episode_0020

‘Is Sarah tired? ‘You’ve been dozing off since morning.’

I, Kim Jin-woo, who became a high school student today, looked at Sarah who was lying face down next to me.

We were lucky enough to end up sitting next to each other on the first day of school. The seating arrangement was decided randomly through a drawing of lots. It was surprising that it beat the odds of 1/29.

‘I heard it’s really amazing. Does it make sense that I’ve been in the same class as this guy for 7 years?’

The relationship between Sarah and I did not end with us being in the same class for 7 years.

When it came time to assign seats in class, there was a high probability that we would end up in close seats.

Of course, we weren’t always close. I stayed away from the times when the teacher assigned me an exact seat or ran a drawing program on the computer to determine my seat. However, there were always no exceptions when determining seats using an analog method such as drawing lots. Sarah won the spot exactly next to me every time she drew lots.

‘What kind of probability manipulation is this?’

no… .

It can’t be probability manipulation.

Everyone draws lots equally, so how can they manipulate it? I couldn’t help but think that we were strangely lucky. When I ran the lottery program on my computer, I wasn’t very lucky. It’s probably not something to think about too deeply.

“Hmm.”

There was something else that bothered me.

These days, Sarah sometimes avoids my gaze. It’s like he’s hiding something from me. Every time I asked him what he was hiding, there was really something he was hiding.

Things like donuts I bought to eat alone, or slightly changing the accessories I wear in my bag.

Well, girls tend to have a lot of secrets.

You shouldn’t try to pry into a woman’s secrets.

After seating arrangements were completed, Class 1’s homeroom teacher left the classroom as it was recess.

The teacher’s name was still written in large letters on the blackboard.

“It’s really white… . Same with skin and hair.”

The students in the classroom whispered as they looked at Sarah lying face down. Sarah slowly raised her head as if she heard voices calling her from around her. Sarah looked up again and was maintaining her usual calm expression. Although his cheeks were slightly red, perhaps because he had been pressed by an arm while lying face down.

“Hey, hello there!”

“It happened! He’s awake!”

The moment Sarah woke up, the students who had been just staring in the classroom gathered around us. Regardless of whether they were male or female, they came and talked to Sarah.

“Wow! Are you a mixed race foreigner?”

“Yes.”

“Your hair is really beautiful… !”

In an instant, the world around us became noisy. It was like an annual event for students to gather around Sarah on the first day of school. Of course, some of the students had already heard rumors about Sarah.

“Se-ra, I heard you are the daughter of a shaman?”

“So what?”

“If you are the daughter of a shaman, do you think you can see ghosts?”

“I don’t really want to receive questions about what ghosts do.”

“Oh, sorry… .”

A female student asked Sarah if she could see a ghost. It was a question Sarah had been asked countless times since she was in elementary school. Sarah, now a high school student, seemed to be tired of people answering that she could see everything. I coolly ignored the question.

‘It’s better to just ignore it from the beginning.’

Both then and now, Sarah was reluctant to tell ghost stories to others. If you’re not going to hear it anyway, it would be better to not respond from the beginning.

After a while, the bell rang and class started again.

Because it was the first day of school, the teachers did not make any progress. Teachers who entered the classroom gave an orientation or brief self-introduction and ended the class. The first day of our high school went by uneventfully.

*

In the afternoon, all classes ended.

Now it was time to go home.

After finishing the funeral, Sarah and I came out of the school.

“Jinwoo. Where are you going?”

“You should go home and do what you always do. I’m going to use the computer.”

Compared to the past, my daily routine has not changed much.

What I’ve always done is investigate mysteries. The easiest way to obtain information was by Googling on the Internet. In the past, I only did research at home, but now I often do research on the computer at Hyehwadang.

“Are your parents at home?”

“You both went abroad yesterday. Mom said she had something to do in the Philippines.”

“Is it the Philippines this time? There’s nowhere your mother doesn’t go?”

“Because talented psychics are very rare. There are people looking for their mothers even in foreign countries.”

Sarah’s parents seemed to have left for a foreign country yesterday. It was a good thing for me. Sarah’s parents tried to take care of me to the point where it was a burden. If I happened to run into him at home, he would give me food and even pocket money, so it wasn’t a burden.

After some time, we arrived at Hyehwadang.

After going inside the house, I turned on the computer and took out a thick notebook from my bag.

A thick notebook covered with a leather cover.

I bought it when I was in middle school, so it was quite old.

This note contained stories that my father had told me a long time ago.

It was a story about evil spirits and monsters he encountered while working as an exorcist.

‘If you just remember it, you’ll forget it. ‘I have to record everything.’

My late father had many stories to tell me. Stories about exorcising such mysterious things as a haunted tree, moths that haunt areas where disasters have occurred, things presumed to be demons, and beings scurrying among the bushes.

These were valuable stories.

I wrote it all down in a notebook before I forget it, in case it might help me someday. In the blank areas of the notebook, I was slowly recording things I had separately researched. This note was an important item to me.

“I brought that again.”

Sarah looked at the note I took out and smiled.

Sarah also knew very well about the notebook I had been carrying around since middle school.

“You should always carry it with you. It’s like a keepsake from my father, so it would be difficult if I lost it.”

“It would be better to keep it well in the future. Because it really is like a treasure.”

“Treasure?”

“Of course it’s a treasure. If you try to sell it, you’ll probably be able to sell it for a very high price. The stories written there, if you can prove their value, it will be worth it.”

Sarah told an interesting story.

The story was that the notes I kept were expensive items.

“The information contained in the story is amazing. There are many records of exorcising old monsters, including evil spirits, and there are also records of demons being expelled through exorcism ceremonies. That’s all valuable information. Because it describes how your father actually exorcised evil things.”

“So where can I sell it?”

“A place like a religious organization. Of course, I have to prove that it is a true story before selling it.”

“It’s too complicated.”

I have to find someone to buy the notebook and prove that the stories are true.

No matter how much money the notes made, the process was too complicated.

It’s not something that can be done right away.

“I don’t. I’d rather just keep it to myself.”

“I guess you’re not that interested in money?”

“If you need money urgently later, why not sell it.”

I opened my notebook and researched the mystery online. I spent some time looking through posts on all kinds of sites. What I mainly looked for were posts about sightings of a spirit that resembled my father.

A large adult male.

Younga with curly hair.

In addition, the clothes my father wore when he was alive.

It was not an eyewitness account that could be easily found because the keywords were so broad.

Even now, as a high school student, I haven’t been able to find any real clues to my father’s traces.

‘Is today also a waste of time?’

I continued my investigation until night fell. It was getting late and it was time to finish the research and go home. The last time I was browsing a site dedicated to mysteries.

I found some posts on the site.

“I was climbing the mountain when I found a strange person.”

Without thinking much, I clicked on the post and read it.

I was thinking of turning off my computer just after seeing this.

“Everyone knows about Chilryongsan Mountain, right? This is a place where there are rumors that hikers have seen Yeongga covered in blood. “Many disappearances have occurred here.”

“I live nearby, and I’ve been to Chilryongsan Mountain once. It must have been quite late at night. “As I was about to climb the mountain, someone spoke to me at the entrance.”

“It was a man wearing a black leather jacket. He suddenly appeared in front of me and said this to me. Don’t climb the mountain now because it’s dangerous. “You could die.”

━━Tap!

My hand, which had been scrolling unconsciously, stopped.

In an instant, a memory from the past appeared in my head.

“Uh… ?”

It was a memory of the day my father passed away.

That day, my father, who was in the car, died of a mysterious heart attack. I opened the car door myself and saw my deceased father for the first time.

What kind of clothes was your father wearing at that time?

The memories became clearer.

I vividly remembered my father with his eyes closed in the driver’s seat.

‘Black leather jacket.’

My father was wearing a leather jacket. The clothes were identical to those of the person seen by the informant in the current website posting. I came to my senses and read the text with concentration.

“That man had a strangely intimidating feeling. Is there anything happening on the mountain? So I asked him directly. Why on earth can’t you go up here? But the man kept telling me to go back because it was dangerous. “Even if I kept trying to climb up, I couldn’t get out of the way.”

“It was like that for a while… I suddenly saw something strange at the top of the mountain. Should I say white? I don’t know if it was an animal or a person, but it was dazzlingly white. That strange thing was getting closer and closer to where I was. “At a very fast speed.”

“When I started seeing white things, the man said this to me. This is your last chance, so go! “This is your last chance to escape.”

“When I heard that, I felt really scared for some reason. I ran back home without looking back. Before I got into the taxi, cold sweat broke out on my back. What on earth was so scary? “Even if I think about it again, I still can’t understand it.”

“What on earth were the things I saw on the mountain in the middle of the night…? ?」

The article is finished.

Maybe I was the first to discover traces of my father.