Part 6. Half-Baked Shamans Will Fear the Young Master (2)
DING!
『First floor.』
Kang Hyeong-seok got into the elevator.
A police car would be on its way by now, and the owner of that car might be weeping tears of blood.
But this was no situation for taking an interest in that.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked up at the floor display in the elevator and opened and closed his hand.
His palm was damp with sweat gone cold.
'This is bigger than I thought.'
Nothing was certain yet.
A brick dropped over his head?
He could suppose some brat raised with no discipline had thrown it off the roof as a science experiment.
But the unease sharpening as the elevator rose was not to be taken lightly.
HMMMMMM.
It was just as the elevator passed the eighth floor.
JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE.
The shaman's bells in his bag rang madly and sent his heart lurching,
DING!
and the elevator stopped at the ninth floor.
Kang Hyeong-seok stared out through the doors with wide eyes.
"...Damn it."
There was no one there.
Nobody had pressed the button, yet the elevator had stopped, and after a moment the doors closed slowly.
HMMMMMM.
The elevator heading upward again felt like a cattle truck bound for the slaughterhouse.
Kang Hyeong-seok tucked the bag firmly under his arm and yanked the zipper open.
He did not know what this was, but it occurred to him that leaving it alone could grow into something truly unmanageable, and he could not bring himself to get off.
HMMMMMM, DING.
Tenth floor.
The elevator stopped again and the doors opened.
Again no one got on, and Kang Hyeong-seok shut his eyes, determined not to look ahead at all.
HMMMMMM, DING.
Thirteenth floor.
He did not open his closed eyes.
There was no sign of anyone boarding, or of any presence beyond the doors.
『Weight limit exceeded. Passengers who boarded last, please take the next elevator.』
There really was no end to the tricks.
Kang Hyeong-seok spat out a curse and got off.
He only had to go up a little way by stairs.
Clenching his back teeth, he opened the fire door and took the steps one at a time.
It was not yet dark outside.
There were windows in the stairwell.
So why did it feel this dim?
'It's turning into a haunted house.'
A haunted house has foul things in it.
Ghosts.
Ghosts that can harm people, that pose a threat to people.
Which is why even a newly built apartment can become a haunted house easily enough.
TRAMP, TRAMP.
Reaching the turn of the stairs, he took the shaman's bells from his bag.
'Unit 1501 is Manager Shin's.'
Kang Hyeong-seok squeezed his eyes shut, snapped them open, and ran up the last of the stairs in one go.
Then he punched the code Shin Jeong-a had texted him into the door lock.
BEEP-BOOP, FLING!
And at once he understood.
Why Shin Jeong-a had been afraid to come inside.
An interior unnaturally dark.
The fishy smell of ghosts.
House centipedes and cockroaches swarming the walls and ceiling.
Shin Jeong-a's home was a haunted house, unfit for anyone to live in.
'Too fast. It is turning into a haunted house abnormally fast.'
Kang Hyeong-seok pushed his breath out between thinly parted lips and adjusted his grip on the bells.
Please protect me.
Please light the road I walk.
Please help me do what is right.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE.
When the bells poured out their clear energy, the insects began to draw back as if fleeing.
Kang Hyeong-seok stepped into her home with his shoes still on.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
It was vicious.
However much the bells shielded him with their numinous energy, he could not shake the thought that it was vicious.
It felt almost like wading into an endless bog in a diving suit.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
Shaking the bells hard, Kang Hyeong-seok opened his mouth.
"Grown old, grown old, the wine of ten thousand years. Never again to be young."
He recited the scripture and looked around.
There were no evil spirits to be seen.
But there was something he could feel.
"Though heaven be far, the dew comes at the first watch of night; though Beijing be far, white hair comes with the passing years."
They were hiding.
Behind the curtains, behind the window glass, beneath the insects.
The television stand, under the bed, the dark between the cabinet doors.
Wherever the light did not reach, in narrow gaps, they clung and glared at him.
"Though the road to the underworld be far, once you slip and die, the underworld lies just outside your front gate."
Even for evil spirits like these, Kang Hyeong-seok murmured a scripture for their sake.
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE!
He rang the bells and held his mind on the scripture for a long while.
The thick, heavy energy that had seemed impossible to clear began to fade.
But this would not settle it.
The root cause was the talisman.
He had to find it and destroy it.
"A soul it is. Whose soul is this soul? The soul of the pitiful departed of the Kim family. If you have come as a soul, we shall seat you upon the soul-tray and set out on the passage."
Kang Hyeong-seok turned his eyes to the bathroom door.
There.
The strongest wicked energy came from there.
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE!
He crossed to the bathroom and threw the door open without hesitation.
Inside, too, the insects had taken firm hold.
JANGLE-JANGLE!
When he shook the bells hard, they writhed and fled. The mirror they had covered came into view, and with it a talisman.
Kang Hyeong-seok tore off the talisman, a house centipede still squirming across it.
His face twisted, and not because of the insect.
It was because he recognized what kind of talisman it was.
'You crazy bastard of a shaman. Where did you get a talisman like this?'
It was a talisman that opens the Ghost Gate (鬼門).
The bathroom, where the yin energy is strongest, and stuck to the mirror at that. Her home had had no choice but to become a den of ghosts.
Kang Hyeong-seok shook off an insect crawling up the back of his hand and ran for the kitchen.
CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK, FWOOSH!
He turned the gas ring until a flame came, and burned the talisman at once.
The thin paper turned to gray ash and black smoke the moment the fire touched it.
CLICK.
Kang Hyeong-seok turned off the flame, gripped the counter, and looked back.
The Ghost Gate was shut, and he had performed a rite, in abbreviated form at least.
The malign energy that had filled the place was fading fast, and the insects too were fleeing the apartment.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE!
Shaking the bells like a shaman closing out a rite, Kang Hyeong-seok left her home for the moment.
It had abruptly occurred to him that he was standing in a woman's apartment with his shoes on.
CLICK! BEEP-BOOP.
Having locked the door properly, he leaned his back beside the elevator and glared at the front door.
The urgent fire was out, for now.
But it could not be called finished.
'That shaman. Crazy bastard.'
Unless something was done about that half-baked bastard, a good many people were going to end up holding funerals.
***
"Is it all over?"
The moment he got into the car, Shin Jeong-a greeted him with a startled face.
Sitting down in the driver's seat with a tired face, Kang Hyeong-seok answered with a nod.
"Wh-what happened? Was it the talisman?"
"Give me a moment to rest."
He had not meant to show it, but the exhaustion came through in his voice.
He had been in a home turned haunted house.
The vicious energy had stabbed at his whole body, and a light fatigue had settled in.
RUSTLE.
Shin Jeong-a pulled a drink out of the convenience store bag between the seats.
She opened the cap and handed it to him.
"Drink this first. Your lips are all cracked."
Kang Hyeong-seok sent her a grateful look and took it.
But he did not drink right away; he looked at the bottle for a moment.
'She went to the convenience store dressed like that?'
The Shin Jeong-a who only ever showed a neat, put-together face did not lend herself easily to that image.
And the drink in his hand was one of the ones that ran close to five thousand won apiece.
Expensive for a convenience store drink, the kind he had never quite reached for.
Who would have guessed it would end up in his hand this way.
"...Can't you drink it? Are you all right?"
At the worried voice, Kang Hyeong-seok shook his head and drank it down in long swallows.
The measured sweetness drove off the fatigue pleasantly.
"Whew. Thank you."
Kang Hyeong-seok read the look in her eyes and went on with the corners of his mouth raised.
"You do not need to worry about the apartment."
"R-really? No more ghosts?"
Ghosts were not the only problem, though.
Kang Hyeong-seok recalled the insects that had filled the place, and how badly Shin Jeong-a feared insects, and shook his head.
"They will not come again."
He deliberately did not mention the insects.
"Haaah. You really went through it, Assistant Manager Kang."
Shin Jeong-a, worn down in spirit, began to pour it out.
"I actually thought about asking you, but there was the last time too, and I felt so bad about it. That's why I went to the shrine house I always go to, and I never thought it would turn out like this."
Pressing her curled fist against her forehead, Shin Jeong-a was full of bewilderment.
"I even got a talisman, so why did it end up like this......."
Kang Hyeong-seok worked his lips.
Was it better to tell her?
Or to bury it?
After some deliberation he sighed and put his decision into words.
"The talisman was the problem."
Only if she knew would she stop going back to that shrine house.
And only then would Kang Hyeong-seok avoid another day like this one.
"What?"
"That talisman. It was one that calls ghosts in. That is why you saw a ghost in your home."
Shin Jeong-a's face hardened and her eyes wavered.
She could hardly believe she had gone through all that because of a talisman she had paid money for at a shrine house.
"Are you sure? Was it really the talisman?"
"It resolved once I burned it."
Her face hardened all at once and sparks came into her eyes.
If burning the talisman had actually fixed it, then even to her, who knew little of shamanism, the problem was far too clear.
Kang Hyeong-seok took a mouthful of the drink he had set in the holder and started the engine.
Shin Jeong-a's eyes asked at once where he meant to go.
"Where is that shrine house? I think I had better see this shaman's face."
He said it with a face that looked ready to put a fist into the man.
"......."
"Please tell me honestly. That way there will be no other victims."
"Assistant Manager Kang."
Her low voice pulled his gaze over.
"Yes."
"Wait a little. I'll change and come back, and we'll go together."
It was not a face asking for agreement.
When Kang Hyeong-seok watched her without a word, Shin Jeong-a got out of the car with a face set hard in anger.
"Wait for me. I'll be quick."
Kang Hyeong-seok watched her go and said he would.
Then he opened his phone and looked over the list of shrine houses he had received from Cheong-geum.
Lee Geum-gyeong's compiled list of fake shamans.
Whether the man was on it, or whether he would be a new line added to it, he did not know.
But either way, it was certain he was a shaman who had done harm rather than help.
FLING.
When Shin Jeong-a came back a little later, she had done the bare minimum of getting ready to go out.
Only base makeup on her face.
Light-wash jeans and a bright-toned shirt.
Kang Hyeong-seok entered the address she gave him into the navigation.
"Why are you smiling......?"
Shin Jeong-a asked it in a cool voice, and Kang Hyeong-seok shook his head as though it were nothing.
Damn it. The shrine house she had gone to was on Lee Geum-gyeong's list.
VROOOOM.
As they pulled out of the complex, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke.
"Manager, I have one request."
"Say it."
She must have been thoroughly angry, because her words were shorter than usual.
"From now on, avoid shrine houses if you can. And if you do go, ask me first."
"Why?"
"I do not want another day like today."
Moving on a day off for the sake of a superior at work was not an easy thing.
Shin Jeong-a must have caught his meaning, because she looked at him for a while, then drew in a large breath and let it out.
"All right. I'll do that."
VROOOOM.
In a car where a heavy silence flowed, Kang Hyeong-seok drove toward the shrine house.
Beside him, Shin Jeong-a held her anger down like a time bomb, her lips pressed firmly shut.