Even Spending Money Brings a Windfall — 17
"Hah!"
With a pain like an awl stabbing into her eye, Bae Jung-hee clutched the doll to her chest.
The eye-shaped thing stuck to the doll's back was identical to the tattoo carved into Seo Jin-woo's shoulder blade. She had manipulated Shin Hye-ra—the girl Seo Jin-woo had briefly fallen for—into getting that tattoo inked, and had been using it to watch his every move.
And now, out of nowhere, an unfamiliar eye was glaring back at her through the tattoo.
What is this? What's going on?
She had spent years surveilling and controlling other people, yet the moment the relationship inverted, goosebumps crawled up her skin. How can it see straight through me?
She flinched and blinked—and the beast struck, raking its claws across the eye before she had any chance to dodge. Tears streamed from it in a continuous, scalding line.
"H-how is this even possible?"
The doll and the tattoo. Those two things had made surveillance and control possible. And yet the other side had just attacked.
"This is possible? No—how?"
Bae Jung-hee cautiously picked the doll back up off the floor. Could she attack through the doll as well? If that worked, a whole new world would open up before her.
Every woman Seo Jin-woo met from now on. Every CEO of a company he tried to transfer to. Every journalist who wrote a malicious article about him. She could wipe them all out, effortlessly.
I wouldn't even have to go through the whole rigmarole anymore—collecting hair and nail clippings and blood, sewing a doll, layering every curse and incantation over it just to control someone.
She lifted the doll and lined her eye up with its eye from a careful distance. And right at that moment—
"Ha. Unbelievable."
"Hhk! The— the doll just talked?"
She had collected Seo Jin-woo's hair little by little through his hairstylist each time he got a trim, and used it to make this doll. That was why it was a jet-black human-shaped figure. And now a mouthless doll had spoken in Seo Jin-woo's exact voice. Looking closely, a red tongue was flicking between the strands of its hair.
"If a monster like you can talk, why couldn't I?"
"Who are you? You... You're that bastard Kim Yunho, aren't you?"
"That's right, I'm Kim Yunho. The most ill-tempered, petty, low-down, unbearably annoying employer and master you could imagine—and you're my butler."
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
"Don't you dare call it nonsense! I am not a dog!"
Suddenly the doll's body began to melt and slide. The black hair came loose, cascaded down, and started winding itself around her wrist.
"Uuugh! Wh-what are you? A shaman? A curse-worker? What the hell are you, that you can even do this?!"
[An evil spirit.]
The hair unspooled, and the presence that had vanished along with its form sent a low, rumbling vibration through the air of the room.
"Don't make me laugh. I've studied evil spirits extensively. Nothing like you exists in this world."
[Oh, really?]
The hair coiled around her wrist grew longer and longer, slowly filling the room.
[Then clear your mind and feel it for yourself. That this world holds an evil spirit just like me.]
The hair, growing with terrifying speed, wormed its way in through her nose and mouth. It slithered down her throat, gagging and twisting, until it packed her stomach and intestines full.
"Mmph. Mmgh! Hrrk!"
She was forced to swallow so much of it that her belly swelled taut and round, but it would not come back up.
"Spare me... please, spare me."
The hair burrowed into her eyes. It pierced through her skin, flooded into her body, and poured out the other side. Unable even to breathe, her consciousness beginning to cloud—then she saw it: the scented candle sitting on the table.
If my hand can reach it... please, let it reach it...
If she could touch the candle's flame to the hair, surely she could burn through it. She stretched with every last fiber of her being—and the instant her fingers closed around the candle!
Whoomph! The hair caught fire.
"AAAAAAAGH!"
The flame spread rapidly along the hair that had slithered in through her eyes, nose, and mouth—and a horrendous agony crashed over her.
[Still going to tell me I'm not an evil spirit? Haha. Delicious!]
The smoke rising off the burning hair curled together and gathered into the shape of a cat, and that cat inhaled Bae Jung-hee's agony, tears, and terror like a fine delicacy, savoring every mouthful.
[Master said I'm not allowed to kill people, so let's skip to the next scene!]
Pah!
Bae Jung-hee, who had briefly passed out from the pain, slowly regained consciousness under a bright light that stabbed at her eyes.
"Wh-where am I!"
The dressing room of her own master bedroom. The hidden space inside it.
[You came to quicker than I expected?]
No. 1 had briefly possessed Bae Jung-hee's body to come here—because the aura of evil spirits was smoldering in this place, seeping up from every corner.
Human-shaped dolls have a way of drawing in passing ghosts who adopt the place as their home and stir up trouble on their own. But this...
The room was packed with dolls—dozens of them. Every single one was a voodoo doll made from human hair, nail clippings, and blood. Some were finished; many more sat half-complete. Each doll on the display shelves bore a title and a name.
Actors from her agency. Staff members. Broadcast network PDs. Journalists.
No. 1 slipped out of Bae Jung-hee's body and approached the doll radiating the densest malice in the room. Pinned to its chest with an clothespin was a drawing of the exact eye that had clung to Seo Jin-woo's back.
—Shin Hye-ra.
No. 1 examined the evil spirit's aura dwelling inside the Shin Hye-ra doll, then spoke.
[So you're the spirit that tried to crawl out of that man's body.]
At that, the Shin Hye-ra doll snapped its eye open.
The one-eyed thing?
It was the same eye as the tattoo on the back—the bloodshot veins visible all the way down, like the eye of a living person.
[Why were you clinging to that man?]
"I have to protect him."
The doll twisted its head around and looked at Bae Jung-hee. "Unnie, why did you do this to me? Why did you kill me?"
"Don't move! Get back on that shelf!"
"Are you going to kill Jin-woo too?"
"If you don't behave, Seo Jin-woo dies. Is that what you want?"
The doll froze. So that was how she had been controlling this doll all along.
[You weren't clinging to that man to protect him. That woman was using you to pour curses all over the man you loved.]
The doll's single eye began to quiver.
[You were strangling Seo Jin-woo's throat. You were trying to kill the people around him. Weren't you?]
"I was trying to protect him."
[No. You were becoming an evil spirit. That woman is the one who made you into this.]
Bloodshot threads crept across the doll's eye, and a white arm burst up out of the doll's body.
"AAAAH! I never gave you an arm—why do you have one?! Hrrk!"
The white arm closed around Bae Jung-hee's throat.
"S-spare... hrrk!"
Bae Jung-hee begged the gray, smoke-like shape of No. 1.
[I'm not doing anything, though?]
"What?"
[You heard me. Beg.]
No. 1 rumbled out a low growl as it spoke.
[Don't beg me. Beg the doll you made.]
"Hye-ra, please..."
[Though I doubt she'll listen. That stopped being a voodoo doll a long time ago—it's an evil spirit now.]
Crack! The white arm snapped Bae Jung-hee's neck. Twisted into a grotesque posture, she collapsed to the floor, her breath rattling to a stop.
The doll climbed up over Bae Jung-hee's body and peered down into her open eye.
"Unnie, why did you do this to me? I... I trusted you."
The doll grabbed Bae Jung-hee and shook her.
"Wake up. Why did you do this to me?"
[She's dead. You killed her.]
Tears began dripping, one by one, from the doll's single eye. Then, after a moment, the doll crumpled to the floor.
What now? Why did it suddenly collapse?
No. 1 drew closer and found that the evil spirit's presence dwelling inside the doll was gone.
Just then—bzzt, bzzt—a phone began vibrating on the master bedroom bed. The caller was Seo Jin-woo.
The man who's with Master.
No. 1 picked a doll at random and poured itself into it. The woman's low-grade spirit had been able to move a doll—even a weakling could manage that much. So naturally, a spirit many times stronger could do the same.
Works like a charm.
Piloting the doll up onto the bedside table, No. 1 pressed the call button.
"C-could you switch masters for me? No, um—could you put Master Kim Yunho on the line, please?"
"Speaking."
At the sound of Kim Yunho's voice, No. 1 swallowed dryly.
"U-um... Master. I didn't kill a person, I swear... the doll killed her."
"A person died? You're telling me Bae Jung-hee is dead?"
"I don't know who Bae Jung-hee is, but the owner of this phone is dead. The doll turned into an evil spirit and killed her."
"Ooh. I'm on my way."
Click. The call ended.
"What? What does he mean? He's coming here? What about me?"
Even a low-grade spirit can teleport, and here I am, what am I, chopped liver?
No. 1 began seriously pondering whether it ought to tattoo a teleportation sigil onto Kim Yunho's back as well.
A sinister pressure. A chill crawling up the spine.
The evil spirit is here.
The malevolent aura radiating from Seo Jin-woo's back was unmistakably not Shin Hye-ra's soul. It was another spirit, born from a voodoo doll—a spirit dwelling within an object, just like the White Porcelain Grandmother.
The problem was that the object in question was a voodoo doll made from Shin Hye-ra's own body. So it couldn't be dismissed as entirely unlike her, either.
You could call it a fragment of Shin Hye-ra's spirit that curdled into an evil spirit.
There was no need to send it off to the afterlife with any ceremony. It could simply be cut down barehanded, like any common gutter ghost.
Can I actually do it?
Alone, without No. 1's help?
Seo Jin-woo tilted his head as I stared blankly into the air after hanging up the call.
"Teacher? Did Director Bae say something strange? You don't look well."
"She says Director Bae is dead."
"Sh-she's dead?"
I nodded slowly, then turned to face Seo Jin-woo. The evil spirit's aura was growing stronger by the second. I had to destroy it before it claimed Seo Jin-woo's mind entirely—otherwise, just as he'd warned me, he would start acting like someone else.
I steadied my breathing and spoke.
"Seo Jin-woo, I am a spiritual medium. I don't need to explain myself—you already know I'm not an ordinary man."
"Yes. I know that very well."
"Then trust me."
I drew one more deep breath to settle my nerves and continued.
"I'm going to tear the evil spirit off your body right now and destroy it."
Bae Jung-hee, who had surveilled Seo Jin-woo through the voodoo doll, was dead. With the cameras switched off, so to speak, there was no longer any reason to hide anything.
"The spirit resembles Shin Hye-ra," I went on, "but to put it precisely, it is not Shin Hye-ra's soul."
"Th-then what is it?"
"You could call it her lingering obsession. It's climbing your throat right now."
A white hand rose up out of his T-shirt, touched his hair, and began stroking it.
Seo Jin-woo must have felt something crawling over him, because his expression went rigid.
"Teacher, can you actually see it?"
"Yes. Close your eyes, and I'll have it gone before you know it."
Seo Jin-woo stared at me with terror-stricken eyes—then squeezed them shut. It was proof that he trusted me completely.
Short and decisive. Let's end this.
I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue and swallowed dryly. This was my first time destroying an evil spirit with my own hands, without No. 1's help, and the tension rose in me of its own accord.
He's trusting you. Don't waste it.
I reached out and gave Seo Jin-woo's shoulder a sharp push. The instant his body lurched backward, I seized the spirit's hand and yanked it free, ripping it off him like pulling a weed out by the roots.
The One-Eyed Curse Spirit—clinging flat against Seo Jin-woo's back until the very last second.
Calling on raw strength, I began tearing the thing into shreds. To anyone who couldn't see evil spirits, it would have looked like I was flailing at empty air—but the severed strands of the curse dropped to the floor one after another.
A vile stench rolled off it. Was this what a rotting corpse smelled like? It was as if someone's resentment, obsession, and malice had congealed into a mass and then burst open, pus seeping from every wound.
[KIEEEEE!]
I balled the shredded spirit together, opened the wood stove, and flung the whole thing inside.
[KIEEE!]
I had worried whether brute force and fire alone could truly annihilate it—but that fear proved needless. Inside the flames, the evil spirit, still twisted into the shape of a human face, began to melt away.
I felt strange. I had just destroyed, with my own hands, a fragment of Shin Hye-ra—the woman Seo Jin-woo had loved—and yet something that could no longer be called her at all.
I wiped the filth from my hands and called Detective Jeong Hyeoncheol, who would be over at the Metropolitan Investigation Unit by now.
"Yes, Detective. Where are you right now?"
It was time to find out whether Shin Hye-ra's death had truly been a suicide.