Part 4. What Must Not Exist (2)
Kang Hyeong-seok studied Shin Jeong-a's face.
She wore a look that said she did not understand why he was looking at her.
Once again, it seemed the sound of the shaman's bells reached only Kang Hyeong-seok.
TRAMP.
Even as he took off his shoes and headed for the small room, the bells went on ringing.
Kang Hyeong-seok went into the small room, and Shin Jeong-a hesitated at the threshold before following him in late.
"Was the salt like this in the morning too?"
Looking at the salt from behind his shoulder, Shin Jeong-a answered with a nod.
That meant the thing had not been active after sunrise.
"Excuse me for a moment."
SCRAAAPE!
Kang Hyeong-seok stepped over the scattered salt and shoved the hangers to one side.
Damn it, why were there so many clothes?
It was as he was hanging elsewhere the ones that kept sliding straight back to their original position.
"Hyeong-seok, do they teach you even this in folklore studies?"
"Teach what?"
Shin Jeong-a did not answer.
So Kang Hyeong-seok moved the hand he had briefly stilled and began clearing the clothes to one side.
"I would appreciate it if you kept this from the company."
"...Kept what?"
"What is about to happen."
JANGLE-JANGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE.
The bells rang more strongly.
Kang Hyeong-seok raised the nails of the hand stroking the wall. Then, with Shin Jeong-a watching, he scraped carefully at the wallpaper.
It was then.
TICK.
His nail caught in a minute gap.
Kang Hyeong-seok pressed along the gap with his nail as though tracing an outline.
He could not say how badly he hoped it was only a simple gap.
SCRRRRRR.
But the mark pressed by his nail was forming a shape.
Shin Jeong-a's face hardened further with unease and fear, and Kang Hyeong-seok's was much the same.
SCRRRRR.
Having traced the line along the gap down to near the floor, Kang Hyeong-seok straightened his knees and took a step back.
The line drew a shape that was all too familiar.
A rectangle.
"...Isn't that a door?"
Kang Hyeong-seok answered her with a heavy nod.
To his eyes as well, there was a door hidden inside the wallpaper.
Shin Jeong-a's eyes turned to him, and the shaman's bells gave off a jangling.
Scattered salt.
A ghost that had traveled the ceiling.
Shaman's bells ringing as if warning of something wicked.
All of it gathered into one and pointed at the door inside the wallpaper.
"W-wait, let me call the landlord right now......."
It was as Shin Jeong-a moved to take out her phone with a confused face.
"Do you have a knife?"
"...To tear it?"
"You said the place was remodeled. The landlord hid it. They will not admit it unless you show them."
Without a word, Shin Jeong-a dropped the hand holding her phone.
Then she brought a box cutter and handed it to him.
CHUNK, SLIIICE.
Kang Hyeong-seok cut a shape slightly larger than the door and began tearing the wallpaper away.
RRRIP! RRRRRIP!
An underlayer had been pasted on to smooth out the difference in height, with the wallpaper pasted over it.
So when he tore the wallpaper, the underlayer came away with it.
RRRRRIP!
Kang Hyeong-seok pulled the paper off, pushed out a thin breath, and took another step back.
Through the torn paper a complete door revealed itself.
It was not an ordinary door.
A frame nailed fast so that it could not open.
The handle hole blocked up with concrete.
The most grotesque part was the faded Bodhidharma painting covering the door, hung upside down.
At this point there was no excusing it as something covered over for the sake of the interior.
Looking into the eyes of the inverted Bodhidharma, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke in a low voice.
"Make the call."
"O-okay."
With hands shaking hard, Shin Jeong-a managed to call the landlord.
***
(I got the message. What door are you talking about?)
Oddly, the one who called Shin Jeong-a back was the real estate agent.
"In the small room! You should have told me if there was something like this!"
(What door do you mean? And why are you raising your voice?)
"Is this something to talk about calmly? I'll send you a photo, so look at it yourself!"
They were in front of the house.
Shin Jeong-a raised her voice, though not quite enough to ring through the alley, and sent the photo of the door with the inverted Bodhidharma painting, breathing hard.
(No, this is....... Did you open it......?)
"No! How would I open that?"
(I'll be right there. Don't do anything, just wait.)
Shin Jeong-a hung up with a face that was pressing down hard on her anger.
If Kang Hyeong-seok had not been there, she would surely have poured out curses by the bucketful.
CLICK, CLICK, FWOOSH!
Kang Hyeong-seok, watching her put a cigarette in her mouth, turned his eyes to the house.
The shaman's bells were no longer ringing.
Nor did his spirit eye show him anything in particular.
But strangely, the thought came that he had to open that door.
That was the right thing to do.
He did not know why, but the thought kept jumping up at him.
"Do you happen to have a claw hammer in the house?"
"Why? Don't tell me you're going to open that door."
"Yes."
"Are you insane? Wh-why would you open that?"
Shin Jeong-a swore by reflex, then shut her mouth in embarrassment.
He had expected that was her nature, so it was hardly surprising. And he knew perfectly well the curse was not aimed at him.
"It is a departed spirit that has been held."
"...What?"
"It has to be released. That is what is right."
Shin Jeong-a pressed her lips shut and then opened them carefully.
"Hyeong-seok, did you take a divine descent or something?"
"Something like it."
Shin Jeong-a's eyes wavered.
So this was what he had really been asking her to keep secret.
"But why? You took a divine descent and you're an office worker?"
"There are people like that now and then."
It was not untrue.
There are people who take the divine descent and go on living ordinary lives.
Because their guardian god is not strong enough for shaman's work.
Or simply because they wanted out of spirit sickness.
There are indeed people who receive a god knowing they will belong neither with ordinary people nor with shamanic practitioners.
A good many of them live like drifters, never holding a steady job.
"I don't... really understand."
But as Shin Jeong-a saw it, Kang Hyeong-seok was not one of those people.
He was something that looked to hold more divine power than they did, as much as those who practiced shamanism for a living.
Passing on a secret remedy and finding a hidden door straight away were not ordinary things to begin with.
"It would be hard to understand even if I explained."
"Is it something bad, or dangerous......?"
"It is not."
When Kang Hyeong-seok said it flatly, Shin Jeong-a, confused as she was, pressed her questions down.
"...Then that's fine. I'll take it as it is."
She had judged that it was not a story that needed telling now.
Kang Hyeong-seok smiled bitterly, quietly grateful in his eyes, and nodded.
That was when it happened.
VROOOOM.
The real estate agent arrived in a red compact car and got out with an ashen face.
"What's the situation?"
At words thrown out without preamble, Shin Jeong-a's anger flared again and the corners of her eyes rose.
"Excuse me! Shouldn't you apologize first?"
This time she shouted loudly enough to ring through the alley.
When several people opened their windows to look, the agent was too flustered to get a word out.
"L-let's talk inside."
"How am I supposed to go in there?"
"Then in my car......."
At that, Kang Hyeong-seok cut into the conversation.
"We can go in."
"Wh-what?"
At what he said next, the faces of both Shin Jeong-a and the agent went slack.
"We can go in. It is not a departed spirit that is active in daylight."
Departed spirit.
At the word, the agent's shoulders flinched.
"Who... are you?"
"Someone acquainted with this person."
It was not intentional.
But a strong shamanic air came off Kang Hyeong-seok, and the two of them had no choice but to stop fighting.
"L-let's go in for now."
The agent must have decided there was something to Kang Hyeong-seok, because she kept glancing at him as she went inside with Shin Jeong-a.
CLICK.
Once the front door was shut, Shin Jeong-a spoke with force, her face holding back anger.
"You're going to have to explain this so that I understand. What is that door? You know, don't you? And you said nothing at all about it when I signed the lease, didn't you?"
Whether it was true or not, the agent only stood there in silence with her head bowed.
"If you have a mouth, use it. What is this house? And what is that door?"
As Shin Jeong-a pressed the agent harder, Kang Hyeong-seok stepped out in front of her and spoke.
"Someone died in this house, didn't they?"
It was then.
The short agent looked up at him in a fluster, and Shin Jeong-a turned a similar look on him.
Between them, Kang Hyeong-seok pressed his eyes with the hand stamped with the precept marks.
'What is this? Images.......'
It felt as though another person's memories were flowing into his head.
It was the insight of shamans, and their power.
It was showing Kang Hyeong-seok what had happened in this house.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
A man driving nails into the wall, and two women watching from behind.
One was the agent, looking far younger than she did now, and the other was a shaman in shaman's robes.
The agent's eyes were afraid; the shaman's were fearsome.
Exactly like someone using a secret remedy that must not be used.
'D-do we really have to go this far?'
The agent asked it in a trembling voice, and the shaman's honed gaze turned on her.
'You were the ones who asked me! To keep the murdered tenant's ghost from showing itself!'
The images were far too vivid.
Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed a groan and took his hand from his eyes.
"This is not simply a house where someone died. She was murdered in there, wasn't she?"
"Wh-wh-who are you?"
The agent asked it back, shaking, and Shin Jeong-a shuddered as gooseflesh rose on her.
It was an old house.
Many people would have used it over that time, so it would not be strange for one of them to have died.
But this was a house where a murder had taken place.
"Mmh."
Kang Hyeong-seok groaned at the images entering his head again.
This time fragments came fast, like an album being flipped through.
The departed spirit being killed.
The landlord and the agent finding the body.
Police and an ambulance.
And the shaman.
"Hyeong-seok......?"
Sensing something was wrong, Shin Jeong-a asked it quietly, and Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed dry before turning his eyes to the agent.
"What is your relationship with the landlord? Friends? Relatives?"
"Th... that is."
Kang Hyeong-seok watched her flounder and then wrinkled the bridge of his nose, because another image had swept past like a dagger.
"Relatives, then."
"Oh, oh dear!"
The agent dropped to the floor and trembled, her face gone white.
"Wh-who are you? Who on earth are you?"
"Did you think it would be fine? Did you think it was all over because it was long ago and you covered the door?"
The agent could make no reply and only shook.
It was all exactly as he had said.
Not one word of it was wrong, so even with a thousand mouths she would have had nothing to say.
"The shaman told you to hang the Bodhidharma painting upside down. Did you do it without knowing what the victim's vengeful soul would go through, left like that?"
"Oh dear, D-Dharma Master."
The agent now seemed to have recognized him as a shamanic practitioner.
"I-I'm sorry. I really didn't know it would turn out like this......."
"Call the landlord. I am going to open that door."
"Y-you mustn't! That is......!"
"Are you going to leave it a haunted house forever?"
It was a low voice, and a forceful one.
The agent, by contrast, seemed to have lost all her strength. She let her head drop and sighed deeply, over and over.
"All right."
"Call him right now."
"Yes, yes."
That was after the agent went out the front door with only her phone.
Shin Jeong-a, frozen in bewilderment, spoke to him at once.
"Wh-what is going on? Hyeong-seok, what are you?"
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at her without answering.
His eyes said not to spread it around, and Shin Jeong-a answered with a large nod, her face tense.
"That god I said I received. He is a rather great god."
"......."
"They say he is great enough that merely receiving him would make one a Grand Shaman. I lack experience, so I am nowhere near that, but you can think of me as half a shamanic practitioner."
Shin Jeong-a felt gooseflesh crawl up her forearms.
She had guessed at it, but hearing it from his own mouth landed with a different force.
Feeling awe and a sense of strangeness, she shut her mouth firmly.
In the thick silence, the agent who had stepped out came back in with her head down.
"He says he'll be here in five minutes."
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded, and sure enough, before long an elderly man came bustling in.
"What on earth is."
Seeing Kang Hyeong-seok, the landlord grew more flustered still.
He had come running because he was told there was a shamanic practitioner.
But the man's clothes alone were so ordinary that he wondered what was going on.
Even so, he could say nothing, because both the agent and Shin Jeong-a, the tenant, were keeping their mouths shut.
Exactly like people who had seen something in him.
"You are the landlord."
"Yes? Yes, yes."
So even the landlord found that the atmosphere made it hard to treat the younger Kang Hyeong-seok carelessly.
Kang Hyeong-seok asked Shin Jeong-a to fetch the claw hammer, then looked at the landlord and spoke.
"How much have you heard?"
"That you're going to... open the door."
"Yes. You had best prepare yourself."
"P-prepare for what?"
That was after the landlord's gaze moved to the claw hammer in Kang Hyeong-seok's grip.
"You bound an innocent departed spirit to this house by a wrong method. You will be ill for a while, and there may be small misfortunes."
"N-no! What are you saying......!"
At that the agent hurriedly pulled at the landlord's arm.
At the signal begging him to stay quiet, the landlord looked at Kang Hyeong-seok with a flustered face.
"It is karma you would have had to undo eventually. Only by setting it right now can you keep the damage to a minimum."
It was not to pin all the karma on the landlord.
It was to set the wrong right even now and keep the damage to everyone as small as possible.
They understood what he meant, but the unease and confusion on both the landlord and the agent were plain.
Still, they did not stop him.
Because it felt as if doing so would bring a greater punishment.
"Excuse me. Let me ask just this."
The landlord said it in a voice he barely wrung out, watching Kang Hyeong-seok's face.
"Are you a Dharma Master? A Daoist Master?"
Kang Hyeong-seok took off his backpack without answering.
Then he opened the zipper and drew out the shaman's bells he kept in the pencil case.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
Gripping the bells, which gave off an energy strong enough for an ordinary person to feel, he took up the claw hammer and started for the small room.
"I will open the door now."
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
Overwhelmed by the sight of him shaking the shaman's bells, the others watched with their breath held.