Seoho sprawled out on the sofa. It was the first time he’d thought this deeply about something since his parents passed away.
“I’m tired.”
Perhaps because he’d been living such a lethargic life these past few months, just thinking a bit made his head ache and his body feel languid. Sunlight flickered over Seoho’s face as he lay sprawled on the sofa. The sunlight was more than warm—it was a bit hot—but it didn’t feel bad. He even felt drowsiness creeping in.
For several days, he hadn’t been able to sleep properly because of that crying sound. Realizing he was sleep-deprived, Seoho let his body topple over to the side.
“Let’s sleep for a bit.”
Maybe after sleeping, he’d feel refreshed and be able to think better. Seoho’s vision, his eyes blinking with drowsiness clinging thickly to them, turned pitch black.
How much time had passed like that? Seoho’s eyes flew wide open.
‘My body…’
It wasn’t the usual dark night, and in the living room where sunlight came in well, Seoho was experiencing sleep paralysis again.
And the crying sound reaching his ears.
The minute hand on the clock visible straight ahead showed that only 30 minutes had passed since he fell asleep.
Seoho glared at that clock and tried to move his body. But no matter how hard he tried, his body wouldn’t move at all.
‘Just a little, just a little.’
Even when he put all his strength into his body and tried to put force into his fingers, the sleep paralysis showed no sign of releasing. After putting strength into his body for quite a while like that, Seoho—unbelievably—fell back asleep.
Exactly two hours later, Seoho’s eyes snapped open and he let out a hollow laugh at his own stupidity before roughly turning his body.
‘To not even let me nap properly. If it were my parents, this wouldn’t happen.’
Seoho stared at the backrest of the black sofa for a long while, then thought:
‘I guess the fortunate thing is that there are no eyes this time?’
Seoho let out a chuckle, then was startled enough to fall off the sofa onto the floor. Along with a loud sound, his bottom hurt, but before Seoho could even register that pain, he straightened his back.
And he examined the sofa once more.
“…What the hell is this?”
Eyes drawn on the black sofa. You couldn’t see them unless you looked closely, but those were definitely eyes. Seoho put strength into his legs and ran to his room. The eyes that had been drawn on the wall had disappeared at some point.
Silently staring at the clean wall, Seoho hurriedly prepared to go out.
‘I know where I need to go.’
He would visit the shaman today.
It was a place he’d cursed at and raged that he’d never visit again, that he’d absolutely never have reason to see twice, but still, to protect this house, he had to go find that shaman.
Seoho roughly washed his face.
***
It was his third time visiting this place. Right after taking the college entrance exam, before even doing the self-scoring, it was a place he’d visited hanging out with a friend.
He’d complained to the friend who led him there, asking why a shaman when they could go see tarot cards like other kids.
The friend who was with him then had said:
“It’s a really famous place. It’s hard to even get a reservation?”
When Seoho asked how he managed to book such a famous place, the friend said:
“My mom had something come up today.”
The friend said his mom had paid the deposit so it would be a waste to lose the money, and she told him to go, so since he was scared to go alone, he begged Seoho to come with him.
Seoho eventually had no choice but to follow his friend into the shaman’s house.
The room they entered, guided by an ajumma, wasn’t much different from what you’d typically see in various media, but the shaman’s eyes glaring at them from inside the room gave Seoho chills.
Red makeup and sharply upturned eyes. The shaman glaring at him as if seeing through everything, flashing her sanpaku eyes.
He thought to himself that with that level of presence, she wouldn’t be just anyone. Still, the uncomfortable feeling didn’t change, so he poked the side of his friend standing blankly next to him. He wanted to finish quickly and leave this place. But before Seoho could even rush his friend, the shaman clicked her tongue loudly and said:
“A fate to lose everything!”
Seoho was startled and turned to look at the shaman, who was staring piercingly at him, not at his friend. When their eyes met, the shaman opened her mouth once more.
“Family, house, friends! You’ll lose everything in this place!”
The first emotion that came to Seoho was bewilderment. As Seoho stared at her blankly, his friend started getting furiously angry.
“Are you crazy?!”
At his friend’s voice, Seoho came to his senses. Seoho grabbed his friend who was about to curse at the shaman and said:
“She’s not even worth getting angry at. Let’s go.”
He dragged his friend and left the shaman’s house just like that. The friend who’d been getting angry as if it were his own matter apologized repeatedly to Seoho as soon as they left the shaman’s house.
Seoho shook his head. It wasn’t his friend’s fault, and he didn’t want to think deeply about such nonsensical words and get his feelings hurt for nothing.
Seoho completely dismissed the shaman’s words as nonsense. But not long after that, Seoho’s parents died in a traffic accident.
After his parents’ deaths, he didn’t immediately think of that shaman. After the funeral was completely over, when he returned home alone and was lying blankly on his bed, that woman suddenly came to mind.
‘Family, house, friends! You’ll lose everything in this place!’
It felt like an illusion of those sharp eyes with red makeup glaring at him, acting superior as if she’d known this would happen.
Seoho ran out of the house just like that and went to find the shaman. It wasn’t a close distance, but he didn’t even think to take a bus or taxi and just ran recklessly.
Haa-, haa-.
Only the sound of his own ragged breathing rang in his ears. When he couldn’t quite remember exactly where it was, he asked people around and found his way there.
Dripping with sweat, asking for directions with a face that was a mess from not sleeping or eating properly, Seoho startled people who told him the way. Someone muttered pitifully to Seoho who was asking about the shaman’s house looking completely wrecked, as if it really was a famous place:
“That place is really accurate, but you need a reservation.”
He didn’t have the presence of mind to answer. He just thought he needed to meet that woman as quickly as possible and say something, anything. Seoho took a deep breath and wiped away the sweat flowing down his nose bridge and jawline.
He didn’t know what time it was, but all the lights in the shaman’s house were off. But Seoho didn’t have the luxury to consider courtesy.
Seoho roughly pounded on the door and cursed:
“You quack! This is all because of you!”
He kicked the door and raged:
“Open the door! I said open it!”
How long had he been shouting? The firmly closed door opened. And a young woman came out from inside and bluntly said:
“Fate cannot be changed.”
“…What?”
“You will lose everything. There are no other words I can tell you besides that.”
Only then did Seoho realize that this young woman in front of him was that shaman from back then. The woman without a trace of makeup wasn’t the chilling figure from before.
Just an ordinary woman you could see anywhere.
Seoho stared at the woman blankly, then shouted as if venting:
“Don’t be ridiculous. I won’t lose anything more!”
The woman had no response. She looked at Seoho for a long while, then closed the door just like that. Seoho looked at the door that closed before his eyes and made a resolution.
‘Lose family, friends, house, everything?’
He’d lost his family, but he wouldn’t lose his friends and house. He wouldn’t lose something again and come here to shout that it was all her fault.
‘Just you wait.’
He’d protect everything, and tell her “see, you were wrong.”
Time passed like that. The cold winter passed and spring came. Honestly, it was hard to say he hadn’t lost his friends.
His friends all entered university and made new friends, and his closest friend—that is, the friend who came to this shaman’s house with him—perhaps feeling sorry about his parents’ deaths, cried his heart out at the funeral hall and then left to study abroad.
There were kids he contacted sporadically, but if asked whether they were friends, Seoho was in no position to say confidently that they were.
‘But the house is different.’
The house that became Seoho’s after his parents passed away.
Thanks to the money his parents had saved and the death insurance payout, if he didn’t overspend, he had enough money to live on for a lifetime.
So there was no need to sell the house they originally lived in, nor any reason to sell it.
Seoho did his best to maintain the house. Even while lying lethargically in bed, sleeping when drowsy and getting up to eat when hungry, he kept the house cleanly swept and tidied. He always had a dry cloth in hand so dust wouldn’t accumulate on his parents’ traces.
Diligently sweeping and cleaning the house like that, Seoho gradually got better. Unlike the first month when he stayed holed up at home, in the second month he went for walks around the house and went to nearby cafes, spending time not too badly.
But the third month, in March.
A supernatural phenomenon came to Seoho. And Seoho knew who could give at least some answers to this strange occurrence.
‘The shaman.’
Today, Seoho had come to this place yet again. Unlike when he visited the second time, the sun was still up.
He clenched his fist and caught his breath. He’d said he wouldn’t come back, but to protect the house, he had no choice.
