Chapter 5

Knife, Flower

My ambition to meet Gi In-hwa over the weekend was truly absurd.

Having happily gulped down sweet delusions on my own, I received dung instead of rice cake from Gi In-hwa.

[Rule two: limit the number of messages you can send in a full day to a maximum of three. Rule three: don’t call me. It’s bothersome. And don’t even dream about my weekend time, because I can’t make any.]

From nine in the morning to two in the afternoon on Saturday, I had sent Gi In-hwa a total of twelve messages and received one reply.

After that, I held back and held back, and only left two missed calls, and he went and set rules like that—blade-sharp and frost-fanged—and informed me of them.

Once again, resentment at how unfair it was shot up its head.

Two days—no, three days—of my precious time were about to go to waste, and anxiety burned my insides.

[I think you’ve forgotten your position, senior.]

I sent another threatening message, but there was no reply.

I couldn’t believe its potency had already worn off.

I had assumed some degree of resistance was only natural.

But I had also naively and optimistically believed that if I persistently demanded, he would have no choice but to give in to some extent.

Just as I had been granted six months, I thought that as long as No Joo-eun—the blackmail card in my hand—remained intact, Gi In-hwa would have no choice but to cooperate.

I must have been naive.

Even after being burned like that yesterday, I still hadn’t come to my senses.

For a blackmailer, I couldn’t even be harsher—I was just reading his mood, so of course.

At four in the afternoon, without having eaten lunch, I went all the way to the front of Gi In-hwa’s house and paced around near the five-story villa building.

After about two hours of lurking, all I confirmed was that he wasn’t home, and I was on my way back.

I stopped by the licensed real estate offices and realtors located in each alley and stamped my face in for the first time in a while.

The real estate office owners, as soon as they confirmed my face, made awkward expressions and waved their hands, saying that villa hadn’t had a unit come up for lease yet.

I obediently nodded and earnestly begged them to please call me first if a room came up there, whether monthly rent or jeonse.

It’s Saturday.

Where on earth could Gi In-hwa be at this time on a Saturday?

There were too many guesses, so my feet, after hesitation, naturally headed home.

He might have gone to his aunt’s place.

Or maybe No Joo-eun called him.

Or maybe he begged his workplace to let him come in early.

Gi In-hwa is always busy.

And he works far too much for no reason.

A dark, chilly evening.

I saw cherry blossoms blooming modestly under the faint streetlights, but no inspiration rose in me.

Arriving near my house, I stopped by a convenience store and bought one triangle kimbap and one banana milk.

Even though I had starved all day, I wasn’t hungry, so I ate only half of even that and left the rest.

I have to take care of my health more carefully than others.

No, that’s not right.

That statement is wrong.

Everyone else also has to take care of their own health more carefully than anyone.

There isn’t a single person in the world who doesn’t need to.

It’s just that I’m a person with somewhat stricter conditions.

If possible, I must avoid having to go to the hospital.

To take care of my health, I have to eat well and sleep well.

I know, but there are many times when it’s hard to keep to it.

Especially these days……

Is Gi In-hwa healthy?

Suddenly I become curious.

Gi In-hwa is someone who splits his time into pieces and uses it.

To the point of wondering why he drives his body so hard.

He attends school, works without rest, and in the middle of all that, cares for No Joo-eun.

No distinction between night and day, no weekends.

When on earth does he sleep, and does he even lie down properly to sleep?

Even so, seeing him walk around fine without issue, maintain a solid physique, and preserve the gloss of his skin and hair, I can only think he was born that way.

But that’s only what’s visible—how is it really?

Is it hard?

Is he exhausted?

Does he find it tiresome?

Does he hurt?

Does he sometimes want to drop everything and rest?

If so, how often?

And on top of that, since last night, a lunatic leech named ‘Jo Yoon’ has attached herself to him, so his head must ache.

It’s not incomprehensible that he treats me so coldly.

But I have to live too.

Sorry, but I’ve decided to live.

So I have to take some kind of extraordinary measure.

On Monday we’re bound to meet anyway, so I’ll have to face him then and settle this once and for all.

After steeling my resolve, I pulled over the banana milk I had pushed aside to throw away and finished drinking it.

If he says no to this and no to that, then I have no choice but to chase after him unconditionally.

Anyway, I’m his girlfriend.

I have no choice but to use that as a shield and a weapon and cling persistently.

Even if he gets angry, curses, ignores, insults, mocks, and pulls every kind of shit, I’ll stick like gum and never fall off.

Not that Gi In-hwa would ever do that to me, but even if he really did act that shitty, I would be brazen and mean like a demon risen from hell, and I would hold on tenaciously.

Having resolved that, I opened my laptop.

The board of ‘Twentieth-Century Ghosts’ appeared on the screen just as I had left it after looking at it last night.

‘Twentieth-Century Ghosts’ is an anonymous community where extreme occult maniacs gather.

The administrator does not collect personal information, and members can, if they wish, operate without a fixed ID or nickname.

In this community I operate under the nickname ‘fromhell1818.’

It’s been almost a year since I started, but the number of posts I’ve written in that time is barely ten or so.

I don’t comment much either.

My purpose was information gathering from the start, so I just skim through the posts that go up every day with my eyes.

As always, today is full of nothing but all sorts of miscellaneous posts.

There’s a short post about Theophilus, the first demon contractor, which has been posted a few times before; Japanese subway ghost stories circulating on the internet; tarot interpretation methods; how to make a witch’s broom and the ointment applied to brooms; how to make curse dolls; ghost sighting stories that would only appear on TV horror programs; and attention-seeking posts by people with nothing to do.

Some of the people in this community sincerely believe in demons and exorcism, sorcery and curses, telepathy and clairvoyance, mind reading and prophecy.

The administrator is that kind of person too, and all the boards here are based on using honorifics and polite speech with one another.

Because if by any chance the other person is a real ability user, you never know what kind of disaster might befall you if you carelessly spoke casually to such an unidentified human and committed a ‘crime of hurting feelings.’

So the atmosphere of everyone being careful on their own has naturally formed within the community.

It sounds crazy, but these people are serious.

Most are probably over-immersed delusional patients, but rarely, there are those who are not.

I believe there definitely are.

Real ability users like me.

Expressed genetically and biologically, mutants.

I read the memories and emotions of people whose skin touches mine with a one-in-three probability.

No, I see them.

No, I read them and see them and hear them and feel them.

I can’t explain it properly.

I just resonate with them.

I am a psychic, and since I became old enough to understand things, I have ceaselessly wandered the vast ocean of the internet to find someone like me.

But I haven’t found one yet.

Instead, in the real world, I found one person on whom my ability doesn’t work at all.

That’s Gi In-hwa.

My savior, who was reduced to No Joo-eun’s slave over a crime the size of a rat turd.

The person of my destiny.

Gi In-hwa will soon escape the clutches of the witch called No Joo-eun and enter the mouth of the demon called Jo Yoon.

Because the demon will steal him from the witch.

Because I will steal him away no matter what.

I pulled the half-eaten triangle kimbap from the edge of the table and forced the rest down, chewing and swallowing.

*

Monday, having gotten far too pumped up, I arrived at school before ten even though my class was at eleven.

I decided to kill time sitting on the bench under the wisteria trellis in front of the College of Humanities.

Sitting here is good because I can closely observe the faces of the people going in and out of the building.

So when Gi In-hwa appears, I’ll know right away.

Gi In-hwa takes ‘Understanding of Art,’ an eleven a.m. lecture on Mondays and Wednesdays.

He probably doesn’t know yet, but I take that class too.

It was the sole achievement I secured during the course registration correction period.

Well, the flaw, if it is a flaw, is that No Joo-eun is there too, but that can’t be helped.

I had been watching the building entrance and occasionally glancing at my phone screen for about fifteen minutes when I felt a suspicious presence from the three o’clock direction, and someone plopped down on the bench across from me.

I had my head down looking at my phone, and I stiffened my shoulders for a moment, startled enough that my hair stood on end.

Without raising my head, I rolled my eyes around and slightly surveyed the surroundings.

There are many empty benches.

Far too many……

So why on earth here……?

A feeling of absurdity and displeasure crept up, but only briefly.

Suddenly, a strange sense of déjà vu and unease washed over me.

I, who am unusually sharp in this sort of thing, lifted my head slightly with a feeling of ‘Don’t tell me…’

Sure enough, I saw Yoon Yoo-seon sprawled out on the bench across from me.

“Hi.”

Yoon Yoo-seon, wearing a white shirt under a red checkered button-up, nodded his chin and greeted me.

I was not well, and I was not curious about his well-being, so I didn’t answer and only slightly furrowed my brow.