The Foreigner on the Periphery - Chapter 19

Chapter 19 – Three Ways To Murder Your Boss (16)
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Jung MI-hyang (42 years old, Sokcho-si) was a troll, a yoga instructor, and a druid.

As the sun went down, she was relaxing alone at the yoga academy as usual. It was to prepare an evening time lesson for office workers. Like a troll, her flexible muscles and joints moved smoothly. She bent into the eka pada rajakapotasana pose and concentrated.

Knock, knock.

Drops of sweat fell. The setting sun, which looked to be of a rough scarlet hue, also fell on the window. A few birds flew in through the open window. Trolls held their arms and legs together like a feat and fixed their bodies without moving. Small animals landed on her shoulders and horns, chirping all the same.

There was a gentle peace to the sign. The quiet and pure air descended into the lesson room. Jung Mi-hyang concentrated on her slow exhalation, but soon forgot about this and fell back into her meditative state.

It was only one moment that that peace was broken.

Tit! Jaejae Jack!

Paddat!

Birds chirping over her body ended up flying away in an instant. Jung Mi-hyang opened her eyes in embarrassment. The sparrows were flapping their wings out the window, as if frightened, and then ran away. A few light brown feathers fell on the wooden floor.

‘…What?’

It wasn’t because Jung Mi-hyang suddenly moved that the animals ran away. The cause was outside. As a druid, she could sense the fear of the little things.

And, it wasn’t just the flying beast that felt terrified.

Wong! Wong! Wong! Chiiing!

Nyaaa!

The screams of pets could be heard all over the residential area. The closest thing was the barking of a Martiz dog who was raised next door.

‘Why is he talking like that again?’

Gae-dori thought he was going for a walk a year ago and followed him waving his tail, and was shaking as seriously as the day he was neutered. No, it was even worse now. When she woke up, the sense of loss and betrayal that she felt when she realized that something important was missing from her body was transmitted to Jung Mi-hyang, and she had to open three bottles of soju by herself that night to escape from her empathy.

Parr!

Jung Mi-hyang expanded her senses in order to understand the situation.

With that, she couldn’t help but feel surprised. Almost every animal she could interact with was in a frenzy, not to mention pets, rats in the sewers, squirrels in the mountains, and livestock raised outside the city. They were all screaming at each other to run away in terror.

And, the source of fear felt by said sensitive animals seemed to be coming from the seaside.

She then got up and went to the window. A port could be seen in the distance.

The troll’s mouth began to open slowly.

“It’s me… What?!”

On the shore of the peaceful evening hours, a mountain of dark clouds began to gather, forming a tornado.

A few minutes before, Ghosts had been gathering on the rooftop of the commercial building where Jung Mi-hyang had been meditating.

Unless they had special abilities, the eyes of spirits that were invisible and inaudible to living people were fixated on one person. The target was newcomers. The faces of the deceased, who looked at the Orc Ghosts who vomited out their enthusiasm, did not seem greedy.

= So, one last question. Is there really no one to go up to Seoul with me this weekend to protest? =

Park Tae-sik (36 years old, second year of death, mainly appearing in Sokcho) frowned as if he could not understand.

= Won’t everyone respond like this? Our rights must be found! =

Then, the man, who had been dead for four hundred years, sounded a psychic wave with a displeased expression. As with all the deceased, he became a Ghost that wandered around Gucheon immediately after his death.

= We are uninvited guests who go against the providence and disturb the world anyway. What right do these assholes have to get together in broad daylight in order to make a riot? Heaven will surely get angry. =

Since the spirit body was built as it was when he was wearing silk clothes, the Orc could guess that he was from a yangban.

Park Tae-sik then began to grumble inwardly. ‘Ah, I’m going crazy trying to convince you, even to the four-hundred-year-old Joseon Dynasty!’

Although the times when they became Ghosts were close to each other, the generation gap was a big issue even between them, who had different times when they had enjoyed their lives.

= There, by the way. Even if we have a protest, there are only a few people who can hear it and see it, right? Are you a spiritually sensitive person…? Unless it’s the shamans with amazing skills you see often these days. =

Fortunately, a Ghost who had recently died expressed his doubts. Park Tae-sik had said that he was right and grabbed the tail.

= Volunteers can help! If you mobilize a special magic circle, even ordinary people can see and hear us! =

= Such magic… =

Ignoring the yangban Ghost who was busy clucking his tongue. Park Tae-sik began to speak to the other spirits.

= You have to think carefully about this. If this bill is passed and excavator installations are made mandatory in new buildings, we will never be able to enter places with roofs and walls in the future. The world is a privacy protection law, and in fact, it’s the same as the Spiritual Deportation and Restriction of Rights Act! =

= Isn’t it okay to not go inside? =

= No, then, will you wander around the streets and distractions for a period of time when you don’t even know how many hundreds or thousands of years you have left? =

= Then, why do you go there and watch the people who bought it?! =

It was an inspiration beyond words. Park Tae-sik felt a surge of irritation coursing through him.

= Those who think like that are treating all Ghosts as potential voyeurs! Okay, houses can do that. But, do we always go people-watching in department stores, art galleries, or movie theaters? Are there any other activities other than ‘seeing and hearing’ that we can’t touch or play with? If you don’t do this until then…! =

Park Tae-sik felt speechless.

= ….Huh?=

The moment he thought his spirit body was being swept away by something, his vision had already been turned over.

= Uh… Huh? =

Recognition turned out to be a few seconds too slow. A strong shock had already come and hit Park Tae-sik’s spirit body. He couldn’t see the building’s roof where he had gathered with his colleagues. Like a baseball hit by a bat swinging hard, he was bouncing high into the sky.

= Female… Long? =

He had already left the residential area of Sokcho and was rapidly penetrating the mountains. The demon, who had no physical resistance, penetrated the rock wall in the mountain.

= Wait, this is Seoraksan! =

He then felt a sense of crisis. That was because he knew well that there was a large area that couldn’t be entered because of the powerful exorcism. But luckily, the angle was right, so Park Tae-sik did not collide with it, but passed through the rock layer before soaring into the sky again. The wide field of view then returned.

= What the hell is this?! =

Spirits were not subjected to physical resistance but were more sensitive when it came to spiritual shocks.

Returning to Sokcho a few days later, he learned that the magic shock that started from the small port at the time had blown away all the Ghosts within the city.

Fortunately, he had only bounced off to the vicinity of Inje-gun, but the older the Ghost, the farther it bounced off. This was because the connection with reality was blurred.

It turned out to be the yangban Ghost who died in the Joseon Dynasty who was swept away by the spiritual storm and lost to the most distant place. After barely returning to Sokcho, he described his experiences and made the fellow Ghosts go crazy. He had said that he saw a huge island where the birds made of iron constantly landed and soared again.

Afterward, the yangban Ghost flew to Incheon International Airport.

That evening, the 119 control center suffered from calls from Sokcho citizens. The reporters mainly came from people with special abilities.

Depending on the type of ability, everyone saw and felt differently, but there was one thing in common. All of them testified that something terrifying was going on the side of some small port.

Among the reporters, there were many who shouted in excitement, saying that, if citizens were not evacuated immediately, a catastrophe could occur.

No one knew exactly what was going on, but a sense beyond the ordinary sensed a terrible fear.

The relay of the call, which effectively paralyzed 119 in Sokcho-si, continued for over an hour that day.

Rough raindrops began to hit Ye Minjun’s shoulder.

His appearance was very different from when he first came to Sokcho. His clothes ended up being torn everywhere, and her exposed skin was evidently full of scars. His arms had all disappeared below his shoulders, and instead, a shadow began to form over said arms.

In addition to this, the position of his left eye had changed. An eerie darkness began to pool in the hole where the pupil had trembled and disappeared.

Minjun looked at a particular place with half-biological and half-spiritual sense. The black surface of the water he was looking over licked and touched what looked like a pointed island, or a group of reefs that were spread out wide.

An entity began to float on the sea level with a wide area covering the sea off the port. It might be misunderstood because of the scale, but that was a creature, not a feature. Minjun knew he was alive. For now, that is.

“Oh my gosh… That’s unfortunate.”

President Jenkinson, who came next to him, murmured. He had returned to his human form, and unlike Minjun, he did not show any wounds. This was because he had disguised himself as a human. They both knew that returning to the dragon’s original form was fraught with serious injuries and scars.

“What do you see?”

Minjun, who could see the vitality, confirmed Jenkinson’s guess as true.

“I’m going to die, soon.”

“How to revive?”

“It’s impossible. Even if you deliver a priest who is well-received, you can’t save that.”

“Hmm.”

Although he didn’t speak harsh words as someone coming from a noble family would have done, Minjun could easily understand the feeling of embarrassment in his voice.

“I can’t help it; he was stronger than I first thought. He wasn’t an elder for his age, but his strength was enough for him to be considered one.”

Originally, in order to fight a dragon without sacrificing anything and still win, at least two dragons of the same rank must be mobilized.

The problem was that this case was something that should be kept private in order to save the president’s face. It was the result of not being able to identify the illegal immigrant dragons hiding in his area for over ten years.

And so, given his political standing within the Balaur community, Jenkinson hoped to keep this as quiet as possible and didn’t want to be known by his opponents, so he had no one to turn to for help.

There were only two elders who had been judged not to be interested in his position, all because it was a famous story that the relationship between him and Changcheon was not even equal to that of enemies. In addition to this, and no one knew if Gelberg was still alive or was dead.

Behind Minjun’s second dragon hunt today, there was quite a complicated political situation. In addition to this, despite the two of them, they had failed to capture Jang Tae-jun in the end.

Whoops! Bang bang!

Lightning clouds created by Jenkinson still did not disappear from the sky, and raindrops continued to pour in. Minjun wiped the moisture from his face with his hand within a shadow.

He had blocked the surroundings with a barrier, but it wouldn’t have been perfect. Sensitive abilities must be stunned. It was far unavoidable.

By preventing the physical shock from being delivered to Sokcho and destroying the city and blocking the view from the outside, Minjun did all he had to do.

It was also Minjun’s achievement to deliver close to fatal attacks to that black dragon several times, and finally tie him up so that Jenkinson could give him one last shot.

“Hey, hey.”

Jenkinson began to speak to the other side. The dragon’s head, which had been lying on its side and had been submerged in the sea, showed a slight movement. It then raised one eyelid that had been exposed above the water surface.

The pouring raindrops began to seep through the gaps in the dragon’s scales and flow to meet the seawater. On the water surface, white foam, red blood, and black water met in order to create a strange pattern. Slowly, the dragon began to telepathize.

= Kill me… =

“Even if you stand still, you will return to nature’s bosom. Before that, can’t I just tell you one thing and go?”

= …Are you so curious about that? =

The black dragon then turned his gaze to the two who led him to death in turn. Strangely, there was no resentment in his eyes.

He returned the answer to the guessed question.

= I don’t know anything about them. I just got an offer to help. And so, I can sneak into Earth and do the research I want in this frontier, so that the virus could be developed without fear of being caught by other dragons. =

Then, he sent a mental wave that was close to laughter.

= But I don’t think the help was enough, now that I see the situation. =

Eventually, he was caught by immigration.

This was suspicion that had been raised without any evidence, and the investigation started without anyone guessing that the race was a dragon… but the results proved to be excellent. It was like a cow watching a mouse while walking backward.

Jenkinson then asked a few more questions, and the Black Dragon explained what he knew and said he didn’t know what he didn’t know.

The person who led the other to death calmly asked the question, and the person who was about to die gave out a logical answer. Minjun felt a slight displeasure at the scene. He had never liked this particular dragon-like sentiment.

“Okay… would you like to return to nature right now?”

Whether the interrogation was sufficient, Jenkinson proposed to the Black Dragon.

Then, his big eyes began to flutter slightly. After a moment of silence, Jang Tae-joon sent out a telepathic wave.

His target was Minjun, not Jenkinson.

= Human, when you first appeared, I felt frankly surprised. =

“Is that so?”

= It’s quite easy to make a fake expression. There’s a familiar scent oozing from you. =

He had interrogated an ISP manifester before coming here. It seemed that the pheromone had remained within Minjun’s body.

= Is she okay? =

He decided to ask about the welfare of the woman he had left behind.

Minjun decided not to mention anything about Happy Bug here.

“So-so.”

The dragon narrowed his eyes as if he was trying to guess the meaning of the words. Then, he spoke.

= Please don’t be too harsh on her. =

Minjun didn’t answer.

= She has a borderline personality disorder. =

He knew that this was the will of the black dragon.

= So don’t confuse attachment with anger. Her thoughts were extreme, and she has an obsessive fear of being thrown away… like all humans, she was a very insecure child. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to her. =

The dragon’s jet-black eyes stared at Minjun.

= Since we first met, she’s stuck a knife at the back of my neck three times. The first was when I hid the fact that I met a young dragon at the same time for several months, the second was when I was treating her as a lab mormot, and finally, the third was when she was conspiring with that stupid woman in order to kidnap me. =

Minjun felt quite surprised.

That wasn’t something an ordinary dragon would say.

This was, even more, the case when one was to think about how Edeline had treated Kim Yeon-joo.

= I must have been a pretty bad boss for her to want to kill me thrice. =

Minjun then spoke to the dragon, who was now shedding a bitter smile.

“The woman thought her ISP had just appeared. It was revealed because of Edeline. But in fact, has it been like that for a long time, correct?”

The dragon affirmed this silently.

Kim Yeon-joo had a relationship with Jang Tae-joon for a much longer time than Edeline. Therefore, it must have been secreting ISP in an unconscious state from the old days.

However, the change one would notice on their own started with Edeline. Therefore, it must have been secreting ISP in an unconscious state from the old days.

However, the change that one would notice on my own started with Edeline. Having met two dragons at the same time, it was only a natural result. The darkened pheromone induced visible symptoms.

Therefore, there was a high probability that Edeline was attracted to Kim Yeon-joo’s pheromone and had a favorable feeling towards it.

On the other hand, Jang Tae-joon did not feel the same way.

Minjun felt curious. Was this even the dragon’s plan?

Instead of answering the question, Jang Tae-joon then spoke up.

= Are you an agent and a ‘convict?’ =

“Huh.”

= That’s right. I can’t help it. =

The subsequent telepathy evidently did not flow to President Jenkinson.

Minjun narrowed his eyes when he realized that Jang Tae-joon was only talking to him, not the President.

= By any chance, do you have a homunculus? =

After a brief hiatus, Minjun answered with a spirit wave. ‘And if so?’

Minjun was convinced that the creator of it was Jang Tae-joon. Before disappearing into outer space, he hoped to officially die as a human. In addition to this, he hoped that everything would be executed according to the will.

The Black Dragon sent a telepathic message that only Minjun could still hear.

= Then, there will be no cremation of it according to the will. =

“?”

= I’m going to die anyway, and I won’t be able to confirm what’s going to happen. So, it’s your only choice with what you do with the information you give us from now on. Either inform that elder dragon, report it to the committee, or just forget about it. =

On the brink of death, the dragon finally revealed his secret.