I Do Not Lie

Yu-yeong lay moaning softly, her palms pressed to her cheeks, which had swollen beyond a bruised blue into a deep purplish hue. Watching her, Cha-mu's eyes grew colder still.

The malicious comments that had flocked beneath the video of her fall had surfaced unbidden in his mind.

It had said exactly that.

Throwing her body around? Who? The soul within Yu-yeong was crystal clear to Cha-mu's sight. So clear, so damnably clear, that every stray spirit in the world considered her fair game and came drifting in and out of her at will.

A soul tainted by base desires — even wandering spirits kept their distance from that. But Yu-yeong was different.

Throwing her body around. As if.

No soul that reckless could possibly shine that pure. It was because he knew that truth that Cha-mu could not shake the venomous comment that kept circling stubbornly through his head.

Goddammit. Seeing the underside of things that no one else could — it never failed to turn his stomach at moments like this.

Yu-yeong, who had been grieving at her own reflection in the mirror, soon turned her eyes toward him.

"W-were you, um, were you going to help me...?"

"When it hurts, say it hurts."

"I'm sorry?"

"There's nothing to gain from enduring pain."

So saying, Cha-mu quietly studied her mottled cheek.

He had to tell her about the black cap.

But the moment he did, this woman would inevitably start digging at herself, insisting it was all her fault. He felt an impulse to simply bury the whole thing as an accident rather than watch her do that to herself again.

"The cap. Why did you throw it away?"

"I'm sorry?"

"The black cap — I asked why you threw it away."

At Cha-mu's abrupt question, Yu-yeong's face went blank for a moment. She genuinely had no idea what he meant.

But as his words continued to flow, she came to understand why all of this had happened to her.

"That black cap you left in the alley in front of my house — the one that already had an owner. There was a cold, resentful energy dwelling in it."

"..."

"It carried the dying wish of someone who loved a person very deeply. And that cap was thrown away — so of course the one who gave it would rage."

Only then did Yu-yeong remember — picking up Yu-won's black cap, wearing it out of the hotel, and tossing it aside.

Right. He'd said it was a gift from a devoted fan.

Something a fan who adored him had bought with his own hands and given him.

"Did the cap belong to someone who's dead?"

"A living person gave it, clinging to another's body to do it."

"Oh."

"The living person who gave that cap — the giving, the shoving you down and striking you — all of it was committed while their body was hijacked."

At Cha-mu's calm, clipped explanation, Yu-yeong's face drained pale. Who had done such a thing to her, and why — she felt she understood it all now.

It was all her own fault.

She had acted carelessly again, and taking the cap and wearing it was squarely, undeniably her own doing. She had...

"Blaming yourself won't help."

"..."

"What changes from piling self-reproach on top of something that's already happened? Nothing changes at all. Spend the time you'd waste on guilt thinking about a solution instead."

"A solution..."

Cha-mu's voice was cool.

A solution.

The solution comes first.

Crying and blaming herself wouldn't make the one who'd done this to her acknowledge it, nor would it erase what had already happened.

"Th-then how am I supposed to solve it?"

"Hmm. Forgiveness first, probably."

Forgiveness.

Cha-mu felt nothing in particular toward the one who had done this to Yu-yeong. They had only been used, their body stolen from under them. If anything, it was the bastards who'd written that filth stone-cold sober that made him want to drag them somewhere and kill them.

"Oh, of course... of course I'll forgive him. But more than forgiving that person... the spirit that entered his body..."

"That one's mine."

Forgiving the living was Yu-yeong's task; sending the dead to their ascension was Cha-mu's.

"It would be best if I let you carry her for a little while and arrange a meeting with the black cap's owner, but..."

"I-I can do it! I'll carry that spirit and—"

"No."

Cha-mu shook his head firmly.

In truth, that was the ideal. Carry the spirit of the fan who loved Yu-won in Yu-yeong's body, let her actually lay eyes on him once, unburden her resentment, and then send her on to her ascension.

But this was a soul already festered with twisted love and hate — one that had used a human to hurt Yu-yeong, had even thrown punches.

There was no telling what she might do if she were carried in Yu-yeong's body.

"She's already become too dangerous a soul for that."

"..."

"Can you contact someone?"

"Contact who?"

"The owner of the black cap."

At Cha-mu's words, Yu-yeong thought of Yu-won for a moment — the one the spirit inside her had charmed with every trick in the book...

If she contacted him and asked him to visit the hospital, he would certainly come.

He would come, but...

"I can do it."

"Then call him."

"..."

"I'll be stepping out to Wolryeongsa for a while. I need to bring the kid back, and there are things I have to gather."

With that, Cha-mu rose from his seat. As he stood, the child who'd been sleeping on the sofa stirred awake, rubbed his eyes, looked up at him — and promptly hopped up onto his shoulder.

Yu-yeong, naturally, could not see him.

"Oh, and one more thing."

"Yes?"

"My name is Lee Cha-mu."

"..."

"I do not lie."

With those final words, Cha-mu left the hospital room. Lee Cha-mu — a man who did not lie.

"He doesn't lie."

That one sentence eased Yu-yeong's heart, just a little. If he didn't lie, then everything spoken in this room had been the truth.

Thinking that Cha-mu would send on the spirit that had hurt her — the spirit she herself had wounded — made her feel somewhat lighter.

"Lee Cha-mu..."

Left alone in the hospital room, Yu-yeong murmured his name softly, rolling those three syllables over her tongue.

It was an unfamiliar name.

But she could trust the claim that he never lied. Because he didn't lie, she could believe in Cha-mu. She felt she might be allowed to believe.

"Let's ascend."

At Cha-mu's words, the face of the figure seated before him — a girl who looked barely old enough to be a university student — twisted violently.

When a departed spirit nursing a grudge contorted its face, it took on unmistakably the visage of a demon. Newly minted shamans, seeing that face, would panic and flee on the spot.

Cha-mu was not one of them.

He gazed quietly at the girl who had followed him inside Wolryeongsa.

He had crossed paths with Yu-won in Yu-yeong's hospital room just an hour ago. When Cha-mu had retrieved the black cap and returned to the hospital, Yu-won was there.

That handsome idol, stroking Yu-yeong's bruised cheek with tears welling in his eyes.

At the sight, Cha-mu had clicked his tongue briefly.

Yu-yeong had tried to explain who Cha-mu was, but his hand moved faster. Drawing a single talisman from inside his coat, he slapped it squarely onto Yu-won's forehead — and at that instant, Yu-won froze mid-motion.

Without a word, Cha-mu set the black cap on Yu-won's head.

In that moment, the spirit who owned the cap appeared.

'Don't you dare put weird things on our Yu-won's forehead!'

Watching her fly into a fury because he'd stuck a strange talisman on the face of the idol she loved, Cha-mu clicked his tongue as if the whole thing were beneath him.

"Come with me."

"..."

"I'll make sure no one hates you."

Cha-mu spoke those words to the spirit.

"You won't be remembered forever, and that cap won't be passed down through generations. But neither you nor the human whose body you borrowed will be hated. And for years to come, he'll cherish that cap like his own flesh."

"..."

"I promise."

I do not lie.

At Cha-mu's weighty declaration, the malevolence that had saturated the spirit's aura began, slowly, to clear.

What in the world is love? What was this thing called affection, that a spirit so swarming with malice could turn clear in the blink of an eye? Cha-mu exhaled a hollow laugh, half exasperated.

'Can you really promise?'

In answer to the spirit's question, Cha-mu looked at Yu-yeong instead of replying.

"Will you date him?"

"No!"

"The terrorist?"

"I'll tell him I forgive him once the sun comes up tomorrow!"

"And the cap?"

"I'll say I took it and wore it, that I'm sorry — that it was something precious someone gave him, and I'll apologize for taking it!"

"She says she will."

At Cha-mu's words, the spirit's aura softened further still.

"Come with me."

So saying, Cha-mu extended his hand toward the spirit.

"Any later, and there'll be nowhere left to go."

Come. I'll take you there myself.

At Cha-mu's low urging, the spirit gazed for a long while at Yu-won, still wearing the cap she had given him, before finally turning her eyes to Cha-mu.

'...You have to promise you'll get me that forgiveness.'

In the end, a heart that loved someone could never turn a person wholly evil.

When Cha-mu nodded, the spirit took his hand.

"Once you ascend, it won't hurt anymore."

Yet standing at the threshold of leaving the living world, she hesitated, as if something still held her back.

"I'll pray for you."

Cha-mu said it as if he understood exactly what she was feeling.

"Some ten years of paying for your sins, serving your punishment — and then I'll offer a prayer that you be reborn as the child of the one you love so dearly."

In the end, even soothing a departed spirit into ascension required a bargain.

Only by giving her what she wanted could she release the resentment knotted inside her and depart with a smile.

At the promise that she would be born as Yu-won's child, the spirit's once demonic face blazed incandescently bright.

'Then make me a daughter!'

"That one's up to Samsin."

'Can't I marry him?'

"Mind the age gap."

'Oh.'

"If you're to receive a new body, at least ten years have to pass. Do you know how old your oppa will be by then?"

'Nnngh.'

"Unless you're trying to turn your oppa into a pedophile, settle for being his child. The joy a child brings outweighs the joy a lover ever could. And you'll be the one who gives it. The greatest joy of his life."

As if delivering some rambling monologue, Cha-mu answered her every question in turn, his face utterly expressionless.

"Go."

At Cha-mu's send-off, the spirit nodded with a smile. Ten years of penance, and then a chance to be born as Yu-won's child — she felt she could endure anything.

The spirit vanished, and Cha-mu felt his wrist flare searing hot.

The red thread had wound itself around him.

He had sworn to live his whole life without binding himself to a single human being — and in the end, the damn thread had been tied after all.