The House That Paid Its Debt of Malice [2]

"Honestly, this much was nothing."

"A simple opponent, sir."

Big words, from two people who'd teamed up and spent several minutes grunting and straining against it.

"...Excellent work, both of you. That was skill truly befitting the Eul-mid rank."

"Getting patted on the head by a Bureau lapdog doesn't exactly make my day."

"Spare me the lip service."

Yoon Soo-ah had graded the two of them Eul-mid. That is to say, the Paranormal Administration Bureau sorted its psychics into four broad tiers — Gap, Eul, Byeong, Jeong — with each tier subdivided into upper, mid, and lower: twelve ranks in all. Which meant the pair of them counted as mid-tier among Korea's licensed psychics.

The problem was that the giant evil spirit, which had required two mid-tier psychics working together to exorcise, was roughly on par with the hair evil spirit from before.

By any honest grading, the giant or the hair spirit would barely rate Yeongnan-upper...

The Corner Man had been Yeongha low-to-mid. The Curse of Solitude, Yeongha-low. Solitude itself, somewhere between Yeongha-mid and upper.

So if a prodigy-grade anomaly ever showed up, who exactly was supposed to handle it?

The future of Korea's psychic community looked very dark indeed.

Krrrrrrrk—!

At that moment, yet another evil spirit burst through the wall and ceiling. A grotesque thing with a tongue swollen bloated, hanging all the way down to its knees — rated Yeongnan-upper, same class as the giant. And positionally, it dropped straight down onto my head, the nearest target in the room.

"Danger—!"

Before Yoon Soo-ah could even finish, I drew the peach-wood sword I'd brought along and swung.

Shwk!

Fssssssssh...

No special sorcery, no talisman barrier required. A single stroke of the peach-wood sword cut the tongue spirit clean in two, and it dissolved. There wasn't even any blood on the blade, but I gave it a shake for the feel of it and slid it back into the talisman tube. Then, as relaxed as possible, with the air of a man long used to such chores, I looked at Giselle Breed and Shin Han-hee and said, "Nothing to it."

"...Yeah, fine, I'll give you that — you're every bit as good as you are arrogant! But that doesn't change the fact that I was the one who laid Yoon Si-woo's spirit to rest first!"

At that, I sighed once more inside. Did he actually think the giant evil spirit just now had been Yoon Si-woo? I hadn't been the one to exorcise it, but standing that close had let its residual thoughts drift my way. The giant evil spirit was not Si-woo — and obviously, neither was the tongue spirit. Both were complete strangers, drawn in by the strange pull the mansion was giving off.

"Mr. Giselle Breed, Ms. Shin Han-hee — I'm grateful that you exorcised the evil spirits that entered my uncle's home, but... the one you just destroyed appears to be a separate spirit with no connection to Si-woo whatsoever. If it had truly been Si-woo's, I would have ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sensed something, being his blood relative."

Yoon Soo-ah sided with me.

"...Damn. Waste of a good effort."

"······."

With Soo-ah saying her piece like that, neither of them had anything left to argue.

Afterward, every psychic gathered at the mansion — myself included — turned the place inside out, but Yoon Si-woo's soul was nowhere to be found. Neither was the cause of the mansion's strange spiritual pull. I asked Yoon Chang-sik about it too, but nothing came to mind. In the end, all we could do was guess that Si-woo, indignant over an undeserved death, had been drawing in the nearby evil spirits himself.

"However I look at it, there's something else still hidden in this case..."

I flopped onto the bed in the guest room, head swimming with loose threads. So many guests had come that I had to share a room with Lee Ha-ram and Choi Eun-ha. The room was spacious, but three people of mixed genders under one roof made for a certain awkwardness — bearable for a night or two, at least.

"Teacher... the way I see it, this case is hiding a shocking truth."

Lee Ha-ram, having finished sorting through today's footage on her laptop, spoke with a grave face.

"A truth?"

"Yes. It's a classic trope in stories about child ghosts who can't leave a house. The truth of the matter is, the one who really killed the child was..."

"...the child's own parents, and the grudge is what pins him to the house? Isn't that a bit of a leap?"

Choi Eun-ha, sprawled across her own bed tapping away at her smartphone, cut in with studied indifference.

"But then everything clicks, doesn't it? Look — attacking the parents would make perfect sense if that were the reason!"

"Well..."

I gave a deliberately vague answer and turned it over in my head. Ha-ram was right that the trope was a common one — a child ghost taking revenge on the parents who abused or abandoned it. And ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠viewed through that lens, the picture did assemble itself: Yoon Chang-sik actively pushing to lay Si-woo's spirit to rest, while Yoo Mi-ra inwardly resisted.

Chang-sik was involved in Si-woo's death in some way, big or small, and Mi-ra knows it — wants to do something about it, but has no strength, so she holds her tongue...

Of course, that was nothing more than my own clumsy guesswork.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Eugh..."

"Yi-yeon, where are you going?"

"Getting some water."

What was the point of lying in bed chewing over scraps of information? Half hoping that another cliché might oblige and unfold before me, I headed down to the first-floor kitchen. In the dark, I opened the state-of-the-art refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. And the moment I closed the fridge and turned around —

"Bingo."

There stood the silhouette of a child who had no business being in this house.

The horror-film cliché: anyone who wanders alone at midnight meets a ghost. Or, in this particular case — the trope of a vengeful soul coming to seek out a renowned shaman?

Anomalies are drawn to the mysterious. Reverse-engineering that law, I had deliberately come downstairs without the talismans and the peach-wood sword I carry everywhere, without fail. Confronting an evil spirit barehanded would have been a hassle, but as intended, Si-woo had come to me.

With such idle thoughts, I looked down at the little boy who barely reached my waist. Si-woo waved at me, then began to walk off somewhere. Follow me, apparently. I obediently trailed after him.

Si-woo led me to the mansion's rooftop. Or, to be precise, he stopped on the landing one flight below the roof, gazing fixedly upward at it.

"Can't go up to the rooftop yourself?"

A nod. Then a little swish — his finger pointed at the rooftop door. Go out to the rooftop garden and look, then.

"Got it."

I stepped out into the rooftop garden exactly as he wished.

"It's actually alive~."

I was taking in a garden far too beautiful to believe it sat atop a private residence when —

"Hm?"

In one corner of the rooftop garden stood a familiar figure, frozen and motionless. It was Yoo Mi-ra, Si-woo's mother. Come to think of it, hadn't she developed sleepwalking symptoms ever since Si-woo died?

And then it dawned on me. She wasn't simply standing there — she was speaking, and fast.

...What the hell is that?

One wrong lesson in breathing technique, and I'd tumbled headfirst into the spirit world — I had seen every flavor of strange this side of the veil. But nothing in all that time had crawled up my spine like the sight of Yoo Mi-ra standing alone on an empty rooftop garden, muttering an unintelligible tongue into the night.

"······"

I listened just long enough to catch the strange cadence of her chant, then slipped back down from the rooftop garden without being noticed. By then, the soul of Yoon Si-woo that had been standing on the stairs was already gone.

"Did he want to show me that side of Mi-ra?"

Probably. It was a shocking sight, no question about it. And yet...

"The dialect Mi-ra was chanting... why does it feel so naggingly familiar...?"

I was retracing the source of that déjà vu on my way down when I ran into Yoon Chang-sik.

"Ah, Mr. Kim Dosa! Have you by any chance seen my wife?"

"I was just about to mention it — she seemed to be heading up to the rooftop garden."

"Th-thank you. Honestly, that woman..."

Yoon Chang-sik hurried up to the rooftop garden and guided his wife back down to the bedroom. Then he returned and thanked me once more.

"Mr. Yoon Chang-sik."

"Yes?"

"Might I see some photographs of your son, from before he passed?"

That was what I asked of him. Most likely I was right — but I wanted to confirm whether the soul of Si-woo I'd just met was the real Yoon Si-woo.

"Yes — to the number you first contacted us on, I'll send the address of the social media account our family used as a family album."

Back in my room, I connected to the account Chang-sik had sent. Uploads had stopped after Si-woo's death, but there he was — a boy wearing the exact face of the child I'd just met, smiling brightly into the camera.

Which meant, first of all, that the soul I'd encountered was certainly Yoon Si-woo.

And as I kept flipping through the album —

"Hm?"

One photograph prickled at me with a powerful sense of wrongness. It was a shot of Si-woo's room, taken while he was alive. I wondered what had triggered it and studied the picture carefully. And at last, I spotted what the wrongness was.

"...There are no flowers."

Si-woo's room had flower pots everywhere — along the window, on the desk, on the shelves. Granted, it was possible the couple had decorated the room with flowers after his death, in mourning. But the psychology of parents preserving a deceased child's room being what it is, they would almost without exception keep it exactly as it was in life.

And as I chewed on that thought, it suddenly surfaced — where I had heard Mi-ra's dialect before. I hurried onto Dongbin's Dao Study Room and opened a certain post.

And only then did I understand. The truth of everything that had happened in this mansion.

"Teacher, what are you reading?"

"You two — do you have one?"

"Huh? Have what?"

Choi Eun-ha answered right away, her voice drained flat. "You are already dead~..."

Lee Ha-ram mulled it over for a moment before speaking up. "Uh... I'm gonna be the Ninja King?"

"Alas, you are no ninja — that dream will never come true for you in this lifetime."

"I mean — yeah, obviously, but... do you have one, Teacher? A line you'd want to deliver?"

"Of course I do."

"Whatever it is, you'll never get the chance to use it in real life anyway."

"No. I will."

"What?"

I raised a finger with a snap and pointed it straight at Ha-ram.

"The mystery... is completely solved."

A shame I couldn't stake my grandfather's name on it.

The second day at the mansion. Giselle Breed was climbing the stairs to the rooftop garden wearing an expression like he'd bitten into something rotten. Nor was he the only one summoned there. Shin Han-hee, Yoon Soo-ah, and even Yoon Chang-sik and Yoo Mi-ra besides — every party involved in the matter of laying Yoon Si-woo to rest had been called up to the rooftop garden.

By Kim Dosa — a rootless nobody none of them had ever so much as heard of.

Where in the hell did a guy like that even crawl out from?

Giselle Breed was a man with deep roots in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this industry. Born in America, he had immigrated to Korea over a work matter, and it was a traffic accident that awakened his latent psychic abilities. The moment Giselle learned he was special, he quit his job on the spot and set out on the path of the psychic. Ten years of building a name followed, until he stood among the rare foreign powerhouses of the Korean psychic scene.

And now this Kim Dosa had materialized out of nowhere, a presence Giselle simply could not parse. Not only did the man openly disregard an industry heavyweight like himself — he bared his teeth at the Paranormal Administration Bureau in broad daylight. In truth, Giselle and Shin Han-hee had never done more to Yoon Soo-ah than needle her; beyond that, they dared not go. Anyone who knew what the Bureau was capable of doing to a psychic who didn't know their place took that as simple common sense.

Seen through that lens alone, Kim Dosa might have looked like an outsider clueless about the psychic world, striking poses out of sheer ignorance. But...

His skill is the real deal.

He had erased a Yeongnan-upper evil spirit with a single swing of a wooden sword.

A peach-wood sword... no, it can't be. Ordinary peach wood could never produce that kind of power. Thunder-struck jujube wood? Thunder-struck persimmon wood... don't tell me the thing is cut from dragon-eye wood — the thunder-scarred grain shaped like a dragon's eye?

...Might not be a bad idea to sound him out about joining the organization.

The arrogance rubbed him the wrong way, but this trade had always forgiven talent. And above all, the open hostility toward the Administration Bureau delighted him.

Of course...

Not that I have any intention of losing this bet.

He could concede Kim Dosa's skill. But this wager was not something skill alone would settle. Uncovering a hidden evil spirit took experience and hard-won know-how, not just exorcism chops. And of everyone gathered here, the longest career and deepest experience belonged to Giselle Breed himself.

Shin Han-hee... I'll have to mind the fact that she serves the Gyeonggang Jeokryong, the Red Dragon of the Han River, but she's still young — green as spring grass herself.

Just as Giselle Breed was savoring the certainty of his own victory, Kim Yi-yeon — the man who had summoned them all — came up the stairs.

"Eun-ha."

"Okay~."

Click.

The sound of the door locking from the outside rang out. At the sight, everyone gathered in the rooftop garden panicked.

"What are you doing!? Why'd you lock the door?"

"So that, from this moment until this case is resolved, no one can run away."

"C-case?"

"Yes."

Kim Yi-yeon nodded and continued in an even voice.

"What has happened in this mansion is no mere case of a dead child sulking over an unfair death."

"Let's review the outline of this case first."

Yoon Si-woo's sudden accidental death. The strange phenomena that began occurring in the house afterward. The Cheondoje rite they had held in the belief that the dead boy's spirit was playing pranks. And then — the phenomena that, if anything, grew worse.

"Mr. Yoon Chang-sik. Ms. Yoo Mi-ra. From the very moment I took on this case, there was something I wanted to ask the two of you."

"Wh-what is it?"

"Was your son, Yoon Si-woo, a wicked child who took out the grief of his own early death on his parents?"

Kim Yi-yeon's question — too direct, too violent — sealed the couple's lips.

Is he insane? What the—!?

Even Giselle Breed, who had seen every shade of ugly this trade had to offer, found himself speechless at language so brutal toward parents who had lost a child. But Kim Yi-yeon did not stop there.

"I am asking whether he was a child so wicked that he would harbor murderous intent toward the parents trying to lay him to rest."

"Th-that's..."

"No! Si-woo was never like that! This is Si-woo's...!"

The one who cried out was Yoo Mi-ra. Her abrupt transformation from the hollow-eyed woman they had watched until now made everyone's eyes go wide.

"Hah...!"

Yoo Mi-ra clapped a hand over her own mouth. She, too, had realized it too late — that this was the one place she must not deny things so fiercely. Because what was happening in this house, however crude the wording, was precisely what Kim Yi-yeon had said. Her husband, Yoon Chang-sik, for his part, was enraged and rattled by the bluntness of the phrasing — but he could not deny the words themselves. To deny them would be, in the same breath, to confess that this request hid a secret truth, and that he knew what it was.

"...There are cases where the dead cling to the living. But there are also cases where the living cling to the dead."

The implication was plain.

"Yoon Si-woo did not fail to pass on out of the unfairness of his death."

Swish.

Kim Yi-yeon overturned the flower pot that had stood in the very spot where, the night before, Yoo Mi-ra had stood pouring out her eerie chant. Hidden beneath it was a talisman — one that was familiar to his eyes. Among those pasted over the jar of Solitude in the abandoned house, there had been one exactly like it.

Just as the name said, it was a talisman for pressing down souls — it sealed every spirit within its range so that none could pass from inside to out. On the jar, it had been there to keep the completed Curse of Solitude from slipping free on its own. And this time...

"It was to keep Yoon Si-woo's soul from leaving this mansion... am I correct?"

"······."

To Kim Yi-yeon's question, Yoo Mi-ra answered only with silence.

"Answer me, Ms. Yoo Mi-ra. Why did you try to make your son into a Taezagwi?"