I brought over a green tea latte piled high with whipped cream, set it in front of Min-seo, and nervously watched her face. When she said nothing, I felt awkward and just fidgeted with my fingers under the table.
"It wouldn't have been too late to start after you reached the Expert tier. You exchanged points for cash?"
"I opened a vault recently and got some soul fragments."
Under Min-seo's sharp gaze, I suddenly felt like she was lumping me in with Eden, treating me the same way, and displeasure welled up. But I didn't show it in front of her.
"It seems you have no plans of going as far as Mogul."
I neither confirmed nor denied it. It would be nice to get there, but right now just rising to Expert was hard enough, and honestly, unless it was a wish that defied causality, like regression, I didn't need wishes up to S-Grade. I wanted to ask Min-seo what kind of revenge needed an S-Grade wish, but I didn't want her to know I had used a wish to find that out, so I asked something else entirely.
"By the way, the market is pretty generous about turning points into cash."
"It's a sales tactic. Because of it, some people come swarming into the market like moths to a flame."
Eden couldn't be the only one of his kind in the world. If you had no plans to raise your grade, nothing beat cash. It's not for nothing they say South Korea is the best country in the world to live in, if you have money.
"And, well, the ghosts are also a little ignorant about how people think of money."
I had thought I knew quite a lot about the Ghost Story Market by now, but I couldn't get a feel for how it ran. I wondered how so many people found out about it and kept coming into the market. They said it was for money, but that was only possible if you knew the place existed in the first place. It didn't add up.
"It seems there's something more you're curious about."
"It's nothing much, I was just thinking about how people end up flocking to the Ghost Story Market...."
Min-seo flicked through her phone and held out the screen.
"A Ghost Story Market... website?"
I blinked, but I hadn't misread it. I never would have thought I would see a Ghost Story Market website in the real world.
I promptly snatched the phone out of her hand and started exploring the site. It didn't actually sell anything; it listed things like urban legends and how to get into the Ghost Story Market.
"The Experts manage it. They're desperate for people to ferry disposables to them in the real world."
Watching Min-seo use the word "disposables" again, I swallowed hard.
"I haven't seen any Experts in the market other than you, Min-seo."
"The market isn't only in Korea. And right now, there are only about 30 Experts, me included."
At that, my head snapped up and I stared at Min-seo, and she gave a meaningful smile.
"Ah! One of them dropped out recently. You went soft and didn't finish it off, Min-jae, so I only confirmed it late."
It was the same smiling face and gentle tone as always, but for some reason her words made every fine hair on my body stand on end. The Ghost Story Market's user numbers currently ran up into the 5000s. Yet at her saying there were only about 30 Expert Investors, I felt an inexplicable unease.
"People in the market are meant to be ground down. They need to fill their bellies too, so the disposables have to keep cycling."
"...Do you get points for it separately?"
I paused for a moment at Min-seo's words, then went on.
"You're sharp."
Cold sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I wasn't fully in the safe zone yet either. When even the Experts were being ground down until only the bare minimum remained, I had only just reached the position of Experienced Investor.
Inside the Ghost Story Market, just because I had gained the upper hand with the old woman's notebook, I had been losing my head as if I had achieved something great.
"The reason for the grades. They don't want more people who can make big wishes."
"So they only want more humans who'll ferry food to them from the real world."
It was a good thing I had come to my senses now, at least. If I hadn't caught on, I would have sunk into one of what they called disposables, like the humans at the auction house.
A brief silence passed.
I didn't know why Min-seo had chosen me, but the vicious ghosts of the Ghost Story Market didn't want Experts to rise to Mogul Investor. It wasn't about points. Since even Min-seo, who had become an Expert and was getting separate points from them, still wasn't a Mogul, there were very likely other conditions attached.
'Experts who exist purely for convenience.'
Their numbers had to be maintained, but they didn't want them going any higher. Then the many Experts who had disappeared must have been the ones who tried to climb anyway. I wondered whether she, challenging it while knowing all that, was really still human.
And another question: it wasn't in the notebook, so I had tried to look it up with a wish, but information on Mogul Investors couldn't be found anywhere, except for 1 person in the past. In other words, it could also be a trap set by the market.
"It runs that deep?"
My despair didn't go so far as to accept all of that. Revenge mattered too, but my true goal was to survive afterward and live happily while watching their miserable, wretched ends.
I had no way of knowing why Min-seo pressed on, throwing away everything. I think that if you lose yourself in the end, you have failed. The only thing worth throwing everything away for is your own happiness. If nothing remained at the end, there would be no difference between Min-seo and the zombies I had seen in the market.
"I know you want your revenge right away, but you'll have to put it off for a while and take part in the Colosseum for me."
"What do you mean by that?"
Instead of answering my question, Min-seo said something out of left field. I was aware I couldn't yet take my revenge as satisfyingly as I wanted at the Experienced grade, but her words needed more explanation.
"You can use soul fragments to get skills, so you should have asked before using them. Points can be earned, but getting fragments by trading with humans isn't easy."
"I knew you could get skills, but I never imagined skills came in such a range, weapons, defense, even nullifying time limits."
I realized I really had used the fragments too hastily.
Skill-up....
The text had said skill-ups were possible from Experienced Investor on, but I had thought the fragments I had would be enough. And I had assumed it wouldn't be much different from the way Ocheonsa upgraded her favorability.
"You know the market has plus grades, right?"
"So if you acquire a skill under certain conditions, plus-grade wishes become possible."
Min-seo gave a meaningful smile. I had already understood, so I asked nothing more at that smile.
The wishes an Experienced Investor could make were C-Grade, which meant an investor with a skill-up could make C+-Grade wishes.
"How many do you have left now?"
I knew instinctively she was asking about soul fragments.
"I used some to raise my grade to Experienced, so 28."
"Then you'll have to collect 2 more from here on."
I was so startled my body nearly jumped forward, but I barely kept it under control. I had thought there were quite a lot of soul fragments in the vault, but the number of soul fragments needed for a skill-up was outrageous.
"I'll have to start collecting soul fragments right away, then."
Points might be collected through the market or other channels, but souls were different.
"You just raised your investor grade too fast, Min-jae. And 2 or so, you can collect bit by bit from now on. Don't worry."
Unlike me, deep in serious thought, Min-seo talked as if getting fragments were easy. I was about to sound her out, wondering whether there was another route, when she spoke.
"From now on, once the shop opens, buy every item without fail, every day."
"All of them?"
At Min-seo's words, out of nowhere, I stopped what I had been about to say. The shop's goods changed every Monday. That meant spending at least 30 to 40 points every week.
"Starting exactly one month from now, we'll take part every single day the Colosseum is open."
"Yes. I'll have everything ready."
"Keep your points at their current level by trading with them."
"Understood."
Min-seo said only what was necessary, but that was exactly why it hit home all the more. Spending 40 points every week might feel like a lot, but a little thought made it clear. This was another route to getting soul fragments.
What bothered me was that B-difficulty games hadn't come up in the Colosseum recently, so by the time I took part, the odds were high that difficulty would come up. But now that I had proven my usefulness to Min-seo, she wouldn't let me fall into danger. Min-seo's goal seemed impossible to reach alone, after all. In that case, I could squeeze her information and knowledge for all they were worth too. Life is give-and-take.
'The Kim Hyun-woo matter.... For word to spread that I'm back on my feet will take at least two months....'
It was fine to go a little slowly.
It mattered more that nothing like a half-baked revenge happened because I hadn't raised my grade.
***
[Memory Eraser, Soul Charger, Emotion Control Bracelet, Talisman of Protection.]
These were the items I had gotten through the market this week.
With them, I had handled about 3 requests from ghosts. The moment I rose to the Experienced grade and could trade with ghosts directly, I started taking requests.
[I want to eat 5 painful memories.]
[I want a human eyeball.]
[Open the path of nightmares for me.]
The requests varied according to their many tastes.
I had handled them all except the request to slip into a human's dreams and eat nightmares, but the problem was the shop. It wasn't simply a place that sold what investors needed. What I learned from trading with them was that most of the items from the shop were put together so their requests could be handled smoothly.
Items useful for playing Colosseum games hardly ever showed up.
'A market that exists purely for the ghosts.'
Maybe wishes were just the bait for that.
In the end, I turned my steps to the ghosts' shopping street. I meant to buy even one thing that would help in the Colosseum.
"How many credits will this cost?"
What I pointed to was plainly not a human hand. But it looked so useful I couldn't help asking the price.
"2000 credits."
A price equal to 20 points.
I hesitated to buy at the high price. But when I looked at the price tag, the numbers were struck through in red several times over, as if it had been marked down a few times, and I hesitated for a moment.
"You've got a smell on you, huh?"
Sniff, sniff. The ghost's nose twitched a few times, and its gaze went to the bracelet on my arm. As I carried out their requests, they kept eyeing my emotions, memories, and body, so I had put on an item.
'As expected, anyone running a shop must be fairly high-ranking.'
Lower-ranked ghosts hadn't noticed, but the way it looked at my arm, opened its mouth wide and grinned, gave me goosebumps.
"You can pay with something else."
"No. I'll pay 2000 credits."
At that, the ghost, its mouth now clamped shut as if it had never opened it to grin, looked at me with eyes full of regretful obsession. Before things got troublesome, I quickly handed over the money and picked up the item.
"It lasts 5 minutes."
I heard only the time stated, flatly, without any explanation of how to use it.
As something that had gone unsold for a long time, it gave off a dangerous aura.
[Grim Reaper's Left Hand]
The hand of a grim reaper who never made it back to King Yeomra, with only the hand left behind.
Frowning at the foul smoke coming off the black hand, I shoved it into my box.
Then I took out my phone to handle the nightmare request.
[Eden, are you free today?]
His usefulness was over anyway. He had been stirring up trouble in the group chat and causing problems, and because of my promise to Eden I had no grounds to stop him, but if I planted a nightmare in him, it seemed he would stay quiet for a while, so I picked him as the sacrifice for the nightmare request. The conditions for planting a nightmare: the other person and I had to know each other's names, we had to be alone together in a particular place, and I had to touch him and tell him I was giving him a nightmare. There was no one more suitable than Eden for all of that.
[Not this week, next week. Buying your senior drinks again, junior?]
[Yes. Well. There's something I want to ask your advice about, too.]
I didn't mention that I had risen to Experienced Investor. By next week or so, new items would show up in the shop, so it was even better.
'Please let something related to possession show up.'
I didn't want to give Eden any more thought. Dealing with him took as much emotional and physical energy as dealing with a 7-year-old boy. Once I gave him the nightmare, he would be a wreck, so it was a good chance to clear him out of the market.