NTH 79

In an extreme example, he could mobilize gangsters to kidnap and then kill Jin. Therefore, by eliminating the connections Cheon Sagang could mobilize and isolating him, Jin’s life would not be in immediate danger like this time.

As long as he feared annihilation, Cheon Sagang would never be able to kill Jin with his own hands.

“The work I’ve requested doesn’t necessarily have to be done by the elite agents of Team S. Have them focus on VIP protection as they usually do, and secretly hire a separate service. I will cover all the costs for that.”

“Yes.”

“However, I would appreciate it if you could ensure that the reason or purpose for the work is kept strictly confidential from anyone other than yourself and Chief Jeong. Can you promise me this?”

“Of course. I will make sure that the loan shark cannot join hands with any gangster in Seoul in the near future.”

“You are truly reliable. I’ll be in your care. As for those grunts inside, just scare them a little and dump them somewhere. When they return to their organization, they will spread the rumor on their own that they nearly died trying to do a job ordered by a loan shark.”

“Understood.”

In the car on the way back to the apartment where Jin was sleeping peacefully, Jeha was lost in thought.

In this life, I must annihilate Cheon Sagang and get Jin’s soul back.

While figuring out if the method he learned from Hwang Juyeol is true and if it is the only way of exorcism, he also needs to quickly awaken the beginning of his and Jin’s connection that he cannot remember. It felt as if the clue to all these problems was contained in that lost memory.

Jeha resolved to visit Gu Minho once again.

A short time after that, Jeha took Jin in his car and went to Gu Minho’s residence.

He did not forget to bring a large styrofoam box containing three 36-piece sets of macarons and two large cakes from the Domyung Hotel main branch’s bakery, and two boxes of peanut brittle.

Gu Minho’s house was a place that could only be reached after a considerable walk up a steep mountain path that cars could not access, so Jeha had tried not to bring the weakened Jin. However, he could not break Jin’s stubbornness to see the foxes again, so he had no choice but to bring him along.

“It’s been a few months, so the foxes must have grown a lot, right? Maybe they’ve already had kits and there are dozens of them swarming around.”

Jin, who looked noticeably thinner and paler than when he had come before, said in an excited voice as he climbed the mountain path. At his words, Jeha let out a small laugh.

“A fox isn’t a mouse, how could they have grown so fast and had kits already?”

“Ah, is that so.”

“And I’m telling you this so you won’t be surprised, but those foxes are probably exactly the same as when you saw them a few months ago.”

“How? Don’t animal babies usually grow fast?”

“That’s true, but you know my friend who lives there isn’t an ordinary person, right?”

“Yes. He’s a shaman.”

“Actually, I should say he’s a bit different from an ordinary shaman. Anyway, he has a lot of divine energy, so he can make a few strange things happen. That’s why inside his residence, the growth rate of the foxes is extremely slowed down.”

“Really? Then can the ones there live much longer than other foxes outside?”

“You could say that.”

Unlike Jeha, who was simply reborn many times but aged and eventually died at the same rate as ordinary people, Gu Minho had lived for a thousand years without ever dying once.

Compared to him, who lived a life as long as eternity, the beings he took an interest in saw the flame of their lives extinguish in the blink of an eye. Hating that, Gu Minho had made the biological time of living creatures flow infinitely slowly within his residence, so that death could not approach easily.

But a nine-tailed fox was by nature not affectionate like humans, but a cold-blooded species.

Hwon, the raccoon spirit who, after Gu Minho saved his life hundreds of years ago, volunteered to be his loyal servant, enduring all of his fickle and prickly temperament; Jeha, his only human friend who returned to him through repeated reincarnations; and the dozen or so foxes that stayed at his residence. These were all the living creatures to whom Gu Minho had allowed even a tiny bit of his heart in his thousand years of life.

“Hey, then if we lived at the shaman’s house too, could we live for a really long time?”

Just ten minutes after starting to climb the mountain path, Jin, with beads of sweat forming on his forehead and his breathing becoming ragged, let out puffs of white breath. Jeha looked at him with worried eyes.

“I don’t think something like that would be possible for a complex creature like a human. Do you want to live a long time?”

“Yes. With you, Jeha.”

Jin, who had paused for a moment to catch his breath, continued speaking as he slowly walked, leaning on his hiking stick.

“Before, I felt like it wouldn’t be much of a loss if I died at any time. I even thought it would be a relief to die since there would be no one to be sad if I did.”

“……Yes.”

“But now, I want to live. I want to live for a long, long time with you, Jeha. I want to get healthy again, work and earn money, and with that money, I want to make you delicious food and buy you presents. Even without some grand dream, I think I would be happy just being by your side like this every day.”

Jeha’s chest ached, and he bit his lower lip, looking up at the innocent sky.

No matter how hard Chief Jeong and Jeha tried to hide it, there was no way Jin would not know that his physical condition was worsening day by day.

He just wants to live. He isn’t asking for much, just to be happy being able to walk by my side. He’s not asking to live for two or three hundred years, just to enjoy the few decades of his given lifespan. How many times has he been unjustly deprived of his life around the age of twenty?

This time, I will absolutely not let Jin leave like that. For that purpose, Jeha had come to this place today.

“Don’t worry. Even if we don’t live there, you will live with me for an annoyingly long time.”

“Annoyingly long? How long?”

“At least about a thousand years.”

“What? A thousand years?”

Jin burst out laughing as if it were absurd, but Jeha just quietly wrapped his cold hand.

After walking slowly, they finally arrived at a flat place shrouded in thick fog, and a stone pagoda covered in moss came into faint view. Jeha turned to look at Jin.

“Do you want to try ringing the doorbell yourself?”

“Huh? Can I?”

“Let’s test it. Whether the homeowner will open the door for Jin or not.”

Jin carefully put his hand into the hole in the stone pagoda. Finding the jade toad deep inside, he stroked the toad’s back seven times with a fumbling touch.

A moment later, the fog cleared away cleanly, revealing the figure of someone.

“Hwon, it’s been a while.”

As Jeha spoke with a bright smile, Jin’s small, white face bloomed radiantly and filled with a laugh.

“Wow! I think the shaman opened the door for me!”

Hwon, in the form of a neat young man as always, bowed his head to greet them and then took the luggage from Jeha’s hands.

“He is waiting for you inside.”

Jeha and Jin followed Hwon towards Gu Minho’s house. Looking at Hwon, who was always dressed in similarly simple and neat clothes with a clean, short hairstyle, Jeha spoke.

“By the way, Hwon, you’ve never changed your appearance once, have you?”

“No.”

“Is it because you’re lazy? Or is there a separate reason?”

“The master is fond of this appearance.”

“Really? I didn’t know. I thought if it was his taste, he would like something more flamboyantly decorated.”

“He himself likes to dress up like that, but he always wishes for me to be dressed like this.”

Jeha suddenly thought that this was the first time he had had such a long conversation with Hwon. Jin asked in a bright voice.

“Mr. Hwon, are you the shaman’s lover?”

“No. I am a servant.”

“Really? If it were me, I wouldn’t care how my servant dressed. If he wanted you to look a certain way, doesn’t that mean the shaman likes you, Mr. Hwon?”

“No. He simply dislikes things that are offensive to his eyes.”

“Then what about you, Mr. Hwon? Do you like the shaman?”

Jeha was honestly curious about that part too. How on earth could Hwon serve Gu Minho, whose tiresome personality drained one’s energy after just one day together, for hundreds of years?

“Yes. I like him.”

Jeha, surprised to see Hwon answer promptly without a second of hesitation, asked again.

“Really? Even though you have to live in this boring countryside and put up with his difficult personality every day?”

“Yes. I like living like this.”

“Aren’t you tired after all this time?”

“Not at all. The master is the savior of my life, and assisting him is the only reason I am alive. I would rather die than live away from the master’s side.”

Jeha, who was in a state of fresh shock seeing him not only speak at length but also calmly utter such cringeworthy words as if reading from a textbook, was interrupted when Jin rolled his big eyes and said.

“He must pay him a really good salary.”

Jin wanted to play with the fox kits he hadn’t seen in a while in the yard, but Jeha did not allow it, saying it was too cold. Seeing this, Hwon turned on the heating in an empty room, took Jin and the foxes there, and also brought them warm tea and snacks.

Jeha sat facing Gu Minho in Gu Minho’s room, with a tea table between them. Jeha spoke to Gu Minho, who was biting into a macaron with a satisfied look on his face.

“Hwon’s loyalty to you pierces the heavens.”

“What did that raccoon say?”

“He said assisting you is the reason he’s alive. That he’d rather die than leave here.”

“Hmph. You haven’t forgotten that although he looks so clean-cut on the outside, his true nature is a raccoon, have you? He’s a ridiculously sly fellow.”

“Still, the fact that you’ve kept him with you for hundreds of years means you don’t dislike Hwon, right?”

“Well, he’s good at housework, and he’s as quiet as a stone unless I speak to him. And he’s good to play with when I’m bored.”

“How do you play with him?”

Jeha asked with a sense of foreboding, feeling that whatever he heard would automatically conjure up some grotesque image.

“How do you think? I play with him just like you play with that Nana fellow.”

“No way!”

“He’s pretty good at it. He has good stamina, so he doesn’t get tired all night long. Want me to lend him to you once if you’re curious?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Poor Hwon. You truly are a wicked master.”

As Jeha clicked his tongue, Gu Minho grinned while unwrapping his second macaron.

“So, have you found out anything since that lord Cheon-su passed on to the great beyond?”

“I had a dream of my last past life.”

Jeha told Gu Minho about what had happened with Tsubame in his immediately preceding life when he had lived as Seo Suhyun. Gu Minho, who listened to the story with an interested expression, nodded his head.

“Come to think of it, there was a time when you were quite obsessed with swallows. As for me, I’ve lived for so long that my memories of your past selves are all jumbled up.”

“I may not remember other lives, but I remember most of what happened in my last past life clearly. I remember liking swallows so much that I even built a museum to collect works of them. But it’s so strange that I had completely forgotten about something as important as the Tsubame incident until I dreamed about it.”

“You must be under a curse or something. So that you forget everything related to Nana when you are reborn.”

“Is such a curse possible?”

“It’s not impossible. But it’s strange. The way I see it, that forgetfulness is closer to a blessing than a curse.”

“Why is that?”