Part 1. Follow the God's Guidance (2)
There was a sticky, stifling feeling in the air.
An unpleasantness beyond anything the fog alone could give.
And a smell, fishy and sickening at once, stabbed at his nose.
The thing in that darkness was the cause.
SSSHRRRRRR.
An auditory hallucination that sounded like wind rang in his ears.
It was the sound of dozens of people, men and women, young and old, muttering very fast in low voices.
Strangely, he felt he could understand what they meant.
-Come. This way. Hurry.
TRUDGE.
His feet moved regardless of his will.
He was being forced to walk toward the fog, and he thought he heard Noh Su-cheol shouting behind him.
But it was buried under the hallucination and he could not hear it properly.
-Come. You are doing well. That is it. Come quickly.
TRUDGE, TRUDGE, TRUDGE.
Walking into the fog with slow steps, Kang Hyeong-seok felt his breathing grow ragged.
He knew he had to resist, but it was as if a transparent rope had wound tight around his body and was hauling him along.
JINGLE.
A bell ringing right beside his ear brought his feet to a halt.
The bells grew more numerous.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
In the end the sounds overlapped, as though a dozen small bells were being shaken at once.
At a sound like the bells shamans used, Kang Hyeong-seok snapped back to himself.
"Hah! Haah, haah!"
Eyes wide, he hurriedly looked around. The car was trapped in the fog, only its outline showing, and Noh Su-cheol's face had gone white with terror.
"Hey! What's wrong with you? Snap out of it!"
Kang Hyeong-seok wiped away his cold sweat and shook his head hard.
'Damn it. Again.'
He had been acted upon by something that common sense and reason could not explain.
Like the ghosts that had tormented him so many times before.
That darkness, too, had tried to bewitch him.
"What are you doing over there? Get over here! You punk!"
Noh Su-cheol screeched at him even louder than usual.
But his voice trembled with fear, so there was nothing threatening about it.
"It's nothing."
Kang Hyeong-seok stared into the darkness with different eyes than before. Nothing came into his field of view, but it felt as if a foul thing might burst through the fog at any moment.
They had to leave this place at once.
"Let's get to the car first, Deputy Manager."
"Wh-what?"
"I'll explain the details in the car."
"What about reporting it? We have to do something, don't we?"
"Let's just go."
He pulled at Noh Su-cheol's forearm, but the man did not budge.
"What are you talking about? We report it first! You brat!"
Noh Su-cheol was digging in his heels to an incomprehensible degree.
The reaction was chilling, and when Kang Hyeong-seok looked into his eyes, he saw eyes that seemed to be gazing at some distant mountain.
Damn it.
Kang Hyeong-seok chewed the curse out with his lips alone.
'Deputy Manager Noh has been bewitched.'
Being bewitched was dangerous.
The things called malevolent spirits bewitched people into behaving in ways that made no sense.
That was how those bastards took what they wanted.
What the Tiger Ghost wanted was a human life.
More precisely, the blood and meat of Kang Hyeong-seok and Noh Su-cheol.
GRAB!
"Snap out of it! This is no time for that!"
Kang Hyeong-seok gripped his shoulders hard and shook, but even the muscles of Noh Su-cheol's face were going slack.
SMACK!
Kang Hyeong-seok struck Noh Su-cheol's shoulder with his palm.
It was hard enough to rock the man's body, yet he only muttered, 'We have to report it.'
"Snap out of it, would you? Come on!"
Kang Hyeong-seok raised his fist to his shoulder. But he could not bring it down right away, and for a moment he hesitated.
It was because the man was his superior at work, but his resolve came soon enough.
That superior was Noh Su-cheol.
CRACK!
Noh Su-cheol's head snapped around and he rolled across the ground.
"Kuh! Ugh! Gaaaah!"
Jolted awake, Noh Su-cheol clutched his cheek and looked up at Kang Hyeong-seok with axe-sharp eyes.
"Y-you bastard, did you just h-hit me?"
"Snap out of it! F*ck!"
Kang Hyeong-seok shouted it more viciously than Noh Su-cheol had ever spoken to him.
It was a side he had never once shown at the office.
So Noh Su-cheol only opened and closed his mouth, clutching his cheek, unable to work his tongue.
SWISH.
"Get up."
When Kang Hyeong-seok held out his hand, Noh Su-cheol actually flinched in shock.
Fucking hell. With a gall this small, what had he been counting on to run his tongue the way he did?
WHOOSH!
Kang Hyeong-seok hauled him up by the collar as though snatching at it, then set off toward the car.
"Follow me. Quickly."
"You, you, why you......."
"I said follow me!"
When Kang Hyeong-seok turned his head and shouted sharply, Noh Su-cheol followed at a distance, thoroughly frightened.
'Damn it. Damn it all.'
Noh Su-cheol would not know even in his dreams.
How dangerous this situation was.
Foul things had spread out everywhere.
Just as a tiger hides inside fog, the Tiger Ghost was keeping its body hidden.
Kang Hyeong-seok, who had been sickeningly tormented by ghosts all his life, could tell from experience how dangerous this was.
'If I don't keep my head, I die.'
Holding on to his wits for dear life, he stood in front of the car.
Apart from the crumpled front bumper smeared with blood and fur, nothing else seemed wrong.
RATTLE!
But cruelly, the door would not open.
The blood drained at once from his face, where relief had just settled.
"We're screwed. F*ck."
Cursing in earnest, he threw the strength of his whole body into shaking the door by the handle.
RATTLE, RATTLE, RATTLE!
Would the handle come off at this rate?
He hauled on the door handle hard enough for that thought to cross his mind, but the door did not budge.
"Y-you didn't unlock it."
"It's a smart key!"
For a man who had bummed a ride on every business trip, Noh Su-cheol was spouting exasperating nonsense.
"What are you doing? Grab it with me!"
"R-right."
"Pull on three."
"O-okay!"
"Two, three!"
CLANK!
The whole car rocked, but the door did not move this time either.
CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!
"Haah, haah!"
Kang Hyeong-seok let go of the car door that simply would not open and dragged in rough breaths.
Something had gone wrong, and badly wrong at that.
The possibility that the car or the key had failed?
It was not out of the question, but that such a thing should happen at this exact moment made no sense.
Something was working this anomaly, as if determined not to let Kang Hyeong-seok and Noh Su-cheol slip away.
"Haah, haah, haah."
Ominous thoughts pressed down on his chest and his breathing quickened.
He had been tormented by ghosts many times before.
But there had never been a moment this dangerous.
Perhaps he would die here today.
At the hands of the thing in that fog.
Kang Hyeong-seok stood beside the car and looked into the thick fog and darkness. When Noh Su-cheol followed his gaze to the same place,
"Excuse me. Is anyone there?"
A deep man's voice came from beyond the fog.
"I-it's a person."
For a moment Noh Su-cheol brightened and made to answer.
But Kang Hyeong-seok clamped a hand over his mouth at once.
'That fishy stench.'
The moment that voice reached him, he had caught the fishy stench.
It was the kind you would find in a fish shop.
Which meant it was not a smell that belonged on a fog-deep mountain like this.
'Ghost-stench.......'
The smell of a ghost.
The smell of an evil spirit.
That was what had brushed past his nose the moment the voice sounded.
"Looks like you had an accident. Are you all right over there? Seems like you need help. Come over here."
Kang Hyeong-seok kept his hand over Noh Su-cheol's mouth and slowly backed away.
His other hand rested on the man's shoulder, so he felt every bit of his trembling.
"I'm not some strange person. I live in the village down below, and I was just passing through on an errand. Are you in a situation where you can't speak? Hey, are you all right?"
GULP.
Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed dry.
The ghost-stench that resembled fish was growing thicker.
The bastard was coming closer.
"Say something, would you!"
Kang Hyeong-seok looked behind him.
Beyond the guardrail he could see a slope that dropped away as if cut sheer.
He could not see the bottom properly through the thick fog, but for running, that way seemed better than the roadway lying dead straight and wide open.
It was then.
"Noh Su-cheol! Kang Hyeong-seok!"
The bastard called their names in a voice that rang loud enough to shake the mountain.
Feeling every fine hair on his body stand on end, Kang Hyeong-seok yanked Noh Su-cheol along.
"Run!"
"H-hnnnnngh!"
"Run if you want to live!"
Kang Hyeong-seok ran for the guardrail first, and Noh Su-cheol scrambled after him.
WHOOSH!
Kang Hyeong-seok threw himself over the guardrail and looked back.
It was to check on Noh Su-cheol, but he ended up seeing the thing that was closing in behind him.
It was not a person.
Tiger-like blotches covering its whole body.
A bulk the size of a calf.
The head was a human's.
As if to announce that it had been devoured by a tiger, the face was twisted in agony, and yet the lips alone were split all the way up to below the ears.
As though it were smiling.
WHOOSH!
Kang Hyeong-seok seized Noh Su-cheol's shoulder and collar and hauled him in over the guardrail.
"Kuh! Aagh!"
He pulled the man up as he shrieked, then ran down the slope as though pouring down it.
"Wh-what, what's behind us? Assistant Manager Kang, hey!"
"Don't look!"
If Noh Su-cheol were bewitched again, he had no confidence he could handle it.
SKRRRTCH! TAP TAP TAP TAP!
Running down the pitch-dark mountain slope, he turned the thing's shape over in his mind.
His spirit eye had opened when he was young, so he had seen many ghosts and been tormented by them.
A shaman who had not received a god.
Petty ghosts and evil spirits coveted such a person.
So one wrong step and they became a false-spirit shaman with a false spirit lodged inside them, and even short of that they suffered brutally from spirit sickness.
Fortunately Kang Hyeong-seok had not come down with fatal spirit sickness, but he had had to see a great many evil spirits.
And yet he had never once seen a ghost in a form like that.
'Why on earth? Why is something like that here?'
RUSTLE, SNAP!
Kang Hyeong-seok shoved aside the branches and the flying insects that lunged at him and ran through the darkness to put distance between himself and the Tiger Ghost.
"Haah, haah! Haah!"
His breath rose to just under his chin.
The fog-wet stones seemed to be watching with a tiger's greedy stare for the chance to snap his ankle.
Right behind him, it felt as if the Tiger Ghost would snatch him by the nape.
The vicious situation, unlike anything he had experienced, dragged up old memories.
'Teacher, why have I not received my guardian god?'
It must have been around when he was thirteen.
Kang Hyeong-seok had kept up his ties with the shaman who performed his divine suppression, and he used to ask her questions like this now and then.
'I see ghosts. I'm so scared. I don't want to see them anymore, but I keep seeing them. You said everything would be fine once I received my guardian god. When can I receive him?'
'You poor thing.'
Back then the shaman had stroked young Kang Hyeong-seok's head.
'There is no need to be afraid. The guardian god you are to receive is a great one, and he watches over you, so what is there to fear?'
'Even though I haven't received him?'
'He has marked you. How then would he not protect you?'
'But it's so frightening. If it's going to be like this, I want to receive the god soon.'
He could not understand it.
Neither the guardian god who left him seeing ghosts,
nor the shaman who only told him to wait.
When I, a child, was suffering so much.
'It is not yet the time.'
'Then when can I receive him?'
'That is for your guardian god to decide. So endure a little longer. When you are complete as a vessel, when you are ready enough to receive him, he will come to find you.'
THUNK! THUD!
"Gyaaaah!"
Kang Hyeong-seok turned to look at Noh Su-cheol, who had gone down over a protruding tree root.
The Tiger Ghost, its eyes savage, was right on their heels.
"Damn it!"
"A-Assistant Manager Kang! S-save......."
Kang Hyeong-seok seized the hand Noh Su-cheol stretched out and ran again.
WOOOOOOOO!
The mountain wind rang in his ears like a malevolent spirit's scream and raised gooseflesh.
'I wish I could receive my guardian god soon.'
Young Kang Hyeong-seok had said that same thought to the shaman.
'Hyeong-seok. Remember only this. Your guardian god waits as desperately as you do.'
'He's waiting?'
'Yes. As though all he ever wished for was for you to be born.'
That was how the conversation with the shaman had ended that day.
'Is this not that very moment?'
It was the moment Kang Hyeong-seok felt a pang of disappointment at his silent guardian god.
"W-wait! Just, hukk! Hoooough!"
Noh Su-cheol, dragged along by the arm, gasped the words out. But Kang Hyeong-seok kept running down the mountain and looked back.
SSHAAAAA!
The Tiger Ghost was moving from behind them around to their left as it gave chase.
Exactly as if it meant to herd Kang Hyeong-seok and Noh Su-cheol in the direction it wanted.
GRIT!
Kang Hyeong-seok clenched his back teeth and thought through a great deal in a very short time.
'Where should I go?'
Back to the car?
Or right? No, left? Or just straight ahead?
It was while he wavered, as though he had lost his way.
JINGLE.
A clear bell sound brushed past his ear.
JINGLE.
JINGLE.
JINGLE.
The bell rang on and on as if telling him which way to go, and it drew Kang Hyeong-seok's gaze.