“They said the rescue team will come in about four hours.”
To change the subject in the awkward atmosphere, there would be nothing but work talk. Sim Seowoo conveyed everything he had communicated with Do Seonhwa earlier and informed him that if they waited at the shelter, Heun’s members would come find them.
However, until the end of the not-so-short story, Cheon Yijae didn’t say a single word. He was dumbfounded when he confirmed the back view of him sitting far away against the wall, leaning with his back turned to him.
Was he so angry about not correcting the misunderstanding that he cut off conversation like this? Even thinking about it again, he felt it was the fault of the one who misunderstood, but Sim Seowoo exercised patience.
Still, there was help he’d received from Cheon Yijae…
“Um, it’s a late greeting, but thank you for helping when the Guiyeok collapsed. It was my first time experiencing something like that so I was flustered, but thanks to you, I came out safe—”
“If you’re grateful for that, leave Heun.”
He was sincerely conveying his thanks in his own way when—cut—Cheon Yijae interrupted. Instead, as if he didn’t like Sim Seowoo being grateful, he sneered in a mocking voice.
“Isn’t something wrong with you? If you almost got bitten by a yokai and were stranded like this, isn’t the normal reaction to shudder at the thought of ever being involved with Heun again?”
“Why are you trying to make people into trash…”
But Sim Seowoo was dumbfounded by Cheon Yijae’s point. He understood what he was trying to say. As an ordinary person, he had experienced things several times today that were unimaginable, so Sim Seowoo had been quite surprised too. It was also shocking to realize that Heun had been protecting the world’s balance like this.
However, in a situation where he had ultimately survived safely thanks to the successor of that organization, getting angry at the person who protected him was absurd. Though Sim Seowoo did tend to think in terms of results to some extent originally, honestly, Cheon Yijae’s words right now only sounded like nitpicking.
Telling him to quit if he was grateful—he really persistently tried to drive people away.
“You suffered plenty at the site. Since you said you’d experience it yourself and judge, if you’re in your right mind, you’d say you’d quit as soon as you got back.”
Come to think of it, he remembered they’d kept having conversations on this topic even right before coming to the site, and now he was almost admiringly feeling integrity and fidelity in Cheon Yijae’s consistent attitude.
Did he hate purification that much?
Even though he seemed to have shown quite a bit of purification power this time, the rejection was still there. Though it wasn’t intentional, all the shamans who were there together had been surprised, yet only Cheon Yijae remained unchanged.
Was it that purification that washes away contamination in one go wasn’t important to Cheon Yijae from the start, but that he just hated Purifiers themselves? And if that was the reason, regrettably, Sim Seowoo still couldn’t comply.
The weight of the signing bonus—no, the contract—was enormous.
Rather than greed for money, having done all sorts of part-time jobs as soon as he became an adult and felt the weight of money, Sim Seowoo believed he had to take responsibility for what he received. And thinking from that perspective, being the Sojunim’s Purifier came with very great responsibility.
Having finished thinking as a responsible member of society, Sim Seowoo took off the beige shirt he wore as an outer layer. He had heated up moving Cheon Yijae all the way here, and had also gotten hot wiping his wounds without rest.
“Hey. Stop ignoring what I’m saying—”
Despite Cheon Yijae’s cool warning, Sim Seowoo just focused on pulling his arms out of the shirt. At the gestures that were calm to the point of being thoughtless, Cheon Yijae seemed to have reached the limit of his patience as he grabbed his shoulder.
But the moment he touched his shoulder, Cheon Yijae flinched and backed away.
“…?”
It was before Sim Seowoo could even react. In fact, he hadn’t even known Cheon Yijae had approached behind him, so he turned around bewildered and confirmed that he was covering his mouth with his hand.
His fingertips trembled. Just like forcibly suppressing something.
“Why is your, body scent, like this…”
…Body scent?
Was he talking about sweat smell? He had sweated a little, but did it smell that bad? Sim Seowoo awkwardly raised his arm and sniffed, when—whoosh—Cheon Yijae stood up from his spot.
“…I need to go out. I’ll come back around when Do Seonhwa arrives, so you stay here.”
At the firm announcement, Sim Seowoo stood up bewildered. He seemed about to kick away from the spot and leave immediately, so he hurriedly grabbed Cheon Yijae’s hand.
“They said the mountain is dangerous right now during the Hour of the Ox. They said you should stay in a bright place—”
“Don’t touch me.”
Smack! Cheon Yijae roughly shook off his hand. At the action rough enough to sting, when Sim Seowoo sighed “Ah” and clasped his hand, he hesitated. But in the end, he bit down hard on his lower lip and turned around.
“Petty ghosts aren’t any threat to me, so stop worrying.”
“But you just woke up not long ago. I’ll go out instead, so Sojunim stay here.”
As Cheon Yijae answered in a cold voice and tried to open the door and leave, Sim Seowoo spread both arms wide and blocked his way. Not only had Do Seonhwa asked him to look after Sojunim, but wasn’t he a patient who had been collapsed just a few minutes ago?
Though for a patient, he looked very fine, anyway, his complexion was still pale.
“…”
However, Cheon Yijae, who had seemed like he would push Sim Seowoo aside and leave any moment, backed away. As soon as Sim Seowoo, who had been out of breath from moving quickly, lightly caught his breath—hoo—he crumpled his face and took a step away, even covering his nose and mouth with his hand and sharply turning his head.
Under his large hand, the curse “Fuck…” rumbled as if muffled.
‘…Does my sweat smell that much?’
Was that the reason he tried to leave this place? Sim Seowoo became awkward again and turned his head to the side, sniffing to check his own smell, when Cheon Yijae spoke lowly.
It was a warning spat out in an extremely cold voice.
“Stop meddling.”
“…”
“Who exactly are you worried about? Do you worry about just anyone who goes out to the mountain alone because of your experience being kidnapped on a mountain before? What, are you projecting me onto the kids you couldn’t protect back then?”
In the shelter with only the two of them, Cheon Yijae’s voice echoed very clearly, so he could definitely notice that his final question was tinged with faint mockery. And that it was closer to sneering than a question as well.
In the space where silence descended, a precarious atmosphere like thin ice spread chillingly. Cheon Yijae swept back his hair with the hand that had been covering his lower face and ground out:
“You said living normally was your dream. I understand you have that dream because you couldn’t live normally, but then shouldn’t you at least make an effort to live that way? Looking at how you’re acting right now, I don’t see even a hint of that.”
Sneering coldly, Cheon Yijae looked straight down at Sim Seowoo. His ash-colored eyes without a speck of warmth captured the other person with mechanical movements.
Sim Seowoo quietly faced him. Though there was a gap of one step, his shadow with the light behind him pressed down to cover his entire body.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that all of Heun’s members knew he was the sole survivor of the Seak Akjin Lireugyo mass fire incident. He had often heard whispers during the past few days at Heun about whether the victim’s spiritual sight had finally opened and he’d joined.
But no one had directly mentioned that incident in front of him. Even the Purifiers who had picked fights with him in the training room hadn’t touched on that part.
Yet Cheon Yijae dug it up in one go.
“You say you’ll live normally but joined an organization that hunts evil spirits, and stepped forward in front of a yokai. Now you’re even blocking in front of a human harboring evil spirits, spouting nonsense about going out instead because it’s the Hour of the Ox and it’s dangerous. Looking at you carefully, it seems like you’re just following along because you want to die.”
As if he knew exactly where his weakest part was, far too well.
Suddenly Sim Seowoo understood why Do Seonhwa and Jin Gwangmin had both said in unison that Cheon Yijae’s personality was terrible, and also realized that Cheon Yijae had been holding back his words to him until now. Did he restrain himself because they’d just met, or did he let it slide considering him an outsider who would soon leave Heun?
He threw out each word, each word with a sharply honed blade inside.
“Jin Gwangmin was admiring your amazing powers of persuasion, but in my eyes, it only looks like you’re acting that way because your head is broken.”
“…”
“Since you don’t seem to know, let me kindly point it out: normal ordinary people don’t say they’ll go out alone to the mountain. So if you truly want to achieve your dream, make an effort to adjust that mindset to be normal first—”
“There’s a storage shed next to the shelter, so I was planning to wait there.”
“…”
Sim Seowoo answered calmly. When he said composedly that he had no intention of standing dumbly in the dark mountain from the start, Cheon Yijae shut his mouth tight.
Cheon Yijae’s gaze went to the container visible through the shelter window, then slowly moved back to Sim Seowoo. It was just the simple act of rolling his eyes, but it continued quite awkwardly.
Soon Cheon Yijae reached his hand toward the doorknob.
“Move.”
“But during the Hour of the Ox, you should refrain from going out—”
“I’ll be in the storage shed, so absolutely don’t come in.”
Cheon Yijae, who opened the door almost pushing Sim Seowoo aside, warned firmly.
