Part 3. What Must Not Be Seen (1)
Gangwon Province.
A single boat was crossing a nameless lake deep in the mountains.
CREAK, CREAAAK.
The man working the oar wore a white traditional jacket.
He was in his late thirties, and the man in black clothes seated in front of him had a face that looked some three years older.
The stench of blood hung heavy over the boat.
It came from the blood running out of a pig's carcass.
CREAAK, CREAAK.
When the boat reached the middle of the lake, the man in white bowed his head low to the man in black.
Then he set down the oar and took up a drumstick.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
The drumbeat, which rang even through the soul, mounted swiftly and made a strange mood.
BOOM BOOM BOOM! BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Building a steady rhythm, the drummer with the stick in his hand stared at the man in black.
A shamanic rite had opened.
A rite that no one in the world must discover, that no one must speak of, and that had to wake the long-sleeping dead with the sound of a drum.
CINCH.
The man in black bound a glass bottle filled with rice tightly with a white cord and hurled it down into the lake.
It was a soul-retrieval rite.
CLUNK, CLATTER.
The bottle, thrown far out, was drawn along by the white cord and scraped the lake bed.
What the bottle struck were the bones of humans and animals.
Countless remains, submerged so long that their shapes had collapsed, blocked the bottle as if reaching out hands for help. But the bottle passed the bones by indifferently, drawn on by the white cord.
"Wheeeeeee!"
Calling in the souls with a whistle, the man kept hauling on the cord.
JANGLE-JANGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE.
What hung from the man's hand like a ring was a set of shaman's bells.
Whistling and shaking his hand to ring the bells, he drew the bottle in.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
The drummer's beat mixed in, and the mood turned sinister and clammy.
At the same time the fishy stench sharpened, as though it were bounding closer in great strides.
JANGLE-JANGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE.
As the shaman's bells clashed against one another and gave off a violent sound, the man hauled the bottle up out of the lake.
The drummer stopped his stick and his breath and looked up at the man.
Before him the man unbound the cord and opened the bottle's lid.
POUR.
What spilled out first was white rice.
He tipped some rice into his palm and raked through it, ringing the shaman's bells as he went.
Tension thickened on the drummer's face, and ripples spread out from the boat they rode like writhing snakes.
SHIFT.
The man raking the rice stopped his fingers dead.
Mixed in among the rice was a clump of hair he had not put there.
Tiger fur and human head hair.
They were the souls of those devoured by tigers on this land long ago, and of the tigers that had devoured them.
"The souls have been drawn up."
The man said it in a voice gone hoarse from long silence.
"Hah!"
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
The drummer struck the drum with a shout, and the man pushed his breath out between his teeth. Having spat out a breath hauled up from deep in his body, he muttered in a low, rapid voice.
"Miyuldu gapaje, miyuldu bulyakri."
Reciting an Esoteric Buddhist incantation, the man rubbed his palms together as though twisting a rope.
The tiger's fur and the human hair began to tangle.
Now this person's soul would become a Tiger Ghost bound eternally to the tiger, and it would hunt down other victims.
The resentment of the departed spirit, now forever barred from passing on, grew thicker.
"Miyuldu pilsaga, miyuldu garaenda, miyuldu pasacha."
The man shook the shaman's bells and worked his mouth faster still, then took a bamboo tube from his pocket and put the hair inside.
When he capped it, the foul energy that had filled the air vanished as if it had never been.
And the bamboo tube shook as though it were alive.
"Ripen. I will let you out when the time comes. You have work to do for this country and for me."
Having muttered it into the bamboo tube, he turned his head to the drummer.
"It is done. Let us go."
"What should I do with the pig?"
The man turned an indifferent gaze on the pig lying in the middle of the boat.
It had been prepared for the slaughter rite, but with the business finished it had become useless.
"Throw it to the departed spirits as food."
The drummer set down his stick and pushed the pig to the edge of the boat.
A moment later, dark red blood spread like fog from where the pig had gone in, then faded fast.
As if the vengeful ghosts in the water had swallowed everything down to the last drop.
***
"Assistant Manager Kang, did you hear about that?"
It was the morning of the day one week after the Tiger Ghost incident.
No sooner had Kang Hyeong-seok sat down than Namgung Min-a leaned her head out from the next desk to speak to him.
"What rumor is it this time?"
"So, Deputy Manager Noh left, right?"
"Yes."
"They put up the new listing, and they say it came down last night. Looks like they picked someone."
"Really?"
It was welcome news, and Kang Hyeong-seok spoke in a slightly raised voice without meaning to.
"Yes, yes. It's a good thing, isn't it?"
"It is."
A company is a place where the seat that gets filled goes unnoticed but the seat that empties is unmistakable.
The past week had been the kind of time that made Noh Su-cheol more hateful still.
Partly because he had resigned with no handover, and all the more because Noh Su-cheol had done nothing but push work aside and had properly finished almost none of it.
It was bad enough that Kang Hyeong-seok had heard even the good-natured General Manager Gwak Yeong-ho call him 'that bastard.'
"I hope a good person comes this time."
"As long as they're good at the work. You don't know who's coming, do you?"
"No!"
Her spirit was good to see.
Kang Hyeong-seok gave a small nod and opened his laptop on the desk.
Plug in the charger cable, and the mouse was Bluetooth so there was nothing to pair.......
"Assistant Manager Kang!"
"Yes, sir."
Kang Hyeong-seok, about to connect the laptop to the monitor, turned his head to look at Gwak Yeong-ho.
Standing at the door, he wore an extremely awkward face.
So much so that he looked like a man with something hard to say.
"You're in early. Have you had coffee?"
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at Gwak Yeong-ho, who clearly had something to say, and rose from his seat.
"No. And you, sir?"
"I haven't had any either. How about a cup?"
As expected, Gwak Yeong-ho had something to say.
Kang Hyeong-seok mixed instant coffee into two paper cups in the pantry and went up to the roof with him.
"Sheesh, what's with the weather today. It's gloomy."
"They say it will rain this afternoon."
"Really? Ah, that won't do."
One of Kang Hyeong-seok's brows bent as he was about to drink his coffee.
"Are you going out on field work this afternoon?"
"No, it's, well."
It seemed hard for him to say.
"It's all right, sir. Please say it freely."
When Kang Hyeong-seok put it that way, the worry filling Gwak Yeong-ho's face eased a little.
"I'm really sorry about this."
"Has something bad happened......?"
"It's nothing if you take it as nothing, but you know we're hiring someone new, right?"
"Yes. You told me before that the listing went up."
He did not say that he had already heard from Namgung Min-a that the listing had come down.
It felt like something Gwak Yeong-ho was about to say himself.
"You know Director Shin Chang-yong?"
"Sorry? Yes."
One of the founding members.
Older than Gwak Yeong-ho and holding a management post as well, though the title was a formality; his daily routine was reading the news on his computer.
Still, he had an easygoing temperament and moved at once to settle things when something came up, so his reputation was fairly good.
If one had to name a flaw, it was only that his mindset belonged to an older generation.
"His niece has agreed to come in."
"...Sorry?"
"It's not that she's being shoved in through connections. She'd been looking for a new position recently, and the Director suggested it to her, is what I heard."
"If she has experience, I have no objection."
Having an incompetent superior was misery.
As much as having a superior with a cruel tongue.
"Good experience. Manager level, and they say she speaks Chinese and Japanese too."
"Then isn't that a good thing?"
"If it were only good, would I be making this face?"
Gwak Yeong-ho took a cigarette from his pocket, put it in his mouth, and lit it.
Then he burned through about half of it without a single word.
"Ah, why would he ask for something like this. Tsk."
"Has something bad happened, sir?"
Gwak Yeong-ho scratched his furrowed brow with the hand holding the cigarette.
"He asked to borrow a hand."
"Sorry?"
"He said she found a place around here in a hurry, and asked to borrow a hand."
Kang Hyeong-seok stayed silent, then sipped his coffee.
Damn it. He understood at once why Gwak Yeong-ho had found it so hard to say.
It was not a difficult request.
Nor was it a reasonable one.
It was the kind of request that made it cruelly clear why their company was not a conglomerate.
"I don't know why he'd ask company people for something a moving company could do. Sheesh! Really."
"What reason did he give?"
"He says he can't trust them. Company people are family so he can trust them, but he can't trust outsiders."
With Director Shin Chang-yong, well, that seemed plausible enough.
Beside Gwak Yeong-ho, who was puffing hard at his cigarette, Kang Hyeong-seok sipped his coffee with a troubled face.
There was still something Gwak Yeong-ho had not brought up.
And it would be the real reason he had brought Kang Hyeong-seok all the way up to the roof.
"I'll go."
"...Sheesh."
"I'm fine with it. And I know you always look out for me, sir."
"...Assistant Manager Kang."
Gwak Yeong-ho's face was truly moved.
"Thank you for saying that. There really isn't anyone else to ask. Sheesh."
"Not at all."
It was physical work.
Sending Namgung Min-a would be inappropriate.
And sending that blunt Lee Jin-pyeong would be difficult, so he had judged there was no one but Kang Hyeong-seok.
"I'm the one who should be blocking this sort of thing. I'm really sorry. And thank you."
"Will there be a lot to move?"
"It shouldn't be hard. The fridge and the washer will come with the place. Just help sort the boxes and do whatever she asks, take it easy."
That much was not difficult.
Roughly half a day, perhaps.
If Director Shin Chang-yong's niece pitched in actively, it might finish sooner than that.
"Talk with her, too. Think of it as getting friendly before anyone else does. And as scoring points with Director Shin Chang-yong."
Gwak Yeong-ho went out of his way to stress the upsides.
That was not to say he was wringing out advantages that did not exist.
Catching the eye of a founding-member director could only ever be an advantage, never a disadvantage.
"Understood. So when should I go?"
"She'll probably sign the lease sometime today. So sleep well tonight and head straight over around lunchtime tomorrow."
The space between Kang Hyeong-seok's brows narrowed.
He wondered whether it was worth pushing back his own work for.
"Straight there?"
"What, were you planning to do your work as well?"
Gwak Yeong-ho looked at Kang Hyeong-seok with approval and put a cigarette in his mouth.
"Whew! Never mind. Don't worry about company work. I'll handle it, so you just focus on that."
He had not been able to block an unfair request.
But he would accommodate him as much as he possibly could.
Gwak Yeong-ho said it with emphasis, as if to make certain it got through.
"When it's all done I'll put in a word upstairs and get you something, so think of it as one trip of field work."
"Understood."
Kang Hyeong-seok smiled as if copying Gwak Yeong-ho's smile.
At that Gwak Yeong-ho took a mouthful of coffee with a bitter face and spoke.
"Still, I can't tell you how lucky I am to have you. Thank you, Assistant Manager Kang."
Kang Hyeong-seok answered only with a silent smile and sipped his coffee.
***
"Have a look around."
Before a middle-aged woman with a folder marked Golden Real Estate tucked under her arm, a young woman carefully inspected the empty house.
Two rooms, one bathroom.
A two-story house built twenty-five years ago.
Still, the interior remodeling was finished, so it did not give the impression of being old.
"It faces south, so it isn't cold. It's a good place. Open that window and leave the bathroom door open and it ventilates well."
SHHHHHH!
Without answering, the woman turned on the sink tap and looked around at the wallpaper, the space between her brows narrowed.
"You redid the wallpaper?"
"Of course. As soon as the last tenant moved out we redid all of it in silk paper."
"No defects?"
"None. None at all. And you know there's no house like this for a lease deposit at this level."
The young woman nodded with a face full of deliberation.
That was certainly true.
Move up a single grade in condition from here and the budget jumped nearly one and a half times.
Counting transport and the amenities nearby, it did not seem a bad house overall.
She especially liked how well it took the light.
"Let's sign."
"Oh my! Good decision."
The agent hurried to spread out the contract, in case the young woman changed her mind.
"Just write your name here."
The young woman took the pen, cap already off, and after a brief hesitation wrote in her name.
SWISH, SWISH.
<Shin Jeong-a>
She was Director Shin Chang-yong's niece.