Superstar From Age 0

Chapter 615

“White Tiger!”

“White Tiger.”

The White Tiger unit returned after five weeks, looking no different from when they left.

‘The mana is still there.’

As he checked the mana in the symbols engraved on each building, Sergeant Lee Seo-jun was summoned to the battalion commander’s office. The officers he met looked a bit thinner than usual.

“Thank you.”

“No, no. Just think of it as a chance to diet.”

The battalion commander said with a smile at Seo-jun’s words.

“Your leave was for a valid reason. And honestly, you could have taken more, but you didn’t. You’re a good sergeant.”

Seo-jun smiled wryly.

He felt like he had a long break since his final leave was five weeks, but in fact, he had taken very few leaves before that. He wanted to avoid any trouble later.

“Well, what can we do? It’s our unit’s rule. We can’t call someone who’s on leave when there’s no war or accident.”

Seo-jun nodded at the battalion commander’s words.

He knew he must have had a hard time, though. He decided to give him a blessing before he was discharged.

“Thanks to you, this sergeant, we could take care of the soldiers and have a peaceful time. The other battalion commanders think the same…”

The battalion commander rolled his eyes and lowered his voice, as if he was afraid someone would hear.

“You don’t have any plans to reenlist, do you?”

“No, sir. I don’t.”

Seo-jun answered crisply, and the battalion commander nodded with a look of both disappointment and understanding.

“Then you can go now.”

Seo-jun bowed and left the battalion commander’s office. The battalion commander sighed as he watched him go.

He had a peaceful year and four months thanks to this sergeant.

He shuddered as he thought of the troublesome soldiers he would meet in the future.

***

After the day’s work was over, it was time to rest.

The unit was buzzing with the news of Seo-jun’s return.

“Can you believe it? My sister couldn’t even recognize Lee Seo-jun, the actor!”

“Me too, my brother… He talked about this sergeant all the time during the leave.”

“My parents… They kept asking me about him even though he’s in a different platoon.”

The soldiers of the White Tiger unit had suffered a lot since Seo-jun’s enlistment was revealed. But they all smiled happily when they got his autographs and photos.

“With this, I can get a computer…!”

“Oh, you made a deal for a computer?”

“Yeah! Ack!”

A soldier from the fifth platoon who had promised to get a new computer from his sister was holding a photo with Seo-jun’s autograph and rejoicing, when he heard a quiet voice from his colleague. The colleague grinned and shouted.

“This sergeant! He got the sergeant’s autograph…!”

“Aaaah!!”

Hahaha.

The White Tiger unit was still lively as ever.

“…Is this… normal?”

The privates who had joined in the last five weeks (they were shocked when they heard they were assigned to the White Tiger unit) were sitting stiffly and rolling their eyes.

“Well, yeah. If you want to see this sergeant, go ahead.”

“No, thank you!”

They had been on their final leave for five weeks, and they had never seen Lee Seo-jun, the actor, before. But they didn’t want to join the crowd of sergeants and corporals.

***

The next day passed quickly, and Seo-jun had only two days left until his discharge. He had nothing to do, so he gladly accepted the request for counseling from Jang Hyun-joon. He was planning to give him a gift and explain it to him anyway.

The office in the barracks that Seo-jun used every time he took care of the troubled soldiers.

Jang Hyun-joon and Seo-jun sat down.

Jang Hyun-joon was silent and still. Seo-jun looked around the office, thinking, ‘I won’t be coming here anymore.’ After a while, Jang Hyun-joon spoke in a gloomy voice.

“If I had a power like yours, sergeant… Could I have lived a normal life?”

He didn’t seem to want an answer, but rather to vent his feelings. Seo-jun, the counselor, listened to Jang Hyun-joon’s story.

“I was a kid who could see ghosts.”

He might have been able to hide it somehow as he grew up, pretending not to see them, but as Seo-jun had said before, Jang Hyun-joon had a twisted constitution.

No matter what he did, or how he ignored them, Jang Hyun-joon was always surrounded by lowly spirits and strange phenomena.

That must have looked weird to normal people.

Especially in the modern world, where science was dazzling and strange beings were considered old tales or superstitions.

Jang Hyun-joon’s parents couldn’t understand their son who stared at the empty air, or the strange things that happened around him as he grew older. They couldn’t accept it.

‘I can’t live with him anymore…!’

In the end, they rejected Jang Hyun-joon.

An old house in the countryside.

The young Jang Hyun-joon watched the car driving away, and shivered at the warmth of his grandparents’ hands holding his on both sides.

‘Let’s live with grandma now, kid.’

‘Grandpa will buy you something delicious.’

It was warm.

He heard creepy laughter from around him, but the warmth in his hands covered it up. The young Jang Hyun-joon held on to his wrinkled and rough grandparents’ hands and didn’t let go.

The old people who had lived through many days were not afraid of the strange things. They tried to solve Jang Hyun-joon’s problem by going around everywhere.

Jang Hyun-joon also tried many things.

He tried to ignore them completely, like in comics or novels, and he tried to appease the ghosts, but nothing worked.

“It only got worse when they realized I could see them. I would have been in big trouble if it wasn’t for Dong-dong.”

“Dong-dong?”

“A black dog I raised at home. He went to heaven when I graduated from middle school.”

‘Dong-dong will protect you, Hyun-joon.’

His grandfather gave him a black puppy, the most energetic one of the litter that the monk at the temple had raised.

The black dog, Dong-dong.

He was Jang Hyun-joon’s first friend and brother.

Seo-jun nodded.

“Some animals are sensitive to these things.”

“Yes. I would have been in trouble many times without Dong-dong.”

Jang Hyun-joon’s mind became more relaxed as he lived with Dong-dong.

And thanks to that relaxation, he was able to meet some friends who were not affected by the lowly spirits, but rather fascinated by them.

“After Dong-dong died… It was hard, but I could still manage. I had friends, after all.”

Jang Hyun-joon sighed deeply.

“But I don’t know about the future. My friends have their own lives, and it was already a mess at school with the lowly spirits. What if I cause a big accident in society?”

Dreams and future.

Jang Hyun-jun never thought about such things.

“That’s why I envy you, Sergeant.”

He wondered what it would have been like if someone had taught him how to use his power.

He wouldn’t have been abandoned by his parents, and his grandparents wouldn’t have had to raise him with difficulty. He would have grown up normally and dreamed of various futures.

Jang Hyun-jun smiled weakly.

“It’s just… I enjoyed the past few months so much thanks to you, Sergeant… That’s why I acted a bit spoiled. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I wanted to talk to you about that too.”

“Huh?”

Seo-jun smiled and handed a small paper bag to Jang Hyun-jun. Jang Hyun-jun took it with a puzzled look.

“What is this…?”

“Open it.”

At Seo-jun’s words, Jang Hyun-jun opened the paper bag.

Inside was a bracelet with small, round, black wooden beads forming a circle, like a rosary. Two of the beads were not made of wood, but of a different material. They also had different colors, green and dark blue, unlike the other black wooden beads.

What kind of bracelet is this?

Jang Hyun-jun blinked his eyes as Seo-jun explained with a smile.

“It’s a talisman.”

“…!”

Talisman.

Jang Hyun-jun’s eyes widened. He looked at the bracelet again. The dark blue and green beads glowed faintly.

“My talismans are different from other talismans. They need energy.”

“Energy… you mean?”

“Yeah, like batteries.”

He expected some mystical or divine explanation, but the analogy was too modern and scientific. But it was easy to understand.

“I’m the only one who can inject energy into this talisman, but you can’t come to me every time the energy runs out. You never know when a dangerous situation might arise.”

“Yes.”

“So I put in two functions.”

First, the dark blue bead.

Seo-jun pointed to the dark blue bead with his finger and said.

“This is a talisman that absorbs the power of the lowly spirits and converts it into the energy needed for the talisman.”

“…Is that possible?”

Jang Hyun-jun opened his eyes wide and Seo-jun answered with a smile.

“Of course, it won’t work on very strong ones, only the small ones that the talisman can handle. You know, the ones that followed you when you came back from your vacation last time. They should be easy to absorb.”

[(Production/Design) Photosynthesis of the Lurumpa Flower – Intermediate Level]

The leaves of the lurumpa absorb magic.

The absorbed magic turns into light energy.

The lurumpa flower is a plant that produces dark blue flowers, and it existed in a world where corpses buried in graves naturally turned into undead when they met magic.

It had the ability to turn magic into light energy, and it was planted in communal graves to eliminate the magic and prevent the undead from arising. It was also a plant that was planted whenever a new tomb was made.

Seo-jun didn’t tell the rest of the story behind his ability and continued his explanation.

Next, the green bead.

“And the one next to it is purification… or something like that. If you use it when something attacks you directly or something strange happens, the lowly spirits around you will all disappear. The energy converted from the dark blue bead flows into here.”

[(Production/Design) Purification Bead of the Cavant Priest – High Level]

It is a manifestation of the purification ability of the Cavant tribe priest.

The activated bead eliminates the evil energies within a certain range.

“This is active, so you can use it if you think about it. Try touching the green bead.”

Jang Hyun-jun, who had a bewildered face, touched the green bead with his index finger as Seo-jun said.

[]

Something came to his mind.

It was like measuring the remaining energy in a game…

Jang Hyun-jun’s mouth opened wide. The genre of his life, which had been a horror, seemed to have suddenly changed.

He looked at himself with a surprised face and Seo-jun said with a smile.

“I filled it up for you now, so you just have to absorb the lowly spirits to fill it up when it runs out. The activation method is to think strongly of the word ‘purification’ or touch the green bead. Easy, right?”

Seo-jun kindly continued his explanation.

“The other beads are just ornaments, so you just have to keep these two colored beads well. If the bracelet is uncomfortable, you can separate the beads and make them into other accessories. They are pretty strong, so they won’t break easily. Oh, and be careful, they look black to other people’s eyes, just like the other beads.”

…Ah…

Jang Hyun-jun held the rosary with black beads in a row with a choked face. The dark blue and green beads between the black beads seemed to sparkle.

If what the sergeant said was true.

Jang Hyun-jun could now live normally. He could absorb the lowly spirits that came close to him with the dark blue bead and purify the lowly spirits that caused trouble from afar with the green bead.

Jang Hyun-jun lifted his head.

The quiet peace, where no sound was heard… He couldn’t believe that it would continue like this.

When he was young.

He had imagined such a thing while watching a cartoon where a master taught the protagonist who had a special power.

One day, a special being would appear to him and his grandparents and say, ‘You’ve worked hard so far.’, ‘You’ve suffered a lot.’ and teach him how to use his power in a dream-like imagination.

He imagined shouting, ‘I can’t see ghosts anymore! Grandma! Grandpa!’

…Now he could confidently say that.

“Th-thank you very much, Sergeant…”

“You’ve worked hard too.”

Jang Hyun-jun, who was wiping his tears and laughing, sniffed and asked.

“But… why did you do this for me…?”

“Because you’re my successor.”

Seo-jun smiled.

He wished for the happiness of the beings connected to him, from his family and friends to the sprouts of the whole world.

“And…”

Seo-jun turned his gaze to the side of Jang Hyun-jun. Jang Hyun-jun also looked that way.

The empty air.