## Chapter 1532 – Chronicles of a Black-Haired Foreigner – The Demon God of Another World

`Are you going to the countryside or not!!! You little bastards better listen to your dad when he’s being nice!!! You’ve all gone bad after getting hooked on those weird things, gone bad!!! All you know is how to play games, you don’t even think about the countryside!!! Honey!!! Where’s the stick, where’s the stick!!! Get the stick out here now!!!`

Suddenly, a madman’s voice seemed to echo from the depths of my memory.

`Aaaaaaaagh!`
`Aaaagh!`
`Oaaaaaaagh! Help me!!!`

I got beat a lot for truly bizarre reasons.

After moving to the city, holidays were like hell for my siblings and me. The congested highways. The trip to the countryside took twelve hours. No. Depending on the road conditions, it often took even longer.

What’s worse, Dad’s old car, reeking of stale cigarette smoke, induced extreme motion sickness. But that wasn’t all. The air freshener meant to mask the cigarette smell only created a strange synergy, which caused dizziness.

My siblings and I kept throwing up in black plastic bags all the way to the countryside. And we endured the suffering in that tedious space.

But it wasn’t just holidays… it was the same on memorial days. Dad was a stickler for always attending ancestral rites. So, every time a relative from my grandfather’s generation passed away, those days of suffering increased. It would have been nice to hold the rites all at once, but a stickler wouldn’t do such a thing.

As a child, I seriously thought that the deceased grandfathers were trying to take us, their cute grandchildren, to heaven with them. Please stop dying. You’re going to kill all your grandkids.

`Geuntae, you little brat, being the eldest son, you should be preparing to go down before the holiday, what?! You’re not going?! You want to study at home this time?! You hate seeing relatives you only see a few times a year that much!!! You’ve only liked weird things since you were little, and now you have no manners, no manners at all!!! You think Dad doesn’t know you’re trying to play games at home?! You’re a game addict, an addict!! I need to throw that damn computer away!!!`

My father would grab my siblings and me with his rough hands and forcibly cram us into that small car.

“Wow, seriously.”

Inhumane recollection.

It’s all coming back so vividly now that I’m trying to remember it. I decided to sort through the memory album in my head and recall as much as I could about my father.

`Geuntae, have you leveled up my Lineage character?`
`I’ve been playing for about two hours and twenty minutes.`

I wasn’t allowed to use the computer whenever I wanted. To use the computer, I had to level up my father’s Lineage character for three hours. So, I would play Lineage after coming home from school.

Of course, even if I leveled it up, I couldn’t do whatever I wanted. Usually, it was limited to one hour. My father had the bizarre belief that if a child played games for more than an hour a day, they would definitely become a game addict, and he was a stickler with the principle that he could never allow his game-addicted child to suddenly die while playing games at an internet cafe.

But I couldn’t understand why he made me level up his Lineage character. Wouldn’t playing Lineage for three hours make me three times more of a game addict? Why was Lineage the only exception? Of course, I couldn’t ask about this. He would hit me if I asked such things.

`…Is that so? Then stop and play games for an hour.`

But this one memory especially sticks with me.

“Play games for an hour and turn off the computer.”

He must have been in a good mood that day because he let me use the computer even though I had only leveled up his Lineage character for two hours and twenty minutes.

“Good job.”
“…”

That expression he made, as if he had done something very benevolent and fatherly. I couldn’t forget that absurd expression and situation. I don’t know exactly, but my father had that kind of face back then.

It was definitely not the face a man who treats his own child like a living labor camp while using the excuse of game addiction to only allow them one hour of computer time a day should make.

But as the saying goes, when a crazy person does something nice once in a while, you remember it. That was exactly it.

This memory remains very vivid.

“…”

Come to think of it, we used to go fishing together a lot when I was young. Of course, I didn’t want to go, but he would get angry if I said I didn’t want to, so I had no choice but to go.

`Geuntae, should I make you a spicy fish stew?`

But the spicy fish stew I ate there… was delicious.

`You little brat, how dare you touch it before your elders!!!”

But I remember getting hit again after tasting a bite. The charge was that I had tasted the broth before my father. He was truly stingy when it came to food.

He was the kind of person who would grab all four drumsticks without any hesitation when we ordered two chickens and put them on his plate.

“Geuntae, Geunsu, and Geunmi. Did I teach you to be greedy with food? Does the chicken run away if you don’t put it on your plate like that? Don’t you know how to share with your siblings?”

Yet, if we put more than two pieces of chicken on our plates, he would get angry, saying we were being greedy with food.

ㅡCreep, creep.

Old memories rapidly surface.

`Geuntae, you little brat, you made a Gu again!!! You dare to curse your father!!!!! Where’s the box, where’s the box!!! Bring me the bug box!!!!!!!`

My father was in a panic.

`No! It’s just a cockroach that came in from outside! What Gu are you talking about!`

It was just a cockroach in the house, but he was convinced that I had made a Gu and started yelling. It was a kind of PTSD.

`Kyaaaaaaaagh!! Catch it!!! Geuntae, catch it quickly!!! There! It’s running away! Catch it! Catch it! Kyaaaaaaaagh!`
`Aaaaaaaagh!!!`

He was really afraid of bugs. He would scream just at the sight of a cockroach. My father couldn’t distinguish between a stag beetle and a cockroach.

`Quickly!!! Catch it quickly!!! Honey!!!!! Geuntae, that little brat, made a Gu again!!!`

But in fact, the cockroach that appeared in the house was one that I had deliberately caught from the stairs outside the front door and left inside, and my father was running around the house in a frenzy. Actually, I had been thinking about making a Gu.

`Anyway, I’m keeping an eye on you… Clean up properly. Geuntae, it’s because you’re always playing games in your room that cockroaches like that come in. You don’t study and you’re always playing games, so the house is a mess. A mess.`

It was impossible to understand what he was saying. Rather, I played more games because of Lineage, and I couldn’t see what connection there was between playing a lot of games at home and cockroaches coming in.

`Geuntae, the red ginseng in the refrigerator is all gone!!!!`

And he would express his anger whenever the red ginseng in the refrigerator ran out.

`Geuntae!!! Geuntae!!! I said the red ginseng in the refrigerator is all gone!!! You little brat, you don’t even think about getting up when your dad is talking to you!!!`
`It’s Sunday today…`
`Dad goes to work on Sundays too!!! To feed you little bastards!!! Order some red ginseng!`
`Okay…`

I’m not lying, I must have fed my dad over a million won worth of red ginseng.

`Siblings are alike, buying things like this!!!! Who told you to buy a curse mask!!! Who are you trying to curse by buying a ghost mask like this!!! Huh!! Did you learn it from Geuntae?!`
`Aaaagh!`
`Where’s Geuntae! Bring Geuntae here!!!`

My younger sister, Kim Geunmi, was beaten just for buying a Hollow mask from the anime Bleach. It was because he firmly believed that the mask was a mask of ghosts and was used for cursing.

`Turn off the fan! Do you want to die?!`
`Who!!! Told you to step on the doorframe!!! I told you to be careful!!!`
`Head! Head! You’re sleeping with your head facing north again! Honey! I told you to watch the kids!`

He was also very superstitious. In my father’s worldview, people who slept with the fan on would die, stepping on the doorframe would bring bad luck, and sleeping with your head facing north was ominous. The world around him was dangerous. Full of dangerous things.

Perhaps that was why he became so eccentric.

Because he had to protect his family in a dangerous world. But as is always the case with these kinds of stories, in the end, the most dangerous thing was none other than my father.

“…I’m getting dizzy.”

I couldn’t take it anymore and closed the memory album. It felt like I had opened a book that shouldn’t have been opened. What is my father, who used to be like that… doing now?

I used to think about that a lot.

“Katt? Are you okay?”

At the same time as I heard Claudia’s voice, I returned to reality.

“Ah. I was just thinking about the old days… I’m okay. Hilde. I just thought about it, and he’s not the kind of person who can keep a secret. He’ll probably blab it all over town like a madman. There’s no way he’ll be quiet.”
“W-what were you thinking about that made you suddenly assert that with such a serious face…”
“I dug through my memories a bit.”
“No. Even so, do you have to be so sure?”

Liz asked with a questioning look, but it’s a fact.

“Yeah. I’m sure. I know him well. He was a strange person beyond just being strange.”
“W-wasn’t he normal…?”
“Yeah. He’s a strange person. My father is.”

At those words, they closed their mouths for a moment.

Then.

“Ah.”

They nodded as if they understood something.

What?

“Well, yeah. Thinking about what my husband does, it seems like he would be strange.”
“He wouldn’t be normal…”
“This Saintess thinks so too. After briefly predicting… I understand.”
“There’s no way the person who made the Blackie is normal. Sisters.”

What is all this talk!

“No. You’re talking as if I’m a strange person.”
“Katt, if we had to classify you, you would be a strange person.”
“What! What is all this talk! Listen! There’s no way I’m a strange person! Then what is my dad, a transcendentally strange person?!”

I’m someone who has never been called strange anywhere!

“U-umm… Still, I can’t really predict what Katt-nim’s father is like…”
“I-I think that as the father of a Saint, he must be a wonderful person. He definitely will be.”

Hilde and Eliza said with troubled expressions.

“If you can attach the word ‘wonderful’ to strangeness, then that’s correct.”

Anyway, it doesn’t seem like just talking will work.

Is there no other way but to subdue them with force?

“Then that’s a big problem, Katt-nim. I don’t think there’s any other way but to manipulate his memories or control his mind with some kind of magical method. If you can’t communicate with him, it will be difficult to solve it realistically.”
“That’s right.”

Memory manipulation or mind control.

No matter what, I don’t want to use such methods on my family.

“Hmm.”

My worries are only getting deeper.