Late at night.
Beneath a night sky where a slender crescent moon hung as though it might vanish at any moment stood an abandoned two-story school.
A cold wind swept around the deserted building, sending the fallen leaves piled across the playground swirling noisily through the air.
Beyond the leaves, dark shadows slipped past the windows.
DRIP— DRIP— DRIP—
An indistinct sound echoed softly through the corridors. It was impossible to tell whether it came from dripping water or falling drops of blood. Meanwhile, the classroom doors kept opening a crack and closing again on their own with a long, drawn-out CREAK.
Just then, the headlights of a foreign-made car shone brightly toward the school gate.
CRRRRUNCH—
With a loud grinding of tires against gravel, the headlights illuminated the iron chain stretched across the entrance.
[NO ENTRY]
Beneath the rusted chain hung a metal sign forbidding entry, swaying ominously in the darkness.
SCREECH—
The car stopped, its engine shut off, and a bespectacled man emerged from the driver's seat.
Carrying something long and tightly wrapped in cloth, he planted himself in front of the gate.
He stood around 180 centimeters tall, with thick, horn-rimmed glasses and a slender build.
Despite his handsome features, there was something rather awkward and absentminded about him. He strongly resembled what people commonly called a nerd.
CREAK— CREAK—
As soon as he appeared, the wind grew stronger, rattling the metal sign noisily.
Then, in an instant—
SNAP— CLANG!
The rusted iron chain broke and came flying toward the man's neck like a boomerang.
SWISH—
CRASH!
The man turned his body slightly to avoid it, and the sign embedded itself in the car window.
“Are you all right?”
When he turned to ask, another man in the driver's seat waved at him.
“Yes, I'm fine. Please go ahead.”
“Oh, goodness. All right, all right.”
The bespectacled man waved back and pressed a button on the side of his glasses.
[System booting]
.
.
.
[Starting system.]
[Starting recording.]
[Activating Ghost Sensor.]
BEEP, BEEP—
[Synchronizing equipment]
[Equipment synchronization complete]
Message windows appeared one after another across the lenses of his glasses.
WHOOOOSH—
Soon, a list of the items he was carrying appeared along the lower edge of his lenses.
[Primary Weapon - Ghost-Observing Blade (Equipped)]
[Secondary Weapon - Blood-Counting Dagger (Equipped)]
[Flashlight - Battery remaining: 98%]
[Record footage of this area.]
[Starting mission.]
BEEP—
The message windows scrolled upward and disappeared, leaving only the equipment list at the bottom of his lenses and a heart-rate display at the top, both semi-transparent.
He smoothly unwrapped the object covered in layers of cloth.
A red sword emerged.
Its shape was closer to a Joseon-era saber than a Japanese katana.
At the same time, the expression of the man who had seemed so meek suddenly sharpened.
“Let's give this a try.”
He spoke in a low voice, then drew the sword slightly from its sheath to inspect the blade.
When the faint moonlight caught its surface, the blade glittered beautifully.
It almost seemed as though the blade itself were taking the place of the dim moonlight.
He lowered the tip of his sword slightly and strode confidently through the school gate.
STEP—
The instant his foot crossed the threshold, he sensed a presence to one side.
He turned his head and saw a ghost charging toward him, its long hair matted and greasy, its white clothing resembling a traditional mourning robe.
Its eyes were stretched unnaturally wide, exposing the whites in all their ghastly detail, while its pupils were no larger than beans. Its mouth was split so far across its face that the corners almost reached its ears.
He instinctively leaped into the air and swept his sword horizontally.
SHHHK—
Moonlight flashed along the blade as the ghost's severed head flew away in an arc.
HISSSSS—
The headless body turned into black smoke and scattered through the air.
THUD!
The swordsman landed amid the drifting smoke.
At that same moment, another ghost rushed toward him from the opposite direction.
It looked much like the first, but it charged even faster, letting out a piercing scream.
“AAAAAAAH!”
Without changing his landing stance, he drew the dagger at his waist—the Blood-Counting Dagger—and hurled it at the approaching ghost.
WHIRRR—
The dagger spun through the air in a straight line and struck the charging ghost squarely in the forehead.
THUNK—
The ghost's head snapped backward, and its body immediately dissolved into black smoke.
HISSSS— WHOOOOSH—
The black smoke released by the vanishing ghost coiled around the man's body.
He slowly raised his head.
The moonlight reflected from his sword glinted in his eyes.
His name was Kim Tae-woo.
He was a senior associate at Gwihon Trading Co., Ltd.
* * *
Tae-woo had not always worked for Gwihon Trading.
Gwihon Trading was listed as a trading company on various recruitment websites, and its business had absolutely nothing to do with Tae-woo's field of study.
He had majored in programming and game development.
From childhood, he had demonstrated a genius-level aptitude for computer programming and coding. He had graduated from university with outstanding grades and won prizes in all sorts of competitions and contests, making him a candidate that companies everywhere were eager to recruit.
Thanks to those achievements, he had secured a position at Siren, South Korea's largest game company, with an excellent salary.
But there was one problem that prevented him from leading an ordinary working life.
He could see ghosts.
When he was little, he had assumed everyone saw the same things he did. As he grew older, however, he realized that he was the only one who could see them.
He had even gone to the hospital, but the doctors found nothing wrong with his eyes or his brain.
'That can't possibly make sense...!'
Tae-woo did not want to accept that he was different from everyone else.
He had always liked things that followed clear, consistent logic, and so he believed there must be some as-yet-undiscovered scientific explanation for the things he saw.
But refusing to believe in ghosts did not mean he could keep himself from being startled whenever one appeared.
During overnight shifts, a gray-faced ghost might suddenly pop out from beneath his desk. Sometimes an unidentified ghostly hand would be resting on his mouse. On other occasions, dozens of ghosts would stare down at him from the ceiling, their long hair dangling toward the floor.
He could put up with one or two ghosts appearing now and then. But having so many of them pour into the very place where he was supposed to be working for a living nearly drove him out of his mind.
And before long, it began to affect his performance evaluations.
In the end, the company pressured him into resigning.
He was furious, but he could understand the company's position.
After leaving his job, the only thing Tae-woo knew how to do was make games.
He kept submitting his résumé to game companies, but perhaps word had spread among their hiring managers, because he was rejected at the résumé-screening stage every time.
Even when he managed to reach an interview, a ghost would invariably appear, shake his composure, and cause him to make mistakes.
Then, one day, he received a death notice.
His paternal grandfather had passed away.
Having lost his parents at an early age, Tae-woo had been raised by his grandfather.
His grandfather was a male shaman, and Tae-woo had left his hometown as soon as he graduated from high school.
That was because he had blamed his grandfather for his ability to see ghosts.
Many years had passed since he had grown estranged from his grandfather and stopped contacting him.
And now, out of nowhere, news of his grandfather's death had arrived.
Tae-woo traveled to his home province of Gangwon for the funeral.
There, he watched as his grandfather's spiritual sons conducted the funeral rites.
Not one of them reproached Tae-woo for being a terrible grandson who had left his grandfather all alone.
They simply carried out the funeral procedures in silence, offered prayers, performed rites to guide the deceased to the afterlife, and comforted Tae-woo.
When all the funeral rites were over, the eldest of the spiritual sons handed Tae-woo a large box.
“Father left these belongings behind and told me to make sure you received them when I saw you. Take this with you and come to this address by ten o'clock tomorrow morning.”
Along with the box, he handed Tae-woo a business card.
It was clear that the spiritual sons called Tae-woo's grandfather “Father.”
[Gwihon Trading Co., Ltd.]
234 Sail-daero, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
CEO Kim Hong-seok
010-****-****
Tae-woo tilted his head as he accepted the card.
“What is this? What place is this?”
“It's where you'll be having your job interview, Mr. Kim Tae-woo.”
“An interview? But I never submitted an application.”
“Father submitted one on your behalf. He said the employment terms would be good, so you were to make sure you attended the interview.”
“The terms are good?”
Tae-woo stared blankly down at the business card.
Before he quite knew what was happening, he was on his way home with the box and the card.
On the bus, he searched for “Gwihon Trading.”
[A Global Network Bringing the Whole World Together]
[For All Your Trading Needs, Gwihon Trading]
The slogans on the website's banner alone made it obvious that this was a trading company with no connection whatsoever to Tae-woo's line of work.
“Did Grandpa not know what I majored in? Did he misunderstand it completely?”
Tae-woo wondered whether, because of his age, his grandfather had been unfamiliar with words like “programming” and “gaming” and had recommended the company for that reason.
Still puzzled, he opened the box.
Inside were a book that looked as though it dated back to the Joseon era, a long sword, and a dagger.
Startled to find weapons while sitting on a bus, Tae-woo glanced around to see whether anyone was watching. Then he carefully lifted the lid farther and took a closer look.
“What is all this? Ritual implements?”
He examined the objects more closely, wondering whether they were things his grandfather had used during shamanic rituals.
The book's cover bore the title [Ghost Observation Record]. The sword was engraved with [Ghost-Observing Blade], and the dagger with [Blood-Counting Dagger].
“Ghost Observation Record?”
Tae-woo opened the book and began leafing through it.
In an instant, he found himself reading with intense interest.
Although it was filled with Chinese characters and Middle Korean, he was able to decipher it without much difficulty using smartphone apps and AI.
And what he read was astonishing.
According to the book, one of Tae-woo's ancestors had been the greatest swordsman in Joseon. At some point in the family line, an ancestor had married a shaman, mixing the bloodline with the gift of spirit sight and granting their descendants the ability to cut down ghosts.
Beginning with that account, the book recorded how generation after generation of Tae-woo's ancestors had worked actively as exorcists during the Joseon era. It described the nature of departed spirits and ghosts, how they were constituted, and how they could harm human beings.
It was, quite literally, a record of observations of ghosts, hence its title, Ghost Observation Record.
The book also contained detailed accounts of how his ancestors had performed exorcisms based on those observations.
“……”
Since his grandfather had been a male shaman, Tae-woo could understand why he might have possessed ritual implements like these.
What he could not understand was why his grandfather had left them to him.
And he had no idea what to make of the records themselves.
“What is with this stuff? Is this some kind of fantasy novel?”
He returned to the company's website, which he had been browsing on his phone, and looked through it again.
There, he discovered something truly astonishing.
Founder of Gwihon Trading Co., Ltd.
CEO Kim Jun-mo
Kim Jun-mo was his grandfather's name.
And right beside the introduction to the company's founder was a photograph of his grandfather, displayed for all to see.
Even more astonishingly, Gwihon Trading had annual revenue of no less than 750 billion won!
The sight made Tae-woo's head spin.
The grandfather he had always thought was merely a male shaman was the founder of a corporation generating an astonishing 750 billion won in annual revenue!
“Whoa.”
Dumbfounded, Tae-woo looked from the website to the box containing the swords.
He remembered being told to bring the box to his interview the following day.
“Seven hundred and fifty billion won.”
The company's annual revenue kept circling through his mind.
Since he had been told to come for an “interview,” it seemed his grandfather's dying wish had been to secure a job for his only grandson.
Or perhaps even to hand the company over to him.
“What on earth is going on?”
By this point, Tae-woo could not make sense of any of it.
The grandfather he had believed spent his entire life working as a male shaman in the Gangwon countryside had actually founded a trading company with annual revenue of 750 billion won. On top of that, his inheritance included records that read like something straight out of a fantasy novel.
None of it made sense by any ordinary standard.
The one thing he knew for certain was that, before he died, his grandfather had instructed him to attend an interview at Gwihon Trading.
And from Tae-woo's perspective, if his grandfather really was the company's founder, that seemed like a perfectly plausible final wish for him to leave behind.
“Good grief.”
Whatever the case, Tae-woo had suddenly enjoyed something of a “rise in status,” becoming the maternal grandson of the founder of a company that brought in 750 billion won a year.
It was a little embarrassing, considering how estranged he had been from his grandfather until now. But he had lost his job, and his spirit sight made finding employment elsewhere difficult. This might just be a good opportunity.
And not merely a good opportunity, either—an unbelievably good one!