Room 401 of the XX Motel.
Once we were face to face, Min-seo and I exchanged documents. I held out my report, and she held out a contract.
'This is... the trust I saw in the notebook.'
At the bottom of the contract were the name and mark of the Nightmare Trust that I had found in the old woman's notebook.
"Min-seo, why is the trust's mark on this?"
"Because you put up your soul as collateral."
At her words, I hurriedly flipped to the front page of the document and started reading. Nothing we had agreed on had changed, and if the contract was broken, my soul, held as collateral, would be recovered by the trust and deposited into her account. In the process, 1/5 of the soul would be taken off the top. It seemed a trust guarantee was a must for soul trades.
In the market, unlike the bank, which only held money, things like souls and memories were intangible, things a human couldn't carry around and use, so they were left with the trust, which stored special trade goods and items. As befitted the notorious market, it was for storing them to use when needed, after paying commissions and usage fees.
"I'm human. It's not the soul itself that I need."
"Still, you know this contract is a system where only the market profits, right?"
"The commission is steep, but if you were in my shoes, Min-jae, would you be sure I wouldn't betray you without a contract?"
A binding force, a covenant strong enough to stake a soul on. Those two things were what Min-seo needed.
As a user in the 2000s of the Ghost Story Market, she didn't trust verbal contracts between people. Neither did I, but I hadn't expected the system to be this unfair.
"The report's good enough. We're short on time, so hurry up and sign."
[Agreement Contract]
-Min-seo will help Min-jae with everything concerning market information, trades, and trades with ghosts until Min-jae becomes an Expert Investor.
-After becoming an Expert Investor, Min-jae will support Min-seo with a portion of the points and items he obtains in the market so that she can become a Mogul Investor.
-Inside the Ghost Story Market, neither will oppose the other until both of their wishes are fulfilled.
And so on... It laid out what we had discussed at length beforehand. Of course, the price of betrayal was a soul. A contract bound by souls tied us into a powerful partnership until both our wishes came true. Of course, I had no intention whatsoever of letting her take my soul. She didn't seem to have noticed, but this contract had a loophole.
[Party A : Kim Min-seo, Party B : Promising Investor Kim Min-jae.]
The reason she had gone out of her way to write "Promising" in front of my name, and one more thing.... Min-seo had made helping me become an Expert a condition, but if I played it right, I could turn this clause around too.
Min-seo tapped the contract with her finger and urged me on.
"I have one last question."
At my serious expression, Min-seo nodded.
"Once the deal is complete, my soul goes back to being mine, correct?"
"Yes, that's right. It's literally collateral."
"Then even if my soul turns black, is it still worth something when I trade with them?"
Min-seo seemed surprised for a moment, then covered her mouth with her hand and burst out laughing.
"What a cute question."
When my heavy expression didn't ease despite her teasing tone, Min-seo stopped laughing. Then she spread her white hand wide and showed it to me.
"Min-jae. If my hand were black, would it stop being a hand?"
"...Yes, I understand. Let's sign."
What was valuable to them was the soul itself. Black or white, it didn't matter. The soul of the Min-seo in front of me now was probably already stained black. That must have been why she handed that simple request off to me.
"I'll go hand the report over to the Idler. By our next meeting, write up the people you want revenge on, your priorities, procedures, and plans in detail and share them with me."
"Me first?"
"My revenge may only be possible once I reach Mogul. After you rise to Expert, we'll take care of your revenge first."
Watching Min-seo's back as she walked out of the motel, I sank into thought. I wondered what the wish could be that she hadn't been able to fulfill even with the skill that had carried her up to Expert, one step below Mogul Investor.
'Come to think of it, there was a rumor that she's a collector of souls....'
Among all the rumors about Min-seo that had gone up in the group chat, one said she was a collector who gathered souls. At the time, I had dismissed it as idle gossip, but it occurred to me that she might really be collecting them. If I couldn't see her revenge through to the end, my soul would pass to her. Min-seo's soul was already pledged, so she had put herself up instead. A so-called slave contract. That might look more profitable than a soul she couldn't use right away, but I didn't know why she had bothered to stake herself, and it left a bad taste.
"I'm sure I'm not the first."
Even inside the Ghost Story Market, souls were priced the highest of all. I wondered what Min-seo was trying to achieve by collecting however many of them, but then I snapped out of it.
'Curiosity is poison in here.'
However pretty she looked, she was the one who had been knocking around the market the longest. Even that personality could be fake. After all, I had never met an Expert Investor in the market other than Min-seo. I didn't need to be told what had become of the people who disappeared in here without a trace.
I had seen how it ended in the Colosseum game.
***
"Haa. I'll have to use a wish ticket after all."
Right after the test was over, I had flown to the hospital on Jeju Island where the old woman was.
But people who weren't family couldn't get in. If I had known, I would have found out the Ghost Story Market's entrance on Jeju Island in advance. Making wishes outside the market was only possible from Experienced Investor on.
'I'd better use a wish here today and then go to Jeju.'
All I had done was waste precious time. Of all things, the hospital sat on an exclusive plot of land on Jeju, and they started screening from the road near the hospital, which had me sweating bullets. No one would have guessed that the entire road was the way to the hospital entrance.
"How many points do I have left now?"
A few days ago, I had turned points into cash and picked up a Bentley Continental GT. 60 points, including the commission. At the same time, I had exchanged 20 points into market funds, so for the time being I could make plenty of wishes without converting points into funds.
[Promising Investor No. 3029 Fund Status]
Market Funds : 2100 credits, Current Points : 201 points
And in real money, exactly 10 million won was left in my bank account.
I had spent a fortune of nearly 80 points, but I had a hunch there would be something worth that much in the old woman's vault, so I went for it boldly.
"Give me documents that can prove I'm the old woman's family."
[No. 3029, this is an E-Grade wish and costs 100 credits. Proceed?]
"Proceed."
In front of my eyes appeared a family relations certificate and even an ID with a new name.
And now.
"Check whether I have the right to use the old woman's vault."
[No. 3029, this is an E-Grade wish and costs 100 credits. Proceed?]
"Proceed."
[According to the documents, ownership of the vault is included among the items in the home. Use permitted.]
It bothered me, so I used a wish ticket to ask whether I could use it. If I went all the way back and didn't have the right to use the vault, I would be in trouble. Lastly, I decided to use a wish to settle what I was most curious about.
"Check what the old woman has in the Nightmare Trust and the Bank of the Dead."
[No. 3029, this is a D-Grade wish and costs 1000 credits. Proceed?]
Startled, I hesitated to answer for a moment. It was a wish only 1 grade higher, yet the gap in credits was huge. It was only 10 points, but it meant the higher your investor grade went, the more funds you needed to make a wish.
"...Proceed."
[Nightmare Trust - 38 small soul fragments, Ghost's Eye (5 intermediate, 1 advanced), 120 memories, 81 nightmares]
[Bank of the Dead - 4300 extorted points (1000 points on hold, death not yet confirmed)]
There was more in the trust and the bank than I had thought. An unexpected windfall. She seemed to have put only the important, choice things in the trust. If nothing else, 10 soul fragments were worth 500 points. Depending on what kind of memories they were, the memories looked like they could easily be worth 100 points or more, and I couldn't remember the rest in detail, but they were bound to be helpful one way or another. And 4300 points: even minus the points on hold, it was enough to go straight up to the Expert tier.
"Haha. Isn't this a whopper of a catch?"
My face twisted strangely, and as laughter leaked out of me in joy, the corners of my mouth rose.
"With these points, I can rank up to Expert Investor...."
[Promising Investor No. 3029, will you use 1000 points to change the registered holder?]
At the alert, my head went cold. To use the extorted points, I had to hand over 1000 points; with the 200 points I had on hand now, that was out of the question.
"No. Tell me what I can use right away if I open the vault now."
I had forgotten for a moment that this was a vicious market where nothing ever came easy. If, even after opening the vault, I couldn't use any of it right away, or using it cost more points than I had, there was no need to push myself to open the vault. In the end, I used a wish to check.
[Nightmare Trust - 38 small soul fragments, 120 memories, and 81 nightmares are immediately usable.]
I had spent points to check, but I didn't think I would need the souls urgently right now, and I didn't know how to use the rest, so I had to spend still more points asking questions.
'If I ask more questions today, I'll have 600 credits left....'
I asked my questions, meaning to hold off on wishes for a while afterward, but I didn't get very satisfying answers. In the end, with my flight's departure time looming, I had no choice but to leave the Ghost Story Market. As it turned out, the only things in the old woman's trust I could actually use were the memories and the nightmares. And even the nightmares came with their own conditions for use.
I had deliberately booked a dawn flight so I could sleep on the plane, but my mind was too unsettled, and I couldn't fall asleep.
'I really hope she's in a condition where she can talk.'
As for the fingernails, as long as she was alive, I could just clip some and bring them back; the problem was the cursed gold coin. When I heard that formally inheriting the trust required the previous user's authentication gold coin and a part of her body, goosebumps had risen on my skin. I had compromised on fingernails for the body part, but with an E-Grade wish, I had only confirmed that the gold coin was in the hospital. At first, I had asked for its exact location, but the wish grade immediately jumped to D-Grade, and I stopped the wish, begrudging the points.
'It's definitely in the hospital anyway, so if I search, it'll turn up.'
The owner of the No. 3029 key was me now. If she wouldn't hand it over, I could just make a deal to get her out of the hospital. The house, the key, and the market registration were all in my name now, so even if the old woman got out, she couldn't do a thing.
***
"I'm here to see Grandma Kim Ok-bun."
"What's your relationship to her?"
"I'm her grandson."
I held out the prepared documents and the new ID the market had given me.
The nurse looked over the documents, then picked up the receiver and called the elevator guard. The guard came over shortly, bowed to me, took the elevator key out of his pocket, and unlocked it.
"It's the room at the far left end of the 19th floor."
"Thank you."
I gave a kindly smile to the guard, who tapped his card key and pressed the floor number for me. It might be called the room at the end, but apart from the waiting room and the guest areas, she practically had the 19th floor to herself. Her children had abandoned the old woman, yet they were paying an absurd amount for her to use an entire floor of a hospital this big.
'Well, maybe the inheritance procedure isn't finished yet?'
The elevator arrived at the 19th floor, and the doors slowly opened. Deciding to set aside useless thoughts for now, I headed for the VIP room at the end of the left corridor to see the old woman.
KNOCK KNOCK—
I cleared my throat once in front of the door and slid the sliding door open. Then the bed inside the room came into view, and the old woman lying on it.
"Hello. I'm...."
For a moment, I forgot to breathe. It was because saying hello was pointless.
A cursed living corpse.
That wasn't a person. There was no other way to put it. At the shocking sight of her, I froze on the spot, unable to move.