“Phew,” I sighed in relief as I walked out of the alley. My heart was racing like crazy. I knew Bae Sung-Hyun had a bad personality, but I didn’t realize it was to this extent.

[Bossou is tired. Tired. Tired… Very tired… Sacrifice, sacrifice!]

I sensed a fight coming and activated Bossou’s power. However, Bossou was not in their best shape, so I refrained from using their power except when I shook Bae Sung-Hyun’s hand. I would have been in big trouble if a fight had broken out.

It was weird to be pondering about this in the first place. I was confused as to why Bae Sung-Hyun had been chosen as one of the student representatives. A conspiracy theory around the school claimed that ‘F.A. puts skill and money first, rather than faith and character.’

I thought it was a rumor and brushed it off, but looking at Bae Sung-Hyun, I was more convinced that it was closer to fact.

“Hey, you were cool back there. ‘You look childish and pathetic.’ Woah, I get chills from that line.”

“Hey, don’t copy me.”

“Wow, ‘don’t copy me’? Even that’s cool.” Koo Jun-Hyuk was making fun of me by copying what I was saying. He would not stop even when I asked him to. Eventually, I gave up. While we were monkeying around, Jung In-Ah’s head hung low as if she was pondering about something.

“Jung In-Ah.”

“...Oh! Huh? Yeah?” She looked up, startled by my calling her name.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Oh, it’s nothing… Remember the student lying on the ground? I was just worried for him.” It seemed like she was thinking about the student that Bae Sung-Hyun and his gang were bullying. She looked guilty that she hadn’t been able to save him.

“I bet he would have been hit more if we had tried to help him. It’s important not to do anything in situations like these,” Koo Jun-Hyuk said as he continued miming my speech. It was a surprisingly sound argument, considering it came from Koo Jun-Hyuk.

“...You’re right.” We could hear the slight bitterness in Jung In-Ah’s response.

After a few moments, we reached Jung In-Ah’s place. Her house had multiple floors, an attic, and a front yard. Although she seemed unsatisfied with her house, it was much better than my shabby house.

“See you tomorrow!” Jung In-Ah walked into her house and said goodbye.

Koo Jun-Hyuk and I made small talk as we walked. Finally, after five minutes, we arrived in front of my villa. Right before I went inside, a question popped into my head.

“Koo Jun-Hyuk.”

“Yeah?”

“Where do you live?”

Koo Jun-Hyuk scratched his head as if he had been asked a difficult question.

“Eh, somewhere nearby.” He smiled awkwardly.

‘Hm, he must have his reasons that he finds hard to discuss. After all, everyone has their own secrets, like me.’  I walked to my house, shrugging off the thought.

***

After a few uneventful days, the weekend arrived. The morning of the weekend almost tasted sweet—warm sunlight gleamed through the window, and the breeze was refreshing.

It was a great day to go on a date. That is, if I had a girlfriend. Just saying.

Anyway, I woke up at around nine and headed out of my room with my mask and clothes. Uncle Lee Jin-Sung’s car was parked in front of my house.

Beep beep!

My uncle honked as I drew closer as if to greet me. I jumped in the shotgun seat and fastened my seat belt. My uncle was inputting directions into the navigation when he suddenly asked, “Hey, did you bring it?”

My uncle had been using the word it to describe almost everything recently. His age might be getting there.

“What do you mean by it?”

“You know, that, that, oh! The mask. You got it?”

“Ah, yeah. It’s in my bag.” I tapped on my bag with my fingers. A slightly dry clatter came from my bag.

“Okay, let’s go.” Driving was one of the many talents that my uncle had.

I stared through the car window at the constantly changing scenery outside. I was nervous.

[There is nothing to be nervous about. Have faith in me.] Legba's voice brimmed with confidence.

“Uh, sure.” Even Legba’s confident words couldn't help calm my nerves.

We were heading to a dBP-affiliated hospital to wake up the dBP chairman’s wife, who was in a coma. I wasn’t sure if I could complete my job as the Loa’s power was significantly lower with the altar gone.

“I see that your phone’s constantly ringing. Is it a friend?” My uncle snuck in a question as he was driving. I looked at the stacked, unread messages.

There were a few messages from Jung In-Ah, some from Koo Jun-Hyuk, and several spam messages.

“Yup. Friends.” Some of the messages had been from Koo Jun-Hyuk and Jung In-Ah, so I explained that they were friends.

“Sounds like you’ve adjusted pretty well, making friends already. How are they?”

“They’re both kind. Maybe it’s because we’re at a clergy academy.”

“Yeah? So I’m guessing nothing is going on in school that I should be concerned about? Back in my day, we had a lot of bullying. Hmm, but maybe I’m worrying too much. After all, you are in F.A.”

Bae Sung-Hyun popped up in my head, but I chose not to bring him up.

“Oh, Uncle?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Didn’t you say you invested some stocks in dBP?”

My uncle pondered a bit with his hands on the steering wheel. “Yeah. I bought them some time ago. They are a blue chip stock, after all.”

“Sell all of that in a week.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I have a feeling they’re going to depreciate soon.”

My uncle tilted his head in response. “Why? Is there a reason?”

“There is, but for the most part, it’s just a feeling I have.”

“Who invests with their gut? I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” My advice went through one of my uncle’s ears and out the other. I wasn’t going to pressure him to sell his shares if he didn’t want to. It would be his loss, after all.

I turned my attention to the window to observe the world passing by. I closed my eyes briefly, and before I knew it, our car had arrived at our destination.

The dBP Hospital building, or the hospital officially associated with dBP, stood tall in the middle of the city. We got out of our car and got on the special VIP elevator. I took out my mask from my bag and put it on.

Ding–!

The elevator opened on the top floor with a clear sound. As the doors opened, two towering men stood before our paths as if they had been expecting us.

“Names, please.”

“Please tell the chairman that Kim Sung-Jin has come to see him.”

“Please wait for a moment.” The two men swiftly disappeared and reappeared seconds later.

“My apologies. Please follow us.” The giants led us down the hallway. We followed them closely and passed by posh aquariums and flower pots before finally arriving in front of a room.

The room wretched of the characteristic smell of disinfectants, and the lights were dimly lit and dull. Someone who looked like the dBP chairman sat in the middle of the room.

“You two, stay outside.” Responding to the chairman’s order, the two guards bowed and exited the room.

The chairman weakly got up from his seat, walked toward us, and extended his painfully thin arm toward us for a handshake. “I’m Bae Jung-Hwan, the one who asked for the request. Mr. Kim Sung-Jin, I presume?”

“Yes sir, my name is Kim Sung-Jin,” my uncle said as he reached for a handshake, his back straight as a stick. ‘Kim Sung-Jin’ was my uncle's alias whenever he took in requests.

“Then, who is this man next to you?” Ending the handshake, Bae Jung-Hwan diverted his attention to me. He seemed to find me odd, as I was a silent man with a white-bone mask.

“This is our cult leader that I’ve told you about. He will be performing all of our rituals.”

“Ah, yes, the cult leader. I understand.” Bae Jung-Hwan nodded slowly. I had no reason to speak, as we had decided prior that my uncle would do all the talking.

“Now, Mr. Chairman, shall we get right to business? Or would you like to discuss some things over tea?”

“Let’s get to business.”

“Then, would it be okay to turn on the lights? We need to inspect the state of our patient.”

“Do as you wish.”

As my uncle flipped the switch, the room lit up with a tack.

Bae Jung-Hwan's jagged wrinkles were more apparent under the bright light. Along with his face, the appearance of many security guards in black attire came into view.

“Wow, Mr. Chairman, what is this? The circumstances seem to be different from what we said earlier?” My uncle questioned as if he was terrified of the guards.

“Don’t mind them. I have them here just in case things go south. You can’t trust anyone, especially with so many people out for my money.”

“Aha, and can I ask where these people end up?”

“Didn’t you see the fish tank on your way here? The big one?” Bae Jung-Hwan let out a vile laugh. “I give them to the fish. Ground to paste.”

“Oh, cough, cough, wow, haha. Well, we’re not scammers, so don’t worry about us. We’ll definitely bring your wife back to life.”

“Of course. For both of our sakes. Correct?”

“Haha, yes, sir.” My uncle patted the sweat off his temples. I grew more anxious. The reassuring thought that it would be okay to fail quickly vanished.

Failure meant death. I had to succeed.

With heavy footsteps, I made my way to the patient's bed. The patient’s face was pale, and their breathing was weak. Their arm was so thin it resembled a dry wilting tree branch. A repetitive beep—- beep—- sound came from the patient’s heart rate monitor.

Only when I checked the patient’s state with my own eyes did my throbbing heart finally start to calm down.

[They're not in that bad of a state.] As Legba had said, they weren’t doing that bad. It seemed like we were not going to end up as paste today.

I put my hand on the patient's head to initiate the ritual. As soon as I did, Bae Jung-Hwan flinched and got up, his body shaking.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s part of the ritual.”

“Hmm.” Bae Jung-Hwan chewed on his lips in what seemed like anxiety. He still didn’t seem to have much faith in us.

I ignored Bae Jung-Hwan and channeled all my attention toward performing the ritual. I released my voodoo magic into the air, drawing five arrays. Legba’s voice boomed inside my head.

[──! ───! ──.]

I wasn’t entirely sure about what they were saying, but their sentence seemed to contain words about life and death. Moments later, Legba's chanting started to speed up.

Soul, afterlife, resurrection, circulation… The sentences were getting longer, and more difficult words were incorporated into the chant.

As the ritual was drawing to an end…

Charrrrr—!

Purple bandages spewed forth from the arrays I had conjured. To be exact, they were ‘something that resembled bandages.’ The bandages wrapped around the patient’s entire body, leaving no gaps.

Beep— Beep—

At the same time, the beeping sound coming from the patient’s EKG monitor started to slow down. The patient’s breathing slowly thinned out. She seemed to be in critical condition and could lose her life at any moment.

Bae Jung-Hwan not only chewed on his lips, but he also bit off his fingernails to the point where he was bleeding.

[───, ───! ──.] Finally, Legba’s voice came to a halt.

Bee—-------

And so did the electrocardiogram. This meant that the patient was going through cardiac arrest. The room fell dead silent.

“Ha, haha. Hahahaha. Ha—hmph.” It was Bae Jung-Hwan who broke the silence. After laughing crazily, he icily ordered his guards, “Get them.”

“Wa-wait! Give us thirty seconds, no, just one minute–!”

“Shut up. It’s my fault for trusting scammers like you. My fault. All my fault….” The guards captured and tightly secured my uncle, who had tried to flee. Then, after using their prepared cable ties to restrict miy uncle’s wrists and ankles in an ugly fashion, they inched their way toward me.

I quickly searched the room for an escape route. Unfortunately, my effort was in vain, as there were no escape routes in sight.

[Did I mess up? I don’t think so. The ritual went perfectly! Hm. I don’t understand.]

“I told you I had a bad feeling about this!”

Legba remained calm throughout the whole situation. While I continued blaming them, I released the voodoo magic through my fingertips. I couldn’t die here, not like this. I was planning to fight back.

As I was halfway through drawing the superior curse of enchantment—

“Darling, what’s going on?”

A clean timbre came from the hospital bed and cut through the room, relieving the chaos. Bae Jung-Hwan’s wife woke up from her coma.

“Urgh, my head. How long have I been asleep? Where am I?”

“D-Dear.”

Color replaced the despair and anger on Bae Jung-Hwan’s face. No, it was not color alone that had returned, but emotions that were too complex to describe. The emotional cocktail of happiness, sadness, surprise, relief, and feelings that had sprung from deep down had turned into tears that flooded his cheeks.

“Ah…who are all these men? And what time is it? It feels like I’ve been asleep for so long.”

“It hasn’t been that long. Let's just think… that you’ve woken up from a long nap.”

“Why are you crying all of a sudden? And when did you get so old, darling?”

Everyone in the room held their breath as they watched the moving reunion. It was a tear-jerking sight. As for myself, I usually don’t cry, and I wasn’t crying then either. I was just relieved that I was alive.

There were many ups and downs, but the ritual was a success.

“Uh, cult leader? Quick, can you untie these bands?” During the reunion, my uncle squirmed around like a caterpillar, with his wrists and ankles tied. I released him from his bond by using a saw from one of the guards. But, come to think of it, why did he have a saw? Were they planning to cut our bodies into pork chop? The thought sent shivers down my spine.

“Phew, I thought we were dead meat.” My uncle stood up and fixed his clothes. With that, he glanced at the guards as he slowly approached Bae Jung-Hwan.

“Hm, Mr. Chairman. You must be overjoyed, but don’t we have unfinished business?”

“Ah, yes! Of course. Look at my manners. I’m so sorry you had to see that.” Bae Jung-Hwan wiped his tears with a handkerchief. His mannerism had changed. He now treated us with the utmost respect even though he had looked down on us earlier.

Bae Jung-Hwan quickly wrapped up his emotional reunion with his wife and escorted us to a guest room, constantly bowing down and expressing his gratitude. I felt strange looking at Bae Jung-Hwan.

[He is your friend’s father, after all.]

Friends? It’s a bit more complicated than that, but whatever.

Bae Jung-Hwan was many things. He was the dBP chairman, a hopeless romantic for his wife, and Bae Sung-Hyun's father.