Part 7. I'm Counting On You, Assistant Manager Kang! (2)
VROOOOM.
Danyang, in North Chungcheong Province.
A fine place.
Its natural scenery is remarkable enough to be featured often as a domestic travel destination, and the harmony between that nature and the town is excellent.
"Wowww."
Watching the bridge that crossed the clear river from inside the car, Namgung Min-a let out a sound of admiration.
"It's something, isn't it?"
"Yes. Even seeing it again after so long, it's beautiful."
Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes, stiff from the long drive, widened slightly.
"Again?"
"Huh? You didn't know?"
The road was straight and there were no other cars, so he turned his head briefly toward her and back.
Her eyes had met his, and she was plainly surprised.
"Danyang is my hometown."
"That... I didn't know."
Her Seoul accent was perfect, and he had never once imagined she came from anywhere else.
"Ah! Right, you wouldn't have seen my resume."
Having found and accepted the reason for his surprise on her own, Namgung Min-a grinned mischievously.
"You didn't know because I speak Seoul-style well, right?"
"To be truthful, yes."
"I moved when I was small. Third grade, I think?"
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded in understanding.
If that was the case, the accent made sense.
"Oh, right. Can I tell you a scary story?"
"Out of nowhere?"
"We never did the scary story."
The drive up to North Chungcheong had not been dull.
Namgung Min-a had talked more than most radio hosts, and there had been the chocolate she thrust at him whenever he had almost forgotten about it.
Kang Hyeong-seok checked the time discreetly.
There was still a while before they arrived.
And letting her chatter seemed likely to help keep her nerves down.
"Go ahead."
"Do you know Bunsinsaba?"
At the unexpected words Kang Hyeong-seok blinked and then let out a hollow laugh.
"We are not that far apart in age."
"Oh! So you did it a lot too?"
For a moment his brow furrowed.
His spirit eye had opened so young that he had never been able to play ghost games like Bunsinsaba.
More precisely, he had not been able to.
Because he had been afraid of the petty ghosts that gathered around children muttering "bunsinsaba, bunsinsaba" over a pencil laid on paper.
"No."
"You know what? I was really good at it. So uncannily good the teachers came to me too."
Kang Hyeong-seok moved his lips like a man with something caught in his teeth and swallowed his words.
'There is no way.'
It was a childhood memory, so it would be distorted.
Bunsinsaba is not a proper summoning.
And Namgung Min-a did not seem to have the spirit gift.
Nor did her intuition seem sharp.
She looked no better than anyone else, if not worse, and it was hard to believe someone like her had divined anything with a game like that.
"Strange, isn't it? But do you know why it worked?"
"No."
"So the thing is, sir."
Namgung Min-a lowered her voice and set the mood, as though about to confess some great secret.
"The friend I did it with. Apparently she had the spirit gift."
Kang Hyeong-seok marveled silently with a face that said, that explains it.
If that was it, everything made sense.
Even without receiving a god, the spirit gift alone is enough to divine something like another person's past.
That did not make it a good thing.
That student had probably gone through a time as hard as his own.
An uncontrolled power, a spirit eye that sees ghosts.
A pain no one else can even sympathize with. A hell.
"What about her? Are you still in touch?"
"No. We lost contact when I transferred schools."
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded with a face gone bitter.
It was a common enough thing in childhood.
Back then elementary schoolers did not carry phones the way they do now.
"But I remember her name! Yun Bo-mi, and she was so kind......."
"You never know. If she still lives in Danyang you might run into her."
"You think so?"
Namgung Min-a grinned and fixed her eyes out the window.
As though checking the passersby for an old friend.
She probably was.
'Distance remaining.......'
Six kilometers now.
Far if you called it far, close if you called it close.
Kang Hyeong-seok turned his eyes to her for a moment.
She was looking out the window so he could not see her face, but through the back of her head he could feel longing and memory.
Fortunately there was no nervousness anywhere in it.
***
"Ah, there you are! Come in, come in."
Spotting Kang Hyeong-seok's car from the wide garlic field, an old man waved.
The road ran right alongside the field and had no asphalt, so Kang Hyeong-seok, driving slowly, leaned his head out the window before he had even stopped.
"Hello!"
"Over there, park over there!"
Talking loudly in case the engine drowned him out, Kang Hyeong-seok pulled into a quiet clearing.
"Come out with me."
"Yes, yes!"
Unfastening his belt, Kang Hyeong-seok turned his eyes to her and gently lifted the corner of his mouth.
"Don't be nervous. All right?"
"Yes."
With her nerves eased, Namgung Min-a stood with him before the farm's owner.
Ha Jang-seo.
He was in his early sixties, but the sun taken in from field work had left his brown skin so deeply creased you would have believed seventy.
"Have you been well? And how is the work going?"
"Oh, that talk the moment you arrive. Sometimes you're like an inspector."
"An inspector? How could I do that to you?"
"Just saying it for a laugh. Hahaha."
They had done business together a long time, so Kang Hyeong-seok and Ha Jang-seo were used to each other.
"And this young lady is?"
"Our new hire."
Kang Hyeong-seok stepped aside entirely to make room.
Namgung Min-a bowed deeply with a movement she had clearly rehearsed several times, took a business card from her wallet, and offered it with both hands.
"I'm Namgung Min-a! I look forward to working with you!"
"Well now, spirited. And pretty too."
Ha Jang-seo took her card and only ran his rough fingers over it.
A strong sense of wrongness came rushing in like a tide.
'What is this? He never used to be like this.'
When Kang Hyeong-seok had first met Ha Jang-seo, the man had produced his own card the instant he took one.
But now he looked as though he were deliberating over whether to bring out his card at all.
"She's my junior. She'll be coming out to see you now and then from here on."
"Is that so?"
Even after that, Ha Jang-seo went on fiddling with her card.
It was as Namgung Min-a, reading the mood, began to worry that she had made some mistake.
"Have you eaten? If not, let's go together."
Kang Hyeong-seok gestured at his car in a bright voice.
"Eat?"
The change of subject thinned the awkward air.
"Yes. There's that place up the road that does the braised half-dried pollack well, isn't there? The one you like."
When Kang Hyeong-seok laid on the good-natured charm, an awkward smile spread at Ha Jang-seo's mouth.
"Let's do that. Let's go and eat."
Ha Jang-seo left to gather his things.
Namgung Min-a looked at Kang Hyeong-seok at once, and he only shook his head, telling her not to worry.
VROOOOM.
The restaurant was not far.
Five minutes by car from the garlic field.
But it felt far longer than that.
The awkwardness Ha Jang-seo had made while fiddling with her card had not yet cleared.
"Sir, one large pollack here. And dumplings with it, please."
Kang Hyeong-seok asked Ha Jang-seo whether to order a bottle of soju, and what came back was a shake of the head.
Something was certainly off.
"You must be watching your health these days. You always used to have a drink with the meal."
"Sheesh, well, that's."
He seemed to have something to say, so Kang Hyeong-seok sent Namgung Min-a beside him a look telling her to stay quiet.
"Please say it freely."
"Ugh, this is, sheesh."
Ha Jang-seo scratched at his head and smiled bitterly.
Then he brought out words that were entirely unexpected, and that must not be heard.
"I'm thinking of giving up farming after this year."
"...What?"
The account must not be lost.
That was what Kang Hyeong-seok had told Namgung Min-a.
As her eyes went wide and she swallowed dry loudly enough to hear, Ha Jang-seo fiddled with the napkin under his spoon.
"My body isn't what it was. The hospital only says it looks like plain aging."
Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes dropped without meaning to, to the man's fingers.
Ah, why had he not noticed until now?
That his fingers were trembling, like a man in the grip of anxiety.
"Is it bad?"
Ha Jang-seo smiled wryly and rolled up his sleeve.
His forearm was thick with red blotches like burn scars.
They looked more serious than heat rash or hives.
"And it isn't only this. It's all over, more or less."
"...You're still hale. And you used to say you'd farm for a thousand years and ten thousand more."
Kang Hyeong-seok had said it in a deliberately bright voice, because the mood was growing too heavy.
"That's how I'd like it, but a person's affairs don't go the way they want."
As Ha Jang-seo raised his water glass with a trembling hand and drank, the braised pollack arrived.
The distinctive smell of half-dried pollack, chewy and firm, in bright red sauce.
The look of it alone announced a good kitchen.
CLINK, CLINK.
Even so, an oddly heavy air ran through the meal, and it was because of what Ha Jang-seo had said about giving up the fields.
"It's such a shame. Coming here with you was one of my pleasures."
In a space where the meal continued carefully, Kang Hyeong-seok went on in a low voice.
"Could I ask you to reconsider, just once more?"
Ha Jang-seo set down his chopsticks and shook his head slightly.
"I'm sorry about it."
"If you tell me the exact symptoms, I could look for a good hospital as well."
"You would......?"
"I have a fairly wide circle through work, and our General Manager would look into it with his sleeves rolled up too."
"Sheesh, this is embarrassing."
"What is there to be embarrassed about?"
Ha Jang-seo sighed several times over and then leaned back into his chair as though he had no appetite.
His body must truly be poor; more than half his rice was left.
"There's really nothing to the symptoms, and that's what's maddening."
With the face of a man who wished what was in his water glass were liquor, Ha Jang-seo looked down at the table and folded his arms.
"I don't sleep well, the hair on my body stands up, my arms and legs go numb, and sometimes my legs give out and I go over."
The more he heard, the more Kang Hyeong-seok understood why a doctor had diagnosed old age.
Rather than anything clearly wrong in one place, it was a sense of overall vitality worn away.
While Namgung Min-a, afraid of misspeaking, watched Ha Jang-seo with a pitying look and said nothing, Kang Hyeong-seok ran his tongue silently over his teeth.
It was because Ha Jang-seo's symptoms were familiar.
"...Sir."
"Hm?"
"Have you brought anything new into the house recently?"
Namgung Min-a and Ha Jang-seo both turned uncomprehending looks on him.
"You had that hobby of buying antiques at the market and collecting them, didn't you? It just came to mind."
"Well, I've been busy lately, and ill, so I haven't done any of it......."
At Ha Jang-seo's look asking why on earth he would ask such a thing, Kang Hyeong-seok drank a cup of water and spoke.
"I heard somewhere before. About people catching something like a germ from a secondhand item they bought badly."
"Oh? Does that happen?"
"Yes. Hearing your symptoms, it doesn't sound surgical."
It was said to cover his tracks, and it was more persuasive than he had expected.
"It may not be much of a comparison, but a friend of mine once bought secondhand shoes badly and had a terrible time of it."
"Hmmm."
Ha Jang-seo rubbed his chin with a face that allowed the possibility and sank into thought.
In the brief silence that came, the remaining pollack dried hard.
Looking down at it, Kang Hyeong-seok sank deep into thought of his own.
'Possession, or a disturbance curse? It could even be a folk hex.'
They were symptoms common in those who had touched or become entangled with something bad.
Please let it be that.
If it were, he could do something about it.