As Giju Wishes Chapter 1.8

🔖⛩️📿

“But he doesn’t look like that. What’s a young kid like him doing involved with a cult already.”

Song Jiseop muttered, recalling Giju who had been diligently sprinkling salt.

“Hey. They say there are cult villages these days. He was probably born there.”

“Shit, you think they’re gonna take over our whole neighborhood?”

A subtle fear crept onto Song Jiseop’s face.

“That’s why we’re going to root them out.”

Choi Geon menacingly swung the baseball bat he was holding with a grim face.

“Aren’t we going to be on the news?”

“Don’t even think about going home today. We’re going to clean out their headquarters too.”

To be able to unleash a downpour right on cue, it couldn’t be a small organization. Many people must have been on standby nearby to make it look like a coincidence. Choi Geon realized it that day while performing that crappy exorcism. If he didn’t annihilate this cult, his father or grandfather could be next. The reason was sufficient enough. They were overflowing with money.

“How dare they try to fleece me?”

He felt ashamed of himself for believing, even for a moment. The feeling of being toyed with made it impossible to let it go. Choi Geon’s steps began to turn demonic.

“I’m gonna smash them to pieces,”

“Hey, hey, be quiet. I think someone’s there?”

At Lim Hyojun’s words, they all quieted their once-confident footsteps.

“Why, what is it.”

Lim Hyojun, who was in the front, placed his index finger over his lips, telling them to be quiet. Then, holding his breath, he stopped behind a wall.

“This is the problem with you. You go looking for trouble!”

“You guys are the ones looking for more trouble than me, ah!”

The sound of someone getting hit could be heard. The group, except for Choi Geon, simultaneously made eye contact, collectively bewildered.

“I told you you’d get bad luck if you keep this up, ah!”

As he was hit again, those secretly watching from behind made eye contact again, their faces showing question marks. Choi Geon, at the very back, craned his neck as if he couldn’t see well.

“What is it.”

“That cult guy is getting beat up.”

“What?”

At the unexpected words, Choi Geon poked his head out.

“If you don’t want to get your ass kicked, greet me properly from tomorrow and do as you’re told, got it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to. You should be the one to not even look at me or talk to me starting tomorrow.”

They thought he had brought his cult friends, but listening to the conversation, that wasn’t it. It was just one-sided bullying. Choi Geon was so flustered his mind couldn’t work properly. As he was wondering if the guy was paying the price from his cult companions for a failed ritual, the one who was hit hard suddenly hit his head on a telephone pole and collapsed.

“What the hell are they doing.”

Separate from punishing the cultist’s sins, the scene of one-sided violence was unpleasant to watch. Choi Geon, who was about to give them a piece of his mind, stepped out from behind the wall where he was secretly watching.

“Hey, you…”

Just then, as if he’d seen something, Choi Geon’s spirited shout trailed off. His friends, who were following him, also stopped in their tracks. As if time had frozen, everyone’s movement in the alley had stopped.

Rumble-

At the same time, a sound like thunder came from the clear sky, and a cat that was passing by shot past them as if fleeing. Everyone present, including Kim Minsu, was staring at Giju with their jaws dropped.

Giju, who had lifted his bowed head, had white eyes. It was impossible to see his pupils, whether they had rolled back or sunk into the ground.

“Even a great tree has its spirit, and even a large stone has its spirit, so how could a human not have a guardian spirit in their body. Yes, indeed, the spirit of the great family Moh has been moved by this matter, and thus has descended upon this path~ Taesang-taeseong Eungseomubyeon Gusabakmae Bomyeonghosin Hosinjihye Yeongsinsimji Samhonyyeonggu Baekmusanggyeong Om geupgeubyeoyullyeong~”

Giju, with no pupils visible, trembled as he recited the scripture. But the voice wasn’t Giju’s; it was someone else’s. At the voice of a 1,000-year-old man that sounded like it came from hell, the front of Park Taesik’s pants turned yellow and wet.

“Hee, heek, who do you think you’re in front of, pissing yourself!! Oh, you drank yesterday, didn’t you? Bring me a bowl of makgeolli, you bastard. Ke-ke! You, you, the one in the back like a rat, you’re thirsty, aren’t you? Huh? One of you is hungry, right? Those two bastards drank yesterday too. You, you, you bastard, why did you eat something so salty for lunch? You’re so full of saltiness, it’d be a sight to see you soaked in water and sucked dry by a water ghost. And one more, look at that one, that one. You’re the one who came carrying a water ghost on your back. Wahahaha! What kind of guy is that, he’s even shadier than me! Why would a fisherman come all the way up to land and act like that. Got all his caught fish stolen and croaked. Did you like the sea that much, you tenacious ghost. Ptooey, you rotten-luck-ridden bastard, ptooey!”

Without taking a single breath, Giju turned his head to look at each person one by one, spewing out gibberish, and his pupils slowly started to return. Giju blinked blankly. After blinking once or twice, he got a double nosebleed.

Simultaneously, everyone except for Choi Geon vanished from the spot. They fled for their lives. Kim Minsu was just a little slower as he dragged the fainted Park Taesik away.

Left alone, Choi Geon forced his gaping mouth shut and raised his right hand to slap his own cheek. He felt the pain. Therefore, this was not a dream.

Thud…

The baseball bat in his hand fell powerlessly and rolled away. Giju’s dazed eyes turned towards Choi Geon. At the same time, his body collapsed to the ground like the bat. Choi Geon, who had come to his senses, belatedly approached the fallen Giju, wary and hunched over, and nudged his body.

“Hey, hey…”

Choi Geon, muttering with a somehow wronged expression, looked down at Giju with a face mixed with bewilderment and awkwardness, then looked up at the sky as if asking what the hell was going on.

“Hey… If someone’s gonna collapse, it should be me. Why are you collapsing…?”

Then he looked down once more at Giju’s face with his eyes closed. It felt like he might open his eyes again at any moment and spit, calling him a rotten-luck-ridden bastard.

Choi Geon, who had been standing still as if to sort out his thoughts, roughly swept his hair back only after a good while had passed and silently lifted Giju onto his back. Then, he quietly left the alleyway. The priority was to calm down and get this unidentified guy to snap out of it. He felt like he’d really be cursed if he just left him. The whole story could come after.

Choi Geon, who cluelessly missed his chance to run, cursed his friends who had fled so nimbly and readjusted Giju on his back.

“…What the hell is this.”

Walking while dripping with sweat, Choi Geon couldn’t make any sense of the recent situation and unconsciously muttered to himself.

Then, not long after, he saw a gazebo up ahead. With a sour expression, Choi Geon approached the gazebo and put Giju down. Then he plopped down next to him. Even though he had so much stamina, he felt as if all the strength had been drained from his body.

“Haa…”

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he looked to his side and saw a peaceful-looking face with its eyes closed. Though the double nosebleed caked under his nose looked a bit grotesque. Choi Geon pretended not to see and turned his head forward again. Normally, he would have slapped his cheek and told him not to pretend to be asleep, but now he suddenly acknowledged the existence of ghosts, thinking there must be at least one in this wide world.

He didn’t want to admit it, but what just happened was something that not even a con artist could imitate. Choi Geon had an unlucky premonition that the words about him carrying a ghost on his back might actually be true.

Following that, more than his hot and sticky body, the fact that all of it was an unavoidable truth brought up a shitty feeling. Ghosts, what kind of dog-talking-to-a-person nonsense was this.

‘Look at that one, that one. You’re the one who came carrying a water ghost on your back. Wahahaha! What kind of guy is that, he’s even shadier than me!’

“Ha…”

Being told he was shadier than a dead guy, his pride felt crushed. Choi Geon, who was irritably unbuttoning his school uniform shirt, turned back to look at Giju, the source of his frustration, feeling suffocated. Then he flinched in surprise, his body jolting.

“Ah, shit, you scared me. …Hey! If you open your eyes, you should say so…”

Giju was just lying there with his eyes open. Still with the dried nosebleed. Pretending he wasn’t that surprised even though he was extremely startled, Choi Geon turned his body completely towards Giju.

“The exorcism failed.”

The first thing Giju said, while staring intently at Choi Geon, was about the existence of the evil spirit on his shoulder.

“……”

And Choi Geon had nothing to say. The questions he was about to ask, like what was that earlier and if his head was okay, completely vanished from his mind.

“The evil spirit is angry.”

Giju, who sat up from his lying position, spoke clearly as if he had never fainted.

“Your luck is going to get worse.”

He wasn’t telling a lie, it was clearly the truth, and looking into those clear eyes, Choi Geon’s stomach ached.

“…I’ve felt this for a while, but you have a really pretty way of talking, you know.”

He had heard the words ‘bad luck’ the most in his life. From that mouth.

“So what do you want me to do about it.”

Even though he was the one asking for a favor, Choi Geon asked arrogantly. At that, Giju thought for a moment and then opened his mouth.

“Um… I don’t know for sure either, but in times like these, you have to offer a prayer. With sincerity. That’s the standard procedure.”

Truthfully, he still didn’t want to be played by nonsense like prayers and sincerity. But he wanted to become an even worse-luck bastard even less. Choi Geon, who had been scratching his head in frustration, finally sighed as if letting something go and asked.

“Haa… How do I do it. What, do I have to perform another ancestral rite or something?”

“Hey, a rite is not nearly enough for this. Didn’t you hear what grandmother said on my behalf earlier?”

“What did she say?”

“You know, when I was briefly possessed earlier. Ah, you were a little surprised… I get possessed sometimes when I lose consciousness, and I think grandmother was surprised by you.”

“That was a grandmother? Not a demon?”

Grandmothers were supposed to be warm and benevolent beings. To Choi Geon, who had grown up under such a grandmother, that possessed being was a demon, and a vicious one at that.

“A demon… that’s my ancestral grandmother.”

Having inadvertently insulted someone else’s ancestor, Choi Geon smacked his lips for no reason.

“No, that’s not what’s important…! But is your head okay?”