The Corner Man Rumor [2]
"You're... you're going to draw a talisman? I'm grateful for the sentiment, but that's not something an ordinary person can manage by merely imitating the shape of one."
"Well, lucky for you, I happen not to be an ordinary person."
"Th-that voice... could you be... a psychic?"
The moment I infused my voice with Daoist power, Yoon Soo-ah caught on immediately.
"Just a newbie who started recently. Pleasure's all mine."
"A newbie? What on earth—"
"Let's save the details for later. Show me the talisman first."
Pressured by my momentum, Yoon Soo-ah handed over the scorched talisman. Charred as it was, the paper and the ink had been different colors, so reading it posed no problem.
'But I can't read hanja!'
The extent of my hanja credentials amounted to a Level 8 certification I'd earned in elementary school. And I'd forgotten even that long ago.
"What kind of talisman is this?"
"If I remember correctly, it's a Demon-Banishing Talisman. From what I heard, it's an extremely rare one—not like the Five Thunder Talisman or the Demon-Exterminating Talisman they usually use for exorcisms."
"A rare talisman, you say..."
Would something like that be listed on Dongbin's Dao Study Room? Half worried, half hopeful, I followed the talisman link.
· Demon-Exterminating Talisman
· Household Peace Talisman
· Cough-Relief Talisman
· Nine-Camp Barrier Talisman
~
The scrollbar had shriveled to a sliver. There were far, far too many kinds of talismans. Sifting through them one by one would take half a day or more, so I used the page's search function instead.
-Demon-Banishing Talisman
There it is!
"Um, I've been thinking. Even if you're a psychic, citizen, and even if you know the talisman's name, copying it exactly would be impossible. A talisman only exerts its power when it's drawn while chanting the scripture or mantra proper to it. Without knowing that—"
"Let's see, the scripture you have to recite while drawing it... the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. Ah, so it's a Buddhist-lineage talisman?"
"What!? You figured out the Demon-Banishing Talisman's scripture? No—how on earth!?"
"There's always a way."
I brushed past Yoon Soo-ah's confusion and turned the talisman-drawing instructions over in my mind.
'First, I need yellow paper and a red writing tool.'
The classic talisman everyone pictures—red lettering on yellow paper—is made from consecrated yellow paper and cinnabar ink. Needless to say, there was no way to get my hands on either of those here. Fortunately, the site said you didn't strictly need those two materials. What mattered was matching the color combination of yellow and red. In fact, Dongbin's Dao Study Room went so far as to tell people not to use cinnabar ink.
As long as the script is red, it doesn't matter what you write it with.
Quite the opposite—improperly refined cinnabar ink contains mercury and can be dangerous, so I recommend using another red pigment instead.
You cannot achieve immortality by drinking it or smearing it on your ceiling!
Worse, you could poison yourself into a genuinely fatal situation, so please be careful. And then careful again!
Considering what the site's intro blurb said too, whoever ran this place must really hate mercury.
"I'm going somewhere for a bit, so please wait here."
"Wh-where are you going...?"
Unable to see, Yoon Soo-ah grabbed at my sleeve anxiously the moment I said I was leaving.
"Don't worry—I'm not abandoning you. I'm going to find materials for the talisman. There was a stationery shop in the alley I originally came from."
"Ah—I'm, I'm sorry. I should be the one protecting you, citizen, but I've been showing such an unsightly side of myself."
"It's fine. You can't see, and you can barely hear. Anyone would be anxious."
While I was at it, I tried the door of a nearby café.
Click.
It opens.
'Thankfully, the building interiors are properly rendered too.'
"Wait for me inside there."
"Thank you... I'll be waiting."
"Hey, could you please stop talking like an abandoned puppy? You're making it sound like I'm doing something awful to you."
"C-calling me an abandoned puppy—isn't that rather rude?!"
"Yes, exactly like that. Put some spine into that voice!"
So I left Yoon Soo-ah at the café and headed back to the alley I'd started in, then slipped into the stationery shop I'd scouted earlier.
"Red writing on any kind of yellow paper, right?"
The material for the red lettering was easy to find.
"Red oil-based marker... this counts as red writing too, I suppose."
Next was the yellow paper. And then—damn it.
"What kind of stationery shop doesn't even have colored paper?"
Whether the shop simply didn't stock it or it was all sold out, there wasn't a sheet of colored paper anywhere. That was when something caught my eye.
[Sticky Notes] ₩1,000
"...Well, this is still technically yellow pape—r, right?"
Half in doubt, I picked up the yellow sticky notes. Either way, that completed my materials. But as I was leaving the shop, one question nagged at me.
'What happens if I turn my head around inside a building?'
The Corner Man appears when you turn your head in an 'alley' that has no anomalies. So what about indoors, which isn't an alley at all?
'Either he shows up because I still turned my head, or he doesn't because a building isn't an alley.'
It was a simple curiosity I had no real need to risk my neck over. But once it had snagged my attention, I couldn't just let it go.
'Let's check.'
But first, for safety's sake—
"Hoo! Hueup! Haa!"
I performed the Seven Animals Frolics and replenished my Daoist power. Slow, embarrassing-looking poses I'd never do in front of anyone, paired with that distinctive breathing, over and over. Then the warm, bubbling sensation that had blossomed in my brow and solar plexus gathered in my dantian and turned to heat. The signal that my Daoist power was refilling. And here was the strange part—
"My power recovery and accumulation are faster than usual, aren't they?"
The reason wasn't hard to guess.
"It's because I'm in the Corner Man's alley, isn't it?"
Call it a careful guess: since this was a space carved out by an anomaly, it was probably saturated with spiritual energy. I couldn't say for certain, but it was good news for me. Anyway, with that, my Daoist power was fully restored. Which meant now it was time to—
"Look over my shoulder."
Gulp.
But actually doing it, the tension was no joke. Still, I'd already committed to it. Without lingering any longer, I turned my head.
"..."
I held that position and waited. One minute. Two. Three. In the end, even after ten minutes, the Corner Man never appeared. Wondering if he might appear the instant I stepped outside, I walked out of the stationery shop, but—
"He's not coming."
And with that, one fact was proven. The Corner Man appears only when you turn around in an anomaly-free 'alley.'
"So the rules of the rumor apply far more strictly than I thought."
That was a bigger windfall than it sounded. As long as you obeyed the rumor's rules, no other danger could touch you. In other words, I had all the time I needed to prepare countermeasures.
"Took longer than I expected. Back to the café, I guess?"
Yoon Soo-ah greeted me as I returned from my successful farming run.
"Y-you came back...!"
"I told you I would."
I shrugged my shoulders and announced the results of the haul.
"Red oil-based marker and yellow sticky notes—talisman materials, successfully acquired."
"S-sticky notes?"
"That was the only suitably yellow paper they had."
"Still, drawing a talisman on a sticky note, of all things..."
"So what? Isn't a sticky note yellow paper?"
Faced with my brazen confidence, Yoon Soo-ah looked stumped, then tilted her head. "...I, I suppose...?"
"Let's head inside the café. Oh, and I tested something at the stationery shop—turning around inside a building doesn't summon the Corner Man. So relax those shoulders a little."
Yoon Soo-ah protested that if such a dangerous test had to be run, she should have been the one to do it. I ignored her. Then I pushed the café's tables and chairs against the walls and cleared a space for crafting the talisman.
All right. Now came the real work: making the talisman.
First, facing east, I purified with incense [using tap water]. Then I rang a bell three crisp times—ttak, ttak, ttak. Strictly speaking, I should have timed it to the hour of the Rat [11 p.m. to 1 a.m.], but—
Observing the proper hour makes the talisman more effective, but the skill of the person drawing it matters more than the hour—so don't get too hung up on timing!
—it said, so I got started right away.
The scripture to recite was the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.
"...Gyesu-hwana, sibang-jebul, jedae-bosal-jung, jeja-geumjil-charon..."
Reciting the scripture clearly and precisely mattered, of course, but the text emphasized that infusing the words with Daoist power was more important still. Following that advice, I focused on channeling power into my voice, even if the pronunciation blurred a little. With my mouth reciting the hanja readings I'd memorized in advance, one hand holding my phone to study the talisman diagram attached to the site, and the other tracing the design onto the paper with a marker—juggling three tasks at once was hard enough, and adding Daoist power on top made my head spin.
"...Done!"
And so my first completed talisman. How should I put it—considering it was red marker on a sticky note, the shape was actually pretty decent. But—
A properly made talisman consumes so much spiritual focus that even a single sheet will drain you to the bone.
That's why they're hard to produce in quantity, and why each and every sheet must be treated as precious.
My hands and feet had been busier than the writing suggested, but I didn't feel drained in the slightest.
"Did I mess something up?"
I asked myself and answered myself, and naturally, no answer came.
"Damn it..."
This was exactly why self-study was so hard. There was no one to look at the finished product and tell me whether it was right or wrong.
"Um, is something the matter?"
"Oh, perfect timing, Yoon Soo-ah. Can you read talismans? I drew one, but I'm not sure it came out properly."
"I'm sorry—I don't have any particular expertise in that field..."
"No, what kind of Paranormal Administration Bureau employee doesn't know that stuff?"
"I-I'm sorry..."
Yoon Soo-ah bowed her head, seemingly ashamed.
"No, that's not—I wasn't asking you to apologize..."
Out of sheer frustration, I'd ended up venting at an innocent bystander. Snapping at someone who couldn't help me wouldn't change anything.
'Maybe I should just keep drawing until something feels right?'
That was when an important fact occurred to me.
'Wait—how do you actually use a finished talisman?'
"How is this Demon-Banishing Talisman supposed to be used? Does it take effect the moment it's completed? Or do you stick it somewhere in the alley...?"
"You have to press it directly onto the Corner Man. When I used it, the moment it touched him, his body lurched violently backward... but you saw how that ended."
Yoon Soo-ah touched her right eye with a rueful hand. That must have been the part she'd lost first, back then—her right eye.
"But how did you attach the talisman? The Corner Man's charging speed was no joke."
"Like this."
As Yoon Soo-ah flicked her fingers, the Demon-Banishing Talisman before me rose into the air.
"This is...?"
"Telekinesis. It's nothing special."
"Nothing special? That's a psychic power, isn't it?"
...No, hold on. If there are psychics around, why would anyone even need talismans?
"If you're a telekinetic, forget the talisman—shouldn't you just grab the Corner Man and crush him?"
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it doesn't work like that. Psychic abilities are, broadly speaking, a kind of spiritual power too. So when you use them directly against another psychic or an anomaly, their strength is drastically reduced. Besides, my telekinesis output was never that high to begin with."
"Ah... I see."
"...I'm sorry."
"No—stop apologizing! You have absolutely nothing to be sorry to me for, so please knock it off."
At this rate, I'm the one turning into the trash human here!
"More importantly—could you even attach the talisman by telekinesis, blind as you are right now?"
Yoon Soo-ah silently shook her head. Damn it, things were getting more and more complicated. Then a question occurred to me.
"Wouldn't the Corner Man have dodged the talisman?"
The Corner Man's speed, from what I'd seen, was monstrous. He'd been standing at the alley corner a good seventy meters away, at minimum, and covered that distance to right in front of me in two or three seconds. Lowballing it, that was a hundred kilometers per hour. Yoon Soo-ah's telekinesis wasn't slow, but at that speed he could easily have evaded the talisman.
"The Corner Man was certainly fast, but it made no difference."
"Why not?"
"Because as long as the Corner Man moves along the walls, no matter how fast he is, there's a limit to how much he can dodge."
"But... couldn't he just peel off the wall to get out of the way?"
Yoon Soo-ah shook her head firmly.
"He cannot. Rumor-type anomalies are bound by what we call Narrative Coercion."
"Narrative Coercion? What's that?"
Using the Corner Man as her example, Yoon Soo-ah explained.
DESIGNATION:The Corner Man
NATURE: An anomaly that abducts people into an endlessly repeating alley and forces them into a spot-the-difference game centered on that alley.
RULE: The simplest example—the Corner Man cannot attack anyone who does not look back. Whether you hole up in the alley or press forward on the faintest hope, whatever you do, the moment you keep your head forward, attacking you is outright impossible. Even if the target turns around in a wrong alley, the imposed narrative forbids him from taking more than one facial part.
"Rules like these aren't unique to rumors. Among psychics, too, there are many who create a kind of synergy by imposing rules, bindings, and restrictions upon themselves—what we call 'covenants.' But because a rumor is born from a narrative externally imposed upon it from the very start, this synergy operates on a vastly larger scale. That's why we call it Narrative Coercion in their case."
"So to sum up: because rumors operate according to rules, they gain attack and defense power beyond their official grade, but they can't take any action that violates those rules... is that about right?"
"Exactly. It's also why the Corner Man couldn't attack when you looked back inside a building. He appears to be a rumor on which Narrative Coercion binds more tightly than on the average one."
"Which means the tighter his rules, the stronger the buff he gets in return."
"You catch on quickly."
"Narrative Coercion, huh..."
So it was like the techniques I knew—restrictions, vows, bindings.
"What a pain..."
I'd managed to imitate the Demon-Banishing Talisman, but there was no guarantee of its performance. Even if it was drawn correctly, there was no telling whether it would work on a Corner Man that had already shrugged off a talisman made by a top psychic of the Paranormal Administration Bureau.
A talisman of unproven quality. Narrative Coercion, which empowered the rumor. And the Corner Man, devouring people in an endlessly repeating alley.
"...Huh?"
That was when an idea flashed through my mind. One clever idea that cut across all three of those elements.
"What—what happens if a rumor violates its own Narrative Coercion?"
"What? Then... it's severely weakened—or at worst, it ceases to exist on the spot."
Yoon Soo-ah's answer confirmed the certainty of the idea that had flashed into my head.
"Worth a try, then..."
Which meant there was only one thing to do now: draw as many talismans as I possibly could.
"Well, if I draw enough of them, a few proper ones are bound to come out, right?"
From here on out, it was an endurance game.