By Zephyria 
Saturday. It was a leisurely weekend morning.
Taking advantage of the time while Jeong-ju went downtown to run errands, Yoon Tae-hee helped Jae-gyeom with his stretching today. The unfortunate incidents where his lower body reacted at random times since they began their nightly trysts had finally vanished. Now, Jae-gyeom felt quite comfortable even when his body touched Yoon Tae-hee’s, and thanks to that, he was able to successfully complete his rehabilitation stretching with Yoon Tae-hee’s help, even without Jeong-ju. Jae-gyeom spoke to Yoon Tae-hee as he tidied up the mat.
“What should we do today?”
Last Saturday, they had gone downtown to eat out and watch a movie. And the Saturday before that, they had packed lunch boxes and gone on a picnic to the park with everyone. Jae-gyeom, who had lived without any sense of dates, whether it was a weekday or a weekend, had come to look forward to the weekends since he started living with Yoon Tae-hee.
“Is there anything you want to do or anywhere you want to go?”
Yoon Tae-hee asked as he neatly folded and organized the mat.
“Hmm. Nothing comes to mind right now.”
“Then shall we do ghostly energy training?”
“Sure.”
And so, they decided to go out to the yard to train their ghostly energy today.
The two of them had started ghostly energy training a short while ago. The reason for starting was to verify if Jae-gyeom’s physical condition had returned to its normal track. Mesan had left a message stating that once he could manipulate ghostly energy as freely as before, it would be safe to consider him fully recovered.
‘If you are curious whether your body has fully returned, try using your ghostly energy.’
According to Mesan’s message, Jae-gyeom, whose soul had been damaged when the calamity god departed, was currently in the process of his soul regenerating—like new skin growing over a wound—and fully fusing with his physical body. After the calamity god disappeared, Jae-gyeom underwent various physical changes. One of them was that his energy channels became tangled in a mess.
Although the calamity god’s power was gone, the inherent ghostly energy Jae-gyeom possessed remained.
However, because his energy channels had always been open while the calamity god was inside his body, he had to learn how to contain the energy that leaked out on its own. Back then, the ghostly energy would run wild even if he just stood still. Because of this, Myo-jeong had taught him how to pull in his ghostly energy as soon as they met.
To put it in a metaphor, while others walked with their feet, Jae-gyeom had been walking with his hands.
But once the calamity god left, his energy channels were in a state of being completely closed.
Until then, Jae-gyeom had to constantly maintain a state of ‘forcibly closing the energy channels.’ If he stopped doing that, the channels would open naturally without conscious effort, allowing him to use ghostly energy freely. However, as he returned to a normal body, the ‘closed state’ became the default, just like any ordinary person.
Therefore, instead of forcibly closing the channels as the default, he now had to learn how to open the energy channels at the desired moment to draw out the ghostly energy. It was a completely different sensation from what he had known until now.
Yoon Tae-hee, who had come out to the yard with Jae-gyeom, set up a small table against the wall. He placed a single empty can on top of the table. Jae-gyeom held his fan and stood a few meters away.
“Alright, here I go.”
The goal of the training was to load ghostly energy into the fan and create a gust of wind to knock over the empty can.
“Haaap!”
Steeling himself, Jae-gyeom let out a shout and swung the fan with all his might. However, despite the loud shout, Jae-gyeom’s fan movement stopped right in front of him. It was barely enough to brush away a fluttering leaf.
It was a situation like this:
To reach the target, he needed roughly 10 units of ghostly energy, but even when he swung the fan thinking he had drawn out 10 units, only about 3 actually came out. It was because his energy channels weren’t fully open yet. He had spent his whole life walking with his hands, and now that he suddenly had to walk with his feet, he had no sense of it and felt awkward to death. Above all, it was incredibly frustrating.
After waving the fan repeatedly, Jae-gyeom said irritably,
“I feel like I have terrible constipation. Before, I had to push to keep my asshole closed, but now I have to push to take a shit. But no matter how much I strain, nothing comes out.”
“…….”
Yoon Tae-hee, who had been standing back with his arms crossed, pretended not to hear and opened his mouth to say, “Go again.”
Jae-gyeom readjusted his grip on the fan. Since the output from just now was only that much, should he push about three times harder? Is three times not enough?
“Here I go!”
It was the moment he was about to swing the fan again with another shout. Suddenly, a wind blew from afar. He felt something in his eye, as if dust had gotten in. Hesitating, Jae-gyeom rubbed his eye and swung the fan haphazardly.
“Ah damn, something got in my eye. This one went wrong—”
K-BOOOOM!
At that moment, a tremendous gale erupted from the fan, and one entire section of the wall collapsed.
He clearly thought he had swung it haphazardly, but in an instant, he had misjudged the power control and blown away the wall located behind the table. This, too, was due to his unstable energy channels. With a thunderous roar, one side of the wall crumbled.
Rumble, rumble…
Yoon Tae-hee stood frozen with wide eyes, and Jae-gyeom stood there with his mouth agape.
“…….”
“…….”
The house was wrecked.
The beautiful and modest two-story house now had one corner torn away, looking like a block of tofu with one side smashed. It looked as if something massive had charged straight through the wall, causing the damage.
It would have been a disaster if a water pipe or gas line had burst. While there was no secondary damage from that, the interior where the debris had poured in was a total mess. The steel frames hidden inside the cement were exposed and ragged, and the furniture and fixtures that had been where the wall collapsed were rolling around in chaos.
Faced with the absurd sight before them, Jae-gyeom and Yoon Tae-hee stood side by side, speechless. Then, belatedly snapping back to his senses, Jae-gyeom rushed into the house. It was to check if Mesan was safe.
Fortunately, the flowerpot was far from the collapsed wall, so Mesan was safe.
Jae-gyeom picked up the flowerpot and came back out to the yard.
“…….”
“…….”
It was so absurd that he couldn’t even laugh.
“Hey… th-this… what do we do about this?”
The only saving grace was that no one else was inside the house.
Jeong-ju had gone downtown with Kkaeng-al-i to buy some new beauty products.
“What do we do? Hey, isn’t there a way? I mean, why did you put the table right against the wall!”
“…….”
“We’re in trouble. Jeong-ju is going to flip out when he finds out.”
Jae-gyeom, venting his frustration aimlessly, looked back at Yoon Tae-hee while anxiously biting his nails.
“Among the spirit ghosts in your Exorcist Order, isn’t there anyone with the ability to fix a collapsed house?”
Where in the world would such a spirit ghost exist?
“You said they can read internal power through blood and manipulate dreams, so why can’t they fix a house!”
Yoon Tae-hee was equally flustered. It was an emergency. He had no idea how to handle this situation. It was obvious that Jeong-ju would fly into a rage if he found out.
“It’s okay. Calm down. I’ll try calling someone first.”
Yoon Tae-hee wiped his face with his hand, thought for a moment, and hurriedly made a phone call.
Jae-gyeom’s eyes sparkled as he looked at Yoon Tae-hee as if he were a savior.
Yes, I knew I could trust him! Maybe it’s Lee Young-shin from the Ritual Tool Department? Or someone else? Anyway, there’s clearly someone he can ask for help. If it’s Yoon Tae-hee, he can settle this without Jeong-ju knowing!
“Hello. Mr. Jeong-ju? The house has collapsed.”
— …What?
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I think you need to come over quickly.”
However, the method Yoon Tae-hee chose was ‘confess the sin quickly, and apologize quickly.’
Jeong-ju’s legs gave out, and he slumped down on the spot.
“No, ha… what is… what on… what in the…”
In the end, the cleanup was Jeong-ju’s burden. Jeong-ju, who had been downtown with Kkaeng-al-i, rushed back after receiving the call and clutched the back of his neck upon seeing the disastrous state of the scene. He was utterly speechless.
“How on earth did this happen!”
Jae-gyeom cleared his throat and mumbled, “Sorry… I did it…”
“What were you doing to make it like this?”
“Practicing ghostly energy…”
Jeong-ju jumped up and down, letting out a lion’s roar.
“You brat! Why don’t you just tear the whole house down!”
Jae-gyeom and Yoon Tae-hee stood side by side, silently averting their gazes.
“If you practice ghostly energy just two more times, the whole house will be gone!”
A short while later.
Having barely regained his composure, Jeong-ju contacted a construction company. Since they had no place to sleep starting tonight, it had to be fixed immediately. The company representative, who arrived shortly after, couldn’t close his mouth upon seeing the site.
“My goodness, how did the house end up like this…”
Jeong-ju, who looked as if he had aged decades in half a day, forced a smile.
“We just need to rebuild the wall, right? How long will it take?”
However, the representative, who was estimating the cost while examining the house here and there, suddenly looked troubled.
“It might be difficult to save the house.”
At the thunderbolt-like news, Jeong-ju’s mouth fell open.
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“This house was built with load-bearing walls. It looks like the building is quite old. It doesn’t seem like any separate reinforcement work was done… In a house built with load-bearing walls, the loss of a single wall can lead to the collapse of the entire structure.”
He had thought they just needed to rebuild the wall, but that wasn’t the case. Because the house was designed with load-bearing walls, the balance of the building was gone now that the wall supporting one side had disappeared.
“The whole house will collapse?”
“Yes, there’s a high possibility that the roof will cave in as it is. We could attempt repair work, but since the house cannot withstand the load right now, it wouldn’t be strange for it to collapse at any moment—it could happen five minutes from now. We can’t perform construction in this state. If the house collapses during the work, people will die.”
“Then what do we do?!”
“Looking at the building register, this house was built over 40 years ago.”
“Yes, I believe it’s around that old.”
“If you have the means, it might be better to tear the house down completely and build a new one.”
The representative’s diagnosis was that proceeding with construction was difficult due to the risk of collapse.
Although the interior had been remodeled when they first moved in, the building itself had never undergone reinforcement work, as the representative said. Therefore, in terms of the building’s lifespan, it was in a significantly aged state.
Jae-gyeom, holding the flowerpot, along with Jeong-ju, Yu Nam-saeng, and Yoon Tae-hee, looked at each other in silence.
“…….”
“…….”
“…….”
“…….”
After a deep silence, Jeong-ju spoke, his lips trembling.
“Th-then… how long would it take to tear down the house and build a new one?”
“About a year? Construction technology has advanced these days, so if it’s fast, it can be built in 7 or 8 months.”
Jeong-ju couldn’t find the words, his body shuddered, and then his eyes rolled back as he fainted.
“Ju-ya!”
Mr. Jeong-ju!”
“Oh my, Master!”
As Jeong-ju collapsed, Yoon Tae-hee hurriedly opened Jeong-ju’s eyelids to check his pupils. Jae-gyeom supported Jeong-ju, pulling him into his arms, and Yu Nam-saeng volunteered to be the wet towel, clumsily climbing onto Jeong-ju’s forehead to cool him down.
It was a long time before Jeong-ju opened his eyes.
It was a tremendous butterfly effect brought about by ghostly energy practice.