believe someone. But ridiculously, he wanted to believe the being beside him.
On the surface, he was giving all sorts of logical reasons, but in fact, Jieon’s reason for believing Mua was based on far more emotional grounds.
This was data only Cheon Jieon possessed. Data that only someone who had looked into his deepest abyss from the closest place could have.
Though he had stubbornly turned away because of unbelievable talk about the Afterlife and whatnot, Cheon Jieon had actually instinctively known for quite some time that he was not the ‘Shin Mua’ he knew.
It wasn’t simply because his manner of speaking and behavior had changed. What Jieon felt was something fundamental. To use an analogy, it was similar to saying the scent that person emitted had completely changed.
Something that could never be expressed through acting, something that could never change just by making resolutions to oneself had changed. Cheon Jieon could feel it.
“Yeah. For now, I’ll try believing you.”
Mua quietly watched Jieon, who repeated the same words as if making a resolution to himself.
It was truly a strange feeling. Someone who had been betrayed several times by people he trusted and cherished was going to try believing in an existence he didn’t even know well. Moreover, an existence who claimed to be a grim reaper from the Afterlife.
He thought it was utterly foolish. He was dumbfounded that he hadn’t come to his senses even after being deceived like that, and on the other hand, he was also angry as it reminded him of his past life self, who had also liked and trusted people too much.
When you trust humans, all that comes back is betrayal, so why do the naive—no, stupid—ones give others the opportunity to betray them over and over again?
“Tsk, stupid bastard.”
Mua, who had suddenly become angry, spat out an unexpected curse. Jieon raised his voice indignantly, perhaps finding it absurd.
“You make a fuss whether I believe you or not. Hey! Then should I not believe you? Want to get out right now?”
“Hmph!”
Of course, Mua didn’t even pretend to listen.
***
“No, is this really… really real?”
Suchan, who had come to the hotel after receiving the contact, couldn’t hide his shock as he looked through the photos Jieon showed him.
“I took the photos myself. You still can’t believe it?”
“No, it’s not that… it’s just so absurd. What is this in this day and age…”
Honestly, Mua still didn’t trust Suchan, but Jieon was firm. Mua felt his trust, which was close to blind faith, was a bit pitiful. Right now, Cheon Jieon had lost one belief in his life that had been too solid. In that situation, the feeling of trying to hold onto anything more that was precious to him was, in a way, a perfectly natural reaction.
“Then the fact that you were so… unwell before the accident was all…”
“Well, according to the shaman, that’s right. She said I was lucky to have endured even that much.”
“Ha…”
Unable to hide his confused mind, Suchan roughly tousled his hair. Back then, Suchan had been anxious not knowing when Jieon would collapse, so he stuck by his side all day.
It was hard to accept that it was all because of someone’s malice, and even more so that things like curses really existed.
Jieon, who fully understood Suchan’s confusion, patted his shoulder and continued speaking.
“I know. I can’t believe it either. But more important than whether that curse actually worked is that anyway, someone did this with bad intentions.”
“……”
“And as you know, hyung, this house…”
“The President gave it to you.”
As if finding it absurd even after saying it himself, Suchan let out a hollow laugh. Soon, Suchan, with a worried expression, asked Jieon.
“Are you… okay?”
His question contained many implications. Suchan knew better than anyone how Jieon regarded Yangseon. There had been puzzling moments while watching from the side, but the reason he couldn’t bring himself to say it outright was all because he knew Jieon’s feelings toward Yangseon.
Should he not have done that? Should he have been honest and said your uncle doesn’t seem like such a good person? Belated regret washed over him.
But even Suchan hadn’t thought Yangseon was this bad a person. At most, he thought he seemed to be using Jieon to look better to the Chairman, but who would have thought he was pulling off something this absurd?
“So what are you planning to do from now on?”
However, pushing aside the regret that wouldn’t help, Suchan asked. What was important was how to respond from now on. If the opponent was really someone who knew how to properly use shamanic power, just staying away wasn’t the answer.
“First, both of you act naturally without showing any signs to that bastard. We must not let him know that we’ve noticed something.”
Mua said. What they could say was advantageous now was the fact that the opponent still had no idea how much this side had figured out.
“Since the ritual failed, they won’t be able to act rashly for a while. They must have taken a blow too, and they’ll have no choice but to be careful before they know for sure why it failed.”
“No, but really… they prepared so meticulously, so how did it fail? Was it that difficult a ritual?”
Suchan, who had been quietly listening to Mua’s words, voiced the question that came to his mind. As soon as the question ended, both Jieon and Suchan’s gazes rolled toward Mua. Rather than seeking an answer, it was just a reaction that came naturally.
Of the three people in this room right now, the person who knew this field best would be Shin Mua.
“Probably… there’s a high probability it’s because of me.”
Mua, who calmly accepted the two people’s gazes, opened his mouth with a calm expression.
