ANTITOXIN Chapter 26

“But why are you interested in them? When I’m right here?”

Caught off guard, Seolwon flinched.

“That’s… because I can see those gentlemen, but I can’t really see you.”

“Why?”

“…Well, I’m not sure.”

It wasn’t that people whose fortunes couldn’t be read didn’t exist at all. A Taegwaja [one with overflowing cosmic energy], a Shinnang [divine groom] or Shinnyeo [divine bride], an Unwang [king of luck], a Mumyeongja [one without spiritual light], a spiritual blank space… Unless a shaman possessed an extraordinary amount of divine energy, they couldn’t withstand the aura of such people, making it difficult to read their fortunes. It was impossible to know which of these the man belonged to. At any rate, it was certain he was not someone whose secrets could be dared unearthed with a pitiful amount of divine energy.

“How disappointing. The desire to believe you that I had a moment ago has completely vanished.”

The man picked a fight with a displeased expression. No, it was closer to a tantrum. If a child had done it, it might have been cute, but with a gun-wielding man doing so, Seolwon could only shudder from the intense sense of incompatibility.

Regardless, Seolwon was just as frustrated.

“But there really is nothing visible…”

When he protested with a tearful face, the man twisted his lips and sneered.

“By the way. You’ve been playing tricks by pretending to cry whenever things get unfavorable since a while ago, but are you doing that on purpose? We aren’t at the stage yet where I’d let it slide just because you’re pretty, you know? You shouldn’t be using a honey trap already. Do I look that easy to you?”

What?

At the man’s point, Seolwon’s lips parted blankly. To think his plea, driven by a feeling of suffocating tightness and anxiety, would be taken in such a way. He didn’t know what kind of expression he had been making just now, but he had absolutely not pretended to cry. The same went for a honey trap. Far from attempting it, he had never even imagined that such a thing would be possible. Honestly, it was to the point of being mind-boggling how on earth that human’s brain circuitry operated for him to understand it that way. Since it happened to be words coming from an excessively handsome human, he even wondered if he had failed to catch a high-level sarcasm.

“No. Maybe I am easy. Actually, I was shaken up a bit just now. I almost got turned on, you see.”

“…”

Because he blabbered it with a straight face, it was impossible to distinguish whether it was a joke or serious. Because of that, Seolwon remained silent. For fear that an even greater piece of bullshit would return if he talked back incorrectly. In particular, he wanted to remain ignorant until the very end about what exactly had almost gotten turned on.

“At any rate, those guys are visible but I’m invisible. Fine, I’ve understood up to that point. Then what about the bastard you met at the drinking party? The four-eyes who came out claiming to be the arms broker, I mean. Did something show on him?”

Before he could even fully escape the confusion brought on by the bizarre misunderstanding, he brought back the main subject that had been forgotten for a moment. Since it was an interrogation that was rather welcomed, Seolwon readily admitted it.

“Yes.”

“What did you see?”

“The fact that that gentleman is not the arms broker.”

In reality, it wasn’t that he knew it the moment he saw him, but he had only realized it after seeing this man. However, since he had been continuously feeling a sense of incompatibility from before then, it was not a lie.

The man nodded his head, letting out an, oh. It probably meant he admitted that the four-eyes was a fake.

“That guy was visible, but I’m invisible? Why? Surely it’s not because you’re less interested in me, right?”

“That is not the case.”

Indeed, would there be anyone who would be uninterested with this man in front of them. Whether in a good sense or a bad sense, he possessed a truly magnificent presence. To make an analogy with an animal, he was just like a male peacock in that he erased the presence of his surroundings and occupied the gaze all by himself. Even a moment ago, hadn’t he failed to perceive Executive Director Hwang right away even though he was in that state. In Seolwon’s judgment, he was a person who couldn’t help but attract the interest of others even if he himself didn’t want to.

“There are just people like that on occasion.”

“So, I’m asking what the reason is that people like me exist.”

“That… there could be various reasons, but in most cases, it’s because their qi is too strong. There needs to be a gap to squeeze into, but there isn’t any…”

Humm, the man let out a subtle exclamation and scratched his head with the muzzle. Then, he turned back to his subordinates once more and asked.

“I’m asking because I’m rarely confused like this again, does this seem like a response I can accept?”

This time too, the man’s subordinates answered politely in succession.

“I’m not too sure.”

“Me too. It feels like it makes sense, but it also feels like it doesn’t make sense, it’s just like that.”

Neither was an answer helpful to Seolwon.

The man looked back at Seolwon and shrugged his shoulders. As if to say, ‘Those guys say so, so what should we do?’ Unless it were someone originally very interested in shamanism, it was truly a reaction typical of extremely ordinary people. Even so, that was the only reason Seolwon could provide right now.

Because no other words to add crossed his mind, Seolwon only kept biting his lips repeatedly. Fortunately, the man gave such a Seolwon a chance.

“Well, let’s let that matter slide. But do you want to know about me?”

Of course. He wanted to know. All the more so because he had come to know that the man was the arms broker.

“…Yes.”

Seolwon replied after a split second of hesitation.

“I thought so. I asked something too obvious, didn’t I.”

The man revealed his good mood without any filtering. For Seolwon, it was a bewildering reaction. Because a human who had cruelly inflicted harm upon a person who did a background check on him was now pleased with another’s curiosity. He was a human difficult to grasp clues on in many ways.

“Fine, then. By telling you directly.”

Along with an ominous opening, he lowered his waist. Then, he lifts his pupils and chooses his words for a moment.

“Where should I start. …Ah, right.”

The contemplation was not long. He soon began the story in a calm voice.

“My mom was a ballerina. Did they say it was the Little Angels, or the Devils. Well, she was from an art troupe with a similar name. She was a promising talent in her own right so she did well, and at age twenty, she went to Russia to study abroad. But she met a man there. What did they say he did for a living? …I can’t remember that. At any rate, whether she was lonely or it was just her taste, she fell completely for that guy. The problem was that that guy was a son of a bitch whose exterior was the only thing flashy.”

Tsk, the man lightly clicked his tongue after finishing his words.

Seolwon could grasp through the context that the guy called a son of a bitch in the story was this man’s father.

“Without knowing that, she got pregnant a year after meeting him. Ballet? It went down the drain. The people around her advised her to abort it, saying it was a waste of her career, but is there any way it would be heard by the ears of a human who had lost her mind. They said she was merely intoxicated with the sole thought of setting up a home with that guy. So eventually, I came out.”

Cutting off his words mid-sentence, he smirked broadly and pointed at his face with his finger. He was letting him know that he himself was the very result chosen by his foolish mother.

“Unexpectedly, we lived well for a while. We even had a second child, so that says it all. But where is it easy to raise as many as two little brats. There was no money, there was no one giving help, and the bastard who set up the home would drink like crazy whenever he got the chance… You get the picture of how much of a mess it was, right? It was bound not to last long. When was it? …Well, let’s just assume it was winter, and one day, all hell broke loose. My mom, who had exploded after enduring and enduring, went crazy and ran amok. That bastard was drunk on that day as well. Now, here’s a question. What happens when a crazy bitch and a son of a bitch clash with full force?”

It was obvious. A bad ending must have come about. Sure enough, the man’s story that followed did not betray Seolwon’s anticipation.

“Two people died on that day. Not one person, but two people. The one who died first was my younger sibling. That bastard, who was running amok even crazier than usual, suddenly snatched my sibling by the nape of the neck. And he threw them out the window ostentatiously. My mom screamed and jumped out the window to save my sibling. From the 5th floor, that is. Then what was I doing. I was watching. The scene of my sibling and mom falling.”

It was a terrible story. Yet, what was more terrible than that was the man’s expression. He was smiling. He was blabbing about that terrible past as if it were a piece of interesting gossip.

The story did not end there.

“The thought I had at that time was this: Ah, when a human body falls from a high place, it makes such a loud sound. But the son of a bitch looked back at me. While smiling. And what he said was this: Why? Is something wrong? I caught on right away. That bastard is going to drop me too. I ran away without looking back. Throughout my running, I could hear that bastard’s laughter. Listening to it, I thought. I must live. I must live, and when the time comes, I must ask while smiling too. Like this.”