Chapter 19
019 – New Wine in New Wineskins (3)
On his way home from President Kim Man-chun’s mansion.
Shaman Choi Jang-gun sat deep in the back seat of a taxi and made a phone call.
“This is Shaman Choi Jang-gun. The money I mentioned is all ready as of today. How about we meet and talk tomorrow?”
Choi Jang-gun ended the call with satisfaction, then closed his eyes.
His mind wandered back to his childhood.
─Son, this building belongs to your mother now. I named it Jang-gun Building after you. What do you think?
─Mom, does that mean I’m the son of a landlord now?
─That’s right. So you don’t have to become a shaman or anything. You can make a perfectly respectable living off passive income!
‘Mother….’
Tears welled in the eyes of Choi Jang-gun, who had never bowed his head to even the biggest players.
How many years had it taken him to reclaim the building after his mother’s death?
Just then, the taxi reached its destination and stopped.
Choi Jang-gun paid 20,000 won in cash.
“Sir, you gave me 20,000 won, but…”
“Keep the change. I’m in a very good mood today.”
“No, the fare’s 25,300 won. You’re short.”
Having lost much of his eyesight, he struggled with a lot of things.
Still, he knew the way home like the back of his hand, even though he couldn’t see what lay ahead.
He’d traveled this route for years. Even with his eyes closed, the positions of the sidewalk blocks and railings played out in his mind like a movie.
That was why Choi Jang-gun knew the moment he grabbed the doorknob of his shrine.
Someone had touched it.
‘Is someone inside?’
First, he listened carefully.
Then he heard voices murmuring inside the shrine.
A client waiting for a fortune-telling or saju reading?
No. Their spiritual presence was far too vicious for ordinary clients.
Wondering if they might be spirits or ghosts, Choi Jang-gun pulled the bell from his waist.
He heard no sound at all.
They didn’t seem to be ghosts─.
Then what were they?
Their vicious presence was almost like that of beasts.
Then how was he supposed to explain the voices he’d heard?
─Hanbando-nim, is it true that the Nguyen Witch died?
─Come on, that’s gotta be a lie. Who could kill that magician? Two junior moderators have died because of that bitch already.
A woman’s voice and a man’s voice.
Judging from what they were saying, they weren’t ordinary clients. Maybe they were…
Flutter─.
Choi Jang-gun reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a talisman.
It was made from the remains of aborted fetuses abandoned by their mothers.
Three, two, one─.
After counting down in his mind, Choi Jang-gun flung the talisman as he yanked the door open.
Smack, smack─.
He heard the talisman stick to something.
But what came next was laughter he hadn’t expected.
“Wow, Hanbando-nim, did you see that? I got hit by the talisman!”
“Don’t laugh. This thing’s fucking dangerous. It’s a fetal-spirit talisman. What the hell were you thinking, throwing something like this at a person?”
“A person? You’re telling me you’re human? How’d you survive getting hit by that talisman…?”
“That’s thanks to the cooking foil. Originals don’t use this stuff much, so you wouldn’t know, right? It works great against Oseonjok like you.”
Choi Jang-gun tried to peer harder through his blurry vision.
He could make out two hazy figures.
Thud, thud, thud─.
They approached Choi Jang-gun.
The smaller one lunged at him.
“Die, you fucking shaman!!!”
Something sharp pierced Choi Jang-gun’s chest.
Stab, stab-stab─again and again.
Stab-stab─.
Stab.
“Stop! Please, stop!”
The man grabbed the woman’s arm and held her back.
The shaman was already dead, and she was only hurting her own hand by stabbing him.
“Ah… Haah… I’m sorry. I just… I hate shamans. When I was little… my mom said I had to get a ritual done if I wanted to stop seeing ghosts, and she touched my chest and beat me… put her hand inside my panties… Ugh, uuuugh….”
The woman took off her mask and vomited onto the floor.
The mask she’d tossed aside rolled across the floor with a clatter. Its shape resembled the face of some kind of beast.
“You fucking bastard! Piece of shit!”
Still not satisfied, the woman kicked the dead shaman’s body several times before finally sitting down, panting.
She didn’t so much look calm as completely drained.
Only then did the woman notice what she’d done.
“Hanbando-nim, I… I killed someone.”
“Oh, so this is your first time? But look closely. If you look carefully, the thing we killed isn’t human.”
“It isn’t human?”
Look closely─.
At his words, the woman looked at the corpse.
She couldn’t understand what he meant by saying ‘that thing’ wasn’t human.
The man took the kitchen knife from the woman’s dazed hand and cut through the dead man’s wrist.
Saw, saw-saw, saw─.
The woman watched him, puzzled.
“Why are you cutting off the hand?”
“This part’s necessary to finish the job. Ah, this is harder than I thought. I figured that Oseonjok Exterminator guy made it look easy because he was so good at it. There, done.”
The man handed the severed wrist to the woman.
“There you go. That completes the mission to kill an Oseonjok. Magician Ganadara, you’re a full-fledged junior mod now, too. Let’s stick it out together for a year. Sounds like there’s some kind of reward.”
“A reward? There’s a reward?”
“Yeah. You think the mods delete gross pictures and cursed photos for free? They do it because there’s a reward. The other galleries probably work the same way.”
Reward─. The word lifted the woman’s spirits.
Then she noticed the wrist in her hand.
Now that she looked at it, it really didn’t seem human.
Five fingers.
The joints, smeared with so much blood she could barely make out their shape, looked just like─.
“─Oh. I get it. This is a monkey, isn’t it?”
“Right?”
“Ah… A monkey! So that’s why we’re Monkey Gallery! Wow!”
It felt as if something in her mind had suddenly burst open.
Magician Ganadara felt elated, as though she’d advanced to a higher level.
She felt like she could do anything now.
As she looked around, caught up in that strange heat, the man beside her seemed so dependable that her face grew warm.
“Um, Hanbando-nim, what are you doing after this? My place is nearby… If you don’t mind, would you like to come over and have some ramen…?”
“Ah, I don’t have sex with female magicians. I don’t want to end up a juice magician.”
“…Huh?”
“You know how it is. This line of work is pretty harsh on men. I hope you understand.”
“Ah… I… I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant, really, just ramen… Ah….”
Magician Ganadara was so embarrassed by the rejection that she thought she might die.
So, to hide her flushed face, she hurriedly picked up the mask lying nearby and covered her face with it.
The silence was painful.
So she decided to say anything that came to mind.
“G-Gyeryusan!”
“Gyeryusan?”
“H-Hanbando-nim, have you heard that rumor? The story about the wine cellar on Gyeryusan.”
“Oh, the rumor that there’s a ‘devil’ on Gyeryusan?”
“Yeah. Do you think it’s true?”
“Of course it’s a lie. A devil? If something like that really existed, those suit-wearing bastards would’ve made a huge fuss by now.”
“But there must be something there, right? They say even the Nguyen Witch refused to go anywhere near Gyeryusan.”
“More importantly, Magician Ganadara, look at this. It seems the shaman left a dying message before he died. What on earth is it?”
Magician Ganadara looked at the long streak of blood on the floor.
To her, it looked like…
“…I’m not sure. Maybe a shooting star.”
A shooting star.
They had no idea what it meant.
# # #
“Wizard Ha Yu-seong has arrived.”
I got off the bus and said it for no particular reason.
It was a line I’d wanted to say at least once ever since I became a wizard.
Having finally said it, I found it more thrilling than I’d expected.
My excitement only grew as I gazed at Gyeryusan standing proudly beneath the sweltering summer sky.
I had to climb a mountain in this heat.
Today’s meeting place, 「Gyeryusan Bacchus Winery」, was halfway up the mountain.
If I had a car, getting halfway up would’ve been easy.
Unfortunately, I had a license but no car.
‘Once I’ve made a pile of money as a magician, I should buy a car first.’
With that thought in mind, I started up the mountain.
As I climbed, my heart thumped wildly.
「Monkey’s Paw site」.
The wish I’d entered there.
─What I desire most deep in my heart─.
Because of it, I’d ended up calling a stranger.
And I’d arranged to meet that person.
Was that person what I desired?
Or was it what would happen because of them?
I climbed the mountain nervously, but then a problem came up.
“…Hieegh… Hieegh….”
Bori-bori, who usually followed right behind me without a fuss, had run out of steam along the way.
The sweltering summer heat.
The rugged mountain trail.
Bori-bori bundled up in an old winter puffer jacket.
In a way, it was only natural that Bori-bori would collapse.
What should I do? I didn’t know what to do.
Should I leave Bori-bori behind and go on alone?
As I wondered, I suddenly found the thought amusing.
At some point, I’d begun taking it for granted that Bori-bori would follow me around.
Honestly, I didn’t know who Bori-bori was or what it really was.
I could only vaguely guess that it was a devil.
But Bori-bori was different from the ‘devil’ I’d always imagined.
It didn’t demand sacrifices or wish me harm. It simply existed.
“That’s why I keep telling you to take off that puffer jacket. Get on my back.”
I turned my back to Bori-bori.
Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure it would work.
Bori-bori often followed me around, but whenever I reached out, it kept its distance.
Like a wild animal that couldn’t be tamed.
But perhaps on this sweltering hike, Bori-bori had no choice but to swallow its pride and give in.
Rustle─.
Bori-bori climbed onto my back.
A subtle weight.
It reminded me of carrying my younger sister on my back.
I climbed the mountain carrying Bori-bori─and something strange happened.
The middle-aged men and elderly women coming down the trail kept trying to bump into me.
Had shoulder-checking become a trend among hikers?
Like the ‘butsukari’ attacks on tourists in Japan?
One person even bumped into me and fell over.
“Oh, I’m sorry. There’s a sheer drop right beside me, so I had nowhere to dodge…”
“Good grief, what’s this? Is there a rock sticking out?”
“…Huh?”
“Jeez, what was that? What did I trip over? That was close.”
The old man picked up his hiking stick, then headed down the trail with a steady, rhythmic stride as if nothing had happened.
Only then did I fully understand what was going on.
‘Can these people… not see me?’
It felt as if I’d become invisible.
Just in case, I leaned toward a passing old woman’s ear and shouted as loudly as I could.
“Gyeryusan, I’m here! Welcome to my Gyeryusan! This time, I’ll stand at the summit!”
It was the kind of obnoxious noise that would make people stare at me strangely and point.
Even I thought it was a ridiculous thing to say─.
“Good grief, why are there so many grasshoppers?”
“Those aren’t grasshoppers, they’re brown katydids! Be careful, they bite people!”
Nobody paid any attention to me.
They acted as if they couldn’t see or hear me.
At that moment, I understood exactly what was happening.
I hadn’t become invisible.
Even an invisible person wouldn’t be completely inaudible.
Then what the hell was this?
What kind of state was I in right now─?
As I stood there lost in thought, a huge banner and a parking lot came into view ahead of me.
「Gyeryusan Bacchus Winery Summer Brewing Experience!」
「Women’s groups, couples, and married couples welcome!」