Episode 17: Money < The Peaceful Life of a Possessor < Too Much Money (5)
Sodam shivered, not from the chill of her thin clothes, but from pure, unfiltered fear. To shake off the thoughts creeping in, she quickly splashed her face with cold water and hastily pulled her clothes back on.
The warmth that seeped back into her body brought a semblance of calm, almost enough to coax a small smile onto her face—but before it could form, she slapped her own cheek hard.
Smack!
“Get a grip. You think this is the time to smile? Where’s a person with a debt of a billion won got time to laugh?”
If only she had used that billion won for some real estate speculation, she might at least have a house to her name. But as far as Sodam could tell, all the money borrowed by this ‘Maeng Guide’ had disappeared into the hands of mysterious third parties.
For some reason, the names stamped on bank transactions linked to “Maeng Sodam” were just cryptic Greek letters—Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and so on. Not something she could investigate using legal means, either. If she had been scammed, she’d have bitten down and marched to the police station without hesitation.
“That diary… I shouldn’t have found it. I should’ve just been another clueless person possessed…”
Sodam’s troubled gaze drifted to the thick notebook—or rather, diary—lying atop the desk that had shattered just yesterday.
It wasn’t meticulously written; in fact, entries came so sparsely that even a once-a-month update was generous. A common, unremarkable journal.
But the content inside was anything but ordinary.
[Month S, Day S]
*No matter how I think about it, there’s no way I’m actually F-class. Where else can you find a Guide this good at Guiding? I’ve heard rumors about a group for people whose ranks are set lower than their actual ability. I should look into it.*
[Month C, Day C]
*Turns out, the rumors were half true, half false. There is a gathering for those with lower-ranked abilities, but it seems shady. One person keeps acting out, but no one does anything about it.*
*They say that if everyone prays sincerely enough, things can change. But what would someone who’s neither a Guide nor an Esper even know? Sounds like some cult nonsense.*
[Month B, Day B]
*Samuyeon was right. I heard the news that the first to trust and follow them, a D-class, had their rank adjusted up to C-class. The whole cult celebrated, but honestly, it annoyed me. If a weak Esper like that is a C-class, I should be at least an S-class.*
*It seems like Samuyeon thought so too, because they came all the way to my house and secretly shared their method with me. It won’t be long before the world knows my name.*
[Month T, Day T]
*Failure, failure, and more failure. Just when I was about to give up, Samuyeon approached me again, saying that my potential was too immense and that I’d need to absorb the power of a stronger Esper to awaken it. So, there’s only one target.*
*Baek Juyul. Sure, he’s got a lot of hype because of his family’s influence, but there’s no one with a higher rank than him. If I absorb his power through Guiding, perform the ritual, take the medicine Samuyeon gave me, and wake up, everything will change.*
[Month V, Day V]
*Damn it, that freakish monster. No matter how I look at it, that bastard isn’t human. He’s a damn creature wearing a human mask. It’s been ages since the Guiding session ended, but I still feel like I’m freezing to death.*
*I put on an unwashed hoodie, and now it reeks of mothballs. It’s infuriating. I did the ritual in the bathroom, and all that’s left is to take the medicine. …But this medicine, it’s supposed to just put me into a state of suspended animation, not actually kill me, right? It better be. No way Samuyeon would give me something dangerous.*
*Well, even if it is dangerous, who cares? The bigger the mess, the louder the cheers will be when I return. Samuyeon, give me strength.*
“It’s exactly what you’d expect from a cult follower’s diary. Yeah, the Maeng Guide from those memories didn’t seem like someone who’d make such desperate choices. But seeing that she left behind a will… maybe she was willing to risk her life just for a chance at a higher rank…”
In the world Sodam came from, there were no such things as Espers or Guides, but she could understand the concept if she thought of ranks as social classes. If someone had told her that risking her life could transform her into the youngest daughter of a wealthy conglomerate, she might have considered trying it at least once.
Pushing aside the bitter taste in her mouth, she pulled out the crumpled will she had shoved into her pocket. It was wrinkled, but the contents were still clear enough to read.
「Baek Juyul, that monstrous bastard, plans to freeze every Guide to death. He shouldn’t be treated as an Esper, but rather as some kind of creature…」
“…But really, no matter how hastily you write, how could the handwriting change this much?”
The scrawled, uneven letters bothered her, as did the paper it was written on. Of course, it wasn’t particularly strange to jot down a will on a torn page from a diary, but it seemed like far more pages had been ripped out than just the one. More importantly, the way the letter ‘ㄹ’ was written in the will differed significantly from the entries in the diary.
And according to what the B-class Guide had said, the previous owner of this body seemed willing to Guide Juyul repeatedly. Otherwise, why would they go through the trouble of raising the rank of the mark to a restrictive level when a single session should have sufficed? These might have been minor details on their own, but together they pointed in a single direction.
“No way… No, it couldn’t be. Right?”
This wasn’t some mystery novel; it was a modern fantasy story. Even as she tried to laugh it off, the uneasy feeling in her chest wouldn’t disappear.
After some hesitation, Sodam folded the will back into a crumpled mess and tucked it between the pages of the diary. She decided to hide the secret-filled diary deep under her mattress.
“Better safe than sorry. Yeah, just in case…”
She forced herself to erase the fear from her mind and refocused her thoughts elsewhere. Yet, despite the cold splash of water earlier, she couldn’t help but let out a frustrated sigh every time she thought of her dire reality.
“Samuyeon… just who is that guy?”
The name “Samuyeon” kept appearing in the diary, but it hadn’t come up even once in the original story. That meant that this cult or whatever it was had either scammed the body’s previous owner and disappeared or was insignificant enough not to cause any major trouble.
Since most of the cult’s followers seemed to be Guides or Espers, she might encounter someone related to it while living in this body. But… she could just ignore them and move on.
“Hah. I don’t have time to be worrying about this now. There’s a more pressing problem—the debt I have thanks to all that money thrown at them!”
Grinding her teeth, Sodam slammed her pale fist onto the broken springs of the mattress.
A billion won—yes, it was a lot of money, but she figured she might be able to pay it off if she worked herself to the bone as a Guide… especially if Baek Juyul was among her clients.
“I mean, maybe I could just think of it as putting out a fire and pick up a few crumbs from the protagonist, right? I could make a run for it as soon as that new Guide, Han Daram, shows up. Yeah, that’s it. It’s not like I *want* to do this. The protagonist *wants* me to, right? Yeah, totally.”
The rules she’d engraved in her mind since the moment she possessed this body had long since faded into the background.
“Honestly, this doesn’t even count as breaking my own rules. I didn’t sign a contract with Baek Juyul or anything. I’m just doing what I’m told!”
She chuckled, spinning out excuse after excuse until they started to sound like the truth. After all, how many Espers and Guides were there in this world? The odds of being matched with Juyul again had to be next to none.
In other words, she could take the money from Juyul while staying “harmless,” live like a human until he released her, and then quietly accept whatever matches the Association assigned her, working hard to pay off the debt without ever crossing paths with him again.
“Seriously, who wouldn’t be tempted when you can earn ten million won per session? Yesterday was just a fluke because he was threatening me. As long as I stay quiet, there’s no reason for him to put my life in danger again. Besides, if he’s suspicious of me, why would he even let me Guide him again? He’ll probably just waste a few months and eventually think, ‘Oh, maybe I was wrong.’ After that, I’ll just stick to guiding lower-ranked Espers. Yeah, sounds good. I’ll make this possession life work somehow!”
About three hours after making this firm decision, Sodam’s resolution crumbled almost immediately. She’d come across a breaking news alert on the small screen of the only electronic device in her chilly home—her phone.
「[Exclusive] Esper Baek Juyul to lead the subjugation of the Gunsan creature today」
“…Fine, I’ll just help him out this *one* time. It’s not like I want to see the original story unfold. This is purely out of humanitarian concern… or something like that.”
