Although no one appeared to be watching, Wonhyeok deliberately took a roundabout route toward the house the woman had warned him about.
He could not point to anything specific, but a peculiar sense of discord kept gripping him.
By the time he reached the edge of the village, Wonhyeok narrowed his eyes.
The path was overgrown with tall grass.
It was a sight that plainly showed how few people came this way.
Even if he spoke nonsense, was he not still a sick man? How could they leave him so neglected?
With a somewhat troubled expression, Wonhyeok looked at the old thatched house.
It had been left untended for so long that it almost resembled a cave.
Then he heard rustling behind the house, along with the sound of something smacking its lips.
“Who is there?”
As Wonhyeok headed toward the sound, a chilly wind blew through the densely wooded corner, rustling the trees loudly.
There, a disheveled man was frantically clawing at the ground.
Wonhyeok was taken aback by behavior that seemed even more genuinely mad than he had expected.
“My friend, what are you doing?”
The moment Wonhyeok approached and spoke, the man snapped his head around.
His eyes were bloodshot and red. Dark dirt and blades of grass clung around his mouth as he lunged at Wonhyeok like a beast.
Startled, Wonhyeok cried out and flailed, but the man seized him with the powerful grip of a madman and began shouting.
“Help! Help me! Damn it, damn them! Give me mugwort, mugwort! Give me medicine!”
“L-let go of me!”
The man’s incoherent shouts rang so loudly in Wonhyeok’s ears that his vision nearly turned white.
Wonhyeok hurriedly shook him off, and the man tumbled backward, striking his head against a stone in the dirt.
Wonhyeok flinched and tried to examine him, but the man flailed his limbs as though swimming across the ground. He let out a strange sound, then went limp.
Did I k-kill someone?
With his heart sinking, Wonhyeok quickly checked the man. Fortunately, he had merely fainted.
Relieved, Wonhyeok rose unsteadily.
‘So this is why the woman told me to be careful....’
His face grew hot, feeling as though he had suffered for nothing because of his pointless suspicions.
Had this man become like this because of the ghost? And why was he demanding mugwort and medicine?
Still, Wonhyeok was afraid a tiger might carry the man away if he left him there.
He barely managed to carry the man onto the porch of the thatched house that appeared to be his home, then left.
‘Did I trust my intuition too much? It would be better to look around a little more on my way back and wait for Haje.’
As he left the fence, Wonhyeok saw someone standing in the distance.
Two village women stood as though they had hidden themselves half within the thick brush, watching Wonhyeok.
When he emerged from the thatched house, they glided away as though they had never been watching at all.
A chill ran down Wonhyeok’s spine.
What in the world was wrong with this village...?
Wonhyeok returned to the guesthouse and waited for Haje.
With nothing else to do, he wrote down the things he had seen in the village.
The brush he had received from the Office of Ghostly Inspection, made from a Ghost Gate byproduct, was wondrous. It produced ink on its own, even without carrying ink and an inkstone.
In any event, aside from the strange man, Wonhyeok had met another man who was at least able to move about normally. However, the man had kept his mouth tightly shut and refused to speak with him.
He had only kept his distance from Wonhyeok before entering his house with a woman who appeared to be his wife.
As Wonhyeok went over the information he had organized one by one, he narrowed his eyes.
Come to think of it, Haje had said he came because the Office had received a petition.
Normally, petitions were written in memorials sent from the provinces, or submitted directly to the Office of Ghostly Inspection by wronged people who had traveled all the way to Hanyang.
‘Or so I have heard. There is also a way to submit them to the communication network through lower-ranked Messengers.’
Haje had only told Wonhyeok that a maiden ghost had appeared.
Judging from what he had done since arriving at the village... perhaps he did not know the details either?
Still, it was somewhat suspicious that he had immediately gone to the reservoir.
After recording all the information about the village, as well as the fact that Haje had spoken to the village head and gone to the reservoir, Wonhyeok absentmindedly held up his brush and stared at the sky.
The sun had already begun to set.
The night was about to begin in earnest in this village where ghosts were said to appear.
‘A Ghost Gate Messenger’s clerk....’
More than anything else, Wonhyeok had deliberately kept his distance from stories of the ghostly realm ever since childhood, because of the unfortunate fact that he had been born with dog eyes.
Yet somehow, he had ended up beside Haje, an extraordinary figure who had remained Number One for an entire sixty-year cycle among the only three Gap Grade Ghost Gate Messengers in all eight provinces of Joseon.
It was an incredibly rare thing to be caught up in so suddenly.
Even Eul Grade and Byeong Grade Messengers were tremendously high-ranking Ghost Gate Messengers, yet Haje was Gap Grade.
Wonhyeok wanted to ask what sort of divination the spirit shaman who had chosen him for Haje had seen.
‘But... what could I do even if I met the spirit shaman?’
Would he question why she had sent Haje after him? Would he ask her to divine whether this inspection would go well?
At that moment, a child peeked through the gate of the guesthouse.
Wonhyeok quickly put away his brush and approached the gate. The child must not have expected him to come closer, for he flinched and hid.
Wonhyeok bent down and asked.
“What brings you here? Is there someone you have come to meet?”
At Wonhyeok’s way of speaking, which seemed deliberately formal for a child, the boy of around ten looked at him with shining eyes.
“I heard a Ghost Gate Messenger came, so I came here.”
The boy answered shyly, twisting his body from side to side.
Wonhyeok found the child so adorable that a smile naturally rose to his face.
“Oh dear. I am not a Ghost Gate Messenger.”
“Really?”
At Wonhyeok’s answer, the child forgot his adult-like speech and asked again.
“That is right. I am a clerk who travels with a Ghost Gate Messenger.”
“That is cool too....”
“Thank you... Hmm? You have another friend.”
“Yes. The two of us came because we wanted to see the Messenger.”
Behind the boy stood a girl who appeared to be about the same age. Wonhyeok tilted his head as he looked at the two children’s clothes.
The children he had seen while walking through the village were all dressed similarly.
And by similarly, he did not merely mean that they all wore skirts or trousers with short jackets.
‘They are all wearing rainbow-striped jackets.’
Was it common to dress children like that even after they had turned ten?
Even though the age of Ghost Gate Messengers had made people wealthier and life was no longer as difficult as before.
For most of the village children to wear rainbow-striped clothes regardless of their age was extravagant to the point of excess.
Come to think of it, the cloth the woman had been weaving also seemed not only unusually fine, but overly abundant for the means of such a small and obscure farming village.
Wonhyeok had assumed that weaving was merely something the woman did to pass the time. He had never considered that the clothes might be for the villagers.
As Wonhyeok felt a strange uneasiness, the boy shyly spoke again.
“When will the Ghost Gate Messenger return?”
“Hmm....”
Wonhyeok did not know when that man, Haje, would return either. Moreover, the sun was already setting....
He asked the children.
“Did you ask your parents’ permission before coming here?”
“Yes. We said we were going to have a look.”
I see. In that case, rather than sending two children back along a darkening road, it would be better to keep them here and send them home with an adult later.
Wonhyeok gestured to them.
“Would you like to come in and wait on the porch?”
“Wow!”
The two children beamed at one another, then clumsily bowed as though trying to be polite.
“Th-thank you very... very? much.”
“It is ‘very much.’”
“Ah! Thank you very much.”
“Ha ha.”
Wonhyeok waited for Haje, listening to the children chattering on the porch like the sound of insects.
However, Haje did not return even as twilight began to fall. As the surroundings grew darker, Wonhyeok stopped writing and rose to his feet.
The children were now running around the front yard of the guesthouse, laughing merrily.
“I will go light the lantern for a moment, so do not go outside the gate.”
“Yes!”
Wonhyeok headed to the kitchen with its hearth to light his lantern.
‘Perhaps there is a cook or a maid here.’
Spring was coming, but nights were still cold. Someone might be burning firewood to heat the ondol floor.
However, there was no one in the kitchen when he arrived.
Come to think of it, who would volunteer to stay in such a small village? Wonhyeok felt faintly embarrassed at having taken it for granted that someone would attend to him.
Crouching before the hearth, he soon lit a fire and placed the flame inside his lantern.
At that moment, something white swept past outside, where blue shadows had fallen across the dark ground.
Thinking it might be a person, Wonhyeok raised his head and saw a pale figure standing in the kitchen doorway.
No, it was not simply standing there.
It floated about one cheok—roughly thirty centimeters—above the ground.
Frozen, Wonhyeok stared at its feet and noticed that darkness had not yet fully fallen from the sky.
‘Damn dog eyes.’
The feet moved slowly, as though wading through empty air. Bare feet, wrapped in a white skirt, wore neither shoes nor socks.
Unable to raise his eyes, Wonhyeok stared only at the lantern casting yellow light through the kitchen. Still, he could clearly feel the ghost staring at him.
Pretending not to see it, Wonhyeok calmly closed the lantern’s lid. Then he suddenly thought of the children in the yard.
Cold sweat filled his hands, making the lantern handle feel as though it might slip free at any moment.
At some point, the sound of the children laughing and playing had vanished.
What if that ghost had harmed them...?
Wonhyeok gritted his teeth and sharply raised the lantern toward the kitchen doorway.
As though driven back by the scarlet lantern light, the white figure vanished in an instant.
“...It is gone.”
If the ghost had remained where it was, their gazes would have met by now.
He roughly wiped away the sweat running beneath his headband with his sleeve, then ran into the yard.
“The Messenger is here!”
Fortunately, the children were sitting on the porch as though nothing had happened, playing a hand-clapping game together.
With a relieved expression, Wonhyeok approached them, set the lantern on the porch, and spoke.
“It will soon be night. It is dangerous, so call an adult and....”
He did not notice that he was no longer speaking to the children in the same formal manner as before.
Wonhyeok stopped mid-sentence when the girl let out a small sound.
“Someone is crying.”