Jihoon called everyone into the main floor first thing, waiting until the last chair scraped into place before he started talking.
“New case,” he said.
“Up north.
Factory property, Chairman Oh’s family.
We’ll be gone a week, maybe two.”
“Standard property visit, then,” Somi said, already reaching for her tablet.
“There’s more,” Ishaan said.
“The chairman told me he saw a humanoid figure on the site.
Personally.
With his own eyes.”
The room went completely still.
“He said what?” Baek asked.
“A person, standing at the end of the factory floor.
Watched him, then vanished when he got closer.” Ishaan looked around at all of them.
“We should bring the enhanced talismans.
If a normal person saw it clearly, that’s not nothing.
We might be dealing with something close to what we found at the mall.”
“Maybe.
Maybe not,” Jihoon said.
“Depends entirely on the grade.
Upper A-tier spirits can sometimes be seen by regular people, but only at their weakest points, or when they choose to be seen on purpose, usually to keep people from digging deeper.”
“You could’ve led with that,” Junho said, throwing his hands up.
“That’s kind of an important detail, man.”
“We’re lucky he’s the assistant,” Somi added, nodding at Ishaan.
“At least somebody around here reports things properly.”
“Okay, okay,” Jihoon said, waving off the commentary.
“Let’s get ready.
Full prep, this time.”
Everyone scattered to gather supplies, buying salt and paper and ink in bulk quantities that made the local shop owner ask twice if they were starting some kind of business.
Yuna sat cross-legged on the floor of the archive room, headphones off, eyes closed, deep in concentration.
“What are you doing?” Ishaan asked.
“Practicing,” she said, not opening her eyes.
“Trying to isolate one voice out of a crowd of noise.
If I can filter better, I can pull cleaner information faster next time.”
“We’ve got nothing left to improve on,” Somi said, breezing past with an armful of supplies.
“We’re already perfect.”
“Please don’t encourage her,” Baek said, though he was smiling.
“It is what it is,” Ishaan said, and went back to checking his own pack.
“Who’s driving?” Baek asked later, tossing his bag by the door.
“Me,” Jihoon said.
“Great, don’t need my own car, then.”
They packed for two weeks, just in case, and were loaded into the SUV by four in the morning, the sky still fully dark, everyone moving on autopilot.
Ishaan claimed the passenger seat again without thinking twice about it.
Within twenty minutes, everyone else in the back had fallen asleep, heads tipped against windows and each other.
“You’re not sleeping,” Jihoon observed quietly, eyes on the road.
“Passenger’s not supposed to sleep.
Someone’s got to keep the driver company.”
The highway stretched out long and empty ahead of them, farmland rolling by in the dark.
“This kind of reminds me of home,” Ishaan said, mostly to himself.
“What was home like?”
Ishaan talked for longer than he meant to after that, about the heat, the smell of the ocean near his childhood town, his mother’s cooking, his siblings’ constant arguing.
Jihoon listened, asking small questions here and there, easy in a way their conversations usually weren’t.
“You didn’t answer my question, back at your place,” Ishaan said eventually.
“You told me you’d rather not.”
“Guilty as charged.
I genuinely cannot cook anything beyond instant noodles.” Jihoon kept his eyes on the road, though something in his voice loosened slightly.
“Everyone already knows, and everyone already teases me about it constantly.
When you asked, it felt like a personal attack for some reason.”
Ishaan hummed, amused, and let it go.
They stopped for breakfast around half past eight, the sky finally starting to lighten over open fields.
Ishaan spotted her first, a woman standing motionless out in the tall grass, watching nothing in particular.
“You noticing something?” Junho asked, following his gaze.
“There’s a woman out there.
In the field.”
“There’s probably a lot of things out there, honestly.
Farmland like this collects them.”
“Why do we even bother with the ones like her?” Ishaan asked.
“She’s not doing anything.”
Jihoon took a bite of his food before answering.
“Time to actually explain the ranks properly, I think.
E-grade spirits are wanderers.
Mostly harmless, as long as they stay wandering.
Trouble starts once one attaches itself to a person or a piece of property.
Memories start slipping after that.
Intentions shift.”
“How do you tell the difference between a B and an A, then?
Like, actually tell?”
Jihoon smiled slightly.
“It’s not as complicated as it sounds.
Once you understand the pattern, you’ll pick it up naturally.” He gestured vaguely with his chopsticks.
“A-grade spirits nearly regain full human features.
Close enough to pass, except something’s always slightly wrong about them.
B-grade is working toward that same humanoid shape, not quite there yet.
C-grade is partial, still recognizably trying to become human.
D-grade barely holds any form at all, maybe a suggestion of hands, legs, nothing more.”
“So it’s basically a scale of how human they look.”
“More or less.”
“Want to see the enhanced talismans?” Junho asked, already pulling one out of his bag.
The paper was thick, heavier than any normal talisman Ishaan had handled, dark lines of dried blood worked into the characters.
It smelled strange, sharp and old.
“It’s been sitting in a room burning incense for thirty straight days,” Junho explained.
“That’s what does it.
Strongest talismans we’ve got.
My mother sent five hundred of these with us.
I genuinely don’t know how she pulled that off that fast, but she’s the actual goat.”
They reached the motel a little after dark, the only lodging for miles in either direction.
The owner met them at the front desk looking frazzled.
“There’s something wrong in one of the rooms,” he blurted out before they’d even checked in.
“I don’t know what to do about it.”
“We do property assessments, including things like this.
My whole team’s here.
We’d be happy to take a look.”
“Oh, thank god.” The man practically sagged with relief.
“Please.
This way.”
He led them to the room in question.
Ishaan stood beside Jihoon, and without really thinking about it, reached over and squeezed his hand twice.
Jihoon glanced at him, then smiled at the owner.
“Give us a few minutes alone in here, if that’s alright.
We’ll let you know what needs fixing.”
“Of course, of course.
Take all the time you need.”
The door shut behind him.
Ishaan described what he saw, quick and precise.
Jihoon pulled out his knife.
Junho laid a ring of talismans around the room’s perimeter without a wasted movement.
Somi ran her scan, nodding to herself.
“I know exactly what to tell him.”
“Nothing left,” Yuna said a moment later, headphones back down.
“It’s gone.”
“Intent’s cleared too,” Baek confirmed.
By the time the owner returned, the room felt lighter somehow, the air easier to breathe.
He had no idea his motel had just been fully evaluated by some of the best in the country.
He just knew the chill was gone.
Somi walked him through a few adjustments, furniture placement mostly, angles that would help airflow and, coincidentally, spiritual balance too.
Yuna added her own suggestions about paint colors, framing it purely as interior design advice that would apparently bring in more guests.
The owner was thrilled.
He upgraded all their rooms without being asked and insisted his wife was already cooking enough for everyone to join them for dinner.
“She’ll be so happy to have guests,” he said.
“We don’t get many out here.”
Dinner ran long and warm, plates passed around a crowded table, the owner’s wife delighted every time someone asked for seconds.
Afterward, Ishaan ended up rooming with Junho and Baek, Jihoon taking his own room down the hall, Somi and Yuna sharing the last one.
Ishaan stood by the window before bed, looking out at the dark parking lot, still turning the day’s information over in his head.
That was when he saw a small figure sprint across the far edge of the lot, quick and light on its feet.
His whole body went cold.
I am so tired of being scared of little kids, he thought, already moving toward the door.
He stepped outside, scanning the lot.
There, near the motel’s sign, stood an actual child, maybe six or seven, chasing something across the gravel, laughing.
Ishaan let out a breath, half a laugh escaping despite himself.
“Great.
Fantastic.
Now every kid I see is going to give me a heart attack.”
He turned and went back inside, already composing the story he’d tell Junho in the morning, the door swinging shut behind him without a second glance.
Outside, the child stopped running.
He turned around slowly, joints bending at angles a real child’s never should, and looked up at a window two floors above Ishaan’s, not toward it at all.
“So she wasn’t lying,” he said, to no one, voice far older than his face.
“I should tell the master.”
Behind that window, Jihoon stood with one hand pressed against his forehead, phone held to his ear, voice low and tight with something he hadn’t let anyone else hear all evening.
The child watched him a moment longer, smiling too wide for a face that small, and then simply wasn’t there anymore.