Superstar From Age 0

Chapter 601

“I used to think that way.”

Seo-jun laughed at Jang Hyun Jun’s words as he was writing a report.

The duty of managing the vehicles coming and going from the base was assigned to one senior and one junior soldier. Today, it was Corporal Lee Seo-jun and (of course, under special supervision) Private Jang Hyun Jun.

It had been a week since he moved in.

Jang Hyun Jun adapted very well to the Baekho unit, contrary to his worries. It was thanks to Corporal Lee Seo-jun’s amazing ability.

“I knew I could feel them, but I didn’t know I could see them.”

“…I thought you were not human.”

Jang Hyun Jun recalled a week ago as he looked at the corporal who was smiling and talking.

He was so nervous until he entered the barracks with the platoon leader.

“You guys are amazing…You all have such strong mentalities.”

The senior soldier who was in charge of the platoon introduced Jang Hyun Jun with a calm face, saying, “Private Jang Hyun Jun, he can see ghosts.” He looked like he didn’t care whether Jang Hyun Jun could see ghosts or not.

The other platoon members were surprised, but they didn’t seem to be afraid or think of him as weird. They asked Jang Hyun Jun various questions with curious faces. Some of them went to Seo-jun and asked, “Corporal, can you fix something like that?”

At that time, Seo-jun answered, “Well, I don’t know…”

Seo-jun smiled and said.

“That’s why you came to our platoon.”

He had to deal with a lot of ‘nonsense’ until the old-timers or troublemakers were ‘reformed’ through ‘counseling’. And when they were transferred out after being ‘reformed’, another troublemaker would move in. It was not easy to endure such things that happened almost every week.

So it was natural that the soldiers with the best mentalities in the battalion gathered in the 4th platoon where Corporal Lee Seo-jun was.

Jang Hyun Jun chuckled.

He felt sorry to say this, but he felt more comfortable here than in his previous unit.

He didn’t see any lowly ghosts, nor did he hear any creepy laughter. There were no more unexplained accidents, either.

‘It must be thanks to this corporal!’

He thought he was a fearsome tiger, but he was the kindest person of all.

There were no vehicles coming and going, so he had nothing to do. Jang Hyun Jun brought up the stories he couldn’t tell before.

“Still, I didn’t know there was someone like me. I went to many shaman houses with my grandmother, but they were all fake except for one. They couldn’t even see the lowly ghosts next to them.”

“Didn’t you say your family wasn’t a shaman family?”

“Yes. I don’t know about the old days, but my grandmother said there were no shamans in our family. My friend said it might be something like heredity or something…Anyway, I’m the only one like this in our house.”

He had been like that since he was born, so his parents left him to his grandparents and ran away. Jang Hyun Jun smiled bitterly as he swallowed his words.

“I really wanted to try receiving a divine message with the help of a real shaman, but he said I didn’t have any big gods. He said they were all lowly ghosts… So he said there was no point in receiving a divine message.”

Hmm. I wonder if that shaman could see the divine energy and the demonic energy. He had a brief doubt.

Seo-jun, who finished the record, asked.

“But how did you come to the army? From what I heard about what happened in your previous unit, there must have been a problem during the physical examination or the training camp.”

If there was such a problem, they would have sent him home before assigning him to a unit.

Jang Hyun Jun scratched his neck and answered.

“Well…My friends and I thought so, too. I kept seeing lowly ghosts, so I thought I would be exempted from the military service because of mental illness or something when they interfered with the physical examination. But I didn’t see any of them on the day of the physical examination and during the training camp.”

“None at all?”

“Yes. I didn’t hear or see anything, and nothing strange happened.”

There was no problem, so he passed as a first-class soldier.

Jang Hyun Jun smiled weakly.

“So…I thought maybe I was well suited for the military, so I decided to stick to it…But this happened.”

He quickly added in a bright voice.

“Of course! Now I don’t see any of them thanks to you, Corporal!”

“But this might be temporary…”

Unlike Jang Hyun Jun, who was excited by the long-awaited peace, Seo-jun scratched his chin and spoke pessimistically.

“Right now, I’m staying close to you almost 24 hours a day, so you don’t see them, but if you stay away for a while, the lowly ghosts that were far away will come back.”

Seo-jun was pushing away the lowly ghosts around Jang Hyun Jun with his divine energy. If the divine energy disappeared, the lowly ghosts would swarm back.

“And if I try to exorcise them…It seems like new lowly ghosts will stick to you…”

“Really?”

Seo-jun crossed his arms and looked at Jang Hyun Jun as if he was looking at a strange creature. He was indeed strange. He seemed to be very rare even in the books of his previous life that he had read.

“So, your soul or your power or whatever, it’s like candy.”

“Candy…you mean?”

“Yeah. That’s why the ants keep coming. What’s the point of exorcising ten ants? Thousands and tens of thousands of ants will keep coming.”

Jang Hyun Jun opened his eyes wide at Seo-jun’s explanation.

I was the candy of the ghost world…!

“Usually, there is an owner of this candy. The owner prevents the ants from coming near. Or the amount of candy is small, so the ants eat it all.”

Seo-jun scratched his chin.

He was able to get this information by reading a lot of books related to ghosts or souls in the past week. Of course, they were books from the Library of Life.

“The former is usually solved by receiving a divine message, but the latter is just…um…dying.”

They eat it all…dying…

Jang Hyun Jun swallowed his dry saliva.

“Then…how much candy do I have…?”

Jang Hyun Jun became more polite. He felt like he was meeting a real shaman, and he seemed to hear a bell ringing.

As he looked at Seo-jun, hoping that he would open his mouth,

“Oh, a car is coming.”

“Huh? …Ah! Yes!”

Jang Hyun Jun ran out with a dreamy expression. He had forgotten that this was a military infirmary and that he was on duty.

As he went outside, he saw a car coming from a distance.

‘…How did he know that?’

He could only hear the car sound now, but how did the corporal know that from inside the infirmary?

‘Could it be that the corporal…’

Jang Hyun Jun looked at Seo-jun through the window.

‘…was a shaman outside?’

A very powerful one.

Then he could understand the ‘counseling’ that reformed people. He was so powerful that ordinary people would be unwittingly mesmerized by him.

After the car passed, Jang Hyun Jun asked Seo-jun again about the amount of candy.

“Fortunately, you have a lot. A lot.”

Then I won’t die, he thought and sighed with relief.

“But you don’t have an owner to fend off the ants, so you’ll suffer for the rest of your life.”

“…Is receiving a divine message the best option then?”

“That would be nice, but the problem is that there is no god to descend.”

“…Then am I…a candy that is tempting for lowly ghosts but not very interesting for big gods, a mediocre candy with a lot of quantity…?”

“Well, something like that.”

Jang Hyun Jun became gloomy at that answer. Seo-jun smiled bitterly and patted Jang Hyun Jun’s shoulder.

“I’ll try to find a way too.”

There might be a suitable ability somewhere in the Library of Life.

‘It might take some time, considering that I haven’t found one yet.’

His next work was [Over the Rainbow 2], so he had plenty of time left.

“…Thank you.”

Jang Hyun-joon, who nodded his head at Seo-jun’s words, soon lifted his head.

“Or, what about… working with this sergeant outside?”

“With me?”

“Yes! Then you don’t have to worry about the ghosts when you work.”

Seo-jun blinked his eyes.

“Do you know what I do?”

“Aren’t you a shaman? I can see ghosts too, so I can help you!”

Seo-jun laughed at Jang Hyun-joon’s words.

“No, I’m not a shaman.”

“Really? But you can see ghosts and control strange energy, right?”

“I’m not a shaman, but…”

Seo-jun smiled brightly.

“I do something that’s one step away from a shaman’s fortune-telling.”

***

At the end of May, which was busy with various events.

“Wow! Jang Hyun-joon! You look so different after going to the army!”

“Right. You look like a grown-up now.”

Jang Hyun-joon, who had returned from his vacation, smiled and waved his hand over his shoulder. His friends laughed at his gesture of swatting the empty air.

“Can you still see them?”

“Yeah.”

Sigh.

The three of them sighed at the same time. They both knew that he started seeing the ghosts again four days after he was assigned to his unit.

“But it’s a relief that you have this sergeant with you.”

“I didn’t think there would be someone like Jang Hyun-joon.”

“He’s more amazing than me. This sergeant.”

Fried chicken with honey, spicy chicken, and garlic chicken were placed on the table. The three of them, who had poured a glass of beer each, ate eagerly.

“Can’t you learn that? The thing where you emit energy.”

“I asked him, but he said he could do it from the beginning.”

“I see. It must be a talent then…”

Jang Hyun-joon and his friends said with regretful faces. They didn’t know that it would take a long time to teach [(Pre)Elf’s Basic Breathing], considering the race and age, and to use it like Seo-jun.

“But still, a good shaman would make you a talisman or something, right?”

“Didn’t he say he’s not a shaman?”

“Huh? Did he?”

Jang Hyun-joon nodded at his friends’ words.

“He’s not a shaman, but he does something that’s one step away from a shaman’s fortune-telling. I don’t know much about fortune-telling, though.”

One of his friends, who was eating a chicken wing, rolled his eyes. He was the one who always talked about inheritance and stuff.

“Isn’t that a celebrity’s fortune? You know, when you look at the celebrities’ fortunes, they say that 18 out of 10 would have been shamans.”

“Celebrity?”

Jang Hyun-joon and his friend blinked their eyes.

“If he was a celebrity, Hyun-joon would have recognized him right away.”

“There are some unknown people too.”

“But he’s too handsome for that. He has a face that can’t go unnoticed. That face.”

Jang Hyun-joon’s words made his friend nod his head.

“Besides, his name is Lee Seo-jun. Even if he’s unknown, he has the same name as the actor Lee Seo-jun, so he must have been a topic at least once.”

“Is that so?”

Well, if he had the same name as Lee Seo-jun, he would have been in the news as soon as he debuted, whether he was an actor or a singer.

“Wow. I would use a stage name if I were him.”

“Me too. It’s better for singers. But it would be a disaster for actors.”

“But when is Lee Seo-jun’s next work coming out? It seems like it’s been over a year already…”

“Has it been a year already? It was released last August.”

“That was filmed in November two years ago. It was released at the Independent Film Festival in April and went to the theaters in August.”

His friend, who was a fan of Lee Seo-jun, spoke fluently.

“It’s already May, and if you look at the period, he’s been resting for over a year.”

“Didn’t he have an article in March?”

“That was a birthday reply he wrote on the fan cafe.”

There were so many articles about Lee Seo-jun that many people thought he was active.

“He’s been doing variety shows and plays and going to film festivals, so he’s been active every few months. This is the first time he’s been resting for so long since he was young.”

“Is that so? Maybe it’s his break time.”

“That’s what a lot of people say. He’s been juggling his daily life and acting since he was in middle and high school, and he even took the college entrance exam. And he’s been working hard while attending college, so it’s time for him to take a break.”

His friend nodded his head.

“You have to take it easy.”

“I know, but… Lee Seo-jun’s works are so fun, so I miss them. But still, he hinted at his next work in March, so I’ll wait and see.”

“But… Hyun-joon, why are you so quiet?”

“What, did a disgusting ghost appear or something?”

Jang Hyun-joon, who had been sitting still without saying a word as if his breath had stopped, was looked at with curious expressions by his two friends. He was like this when a very scary-looking ghost appeared.

But contrary to his friends’ expectations, Jang Hyun-joon was frozen by the thoughts that came to his mind, not by the ghosts that he saw.

“…No, no… It’s nothing…”

This sergeant. Lee Seo-jun sergeant. Lee Seo-jun. Lee Seo-jun… actor.

‘No way… It can’t be…’

Jang Hyun-joon gulped down his beer.

…But why did his throat feel so dry?

***

Jang Hyun-joon (special management target), who had finished his sweet vacation and returned to the unit, found Sergeant Lee Seo-jun waiting for him and smiled and saluted him.

“Baekho!”

Sergeant Lee Seo-jun smiled and raised his right hand lightly.

“Baekho.”

It was not a salute with a lot of strength like his, but a soft one, yet it somehow suited him and gave off charisma. He thought it looked cool and practiced it in front of the mirror with his squad members.

‘Wouldn’t this sergeant be good at acting?’

‘That’s right!’

Actor…

“Did you have a good vacation?”

“…Yes!”

He answered a little late, and Seo-jun tilted his head.

He rolled his eyes at that.

Is it true? Is it not? Should I say something if it’s true? But it seems like no one else knows. No, how can they not know? Is he just a look-alike? His head was a mess.

Seo-jun shrugged his shoulders and dusted off Jang Hyun-joon’s shoulder. The small things that were stuck to him stubbornly fell off with a squeaky sound.

“Let’s go in.”

“Ah, sir! Sergeant Lee!”

“Hmm?”

He turned around and looked at Jang Hyun-joon, who was hesitating.

“Uh, are you… an actor by any chance…?”

His voice got smaller and smaller, but it seemed to have reached Sergeant Lee Seo-jun. Because there was a strange silence.

It was unusually quiet in the unit where more than 400 people were staying. As if it was a scene from a horror movie. Jang Hyun-joon swallowed his saliva.

Sergeant Lee just looked at Jang Hyun-joon, without saying anything.

…Is it not? It must not be. Jang Hyun-joon was about to open his mouth, when

“Ah.”

Sergeant Lee opened his mouth.

Jang Hyun-joon’s eyes slowly widened as he looked at him. His mouth also opened involuntarily. The voice was Sergeant Lee’s voice, and the person standing in front of him was definitely Sergeant Lee.

But in front of his eyes right now…

“I’ve been caught?”

The actor Lee Seo-jun smiled brightly.