INV 47

When Kwon Yihyeon felt as if he were going mad with curiosity, Chacha, looking delighted, formed a gentle eye-smile and asked suggestively.

“Shall I press play? Or not?”

“…On a human level, isn’t it too much to say that and then cut it off?”

Chacha chuckled and resumed the screen.

Even before he belonged to the Underworld, he was a shaman of considerable renown.

As shamans often do, he didn’t just dance on blades or hold rituals; instead of simply fortifying futures and receiving fees, he was a rather unique wandering male shaman who specialized in warding off evil and performing requiems.

He did not wait for requests to come in. He went out, provided the cure point-blank, and extracted payment.

Sometimes it was ten thousand gold, and sometimes it was a handful of snacks.

Because there was no proper standard, there were occasional protests. While it is true that shamanic work doesn’t exactly have a fixed price, Gwak Deukcheon would merely behave slyly, replying that he was only taking the most precious thing the person could give.

Because of this, Gwak Deukcheon, well-known in the industry, was strictly speaking one of those “younger generations” who did not faithfully observe tradition and norms; however, he was not a shaman whose basic mindset was rotten.

In this world, there are things that must be chased away, defeated, and sent back for the sake of the living.

In those days, Gwak Deukcheon was convinced that if the path of a shaman had been given to him, it must surely be to chase away, defeat, and send things back for the living. Furthermore, he was in the process of pioneering a new method befitting that conviction. If there was a problem, it was that his method was excessively “new”…

“How dare a brat whose crown hasn’t even dried and whose head hasn’t ripened try to judge my right and wrong!”

The timing was poor. Since the Hell of that time—before Governor Gangnim drew his blade—was a hotbed of exquisite corruption, the Reapers looked at Gwak Deukcheon and felt it was nauseating to see a mere human, not even an official of the afterworld, making a scene. What they meant by “making a scene” was his work of unraveling destinies twisted by the wicked malice and negativity of others and sending the deceased back. Nevertheless, simply because he lacked the title of an Underworld Reaper, the Reapers intimidated Gwak Deukcheon, swarming like thugs to scare him into observing tradition and norms. They poured out verbal abuse, asking if he wanted to know what would happen if they brushed ink over his register of the dead, and tried to send evil spirits so he couldn’t even rest properly in his dreams.

However, that fearless bastard Gwak Deukcheon, despite suffering all sorts of disadvantages, never intended to bend his will even once. If one wonders why he was causing such a fuss alone in a world where others easily discard their convictions and live on, it was because, unlike those like reeds who sway this way and that as the wind blows, a mission he had to achieve even at the cost of his life stood stubbornly within him.

There was no denying that the young man with blade-like eyes had reached the present through the stage of a rosy-cheeked boy.

“Oh, it seems the content I was disappointed to miss earlier is about to come out now. That memory the defense mechanism was hiding. Indeed, is timing everything even in past reflections…?”

“…Is this really okay? Truly?”

And is Jae Angshin’s personality okay as it is? Kwon Yihyeon made a pained sound while clutching his head, but he could not escape on his own anyway. Since Chacha had led him into this illusion, leaving was also impossible without Chacha.

‘The past of my boss… I really don’t want to know…!’

No matter how much Kwon Yihyeon wanted to distance himself from his boss, the internal intimacy toward Gwak Deukcheon was rising vertically in Kwon Yihyeon’s heart.

Even without Gwak Deukcheon himself knowing…

Then, Chacha offered his first comforting words.

“…Dear me. The defense mechanism is quite strong. It’s set so that the actual details cannot be looked into. I could pierce through if I wanted to, but if I did, it would be discovered that we are here. What do you want to do?”

“Please, make it so I can’t see anything. Mister Priest.”

Chacha decided to let it go. As he said, not looking into the specific details, but merely glimpsing what was revealed.

In his younger days, Gwak Deukcheon had one sensitive friend.

Because the friend saw what others could not and heard what others could not, the villagers merely whispered and mocked him, wondering if he was a madman; however, for Gwak Deukcheon, who would quietly listen to the sijo poems the friend recited in pure temples when he was calm, he simply could not believe the talk of madness. The history of such a friend being unable to endure himself and breaking down while chasing salvation was what tempered and forged Gwak Deukcheon like a blade.

Cases like Gwak Deukcheon’s friend were not rare even now. Occasionally, there are those who are subject to spirits because their innate spiritual sensitivity is strangely keen. Helping them hold onto their hearts and providing a center so they can stand properly should be the karma a shaman performs, but there were some “torn mouths” who recklessly told them to receive a god.

If someone looked like they had the temperament of a shaman’s candidate at a glance, these people would engage in blackmail, putting lives on the line without questioning or weighing the person’s four pillars of destiny, claiming they would suffer from divine sickness and die if they didn’t perform an initiation ritual immediately without a proper trial. Since such people were actually false shamans and half-baked shamans whose goal was to line their pockets by holding rituals, they would tie up the person with wandering ghosts or restless spirits during the initiation ritual and then just leave. When that happened, only the remaining person would go mad. Since it was a situation where only filthy things and things like venomous snakes had been accepted in a vessel that originally should have hosted household gods or ancestral gods, there was no way the rest of their life would run properly. As rotten maggots gave off a stench, even the gods who would have stayed with good intentions—whether they were originally meant to be hosted or came to protect—would scatter; and with no one to protect the person whose sensitivity was already keen, only hungry ghosts seeking to strip the flesh from the bone remained.

Thus, in the end, it would become a life where one heard it would be better fate to just wither away.

That was the history of how Gwak Deukcheon sent off his young friend. After being granted the fate of a shaman, this was the reason he was certain the origin of this destiny given to him was surely to chase away, defeat, and send things back for the living. There was no way a mission sharpened by such chilling resentment could be a light weight.

Gwak Deukcheon, who was being collectively bullied by the Underworld Reapers while being called a madman or a freak with a temperament like a fighting dog, finally reached the point where he grabbed one of them, took him hostage, and barked for their superiors to come out…

“…This guy was more of a madman than I thought. Yihyeon. Avoid messing with Reaper Gwak whenever possible. There’s no good in dealing with a son of a bitch with rabies.”

“Yes. It seems I should do that…”

The connection he met then was none other than…!

‘Governor Gangnim!’

The Reaper of human origin who was said to have scraped the insides of Great King Yama by causing all sorts of accidents as the friend of the Taoist Jeon Uchi,

And who, in the present, has become the master who ascended to the position of Great King Yama.

Even back then, Governor Gangnim was a “deep-rooted water” or rather “rotten water,” so under normal circumstances, this matter wouldn’t have reached his ears; however, as they say sincerity moves heaven, perhaps his efforts were commendable or his luck aligned, for it happened to reach Governor Gangnim’s ears by chance.

“From what I’ve heard, some crazy human in the land of Joseon is holding onto a Reaper and, yes, pressing a strange piece of metal—not even a ritual blade—against his neck, while shouting profanities for his master to come out.”

“Have you still left such a nonsensical fellow’s life intact? Immediately look through that bastard’s register and ink it over…!”

If Governor Gangnim hadn’t cut them off then, saying “This is interesting,” Gwak Deukcheon’s fiery temper might have been cut short long ago. Therefore, it might have been foolish not to grasp the blessing the Governor gave him then to become his person. However, Gwak Deukcheon, then as now, possessed eyes so sharp they seemed to pierce the essence of things, and he firmly refused.

The anecdote he used as an example was that of his friend.

“That may be the longevity written in my friend’s register. But this Gwak Deukcheon says he hates that. He says he hates to leave a person’s destiny to live that way when it was disrupted by someone who performs half-baked shamanism while knowing that his own actions are a means of making money. Then what can be done? I shall try to look after them as far as my hands and feet can reach. This undeserved title bestowed upon a foolish and ignorant human—please take it back.”

Hearing that, Kwon Yihyeon suddenly felt aggrieved.

‘In your younger days, you knew how to speak human language; why do you only bark now, you man…?’

Even after Governor Gangnim withdrew, the Reapers talked quite a lot, saying that if his neck remained that stiff, it would soon be dangling. Indeed, it was true that a rebellious attitude of declaring one would do what one must, regardless of what others blathered, was very difficult to survive for long.

Still, Governor Gangnim’s influence sufficiently blocked the Reapers’ nonsense. Simply by silencing them so they couldn’t threaten to ink over the register, he had brought a great deal of fortune; and even after that, he continued to bestow his help. He thought the next meeting would only be after his longevity ended, but decades later, he suddenly appeared before the old man and spoke thus:

“I am your Great King Yama.”

That was right. Over the decades in human terms, Governor Gangnim had returned after overturning the Underworld to reform the absurdities Gwak Deukcheon had pointed out during their last meeting!