WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 1: I Met an Evil Spirit

──────

When someone has had a religion since before they were born, they call it a cradle faith.

It means their parents took them to church or a temple from the fetal stage onward, and they grew up practicing that faith.

I was practically the poster child for a cradle faith, but was I a devout believer? Well, I wouldn't say that.

I was just religious enough to go to church because my parents did.

Going to church from an early age didn't leave me with fond memories.

My parents were extremely devout.

Devout enough to drag a kid who had just started elementary school to every single dawn prayer service.

Smack!

"M-Mom?"

"Who's falling asleep during dawn prayer? Get a grip."

Seriously. Dragging an elementary school kid to dawn prayer, then slapping him for dozing off.

Were there really other parents like that?

Wasn't that way too harsh?

Still, I had to go.

They told me to leave home if I wasn't going to church, so what choice did I have?

"God our Father, protect Your child Baek Yohan from wicked spirits..."

It was during a laying-on-of-hands prayer, like usual.

A laying-on-of-hands prayer was when a pastor placed a hand on a believer's head and prayed for them.

Pastors usually came around to pray for people during dawn prayer or the prayer portion of regular worship.

In my case, the senior pastor always prayed for me, but that day was a little different.

"This is the kid?"

I cracked my eyes open and looked up. Another pastor stood beside the elderly Pastor Park.

The most famous celebrity pastor at our church.

People said his prayers were especially effective or something.

Didn't seem like the kind of phrase you should attach to a pastor.

That pastor didn't start praying over me. He just stared at me for a while.

What was that about?

I closed my eyes again and waited, but the sound I heard didn't resemble a prayer at all.

"Wow..."

It wasn't a prayer. It was an exclamation.

More like a sigh of dismay, really.

I finally opened my eyes and looked up. The pastor was grinning at me.

"You need to keep going to church diligently."

"Excuse me?"

"If you hate church, go to a Buddhist temple instead. You've got a rough fate ahead of you, kid."

What was he, some shaman? Why was he talking about my fate?

"Pastor Kim, is that really something a pastor should say?"

"We have to save people."

Something about what he said was weird, but the conclusion was still that I should keep going to church, so whatever.

Pastor Kim's meddling didn't stop there.

"Hey, Yohan. Come here."

"What's wrong, Pastor?"

"It's nothing. Take this."

He handed me an old scroll.

It was tied with string and bore a seal, and the parchment looked as though old blood had dried and crusted across it.

"What's this?"

"Ah, this is the Book of Enoch, an original apocryphal manuscript excavated in Ethiopia. I nicked it."

"...."

That sounded like an incredibly dangerous thing to admit.

"I thought our Yohan needed it more than I did. Keep it safe."

Anyway, he said it was something precious he had gotten all the way from Ethiopia, so I kept it safe.

After that, my religious life continued.

Or at least, I thought it would.

Until my parents died.

It was a car accident.

The kind of common accident that happened every day.

It didn't feel common when it happened to me.

Both my parents had grown up in orphanages, and they had no relatives. I almost couldn't even arrange their funeral, but the people from church came and handled it for me.

I hadn't known funeral procedures cost that much.

Later, when their bodies were prepared and cremated, the tears I'd been holding back came pouring out.

Ah. My parents were really gone now.

They had nagged me endlessly about going to church, but...

They had also spent their lives doing their best for their only child.

After everything was over, I think I wandered through life for a while.

I took three days off from my part-time job and got fired. There was the inheritance and debt, registering their deaths, closing their accounts. Pensions, insurance, real estate, their car... Capitalist society being what it was, there was a lot of money-related stuff to deal with.

My head was a mess, and I was busy. For the first time in my life, I didn't go to church that weekend.

Then I skipped the next week too.

And the week after that.

And the week after that.

I drifted through a whole month like that.

"I'm hungry."

It was dawn, so the only place worth going was a convenience store.

I grabbed a lunchbox and some canned cola on a buy-two-get-one-free deal, then noticed something on the clerk's shoulder.

At first, I thought it was a shadow.

But shadows didn't "drip down" like that.

I looked up to see what it was, and saw black hair.

Long hair, hanging limp and soaking wet, flowing down the clerk's neck.

Then there was a face.

It was tilted, "looking" at me.

It had no pupils.

Yet I could feel its gaze.

Did our eyes meet? Did it know I had seen it?

Thump.

My heart gave a violent leap.

"Would you like me to ring those up?"

The clerk smiled as if nothing was wrong.

Couldn't they see it? Was I the only one who could?

I hurriedly lowered my head.

Even as I put the lunchbox and canned cola on the counter, I forced myself to keep my eyes down.

Don't look at it.

Never. Never look at it.

I warned myself. When I tried to pull my card from my wallet, I couldn't get a proper grip on it. My fingertips kept slipping.

In the end, I had to dig my nails into the faux leather hard enough to leave marks before I could pull the card out.

Beep.

The payment terminal sounded unusually loud.

"Sir, would you like a bag?"

I almost raised my head without thinking.

Don't.

You can't look up.

Just as I barely managed to suppress the urge with that inner warning, it entered my field of vision.

Why?

I hadn't even raised my head...

It slid its face over the lunchbox on the counter and looked up at me.

Grin.

Its smile split open.

It still had no eyes, but a smile spread across its mouth.

It saw me.

It saw me.

It saw me.

My heart pounded like mad. I ran out of the convenience store without looking back.

"Sir?!"

I heard the clerk's voice, but behind it, very low...

Wet breathing overlapped with it.

Along with a gaze that felt sticky against my skin.

I rushed home and locked the door first thing. If what I had just seen was what I thought it was, I wasn't sure what good that would do.

I locked the door, then threw myself onto my bed.

I pulled the blanket over my head and gasped for air.

My breath came in ragged bursts, but I couldn't stop.

That gaze kept coming back to me. Those empty eye sockets. That horrifying smile.

I was trying to calm myself down when I felt the edge of the blanket shift slightly.

It wasn't my imagination.

It wasn't a mistake.

With a clear rustle, someone was pulling at the blanket.

My breath stopped.

My body froze.

I couldn't move even a finger.

"...."

My throat had closed up so badly I couldn't even make a sound.

Then the blanket was yanked again.

No.

I desperately clutched the blanket.

As if it were my last line of defense, I gripped it with both arms and held on.

I could hear breathing.

It was on the other side.

Wet breaths brushing past from somewhere very close.

I trembled violently.

My whole body shook, my teeth clacking together.

A ghost.

An evil spirit?

It had seen me and followed me.

In that situation, there was only one thing I could rely on.

"Lord... Jesus, God... p-please help me..."

A broken voice.

Something between a prayer and a scream slipped out.

"God, Jesus, please..."

I was making the sign of the cross with my fingers when a low, sticky voice burrowed into my ears.

【What's your cross?】

My heart sank.

【What's it made of?】

That persistent question.

The answer to it would decide my fate.

A cross.

A cross.

Gold? Silver? Iron? Wood?

All kinds of crosses flashed through my mind, but none of them were in my hands.

I wasn't holding anything.

【Where's your cross? Don't you have even one?】

Did I really not have one?

Was there really not a single cross that could save me in a situation like this?

I gritted my teeth and searched for an answer to throw back at the ghost.

My voice cracked as I spoke, desperate enough to give it everything I had.

"My cross is..."

Push through to the end.

"My faith and belief in my heart!!"

At that moment, some kind of light poured into the room.

I thought it was the fluorescent light, but it wasn't.

I had never seen such brilliant, dazzling golden light in my life.

Just as that radiance, holy enough to feel miraculous, flooded the room...

Riiip!

Something split wide open.

【Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!】

A shriek tore through the air, enough to rupture my eardrums.

It wasn't the eerie voice that inspired fear.

It was a pure scream. Was this what a victim on the verge of death in a horror movie sounded like, screaming through unbearable pain?

Crunch! Crack!

One disturbing sound followed another, and the force pulling on my blanket vanished.

Through the gap in the blanket, I saw legs dangling in midair.

Well, it was a ghost, so I guess floating was more accurate...

【Kiiik! Kiiiiik!】

I could tell the ghost's voice had twisted into a scream of unmistakable agony, so I cautiously lifted the blanket.

"Uh."

The evil spirit was being "bitten" by something.

A huge mouth.

Human... no, it was so enormous that the only creature I could think of with a mouth that big was a whale.

A pitch-black maw was chewing on the evil spirit.

It felt far more real than any monster from a slasher movie I had ever watched.

The crunching tore at my ears as the evil spirit struggled inside.

Unlike when it had been hunting me, the evil spirit now flailed in panic, confusion, pain, and terror.

It reached a hand toward me.

As if it were asking me to save it.

【Kyaaaaaaaaaah!!】

But before I could do anything, the evil spirit's torso was severed by those teeth.

Its spiritual body being cut apart looked like a cloud of smoke split in two.

Even the scattered smoke wasn't spared by the maw.

Chomp!

It swallowed it in an instant.

Once it had been cut in half, survival was already a cruel joke, but the mouth wouldn't allow even that. It ground the thing between its teeth, chewing it into tiny pieces.

All I could do was stare blankly.

I couldn't even think of running. My legs were shaking too badly to move.

Meeting a ghost was already unreal enough, but then there was a mouth that ate the ghost.

How was I supposed to run from something like that?

Clack! Clack-clack!

Having chewed up the ghost, the mouth began clicking its teeth at me.

"F-Father in heavenhallowedbeyourname...!"

Clack! Clack-clack!

"Your kingdomcome, Your willbedoneonearthasitisinheaven!"

Clack-clack-clack!

"Forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us! LeadusnotintotemptationbutdeliverusfromevilforthekingdomandthepowerandthegloryareYoursforever!!"

Clack-clack-clack-clack!

Why was it completely fine?

"Amen! Amen amen!!"

Clack!

The mouth drooled as it rubbed its huge white teeth against me.

I shuddered in terror, then suddenly noticed the "white wings" sprouting from that maw.

Six white wings, holy enough to look completely out of place on that pitch-black mouth.

No way.

It couldn't be.

Not with that appearance?

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried