"My shoulders feel heavy these days."
If someone had asked when it started, Mu-ryeong could only answer: from the beginning. He had never been slow to notice things, especially when it came to his work. His instincts had always been razor-sharp in those moments. From the first time he saw Ki Hwan-young, and through the days they spent together, his instincts had led him here, step by step.
"...You figured all that out just from a saju reading?"
They had spent hours on the rooftop, lingering until the sky turned crimson with the setting sun. Mu-ryeong had stared absentmindedly at the sky, while Hwan-young seemed to be sorting through his thoughts. When Hwan-young finally broke the silence with that question, Mu-ryeong answered in an unbothered, everyday tone.
"I couldn’t not know."
Truly—there was no way he wouldn’t have known. Yet Hwan-young’s face hardened instantly, as if he had assumed Mu-ryeong had been completely oblivious. Seeing that reaction, Mu-ryeong ran a hand through his cooling hair before speaking again, his lips moving slowly.
"Just because someone has spiritual energy doesn’t mean they can see spirits. But someone like you... you’d still feel something, even without the ability to see them."
Many ordinary people possessed traces of spiritual energy. Those with heightened intuition or those frequently haunted by ghosts often carried it. But just because they had spiritual energy didn’t mean their spiritual sight was open. At most, they might feel an eerie chill, a sense of unease.
"But you didn’t react at all when ghostly hair brushed against you."
Mu-ryeong recalled the sight of the fiend’s hair draping over Hwan-young’s hand. Most people would have flinched, startled by the sensation—but Hwan-young hadn’t even blinked. As if it was something so familiar, so ordinary, that it no longer fazed him.
"I don’t scare easily either, even when something suddenly jumps out at me."
"..."
"I’ve been seeing them since I was a kid."
Seung-joo had once told him, If I had been born seeing ghosts like you, I probably wouldn’t get scared either. Mu-ryeong had agreed with that sentiment.
"Besides, most people ask what happened after I finish an exorcism."
Whenever Mu-ryeong handled a case, he always fed his friends some plausible excuse afterward. He’d say it was just bad energy, or that he sprinkled salt to ward off negativity—mixing in just enough ghost stories to keep them interested without revealing the truth.
"But you never asked. Not why your shoulders hurt, not what I did in your house—none of it."
If he really wanted to, he could list every strange detail about Hwan-young until morning. Hwan-young might have thought he had hidden it well, but to someone like Mu-ryeong—who had seen and experienced so much—it was obvious.
"They say a spiritual user can always recognize another one."
"...Ha."
Hwan-young let out a small, disbelieving laugh. He looked like he hadn’t expected Mu-ryeong to say that. The expression on his face was a mix of frustration and betrayal.
"And even knowing that, you still ran all the way up here?"
"Spiritual users still get hurt if they fall from a rooftop."
Accidents were called accidents because they happened suddenly. Whatever ability Hwan-young had—it didn’t matter. If he had fallen backward, Mu-ryeong didn’t even want to imagine the consequences.
"That barrier around you... was it to keep the fiend away?"
The same protective field that had repelled a lingering spirit during the entrance ceremony. The same barrier that the fiend had clawed at hungrily, desperate to devour Hwan-young’s soul. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but Mu-ryeong, as an exorcist, could feel it.
"Do ghosts cling to you often?"
As he spoke, Mu-ryeong leaned back on his hands and gazed up at Hwan-young, wondering just how much danger he had been in to need such a constant barrier around himself.
But instead of answering right away, Hwan-young paused. Then, in a calm, almost monotonous voice, he asked:
"Do you think this is to protect me?"
The energy surrounding him began to shift. The carefully controlled spiritual force around him loosened, unraveling like a thread being pulled from fabric. And the aura that seeped out—it was strong, sending chills up Mu-ryeong’s spine.
Then, from the shadows stretching along the rooftop, something began to emerge.
"...!"
A fiend. Or rather, a lowly wandering spirit. Unlike the one that had clung to Hwan-young before, this one was weak—something that survived by latching onto people and slowly draining their energy.
"Wait..."
Mu-ryeong stiffened, caught off guard as he pushed himself upright. It wasn’t powerful enough to cause real harm, but the fact that it had appeared so suddenly—while the sun was still up—was unnerving.
"Wait, you—"
Before he could react, Hwan-young casually reached out and grabbed the fiend by the throat.
No barrier. No spiritual energy reinforcement. No indication that he was using any power at all.
And yet, the moment his fingers touched it—
The fiend evaporated.
Like mist dispersing in the wind, its form vanished completely, leaving no trace behind.
"..."
Mu-ryeong froze, his eyes widening. The faint remnants of negative energy disappeared the second Hwan-young pulled his hand away, erased so cleanly that it was as if it had never existed in the first place.
"This is..."
It wasn’t the first time Mu-ryeong had seen an exorcism. He had grown up in a family of exorcists. As a child, he had followed his father to various cases. He had watched Mu-heun and Mu-yeon perform countless rituals.
But never—not once—had he seen something vanish that fast.
No matter how weak the fiend was, this wasn’t normal. It shouldn’t be possible to erase a spirit so effortlessly, without even channeling power.
"What... did you just do?"
Mu-ryeong asked, his voice quiet.
Slowly, Hwan-young turned his head toward him.
His pitch-black eyes were darker than ever, filled with something deep and unreadable.
"I didn’t do anything."
"..."
Nothing.
The weight of that single statement was indescribable. Mu-ryeong felt as if someone had struck him on the back of the head, his mind going completely blank. The words echoed in his ears like a ringing aftershock.
"Do you think this is to protect me?"
A chill ran down his spine.
What he had always assumed to be obvious... might not have been the truth at all.
The barrier wasn’t for self-protection.
Mu-ryeong realized that everything he had witnessed up until now—the things he had tried to piece together—was only a fraction of the full picture. There was something far greater that he had yet to understand.
"This is why I don’t need talismans."
With that final remark, Ki Hwan-young turned and left the rooftop. The broken iron door let out a chilling creak as it moved.
Left alone, Mu-ryeong found himself replaying the scene in his mind, as if it had been burned into his vision.
***
Exorcists had three main duties.
First, guiding lost spirits.
Second, eliminating malicious fiends.
And third, sealing demonic entities—those beyond simple spirits, such as goblins or vengeful specters.
When it came to fiends, the rule was clear: destroy them without hesitation.
Once a spirit became a fiend, it lost all traces of its former humanity. It was no longer considered a living being, and therefore, it held no value for salvation.
No matter what methods were used, a soul that had turned into a fiend could never return to what it once was. All it could do was drain the life force of the living, or consume wandering spirits, wasting away and harming others in the process.
That was why exorcists—aside from those specializing in demonic seals—prioritized eliminating fiends. They would track spiritual disturbances, trace negative energy, and deal with them using their own methods.
This process was called "work," and Mu-ryeong, not yet a fully recognized exorcist, had never formally participated in such tasks.
Of course, that didn’t mean he hadn’t faced fiends before.
The next morning, Mu-ryeong sat crouched at the entrance of an alley, waiting for Ki Hwan-young.
After staying up all night wrestling with his thoughts, the skin around his eyes was flushed red from exhaustion. His mind kept returning to what had happened—the way Hwan-young had erased a fiend without using any spiritual energy.
"A spiritual user born on a leap day..."
Mu-ryeong had grown up hearing one particular phrase:
"If you want to surpass Kim Mu-ryeong, your best bet is to be born on a leap day."
But he had never met anyone who had actually been born that way. And since his abilities far exceeded expectations, he had never given it much thought.
"With that much spiritual energy, he could handle fiends on his own."
What Hwan-young had erased last night had been little more than a wandering spirit. But even if it had been a stronger fiend, the result would have been the same.
If not for the barrier around him, the fiend gnawing at his shoulder would have dispersed just as easily.
There was never any need for him to request an exorcism—he could have done it himself.
But he didn’t.
Mu-ryeong remembered the night his older brother, Mu-heun, had spoken to him over the phone.
His voice had been serious.
"Stay out of this."
He had said Hwan-young’s fate was one that would consume everything.
His family, his friends, and eventually, even himself.
"He was born under a cursed fate. He slowly drains the people around him."
"If you get too close, you’ll get hurt."
Mu-heun’s saju readings weren’t ordinary fortune-telling.
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They weren’t just vague predictions—his abilities allowed him to read past, present, and future.
And if Mu-heun had said that Mu-ryeong would get hurt... then it was inevitable.
Logically, Mu-ryeong knew that walking away now would be the smart choice.
But for some reason, he couldn’t.
"There must be a reason he requested an exorcism."
He couldn’t shake the image of Ki Hwan-young’s expression—the look of someone who had already given up on everything.
The slight tremor in his eyes when Mu-ryeong had asked if he had been planning to jump.
The way he had clung to Seung-joo’s arm, as if the world had collapsed beneath him.
He didn’t want to turn away.
Even if people called it selfishness, he refused to act as if nothing had happened.
Ki Hwan-young, who couldn’t even take public transportation like everyone else—he didn’t want to watch as he wasted away.
"...Kim Mu-ryeong?"
A familiar voice pulled him from his thoughts.
Mu-ryeong slowly lifted his head.
The face looking down at him from above felt almost dreamlike, distant.
"Don’t cancel the request."
Mu-ryeong leaned his head against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment before reopening them.
The sunlight streaming behind Hwan-young made his vision blur slightly. His throat felt dry as he forced himself to speak.
"I’ll take care of the fiend attached to you."
If Seung-joo had been there, he would have asked if volunteering was Mu-ryeong’s new hobby.
If his mother had been there, she would have scolded him for saying something so reckless.
But Mu-ryeong wasn’t choosing this out of impulse.
He believed that this decision—right now—was the only chance to protect both Ki Hwan-young and others around him.
"I know how to purify it."