The Marble's Scent
It didn’t take long to piece together the situation. The last words he had spoken lingered hazily in her mind.
‘You knew about the marble.’
The only ones who knew of the marble’s existence were Shin-wol, herself, and this ghost.
The strange, unsettling feelings she had gotten from Jae-young over the past days began to click into place like puzzle pieces.
Why hadn’t she realized it sooner? There had been far too many unnatural coincidences for any of it to be mere chance.
A stream of water trickled from between her tightly pressed lips. The water that couldn’t enter her mouth slid down her chin and pattered onto the floor.
“Senior, open your mouth a little. You’re spilling it everywhere.”
Jae-young poked at her lips with the mouth of the plastic bottle, his own mouth stretched into a wide grin. The smile was so grotesquely eerie that Yeo-won squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away. His movements stopped abruptly.
“……Why are you acting like this, senior? Do you hate me?”
“……”
Yeo-won didn’t answer. She focused instead on steadying her increasingly ragged breathing. She couldn’t fall into panic. She fought desperately to shake off the terror that had seized her entire body. Jae-young watched her in silence for a moment before his face twisted into something cruel.
“That really hurts my feelings……”
“Ugh!”
A large hand grabbed her face and forcibly turned it back toward him. Jae-young stared down at her with eyes swallowed by darkness and muttered softly.
“Do I really have to be this forceful?”
Her firmly sealed lips were slowly pried apart by merciless strength. Lukewarm water poured wildly into her forcibly opened mouth.
“You said you’d help me. You need to cooperate.”
“Kek, keghk!”
The water rushing straight down her throat blocked not only her esophagus but her airway as well. She wanted to spit it out, but the endless flood left her drowning helplessly, forced to accept it.
The water that refluxed through her nose made her struggle even more miserably, yet Jae-young only released her face after he had emptied the entire bottle. He hurled the empty plastic bottle to the floor in irritation.
“Kek! Kek, cough, cough! Uuugh……!”
Yeo-won doubled over, spitting out the water that had pooled in her mouth. Every cough made her lungs throb, and the fishy smell triggered dry heaves. As she suffered through the persistent coughing that came with each breath, Jae-young grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head upward.
“……!”
He twisted her hair viciously, shaking her head from side to side. Her body was fixed to the pillar, so only her head moved—producing a raw, scalp-tearing pain unlike anything she had felt before.
Even so, Yeo-won bit down hard on her lip. She refused to scream.
After shaking her like that for several minutes, he flung her head away as if discarding trash. Jae-young shook the tangled strands of hair from his fingers and leaned in close to her face.
“It hurts, doesn’t it, senior? You hate pain. I do too. I don’t want to hurt you. Because you’re so kind.”
His disjointed words buzzed in her ears. Through her disheveled hair, she could see his expression shifting rapidly—smiling, then frowning, then twisting as if in agony.
“You said you’d help me. I desperately need the marble inside your body. Won’t you give it to me?”
“……”
“I won’t ask for anything else. Just tell me if the marble is in your eye. If you do, I’ll only gouge out your eyeball and let you go.”
Jae-young gently smoothed her tangled hair as he coaxed her in a tender voice. When she still gave no answer, the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Why aren’t you saying anything? I didn’t even cover your mouth. If you don’t answer, I’ll do whatever I want. You wouldn’t want all your organs pulled out, would you?”
He roughly swept a hand through his own hair as if suppressing his anger and let out a sigh. Even at those horrifying words, Yeo-won secretly felt relieved. At the very least, she was deeply reassured that he didn’t know how to extract the marble.
Losing the marble meant death for Yeo-won. In the past she might have begged to be killed quickly, but now things were different.
If she died, Grandmother would die too. And Shin-wol’s marble might fall into this ghost’s hands.
That could not be allowed.
Yeo-won swallowed dryly and moved her lips with agonizing slowness.
“……I don’t……know.”
“What did you say?”
Her voice came out hoarse, the way it does after long silence. And it was so quiet he couldn’t hear her properly.
Jae-young frowned and leaned his ear closer. Yeo-won clenched her fists until the blood stopped flowing and spoke clearly.
“I said I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What marble? What on earth is it?”
When Yeo-won glared at him and asked, Jae-young laughed sharply. He let out a disbelieving scoff, then his eyes changed completely.
“Fuck, what do you mean you don’t know! You walk around reeking of it!”
“No matter how much you yell, if I don’t know, I don’t know! Aren’t you the one who’s mistaken me for someone else, Jae-young?”
The moment her words ended, her head snapped sideways with a tremendous impact. The instant she registered that she had been slapped, a burning pain flooded her cheek. Her mouth had split open; blood trickled from the corner of her lips.
“Mistaken? When you smell like this from your blood, what the fuck do you mean mistaken!”
Jae-young let out a furious scream. Yeo-won’s head lolled forward weakly.
“……”
Her lips stung. The slap must have torn them. Strangely, no tears came—perhaps because of the pain. Instead, her mind grew startlingly clear. It felt as if someone had dumped cold water over her head.
After everything else, now she had been kidnapped. And the person who had taken her was the very first person she had ever shown kindness to.
‘Ah. Not a person. A ghost.’
She almost laughed at how wretched her life had become. As she reflected on her absurdly exhausting existence, a shout came from above her.
“Please! Just do what I tell you!”
Jae-young’s words came out in sharp, broken syllables. The sound of something being suppressed was so odd that she looked up. He was clutching his own head and staggering. After swaying unsteadily, he suddenly stopped, then began slamming his head against the wall.
The loud bangs echoed horribly in the narrow space.
“Aaaargh! Shut up! I’m doing it! Stop rushing me!”
He had been bashing his head downward, but now he buried his face in his hands and began sobbing like a child.
“Ah, Mom, I wasn’t angry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…… Still, please don’t hurt senior, please……”
Scratch. His nails raked down his own face. Red scratches bloomed, and beads of blood welled up along them.
Then—
He dropped his head like a puppet whose strings had been cut and began to shake.
“Heh, hehe, hehehehehe.”
When he laughed, a sound like nails scraping across a chalkboard pierced her eardrums. An unbearable ringing followed, threatening to drown her consciousness. Something began to creep up from behind him. A familiar, repulsive sensation.
At the café. In front of City Hall Station. She had felt exactly this same feeling every time.
A woman’s spine-chilling laughter and screams filled the space. A revolting sensation swept over her, as if dozens of insects were crawling all over her body. The stench of rot rose everywhere. The foul odor triggered unstoppable nausea.
“Ugh……”
Even as Yeo-won dry-heaved, her vision spun wildly. Was this what a ghost was? She had never encountered anything like it. She thrashed with all her might, desperate to run away, but the tightly bound ropes showed no sign of loosening.
Instead, the rough surface only tore her skin, leaving fresh wounds.
She was swallowed by helpless despair at being unable to do anything. She wanted to gouge out her own eyes and ears.
A humming drifted down from above. It was a high-pitched tone impossible to associate with a man.
“Baby, my lovely baby. It’s okay. Mommy will do it.”
While Yeo-won was still panting and retching, Jae-young approached and yanked her up by the hair.
Eyes consumed by fear and despair trembled without focus. Jae-young was clearly right in front of her, yet she couldn’t see his face.
His nose and eyes were hidden as if swallowed by shadow; only his mouth, stretched impossibly wide, was visible.
“You really do have something good, don’t you~”
A bizarre phenomenon occurred—the voices of a man and a woman blended together. Through her blurring vision, she saw Jae-young’s lips, dyed a vivid red as if coated in bright lipstick.
“This isn’t enough. You need to be more afraid. You need to feel more despair. I want to see more—your true terror.”
Just as she thought she could endure no longer and was about to faint, Jae-young’s hand suddenly dropped. She barely managed to lift her gaze while gasping harshly. He had shot upright and was glaring fiercely at something, his head turned away.
“……”
Following his gaze, her unfocused pupils slowly regained clarity. There, hidden behind him, was a door she hadn’t noticed before.
“Stay quiet. If you make a sound, I’ll really kill you.”
Leaving only those words, Jae-young walked out the door. She didn’t know why he had suddenly changed, but this was an opportunity. Yeo-won hurriedly pulled herself together and looked around.
The rectangular space was completely empty except for a single candle flickering on the floor. The wall visible beyond the candle looked exactly like the interior of a shipping container. With no windows in sight, the only exit appeared to be that door.
“Hngh, ugh!”
She twisted her entire body, trying desperately to break the ropes, but it was useless. Cold sweat poured down like rain. Not knowing when Jae-young would return pushed her anxiety to the limit. Tears welled up, yet Yeo-won clenched her teeth and kept struggling.
“Please……!”
At that moment, the door rattled.
“Hic!”
Thinking Jae-young had returned, Yeo-won held her breath. Should she scream for help the moment the door opened? Even if someone was nearby, Jae-young would kill her long before they could reach her.
The door rattled once more, followed by the creak of old hinges. As the door slowly opened with a long squeak, Yeo-won lowered her head, surrendering to everything.
A familiar ball of fur squeezed through the gap. In the darkness, honey-colored eyes sparkled.
[Ah! I found you-seumnidayo!]
Seeing Cheong-sil wagging his tail cheerfully in such a dire situation, Yeo-won finally burst into the tears she had been holding back.