Chapter 39
It was pitch-black.
Young Siyeon grabbed her little brother's hand with trembling fingers.
Her little brother lay sick with a high fever.
Something like a black shadow wavered over his body.
Could it have been a grim reaper, or some nameless evil spirit?
The shadow was dragging something pale and indistinct out of his chest.
Young Siyeon instinctively realized that it was her brother's soul.
‘No…….’
Siyeon desperately reached out. She tried somehow to grab the pale, taut cord stretched to the point of snapping.
But.
Swish.
Siyeon's small hand passed uselessly through empty air.
She couldn't catch it.
The cord slipped between her fingers and finally snapped.
"No……!"
.
.
.
"……Gasp!"
Her eyes flew open.
A desk.
She seemed to have fallen asleep right there, sprawled over her desk in the research lab.
Pulling the research papers stuck to her cheek away, Siyeon stared blankly up at the monitor.
Her back was damp with cold sweat.
It was that dream again.
Was it because it came right after what had happened yesterday?
It had always been like this. Ever since she was little, Siyeon's soul had slipped out of her body whenever it pleased.
An uncontrollable out-of-body experience.
Even while asleep, or while sitting there in a daze.
At some point, she'd find herself floating up by the ceiling and looking down at her sleeping body.
It was terrifying.
Once, she'd nearly failed to make it back at all.
So, in other people's eyes, Siyeon had been a strange child through and through.
The hospital had called it idiopathic narcolepsy.
Apparently, it was a disease caused by a deficiency of some hormone that regulated sleep.
‘That's not it.’
Siyeon knew better.
Even when she left her body, her consciousness remained perfectly clear.
She could even see things invisible to other people.
Putting a name to it hadn't changed anything.
Being different from everyone else was reason enough to be ostracized.
And so, to the children her age, Siyeon became a possessed freak and ended up alone.
‘……I can't go on like this.’
So she made a decision. Somehow, she would take control of the soul that kept slipping out against her will.
She couldn't just avoid it forever because it frightened her.
This was a body she'd have to live with for the rest of her life anyway.
If she could only control this thing that might slip out whenever it pleased, couldn't she live a normal life like everyone else?
At first, that was all there was to it.
And so Siyeon began investigating what was happening to her.
Where did the soul leave from?
How could she bring it back?
After grueling effort, she eventually reached the point where she could consciously attempt an out-of-body experience.
It was much later that she gave it the name Soul-Separation Sorcery.
Then one day, some strangers came looking for her, whoever knew where they'd heard the rumors.
‘…Huh?’
They told her there was a place where people like her gathered, and that many things would be resolved if she went there.
And that was how she came to Sorcery University.
It was true.
She wasn't the only one who could see ghosts.
The others set out to become sorcerers, saying that the ability they'd thought was a misfortune could make them money, but Siyeon didn't.
She had a goal.
She wanted to complete this spell formula to the very end.
Everyone else merely scoffed, calling it dangerous, useless research, but Siyeon didn't care.
‘……It isn't useless.’
Maybe those nightmares that repeated every night were what wouldn't let Siyeon go.
Even so, she believed.
That someday, it would surely prove useful. That it was worthwhile.
But yesterday, for the first time, that belief became reality.
The student whose soul was being sucked away by the Soul Stealer.
Without realizing it, Siyeon pulled her own soul out of her body and wrapped it around the student's soul as it was being sucked in.
She had only one thought: She couldn't let go.
Even so, she'd succeeded in holding it back yesterday.
Though if she'd been even a moment later, she would have been devoured whole along with the student's soul.
The spirit-escape incident that had thrown the school into chaos yesterday was swiftly brought to an end thanks to that young craftsman.
Every single one of the escaped spirits was sealed again, and almost no one had been seriously injured.
The school returned to peace as if by magic.
So now, that was all anyone talked about.
“Hey, hey…… I saw Professor Goo running alongside him yesterday. Crazy……. He's basically a freaking idol.”
“Professor Goo's pretty handsome too.”
“No, that's only because you haven't seen him in person. There's no comparison.”
“Still, he's way too young. I'm going with Professor Goo.”
“Yeah, old-man complexes are the worst~”
“Give me a break. Heh-heh.”
The lab mates who had been chatting among themselves for a while suddenly turned toward Siyeon.
“Hey. Song Siyeon.”
“……?”
“You saw that guy up close yesterday, right? How was he?”
“……I don't know. I was too out of it.”
“Figures. What would you know?”
One of her lab mates snickered and turned away.
Things weren't much different even here.
Apparently bloodlines and family backgrounds mattered in the sorcery world too, because people only ever stuck with their own kind.
“Is Dohwang still at school?”
“You don't know?”
“Someone just posted another sighting on Dokkaebibul. Said they saw him near the library.”
“Whoa, really?”
The door burst open.
The person who entered was the necromancy professor.
Siyeon's academic advisor.
“Professor, hello…….”
Thud.
A stack of papers landed on the desk.
“Sort through the conference materials with the others. I have to go on a business trip this afternoon.”
“……Yes.”
The professor cast a brief glance at Siyeon's Soul-Separation Sorcery materials.
“You're still clinging to that? How long ago did I tell you to change your research topic?”
“……”
“Never mind. Have it organized by next week. Good work.”
The moment the professor left, her lab mates began slowly getting up and gathering their things.
“Hey, Siyeon, we're going to grab some food.”
“You can organize this for us, right? You're so thorough.”
Without even waiting for an answer, they busily gathered their belongings.
Even as they did so, they kept talking.
“So where's Dohwang now?”
“The library. The library. Come on, let's hurry.”
“I'm just going to touch up my makeup.”
“What, are you going on a date?”
Siyeon silently took a sip of the cold coffee.
It was bitter. And she was so sleepy.
She hadn't slept a wink last night either.
Right then.
Knock, knock, knock—
Someone knocked on the lab door.
“……Come in.”
The door opened, and a man walked in.
Black hair, sharp eyes, and a charming mole under one eye.
Flashy earrings and a chic face.
"……!"
The lab mates who had just been about to leave froze in place.
It was the very Dohwang they'd only heard about in rumors.
“M-Master Do……?!"
One of her lab mates stammered in a trembling voice.
Assuming he'd come to see the professor, they hurriedly stepped aside.
"The professor just left on a business trip……!"
Dohyun shook his head.
"No. I came to see Ms. Siyeon, not the professor."
“……”
In an instant, the lab fell dead silent.
The lab mates who had looked down on Siyeon moments ago gaped, looking back and forth between her and Dohyun.
"M-me?"
Siyeon pointed at herself with a dazed expression.
***
A small reception table in the corner of the lab.
Once Dohyun sat across from her, Siyeon inexplicably fidgeted as she held out a paper cup of instant coffee.
A sidelong glance.
Beyond the glass partition, she could distinctly sense the lab mates who'd said they were going to get lunch standing in the hallway, unable to bring themselves to leave as they peeked in this direction.
‘…….’
Pretending not to notice, Siyeon turned her gaze toward Dohyun.
“…Is the coffee all right?”
“Yes. Thank you. But you must be very busy these days. Your complexion…….”
“Pardon?”
Siyeon flinched.
Dohwang was quietly examining her face.
“Your dark circles are pretty bad. It looks like you haven't been sleeping at all.”
“Ah, it's just…….”
Siyeon hurriedly covered the skin beneath her eyes with the back of her hand.
So it showed.
“I-I have something to do at night…….”
After saying that, Siyeon frantically waved her hands.
"N-no! It's nothing."
“……?”
Dohwang tilted his head slightly but didn't press the matter.
“Oh, right.”
Instead, he asked about something else.
“I thought you were a teaching assistant in Sealing Studies. I saw you at the auditorium yesterday.”
“Ah……. Professor Goo asked me to help because he was short-handed. It was only for a little while.”
The truth was that one of her lab mates had quietly dumped the task on her, but there was no need to mention that.
“So you wanted to ask me about the spell formula I used yesterday?”
Siyeon asked as she pulled a thick stack of research materials from her bag and set it down.
“Yes, that's right.”
“It's called Soul-Separation Sorcery.”
Siyeon carefully began to explain.
“You've heard of astral projection…… right? It's…… something like temporarily separating the soul from the body.”
Dohwang silently accepted the materials and began turning the pages.
Siyeon stole glances at Dohyun as he read through the notes.
‘……He really is handsome.’
Even more so up close.
Maybe younger men were her type after all.
‘No, what am I thinking?’
Siyeon hurriedly shook her head.
“Ha-ha…… as you can see, it's not a completed spell formula. It probably won't be much help to you.”
“……”
“It consumes far too much spiritual power, too. If you lose concentration even a little, the soul could simply scatter…… so everyone says it's too dangerous.”
Useless.
Dangerous and nothing more, with no practical value.
How many times had she heard that?
“……”
Dohyun didn't answer.
He simply continued reading through the materials, one page at a time, with a serious expression.
Feeling awkward for no particular reason, Siyeon fiddled with her cold coffee.
Just then, Dohwang raised his head.
And looked straight at Siyeon.
"Could you perhaps show it to me?"
“…Pardon?”
“That technique. I'd like to see it myself.”
“…You want me to show you? This?”
“Yes.”
Not once had anyone ever asked Siyeon to show them that spell formula before.
Everyone had only ever called it useless.
“It seems like exactly the spell formula I need right now.”
An odd tickle stirred in one corner of her chest.
His saying that he wanted to see it for himself, that he absolutely needed it, felt like he was telling her that this spell formula had value too.
“B-but…… it's difficult here.”
“Difficult?”
“It's…… much harder to come back than it is to leave.”
She had to maintain her concentration to the very end.
Until the moment she returned her soul to her body.
“So I always practice somewhere familiar. In my room. At night.”
In the same place, in the same surroundings, every day.
That was the only way for her soul to find its way back to her body without getting lost.
“…Ah.”
Now that she'd said it aloud, she felt oddly embarrassed.
Wasn't this basically asking him to go to her room?
With a man she'd only just met.
“…I-I mean, it's not like I meant anything else—”
As Siyeon hurriedly began laying out excuses,
“Then let's go there.”
Dohyun coolly rose from his seat as if it were nothing.
“…Pardon?”
“To somewhere you can show it to me.”