Chapter 13
“He suddenly showed up after years and asked me to invest in him, without any rhyme or reason…”
“As a working professional, I should’ve at least prepared a PPT presentation. I apologize for my lack of preparation.”
“Do you even understand what you’re saying?”
“If it fails, it’s over. If it succeeds, it’s a jackpot. That’s the kind of business I’m explaining.”
“You d*mn scoundrel!”
I tilted my head to the side as the green tea flew towards me, like a mother-in-law in a morning drama throwing tea at a bride-to-be.
The precious green tea splattered against the wall and dripped down, leaving a mixed scent of fragrant peach tea and bitter green tea lingering in the room.
“You dare to speak with your mouth full when you don’t even know why I collected those things at a premium, why I haven’t disposed of them until now!”
“Are you disappointed?”
“I still remember the look in your eyes when you crawled your way up from the bottom! It hasn’t changed even now! If you were a dying man with nothing left to lose, I would have just given you some pocket change and sent you away…”
Seeing my unwavering attitude, Madam Kim Bok-ja shook her hands as if she was cursed with bad luck.
“Just by looking at the look in your eyes, I know exactly what you’ll do if I refuse you. Don’t even think about causing a scene in this quiet street, just follow me quietly.”
“…”
As she said, if Madam Kim Bok-ja had tried to chase me away, I was prepared to take the ‘tools’ even if it meant committing theft.
The distinction between good and evil is meaningless on the path I have to take. It wouldn’t matter if theft was added to my hands, already stained with the blood of 12 people.
Perhaps she had an eye for people that was even better than most shamans. Madam Kim Bok-ja patted her waist with her fist and headed towards her private office.
It was known that she used the reception room for business conversations and her office only for exchanging special items.
Other than that, all she ever did was make small deals with people who came to get some quick cash at the counter on the first floor.
This was my first time actually seeing it, but as expected, Madam Kim Bok-ja’s private office was anything but ordinary. The atmosphere was so different that I wondered if I was even in the same building.
It was filled with so many items, a mixture of various vibes.
Broadly, religion, country, culture.
Narrowly, form, purpose, volume.
It was full of such diverse items that I almost mistook it for an antique exhibition hall.
“This street is where countless people gather at night, when the Yin energy grows strong and human desires are amplified. That’s why so many different kinds of people come here needing money or wanting to get rid of troublesome things.”
“I’ve been to a similar place.”
A remote area where troublesome, annoying, and needlessly resentful spirits are abandoned – a landfill for spirits, so to speak. There’s a place called Maeryeongji near Seoul.
It was surprising that I managed to get out of such a place alive, but I was even more surprised to learn that Hongdae served a similar purpose.
“The really nasty ones leave cursed dolls in Hongdae. Sometimes, young people wandering around drunk get caught by them and d*e tragically. And then there are those who pay a premium to dump these cursed items on an old woman like me who’s on her last legs.”
“Depending on how it’s used, a cursed item could also be beneficial.”
“Don’t even think about it. I don’t know what you’re planning, but the things here are not meant to be used for good. Even the shamans and sorcerers I brought in at great expense only managed to seal them away.”
Perhaps Madam Kim Bok-ja had promised those people a small reward and a word in her will to dispose of these things after her death.
She had a lot of material possessions, but nothing else, which was almost pathetic. She probably wanted to leave this world with these items so she wouldn’t be lonely on her journey to the afterlife.
I picked up a thick, old book that was tightly sealed with a thin metal chain and padlock.
There wasn’t a speck of dust on it, despite being tucked away in a corner, never seeing the sunlight. Was it because the skilled shamans and renowned sorcerers who visited this place had taken some measures?
‘No, I should be suspicious of the fact that this phenomenon of no dust accumulating, despite those people taking measures, is still ongoing.’
Madam Kim Bok-ja called this her private office, but she only used it for work when conducting special transactions.
Judging from the absence of cleaning tools like dusters, it seemed like she only used it for storage.
“That book was given to me by some Yankee for a thousand dollars.”
“You dealt in dollars?”
“Gold, dollars, yen, euros, yuan – I deal in everything. Heh heh…”
It didn’t sound like a joke, coming from the true big shot of this street, the living legend of the pawnbroking world.
“I’ll get back ten times the price for each item. If that’s impossible, I’ll take your life as collateral, as you said.”
“Ten times a thousand dollars is ten thousand dollars.”
At the current exchange rate, that’s about 13 million won. It was half of my total assets.
“Since the collateral is based on my failure, I trust that the deadline for recovering the investment will be quite generous.”
“One year. I can’t wait any longer than that, even if I wanted to.”
“Alright.”
In addition to the thick old book, I picked up a necklace with an unidentifiable insect encased in a deep green crystal and a pocket watch with its second, minute, and hour hands moving erratically.
After confirming the three items I had chosen, Madam Kim Bok-ja announced a shocking price without hesitation.
“That’ll be 9,230 dollars in total.”
“This book, which seems to have good cost-effectiveness, is only a thousand dollars, but these two together are 8,230 dollars? Isn’t that a bit too much of a rip-off?”
“That creepy necklace was given to me by some dark-skinned Westerner who said it came from South America, and the broken pocket watch was given to me by some Chinese guy.”
In this short span of time, I had incurred a debt of 92,300 dollars.
“Then I’ll choose one more.”
“You’ll do anything to d*e, won’t you? Don’t you know the meaning of moderation?”
“For me right now, more is always better.”
The last item I chose was a metal knuckle duster that could be worn on one hand. It had some Latin inscription on the top, and grotesque patterns were engraved on the inside where the fingers would go.
“That was given to me by a dying bride who wanted to drink her fill before going to the Lord’s embrace. I’ll round it up to a clean 10,000 dollars for you.”
“Please provide a burner phone as a service to a premium customer with a debt of 100,000 dollars. The latest model, if possible.”
“So you’re planning on using those to do business?”
Madam Kim Bok-ja asked, opening a drawer in her desk and tossing me a brand-new smartphone.
If I accessed the smartphone’s device information and found out the number, half of the plan would be ready.
“Could you also introduce me to a realtor you’re close with?”
“Why don’t you just suck the marrow out of this old woman’s bones while you’re at it?”
“You’re going to take much more than that from me…”
I plan to get into an empty office building, make business cards under the name Han Dae-ri, and put up a decent sign.
The first base where I can issue tickets to those yearning for heaven, guide those who have lost their way, and ultimately walk my own path.
From that day forward, Han Siu the human ceased to exist in Korea.
Now I, Han Dae-ri, will end the childish farce of these heaven-seekers and proudly walk into h*ll in the end.
It would be even better if I could make some money and enjoy life as I please along the way.
I, having completely lost my social standing, had a top priority: to repay 100,000 dollars within a year, with my life as collateral.
But this was just a stepping stone to a great leap forward. Maybe for someone like me, who does great things, unprecedented luck would follow.
“By the way, Grandma.”
“What is it, you brat?”
“Have you ever thought about believing in Jesus?”
Reserve your ticket now and your place in heaven is guaranteed.
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When I first received the call from the head of the merchant association, I wondered what he was talking about.
━Oh, Shaman! Why are you only getting this now? Something terrible has happened!
━I was praying at the shrine. What is it?
━It’s nothing other than this… A strange guy showed up in our commercial district!
━A strange guy, you say? You need to explain it properly so I can look into it.
━Well… This young guy, who looked perfectly normal, showed up looking all shabby and went into that man-eating motel! We gathered people in a hurry because we were afraid something might happen again, but guess what? That guy was sleeping soundly in the very room where the accident happened!
━…Did he look like a shaman?
━He didn’t seem like a venerable Taoist priest or a sorcerer, nor did he seem like a male shaman. You know how you feel warm and comfortable around those kinds of people? Well, a bunch of strong men went in there, and you know what happened? They all came running out screaming like little girls!
Hearing this, Shaman Yonghwa suspected he might be a possessed patient.
It was just a guess, as she hadn’t seen his face or figured out his birth date. She subtly asked her mentor if he knew anything, but he just quietly shook his head.
The fact that her mentor didn’t know meant that a greater being was hiding it from him. Or maybe it was such an insignificant existence that her mentor didn’t even bother paying attention to it.
━Is anyone hurt? If you’re really worried, bring everyone here. I’ll set up some protection.
━Oh, thank you, Shaman. And if possible, could you… take a look at that guy?
Strictly speaking, Shaman Yonghwa wasn’t a typical fortune teller who ran a common shaman’s shrine, just telling fortunes and scribbling talismans.
She had been told by her mentor to settle down here, and for the past few years, she had been honing her skills and offering rituals in this place.
Thanks to that, she received a lot of consideration from the surrounding merchants for not doing business even though her shrine was located right in the middle of the commercial district.
Of course, a shaman shouldn’t receive anything for free, so she regularly wrote talismans for the merchants, sometimes gave them trivial fortune readings, and so on, to repay their kindness.
But sometimes, like this, when a sinister incident involving spirits occurred in the commercial district, she would act according to her mentor’s instructions.
She had a feeling that the time would soon come to deal with the ghosts of the abandoned motel, even though her mentor had told her to wait because it wasn’t time yet. The place was rumored to be a “man-eating abandoned motel.”
In the midst of all this, something like this had happened, so Shaman Yonghwa changed her clothes to go out, feeling perplexed.
She was a shaman only in this place until her mentor gave her new instructions. Outside, she had to be an ordinary person.
She didn’t wear heavy makeup or colorful shaman clothes when she was out and about. She didn’t even carry her folding fan.
However, she always carried the bell she had chosen when she received the spirit.
“Mentor, I need to go see what kind of guy this is. Please come with me.”
She, who neither did business nor took on a spiritual daughter, gathered her pile of laundry and headed to the coin laundry where the guy was last seen.
That was her first encounter with ‘Han Dae-ri’, who claimed that ‘everyone should receive a ticket to heaven equally’.
And he always added this at the end.
‘Except me.’
