cursed but broke 💀
Ishaan: so update.
i resigned today
Minho: WAIT WHAT
Yoon: no way.
no way you actually took it
Jisoo: ISHAAN K ASCENDING ABOVE ALL OF US MORTALS
Daehyun: maybe the statue really was a blessing after all
Minho: the curse arc was actually just character development
Yoon: you owe us a party.
a big one.
mandatory
Jisoo: we made you rich, technically, if you think about it
Ishaan: you guys literally just watched me stare at a rock for 5 minutes
Minho: exactly.
investors
Ishaan: fine fine i’ll treat you guys, calm down
Daehyun: 🎉🎉🎉
He set his phone face down on his desk, still smiling, and went back to typing out his two weeks notice.
The interview process had been strange in its own way, a single call, a folder of paperwork, no second round.
When word got around the office about which company he was going to, the questions started.
“Higher things now, huh?” one of the senior associates said, not quite looking at him.
“Guess our structure wasn’t good enough for you.”
Your structure kept me in the same seat for three years, Ishaan thought.
“Just needed a change,” he said instead.
The Haneul Group building didn’t look like anything special from the outside.
Glass, steel, a lobby full of people talking on phones and waiting on couches, coming and going like any other office building in the city.
Ishaan walked up to the front desk and set the CEO’s card down in front of the receptionist.
“Hi.
I was told to come here about a job.”
She picked up the card, turned it over once.
“And who told you that?”
“Kang Jihoon,” he said.
“Really?” She was already reaching for the phone.
“One moment.”
She spoke quietly into the receiver, describing him without quite looking at him, something about a foreigner waiting at the front desk.
Then she covered the mouthpiece with one hand.
“Sorry, your name?”
“Ishaan K.”
She repeated it into the phone, slow and careful, like she was reading it off a label for the first time.
“Ee-sha-an…
K.” A pause.
“Ishaank-ssi.
Yes.
That’s what he said.”
Ishaan almost corrected her, the K isn’t part of the name, it’s just my last initial, but he let it go.
He’d stopped correcting people three years ago.
It was easier to just answer to whatever came out of someone’s mouth.
Still, standing there listening to himself get folded into one word, some small part of him wondered if this was really the right move.
He could still turn around.
He could still say he changed his mind.
“Okay, okay, Ishaank-ssi, I’ll send him up.” She hung up and slid a visitor badge across the desk.
“Don’t worry, I’ll walk you over.”
She led him to the elevator bank and pressed the button for the fourteenth floor.
The doors slid shut behind her without her stepping in.
“Someone will be waiting for you when you get up there,” she said through the closing gap.
“Hope you’re happy working with us.”
The elevator rose in complete silence, walls lined in gold accents and dark polished wood, the kind of finish that made everything feel slightly out of his price range just by standing in it.
I basically upgraded my whole life in one elevator ride, he thought, watching the floor numbers climb.
He wasn’t sure yet if that thought made him feel better or worse.
The doors opened on fourteen, and Junho was already standing there waiting.
“Hoped you’d come earlier, but it is what it is,” Junho said, waving him out.
“Come on, we don’t bite.
Mostly.”
He led Ishaan down a hallway that opened into a wide, quiet floor, nothing like the busy lobby below.
“This floor’s just us,” Junho said.
“Rest of the building doesn’t know what happens up here.
Keeps things simple.”
“Simple,” Ishaan repeated, glancing back toward the elevator like it might still be an option.
“We’re not going to sit here and lie to you and say this is a nice, easy job,” Junho added.
“It’s a lot.
Figured you should hear that early.”
An older man stepped out of a side office, sharp suit, calm face.
“Welcome to the team,” he said, extending a hand.
“Chairman Yoo.
Junho’s father, though he doesn’t like people leading with that.”
“Oh.
Hi.” Ishaan shook his hand, unsure what else to do with his face.
“Relax,” Chairman Yoo said, laughing.
“Nobody bites, like my son said.”
Near the windows, arms crossed, Kang Jihoon stood watching the whole exchange without a word, like he was cataloging it rather than joining it.
Yuna appeared from somewhere behind them, headphones pulled down around her neck.
“Where do you live right now?”
Ishaan told her the name of his neighborhood.
“That won’t do.
We have company apartments.” She said it like it was common knowledge, the kind of thing everyone already knew.
“Most people outside this floor don’t even know they exist.
Whole building’s owned by him, actually.” She tilted her head toward the windows.
“Yeah.
It’s owned by me,” Kang Jihoon said, and for a second something almost like pride slipped into his voice.
“See his enthusiasm,” Junho said, grinning, nudging Somi with an elbow.
“Never seen him light up about anything the way he lights up about that building,” Somi said.
“I bought it, it’s mine, I’m allowed to be proud of it,” Kang Jihoon said, already sounding flat again.
“There’s a unit open just below his,” Yuna went on.
“We’ll book it for you.
Easier if everyone’s close by.”
“Oh.
I don’t really—” Ishaan started.
“I don’t think I can afford anything in a building like this right now.”
“There’s no rent,” Yuna said, quiet, almost like an afterthought.
“There’s no rent?”
“There’s no rent,” she said again, even quieter.
“Comes out of his pocket.
Don’t worry about it.”
“I can hear you, you know that?” Kang Jihoon said from across the room.
“You were supposed to,” Yuna said, not even looking up from her phone.
Chairman Yoo gestured him toward a couch near the windows.
“So.
How did all this start for you?”
Ishaan told him everything.
The bet, the mountain, the shrine, the five minutes he couldn’t fully remember.
The room went quiet in a way that felt heavier than it should have.
“Did you hear anything?” Chairman Yoo asked.
“See anything strange, in that moment?”
“It said I didn’t flinch.”
Chairman Yoo let out a short laugh and shook his head slowly.
“Poor thing.
Well.
It is what it is.”
The quiet stretched a second too long after that.
Chairman Yoo clapped his hands together, once, sharp.
“Alright, enough of that.
Let’s let the weird tension go.” He waved a hand at the room.
“Introductions.
Properly, this time.
Nobody’s actually said their name yet.”
Junho stepped forward first.
“I’m Junho.
Kang Jihoon’s best friend, and yes, this old man’s son.” He nodded at his father.
“Officially, everyone in the building knows me as the architect.
Unofficially, I build the talismans, draw the ritual circles, carve the wards.
Architecture just happens to cover for both.
Also, small thing, I once single-handedly held this whole floor together during a breach that would’ve—”
“You patched one ward that was already failing,” Baek cut in.
“Let’s not.”
“I stabilized a collapsing containment line with my bare hands,” Junho said.
“You taped a piece of paper to a wall,” Somi said.
“I was there.”
“The paper was doing a lot of work in that moment,” Junho said, entirely unbothered.
“I’m Yuna.” She tapped the headphones around her neck, ignoring the two of them completely.
“I hear spirits.
Not see them, hear them.
It never turns off, same as your eyes probably don’t.
Officially I’m the floor planner and interior designer.”
“Baek.” The older man gave a short nod.
“I read intent.
What a spirit wants before it acts on it.
Officially, structural engineer.”
“Somi.” She leaned against a desk.
“I read the land itself.
Whether it’s cursed, occupied, carrying some history it shouldn’t.
Officially, I’m the analyst who checks wind load and structural stress.”
Junho waved a hand toward the windows without even looking over.
“And that’s Kang Jihoon.
Doesn’t talk much.
One of his worse traits, honestly.”
“You talk enough for both of us,” Kang Jihoon said, walking over at last, and something in his voice had loosened, just slightly, the way it hadn’t for anyone else in the room.
“See, this is what I put up with,” Junho said to Ishaan, though he was grinning when he said it.
“This is our boss,” Junho went on, more seriously now.
“That’s actually part of why we need you.
Someone’s got to put words in his mouth.”
“He’s our shaman,” Junho added.
“Sees spirits most of the time.”
“Most of the time?” Ishaan asked.
“What happens the rest of the time?”
“We’re all blind moles,” Somi said, and the room actually laughed at that.
Everyone turned to look at Ishaan expectantly.
“Hi.
My name’s Ishaan K.” He glanced at Kang Jihoon, then back at the group.
“I’m the CEO’s assistant, and my job is to see ghosts.”
“Yay,” Somi said flatly, and the room laughed again.
“Before anything else,” Baek said, “we need to give you a name.”
“A name?
I have one.”
“Not for the field,” Baek said.
“You don’t call out someone’s real name on a job.
If something gets hold of it, that’s a door left open.
Names matter more than people think.”
“I’m the Reader,” Baek said.
“Since I read what things want before they act on it.”
“Listener,” Yuna said, tapping her headphones again.
“Analyst,” Somi said, shrugging like it was obvious.
“Crafter,” Junho said, spreading his hands like he was presenting himself.
“And he’s the Anchor,” Baek said, nodding at Kang Jihoon.
“You’ll be the Observer.”
“Because I observe everything?” Ishaan guessed.
“Exactly,” Baek said, and the room lit up again, everyone talking over each other about what that meant, what he’d be doing, how it all worked.
Nobody in the room looked toward the windows.
They were too wrapped up in each other, too busy pulling Ishaan into the noise of it, to notice anything happening outside the glass.
Fourteen floors up, past glass that shouldn’t have let anyone stand there at all, a little girl sat on the windowsill, watching them the way someone might watch fish through the wall of a tank.
She smiled, small and easy, and started talking to herself, her mouth barely moving.
“I don’t know why the goddess chose you.
But let’s see how long you and your little party last.”
Nobody heard her.
Nobody even knew to listen.
Kang Jihoon’s head turned toward the windows first, slow and deliberate, his eyes narrowing at nothing in particular.
“What is it?” Ishaan asked, following his gaze.
“Not sure.” Kang Jihoon kept staring at the glass a second longer.
“Something.
Can’t place it.”
Ishaan looked too, a prickle at the back of his neck he couldn’t explain.
The windowsill sat empty.
Just glass, and the city stretched out gray and ordinary far below it.
“Guess it’s nothing,” Ishaan said.
Kang Jihoon didn’t answer right away, still watching the empty glass like it owed him something.
Then he turned back to the room, and whatever it was, he let it go.