Part 6. Half-Baked Shamans Will Fear the Young Master (1)
Kang Hyeong-seok spent a truly peaceful Saturday.
He binged a drama he had been meaning to watch on a streaming service, sorted out his meals with gift vouchers that had come in on his birthday, and even enjoyed the leisure of a walk near his home.
It was a day off with nothing at all to worry about.
Nothing to worry about with work, and nothing on the shamanic side either.
Since he did not know when such a day would come again, he made the most satisfying holiday of it that he could.
So there was no reason at all for him to have a nightmare.
TAP.
Lying in bed looking at his phone, Kang Hyeong-seok set it down as sleep came pressing in.
Then he gave himself over to the sensation of the bed pulling him under and fell asleep.
WOOOOOOM.
The dream began with a low, heavy resonance of the kind that puts a person on edge.
A dining table.
Seated in a chair at his own kitchen table, Kang Hyeong-seok was looking at his phone.
He did not know why.
Dreams are abrupt by nature and do not follow reason.
BZZZZZZZ.
A call began to ring as though it had been waiting, and answered itself.
"Hello?"
(Assistant Manager Kang.)
On the other end, Shin Jeong-a spoke like a corpse.
"Yes."
(I think I'm going to die soon.)
"Yes."
Her voice was as dry as Kang Hyeong-seok's, who answered as flatly as a block of wood.
(I wanted to hear the voice of someone I knew, one last time.)
"Yes."
In an instant the scene of the dream changed.
A newly built apartment he had never seen.
Probably the one Shin Jeong-a had moved into.
WHOOOOSH.
A heavy wind was blowing in through the opened balcony window, and white silk curtains whirled as they billowed.
Shin Jeong-a was among the curtains.
More precisely, she was perched on the railing, on the phone with Kang Hyeong-seok.
"I don't want to die."
(Yes.)
"I really don't want to die."
Against her words, her body was tilting further and further out past the railing.
The cars and the residents far below looked impossibly distant.
No one had noticed her, and they were going about their days in peace.
Only Shin Jeong-a, about to fall in among them, gave off a presence as alien as a discord.
"Save me."
With those last words, Shin Jeong-a threw herself out over the railing.
The terror of her falling came pressing in far too strongly.
In the instant he wanted to shut his eyes,
THOOOOM!
"Kyaaaaaaaah!"
"Aaah, aaaaaaah!"
"Wh-what was that? Aaaaaah!"
"Don't look! You mustn't look!"
An enormous sound, and the screams of passersby, stabbed at his ears.
And then the situation returned to Kang Hyeong-seok.
He had been holding the phone blankly to his ear, and he ended the call and stayed still.
Doing nothing, entirely as though it were another person's business, without so much as a flicker.
He simply stayed still.
"Haah!"
It was then that Kang Hyeong-seok woke from the dream.
"Haah, haah! Haah!"
Eyes wide, he dragged in ragged breaths and hugged himself as though folding his arms.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD.
His heart hammered as if he had sprinted at full speed.
'F*ck. Of all the dreams to have.'
Shin Jeong-a's end had been horrifying, but the version of himself he had seen in the dream was more grotesque and chilling still.
A person had died.
They had begged for help, and he had turned away.
Dream or not, how could he be like that?
Was there a side of him inside that even he did not know?
Confused, he rubbed hard at his gooseflesh-covered arms and got out of bed.
"It's a dream. Just a dream."
Really?
His unconscious spoke up abruptly.
'I have received a god, and I had a dream that vivid. Was it really an ordinary dream?'
Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed dry and picked up his phone.
'Damn it.'
He had slept deeply.
He had not gone to bed late, and the dream had not been long, and yet it was already morning.
The time was half past eight.
An awkward hour to make contact.
Hesitating, Kang Hyeong-seok remembered the version of himself in the dream who had stayed chillingly still.
Anyone else, perhaps. But that it had been him was hard to accept, dream or no dream.
"Haaaaah."
That was after he let out a deep breath, as though expelling every bit of air in his body.
RING-RING-RING-RING.
All manner of thoughts came to him while the call rang.
Please let it be only a dream.
Let her be half asleep and snap at him in a thick voice.
Just be alive.
And then curse him out properly for it.
RING-RING-RING-RING-RING.
The longer the ringing went on, the more his anxiety grew.
The foreboding of a surely-not swelled sharply, and it was as he looked around the room for his car keys.
(Hello?)
The call finally connected.
"Manager!"
(Uh, huh? What's wrong?)
At her startled voice, Kang Hyeong-seok let out a breath of relief and spoke.
"I had a strange dream. Has anything happened?"
(A dream?)
"Yes."
Having said it, he wondered whether it had been careless.
Asking whether the move had gone well would probably have been enough.
(No, um. You really do have something.)
But Shin Jeong-a's reaction was somehow not what it should have been.
"What happened?"
(It's, haah. Aaah.)
She let out an irritation laced with frustration and went on.
(I saw a ghost in the apartment.)
"...In the place you moved to?"
(Yes! How do I run into this again the moment I move?)
"Hold on. Are you inside the apartment right now?"
(No. I was startled, so I came out. I'm going to a shrine house the moment it opens.)
He had been relieved that she was not on a railing, and then went rigid at the words shrine house.
"A shrine house?"
(Yes. Actually, I went to one on Friday night.)
The word half-baked shaman came rushing into his head and planted itself there.
'F*ck.'
Muttering the curse with his lips alone, Kang Hyeong-seok paced around the bed and spoke.
"What did they say at the shrine house?"
(Huh? Huh?)
"Please tell me honestly. Something is bothering me."
(He said to put up the talisman, and if anything felt off to come back. And that we would do a rite then.......)
Kang Hyeong-seok pressed his lips shut and picked up his car keys.
"I am coming now. Don't go anywhere, just stay where you are."
(No! This isn't something for you to worry about. I feel bad about it. I'm going to a shrine house, so it's fine.)
"That is exactly what I think the problem is."
He got ready to leave, quickly, as he went on.
"I am asking you. Don't go anywhere, just stay put. And don't go inside the apartment either."
(Assistant Manager Kang.......)
An apologetic voice.
But the feeling dissolved in it was plainly gratitude.
Damn it. He had no wish to go and meet a superior on a Sunday either.
But he had dreamed of a person dying.
It seemed his guardian god had sent a revelation through the dream, and he did not want to carry the guilt of having stood by while knowing exactly how it would end.
He did not want to live that way.
"Just send me the address by text."
Kang Hyeong-seok hung up and looked up at the ceiling before leaving the house.
It was a ceiling with nothing to see.
But he sent his gaze up with a trace of complaint in it and spoke.
"A request. Next time, please give me a gentler revelation."
The dream had been so ghastly and foul that he had no choice but to ask his guardian god in these terms.
Leaving behind a house that gave no answer, Kang Hyeong-seok shut the door.
***
VROOOOOM.
All the way to Shin Jeong-a's apartment his head was crowded with thoughts.
Was he getting too deeply involved with her?
And if the man was not a half-baked shaman?
If he was in fact better than Kang Hyeong-seok, and had seen something Kang Hyeong-seok had missed?
HONK!
He must have slowed without noticing, because the car behind him leaned on its horn.
He tapped his hazards to signal an apology, put his foot on the accelerator, and decided to concentrate on driving.
'I'll know everything once I get there.'
It was a situation where action had to come before deliberation.
With the feeling of a man pulling someone out of the water, he turned into the apartment complex Shin Jeong-a had given him.
"Over here!"
Shin Jeong-a, standing in front of the barrier gate, spotted his car and rapped at once on the security office window.
"Sir! This is my guest. Building 112, unit 1501!"
The barrier rose smoothly, and Shin Jeong-a came straight over.
"Get in for now."
She got into the passenger seat and rubbed a face where anxiety and relief sat together.
Then she turned her head toward him, and the whites of her eyes, damp, glistened unusually.
"I'm sorry. On your day off."
"Not at all. Building 112, you said?"
"Y-yes."
Kang Hyeong-seok leaned his head toward the windshield and scanned the numbers painted on the apartment blocks.
Building 112 seemed to be somewhere further in.
As he moved slowly into the complex, Shin Jeong-a's low voice came from beside him.
"Do you think it's the talisman......?"
It had taken him ten minutes to reach the complex.
In that time she had begun turning out what she had been agonizing over.
"You said you saw a ghost. Do you know what kind of talisman it was?"
"One to drive off ghosts."
"A photo?"
"I don't have one......."
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded with a face that said such things happened, and spoke.
"Did it start after you put the talisman up?"
"I put it up after I finished unpacking last night, and I saw the ghost this morning."
"What kind of ghost was it?"
Shin Jeong-a shuddered and forced her mouth open.
"I was washing my hair and I caught a glimpse of a pale blue hand."
It was not the hand of a living person.
A hand like a corpse's.
It had reached toward her face while she was in the shower.
Horrified, Shin Jeong-a seemed to have run out of the apartment without even rinsing properly.
There was the strong smell of shampoo, and her clothes did not look properly put together.
A white boxy T-shirt and a black cardigan.
Below that were pink pajama trousers with a cartoon character on them, strictly the sort worn when alone.
RUSTLE.
Aware of his glance, Shin Jeong-a tugged at the hem of her cardigan as though to cover the trousers.
"I need to look at the apartment first."
Kang Hyeong-seok said it as he turned his eyes to the road ahead, and Shin Jeong-a pressed her lips shut.
Right now she looked exactly like one of those pre-dawn shrine house visitors.
Which is to say, that desperate, that in need.
When such a person keeps her mouth shut, there is only one reason for it.
RUMBLE.
Parking the car, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke as though letting out a sigh.
"I will go up alone."
"...Sorry."
"Not at all. Just a visitor pass, please."
Coming back to find a no-parking sticker on the windshield would be genuinely miserable.
"Got it. Anything else you need?"
"Just send me the door code by text."
Kang Hyeong-seok reached back for the backpack with the shaman's bells inside and got out of the car.
Right after that.
SHHOOOOM!
The sound of something heavy dropping over his head reached him.
At the same instant the shaman's bells in the bag rang out, JINGLE!
No sooner had he thrown himself sideways by reflex,
CRAAAASH!
than a large brick came down where he had been standing.
THUD! WEEE-OOO, WEEE-OOO, WEEE-OOO!
The stone bounced away, struck a parked car, and set off its alarm.
Eyes turned toward them in an instant, and a security guard in uniform came running.
"Hey! Young man! Are you all right? Are you hurt?"
The guard asked it urgently, and Shin Jeong-a, who had all but shot out of the car, watched him with startled eyes.
"A-Assistant Manager Kang!"
Their words did not reach his ears.
Kang Hyeong-seok pushed out a thin breath and looked up.
There was nothing above that could have dropped a brick.
And yet at the irreverent energy he felt up there, his face hardened further.
'Damn it.'
The uneasy premonition that this might be more serious than he had thought spread through his head like black ink dropped into clear water.