At the heart of the Lotus town in the Exorcist building

  On the top floor, bunches of insults could be heard inside a room, pouncing like it was a ping pong competition between two formidable opponents.

  The room was spacious, yet the suffocation could be felt in the air, tightening the throat like a noose. The heated environment stood in stark contrast to the shielded windows, which toned down the conversation from curious eyes. There was a long boardroom table stretched across the centre with two high-backed leather chairs facing each other at the opposite end.

  Two men stood in front of each chair, their silhouettes sharpened under the harsh ceiling light, which retouched all the edges of the room in perfect detail, leaving no corners spared from the authoritarian reach.

  One of the men was Captain Koi.

  He was pointing a finger aggressively at an elderly man in his late sixties, while that person was shoving his hand in resistance. That elder man was dressed in a white, collarless roundneck shirt with buttons aligned vertically from top to bottom. He wore an earthy green exorcist jacket paired with a white head wrap and a red sarong featuring intricate patterns of horizontal strips, which gave a scholarly vibe of someone of high calibre.

  “Don’t divert the topic!” Koi’s voice shot right through the roof and alarmed the birds above. “This is urgent! We need to take action right now before King Cobra follows up with another attack!! He is definitely wounded by my spell and taking his sweet time to heal. I need manpower to act RIGHT NOW!!!”

  “Stop spurring your command like this is a playground!” The older man barked back in a more well-contained manner. “You led a hundred Angels to die in a mission you didn’t even spend one full day planning!!! How could I carelessly call the other team to join your battle before knowing the depth of it? All the Board of Directors are utterly disappointed in you!”

  “Argghhh!” Koi started shouting at the top of his lungs. “Worthless maggot! Fucking meaningless rule licking fool! Is it that important to chastise me, Director Kaw? OK, finish, move on! A hundred more could die again! There is no magical depth to this. We are fighting an elite demon, plain as this!! Do you think you could do better sitting on your comfortable high horse? Do you?!!!”

  “Can you calm your hot head down?! This happens because you dive into the battle unprepared! You take the risk. You GAMBLE with lives.”

  “Gamble? We are all exorcists fighting life sucking demon. Not you, Board of Piglets, sitting at your table eating shits! Don’t lecture me with your moral superiority. I know what I’m doing!”

  Director Kaw grew red like a steamed pot. He locked his hands behind his back and shook his head. “You are indeed difficult to talk to and even more difficult to reason with! I spent the whole day running around the town to talk with the public about this devastating tragedy and shared our condolences, yet you didn’t even make a single appearance! Is this your best attitude as a CAPTAIN?”

  “What is that supposed to bring, peace? Don’t make me laugh! That’s not the priority! I need men to help me fight the demon. Are you deaf?! You are diverting the topic again!”

  Koi pressed his volume into a threatening tone, “My strongest team is gone! My lieutenant is gone! I’m CURSED, Director Kaw! I’m CURSED!”

  “Yes, you have already said that a hundred times!”

  “And that’s why I’m telling you, since the beginning, I need more manpower! Why can’t we bring the CAPTAIN from the other town?!!! Bay Ballemy Town is just right up the corner. Where is Captain Huang Lee?!! Doesn’t he always like to poke his nose in other people’s business?!! Call him here!”

  “Koi, you have this very bad habit of forcing things your way.” The director had now dropped the honorific and further tensed his stance. “This world doesn’t revolve around you or your pitiful feelings. Captain Huang Lee is very busy!”

  “Again with these shitty excuses! Just get that damned old man and his team here!! I’m sure he would come running at this chance!!”

  Like a last straw drawn, Director Kaw raised his voice to match Koi. “Why should I call him? If you think I am purposefully being difficult, why don’t you explain yourself? Tell me everything about that elite demon mission—tell me! Tell me how you failed the fight—tell me!” He fluctuated his tone with a performative expression as if intentionally trying to taunt Koi.

  “I have told you already! All the files are there!!! Quit the drama!”

  “And none of that answers my question—”

  “Have you even fucking read it or are you just happily blind?!!”

  “ENOUGH with the insult!! I have given you a chance to explain yourself so as not to embarrass you, but since you don’t want to admit it I will say it right to your face! YOU misused the Eye of the Heaven spell, didn’t you?!!”

  Koi was taken aback, “W-what?!”

  Kaw closely eyed Koi like he caught the rat’s tail, “Are we finally ready to talk about your issue?”

  The word seemed to sting Koi in the right place. “My issue? I acted in the best interest of the organisation!! Who are you to find fault?!”

  “So self-righteous? That’s why this circle never break. You think you are only cursed by the demon? Too bad, Koi, the Lord has cursed you too!!!”

  As if a current had passed through his spine, Koi instantly heated up. “What the hell are you saying? What circle? What curse?!”

  “You dig your own grave!”

  “Spit it out!” Koi shoved away the edge of the table and stormed toward the director, grabbing him by the jacket with a tight fist.

  The director pushed his forearm against Koi’s chest to keep a safe distance between them, “EASY THERE!! Don’t be foolish!! Behave like a respectable captain and tug your tail if you want to know the truth!!”

  Koi immediately went silent at that crude comment for the first time.

  “I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but nobody wants to set foot in this cursed place!! So I have to volunteer…” Kaw confessed.

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  Koi clenched his teeth and murmured, “What are you implying…”

  The director started to sweat profusely and whispered some prayers before he finally spoke again. “You better not hide anything from me this time, Koi. Let me ask you. You twisted the divine script and performed the Eye of Heaven spell, didn’t you?”

  Koi immediately looked away. The guilt that overshadowed his brows said it all.

  Like grinding words between his teeth, the director yelled with shivering anger, “You son of the devil! You SON of HELL! How could you commit such a despicable, sinful act? How could you betray the Lord?!”

  “But I did that to kill King Cobra!! I did that with good intentions! None of our senior angels could perform the Eye of Heaven’s original script yet!! I alone can’t handle it!! It's all pure intention!”

  “Pure your head!! You twisted the spell script to substitute pure divine energy with earthly tainted energy, with negative energy!! Am I RIGHT?!!”

  “T-that-that is-yes!! Because demons come with negative energy! They will bring an abundance of it! It will save all of us great effort when channelling energy for the spell!!”

  “Yeah, and that also means your script sucked the negative energy of all those Angels who died a violent death, NO?!!”

  Koi tightened his lips with words hanging between his jaw, as if those lips were about to say “so what?”.

  Director Kaw nodded his head in utter disappointment, like he had hit the bullseye. “You knew what you were doing. You calculated your plan intentionally. Those numbers meant nothing to you!!”

  “SHUT UP! Their death has nothing to do with me! Either dead or alive, both contribute to our strength!! King Cobra retreated from the battle, himself. This proves it works! Tell me if I’m wrong!”

  “Keep on justifying! You still don’t understand, do you? You are essentially making this a hell borne script, creating hell energy on Earth through a tainted divine code and traumatising all the deaths by refusing them a peaceful afterlife!! That’s how you will repeat the same old massacre that started 300 years ago. Let me remind you, the first captain who retrieved the holy script was also fighting an elite demon that time!”

  Koi was shocked by his statement. “Wait—”. He grabbed his head as he felt pressure hitting high, “What do you mean? I don’t get it! I don’t GET IT!!!”

  As Director Kaw felt Koi’s grip weaken, he stepped back and released himself. In a confident manner, he realigned his collar and sniffed at Koi. “Yes!! The captain was also foolish like you. He wanted to kill the elite so much that he twisted the script of the spell before the mission to be able to use it. And guess the result?”

  Koi shook his head. “No…” the word powerlessly escaped his lips.

  “It led to a massacre.”

  The answer dropped like a stone on Koi’s heart.

  “I don’t know the details, but that mission took place in the Lotus Children Hospital and killed almost everyone, the patients, their families, the hospital staff and the Angels. For sure provided tremendous negative energy for a hell script, wouldn’t you agree? But like you, the mission failed. The elite demon escaped. Only the Captain and his son survived.”

  Fear started to creep into Koi’s eyes. It was almost identical to their battle result. Just much worse.

  “Lord, talking about this makes me feel like I am being watched, like I’m committing a sin.” The director brushed his own shoulder. “We don’t know exactly what happened afterwards, but another massacre followed shortly killing more people including the captain himself.”

  Kaw let out a sigh, “Master Gong has already confirmed. That second massacre was the divine wrath. The circle repeats every six decades, never breaking once. This circle of repetition is the divine curse. The Lord would lead the elite demon to this town every new circle to give humanity one more chance to redeem itself. To fight the demons with the Lord’s teaching and honour his divinity! To train and be a faithful follower of the Lord. Yet none of them succeed, and in this circle you still fail it.”

  “Stop…stop…this is not true…this is NOT TRUE!!” From a desperate pleading to a hammering threat, Koi’s voice rose like a howl. “Those massacres happened because the captains were all weak!! There were no such things as fake script!! None of these captains dared to wield the Heavenly spell, let alone train the script!!”

  “Bullshit! How dare you question Master Gong’s wisdom like that?!! 300 years ago—that damned wicked 300 years ago in this CURSED SOIL…” Director Kaw pointed his finger down on the floor as he emphasised his words with a passion, “…Master Gong burned the first fake script and the dead captain’s corpse together with his own hands! But that time, he didn’t know the divine curse was casted. Only after the repetitive pattern of massacre did he start to become suspicious.”

  Director Kaw took out a handkerchief and wiped his face as he continued, “So the BOD executed the plan to fence off the massacre area and its neighbourhood in the town as the Valley of Death and moved people out. They also enforced vigorous training to master the real script for the Eye of Heaven! They thought the massacre wouldn’t continue in the next circle, b-but the circle-it-it still repeat…again and again!!

  The director shook his head as he exhaled an exhausting breath, “At this rate you just can’t ignore it. This is the divine curse that we couldn’t stop. You are one of the sinned souls in your circle of trial.”

  “Shut up!!! This is all SHIT!! That area was fenced off because it was suspected to be at the crossroads of two ley lines that carried unpleasant energy!” Koi rebuked.

  “That was just a convenient reason Master Gong gave to the town people!”

  “SHUT UP!!! Stop citing that almost mummified old man!! What’s so strange about a demon attack? It happened everywhere! Didn’t the Sacreed town get totally wiped out by a strange mass suicide incident at the railway track twenty years ago too!! Your speculation doesn’t stand!! Where is the proof that all the captains used the same fake script? Doesn’t mean one Captain did that, prove all the rest failed because of the same decision. It’s plain wrong!! It is plain INSANE!!”

  “You just can’t term to fact, can you? Then let me ask you why is my guess that you used a fake script correct? And how did I know exactly where you change your script? You prove it yourself!”

  Koi took a step back. His distorted face flashed pale white. “No way—”

  “You are blind because you are a part of the curse. You never learn to transcend that awareness. And maybe that’s why…you fail the Lord’s trial.”

  Everything went silent.

  Koi felt his heartbeat hammering in his chest. Finally, he spoke again, “No…no…this is not true…this is all wrong! You plan this. The BOD planned this all to see me FAIL!!”

  “What nonsense are you even saying?!!”

  “I am right!! Otherwise you would have told me all of this earlier before everything happened NOT AFTER! You could have warned me about the incoming mess!! About this stupid trial that you so believed in!! Why? Why did the BOD purposely hide it?!! WHY?!!”

  Koi grabbed the chair behind him and crushed it against the floor, breaking the legs apart.

  The director seemed to be visibly uncomfortable with the question. “I…I understand your feelings, but…this is a divine wrath! Nobody wants to interfere with the Lord’s plan. The Lord is omnipotent and omniscient. You need to face the trial with your pure judgment to claim redemption. You could have prevented it if you hadn’t given in to your dark thought. You have all the resources at your disposal!”

  “So after all, you all just blissfully leave us this way because you are scared to get entangled in this shitty mess you called a divine curse!!”

  Director Kaw looked away immediately in guilt. “Look, I don’t really have a say in this, but Master Gong’s experience said it all. Even if we warn you, you will find other similar ways to fail the divine trial, as long as you don’t truly change. When that happens, everyone will get punished together.”

  Suddenly, Koi snapped and punched Director Kaw in the face. The director almost lost his footing but managed to catch himself midway. “You! I came here with the risk of getting into your mess. Seems like I put too much hope in that shitty attitude of yours!”

  But Koi didn’t respond. His face was stone cold.

  Director Kaw sniffed, “Captain, good luck with the incoming divine wrath. You fail your trial in this circle, he will surely come for you, and you will contemplate hard on your shitty attitude.”

  As the director made his way to the door, he turned his head a bit and whispered in a depressing tone, “I am sorry, captain. I really am…”