While Ban Hanseong and Eun Seonmyeong bickered, Shim Iyul examined Seo Junhui. He hadn’t noticed it a few days ago, but now he could see a red thread wound around her pinky finger. It was so faint and fragile, as if it would break at any moment, that he must have failed to detect it back then.
‘What is this?’
A red thread signifies a fateful connection. There are many types of connections—lovers, spouses, parent and child, siblings, friends, and so on. He couldn’t tell which kind of connection was bound to Seo Junhui.
“Why are you stopping me? Why!!!”
The voice of the ghost Seo Junhui, properly heard for the first time, was chillingly filled with resentment in every word.
“Didn’t I tell you? If a ghost harms a human, they cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation!”
Normally, when a human dies, they enter the afterlife guided by a grim reaper. After judgment, their sins are weighed and they are reincarnated in various forms. If a soul that escaped from the reaper’s grasp becomes a vengeful ghost and harms humans, they lose the chance for reincarnation. No matter how many good deeds they accumulated during their human life, they will fall into hell.
Of course, humans whose sins are as vast as mountains and seas also fall into hell to suffer eternally.
“I don’t care. As long as I can kill that bastard Choi Myeongwon with my own hands, I don’t care about anything!”
Seo Junhui made no effort to hide her fury toward Choi Myeongwon.
“That bastard ruined me and harmed my child! It was my child, but also his own flesh and blood, and he harmed that child! I’ll kill him with my own hands. I’ll take revenge with my own hands!!!”
Suddenly, a gust of wind blew and Eun Seonmyeong’s car rattled. It was Seo Junhui’s doing. She glared ferociously at Ban Hanseong and Eun Seonmyeong as if they were mortal enemies and swung her arms. Sparks flew from a nearby utility pole. She seemed to have forgotten even her fear of Eun Seonmyeong, consumed by resentment.
“Oh my, my goddess! Gaju, do something! Stop her!”
“Why should I?”
“Gaju!”
“She wants to take revenge herself, so let her. She says she’ll accept it even knowing what consequences await.”
“Gaju! Don’t you feel sorry for my goddess? If you don’t help me, I’ll ignore you from now on too! Help me if you don’t want to become my enemy!”
Seeing the ghosts he commanded being pushed back, Ban Hanseong stomped his feet and clung to Eun Seonmyeong. Eun Seonmyeong sighed and changed the magazine. Then he shot at the foot of Seo Junhui as she pushed away Ban Hanseong’s servant ghosts and flew up.
With his words, he acted as if he didn’t care whether Seo Junhui killed Choi Myeongwon or not, but it would be troublesome if he died now. Seo Hyeonjeong would cling to him and make a fuss. That’s why he told Ban Hanseong to keep him alive for six months.
Something like white liquid flowed from the bullet that hit Seo Junhui’s ankle, then turned sticky like a spider’s web and bound her to the ground. Seo Junhui screamed and struggled to break free, but the more she did, the stickier the web became as it ensnared her.
“Red Spider Web, I see?”
It means the web of a red spider. A spider raised on a hunter’s blood turns entirely red and spits out webs imbued with spiritual energy. When melted and made into bullets, they can bind wicked things like this.
Eun Seonmyeong is a hunter and an exorcist. So elimination is the principle, but he had made these bullets for occasions when it was necessary to immobilize something completely.
Eun Seonmyeong approached Seo Junhui, who was shedding bloody tears. The bloody tears flowing down her pale face made her look even more pitiful.
“I’ll call a reaper for you, so just go to the afterlife. Entrust your resentment to that guy. He’s a shaman who only takes requests from ghosts.”
Ban Hanseong, thinking this was his chance, stepped forward.
“That’s right. I, Ban Hanseong, will cleanly resolve Seo Junhui-nim’s resentment. I’m a shaman boasting a 100 percent success rate on requests up to now.”
Despite Ban Hanseong’s words about serving her with kindness and trust, Seo Junhui only shed resentful tears.
“Choi Myeongwon must die. I have to kill him with my own hands. He’s the human who ruined my future and killed my child!”
A brilliant future had been waiting for Seo Junhui. After a long period of obscurity, she landed a supporting role in <Youth> and caught her chance to rise. Youth achieved ratings over 40 percent and gained tremendous popularity, and Seo Junhui, who poignantly portrayed the childhood friend who had secretly loved the male lead for years, received love from the public that was close to a syndrome.
Scripts for her next projects arrived at her agency almost daily, and CF offers poured in. She believed the road ahead would be smooth.
But because of Choi Myeongwon, who appeared at the wrap party, her life plummeted into hell.
“I’m Choi Myeongwon from Seonjin Investment.”
Choi Myeongwon, who offered a handshake with a friendly smile. At the time, Seo Junhui didn’t know how vicious Choi Myeongwon was. She was attracted because a man with a decent appearance showed interest in her, and she dreamed of a movie-like romance with a second-generation chaebol. But it was a fleeting dream. Her happiness didn’t last three months.
The moment she joyfully confirmed her pregnancy and told him three months after meeting Choi Myeongwon, he changed completely.
“Who are you trying to block by doing this?”
With the face of an evil demon, Choi Myeongwon said what lowly bitch was trying to trap him with pregnancy and tried to drag her to the hospital. When she clutched her belly and resisted, he started kicking her, and after being severely beaten, she eventually miscarried. At that time, Choi Myeongwon laughed, saying it was good that he saved on surgery costs.
Shocked by the betrayal of the lover she trusted and the miscarriage, she suffered severe depression for a while, and when she went to confront Choi Myeongwon, she was repeatedly chased away by his bodyguards. She lived like a wreck for months. The voice that had laughed like a demon kept echoing in her ears, driving her mad. She swore in anguish that she wouldn’t forgive him, but realistically, there was nothing she could do.
Then one day, the CEO of her agency ‘Star Moon’ came to her home and unilaterally notified her of contract termination for violating the dignity maintenance clause. The CEO showed the bewildered Seo Junhui a video.
“Th-this is…!”
It was a sex video.
She wanted to deny it wasn’t her, but the woman in the video was indeed Seo Junhui herself. And unlike her face which was fully visible, the man’s face was covered with a mask.
‘Ah…’
Seo Junhui groaned inwardly. She remembered the exact date in the video. It was the day Choi Myeongwon suggested they enjoy unusual sex. He brought a whip, handcuffs, and a mask, put the mask on his own face, and then fixed both of Seo Junhui’s arms to the bed. Then he demanded she act as if she was enjoying it when he brought down the whip. At first, she refused out of fear and unease, but she couldn’t ignore Choi Myeongwon’s plea that he ‘just wanted to enjoy unusual play once.’ Deeply in love at the time, she eventually did as Choi Myeongwon wanted. And that was the result.
In the video, Seo Junhui appeared to enjoy sadistic and perverted sexual acts. Of course she did—she had acted that way. Moreover, intimate parts were explicitly filmed, so if the video leaked, not only Seo Junhui herself but the company would be shaken.
‘He planned to secretly film it all along.’
Seo Junhui squeezed her eyes shut. She truly hadn’t known he was filming it.
“That’s why you shouldn’t have looked at a tree you can’t climb. You should have acted like a plaything if you were going to be one. Pregnancy? How absurd. Did you think a chaebol family like Seonjin would accept someone like you?”
“……”
“And if you miscarried, you should have stayed crushed. Why did you keep visiting and being a nuisance? Don’t even think about acting anymore. Just live like a dead mouse. Unless you want your naked, crazy display shown to the whole world.”
The CEO grabbed the hand of Seo Junhui, who was lost in despair, and forced her to stamp the contract termination agreement, then left with a sneer.
That afternoon, articles poured out about Seonjin investing tens of billions into Star Moon Entertainment. Considering the impact the sex video of Seo Junhui, a rising star, would bring, the CEO decided to accept the investment and gladly abandoned her.
It was arduous to reach the peak, but rolling down to hell was instantaneous. The price for falling in love without knowing Choi Myeongwon’s true nature was that severe. Love, dreams, future, child, even her career—everything lost through one wrong choice, the only option left to her was suicide.
“That piece of trash!!!”
Cutting through Seo Junhui’s voice as she painfully recounted the past came Shim Iyul’s furious cry.
“Hey, you go ahead and get revenge yourself. Avenge your enemy! Just kill him! Revenge tastes best when you do it yourself!”
Shim Iyul threw the cup in his hand to the floor and raged. Ban Hanseong, who had been about to shout ‘How dare he drive my goddess to death! That damned bastard!’, blinked in confusion.
“F-Fox-nim.”
“Why are you getting excited?”
Eun Seonmyeong turned to look at Shim Iyul.
“How can I not get excited?! Aren’t you angry after hearing that poor ghost’s story? You cold-blooded thing.”
Shim Iyul looked at Eun Seonmyeong like he was trash and cursed, “Even if I stabbed you, not a drop of blood would come out.”
“Do you feel sympathy or something?”
“Wh-what are you saying?!”
“Didn’t you say the reason you bewitched Choi Myeongwon the other day was because that bastard was trying to rape an unconscious woman?”
“Th-that time, I punished him because that bastard was trying to pull something near my field!”
“……”
Eun Seonmyeong silently watched Shim Iyul, who was making exaggerated excuses.
“Today is just… Choi Myeongwon is objectively too much trash, so I got angry!”
“……”
“It’s not that.”
“What isn’t?”
“I’m absolutely not sympathizing. I don’t have such cheap emotions, you know?”
“Who said anything?”
“You were looking at me with those eyes!”
Looking at him like he’s an emotionally rich fox who sympathizes with humans. Ridiculous. Humans are a species not worthy of sympathy from the noble and magnificent Fire Fox that he is.
Shim Iyul snorted and sneakily avoided Eun Seonmyeong’s suspicious gaze.
“You’re a rather funny hunter yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you said things like ‘Why is a Yosu interfering in human affairs,’ so I thought you were a very moral—no, a principled hunter, but you weren’t, were you?”
