ANTITOXIN Chapter 11

“There are some people who can do that, but I am not one of them. The basis of a divination is a clear question. You have to tell me exactly what you want to know for me to see it.”

Seolwon, who neither had any particular desire to be recognized as a spiritually powerful shaman nor felt any need to gloss it over with lies, stated frankly.

Fortunately, President Kim did not argue and readily understood.

“Is that so? Hmm, then let’s see…”

President Kim closed his eyes tightly. It seemed as though he was organizing in his mind where to start and where to finish. Just then, an employee opened the door and walked in. Only after the employee, who placed the brought water and snacks on the table, went back out did the president finally open his mouth.

“You see, the thing is. I’m actually a guy who makes a living running errands. You know, catching evidence of infidelity for couples having affairs, teaching lessons to bastards who ran off with money, and taking revenge on behalf of people who claim they’re dying of unfairness…”

He had a rough idea, but after hearing the explanation, Seolwon now felt he knew for sure what the identity of this office was. It was an errand center. One that didn’t just carry out legal work, but illegal deeds as well.

“But a big case came in this time, you see? They asked me to dig into some guy’s personal background, and wow. They gave me one big bill as a deposit, you know? Even in crisp banknotes. So I took it gladly, thinking it was great. But, ah, fuck. This is giving me a hell of a headache. Our boys are busting their asses following him around, but, huh? The blanks aren’t being filled. It hasn’t been just a day or two, it’s already been a fortnight, but still. On top of that, two guys are missing, and one guy turned up dead a few days ago. His head was completely smashed to pieces. Ssh, whenever I think of him, my stomach still…”

Whether he genuinely felt nauseous, President Kim let out a dry heave with a wook. Considering his history of making a living running errands, he must have seen all kinds of sights, yet seeing him so sincerely disgusted made it seem like the condition of the corpse had been terribly bad.

Wait, his head was smashed?

For a moment, Seolwon looked at the ghost standing next to President Kim without realizing it. And he recognized it at once. The person who had just made President Kim dry heave was that very ghost.

Did he stare too openly? Suddenly, the ghost turned its head. Catching himself, Seolwon quickly cast his eyes down. Fortunately, by a hair’s breadth, their gazes didn’t lock. If they had met, he would have been caught red-handed by the ghost without any excuse.

In the midst of this, President Kim rubbed his chest with his palm and poured out the rest of the story he hadn’t finished.

“The police say it happened because of some traffic accident. Fuck, bullshit. My intuition is top-tier, what do they mean, a traffic accident. I can tell just by looking at it. He was done in. By that bastard. He was done in properly.”

It seemed like a deduction based purely on gut feeling, but Seolwon agreed. It was because it matched to some extent the cause of death he had deduced earlier from the ghostly odor. The fate of the remaining people who were said to be missing would likely not be different from that ghost.

“Honestly, at this point, I think it’s right to pull out. But there’s money I’ve already taken and eaten, and labor costs have gone into it… No matter how much I roll my brain, if I pull out here, the loss will be immense. So what can I do. I have to salvage something. The problem is, huh?”

Tak, tak! President Kim added emphasis by striking down with his left hand while keeping his right palm underneath.

“There’s nothing. There are no results. It’s a blank page, a blank page. What, like he’s a fucking ghost or something, huh? It’s to the point where it’s bizarre how this could even be possible.”

President Kim, who kept the real deal by his side, poured out his resentment while mentioning a ghost. Seolwon inadvertently let out a hollow laugh at the ironic situation. Fortunately, only internally.

“I’ve been eating from this bowl for twenty years now, and there’s never been a case like this. By this point, I’m getting curious myself about what kind of bastard he is. What’s certain is that he’s no ordinary bastard. So ordinary methods don’t work on him.”

Certainly…

Seolwon agreed inwardly. He didn’t know who it was, but just hearing about it, he could clearly feel that the person was out of the ordinary.

“That’s why I looked for Mister Shaman.”

President Kim, who had laid out a sufficient introduction, finally revealed his business. To summarize, he had taken on a big job, but it absolutely wouldn’t work with the means he possessed, and pulling out now would cause an immense loss, so he was intending to solve the matter by borrowing even the power of shamanism.

He had already expected it wouldn’t be an easy task, but even so, it was a request that felt baffling. To be sure, in this field, coming to see a divination for a complete stranger rather than one’s own fate belonged to a fairly common category. A significant number of the clients who used to visit his grandmother came with such a purpose.

The problem was that it wasn’t a familiar task to Seolwon. In the first place, there were only a few times he had properly performed a divination. Yet, to tell him to look into a divination to dig into the background of a stranger whose face he didn’t even know… It was something he had never done before.

“How about it, can you find out what kind of guy he is?”

“That is…”

It was difficult to confidently say it was possible, but theoretically, it wasn’t impossible.

At Seolwon’s ambiguous response, President Kim’s eyes narrowed.

“Why? It won’t work?”

“Rather than saying it won’t work, it can be said to be difficult.”

“Difficult… which means, it is possible?”

“Yes, well… By any chance, do you know that person’s Saju?”

To see another person’s divination, there are a few conditions. The first is when it is a person close to the client. The second is when the subject’s Saju is known.

The first method could only be found out through a spirit. However, for the second method, even without going through a spirit, one could extract a certain amount of data on what kind of person the subject was through the Heavenly Stems and Ten Gods present in the Saju. It was approaching it academically rather than spiritually. What Seolwon, who had learned the Saju destiny matrix before mathematics when he lived on the island, could do was precisely the second method.

“Saju? What, like the date of birth and stuff?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I want to know too.”

“What about the name and age?”

“I’m saying I want to know that too!”

What kind of…

A person who said he was doing a background check didn’t even know the target’s basic personal profile? Was it possible to launch a background check without even knowing the name? It was completely incomprehensible by Seolwon’s common sense.

Ahem! President Kim let out a dry cough, feeling embarrassed by Seolwon’s dumbfounded expression. However, as if something suddenly came to mind, he went “Ah!” and raised his index finger with a confident expression.

“Instead, there’s this.”

Saying so, President Kim opened the drawer next to him and pulled out a document envelope folded in half.

“Here, take a look.”

Thud, the document envelope was placed in front of Seolwon.

Following his invitation, Seolwon took out the contents from inside the envelope. There were two items. A business card the size of a palm and two photographs. Among them, what caught his eye first was the photograph.

In the photo, along with a white car, there was a man captured at a size about the length of a pinky finger. However, it was from the side, not the front.

“Yeah. That’s him, that guy.”

President Kim, who already knew what was captured, pointed with his finger and emphasized. Even without being told, Seolwon could also tell at once that the figure in the photo was the target. The problem was that the subject was too small and even the image quality was blurry, making it impossible to recognize the subject’s facial features. It seemed to have been taken forcibly by pulling the zoom from a long distance, and other than the light brown hair and a black shirt, there was no part clearly visible.

Just in case, Seolwon stared fixedly at the figure in the photo. Because if he kept looking, something might come to mind. Although it didn’t contain a spirit, it was a physical body that possessed spiritual energy. The spiritual eye, which could see not only reality but beyond it, might salvage something.

President Kim watched Seolwon, who was concentrating, while holding his breath. His gaze was full of anticipation.

But regrettably, Seolwon could not satisfy his expectations. Because nothing more came to mind. No matter how much he concentrated, the only thing felt was a sense of déjà vu for an unknown reason.

After putting down the photograph, which wasn’t of much help, he checked the business card. Engraved on a background that was just black without any design worth mentioning were English words and a number.

we Felix

HAPPY

010—0011—1110

Felix? Happy?

The ‘we Felix’ written small at the top seemed to be the name of the company. Then what about the Happy below it? A name?

…This is a name?