By Zephyria 
〈Can you even call yourself human after doing this? Do you truly not fear your karma! This child is your own offspring!〉
It was incomprehensible. What did human karma matter to an Aberration? The Smiling Man chuckled, circling around the swing.
「Mother was wrong. I’ve been perfectly fine until now, haven’t I? There is no karma for me to receive, nor any wrath from the spirits! Yeo-jin will be back soon too! Our child, the child… Ah, he’s dead. My little one.」
The vision of a blood-stained child collapsed, wrapped in Jeil Heon’s field jacket, tore through the folds of his brain. The moment he had seen that sight 17 years ago, he had briefly thought that the jacket was a shroud. A shroud for a grandson, made by the mother.
〈Mister, your clothes are so big. Even bigger than Daddy’s.〉
〈Since I’m bigger than your daddy, the clothes are big too.〉
〈Jiha wants to try them on too.〉
As the child reached out and whined, Jeil Heon had politely taken off the jacket and put it on him. The adults around them burst into laughter at the sight of the hem dragging heavily on the ground. The child would pout as if telling them not to tease him, but then he would kiss Jeil Heon on the cheek and whisper that he liked the mister the most, after his daddy, mommy, and grandmother.
That child had returned as a corpse, using the clothes of the Jeil Heon he loved so much as his shroud. The Smiling Man laughed, clapping his hands. When he first learned of his child’s death, rage had surged, but now he thought it was not a bad outcome.
「Haha! It’s better to be dead than to live as a living sacrifice in such a state! Yeo-jin, don’t you think so too? Mother, you think so too! Ah, if you’re dead, you can’t think, can you? I’m sorry! For killing you!」
「I should have never had a child. No. Yeo-jin was so happy. I was happy too. Until you started having those damn dreams. Yeo-jin, Yeo-jin. He was going to die anyway, maybe I should have aborted him back then. For the child’s sake, I shouldn’t have given birth to him.」
「It’s okay now! I’ll contaminate the pretty child you chose! And make him our child again! My little one! Our child! I won’t ever lose him this time. Yeo-jin! Here, Mother and Sunbae won’t be able to interfere! Because he’s my child!」
The Smiling Man, who had been swinging the seat back and forth as if Lee Yeo-jin were riding it with the child, suddenly paused. With the same smiling expression etched onto his face from murdering countless people, he tilted his head in curiosity.
「…What was I trying to contaminate?」
* * *
Gong Ran-sa, who only found out about the incident after the two returned home, was practically jumping with indignation.
「How dare that convert, who deserves to be drawn and quartered, cause harm to whom!」
Though she was playful, she never lost the dignified speech and behavior of a scholar from a historical drama; this was the first time he had heard her use such foul language. The handprints on his neck had healed cleanly after purification, but it felt secretly good to know there was someone—no, a ghost—who worried about him.
“Still, he said he couldn’t contaminate me because of this necklace. Did the teacher put energy into it in case something like this happened?”
「That is…」
Jeil Heon naturally stepped in for her, as she was poor at lying.
“That’s right. It’s a Tool that Mae-gu made a long time ago, and the teacher entrusted it to me because she was concerned about you.”
“Wow. Thank you! I was safe thanks to the teacher!”
As Yoo Jiha’s eyes sparkled with an almost overwhelming intensity, Gong Ran-sa cleared her throat and discreetly looked away.
By the time they returned home after ensuring Jeong Ing-bar’s surgery ended successfully and stopping by the Management Bureau for purification, the dawn was already breaking. Only after a yawning Yoo Jiha returned to the guest house did Gong Ran-sa breathe a sigh of relief.
「It is surprising every time I experience it, how you lie. Not a single flicker in your expression. Anyway, did the Smiling Man not recognize Young Yoo?」
“He was completely fooled by the corpse of the child Mae-gu had created, and it seems he misunderstood Jiha’s contamination-resistant constitution as being due to the necklace.”
「How much did you tell Young Yoo and Young Kang? I must know so that I do not make a slip of the tongue.」
A complicated bitterness lingered on Jeil Heon’s lips. Was it said that to deceive others, one must mix a bit of truth into the lies?
Just as a US Army uniform was found at the Jeonmae Five-Day Market, or as Aberrations with similarities were found despite belonging to different Aberrant Realms, there are passages in the Dividing Mist that connect one Aberrant Realm to another. Jeil Heon had personally entered and exited such a space—a place the Management Bureau only vaguely speculated about—with the help of Mae-gu. It was 22 years ago, to protect the child from the Smiling Man.
The flow of time in the passages that stitch Aberrant Realms together is haphazardly entangled. Though it didn’t feel very long, five years had passed by the time he faced the Smiling Man again.
Gong Ran-sa also let out a sigh.
「Hiding the truth is not always the best solution. Young Yoo has a strong and upright heart. Do you intend to let him ignore the bonds of kinship until the end?」
“…I think so too. He will be shocked and sad for now, but he will overcome it someday.”
「Then why keep hiding it?」
“That is why I cannot tell him, Teacher.”
Jeil Heon closed his eyes, exhaling a pained breath.
“What if Jiha, after knowing and understanding the truth, tries to accept that fate as well? No. He definitely would. Jiha, who grew up under good adoptive parents without losing his kind nature, would make a different choice than Yeo-jin or Hyun-woo.”
「Young Je…」
“Even if I have to deceive Jiha for the rest of his life, I do not want that child to fall into a state no different from a living sacrifice. I want him to enjoy happiness as a human, live a life as a human, and reach the end of his lifespan as a human.”
This was the duty Lee Yeo-jin had passed on to Yoo Jiha, and it was his own terrible selfishness, wanting to keep the child safely locked within the blessing of ignorance.
He was extremely sleepy, as if he had stayed up all night. However, once he actually lay in bed, sleep did not come easily. The encounter with the Smiling Man. The terrifying sprint. Jeong Ing-bar’s injury. The events he experienced in a single night felt like fragmented shards embedded densely in his brain.
Perhaps it was because the name Lee Yeo-jin lingered in his mind for some reason. The presence of the Aberration known as the Smiling Man—once her husband and the one who murdered her—would not fade.
He eventually fell asleep, but he doesn’t know how many times he woke up from a shallow slumber. Yoo Jiha, groaning from the lingering echoes of the Smiling Man’s bizarre laughter, vaguely felt a heavy weight lying beside him.
“…Mister?”
As he mumbled in his sleep, the man reached out and pulled him close in an embrace. The slow patting on his back felt familiar. As if, even in his very early childhood, he had been held in these arms to find stability.
His unstable breathing gradually synced with the rhythm of the hand stroking his back and became steady. The sleep that had avoided him finally rushed in with deep density. Yoo Jiha fell asleep listening to the sound of the man’s heart while leaning against his chest.
This time, it was a deep sleep without any dreams.
He had fallen asleep like this on the first day he met him. This was truly the most peaceful place in the world.
Jeil Heon, who had been restless even during breakfast, was not satisfied with just seeing him off on his way to school; he tried to follow him all the way inside the school.
“There are benches at school, right? I’ll just sit quietly outside the building where you have classes so I don’t stand out.”
“If you want to go undercover, I think you should fix your face first.”
What nonsense, thinking he wouldn’t stand out with that face. While Jeil Heon’s worrying was something one could enjoy 365 days a year and still not have enough of, Yoo Jiha decided to act like a mature adult and student, fulfilling his duties.
“It seems the Smiling Man doesn’t have any ill will toward me. He was curious, but he didn’t seem to have any interest beyond that…”
Even in the Prayer Chamber, it felt like an atmosphere where he would be ignored as long as he kept his mouth shut. So, when Jiha waved him off and told him to just go to work, Jeil Heon reluctantly gave up.
“I have something I promised to deliver separately, so he won’t appear openly in front of people to cause harm. Always move toward where there are many people.”
Yoo Jiha, failing to notice the subtext of ‘use other people as shields in case of emergency,’ went to his classes. He pretended to be brave, but since he was actually terrified, he quickly returned home in Jeil Heon’s car as soon as class ended.
It was the beginning of precarious days, never knowing when the Smiling Man might suddenly strike.