NTH 2

In truth, even if you added up the value of all the stolen items, it would not even reach ten million won, and to Kwon Jeha, that amount of money was insignificant, making no difference whether it was in his bank account or not.

He had never once checked how much was deposited each month into the bank account he submitted for his salary when he was appointed as a professor. This was because the profession of a professor, for him, was something he wanted to do, but it was by no means a means of livelihood.

If there was anything he regretted, it was the external hard drive. But he could just gather the materials again and write a new academic journal paper. Yet, for some reason he could not understand, Jeha could not get that thief out of his mind.

No matter how many times he watched the video of the theft, it was a face he had never seen in this current life. Still, the fact that it came to mind and bothered him more than necessary made him think that perhaps they had some sort of connection in a past life.

Having lived for nearly a thousand years, Kwon Jeha had experienced more than a dozen lives, changing bodies with the same soul.

He did not remember his early lives when he was a lower-level soul at all. One thing was certain: as he was repeatedly reborn into a new body after the one he inhabited grew old and died, he gradually became a higher-level spirit (靈).

With each life, he gained stronger power and a higher social status. The very reason Jeha’s five senses and physical abilities far surpassed those of ordinary people was precisely because of this.

Having gone through several lives like this, he came to realize one unchanging truth. That a life lived while doing meaningful work in a state of moderate wealth was the happiest.

Excessive material wealth or power, in one way or another, made people unhappy and bored. Also, no matter how much wealth he accumulated or honor he gained, the moment that life ended and he was reborn, his life was reset to one completely unrelated to his past life, so his lingering attachment to those things gradually diminished.

In that sense, he quite liked the background of the man named ‘Kwon Jeha’ in this life. He was the third generation of a quasi-chaebol family that ran a group whose main business was international trade, and the youngest of three sons and two daughters at that.

All his relatives and siblings, except for him, held positions in the group’s headquarters and its affiliates. When Jeha received his Ph.D. in English Studies from Oxford and got a professorship at a prestigious domestic university, they thought he would surely quit within five years and did not take it seriously.

Regardless of what his family thought, Jeha successfully completed his first semester, receiving high scores in his course evaluations. Then, during the vacation while preparing for his second semester, he was robbed at the cafe.

Jeha tried to force the thief’s face out of his mind and focused on his class.

After finishing all his lectures, Jeha returned to his personal office and changed into a black pique shirt and light-colored cotton pants. As he was meeting with students, he wanted to approach them in a casual and comfortable manner.

Jeha met Professor Min from the same department on the first floor of the faculty building and walked to the location of the opening general meeting near the school’s back gate. Professor Min was a beautiful and talented woman who had been the youngest in the department until Jeha was appointed as an assistant professor in the K University English department.

When they arrived at the spacious pub, which was famous for its chicken and beer, the students had already started drinking. As the two young professors, who were famous for their outstanding looks not only in the department but throughout the entire university, arrived, the students cheered loudly and welcomed them.

Jeha, who had been drinking beer with the students and chatting pleasantly with them for a while, was on his way back from the restroom when he glanced at a table near the door.

At that moment, he doubted his own eyes.

A man with a small, pale face, wearing a black baseball cap and a black short-sleeved t-shirt, was sitting at the very end of the table closest to the door.

He was holding a chicken wing with both hands and tearing at it frantically. He looked just as desperate as when he ate the cake at the cafe. His cheeks were puffed up as if they would burst if touched, because of the chicken he had shoved into his mouth without even taking the time to chew.

Could it be that the thief was a student in his department? Jeha was momentarily bewildered.

He had taught for two semesters in the undergraduate and graduate schools, teaching students of various years. However, not all students were required to take his lectures, and there were many students who returned after taking a leave of absence, so there were many faces he did not know, even if they were his students.

Unaware that Jeha was watching, the thief was busy stuffing his stomach. But as he watched a little longer, something seemed strange.

The students sitting around the thief were paying no attention to him at all. Not only did they not speak to him, but it felt as if they could not even see him.

As if he were an invisible man.

“Professor, what are you doing here?”

“Come over to our side too, professor!”

A few students suddenly flocked over, surrounded Jeha, and led him to their table. Swept up in the moment, he ended up sitting at their table, from where the thief was hidden from view by a pillar.

Jeha sat there, passing the time appropriately, then stood up using the restroom as an excuse. The end of the table near the door he had urgently looked at was empty. Jeha hurriedly approached that table.

“Who was the student sitting in this spot just a moment ago?”

“Huh? Here? Who was sitting here?”

“Uh, I’m not sure. Yurim, did you happen to see?”

“I think someone was sitting here, but I don’t really know who….”

All three students who had been sitting next to and across from the thief could not remember who he was. But they did not seem to be drunk either. Feeling frustrated, Jeha pressed them again.

“You don’t remember when that student left either?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Me neither.”

“Why, professor? Is something wrong?”

They saw that a person was there, but they could not remember the face……. The situation was different, but their reaction was vaguely similar to the reaction of the cafe employees who had watched the video.

Was this a simple coincidence? Why was he so clearly visible only to Jeha, and left no impression in the memories of others?

Feeling baffled and bewildered, Jeha mumbled something to the students and left the pub.

Thinking that he might still be nearby, Jeha was just about to pass a narrow gap between the buildings after rounding a corner, when he stopped in his tracks.

In that gap, was the thief.

The thief was squatting down and rummaging through a pile of cigarette butts discarded on the floor. Finding a fairly long one, he held it in his left hand and then, as if searching for something, put his right hand into his pants pockets one by one and searched.

“Need a light?”

Jeha took out a lighter and approached. To the thief who was just staring blankly at him, he continued.

“You might get sick if you pick up and smoke what someone else has spit out.”

“Who are you?”

The thief, looking at Jeha with a bewitched expression, asked. Seeing him speak so informally without even knowing who Jeha was, it was clear he was not a student of K University’s English department.

“That’s my line. Who in the world are you to keep stealing other people’s things and sitting down at strangers’ tables to eat chicken?”

As Jeha asked in a scolding tone, the thief’s eyes widened and he asked back.

“You, you can see me?”

Jeha let out a short breath, ‘Heo,’ and retorted.

“You’re right in front of my nose, of course I can see you, you think I can’t?”

“When? When did you see me?”

“I saw you last Wednesday on the second floor of Cafe Forest when you drank my coffee, ate my cake, and then stole my things, and I also clearly saw you tearing into chicken at the pub in this building just a moment ago.”

“You saw me last Wednesday and you remember my face? Are you sure the person you saw on Wednesday, and the person eating chicken a little while ago, were both me?”

“Do you take me for a fool? It was definitely you. Hand over the things you stole right now before I drag you to the police station.”

The cigarette fell from between the thief’s fingers. He mumbled as he stared at the wall.

“Wow, that’s truly amazing.”

Jeha frowned and asked back.

“What is?”

The thief turned his head and stared straight into Jeha’s eyes.

“That I’ve met someone who remembers my face.”

Although English was more comfortable for Jeha than Korean, he had never once felt any inconvenience communicating in Korean.

But right now, he could not understand the thief’s words at all. He even began to wonder if his Korean language skills were lacking.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You say it’s amazing to meet someone who remembers your face. Does your face change when you wake up, like in the movies?”

His appearance was perfectly identical to what he had seen at the cafe last week, so it was an impossible hypothesis, but there was no other way to explain the thief’s words.

The thief picked up the cigarette he had dropped with a slow motion. Then, with a somewhat annoyed expression, he replied to Jeha.

“It’s strange that you recognized me, but it’s a pain to explain. I don’t think you’d believe me anyway. Just lend me a light and go.”

“Hey. I think you’re seriously misunderstanding something. I’m not happy to see you again. You are a thief who has stolen my things three times. If you don’t return every single one of them, I’ll give you a tour of the police station right now.”

“Police? The police are right over there, you know?”

Jeha turned around to follow the direction the thief was pointing with his finger. There was no one there. Realizing his mistake, he quickly spun back around, but the thief was already running away in the opposite direction.

But this time, he was within Kwon Jeha’s sight.

It meant he was a rat in a trap.

The thief did not even make it 100 meters before Jeha caught him by the scruff of his neck. As Jeha grabbed the thief’s collar, he abruptly squatted down on the spot and started coughing like crazy.

“Keoheok, wait, just a minute…, I’m sick….”

“This bastard, trying to trick me again!”

“It’s true…, keuht…!”

The thief covered his mouth with his hand and coughed violently. Jeha, thinking he was pulling another trick, tightened his grip on the clothes. But a moment later, when the thief removed his hand, Jeha’s brow furrowed sharply.

The thief’s hand and the area around his mouth were covered in bright red blood. Perhaps because of his white and pale face, the blood from his mouth looked even redder, making the thief look like a vampire who had just drunk his fill of human blood.

“You, what is this….”

“Huu. I’m not supposed to run until I’m out of breath. Kkt, it’s happened again.”

The thief looked back at Jeha and smirked. It felt eerie to see him smile with his mouth covered in blood. Amidst it all, Jeha felt a strong sense of déjà vu, as if he had seen such a scene somewhere before.

But this was not the time to be lost in sentiment. Jeha took a handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to the thief.

“Where does it hurt so much that you throw up blood from just a little bit of running?”

“I don’t know. I’m just, always sick.”

“Say something that makes sense. How does a guy who can’t even run go around stealing things? And where on earth did you disappear to when I chased you right out of the cafe before?”

“I don’t remember. If I felt someone chasing me from behind, I probably clung to the corner wall of the building like a spider. You’d be surprised how well you can hide there.”

Jeha had only looked forward, thinking the thief had run straight ahead, and had not even thought to check the side of the building. Now that he knew, the thief had not teleported or escaped down a manhole, but had simply been hiding in a blind spot, holding his breath.

The thief, having wiped the blood from his mouth and hand with Jeha’s handkerchief, stared at it blankly. He slowly stood up and looked straight up at Jeha.

“This, are you giving it to me?”

Jeha was dumbfounded, but he did not particularly want back a handkerchief stained with someone else’s blood.

“Keep it.”

“Really? Is this expensive?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I wash it and sell it?”

“Who would buy a used handkerchief.”

“Your fans would.”

“What are you talking about? Where would I have fans?”

“Aren’t you a celebrity?”