My Girlfriend Is a Shaman

20 – Like the First Snow #4

‘Is Sarah tired? ‘He’s been dozing off since morning.’

I, Jinwoo Kim, looked at Sarah who was lying face down on the seat next to her.

Sarah and I became high school students as of today.

We were lucky enough to end up sitting next to each other on the first day of school. The seating arrangement was decided randomly through a drawing of lots. It was surprising that it beat the odds of 1/29.

‘I heard it’s really amazing! I was in the same class as him for 7 years, and there were quite a few times where we sat next to each other.’

Something from the past came into my head. The relationship between Sarah and I did not end with us being in the same class for 7 years. When it came time to assign seats in class, there was a high probability that we would end up in close seats.

Of course, we were not always close. I stayed away from the times when the teacher assigned me an exact seat or ran a drawing program on the computer to determine my seat. However, there were always no exceptions when determining seats using an analog method such as drawing lots. Every time Sarah drew her lot, she won exactly the seat next to me.

‘What kind of probability manipulation is this?’

No….

It can’t be probability manipulation.

Everyone draws lots equally, so how can they manipulate it? I couldn’t help but think that we were strangely lucky. When I ran the lottery program on my computer, I wasn’t very lucky. It’s probably not something to think about too deeply.

“Hmm.”

Besides that, there was something else that bothered me.

These days, Sarah sometimes avoids my gaze. It’s like he’s hiding something from me. Every time I asked her what she was hiding, there was really something she was hiding.

Like donuts I bought to eat alone, or slightly changing the accessories I wear in my bag.

Well, girls tend to have a lot of secrets.

You shouldn’t try to pry into a woman’s secrets.

“It’s break time! Teacher, I’ll be leaving now.”

After the seating arrangement was over, Class 1’s homeroom teacher left the classroom as it was recess. Her teacher’s name was still written in large letters on her blackboard.

“That girl is sleeping.”

“It’s really white… Both the skin and the hair.”

The students in her classroom whispered as they looked at Sarah lying face down. She must have heard a voice calling to her from around her, and Sarah raised her head. Sarah raised her head again and saw that she was maintaining her usual calm expression. Although she was lying face down and her cheeks were slightly red, probably because she was pressed by her arms.

“Hey, hello there!”

“He’s up! He’s up!”

The moment Sarah woke up, the students who had been staring at her in her classroom crowded around us. Regardless of whether they were male or female, they came to Sarah and spoke to her.

“Wow! Are you a mixed race foreigner?”

“Yes.”

“Your hair is really beautiful…!”

In an instant, the world around us became noisy. It was like an annual event for students to gather around Sarah on the first day of school. Of course, some of the students had already heard rumors about Sarah.

“Sera, is it true that you are the daughter of a shaman?”

“It’s true.”

“Then are you saying you can see ghosts?”

“I don’t really want to be asked that question.”

“Oh, sorry…”

A female student asked Sarah if she could see her ghost. It was a question Sarah had been asked countless times since she was in elementary school. Now that she is a high school student, Sarah seems to be tired of people telling her that she can see everything. She coolly ignored the question.

‘It’s better to ignore it from the beginning.’

She, then and now, was reluctant to tell her ghost story to others. If she’s not going to tell you anyway, it might be better to just not respond from the beginning.

After a while, the bell rang and class started again.

Because it was the first day of school, the teachers did not make any progress. Teachers who entered the classroom gave an orientation or brief self-introduction and ended the class. The first day of our high school went by uneventfully.

*

In the afternoon, all classes ended.

Now it was time to return home.

After finishing the funeral, Sarah and I came out of the school.

“Jinwoo, where are you going?”

“I’m going to go to your house and do what I always do. I’ll borrow your computer.”

Compared to the past, my daily routine has not changed much.

What I always did was investigate mysterious phenomena. The easiest way to obtain information was by Googling on the Internet. In the past, I only did research at home, but now I often do research on the computer at Hyehwadang.

“Are your parents at home?”

“They both went abroad yesterday. Her mom said she had some work to do in the Philippines.”

“Is it the Philippines this time? There really is no place your mother doesn’t go.”

“A talented psychic is extremely rare. There are many people looking for her mother even from abroad.”

It seemed like Sarah’s parents had left for a foreign country yesterday. It was a good thing for me. Sarah’s parents tried to take care of me to the point where it was a burden. If I happened to run into him at home, he would give me food and even pocket money, so it wasn’t a burden.

After a while, we arrived at Hyehwadang.

Once inside the house, I turned on the computer and took out a thick notebook from my bag.

A thick notebook covered with a leather cover.

I bought this item when I was in middle school, so it was quite an old item.

This note contained stories that my father told me a long time ago.

It was a story about evil spirits and monsters I encountered while working as an exorcist.

‘If you just remember it, you’ll forget it. ‘I have to record everything.’

My late father told me many stories. Stories about exorcising such mysterious things, such as a haunted tree, a moth that haunts an area where a disaster occurred, something presumed to be a devil, a being lingering among the bushes, etc.

These were precious stories.

I wrote everything down in a notebook before I forget it because I thought it might be helpful to me someday. In the blank areas of the notebook, I was slowly recording things I had separately researched. This note was an important item to me.

“I brought that note again.”

Sarah looked at the note I took out and smiled.

Sera also knew well about the notebook I had been carrying around since middle school.

“You should always carry it with you. It’s like a keepsake from your father, so if you lose it, you’ll be in trouble. To be precise, the stories written in the notebook are your keepsakes.”

“It would be a good idea to keep it safe from now on. It’s truly a treasure.”

“Treasure?”

“Of course it’s a treasure. If you try to sell it, you’ll probably be able to sell it for a very high price. The stories written there, as long as you can prove its value, it will be worth the price.”

Sarah told her interesting story.

The story was that the notes I kept were expensive items.

“The information contained in the story is amazing. There are many records of exorcising old monsters, including evil spirits, and records of demons being expelled through exorcisms. That is all valuable information. Your father actually killed the evil ones. “It contains instructions on how to exorcise.”

“So where can I sell it?”

“Something like a religious organization. Of course, before selling it, they have to prove it’s true.”

“It’s too complicated.”

I have to find someone to buy the notebook and prove that the stories are true.

No matter how much money the notes made, the process was too complicated. It’s not something that can be done right away.

“I won’t. I’d rather just keep it to myself.”

“I guess you’re not that interested in money?”

“If you need money urgently later, why not sell it?”

I opened my notebook and researched the mystery on the Internet. I spent some time looking through posts on all kinds of sites. What I mainly looked for were posts about sightings of a spirit who resembled my father.

A large adult male.

A young man with curly hair.

In addition, the clothes my father wore when he was alive.

It was not an eyewitness account that could be easily found because the keywords were so broad.

Even as a high school student, I couldn’t find any real clues to my father’s traces.

‘Is today also a waste of time?’

I continued my investigation until night fell. It was getting late and it was time to finish the research and go home. The last time I was browsing a site dedicated to mysteries.

I found some posts on the site.

「I was climbing the mountain when I found a strange person.」

I clicked on the post and read it without much thought.

I was thinking of turning off my computer just after seeing this.

「Everyone knows about Chilryongsan Mountain, right? It’s a mountain that’s been a hot topic everywhere these days. A place where there are rumors of spiritual sightings among hikers. “Many disappearances have occurred here.”

「I live nearby, and I have been to Chilryongsan Mountain once. It must have been quite late at night. “As I was about to climb the mountain, someone spoke to me at the entrance.”

「It was a man wearing a black leather jacket. He suddenly appears in front of me and says this to me. Don’t climb the mountain now because it’s dangerous. “You could die.”

━━Tap!

My hand, which had been scrolling unconsciously, stopped.

In an instant, a memory from the past appeared in my head.

“Huh…?”

It was a memory of the day my father passed away.

That day, my father, who was riding in the car, died of a mysterious heart attack. I opened the car door myself and saw my deceased father for the first time.

What kind of clothes was your father wearing at that time?

My memories became clearer.

I vividly remembered my father with his eyes closed in the driver’s seat.

‘Black leather jacket.’

My father was wearing a leather jacket. The clothes were identical to those of the person seen by the informant in the current website posting. I came to my senses and read the text with concentration.

「The man seemed strangely intimidated as he spoke. Is there anything happening on the mountain? So I asked him directly. Why on earth can’t you go up here? But because the man was dangerous, he kept telling me to go back. “Even if I kept trying to climb up, I couldn’t get out of the way.”

「It was like that for a while… I suddenly saw something strange at the top of the mountain. Should I say white? I don’t know if it was an animal or a person, but it was dazzlingly white. That strange thing was getting closer and closer to where I was. “At a very fast speed.”

「When I started seeing white things, the man said this to me. This is your last chance, so go! “This is your last chance to escape.”

「When I heard that, I felt really scared for some reason. I ran back home without looking back. Before I got into the taxi, cold sweat broke out on my back. What on earth was so scary? “Even if I think about it again, I still can’t understand it.”

「What on earth were the things I saw on the mountain in the middle of the night?… ?」

That’s how the article ended.

Perhaps I was the first to discover traces of my father.