INV 10

The reason for obsessing over this was simple. If he could figure it out, there might be a way to seal him back or something. Chacha would rot for another ten thousand years once re-sealed, but that was none of his business. What mattered was that Kwon Yihyeon regained a “superficially” ordinary and intact daily life.

Park Seongjun’s conclusion was simpler than expected.

“Maybe you’re just a talented bastard.”

“What?”

“Like a super-rookie of the hidden world, a concealed genius, a top-priority scouting target, uncontrollable brilliance—that kind of thing. Since you’ve already contracted, you won’t suffer from spirit sickness, but ‘companies’ and the like might be dying to take you. However,”

Park Seongjun stopped teasing Kwon Yihyeon, and his face turned deathly pale. The moment he was about to ask what was wrong, a chill crept up his neck along with a prickling sensation of goosebumps.

In a room where there had been no one but the two of them, a voice was heard from behind.

“You scoundrel, what are you doing here?”

Someone was holding a knife to Kwon Yihyeon’s throat. A real knife, sharp-edged, touching Kwon Yihyeon’s skin with a slight sting.

“…!”

To say that Kwon Yihyeon’s life had been perfectly ordinary, one would first have to discuss what the standard for “ordinary” even was. However, it was certain that he had lived within the framework of a law-abiding citizen. This meant his life was a far cry from one where someone would brandish a “real blade” as a “threat.”

The person holding the blade against Kwon Yihyeon’s throat as a threat and standing between them as if protecting Park Seongjun was a tall woman. Because she looked so much like Park Seongjun, it was immediately recognizable that she was his friend’s noona.

“Noona! What are you doing right now…!”

“Young Master, you must not let a thing like this inside.”

Kwon Yihyeon was simply dumbfounded. He didn’t even notice the fact that he had just been referred to as a “thing” rather than “this guy” or “this bastard.” I just came to a friend’s house to hang out and I’m being subjected to this? Just because I saved someone who collapsed in the mountains, I’m supposed to naturally accept being looked at like foul, dangerous filth?

Park Seongjun kept trying to stop his noona, as if to make an excuse or provide an explanation.

Saying it wasn’t dangerous, telling her not to do this, saying he would handle it.

Park Seongjun had mentioned before that although he was the youngest, he was the superior in terms of generational rank. However, he never gave off the impression of boasting about that fact. After all, the Park Seongjun Kwon Yihyeon knew was someone who always nimbly brought out refreshments, did housework, and politely respected his hyungs and noonas. He had never seen him receive honorifics from his hyungs or noonas.

However, seeing that person calling the youngest, Park Seongjun, “Young Master,” consistently using honorifics, and dismissing Park Seongjun’s words, it seemed that what Kwon Yihyeon had seen was only the Park Seongjun of “reality.”

Not Park Seongjun, the promising baksu-mudang of a shaman lineage.

For someone called “Young Master,” Park Seongjun might not have much power. The distance between Kwon Yihyeon and Park Seongjun remained wide, and the blade aimed at Kwon Yihyeon remained sharply honed, prepared for any contingency.

Listening to the bickering between the two and the threatening words directed at him to leave immediately, reality slowly settled coldly on his shoulders.

“Noona, he’s my friend. He just got caught up in a difficult situation he didn’t even want. If you keep acting this way…”

When Kwon Yihyeon thought about it coldly, he was not the 10-year friend Kwon Yihyeon to Park Seongjun right now, but the contractor of Jae Angshin who had invaded a spiritual territory.

Kwon Yihyeon would not cause any harm to Park Seongjun. He could swear it.

However, such an explanation would be useless.

In that person’s eyes, he likely just looked like a madman contracted with Jae Angshin reaching out toward her precious family member.

“The Young Master’s position is not one where safety can be recklessly thrown away. As for me―,”

“Stop, please stop.”

“…”

“…”

When Kwon Yihyeon, who had slowly organized his thoughts, opened his mouth for the first time, silence suddenly fell over the room.

As the argument died down and the human voices vanished, the faint sound of an unknown bird murmuring drifted in. The moon outside the window, shimmering at the edge of his vision, was a bright full moon, but it was slightly obscured by the silhouettes of power lines and crows.

While silence filled the space, the surrounding noises stealthily poked their heads out.

‘…Is this what the house Park Seongjun usually feels is like?’

While suffocatingly hostile gazes and anxious, restless looks were poured upon him simultaneously.

Having organized his thoughts, Kwon Yihyeon spoke slowly.

“I have caused a disturbance by visiting so suddenly. I shall be on my way now.”

He thought his voice would come out cracked, but it came out surprisingly calm.

…Yes, though it was a hostile gaze, it was still a human eye.

After enduring a murderous glare for a long time, he saw what was hidden behind it.

It was fear. Park Seongjun’s noona was afraid. She was fearful, scared, and terrified, yet she still had to protect the “Young Master.” For that sake, she had instead made her eyes fierce and her tone sharp, ensuring there was not a single tremor in the knife aimed at Kwon Yihyeon. Sensing that, the energy to be angry vanished. The strength to insist on staying here vanished as well. It was only right for Kwon Yihyeon to leave quietly. This really wasn’t because they had done something wrong. Kwon Yihyeon had become the uninvited guest who broke their peace.

‘And overnight…’

The world flipped upside down overnight. The friend’s noona, who had been kind when he came to hang out with Park Seongjun, pointed a knife and tried to stab Kwon Yihyeon to death. Yet the world is shouting that you are the one who flipped over alone.

That you are the one who did wrong, that you are the one who is wrong…

‘There’s no way I can adapt to this.’

He could feel Park Seongjun looking at him with a look that seemed like he might die from guilt. He wanted to sneer and tell him to feel even more guilty if possible, but Kwon Yihyeon silently gathered his coat that he had taken off and set out.

On his way out, he received something akin to a send-off, but there wasn’t a speck of friendly intent in it. Anyone could see it was surveillance. He could feel a glare watching him, wondering if he might slip away somewhere he shouldn’t. That gaze came to an end as the door slammed bang behind him.

Thus, Kwon Yihyeon returned to “reality.” To his deprived daily life. Surrounded by the low crying of birds, the sound of cars passing, and the rhythmic tick-tick sound of an old streetlamp reaching the end of its life, he was kicked out.

Before he could even escape the lingering feelings of that moment, a light footstep approached from behind. Kwon Yihyeon somehow felt he knew who the owner was.

Beauty or fear was speaking, borrowing the form of a human voice.

“This is what it’s like to have woken me.”

Kwon Yihyeon turned around. And his prediction was correct.

Chacha was looking at him.

“How does it feel to not be welcomed?”

“It’s really terrible.”

“Is that all?”

There was plenty to lament or curse about. However, after keeping those emotions bottled up for a long time, in the end, there was nothing else to say but this.

“Because it’s a familiar thing.”

It was true. It was familiar. Both the feeling of being an uninvited guest and the feeling of being kicked out—even the fact that the cause wasn’t exactly Kwon Yihyeon’s own karma—were similar.

It was bitter, but not new. Being a loner just because he was the son of a shaman’s house wasn’t a thing of a day or two.

As it was merely that much of an impression to him, he felt a bit puzzled when Chacha lowered his eyes as if chewing over those words and then let out a suspicious smile for a long time. However, Chacha didn’t say anything else, and Kwon Yihyeon finally threw the question he had wanted to ask as soon as he saw Chacha.

“What happened to those clothes?”

After all, the Jae Angshin and long-lived fox yokai before his eyes looked like a model or an actor judging by his attire alone. He wondered where the classic beauty who looked good in a white undershirt had gone, and where this glamorous long-haired modern person, who looked like he could be an active actor, had suddenly appeared from.

“I went for a stroll to the most glittering place in this country.”

If it was the most glittering place in South Korea to go for a stroll, it would likely be Seoul. He went to Seoul in that short time they were apart? That’s not a problem to be dismissed with a “That’s impressive.” Wait a minute. Was I supposed to always follow this guy around and serve him? With Chacha’s temperament, he surely must have gotten into a fight with someone. If Chacha did something crazy, the aftermath would come to him as the contractor who woke him, right?

Kwon Yihyeon decided to ask in more detail.

“Was the stroll fun?”

“Humans certainly love noisy places.”

He didn’t know what the other had seen, but modern Seoul would be much noisier than ten thousand years ago. There was nothing more natural than that.

Kwon Yihyeon, who thoughtlessly figured nothing much happened, nodded appropriately, and Chacha indifferently spat out the next words.

“And they were more rude.”

Kwon Yihyeon felt his blood run cold.