Chapter 9
009 – Monkey Gallery
A day’s pay of 220,000 won in a white envelope.
Fair wages for my work as a night security guard.
By the time I got home and showered, the sun was blazing.
That’s the downside of summer.
The sun comes up way too early.
Since I didn’t have blackout curtains, I had no choice but to lie in bed beneath the glaring sunlight.
Maybe that was why I kept tossing and turning, barely sleeping at all.
“…I can’t sleep!”
Honestly, my mind was wide awake.
It was because of everything that had happened at dawn.
A suspicious basement.
An escape.
An encounter with a man in a black suit!
It was so intense, it felt like my brain was being fried.
A lot had happened, but the only thing on my mind now was the man I’d met earlier.
The man in the suit and glasses.
He hadn’t even told me who he was or what organization he belonged to.
Could you be a magician─?
When I asked, he smiled.
And then he left without giving me any further answer.
Maybe he’d been busy dealing with Nikon, Jang Geun-beom, Mi-young, and the others trapped in the basement.
Maybe he’d rescued them like a search-and-rescue team.
Could the reason the rulebook didn’t clearly explain how to escape be that it expected someone from the outside to ‘rescue’ you if you survived?
That made plenty of sense.
Anyway, the gist of the encounter was this:
~There are people who go around solving strange incidents!~
They must be more than just one person if they’re making things like ‘suspicious medicine.’
“…Probably an organization?”
An organization that never showed itself in everyday life.
Covert operations. The underworld. A foundation. A bureau.
Those concepts appeared in my mind, then disappeared.
“…Men in Black.”
People who went around erasing the memories of those who’d had strange experiences, like encountering aliens.
Could people like that actually exist?
“This medicine is proof.”
I turned the white medicine box labeled 「Neuron Clear」 over and over in my hands.
It didn’t list any ingredients or effects.
There was nothing but the name.
“So if I take this, I’ll go back to when I couldn’t see ghosts and things?”
Would Bori-bori disappear, too?
Grrrrrr─.
Just then, Bori-bori’s stomach rumbled from the corner where they’d been curled up.
Right, now that I thought about it, it was breakfast time.
I took a few bills out of the 220,000 won I’d earned today.
“Bori-bori, we’re ordering delivery today.”
Honestly, I’d nearly died several times today.
If I died, all this money would rot away like shit, too.
I didn’t know if I’d keep going through things like this in the future.
Honestly, wouldn’t it be better for my mental health to eat what I wanted and spend when I wanted, rather than desperately saving every last won?
Yeah.
There might be plenty more things like today ahead.
Because I had no intention of taking this ‘medicine.’
I mean, it’s magic, right?
I can become a magician, right?
No, I already have!
Now that I had the chance to become someone special,
it would be a waste not to seize the chance to finally become different from everyone else.
“I’m not sure I want to just swallow some suspicious medicine.”
Just as I was about to look up 「Neuron Clear」 online, a jajangmyeon and a jjamppong arrived.
I set the black and red dishes on the table and asked,
“Bori-bori, what do you want?”
The black-as-night jajangmyeon,
or the red-as-hell’s-sulfur jjamppong?
Swoosh─.
Bori-bori pulled the red jjamppong, with squid floating on top, toward them.
Did they like red because it matched their hair?
Were they drawn to the blood-red color because they were a demon?
Slurp, slurp─.
Bori-bori had gotten pretty good at using chopsticks by now.
I said to Bori-bori, the little devil of jjamppong,
“You helped me out in the basement earlier, right? I ordered sweet-and-sour pork, too, as a thank-you, so eat as much as you want. Whether it’s good or bad, you should always repay what you receive in kind─. That’s our family motto and my personal rule.”
“…Mwehehe.”
“Huh? Did you laugh?”
I’d heard Bori-bori laugh.
Wondering what that was about, I stopped eating my jajangmyeon and glanced over. Bori-bori was busily eating the jjamppong and sweet-and-sour pork with a blank, slightly haughty expression, as if they’d never laughed at all.
…Was I imagining it?
I was sure they’d laughed.
Anyway, I’d learned that today Bori-bori liked jjamppong more than jajangmyeon.
They liked sweet-and-sour pork even more, and preferred it with the sauce poured over.
The strange demon Bori-bori, visible only to me.
Bori-bori, who’d been afraid of the man with glasses I’d met earlier.
Why had they been afraid of him?
It didn’t seem like he could see Bori-bori.
Whatever the reason, this was the moment my guiding principle and direction in life were decided.
‘I’d better avoid getting involved with those men in black suits as much as possible.’
What if they found out about ‘Bori-bori,’ who was visible only to me?
They might say, “Ha Yu-seong! You’re a new light to me! Your eyes are my spares!” and pluck my eyes right out.
So I figured it would be best to keep Bori-bori and my business a secret whenever possible.
That might change if I found out for sure that those Men in Black were trustworthy, though.
As I was thinking that, I’d finished every last bite of my jajangmyeon.
That was delicious.
I figured I’d look some more things up online, and then—
「Name: Oseonjok Exterminator」
「Title: Buying Neuron Clear.」
「Price negotiable」
A post caught my eye on a secondhand marketplace.
Someone wanted to buy the medicine I had.
Could they know a lot about this ‘medicine’ and this strange, mysterious world?
At least, they’d know more than I did.
So I contacted them using the details in the post.
# # #
“H-hello… I’m ‘Oseonjok Exterminator.’”
He was a man with acne on his face and a patchy beard.
It didn’t seem like he’d grown it on purpose. More like he hadn’t had a chance to shave.
Even in the hot weather, he had a gray hoodie pulled over his head and was sweating. It was painful just to look at him.
“You’re ‘Meteor,’ the one who contacted me, right?”
“Yes.”
For the record, Meteor was my username.
My name was Ha Yu-seong (流星), after all.
Meteor.
“So, you’ve got the me-medicine, right?”
A busy downtown area.
A man in his mid-twenties, shivering in a hoodie as he searched for medicine.
It was just the sort of story that would make people gossip if they heard it.
Damn, I felt like some kind of drug dealer.
I looked around to avoid people’s eyes, then pointed to a quiet café.
“Let’s go inside and talk.”
“I-I don’t have time.”
“I’ll pay.”
“Then I-I’ll have a Setbucks Reserve Café Mocha, venti, with three extra shots and lots of whipped cream, extra chocolate drizzle, java chips, and in a special tumbler─.”
…The hell, man?
An unnecessary expense had just cropped up.
The man and I sat down in a corner of the café.
The man clicked his tongue.
“C-coming to a café with just the two of us makes us look gay.”
“Ha, Mr. Oseonjok, you don’t have any friends, do you?”
“I-I do! A few regulars with fixed usernames and some anonymous users who comment every day….”
Ah, fuck it! Forget it.
If I kept picking on him, I didn’t think he’d cooperate.
So I took out the medicine and set it down on the table with a clack.
“Here’s the medicine. Want to check it?”
“It’s genuine. I’ve been around long enough to recognize it at a glance. Then I’ll send you the payment I prepared….”
The man started fumbling for his phone.
I didn’t miss the chance and quickly asked him a question.
If I had an opportunity, it was now.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you trying to take this medicine?”
“I-I don’t want to see them, of course.”
“You don’t want to see them?”
“G-ghosts and monsters and things. My pineal gland opened up, so I see them without any kind of filter. When I see them, they see me, too. Ah… I don’t think there’s anything here, though.”
The man looked around, trembling.
It seemed like the ‘monsters’ and ‘ghosts’ were why he was so subdued.
Since I’d gone through the incident with Ming and the underground parking garage at Dori Building, I could somewhat understand what he was afraid of.
On the other hand, it was kind of funny.
There’s a demon right beside you.
They’re eyeing the tiramisu cake on the table, you know.
Still, I couldn’t just say that out loud, so I asked him something else.
“What’s a pineal gland?”
Going by the name, was it a variety of fruit, like figs or passion fruit?
I’d never heard of it in the ingredient storeroom at the restaurant where I used to work.
Maybe my question amused him, because the man gave a crooked little smile.
“Ah… Y-you’re a transfer student, right? You don’t seem to know. The p-pineal gland is an organ in the brain… If it’s open, your sixth sense develops, or your third eye… awakens….”
The third eye. The sixth sense.
Ahhhh!!! I think I get it now.
When I first saw Bori-bori, I’d felt like something in my brain had suddenly opened wide, too.
Could my pineal gland have opened, too?
“So taking this medicine can close that pineal gland?”
“Y-yes. But a certain group of people practically have a monopoly on producing it, so it’s hard to get. And it seems the medicine itself stops working once you reach a certain level….”
“Sorry to keep asking questions, but what’s a transfer student?”
“Transfer… Ah. You really don’t know anything. It means people like you and me. If you’re a magician from birth, you’re an Original. If your eyes open through some special experience during your life, you’re a transfer student.”
So there were people who were born magicians.
Could that man with the glasses be one of them?
If so, it made sense to call people who entered this world later in life transfer students.
“Transfer students have their limits. Those Oseonjok bastards… Ah, the Originals were gifted kids who received magician training from birth, so we can’t keep up. I-I hate to admit it, though.”
The man kept talking, even about things I hadn’t asked him.
His gloomy face was full of interest and excitement. He seemed to really enjoy lecturing someone like me, who knew nothing, about what he knew.
All the better.
I decided to take the opportunity and ask him more things.
“Is the difference between transfer students and Originals that big?”
“Yes. Think about Santa Claus. At our age, if someone told us to believe S-Santa was real, would we believe them? But the Originals actually saw Santa growing up.”
“Hmm….”
“The quality and d-depth of our magic are different. In this world, people who are deeply entangled with the mysteries and the uncanny are treated well. Someone like me can only ever be a ‘juice magician.’”
A juice magician.
Where had I heard that before?
Oh, I think there was a job listing when I was looking for security work that said ‘Juice magician wanted.’
I was about to ask what that meant when the man grinned.
“Y-you’re better off not knowing about juice magicians. They’re the scum of the scum. You’d be better off k-killing yourself than becoming one. Anyway, we’re done talking.”
He snatched the medicine box out of my hand with a clack.
Then he fiddled with his phone and sent me some kind of gift coupon with a ding, but…
My brows shot up.
“What’s this? It doesn’t seem right for the price of the medicine.”
“You can’t just get this anywhere. It’s the 「Monkey’s Paw Site」. It’s a Q-QR code that lets you access it. It’s a re... reward you can get by being a sub-moderator of the Monkey Gallery for a whole year.”
「Monkey’s Paw Site」
I tapped the link that came with the QR code on my phone.
A little while later, a simply designed website greeted me.
It was a site with nothing but a search bar.
「Monkey’s Paw Site」
「Enter your wish: 」
“What the hell is this─.”
I lifted my head.
The man who could have answered my question had already disappeared.
Instead, Bori-bori had sat down in his place and started eating the tiramisu cake.
“…Mwehehe.”