[Lee Wonhyeok, Clerk of the Office of Ghostly Inspection.
At the request of Haje, a Gap Grade Ghost Gate Messenger and my accompanying inspector, I write this record.
The starting point of this inspection is Gyeonggi Province, in the spring of the Year of Muin....]
Wonhyeok paused over the blank ledger and looked up at the man before him with disapproval.
Unconcerned, Number One, Haje, was swaying about lazily.
It had already been three days since Wonhyeok had succumbed to the temptation of money and put his fingerprint on the contract. Even then, he had been dizzy from all the greetings offered by the other Ghost Gate Messengers of the Office of Ghostly Inspection.
He had intended to live as an obscure official in some lowly post even if he passed the civil-service examination. Thus, he had no complaint about belonging to the Office of Ghostly Inspection, which was somewhat marginalized in political circles....
“What is it you truly want?”
“I told you. I want you to write it down.”
Despite Wonhyeok’s dubious question, Number One answered in a sly tone.
Haje grinned.
“Everything that happens with me. All of it. In detail. Properly. How easy is that? I hear your penmanship is quite elegant too.”
Anyone listening would have thought he was an idle gentleman teasing a woman from the neighborhood.
“Who told you that?”
“A spirit shaman.”
“......”
Incidentally, the spirit shaman was also the second-ranked Ghost Gate Messenger.
Unable to argue with either Number One or Number Two, Wonhyeok could only simmer inside.
What Haje demanded of Wonhyeok was truly a “record.”
Ever since the Ghost Gates opened, those who awakened had been called Ghost Gate Messengers. Ghost Gate Messengers generally belonged to one of two groups: guilds or the Office of Ghostly Inspection.
According to Haje, it was the difference between being a privately owned slave and a state-owned slave.
Regardless of their affiliation, Ghost Gate Messengers were expected to patrol their regions and look after the people’s welfare.
This was known as a Ghost Realm Inspection.
Since Ghost Gate Messengers generally had a habit of smashing everything to pieces, someone had to monitor their actions and record them in full detail.
Thus, it was mandatory to send along a civil official who served as a clerk.
There were more complex regulations if one looked deeper into the matter....
In any case, that was the relationship between accompanying inspectors....
“However, Lord Haje, I understand that you have not conducted Ghost Realm Inspections so far, under a kind of special privilege granted to you as Number One.”
That was true. Haje had apparently appeared rather often during the early days after the Ghost Gates opened, but little had been known about him since.
Among those who were not Ghost Gate Messengers and could not learn the current situation through the communication network, some even believed that Number One was already dead.
“Goodness, the first full sixty-year cycle since the Ghost Gates opened is about to turn over. Should I not tighten discipline and regain my original resolve?”
“If you do not wish to explain the reason, please simply say so....”
With the haste of roasting beans in a lightning flash, they had rushed through the procedure of joining the Office of Ghostly Inspection and were now outside Hanseong for their inspection.
Unlike Wonhyeok, who wanted to save every coin and live frugally, Haje spent money with unusual abandon.
If the travel expenses had not been coming from Haje’s own purse, Wonhyeok would have coughed up blood.
Furthermore, unlike Wonhyeok, who wanted to make a quiet and respectable impression at his first workplace, Haje held such an overwhelmingly high rank that he wandered wherever he pleased.
Because of that, the line Wonhyeok heard most often at the Office over the past three days had been, “Where has Lord Haje gone? Accompanying Inspector, please bring him back.”
Wonhyeok, who had spent most of his life studying in quiet places, naturally grew pale.
Moreover, Haje was... far too self-willed for someone his age.
“I say.... With that face, you could have made a living anywhere instead of taking the civil-service examination. Why did you want to take it? Why not live as a layabout? Life is short.”
At other times, he said things like this.
“Do you have a sister? You look fated not to have one, but what a pity.”
And even this.
“Have you truly never met a woman who would say that she could live just by admiring your face, and so would take responsibility for your life?”
“Have you lost your mind?!”
Wonhyeok’s horror was only natural.
What kind of behavior was this, examining a person from every angle like an elderly matchmaker?
Was this truly Haje, the unchanging Number One whom all commoners admired?
Wonhyeok wanted to treat Haje the same way and tell him to suffer it himself, but Haje always wore his military hat and concealed his face behind a black veil.
The only thing Wonhyeok could see clearly was Haje’s golden eyes, and even those were not always visible because of the difference in their heights.
“Are our written words the only things that fail to communicate? We cannot communicate as people either. Truly....”
“So, where are you planning to go?”
“Let us see. There is a place where a petition came in recently.”
I have to travel all eight provinces of Joseon with such a self-willed man and work....
Wonhyeok dearly wanted to beat the self who had put his fingerprint on that contract three days earlier, but the past was the past.
He decided to endure Haje, gain experience, and then change jobs.
A perfectly ordinary thought for a young man of Joseon.
All Haje wanted was for him to keep records throughout this inspection. Honestly, aside from the work being terribly bothersome, the period being long, and his superior being an overwhelming figure, the conditions and pay were good so far.
Having resigned himself, Wonhyeok mounted a relay horse beside Haje and headed for Ansan in Gyeonggi Province.
“Ansan? Is there a Ghost Gate here as well?”
“We did not come because of a Ghost Gate. How could I take a green civilian who entered the Office only the day before yesterday into such a dangerous place? I told you, it is a petition.”
Haje spoke in his slippery manner and spurred his horse onward. Then he asked.
“What do you think, Clerk? Do you know how to soothe women?”
“What women are you suddenly talking about?”
Wonhyeok snapped coldly, but Haje paid him no mind.
Wonhyeok considered delivering a sharp barb about how Haje still took an interest in womanizing at his age, but he soon began to feel uneasy.
“...You are merely teasing me, correct? Why are you suddenly talking about soothing a woman?”
“Think about it. What is the most famous ghost in this country?”
“Pardon?”
Were there not many? Bachelor ghosts, tiger ghosts, goblins, and the like....
Watching his bewildered expression, Haje smiled as his golden eyes curved.
“A maiden ghost.”
“We are going to resolve a maiden-ghost problem.”
With those words, Haje cried out and spurred his horse forward.
Wonhyeok, still dumbfounded, quickly came to his senses and snapped his own reins.
“What did you say?!”
A maiden ghost?!
Wonhyeok, a virgin bachelor himself, was frightened, but what else could he do?
He had no choice but to follow Haje into a village in Ansan.
Haje was surely the incarnation of lightning.
Having already been struck by lightning because of Haje for some reason, Wonhyeok considered this a fairly reasonable suspicion.
It had not been long since he learned that the lightning bolt which had struck him on the head outside the examination grounds had truly belonged to Haje.
“I was talking with the spirit shaman and became a little angry, so I threw a lightning bolt. How did it happen to strike right on your crown? Ha ha!”
And, like someone who scattered lightning about so freely, Haje rode at an incredible speed for an entire day before arriving in Ansan.
Wonhyeok wondered whether he had ever crossed into another region so quickly in his life.
Haje looked at him and loudly declared that Messengers always traveled this way.
However, it seemed only fair to ask the relay horses for their opinion as well.
He had been told to record the journey in detail, so he tried to write it down. Truly, though, there was nothing else to record.
[With the haste of roasting beans in a lightning flash, we headed for an obscure village in Ansan.]
That was the end of it.
In any event, Haje entered the small village where the maiden ghost was said to dwell, met the village head, and immediately showed his Messenger plaque.
The startled village head promptly led them to the largest and cleanest thatched house. Haje roughly unpacked his things, then immediately lay down.
Wonhyeok was dumbfounded.
“It is not even night yet.”
“Was riding here not tiring? Let us sleep for a while.”
Just look at how quickly his disposition relaxed.
If not Haje, then who else could be the incarnation of lightning?
“Did you not say you would regain your original resolve?”
“Mmm~ I believe I have already found it.”
Madman.... Wonhyeok thought to himself.
Haje had even tossed his own Messenger plaque carelessly beside his pillow.
Messenger plaques were made in accordance with rank. The highest of them, a Gap Grade Messenger plaque, was fashioned from white jade.
The white jade shimmered with an unusual light, and its intricate workmanship was said to make counterfeiting impossible.
‘It is probably a byproduct from inside a Ghost Gate.’
The appearance of Messenger plaques was widely known to all, so that anyone could recognize a Ghost Gate Messenger.
“Where are Messenger plaques made?”
It was not as if one could visit a government office and receive one like an identification tag. Did the Office of Ghostly Inspection make them?
At Wonhyeok’s question, Haje replied with his face still hidden beneath his military hat.
“There is a guild in Dalgu-beol called <The Ironing Room>. It is where people who like tinkering with byproducts from Ghost Gates gather. For now, that guild handles the materials, and the Office of Ghostly Inspection uses those materials to make the plaques.”
“Dalgu-beol... That is Daegu. Hmm.... They are fighters, but they are skilled with their hands as well.”
“It is not filled only with fighters. There are people who make things too.”
“Ah, so they are from the technical examinations.”
Among Ghost Gate Messengers, there were only those who had passed the military examinations and the technical examinations. There were no civil-examination graduates. No wonder the civil-service examination only became more difficult to pass....
Feeling strangely troubled, Wonhyeok nodded, then asked.
“I truly know nothing at all about Messenger work. Is that all right?”
“Goodness, Clerk. You do talk a great deal.”
In truth, between the two of them, Haje was the more talkative one.
“No, we came here to catch a maiden ghost, so why are you just lying there? Should we not be working?”
“Let us take it easy.”
“Do you not know that time is gold?”
“Ugh.”
Haje rose while pressing his military hat against his face, then adjusted it and spoke.
“Clerk, instead of spending time saying such things, it would be most helpful if you awakened.”
“Th-that is easy to say, but is it even possible? Please tell the spirit shaman that this divination appears to have been mistaken....”
“Really? Shall I truly tell them? I have turned on the communication network.”
“Ah! No!”
Whenever Wonhyeok began to relax because of Haje’s loose and languid manner, Haje would suddenly act overbearingly and leave him horrified.
Wonhyeok gathered his courage and strongly—by which he meant weakly—resisted, asking Haje to stop doing such things. Needless to say, it had no effect.
Rather, Haje seemed somewhat irritated by Wonhyeok’s characteristic civil-scholar stubbornness. Instead of obediently doing as he was told, Wonhyeok seized every opportunity to load a memorial into his sleeve.
‘We are a terrible match!’
That was right.
Between Wonhyeok, who had lived diligently and uprightly while studying texts, and Haje, who had stood at the top for decades, there lay a vast chasm that could not be bridged.
Thus, on the first page of his record since arriving in Ansan, Wonhyeok wrote this sentence.
[Ghost Gate Messenger Haje was so unruly and indolent that he drove one to sigh.]
This was possible only under the condition that Haje could not see Wonhyeok’s record.