Part 5. There Are Many Shamans Like Lumps of Mud (1)
Monday morning came.
With his backpack over one shoulder, Kang Hyeong-seok hesitated a moment before opening the office door.
If Shin Jeong-a was already in, how would she react?
Could he treat her the way he had before?
'What does it matter.'
Kang Hyeong-seok narrowed the space between his brows and reached for the door.
He was the one who had helped.
Being self-conscious around the person he had helped made no sense at all.
"Good morning."
That was right after he came in with a greeting, as he always did.
"Hyeong-se......."
Shin Jeong-a rose from her chair as if she had been waiting only for him, and then changed her expression.
"Assistant Manager Kang, you're in?"
A blunt, cold impression.
The usual Shin Jeong-a.
"Yes. You're in early."
"I wanted to look over what my predecessor left behind. You know I never got a handover."
That was certainly true.
Noh Su-cheol had quit as if escaping, so Shin Jeong-a had received no handover at all.
This was the hardest part.
Just working out what her job was, how to do it, and where her responsibility began and ended would give her a headache.
'The difference in rank must be hard too.'
A deputy manager had left and a manager had come in.
From the company's side it was an excellent way to cut labor costs, but from the worker's side it was maddening.
Not only for her but for the people around her.
So Shin Jeong-a seemed to be doing her best to keep the burden on the rest of the department as small as she could.
"Have you had coffee?"
Shin Jeong-a checked the time on her smart watch and shook her head.
"There's time. Shall we have a cup?"
"Then I will bring it."
"Thanks. I'll be by the emergency stairs."
"Yes."
Watching her take her cigarettes and leave the office ahead of him, Kang Hyeong-seok gave a small nod.
From the way she was acting, the thing he had worried about did not seem likely.
FLING.
That was after they came up to the building's roof together.
CLICK, FWOOSH.
Shin Jeong-a put a cigarette in her mouth, leaned her back against the railing, and took a mouthful of the coffee he handed her.
Then she closed her eyes and opened them with her brow drawn tight.
"This is hard. Really."
"If getting on top of the work is hard, could you not ask the General Manager for help?"
"No!"
It was a roof with only the two of them.
Shin Jeong-a raised her voice sharply and then pressed the corners of her eyes with the hand holding the cigarette.
"I really don't know how to treat you."
"You were fine this morning. Just keep it like that."
"Haaaah."
Shin Jeong-a made a groaning sound as though it really were hard, and put the cigarette to her lips.
"You look awfully unbothered. I spent all of Sunday racking my head to pieces over it."
"Do you think I did not?"
Only minutes ago, opening the office door, he had worried about how she would behave.
Standing a good three paces from her, he sipped his coffee and blew a sigh out between his lips.
"Let us just treat it as though it never happened. That would be easier on both of us."
"...That's not easy."
Shin Jeong-a said it almost as a mutter and squeezed her eyes shut.
"I went and looked up the news articles, just in case. It was real. A son killing his own mother in that house."
It was an article from twenty years ago.
It did not say which house, but it did give the neighborhood.
The article said a son had brutally murdered his widowed mother and mutilated the body.
The more she read the more her anger rose, and what enraged her most was that the son had ended his own life.
He had fled into death without paying for his crime.
"Just forget it. That would be easier on both of us."
"...Since when have you been like this?"
"You mean driving off ghosts?"
Shin Jeong-a nodded around her cigarette, and Kang Hyeong-seok pressed his lips shut before opening them.
"Not long at all. By count, that was the second time."
"Really? Then how were you so practiced?"
Shin Jeong-a's eyes went round in disbelief.
That day he had looked like a seasoned shamanic practitioner, enough to make the claim seem absurd.
"I think the various things I studied over the years helped."
"Ah... you said you studied folklore, right?"
Was that why?
Shin Jeong-a bent her brows in question and blew out a long stream of smoke.
"What was the first time like?"
"Your predecessor was a man named Deputy Manager Noh Su-cheol. It was while I was with him."
"Was it?"
Her eyes were so full of curiosity that Kang Hyeong-seok explained briefly.
"That time we were chased by a Tiger Ghost."
"A T-Tiger Ghost? Where?"
"On a fogged-in mountain."
Shin Jeong-a's face twisted in revulsion.
She did not know what a Tiger Ghost looked like, but she knew it was a ghost.
Imagining being chased by such a thing, and on a mountain thick with fog like something out of a horror film, raised gooseflesh on her.
Enough to make her grateful she had not gone through it herself.
"In any case, Deputy Manager Noh Su-cheol resigned the very next day. And then you came in, Manager Shin."
"...So it really hasn't been long."
"Yes."
Looking at him, Shin Jeong-a rubbed her forearms.
Gooseflesh had risen strangely.
She was no blind believer in shamanism, but she did go to tarot readers and fortune-tellers now and then.
So she had seen many practitioners, and she had never seen anyone like Kang Hyeong-seok.
"So then, did you receive a god too?"
"Something like it."
"Wh-when?"
"The first time I drove off a ghost."
Shin Jeong-a's face went entirely aghast, and she did not even notice the ash falling onto her shoe.
"You really are something......."
It was then.
FLING.
Gwak Yeong-ho shouldered the door open, saw the two of them, and widened his eyes in surprise.
"What's this? You two were together?"
"Good morning, sir."
"Good morning."
Gwak Yeong-ho waved once and put a cigarette in his mouth.
Shin Jeong-a quietly hid her cigarette behind her, and Gwak Yeong-ho shook his head firmly as he lit his own.
"Don't do that. Our company isn't like that, Manager Shin."
"Ah, yes."
"Be at ease. At ease. So what were you two talking about?"
At the question, Shin Jeong-a faltered for a moment.
"We were talking about her predecessor."
"Deputy Manager Noh Su-cheol?"
Gwak Yeong-ho's brows bent sharply.
"What about him?"
"It's nothing. Manager Shin didn't get a handover. We were talking about the work and it came up."
"Ah."
Gwak Yeong-ho nodded in understanding and sucked at the filter over and over, as though stifled.
"Whew! Manager Shin, I'm sorry about this. Your predecessor was such an irresponsible man that you're having a rough time."
"No, it's fine. He must not have been much of a person."
"Don't get me started. Did you hear why he quit?"
Shin Jeong-a shook her head, aware of Kang Hyeong-seok even without looking at him.
"Whew! He quit because he saw a ghost. A ghost. Does that make any sense?"
It was as Gwak Yeong-ho looked into the distance and blew out irritated smoke.
Shin Jeong-a looked at Kang Hyeong-seok, and when their eyes met he gave a short nod.
She understood at once why he had asked her to keep it from the company.
"That is irresponsible."
"If I'd known he was that sort I'd have done something long ago. Sheesh, I still can't sleep when I think about Deputy Manager Noh. Can't sleep."
Having grumbled, Gwak Yeong-ho smiled bitterly and pointed at Kang Hyeong-seok with the hand holding his coffee.
"Anyway, if there's something you don't know while you're working, ask me or Assistant Manager Kang. He'll know it well."
"Assistant Manager Kang?"
When she asked back in a surprised voice, Gwak Yeong-ho nodded and answered.
"You don't find people like Assistant Manager Kang."
Gwak Yeong-ho's gaze on him was deep.
It was the look one gives a person one can trust.
He had investigated, in case Noh Su-cheol came after the company unjustly.
In the process he had learned a few things.
'You should have said something if it was hard.'
Noh Su-cheol was a bastard who, like an onion, kept giving up more layers to peel.
The tasks he had pushed onto Kang Hyeong-seok were not one or two.
He had done so much work for his rank that it prompted the thought, 'At this rate we could promote him before long.'
"Understood. I'll ask Assistant Manager Kang a lot."
"That all right with you, Assistant Manager Kang?"
It was not a question pressing down with rank. The tone truly asked for his agreement.
"Yes."
So when Kang Hyeong-seok answered without hesitation, Gwak Yeong-ho could only nod and breathe out smoke like a sigh.
"Really, truly. If everyone were like you, how good that would be."
Kang Hyeong-seok gave an awkward laugh.
Gwak Yeong-ho laughed as if copying him, looked at his watch, and put out his cigarette.
"Let's head in. And are you both free tonight?"
"Why do you ask?"
Kang Hyeong-seok, about to open the door, looked back, and Gwak Yeong-ho was pointing at Shin Jeong-a.
"We have to do the welcome dinner. Last Friday was too hectic."
"On a Monday?"
This time it was Shin Jeong-a who asked, and Gwak Yeong-ho laughed awkwardly.
"Is that bad? If it's a burden, let's just have a light dinner without drinks."
"Yes. That would be fine."
"Got it. Manager Shin, just think about what you'd like to eat."
"Understood."
Watching the two of them smile faintly, Kang Hyeong-seok opened the door down to the emergency stairs.
A welcome dinner on a Monday.
It did seem a bit off.
But he knew the mood of these staff dinners well enough that it was neither a burden nor an irritation.
***
"Come now, we could have gone somewhere nicer."
The department, having left thirty minutes early on account of the welcome dinner, headed for a restaurant two stops from the office.
It was a pancake tavern.
The kind that gives off a heavy smell of oil and serves makgeolli in dented aluminum kettles.
For a staff dinner on a rainy day, fine.
But for a welcome dinner there was something a little wanting about it.
"Why? I like pancakes."
"Still, isn't the menu too ordinary?"
"I read the reviews and they say the seafood scallion pancake here is really good. And the makgeolli is house-made, so it's thick and tasty."
"Is that so? Ah, no, you don't have to drink. There's no need to push yourself."
"It's because I want to."
"Oh, is that so?"
Gwak Yeong-ho's mouth spread into a wide grin, but Namgung Min-a's did not.
She must have had high hopes for a welcome dinner.
She had evidently thought it would at least not be a place like this, and her lips were pushed out.
Beside her, Assistant Manager Lee Jin-pyeong, a man who might as well not be there even when he was, stayed quiet.
"That all right with you too, Assistant Manager Kang?"
"Yes. I like pancakes as well."
"Good. Everyone, in we go."
Shin Jeong-a opened the door and went in.
From the first impression it felt like a good place to eat.
The food needed no further comment.
The seafood scallion pancake came out not the least bit soggy but crisped almost to a fry, the potato pancake was crisp outside and soft and floury within, and the kimchi pancake was moving.
"Wow, this place is really good."
"Have you never been here, sir?"
"We only ever go where we always go. To be frank, I didn't even know a place like this existed."
"Let's come often. It would be good on a rainy day."
"Manager Shin......."
Until now there had been no one in the department who liked to drink.
Gwak Yeong-ho's face now said he liked Shin Jeong-a immensely.
"Assistant Manager Kang, can I have some dumplings?"
"If you want them, Min-a, order them."
"Really? Sir, one plate of dumplings here!"
Unlike at the start, Namgung Min-a now seemed to have grown fond of the place.
GLUG, GLUG, GLUG, GLUG.
Shin Jeong-a poured makgeolli into a cup and held the kettle out to Lee Jin-pyeong as well.
"Assistant Manager Lee, are you always this quiet?"
"Yes."
At the sight of him not even lifting his cup and digging only into the kimchi pancake, Shin Jeong-a nodded as if she had worked out what sort of man he was.
The welcome dinner went on in a warm mood overall.
It was a welcome dinner in name only, with nothing grand about it, just good food and small talk, which made it all the more so.
"Assistant Manager Kang, you don't drink?"
"I brought my car."
"Call a designated driver. I'll pay."
"No thank you. I do not like drinking that much."
It was a conversation with Shin Jeong-a, but out of nowhere Gwak Yeong-ho's eyes turned sad.
"Shame. Then the only drinkers are me and the General Manager."
"Should I have a cup after all?"
"No, no. There's no need to drink that badly. Oh, sir, what are you doing?"
Shin Jeong-a waved him off in alarm as Gwak Yeong-ho quietly reached for the kettle.
In the end the meal finished without another order of makgeolli.
"Ah, that was good. Manager Shin, thank you for joining our department."
"Not at all, sir. What are you saying?"
"No, I mean it. I'm truly grateful."
Reluctant to part just yet, Gwak Yeong-ho looked around.
It was a busy district.
A busy district with a few bars nearby, a convenience store, and a cafe as well.
"There's a cafe. Let's get takeout, smoke one cigarette each, and call it a night. How's that?"
"Excuse me, sir."
"Yes, Assistant Manager Lee."
"I should be heading off."
"Then take a coffee with you. All right?"
"Yes."
It was the moment Gwak Yeong-ho took a card from his wallet to hand to Lee Jin-pyeong.
"Huh? Isn't that Deputy Manager Noh over there?"
Namgung Min-a, who had been peering toward the convenience store, pointed.
Everyone's eyes went that way at once, and Kang Hyeong-seok's brows narrowed fiercely.
Because Noh Su-cheol really was there.
Looking thoroughly suspicious, as though doing something he should not.