Chapter 99
Translator: uly
Chapter: 99
Chapter Title: Lycanthrope (2)
At the magpie's scolding, Mi-seon pulled a nail clipper and a knife from her bag, her face full of dissatisfaction as she asked,
"But why me? Do I have to go all the way to the funeral home?"
Mi-seon was full of complaints, but she still spoke politely to the little magpie.
Unlike the courteous Mi-seon, the magpie talked down to her like a subordinate.
"Argh! You frustrating girl. We'll get off at the funeral home, and you can just drive the car away! No, don't go anywhere until you've wiped it all off! Work! Scrape it hard and get rid of that creepy stuff right now!"
Na-rae was quite curious about what this talking bird was ordering, but it was hard to check while driving.
At the magpie's shout, Mi-seon pulled the blade from the nail clipper and rubbed it against the knife before asking again.
"Um, but Magpie-nim. It's really possible to hit the lotto jackpot, right?"
The magpie yelled at Mi-seon, who was still being polite.
"Argh, this girl. Just do the job cleanly first! Then I'll take care of everything nicely for you."
For some reason, it felt like a scam.
Na-rae, who had been listening to their conversation, cautiously asked Dong-su.
"Lotto jackpot! Is that for real?"
Na-rae seemed to have a big interest in the lottery too.
Dong-su, for whom the lottery was irrelevant since he was already dead, looked out the car window and replied indifferently.
"No idea. But aren't you amazed by this talking magpie, Reporter Eun?"
"I raised a cockatoo at home when I was little. So I've seen birds talk a lot."
Dong-su was at a loss for words at the unexpected answer.
The car Na-rae was driving sped toward the Gangnam hospital.
"So, what is she making you do?"
"Oh, nothing much."
She seemed completely unaware that the thing Mi-seon was rubbing with the nail clipper blade was the knife from the mountain lodge.
* * *
Seol-mi's funeral parlor was in the basement of the Gangnam hospital.
It was a structure where multiple parlors were crammed together, sharing dining tables.
With no one to tend to it, it looked even more shabby than Dong-su's.
Though the night was deep, Il-han was staring intently at the tablet PC he'd received from Detective Han.
It was footage from external and internal CCTVs at a convenience store during the Daesung University incident.
In the video, a woman in hanbok swung a silver sword against a horde of zombies filling the hospital lobby, while reporter Kim Byung-su fought them with his grotesque arm.
'Reporter Kim had abilities like this...?'
Among them, the red-haired woman who entered the lobby with the corpses stood out.
'She's connected to the corpses. We should issue a wanted notice, but Glasses must have given me this footage to show her.'
With no visitors to distract him, he could focus on the video.
"What are you watching so intently?"
Before he knew it, a middle-aged man was peering over Il-han's shoulder at the tablet.
"No, this!"
The man's voice grew louder.
Il-han hurriedly flipped the tablet over in panic.
'Who is he? Damn, when did he sneak up behind me?'
It was footage that couldn't be shown to civilians yet.
Il-han hesitated, unsure what to say.
To make matters worse, the scene the man had seen was zombies swarming as a woman in elegant hanbok sliced their necks with her slender silver sword.
'This is bad. How do I explain?'
The man's face said, 'I've already seen it all!'
Meeting the man's eyes, Il-han bowed his head in thought.
'How much did he see? He's definitely a mourner from the next parlor. He couldn't have been behind me for more than a few minutes. Stay calm.'
The man grinned and said,
"No way, watching zombies at a funeral parlor."
The man had clearly seen the zombies in the video.
Il-han tried to hide his panic and said calmly,
"How much did you see?"
"Enough to see the woman in hanbok slicing zombie necks. But man, what kind of movie has such crap quality? American zombie flicks are still the best. You seen World War Z?"
'Phew! He thinks it's a movie.'
Il-han finally wiped the sweat from his brow and relaxed.
The man thought the video Il-han was watching was a B-grade zombie movie.
"Oh, it's a documentary-style zombie flick, but low-budget, so it's a bit sloppy. Zombies are best in American ones, yeah."
Il-han gave the man a thumbs-up, picked up the tablet, and headed outside.
"It's too stuffy in there to watch."
Still sore from the glasses-wearing man who'd kneed his groin, he waddled out of the funeral home.
Once Il-han left, the man made a phone call.
Looking around cautiously, he started the call.
"Yeah, it's me. Section Chief! I found the guy with the Daesung University hospital footage."
"What?"
"I came to my distant uncle's wife's nephew's hometown brother's funeral, and..."
"What? Whose funeral? You drunk?"
"Anyway. Daesung University hospital! Swarming with zombies. It's on the tablet PC."
"You sure?"
"Yes! Totally sure. I know that hospital lobby well. My wife's cousin's high school classmate's little brother was hospitalized there, went a lot."
"What? Who? ...Anyway, if it's real, secure it!"
"Secure it? Yes, sir. Got it."
After hanging up, the man looked around again.
The floor had multiple parlors sharing dining tables, but no one seemed interested in his call.
'Great! The day that tablet goes exclusive in our Hanbando Newspaper, this government that painted it as a cult holocaust will meet its end. A bright future awaits me too. My third cousin's college buddy lives next to the opposition floor leader—maybe I'll get a nomination?'
The man had impressive connections.
* * *
Il-han, guarding Seol-mi's parlor, eyed the hulking foreigner who had arrived.
The giant man looked down at Il-han, who held a tablet in one hand, with a puzzled expression.
"Isn't Reporter Kim here?"
The giant spoke first.
Il-han scanned him up and down, then took over a dining table by the parlor and said,
"First, have some yukgaejang. A bottle of soju too. It was so empty here, perfect timing."
But the giant seemed suspicious of Il-han.
"Hey, kid. You don't just treat strangers at someone else's funeral. Everything costs money."
Il-han smiled at the giant's words and replied,
"You paid respects to the deceased, right? Put money in the condolence envelope? Then eat and stay a bit."
As Il-han handed him chopsticks, the giant tilted his head.
"But do you know me?"
Even as the giant asked suspiciously, Il-han just smiled.
"You're here to pay respects to Seol-mi, I assume. Thanks for coming anyway."
The man was the motel owner who had trailed Sang-in with Byung-su.
* * *
When the car stopped at the Gangnam hospital funeral home, the magpie asked Mi-seon,
"Girl, all scraped off?"
Mi-seon politely held up the knife and replied,
"Still this much left."
Seeing a bit of the inscription remaining, the magpie scolded her.
"How do you expect to earn a living like that! Keep scraping until we come back! Don't go anywhere, work hard!"
'What's that about?'
Na-rae checked the back through the rearview mirror from the driver's seat, but whatever Mi-seon held was hidden by the seat.
It seemed deliberate, making it hard to ask.
Cowed by the magpie's scolding, Mi-seon stayed in the car alone, while Dong-su, Na-rae, and the magpie got out and headed into the funeral home.
"Tomorrow's the burial?"
The magpie on Dong-su's shoulder asked.
Dong-su checked the clock on the lobby wall and replied,
"It's today now. Burial in the morning."
Na-rae nodded at Dong-su's words and led the way into Seol-mi's parlor.
* * *
It was a dark night, a few hours before dawn.
Four young men stood under an officetel overlooking the Han River.
Their clothes were shabby, but their eyes gleamed fiercely— no ordinary aura.
Among them, a tall man with an exceptionally pale face stood out.
"What are your plans for Lord Kang-rim?"
The man in the worn jacket asked the tall one.
The tall one seemed to be Lord Kang-rim.
Kang-rim looked up at the building and replied,
"Five hours till dawn. Seventh floor, right there. No need to overthink—just go in. Everyone, get ready."
At Lord Kang-rim's straightforward command, another man objected.
"Lord Kang-rim, isn't a ghoul evil spirit there? Ghouls are notorious rakshasas from the West and India. Can we handle it alone? Even lions from Gwanghwamun fled from her."
They were geomantic reapers sent by Judge Choi to assist Lord Kang-rim.
Lord Kang-rim grinned confidently at the man's words.
"I am Jeon Woo-chi, who failed to become an immortal and now merely serves as a grim reaper. Would I fear a mere ghoul rakshasa? If you're scared, stay here, geomantic reapers."
Grim reapers lose memories of their past lives, but Lord Kang-rim remembered his fully.
He called himself Taoist Jeon Woo-chi.
Whether he was or not, humans had called him Lord Kang-rim for centuries, the only named grim reaper.
Beyond reaper duties, he exorcised yokai tormenting humans, chased evil spirits, battled evil gods—and had shrines and shamans worshiping him as a deity.
"If you're confident, we'll trust you."
With the high divine power Lord Kang-rim exuding confidence, the other geomantic reapers nodded in agreement.
"Alright, let's go in. Time to have some fun."
Lord Kang-rim led the way into the building, the other three following.
Their target: the seventh floor, where Emel and psychic researcher Sang-in were hiding.
Stepping out of the elevator, Lord Kang-rim headed down the right corridor and said,
"We've confirmed a ghoul and two human males inside. When the door opens, you three subdue the humans, and I'll go in and snap the ghoul's neck."
Lord Kang-rim was still relaxed.
The three young geomantic reapers nodded at his words.
At Lord Kang-rim's signal, a reaper rang the bell and stood in front of the camera, blocking the front door monitor's view.
The door clicked open without even asking who it was.
"Charge!"
Lord Kang-rim yanked the slightly open door and rushed in, followed by the three reapers.
The door had been opened by psychic researcher Sang-in, who was instantly subdued and collapsed by a reaper.
"Which one's the ghoul? You?"
Lord Kang-rim spotted the red-haired woman, Emel, and charged at her.
But a hulking figure, head and shoulders taller, blocked his path—Kwon-geon grabbed Lord Kang-rim's neck with one hand and hurled him into the back floor-to-ceiling window.
Crash!
Lord Kang-rim smashed into the wall-spanning window, shattering it and flying out of the officetel.
'Wha—what? This anticlimactic?'
In the instant of falling after breaking the window, Lord Kang-rim glimpsed Kwon-geon savagely severing the reapers' heads.
Thud!
Falling from the seventh floor, Lord Kang-rim hit the asphalt with a dull sound, cracking the back of his head.
'They say even grim reapers can die... is today that day?'
As consciousness faded, Lord Kang-rim strained to look up at Emel's officetel on the seventh floor.
Through the broken glass, he saw the red-haired woman, Emel.
She seemed to be looking down at him, sprawled starfish-like on the asphalt staring at the sky.
'That woman's the ghoul... Damn, what happened? I've suffered a huge humiliation today.'