Pr: K
It was a cold winter, the morning had barely begun, long after midnight.
Seok Juryeon was walking down the empty street with her coat collar folded against the sharp cold wind. From time to time, there was the sound of the wind blowing and the branches of the trees trembling. At some point, she realized that she was being followed. The person was quite stealthy, following at a certain distance.
‘Is it a ghost or a human…?’
Seok Juryeon, who had many enemies, walked calmly. She noticed a brightly lit store in the distance; a 24-hour convenience store. Seok Juryeon went into the convenience store first. As she opened the glass door and entered, there was a jingle as the bell rang. The clerk, who was dozing off at the counter, reflexively greeted her.
Seok Juryeon glanced sideways at the clerk. There was another face on the clerk’s shoulder as he half bowed his head. It was a ghost. The ghost looked like a child of six or seven years old, and it had its chin resting on the clerk’s shoulder. The young ghost opened its eyes wide and looked at Seok Juryeon with an innocent expression.
Seok Juryeon turned her gaze away from them and went to the transparent refrigerator where the drinks were displayed. Just as she was calmly choosing a drink, the door to the convenience store opened with a click, sending a rush of cold air towards her. Someone came in. Seok Juryeon stared at the glass door of the refrigerator. Through the reflection of the image in the glass, she checked the facial expressions of the person who came in behind her. Their hair was long enough to reach their shoulders, so at first she thought they were a woman, but when she looked closer, she saw that it was a male.
He was a boy who looked to be about 15 years old. The boy’s appearance was shabby even at first glance. A boy wearing a tattered baseball jumper stood in front of a dairy product stand and selected a product.
‘Could it be that kid who followed behind?’
After thinking for a while, she took out a bottle of beer and a bottle of mineral water.
Seok Juryeon took the beer and bottled water to the checkout. The clerk was so busy dozing off that he didn’t even notice that a customer had come to pay. He couldn’t even keep his head up and was almost dozing off with his head hanging down. He seemed so tired that he couldn’t come to his senses. Of course, the reason could be because of the hardships of night work, but more than that, it was because of that ghost on his shoulder. When a ghost attached itself to a body, one would feel heavy and drowsy.
Instead of waking the clerk, Seok Juryeon opened her wallet with an expressionless face. Mixed among the piles of banknotes were retraction talismans made in a similar shape to banknotes. Seok Juryeon took out a 10,000 won bill, placed a talisman underneath it, and placed it on the counter. Just by looking at it, it was clear that it was a miscellaneous ghost with no malicious intent and weak strength. It would have been easy to defeat it just by touching the talisman in the clerk’s hand.
“I’d like to pay please.”
Seok Juryeon opened her mouth. Then the clerk looked up in surprise and lazily got up. The eyes, full of sleep, were cloudy. The clerk first picked up the beer that Seok Juryeon had brought and scanned the barcode. At that time, a milk carton suddenly appeared next to the bottled water on the counter.
Berry Berry Drinking Yoghurt.
Seok Juryeon turned her head and looked to the side. At some point, a boy wearing a baseball jumper came and stood there. The boy met Seok Juryeon’s gaze without retreating an inch. Sharp eyes, deep, dark eyes. Seok Juryeon recognized it at once; deep hostility and anger coiled like snakes in the boy’s eyes.
The clerk asked as he scanned the barcode of the remaining bottled water.
“Together?”
What the clerk pointed to was the drinking yoghurt the boy had brought. In the eyes of the half-asleep clerk, Seok Juryeon and the boy appeared to be together. She shook her head and opened her mouth to say something, but the boy spoke up first.
“Yes.”
She paused and glanced at the boy. The clerk picked up the yoghurt carton and scanned the barcode, “It’s 4,700 won.” Just when the clerk reached for the bill, the boy touched the 10,000 won bill before the clerk could reach it. The boy quickly grabbed the money and stuffed it into his jumper pocket. Naturally, the overlapping talisman went with it. The clerk looked puzzled.
“…”
Seok Juryeon narrowed his eyes as she stared at the boy. The boy took money out of his other pocket, a crumpled 5,000 won bill, and he handed the cash to the clerk. The clerk looked back and forth between Seok Juryeon and the boy, then just silently took the money the boy offered.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“Let’s go.”
The boy opened the glass door wide and gestured at Seok Juryeon, making a cold wind blow into the warm interior of the convenience store. At that, the clerk looked at the boy, wrapping his arm around him as though wanting him to close the door quickly. Even the ghost shivered. Seok Juryeon cast a final gaze at the ghost on the clerk’s shoulder and left the convenience store without a word.
“What are you doing?”
Seok Juryeon crossed her arms obliquely and looked at the boy. The boy had a plastic bag hanging on his wrist as if it were all his own. The bitter cold wind tore through the boy’s long hair. The boy standing facing him took out the talisman from his pocket with a calm expression on his face.
“It’s because it’s cold.”
The half-crumpled talisman glowed and then burned in the boy’s palm. Seok Juryeon narrowed her eyes at that. The boy did not hide that he was a gwijae. Moreover, seeing as he could burn talismans, he seemed to have quite good skills.
The boy said as he dusted off the remaining ashes from his hands.
“That ghost. It’s not even a vengeful ghost, so you can just leave it alone. It’s stuck to him like that because it’s cold outside. it’ll go away later when the sun rises.”
Seok Juryeon walked closer to the boy.
“You’ve been following me from before, so you must know who I am.”
“Among the aspiring exorcists, is there anyone who doesn’t know you?”
While muttering that, the boy was rummaging through the plastic bag.
Smack!
Seok Juryeon cupped the boy’s cheek with an expressionless face. She could tolerate fearlessness, but not rudeness. The boy lowered his head with his cheeks covered. His cold, frozen cheek hurt as if it would break.
“You cheeky bastard.”
Seok Juryeon spoke in a low voice. Then the boy slowly raised his eyes. As The wind blew his hair, his eyes, half-covered by his hair, sparkled mysteriously. It was a clumsy and rugged thorn that showed the raw emotion.
“You have a knife in your eye.”
Seok Juryeon recognized the look in his eyes, for she had once been like that. It was a look commonly seen in young gwijaes of that age. Living as a gwijae meant wandering around the fringes of the world, a life that cannot belong anywhere and cannot take root. There was a time when her temper flared up for no reason and her anger boiled uncontrollably. To Seok Juryeon, who had passed those days a long time ago, it was just a joke now.
“Take me with you.” The boy said.
Seok Juryeon asked back coldly, “Why should I do that?”
“Because it’s cold.”
Seok Juryeon snorted. That was a pretty good answer. The guy deliberately walked around to get her attention. He was quite brazen as to set aside other routes and approach her directly. She liked that, but she didn’t want a beast that bared its teeth as soon as she touched it.
“I don’t need a guy who can’t even properly hide the tip of a knife.”
After finishing her words, Seok Juryeon turned around. The boy stared at her back with unwavering eyes. As she was moving further and further away, the boy spoke.
“Then what should I do?”
Seok Juryeon stopped walking and looked back at the boy.
“Who knows. If the knife is not in the eye, but here…”
Seok Juryeon pointed her finger below the boy’s abdomen.
“Shouldn’t you hide it in the stomach so it can’t be seen?”
As soon as Seok Juryeon finished speaking, the boy suddenly took off the jumper he was wearing. A bitter winter wind swept over the boy wearing a thin T-shirt. The boy took the beer bottle from the plastic bag around his wrist.
Clink!
In an instant, the bottle broke.
“…”
“…”
“Like this?”, the boy asked.
Seok Juryeon, who had a premonition of something, stiffened.
“You- wait… !”
She quickly stretched out her hand towards the boy, but she was one step too late. The boy picked up the half-blown bottleneck and drove it straight into his stomach. The broken glass bottle was a weapon itself. As the sharp edge penetrated, the thin T-shirt quickly began to turn red. The hem of his blood-soaked clothes was frozen cold.
“I’m Yoon Taehee. I don’t know my age, and I don’t have any parents. So leash me and use me as your hound. If you no longer need me someday, you can just throw me away.”
Bewildered, Seok Juryeon subconsciously grabbed both of the boy’s shoulders. The boy who had been expressionless the entire time was smiling for the first time.
“What are you doing?”
The boy’s body collapsed. Seok Juryeon hurriedly supported the boy’s upper body. The boy continued to chuckle. Little by little, his eyes began to blur. She was furious and slapped the boy hard on the cheek.
‘You insolent bastard, open your eyes…’
That was the first meeting with Yoon Taehee that Seok Juryeon remembers.
***
Afterwards, the boy was so arrogant that he only opened his eyes after three days. It was said that if the glass had gone in one inch further, his life would have been in danger. It was true that he did not know his age and had no parents. From the moment Yoon Taehee began remembering his life, he was living a street life. The only thing he knew about himself was his name.
Seok Juryeon, who was suspicious of him, contacted the police separately and asked to check Yoon Taehee’s background, but they only confirmed that he was an unrelated person with no official identity. He wasn’t even reported missing. He was like a ghost that had substance but did not exist.
“Use me as your hound.”
The moment Seok Juryeon heard those words, she felt a crack forming in her heart. It was a confident and arrogant request. But it sounded strangely lonely. Seok Juryeon saw her younger self in Yoon Taehee, whom she had never even met.
Like Yoon Taehee, Seok Juryeon also had no parents. No, to be exact, she had someone who gave birth to her, but it wasn’t her parents. Her parents sold young Seok Juryeon to a shaman. The day she crossed the threshold of the family home, led by her parents’ hands, was a winter day so cold that the sharp wind scuffed her skin.
At one time, it was common among shamans who suffered from anxiety about losing their spiritual energy to secretly bring in young children and use them as fetal ghosts. The method was to lock the child in a small place where there was no light and then slowly kill them by draining them of energy. So, when the child became a vengeful ghost, it would exert its power.
After being trapped in the darkness without a ray of sunlight, Seok Juryeon finally managed to take advantage of the moment the shaman was away and escaped with all her might. But she really had nowhere to go. Young Seok Juryeon wandered around the street for days and days, until she was lucky enough to be noticed by someone who took her in.
She took the boy, who was like a wild dog, and gave him an identity. With nowhere else to go, she gave him a room in her house and told him he could stay there until he came of age.
16 years old. That was the first age Yoon Taehee had.
Seok Juryeon and Yoon Taehee lived together for about three years. Yoon Taehee entered the office in the spring of the following year and rose to the position of Chief within two years, and Seok Juryeon became the head of the Exorcism department in the same year.
Although they lived under the same roof, they were not like family. It was hard to call them that. Sometimes, when the time was right, they would sit down at the table and eat together, but it only happened once or twice a month.
At that time, Seok Juryeon was leading an incredibly busy life, so she spent more time at the main office than at home. Even though they lived in the same house, the total time they spent together was probably less than three months.
For three years, Yoon Taehee lived very quietly. When Seok Juryeon returned home from work, he would always come out to the front door, no matter whether it was dawn or day, and greet her, ‘You’re here.’
Each time, his gaze would be higher than the last.
“How is it? Can you still see the knife?”
It’s been 10 years since she picked him up like that.
“…”
Seok Juryeon stared blankly at the young man sitting across from him who was no longer an unpolished youth. Suddenly, his shoulders widened and the lines in the figure became thicker.
“After all, it’s better to smile, right?”
The expressionless face turned into a smile. Whenever Yoon Taehee smiled like that, with his eyes curving, Seok Juryeon sometimes felt a strange sense of discomfort. She sometimes wanted to ask, “Have you gotten better at hiding, or have you put down your knife?”
“Yes, you have. You’re only tolerable if you smile.”
Pretending to be ignorant, she muttered as she picked up the documents. They hadn’t always been close, but ten years was a long time to learn a lot about each other, no matter how much she treated him as her hunting dog. The guy learned to laugh.
“What’s going on? Our boss gave me all kinds of praise.”
Yoon Taehee said playfully while resting his chin.
“What praise…”
Alas, Seok Juryeon hoped it was the latter.
It makes me really think that Yoon Taehee might not actually be a mortal.
Thank you for the chapter!! <3
He’s so interesting ugh
So when she says to hide the knife in the stomach it means to hide his true intentions/feelings?
What made a kid so young, who presumably didn’t remember anything, hate Naryecheong so much? Of course, any kid in his place would hate the world itself, but what made his anger directed in the agency?
Is he really a mortal with so much power?
So many questions lol sorry if I’m being annoying