Chapter 13 – Episode 13- The Secret of Birth

Kim Ji-hye, whom I introduced as the general shaman of the Seoul branch, led me and Miho to a black sedan.

Curiously, no vehicle or person was seen near the sedan.

Even though there had been a lot of commotion in the academy just before, she felt uncomfortable seeing the streets filled with silence.

She snapped her fingers and told me, as if realizing that I was staring blankly into her distance.

“What are you doing, ride?”

“Yes… Yes.”

Sitting in the back seat with Miho, Jihye Kim skillfully grabbed her steering wheel and drove her sedan.

As she made her way along the road at high speed, she glanced behind her, and she said to us.

“Lee Mi-ho, you go home first. We have to deal with him first.”

Knowing Miho’s name and seeing the way she spoke without hesitation, it seemed that Miho and Jihye Kim had known each other for a long time.

When Miho heard Kim Jihye’s words, she pricked up her ears and protested.

“Che… How do you handle it?”

Miho squeezes my hand tightly.

Miho, who held me tightly with strong force that didn’t go well with her slender hands, glared at Kim Ji-hye.

When Kim Ji-hye saw that, she clicked her tongue as if she was full of energy and said,

“He’s fucking, he’s just fucking.”

Juseom Juseom Jihye Kim twisted a cigarette in her jacket pocket and looked at Miho as she toughly bent her steering wheel.

“Don’t worry, it’s not like you think. This guy is more difficult than you imagined, so I can’t touch him.”

Hearing that cold and blunt, but unexpectedly trustworthy tone of voice, Miho lowered his head and touched my finger.

“I know…”

The sedan, which was moving at high speed, stopped in front of a luxurious detached house.

Kim Ji-hye turned her head and shook her head as if telling her to leave, she said.

“I’ll contact you later, so you know.”

Outside the window, from the huge door made of iron bars, two giants in suits walked out and approached the sedan.

The moment I was about to say hello to Miho, seeing him as if he was coming to meet me.

Miho also spoke to me.

“”That…””

Each other’s words interlocked in the air, and we naturally waited for each other’s words.

Naturally, he met Miho’s eyes.

Exchanging glances with brown-eyed Miho, the events that happened with Miho today passed by like a flashback.

A lot of things happened, but the image of Miho shaking his butt on top of me was what filled his mind.

“……”

Miho must have felt the same way as I did, and his cheeks were blushing.

“That… Han Jun-ah, I’ll go… My… See you tomorrow.”

When two giants in suits arrived in front of the sedan, Miho hurriedly greeted me and went outside.

“Uh… Yes, yes, Miho.”

As she greeted Miho and awkwardly shook her hand, Kim Ji-hye sighed deeply.

“Patience… For real.”

Jihye Kim roughly breaks her steering wheel.

After leaving Miho’s house, the sedan headed to the underground parking lot of our apartment.

“Hold your hand.”

Arriving at the underground parking lot, Kim Ji-hye holds out her hand to me.

Blink your eyes, asking if I have any reason.

Jihye Kim frowned, she told me.

“You’re not going to ride the elevator like that. You don’t live in a house like Lee Mi-ho.”

Certainly, my appearance now was spectacle.

Just like the cloth you get when you get your hair cut at a beauty salon, this black cloth that covers my body like a cape, with only my hair sticking out, made me stand out in front of others.

“I know.”

I didn’t know why, but as Kim Ji-hye said, I held her hand.

Then, with the feeling of being sucked in…

I arrived at a corner of my house with Kim Ji-hye.

“… Yes?”

As I stood blankly with a bewildered expression on my face, Kim Ji-hye sat down on her sofa as if nothing had happened and wiggled her fingers.

“Go, put on some clothes. We have a lot to talk about.”

“… Yep.”

I don’t know what it is, but I felt like Jihye Kim would solve all my questions…

I hurriedly went into my room and started changing my clothes.

* *

“Can I get you some coffee?”

She awkwardly approached Kim Ji-hye, who was sitting on the sofa, smoking her cigarette.

She was someone who had seen my naked body, and seemed to be basically a blunt person, so it was quite difficult to deal with.

Kim Ji-hye looked at my face blankly and shook her head.

“Okay, don’t drink coffee after 17:00. I can’t sleep well.”

“Yep.”

I bowed as politely as possible and sat down on the floor across from the sofa.

She is definitely the one who said she had a lot to say to me.

What should I tell you, as she was still waiting, Kim Ji-hye slowly took off her cigarette and told me.

“Kang Han-jun, there are so many things to say, but I’ll explain it as simply as possible. You are cursed.”

“Um… Curse?”

“Yes, a curse that can feel like a blessing.”

Jihye Kim pointed at my neck with her slender fingers.

I naturally followed her gaze, and as I groped for her neck, I felt her necklace.

‘Necklace.’

Since the necklace and a lot of things were intertwined today, I swallowed her saliva and waited for Kim Ji-hye’s next words.

Kim Ji-hye took out something of hers from the pocket of her suit, and she proudly held it out to me.

What she handed over was a picture.

In the photo, a tall-looking man and a woman with a kind smile were holding hands.

They looked normal, but I could see the scales of a snake sticking out around the woman’s cheeks.

After guessing that the woman in this picture is probably a ‘ghost’ like Miho, I asked Kim Ji-hye.

“Are these the people who cast a curse that can feel like a blessing?”

No matter how I looked at it, I didn’t feel like the people I would curse.

It’s hard to judge a person with just one picture, but somehow I felt that way.

Heart tickling, viscerally familiar.

Strangely, my eyes went to the two people in this picture.

“Yes, the curse these people put on is the curse of being loved by everyone.”

“… Yes?”

As I was staring at the photo, Kim Ji-hye answered me casually.

“And so are your parents.”

“… What is that?”

I lived alone with her grandmother, without parents all my life.

Even when asked about her parents’ whereabouts, she was a grandmother who always avoided answering.

For the first time in my life, I heard about my parents for the first time from someone else.

“You know the terrorist attacks that happened around the world 20 years ago, right?”

Kim Ji-hye left me in shock and continued her words.

“That… You know, something collapsed and something collapsed…”

Kim Ji-hye, who sighed and raised her eyebrows as if recalling her memories, spoke to me step by step.

“Well, this is all over. To put it simply, I think it all happened because of the fight between youkai and shamans.”

Yokai, sorcerer.

It was a word that felt infinitely far away, but it was already a word that was close to me.

Just today, I already wrote the ‘spell’ and met Miho and the strange monster.

“The ghosts who lived in hiding rebelled and had a fight with the shaman… In the meantime, here…”

Jihye Kim points to the picture of the tuk-tuk.

“Your parents fell in love with each other during that war. And ended the war in a ridiculous way.”

“Uh… How?”

Let me gulp on an interesting story and ask questions.

Kim Ji-hye put on a puzzled expression when she thought about it again, and then she said to me.

“With your father’s sorcery and your mother’s sorcery, I just created a world and ended the war.”

“…Yes?”

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“Just as it is. Your father, who was the best shaman of the time, and your mother, who was on the verge of ascending to heaven as a dragon, created the world and completely erased the cause of the war that youkai don’t want to live in hiding.”

“…Does that make sense?”

I blink and tell Kim Ji-hye.

Jihye Kim also clicked her tongue.

“It doesn’t make sense, but it’s your parents who did that nonsense. And because of those nonsense people, you are cursed.”

Kim Ji-hye took a deep breath, and then she continued.

“Unfortunately, since they created another world, your parents passed away soon. However, they gave birth to you right before they died, and the two of them, who held you in their arms right before they died, left a will for you.”

I blankly recalled the sentence Kim Ji-hye said earlier.

At the same time, the words flowed from Jihye Kim’s mouth.

“I hope everyone will love you a lot.”

“These words were simply given from the heart of parents who love their children, but since the two of them had already approached the realm of transcendence, that will became a tremendous force and bound you.”

For a moment, Miho, who was running madly at me, appeared in my mind.

A terrifying thought crossed my mind as I thought of Miho who preyed on me regardless of the surrounding situation.

“That… I mean, does that apply to men as well?”

When I asked a question with serious eyes, Kim Ji-hye answered me as if to reassure me.

“It’s not like that. The will to be loved by everyone doesn’t really apply to ‘everyone’, it’s because it was applied to your body with a slight twist.”

Jihye Kim pointed at my necklace again.

“The curse of exponentially increasing yang energy. That’s both a blessing and a curse on your body. Your necklace is a device that suppresses yang qi.”

Sheep…? Is it like the man’s energy?

Come to think of it, every time I vomited up my semen, Miho let out a broken moan and trembled.

As I pondered over my thoughts and started thinking about Yang Qi, Kim Ji-hye gave me an additional explanation.

“And that yang qi works for most women. Especially… For female youkai.”

Hearing her words, the words of her grandmother’s will came to her mind.

‘Never take off the necklace.’

‘Don’t trust women who approach you for no reason.’

Apparently … Her grandmother had already noticed ‘this side of the world’.

As I kept my mouth shut at the shocking fact that was suddenly handed to me, Kim Ji-hye smoked a cigarette and waited for me.

“… Shit.”

Kim Ji-hye, who was carefully examining my face, let out a sigh and chewed on a cigarette.

I looked at the smiling faces of my parents in the picture.

I’ve never seen her before, but I somehow feel a longing for her.

I looked at my parents in the picture for a while and organized my thoughts.