An Office Worker Is Good At Exorcism - Chapter 263

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 262
Part 5. What Spreads Through Bloodline (2)
Vrrrrm.
The air inside the moving car felt heavy.
I gripped the steering wheel and drove slower than usual, my gaze drifting across the surrounding landscape.
We were heading toward the outskirts.
Jagged mountains pierced my vision like needles, and gray clouds that obscured the sky writhed and shifted overhead.
“Your mother…”
It was then that Kim Il-hong, sitting in the passenger seat, began to speak with his head bowed.
“She lived her entire life afraid of something.”
His voice was heavier and more turbid than the storm clouds themselves.
Heavy enough to furrow Yoon Sang’s brow in the back seat.
“I thought it was paranoia. Because of that, she nagged us constantly. Now that I think about it, I wonder if every action, every breath she cautioned us about was a warning.”
Perhaps it was fortunate that I hadn’t brought my son.
Kim Il-hong looked so frail and weak that it was hard to believe he was anyone’s father.
“But because she never explained, what could the children understand? Eventually, when I was in high school, I talked back to her for the first time in a major way, and her expression was so terrifying.”
As if voices couldn’t be raised.
As if the very existence of children couldn’t be known.
As if this situation itself shouldn’t be happening.
My mother, who was a Shaman, was consumed by fear.
“…And you don’t know what that was?”
“No.”
I stared straight ahead and pressed my lips firmly shut.
Then I turned the wheel toward the Mountain, lowering my voice as if someone might be eavesdropping on our conversation.
“Your younger sister didn’t know either?”
“…What?”
“It was your younger sister who drove in the stake. She didn’t know either?”
Kim Il-hong stared at my profile with his jaw hanging loose.
Then he narrowed his brow and cast his eyes downward, rubbing his lips.
He searched through his memories meticulously, but found nothing that caught.
“Why are you asking that…”
Vrrrrm.
Perhaps because the surroundings were silent as a mouse’s death.
The engine sound rang out loudly.
I parted my lips and spoke with measured caution.
“What spreads through blood isn’t only curses.”
A Shaman’s fate also spreads through blood.
It isn’t only the Hereditary Shaman Tradition.
Even those of the Possessed Shaman Tradition can have mothers and daughters become Shamans.
It’s not uncommon for mothers and daughters to be reborn in the relationship of divine mother and divine daughter.
“Did your younger sister receive the divine descent?”
“Ah, no. No. That never happened.”
The answer came back with absolute certainty.
Yet I couldn’t simply accept those words at face value.
Divine descent unfolds over hours, sometimes days.
Kim Il-hong might have experienced it while serving in the military.
“I understand for now.”
The engine rumbled.
I steered the car toward the Mountain that drew steadily closer.
It was the Mountain where that Graveyard lay—the one where the steel stake had been extracted.
Something strange had happened to Kim Il-hong.
Kim Yi-jun had said last night that Kim Il-hong didn’t come straight home, and I’d even heard that he’d spoken with his younger sister.
One night had passed since then.
Just one night, but enough time for someone to repeat their vicious deeds.
The car ground to a halt, treading through soil.
I stepped out with Yoon Sang, gathering our gear, but Kim Il-hong remained frozen in the passenger seat.
Perhaps he needed time to steel himself.
I had to check the Graveyard.
I had to confirm what Kim Il-ju, his younger sister, had not done.
“Sigh.”
Understanding Kim Il-hong’s emotional state, I resolved to wait patiently.
That was my intention.
But then—
The bell chimed.
The Shaman’s Bell in my bag rang out on its own.
‘Just now…’
I glanced at Yoon Sang, but his eyes remained innocent and untroubled.
The bell chimed again.
The Shaman’s Bell rang once more, and I quickly unzipped the bag to retrieve it.
Chime, chime, chime, chime.
With no wind blowing, the Shaman’s Bell continued ringing of its own accord.
“Huh? Uh, hyung.”
Without sparing a glance at the bewildered Yoon Sang, I urgently rapped on the passenger window.
“Kim Il-hong! Kim Il-hong!”
Startled, Kim Il-hong opened the car door.
“Yes, yes?”
“We need to check the Mountain. Now! Hurry!”
Heeding the Shaman’s Bell’s warning, I seized Kim Il-hong’s arm and pulled him along.
Together with the bewildered Kim Il-hong and Yoon Sang, I began climbing the Mountain at a near-sprint.
‘Damn it, damn it.’
Violent images kept flashing through my mind.
A fishy stench—the kind that clung to snakes and spiders—brushed past my nostrils.
“Hah, hah! Haugh!”
Kim Il-hong gasped for breath until his throat felt raw, but I couldn’t slow my pace.
Everything seemed to be urging me forward.
The wind, the Mountain, the Shaman’s Bell, even that murky sky above.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
As we drew closer to the Graveyard, the Shaman’s Bell rang louder and louder, and when the Graveyard finally came into view, I had no choice but to stop.
“…Damn it.”
Kim Il-ju was there.
Embracing the Graveyard, limp and lifeless, lying on soil darkened by blood.
“Il-ju! Il-juuuu!”
Kim Il-hong screamed, his voice tearing, and rushed toward her.
The moment he turned her over, his face went pale and he collapsed.
One of Kim Il-ju’s eyes was crushed, her face twisted grotesquely.
As if she had witnessed something she should never have seen.
“Ah, ah, ah! Ahhh! Ahhhhh!”
As Kim Il-hong screamed in horror, I turned my gaze to the Graveyard.
A blood-soaked steel stake stood upon the Graveyard like a gravestone.
***
Tap, tap.
Kim Il-hong knocked on the passenger window of my car after 4 p.m.
Click.
When I unlocked the door, Kim Il-hong sat in the passenger seat with the face of a corpse.
We were near the Mountain.
The shortened daylight made the surroundings dim already, but it must have been an incredibly long day for Kim Il-hong.
“Did the investigation go well?”
“Yes.”
As Kim Il-hong answered like a man without a soul, Yoon Sang, sitting in the back seat, pulled a drink from his bag and handed it to him.
“Have something to drink, at least.”
“…Thank you.”
Kim Il-hong took the drink but didn’t open it, gripping it tightly in his hand.
Then, with his head bowed, he muttered like a sigh.
“I told the Police Officer well.”
To keep me from being implicated.
To ensure no trouble would come to Kang Hyung-seok, who had helped him.
Kim Il-hong had thoroughly hidden my existence from the Police Officer who came to the Graveyard.
“They questioned how I got there. I said a younger sibling gave me a ride to the area. I said I climbed the Mountain alone.”
“Your sibling…”
“The cause of death was so obvious…”
Scrape.
Kim Il-hong rubbed his foot against the passenger seat mat.
That explained everything.
He’d slipped while driving the steel stake into the Grave.
By sheer misfortune, the protruding steel stake struck Kim Il-ju directly in the eye, killing her instantly—that was the Police Officer’s assessment.
“We’ll know more once the autopsy is complete, but… can something like this really happen?”
Kim Il-hong’s head trembled slightly as he shifted his gaze toward me.
What happened this morning and what happened on the Mountain.
His sister’s death.
His expression was so devastated it seemed impossible he could maintain any semblance of sanity.
“This isn’t coincidence. Is it?”
“…Please, calm yourself.”
“How can I calm down! In this situation!”
Yoon Sang frowned at the outburst, but I met Kim Il-hong’s gaze with an expressionless face.
Sometimes a moment of silence carries more persuasive power than a hundred words.
Just like now.
“…I’m sorry.”
“No. I understand.”
Huh!
I took the beverage from Kim Il-hong’s hand, opened the cap, and handed it back to him.
Then, watching him with his head bowed low, I spoke quietly.
“You need to pull yourself together.”
Sob! Huff, huff!
“You can’t let your Son get caught up in this.”
That was when it happened.
Kim Il-hong stopped sobbing and stared at me with wide eyes.
“Just now… what did you…?”
“You must protect your Son.”
For just a moment, despair flickered across Kim Il-hong’s eyes.
“W-what… what are you saying? My son? Why Yi-jun?”
“…You were harmed, and your sister was harmed as well.”
I could see how deeply the shock had frozen Kim Il-hong, his expression turning cold and rigid.
But this was no time to be swayed by emotion, so I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then I opened them and spoke each syllable with deliberate care.
“You know it’s spreading through the family.”
…
“Your Son could be next. That’s why he didn’t come along.”
Kim Il-hong’s pupils trembled, and his Adam’s apple bobbed heavily.
Beyond the terror of his sister’s death, the thought that his child might suffer what he and his sister had endured seemed almost unbearable.
Yet Kim Il-hong did not lose his grip on reality.
“Yes, yes. What should I do?”
“The house where your mother lived—does it still exist?”
Kim Il-hong asked, his eyes glistening with moisture.
Why was he asking that?
“The Shamanic Temple. I need to visit it myself. If possible, could you also show me the Prayer Ground?”
“…The Prayer Ground?”
“The place where your mother went to pray. She regularly visited places like the Mountain, didn’t she?”
“Ah, yes. Yes, yes.”
Kim Il-hong nodded vigorously.
“Let’s go together.”
“G-go together?”
Kim Il-hong turned his head toward the direction of his son’s house, but Kang Hyung-seok gripped his wrist firmly.
“Now is not the time to go to your son.”
“….”
“Show me the way.”
Kim Il-hong’s lips pressed together, turning pale.
Then he nodded heavily, and Kang Hyung-seok started the engine, rousing the sleeping machine to life.
He then picked up the mobile phone resting on the dashboard and handed it to Kim Il-hong.
He wanted him to enter the address into the navigation system.
Tick, tick-tick, tick.
As Kim Il-hong set the destination, Kang Hyung-seok turned the car’s head toward the road.
‘This won’t be easy.’
After owing the Hospital a debt, I had thought to live more leisurely, but it seems I’ll need to exert myself this week.
The board has grown far too large.
‘Grave wind, steel stake, reverse fortune, bloodline.’
Everything points in one direction.
The deceased Shaman.
What she had feared.
What she had hidden even while disciplining her children harshly.
What Kim Il-ju had sought to avoid by driving a steel stake into her mother’s Grave.
I don’t know what it is, but I sense it’s nothing ordinary.
I must go.
I must go and verify.
Only by confirming and eliminating it can I completely sever what has taken root in the Kim Il-hong family.
“Here it is.”
Kang Hyung-seok hung the mobile phone Kim Il-hong had given him on the dashboard and began driving the car, following the navigation’s guidance.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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