The Paper Beneath the Ash
Gallery Yeon, a holding of the Seungho Foundation.
Jeong Hyeonyeong was scouting the new works she planned to bring into the gallery this season. An aesthetic eye, honestly, counted for little when it came to running a gallery. What mattered was the temperament of the critics and the wants of the clients — how a given work was being appraised right now, and how it would be appraised ten years from now. Those were the questions that had to live in her head at all times.
"This time, lean toward American artists as much as you can... Why? Because they hold their value, you idiot. Do you have any idea how much Americans spend buying their own country's art?"
Hyeonyeong hung up the phone with a sigh. Lately she couldn't shake the feeling that her shoulders were growing heavier by the day.
And not the weight of running a gallery or directing a foundation — her shoulders were literally heavy, locked up stiff with pain.
The hospital had found nothing wrong, so she'd tried massage, then a Korean medicine clinic, and none of it had done a thing. The fatigue just kept piling on, and her whole body was a wreck.
...That goddamn bastard.
It was all because of that man's divorce suit. Hyeonyeong scowled and clutched her head.
Right. Once the verdict comes down, it's over.
Her lawyer had all but guaranteed a victory. That fact alone seemed to lighten this state of hers, if only a little.
Then came a knock at the door, and her secretary slipped carefully into the room.
"Director, it's time to go."
"...Is it that late already?"
Hyeonyeong rose from her seat with another sigh. She was sick to death of looking at that lawyer's face, too.
Stories kept drifting in about how his previous clients had met with one accident after another — unsettling talk, of all things. For Hyeonyeong, who still went to shamans for readings now and then, such rumors were a fishbone caught in her throat.
"You've skipped meals again... You really should eat something."
"Have something simple ready to eat in the car. And coffee."
Still — first she had to see this lawsuit through to the end. Everything else could wait.
In the speeding car, Hyeonyeong wet her throat with coffee. Her throbbing head let down barely a few bites of the sandwich.
"Anything on the schedule after this?"
"A meeting with a collector from Hong Kong, in Hannam-dong."
The secretary in the passenger seat answered while checking the calendar. Five years had slipped by since she'd first stood at Hyeonyeong's side, and she knew exactly what that schedule would cost her boss.
"...I'll see to it that this meeting wraps up as quickly as possible."
"Good."
Hyeonyeong's voice brightened, just slightly.
HOOOONK—!!
"Oh, you— shi—!!"
The driver wrenched the wheel and slammed the brakes, and a wobbling one-ton truck lurched past right in front of their car.
"Wh-what the hell was that?!"
Hyeonyeong stared ahead, her voice shaking. Drunk, or texting, maybe — the truck was swerving even within its own lane.
"Are you all right, Director? Where the hell did that truck even come from?"
"..."
If there'd been an accident — or worse, if this little episode had soured her mood — it was his own job that would go up in smoke. The driver asked in a voice trembling like a leaf, but no answer came from Hyeonyeong. She simply stared straight ahead, blank-faced.
"...Let's get moving. Please."
The secretary shot him a look from the side, and only then did the driver put his foot properly back on the gas. Beneath three separate strains of unease, the car made it safely to the office building's parking garage.
Hyeonyeong entered the building with her secretary in tow. What had just happened had to be erased from her mind. Now was the time to get this meeting over with quickly and think about the next one.
Ding.
The chime announcing the seventh floor rang out, oddly loud in her ears. Hyeonyeong walked the corridor she knew all too well by now and reached the office.
"Welcome, Director. This way, please."
"It's been a while, Attorney Song. You've been quite busy lately, I hear."
"Busier than you, Director? Please, have a seat here."
So he doesn't slip up and call me 'Madam' anymore, does he.
Hyeonyeong shot a sidelong glance at Attorney Song Seongjae — and just as she was about to take her seat, she caught sight of a face she had never seen before.
He was young. He watched her with an air of unconcealed curiosity, and he was handsome enough that the sight wasn't an unpleasant one.
"And that one? Someone new? Or a young client of yours?"
"Ah... that would be... a gentleman who's come to help us with this matter..."
A 'gentleman,' was it?
Hyeonyeong's brow creased faintly. This insufferable lawyer was treading so carefully around the man that he'd resorted to honorifics?
"Came to help? Help with what, exactly?"
"I, ah... did I not mention it? The strange things that have been happening lately."
It had hardly been a matter of 'strange things' happening 'lately.' Hyeonyeong decided not to pick at the wording.
"He's a specialist in that field... Another client of mine recommended him, so I brought him in."
"What, did you go and fetch a shaman? Why are you trembling like that?"
Hyeonyeong turned her head for a better look. He didn't particularly resemble a shaman, but he did carry a strange air — something that set him apart from ordinary people.
It wasn't the overbearing presence your typical spiritual practitioner gave off. It was more refined. Colder. Yes — closer, if anything, to the bearing of a priest.
"A shaman... Yes. He is a shaman. A somewhat different kind, admittedly."
Song nodded. Hyeonyeong scoffed. So the man was that desperate, was he? She'd have bet money he'd never so much as share a table with people like that.
"And so you called him into a meeting like this without a word of consultation."
"But — trust me on this, Director. I... no. You, too, will need this man's help."
Hyeonyeong wanted to press him further, but the desperation radiating off Song stopped her at the root.
"Fine. Then what does this person have to do with my lawsuit?"
At that moment, the silent young man drifted slowly toward her. From barely a step away, his gaze was fixed — not on her face, but on her shoulder.
"Isn't that heavy?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"You look awfully weighed down. Your head. Your shoulders."
Hyeonyeong's body flinched at the words.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know why you'd react like that. You know better than anyone."
Doyoung laid his left hand lightly on her shoulder. Hyeonyeong could neither accept the touch nor shake it off; she simply sat there, rooted in place as if bound fast.
"Ugh—?!"
Then a sensation like a tingling current came ripping through her, from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. The secretary's eyes blazed at the sight, and she lunged at Doyoung.
"Excuse me! What do you think you're doing to the Director—!"
"Wait."
Hyeonyeong raised a hand and held her secretary back. The woman was staring at Doyoung with an expression of sheer disbelief.
"What... what exactly did you just do to me?"
Hyeonyeong ran her hands over her own shoulders, her own head.
The stiff, aching shoulders and the headaches that had refused to heal for months were simply gone. More than joy, she felt utterly baffled by the state she was in.
Those nagging pains that had made doctors and every other specialist shake their heads — gone, with a single touch of this man's hand? However she turned it over, it made no sense.
"What did I do? You looked like you were carrying a lot of baggage on those shoulders, so I took some of it off."
Doyoung withdrew his hand from her shoulder, the corner of his mouth quirking up. Hyeonyeong could only stare at him, with no idea how she was meant to take any of this.
"Baggage? And what is that supposed to mean?"
"You'd best be careful with yourself for a while."
The informal speech didn't even register anymore. Who in the world is this man?
"Did anything happen on your way here?"
"..."
"Traipsing around with things like that dangling off you — I'd say something dangerous was bound to happen at least once."
"...!"
And this time it was the secretary's face that flooded with horror.
"Kheheheh. The ones with long tails have come trailing in."
Muyeong was right. Behind Jeong Hyeonyeong — behind the client who had just walked in through the office door — every species of stray spirit hung in a tangled, writhing knot.
From the feeblest, most mongrel of things, to one that seemed to know the taste of human beings. Every last one of them, Doyoung suspected, had caught the scent of a deep curse, or of death.
It said something that they'd even begun nosing at the secretary standing beside her.
This time I'd had no choice but to call on Banjeom's gift, and I'd managed to round up enough stray spirits to keep Mother fed for three days running with some to spare.
Rubbing the tingling Banjeom, I looked at Jeong Hyeonyeong.
For a single stray spirit to bend reality is an extraordinarily difficult thing. It takes decades of festering, or a beast that has devoured its fill of people.
But even setting that bar aside, when strays gathered in a swarm like this, the world around them could not help but warp under their ghostly weight.
"Traipsing around with things like that dangling off you — I'd say something dangerous was bound to happen at least once."
At my words, the secretary's face and Hyeonyeong's went rigid at the same instant. So it had.
"Well, you'll probably be fine on the way back. The fire that was burning just now is already out."
"...Could you explain to me what exactly is happening to me?"
I glanced briefly at Song Seongjae. Pale as a sheet, he shook his head side to side. Right — she wasn't to hear the part about dying.
"The energy of the place isn't very good, so I've been advising him on what to do about it. You've heard the rumors, haven't you? About his clients meeting with one misfortune after another?"
I handed her a story parked somewhere between truth and lie. Bring up the word curse out of nowhere, and she'd only start imagining things.
"I did hear about that... but am I safe now? Nothing more will happen to me?"
"You'll be fine. Get spooked and go chasing after something stupid, and you'll only tie the knot worse."
Hyeonyeong swallowed dryly at my words.
"Something stupid, meaning..."
"Running off to some half-baked shaman or exorcist."
Take this matter to some greenhorn exorcist or shaman, and it would be the practitioner who ended up as the meal.
"Astonishing salesmanship. You've got a nose for money, I'll give you that."
...It's not a hustle, for the record.
At Muyeong's jabber, I sighed and pushed myself up from my seat. Song Seongjae's and Hyeonyeong's gazes swung to me in unison, following me up.
Honestly — it's not like I'm a mother bird abandoning the nest.
"Where are you going?"
"...Smoke break. You two go over the case."
"Ah — you can smoke by the fire exit, out past the corridor."
I pushed open the iron door of the fire exit, stepped outside, and set a cigarette between my lips.
Time to get the situation straight.
The misfortunes striking his clients had all come through Song Seongjae. Just like the centipede in my pocket, Song Seongjae himself had been functioning as a medium for the curse.
Which meant the curse had transferred onto every client who signed a contract with him. And the bigger the case — the more meetings it demanded with Song Seongjae — the harder the curse must have burned.
Which meant, in turn, that no amount of digging into his clients would ever turn up the source of the curse.
A doubly-mediated curse.
Clever in design, masterful in execution. Whoever had laid it, the odds were good that they were a shaman or an exorcist with a name.
If Master heard of this, he'd raise hell.
Mother despised curses — that spiteful, backhanded breed of sorcery — above nearly all else.
And either way, it meant the source of the curse had to be somewhere near Song Seongjae. So where was the vessel that had once held that solitude?
Tick. Tick.
Then I felt it — the centipede in my pocket glowing again. I flicked my cigarette ash into the jar serving as an ashtray, brow furrowing.
...What the hell?
I fished out the glass bottle with the centipede and swept my eyes over my surroundings — until they came to rest on the ashtray jar.
...No way.
"Hah... In any case — congratulations on the win, Director. You can walk into that courtroom with an easy mind now."
"Thank you for all your hard work."
With a tension that had nothing to do with the trial itself, the conversation between client and counsel drew to a close.
The verdict was all but settled, yet neither Song Seongjae nor Hyeonyeong could summon an ounce of relief. Song, picking at his fingernails, abruptly pushed himself up from his chair.
"Director — forgive me, but I need a moment with a cigarette..."
"Go ahead."
Song stepped out into the corridor with a cigarette between his lips. Doyoung still hadn't come back. Was he out there working through the whole pack?
BANG-CLATTER-CLATTER—!!
Then, from the smoking area, came a racket that had no business existing.
Song sprinted headlong for the fire exit — and walked straight into a scene that nearly floored him where he stood.
"Y-young master!! What in God's name do you think you're doing!!"
Doyoung had upended the ashtray jar and was shaking out every last scrap of garbage inside it.
Doyoung lifted his head with perfect calm, and at the sight of that expression Song's temples began to throb.
"Ha... what on earth is all this!"
"Oh, there you are? Wanted to show you something interesting."
Doyoung gave a small snort of a laugh and shoved the jar — now purged of its garbage — right up in front of Song's face.
"What in the..."
Before he could get the words out, the bottom of the jar came into view.
Caked against it were cigarette ash and chewed gum, and a sheet of newspaper plastered with trash. And glinting between them — a flash of white paper.
"Tear the newspaper off. Look."
At Doyoung's word, Song reached a hesitant hand into the jar and peeled the newspaper away.
What had been stuck beneath it was a piece of paper that was clean to the point of being uncanny.
And written across that paper, in huge black strokes, was a single character: Gu — the sigil of the curse, worms breeding in a vessel.
The cigarette pack slipped lifelessly from Song Seongjae's hand and hit the floor with a soft thud.