#3. JaU
Sim Seowoo lived a life in which a great many things had been turned upside down after that day.
The fire at the time had drawn enormous attention, and as provocative headlines about the shocking end of a cult continued to pour out day after day, police investigations were carried out frequently.
But back then, he was simply numb.
He had lost all sense of reality about everything, and couldn’t bring himself to feel sad about his situation, nor could he feel the joy of finally being out. The doctor worried, saying the massive incident had left him with severe psychological trauma — but at the time, he simply took it as a convenience, since it meant the police interrogations decreased.
Like that, as the days passed, there came a day when he was finally able to be discharged and go home.
Because his parents had fallen into the cult, contact with his relatives had been severed long before. The incident this time around did prompt them to check in on Sim Seowoo briefly, but they seemed uncomfortable with the idea of taking in a nineteen-year-old. Sim Seowoo had no intention of staying with them anyway, so it was a blessing.
Around the time of his discharge, he had been absent from high school for so long that he simply dropped out and prepared for the college entrance exam. If he went back to school, there would be kids who recognized him — so he wanted to sever his ties to that neighborhood entirely.
I have to go to university.
That was the only thought in his head.
The original reason he had wanted to go to university was to gain independence from his parents, so now it felt meaningless — but he moved forward driven by the compulsion to keep the promise he had made to the children. Perhaps it was because of the time he had spent teaching them; he naturally gravitated toward a major in education.
He adapted quickly to life alone in the city, renting a small place. His parents had neglected the household ever since they had gotten caught up in investments, so living on his own was something he was already used to — and in fact, it was a relief. The government-funded mental health counselor even asked him if he was doing alright, given how smoothly his days seemed to flow.
Sim Seowoo answered, somewhat surprisingly, that he was fine.
And truthfully, he wasn’t doing badly. The reason was that he simply didn’t let himself think deeply about anything. To put it more honestly, the very act of thinking had become exhausting. As long as nothing directly harmful happened to him, he had developed the habit of letting things go with an ah, well.
Sim Seowoo came across as a somewhat blank person,
at times appearing as though he had attained a calm detachment from the world, and at the same time, like a shape worn smooth by resignation.
Whatever it was, Sim Seowoo lived as the current carried him. The world was full of all manner of events and mishaps beyond one’s control, and so the habit of not thinking too hard had taken root — and no matter what happened, he didn’t let it into his head. The space inside him had been reduced to ash by the fire, and all he managed to hold onto was the promise he had made to the children.
Live normally.
He took that as the ultimate purpose of his life and lived accordingly. Attending university normally, working a part-time job normally, and now he was on the verge of a normal graduation and employment. People around him might not see it that way, but for Sim Seowoo, his current life was a very ordinary, unremarkable shape.
It was in the midst of that when Sim Seowoo came face to face with his current situation.
[Hey, our eyes met, didn’t they? Now you can finally see me properly, hyung!]
‘That day, during that ritual — the Hyungsin truly was resurrected.’
His spiritual sight had opened, and once he learned the truth of that day, he deliberated. Rather than agonizing over it through emotional responses — shock at seeing a malevolent spirit, fear — he ran through a very plain, algorithmic process.
Is this something I can let go with an ah, well?
It seems rather difficult to do that.
Then let’s resolve the root cause.
At the end of that line of thinking, Sim Seowoo said he would join Heun. Once this problem was resolved, he planned to return to his normal everyday life. Although everyone who had been in the recovery room at the time had worn expressions of bewilderment at his goal, he was entirely serious.
And so, at the same time as deciding to join, he also wanted to begin purification training right away.
“I’d like to learn purification techniques as well, right away.”
According to the conversation between Cheon Yijae and Do Seonhwa, it seemed that he didn’t know how to use his purification power properly and had simply poured it all out recklessly, which was why he had bled from the nose and fainted. He didn’t want to go through that again, and so he wanted to master the purification techniques.
Heun was an unfamiliar place, but compared to the cult facility he had been kidnapped into in the past, it felt moderate by comparison.
Around that time, the people in the recovery room began to exchange glances, finding things a bit odd. Of course, Cheon Yijae alone had creased his brow and stated once again that a Purifier was unnecessary — but at that moment, someone entered.
“Sojunim. The Vice-Leader has summoned you to come up immediately.”
The atmosphere in the room shifted with that news.
The somewhat chaotic space went quiet in an instant, and Cheon Yijae bit down on his lower lip. He looked displeased — but in the end, he let out a sigh and stepped outside.
Not a single person spoke until his back had completely disappeared from view, and only then did they let out sighs one after another, belatedly. Some stroked their chests to calm themselves.
“The Vice-Leader has returned, it seems……”
“Huh, we can finally breathe a little easier now……”
Do Seonhwa, too, looked visibly relieved, letting out a long phew as she caught her breath — before suddenly going ah and answering Sim Seowoo belatedly.
She said his enthusiasm for learning purification techniques was very appreciated, but for now it would be best if he rested first. His spiritual sight had only just opened, and he had even fainted — he needed to take at least one day to recover, she emphasized.
And attached to that rest was one condition.
“It would be best if you stayed at Heun for a while.”
The reason was that they couldn’t be certain whether the Hyeong Akgui attaching itself to Sim Seowoo had been a coincidence or not, and so they needed to be cautious. They had only learned that he was the sole survivor of that day after looking into Sim Seowoo’s mind — and while it might be pure coincidence, it was too worrying to simply brush it off as such.
Sim Seowoo found the explanation reasonable, and from that day on, his life at Heun began.
Heun, situated deep within a building on the outskirts of the city, was a very peculiar space. The office Do Seonhwa had once dragged him to see was only a small fraction of the whole — and each floor served a different purpose.
The workshop of the Manufacturing Division, which crafted ritual implements. The laboratories of the Research Division, which studied the arts. The offices of the Cleanup Division, which concealed Heun’s activities. The training rooms where the practitioners practiced their craft, and so on. Each division’s practitioners had such firm preferences that the interior design differed from floor to floor, as though one were touring entirely different buildings. Traditional and modern design blended in subtle, curious ways.
And across two floors, dormitories had been set up, and many of Heun’s members lived here, it was said. Furthermore, because Heun’s work needed to stay out of the world’s eye, the members naturally tended to move about only during the quiet, early hours when few people were around.
So it was also said that many members rarely went outside unless they were given a mission.
“To be honest, Director and I have been going out quite a lot recently. And every time, we happened to run into you, Seowoo-nim.”
“Doesn’t it feel suffocating?”
“Once you settle in, it’s not too bad, actually. Most conveniences are provided, and practitioners who are qualified enough to enter Heun tend to have undergone seclusion training from a young age to refine their spiritual energy — so I suppose you could say they’re used to it……”
While Sim Seowoo stayed at Heun, Jin Gwangmin volunteered to help him out. There were many aspects that made it difficult for an outsider who had been living an ordinary life on the outside to navigate.
Not only was the internal layout complex, but there were rules aplenty — certain floors were off-limits, certain objects were not to be touched, certain doors were not to be opened at specific times, and so on. It was a space that first-timers needed to be very careful in.
“On the contrary, I’m actually more worried that you, Seowoo-nim, might find it suffocating and difficult.”
Sim Seowoo blinked a few times at Jin Gwangmin’s cautious remark, then shook his head.
“It’s fine. I happen to be on break from classes.”
“……Ah, that, that really is good news then.”
There was a thick undercurrent of what a peculiar person in the response, but Sim Seowoo was being entirely sincere. His final exams were finished, so he had no reason to go to school, and he had also not responded to the café part-time job he had been scouted for.
On top of that, though it was an unusual space, his phone worked normally, so it wasn’t particularly suffocating. Thanks to that, he was able to stay in touch with the friends who had been trapped in the movie theater.
According to Jin Gwangmin, Heun’s Cleanup Division had moved all of his friends into the screening room. And then, by having the movie theater staff wake them up, they had guided them into dismissing the whole experience — the game of tag with the ghost — as a dream.
Keeping in mind that their memories had been blurred with Peach Tea and so it would be difficult for them to recall the truth, Sim Seowoo called his friends while being careful. He couldn’t afford to give them any thread to pull on that might lead them back to that night, so he had to dance around everything as much as possible in conversation.
He told them that at the movie theater, his eyes had hurt so he had left for the hospital first, and after that he had simply resumed his travels. The fact that he had gone on trips every vacation up until now made for a convenient enough excuse.
‘Some things are better left unknown forever.’
Turning Jin Gwangmin’s words over in his mind, he arrived in front of the training room.
The two pillars that made up Heun — combat-type practitioners and purification-type practitioners — each used separate training rooms, and Jin Gwangmin was unable to follow him into either space.
The former was because the combat practitioners’ training was dangerous; the latter was because of the purification practitioners’ fussy nature, he said. Purification was a task that demanded a high degree of concentration, and so noise was simply not welcome.
So Jin Gwangmin cheered him on, albeit regretfully, from outside the training room.
“Take your time learning the purification techniques. Absolutely don’t put any pressure on yourself!”
“……Mm, yes.”
Sim Seowoo answered at an unhurried pace. Jin Gwangmin didn’t need to tell him — he was already learning the purification techniques at a slow, very leisurely pace.
Five days since entering Heun.
Sim Seowoo had been exposed to the theory of purification techniques, and yet he had not managed to successfully purify even once.
