INV 84

Listening to the testimony of Myo Woon, who had been searching the ley lines, Kwon Yihyeon had been found collapsed in the mountains.

Seeing him collapsed without even being able to properly attach the talismans, Myo Woon reportedly summoned all team members in a hurry, fearing that some kind of rejection reaction had occurred at Bukhansan.

The assessment from Gwak Deukcheon, who gathered there, was this:

“This bastard is snoring?”

Whether he was actually snoring is unknown, but the judgment was made that it was simple sleep. Only then did Myo Woon breathe a sigh of relief, while Gwak Deukcheon devised a cheeky scheme to use the collapsed team member as an excuse to be liberated from overtime.

That was why the team members, including Gwak Deukcheon, were still staying by his side even now that Kwon Yihyeon had woken up.

“Did… things get handled well?”

“What things.”

“The UFO and such.”

Kwon Yihyeon, sitting on a spread-out durumagi—the outdoor activity uniform of the Grim Reapers—looked up at Gwak Deukcheon and asked.

He felt sorry for the others who were likely working hard on their feet, but Kwon Yihyeon inwardly doubted whether something like large-scale memory manipulation could actually be achieved in reality. It was perhaps because the behavior shown by the Celestial Realm and the Afterlife Company thus far had been fundamentally untrustworthy.

“If you’ve come to your senses, give me back my clothes. How dare an intern sit and sleep on his lofty Team Leader’s clothes. Huh?”

“It’s not that I spread it out, but when I woke up… you were the one who provided it for me, Team Leader!”

“Kids these days, I swear!”

Gwak Deukcheon, grumbling for the sake of it, took the durumagi back from Kwon Yihyeon and spoke nonchalantly.

“If you’re so suspicious, look it up. Portal site articles or SNS content. Search through it all.”

Kwon Yihyeon was confused as to whether this was a delegation of additional work or a solution to satisfy his curiosity, but he just did as he was told. If you’re a newcomer—an intern at that—you’ve got to do it. What else can you do?

Tapping away at his phone, Kwon Yihyeon whispered a moment later like a sigh.

“…Everything really has changed…”

Up until the last time Kwon Yihyeon checked, it was a world overflowing with all sorts of talk. A world where fake news was rampant, escalating various speculations and anxieties—that this was all an occult phenomenon, the end of the world. There were shamans who stepped forward to deceive people by taking advantage of the chaos, and there were also shamans who set up barriers with all their heart and soul to somehow block the spores of minor evils.

However, the newspaper article headlines now were about entirely different topics.

The appearances of animal-type yōkai had been changed to reports of wild beasts escaping from zoos and being shot dead. The appearances of plant-type yōkai had been changed to contributions about mutant plants, and the yōkai observed in the sky had been naturally changed to columns about migratory birds or articles stating that UFOs had been sighted. Of course, the articles about UFO sightings were treated as nonsensical talk.

He didn’t know how things were being settled overseas, but at least the current state of South Korea was like this.

“Check SNS, too. It’ll be fascinating.”

At that moment, Gwak Deukcheon added a word as if spitting it out, while keeping his gaze elsewhere. Kwon Yihyeon looked up at Gwak Deukcheon for a moment, then accessed SNS. Come to think of it, SNS uploads users’ remarks in real-time; he wondered what would happen to posts already uploaded, even if memories had been manipulated.

The answer was simple.

“…Ah.”

SNS posts were being edited in real-time. As if someone were rewriting them.

“This, how is such a thing possible?”

Even on SNS platforms where editing itself is impossible, the previously written occult-related content vanished, leaving only ordinary daily life. It was a realm impossible for scientific technology.

Kwon Yihyeon was so flustered he even stuttered. Gwak Deukcheon watched Kwon Yihyeon and curled one corner of his mouth upward.

“Because this is possible, isn’t that why memory manipulation is an absolute taboo? Unless it’s a matter threatening the existence of each realm, it’s a secret technique that must never be used.”

“So memory manipulation isn’t just about changing memories?”

Gwak Deukcheon said, “You’re surprisingly smart for someone who looks so stupid,” gaining minus points by adding words that didn’t need to be added, before beginning his explanation.

“Things that aren’t remembered disappear. That is reality. Just as gods who lose their believers fade away.”

“…Does that mean if something is forgotten from memory, it disappears from reality as well?”

At that moment, Kwon Yihyeon felt a sense of loss so intense it made him dizzy, though he had no idea why.

He only whispered in a trembling voice.

“But we remember, don’t we.”

“Hey, are we people of the Human Realm? We belong to the Underworld, don’t we?”

“Ah.”

Gwak Deukcheon clicked his tongue with a tsk and continued the explanation.

“Shamans are also classified as belonging to the Underworld. So, the memories of shamans don’t disappear. But we’ve wiped all the memories of those belonging to the Human Realm. If no one in the Human Realm remembers, from then on…”

“…”

“History is changed (歷史 改變).”

Of course, he said that forgetting someone doesn’t mean all of history changes. The explanation followed that because there was active shamanic intervention to change history, the massive “countering of heaven” known as history alteration could be achieved.

He understood it all, but Kwon Yihyeon felt strange for some reason. He knew there was no reason for him to feel that way, but a bizarre sense of depression and obsession welled up. It was at that moment when he was thinking he wanted to escape this emotion quickly.

“What are you doing there? Others are working overtime.”

“Ah. Shit. I’m caught!”

Geom Biyeon approached, parting the bushes. Geom Biyeon, looking at the employees of the Haetae Department—who had sat down with full intention to take a break—as if they were pathetic things, clapped her hands clap, clap.

“Let’s get up now. It’s time for ‘work’.”

Her tone seemed full of resentment, but surely that’s just an imagination?

Unfortunately, it wasn’t an imagination. Geom Biyeon dumped all sorts of odd jobs onto the Haetae Department. For instance, a pile of various odd jobs that shouldn’t be discovered by civilians—such as casting purification mantras on guardrails and asphalt damaged during the repair process of roads destroyed by yōkai—stacked up for over a week’s worth. They were tasks that required meticulous attention because if not purified in time, they could become sources of pollution emitting minor evils for a long time afterward, yet they were the kind of work that made one wonder if we really had to be the ones to do this.

Still, one cannot pass off already assigned work to another department.

The team members cursed Geom Biyeon five thousand times as they began to process the tasks one by one.

And during that particular week, Kwon Yihyeon realized he had more talent for martial arts than he thought.

He received evaluations from all over that the martial arts skills he briefly learned from his team members were exceptionally superior, far beyond imagination.

“They say it’s only natural not to be able to do it at this quality if you’ve only learned this much.”

Kwon Yihyeon simply outputted exactly what was input.

Until now, he hadn’t really thought that he handled his body well, so it was an unexpected result.

“Eh? I felt like something was here?”

Kwon Yihyeon, standing with his feet on a power line, grabbed a yōkai hanging from a traffic light by the scruff of its neck and jumped down from the wall. Those who witnessed Kwon Yihyeon’s afterimage tilted their heads in confusion, wondering if they had seen something properly or not.

Sitting beneath the wall, Kwon Yihyeon let out a short breath, whew.

Dealing with yōkai was originally the role of the Celestial Realm. Thus, Kwon Yihyeon’s actions could be called an overstepping of authority. However, Kwon Yihyeon had his reasons.

He had simply pulled the yōkai away before things broke, as it was trying to gnaw on the power line with its blunt front teeth.

‘If a blackout happened in the area… it would be terrible!’

It could be seen as a very modern sensibility.

‘Now if I just contact my sunbaes and report it to the Celestial Realm…’

Once reported to the Celestial Realm, the yōkai would be destroyed. However, the yōkai suddenly burrowed into Kwon Yihyeon’s embrace.

“Uh, uh?”

Normal yōkai either despised or loathed Kwon Yihyeon. Or they viewed him as a useful tool to be exploited. The annihilated Red Boy was like that, as were the other Great Yōkai.

Therefore, this was the first time Kwon Yihyeon had encountered a harmless yōkai.

<Kyuu?>

“It’s… it’s cute…?”

It looked white and soft like a rice cake.

Its eyes and nose were round.

It looked like a puppy, but also like a bear…

“Ah, no. No. Now is not the time for this.”

Kwon Yihyeon shook his head from side to side.

Not all yōkai were evil, and it was quite easy to be soft-hearted considering Sunbae Myo Woon was also a yōkai.

But he had to come to his senses. Because the cute, charming appearance it was showing him now might be a lie.

<Kyuung!>

But the yōkai was way too charming…! As much as a newborn kitten!

‘If this is acting, it deserves a grand prize!’

Just before a gallant defeat, Kwon Yihyeon barely managed to succeed in contacting his sunbae.