After getting into her car in the parking garage, Ye-rim started the engine and prepared to leave.
As Tae-woo settled into the passenger seat, she spoke.
“By the way, isn't it fascinating? That a company like this even exists?”
“Yes. I never could have imagined it.”
“I've only been working here for about two years, but I still can't tell my parents or anyone else exactly what I do. They all think I work for a trading company.”
“Ah, I can understand that.”
“Did you see a lot of ghosts when you were little, Tae-woo?”
“Hmm. Yes, I saw plenty. What about you, Assistant Manager Yoon?”
“I saw an awful lot of them, too. Apparently, my saju—my birth fortune—has unusually strong yin energy. They told me that's why so many ghosts were drawn to me.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“The worst part was the sleep paralysis. I used to get it all the time. Once a day? Once every other day? It happened so often that I thought I'd lose my mind.”
“Hmm. Yes. Not being able to sleep would do that.”
“Didn't you ever suffer from sleep paralysis?”
“Me? Well, rather than pinning me down in my sleep, the ghosts would just keep talking beside me.”
As Tae-woo answered, memories of his childhood came back to him.
He had rarely experienced sleep paralysis that left his body rigid while he was sleeping at night.
Instead, there had been countless occasions when he rolled over in bed and found a ghost with a deathly pale face sitting beside him, staring at him while chanting what sounded like a spell.
He still had no idea what those sounds meant. Looking back, they had almost sounded like someone blowing air through their mouth.
And that was not all.
Sometimes, while he slept, a ghost would lie beside him and make a strange ‘GRRRRKKK’ sound.
At times like that, he had jolted awake, fled, and even screamed, but none of it made much difference.
Even if a ghost disappeared from his sight that night, another would inevitably appear the next day.
Because of that, Tae-woo had sometimes stayed awake all night, too frightened to fall asleep.
After enduring it for a day or two, he would become so exhausted that he fell asleep whether ghosts were nearby or not. Then the same routine would begin all over again.
His habit of tinkering with IT devices and coding throughout the night had started the same way. Afraid of falling asleep, he had begun spending his nights alone in front of a computer.
“By the way, how did you think of using all that equipment to record the place? I've seen plenty of interns, but you're the first person I've seen approach orientation so creatively,” Ye-rim said.
“Well, that's just the direction my mind naturally goes. But you've seen a lot of interns? There didn't seem to be many newcomers in the Cleanup Team's office.”
“Most of them drop out pretty quickly. Out of ten people, maybe one or two stay.”
She answered as though it were nothing unusual.
Tae-woo nodded, looking as though he understood perfectly.
By then, the car had left the underground parking garage and was speeding along the road.
“When we go out on assignments, do we have to roll around on the ground fighting ghosts like I did during orientation?” Tae-woo asked.
“It depends on the situation. Usually, yes, but sometimes they disappear without much fuss. Still, we go in prepared for a fight. If someone has requested our services, it means there's definitely a ghost trying to affect the living.”
“Do people ever get seriously injured or even killed while fighting ghosts?”
“Of course. It happens. There are some truly vicious ghosts out there. Generally speaking, the higher their grade, the stronger they are.”
“What's the toughest ghost you've ever faced, Assistant Manager Yoon?”
At his question, Ye-rim gave a faint chuckle and shrugged.
“It's better not to ask that sort of thing. You'll only develop preconceptions. Even ghosts of the same grade can be easy for one person to handle and difficult for another.”
Tae-woo had a feeling she was deliberately avoiding the question.
That only made him more worried.
Perhaps there were ghosts far stronger than he had imagined.
* * *
SCREECH—
When the car stopped, Ye-rim said, “Here we are.”
Tae-woo looked out the window.
Before them stood a rather shabby three-story commercial building.
On the first floor were an antique shop that appeared to have closed for business, a tiny supermarket that looked as though it might collapse if someone kicked it, and a barbershop with an elderly man sitting vacantly outside. There were no signs at all on the second or third floors.
The building had the unmistakable look of something built in the 1990s. Its black window frames and faded glass made it seem even more ominous.
“Normally, we'd come at night so we could see things more clearly, but we still have to get to Ilsan today. Let's get this done quickly.”
Ye-rim took a Glock 19 pistol from her pocket and checked the magazine.
When Tae-woo stared at the gun in surprise, she explained.
“Just as your primary weapon is a hwando, mine is an airsoft gun. It's a GBB, a gas-blowback BB gun, but the company's Technical Department modified it, so it can shoot reliably out to fifty meters.”
“Wouldn't it hurt if you shot a person with that?”
“It would sting if it hit a living person, but it wouldn't be particularly dangerous. And the BBs have been treated with salt and cinnabar, so they shatter on impact if they hit a person.”
Once she had finished her preparations, Ye-rim slipped the pistol into a holster inside her suit jacket with practiced ease.
Tae-woo also got out of the car, secured the Blood-Counting Dagger at his waist and the Ghost-Observing Blade across his back, then put on his smart glasses.
[System Booting]
.
.
.
[Starting System.]
[Starting Recording.]
[Activating Ghost Sensor.]
[Activating Ghost Radar.]
BEEP-BEEP— BEEP-BEEP—
[Synchronizing Equipment]
[Equipment Synchronization Complete]
This was his first field test since upgrading the equipment.
For now, the flashlight module he had installed appeared to be working properly.
All that remained was to see whether the Ghost Radar functioned correctly in the presence of ghosts.
“It's helpful to interview people nearby before entering a site. Let's have a look around.”
Ye-rim took the lead and approached the elderly man outside the barbershop.
Tae-woo followed, casting self-conscious glances around him. The sword strapped to his back was bothering him.
“Hello, sir. May I ask you something? We've heard there are ghosts in this building. Do you happen to know anything about that?” Ye-rim asked warmly.
“What? Ghosts?”
The old man raised his voice, apparently hard of hearing.
“Yes, sir. We've heard that ghosts appear in this building. Do you know anything about it?”
“Ghosts? Ghosts? I don't know anything about that.”
The old man shook his head.
“Is there someone else who might know?” Ye-rim asked.
“The owner of that antique shop next door would probably know. Haven't seen him around lately, though.”
“The owner of the antique shop next door?”
Ye-rim took a step back and looked into the closed shop.
Through the locked glass door, they could see all manner of objects scattered haphazardly inside.
At a glance, there hardly seemed to be room to set foot in there.
“Do you know where we could find him, then? Or perhaps how to contact him?”
“The owner? The people at that supermarket over there might know.”
The old man gestured with his chin toward the supermarket beside the antique shop, at the far end of the building.
While the two of them talked, Tae-woo slowly approached the antique shop's entrance and peered inside.
Among the objects that looked incredibly old, he saw a blue light move across his vision.
Tae-woo blinked and took a step back.
That blue light.
His Ghost Radar had detected something.
It meant there was a ghost inside the antique shop emitting fairly strong interference.
“Tae-woo, let's go to the supermarket.”
Having finished talking to the man, Ye-rim gave Tae-woo a light tap and went into the supermarket.
But Tae-woo frowned, unable to take his eyes off the antique shop.
The blue light had disappeared again.
'What was that?'
This was his first time in the field since installing the Ghost Radar, so he could not yet tell exactly what was happening.
But if it had not malfunctioned, there was a ghost inside powerful enough to interfere with the radio signal.
“Tae-woo, what are you doing?” Ye-rim called again from the supermarket entrance.
“Ah, coming!”
Tae-woo hurried after her.
When the two of them entered the supermarket, they found a remarkably cramped interior.
They passed narrow shelves stocked with old-fashioned snacks and assorted household goods until they reached a small sliding door in the corner.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” Ye-rim called.
An elderly woman slid the door open with a RATTLE.
“Need something?”
A musty smell drifted out of the room behind her.
The television was showing a program introducing local attractions, the sort of thing elderly viewers tended to enjoy.
“Ah, yes. We heard there were rumors about ghosts in this building. We asked the gentleman outside the barbershop, and he said the owner of this supermarket might know something.”
“That old man said that? Goodness. All right, what do you want to know?”
The old woman looked annoyed, but she adjusted her sitting position as though she intended to explain.
This was what she told them.
The owner of the commercial building was a man surnamed Park, who ran the antique shop.
Collecting antiques had been his hobby, and after purchasing the building, he had opened an antique shop there.
Then, one day, he began saying strange things like a madman and behaving bizarrely, running about shouting in the rain and causing a commotion.
No one could figure out what was wrong with him, and even his two sons all but severed ties with him.
Several years later, Mr. Park took his own life on the second floor of the building.
Ownership of the building then passed to his sons, but they seemed to have no interest in it. Neither of them had visited even once.
From that time onward, rumors that ghosts haunted the building had begun to surface regularly.
“But why are you two looking for ghosts? Are you those NewTubers, or whatever they're called? I've heard there are NewTubers who go around filming ghosts.”
The old woman looked from Ye-rim to Tae-woo.
“No. We've been hired to perform an exorcism.”
“An exorcism? Ahhh. The people in the shopping building said they were pooling their money to hire a shaman. You must be the ones they meant. Though this young fellow doesn't exactly look like a shaman.”
The old woman blinked at Tae-woo.
“Thank you very much for telling us all that.”
Ye-rim smiled, bowed politely, and led Tae-woo back outside.
“By the way, Assistant Manager Yoon, listening to that made me curious. How do people request our company's services? I'd never heard of a company that catches ghosts until now. And from what I can tell, we don't advertise.”
“That's right. We don't advertise. As far as the public is concerned, Gwihon Trading is a trading company. Both you and I are officially employed in the trading business.”
“Oh?”
“I suppose nobody explained that to you. Our company receives exorcism requests through two channels. First, clients who already know we're an exorcism company submit their requests through our Sales Team.”
“Right, right. So we really do have a Sales Team.”
“Yes, we do. But they mainly handle VIP clients, so direct requests are extremely rare. Usually, people don't approach Gwihon Trading at all. They go to a fortune-teller's shop, a Catholic church, a Protestant church, or a Buddhist temple.”
“They go to fortune-tellers?”
“Yes. There are shamans and priests who work with us. When they receive a request for an exorcism, they pass it on to us in exchange for a commission. Internally, we sometimes call those shamans and priests our 'Outsourced Sales Team.' Those are the two ways requests reach us. This case came through the second channel.”
In other words, VIPs who knew the company's true business could contact it directly through their connections, while shamans, exorcists, and priests authorized to perform exorcisms across the country could pass their clients' requests on to Gwihon Trading.
“There's still a lot you'll have to learn about how the company works. Do your best to settle in.”
Ye-rim smiled and stopped at the building's entrance.
The stairs visible from outside were already filthy, littered with all sorts of rubbish, cigarette butts, and crumpled paper cups.
“Just the sort of place ghosts would love.”
She drew her pistol and stepped forward.
Tae-woo drew the Ghost-Observing Blade from his back and followed her inside.