The Fountain Pen

Bodhisattva Chuyeon, the man, and I arrived in front of his house. Conveniently, it wasn't far—about a twenty-minute walk from her shrine.

"Th-this is it... Teacher..."

He opened the door and carefully stepped aside. The door of the aging villa swung inward with a long, reluctant creak.

"Excuse me, then."

I stepped inside. The place was tidy. He seemed to live alone; the furnishings were spare.

"Which room do you sleep in?"

"Ah, the one at the end..."

I walked into the room he indicated. It was tidy as well—nothing in it but a single bed, a desk worn smooth by years of hands, and a chair. Sheets of paper, notebooks, and pens lay scattered across the desktop.

Catching the direction of my gaze, the man ventured a careful explanation.

"Ah, those pens... I still work on paper for a first-pass translation, then move it onto the computer for the second... It just comes out better that way. Even sentences that won't unstick sort themselves out..."

I nodded.

"You mostly write with that one, don't you?"

I pointed at a fountain pen. The man stared at me, startled.

"H-how did you know?"

The pen looked like an old design, and yet it was immaculate, a slick gloss running over its surface. Something like cloth was bound around the grip, worked with a complicated pattern.

"When did you buy it?"

He blinked and scratched the back of his head.

"Uh... hmm... huh? I... don't remember? What the...?"

Beside me, Chuyeon swallowed dryly, and in the quiet room ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the sound seemed to spread. I jerked a thumb over my shoulder.

"Both of you, wait outside."

"Yes...!"

Chuyeon read the situation at once, seized the man, and hustled him out of the room. I shut the door and turned back around.

"Whew. That's a nasty tingle."

The thing was spewing yellow lines like a lunatic and radiating presence for all it was worth. Fail to notice that, and you'd be an idiot. The fountain pen had strung those yellow lines across the whole room like a spiderweb.

I picked the pen up off the desk. In the same instant a skin-crawling shriek—like fingernails raked down a chalkboard—tore through my ears.

"?"

I smoothly peeled away the membrane of blue line I'd set over my ears. Good thing I'd thought to lay blue line over the exposed places—my hands, my face. Get that wrong, and I would have gone down pouring blood from my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Even with the membrane up, the roar's vibration shook my whole body hard enough to leave me dizzy.

"Whew. Dizzy."

For an instant the fountain pen seemed to flinch. It was speaking at me, and the voice sounded thoroughly rattled.

"Fascinating."

Hungry ghosts, and the Hungry Ghost King, were spirits you couldn't hold a conversation with. The King muttered, certainly, but actual communication had been impossible. The ghost in the fountain pen, by contrast, looked like something I could talk to. High intelligence, in other words—and also a premium nutrient. Drop it in the ginseng pot, and it would spin out even more blue line.

Without hesitation I shot blue line out through my index finger and thumb. An astonishingly vivid thread poured free and bore down on the pen, and cracks began to spider across a surface that had looked sturdy. A grinding crack split the air. The fountain pen screamed in pain.

The blue line spilling from my hand grew thicker still. Another grinding crack.

"Bastard?"

The moment I paused the blue line, the pen rushed to correct itself.

"I'm not a shaman."

"Mm. Something like a mage."

For a second I had the illusion of the pen pulling out a hand to scratch the back of its head.

"That? Dropping the honorifics, are we?"

"Anyway. Why'd you call me over?"

The peculiar crankiness mages are known for must have shaken it pretty badly. It had even started hiccuping.

"Plant you in a pot and I bet the ginseng would grow nicely."

The pen answered in a voice that, had it possessed two eyes, would have been blinking in pure disbelief.

"Why a loss?"

Quite the talker, this fountain pen. My time at the company had been short, but I'd learned plenty, and one of those lessons was about persuasion. A company is nothing but persuasion, end to end. And the people you have to persuade are usually busy. They don't have time. So of course you need to be able to boil the whole pitch down to exactly three lines.

"Say it in three lines."

If it had been a person, I would have been polite. Thinking of it as a ghost, I found myself treating it roughly without quite meaning to. Do harm to someone else, and you ought to be ready to take the same harm yourself, no?

"You've got ten seconds. Ten, nine..."

The pen rattled it off like a machine gun.

There, see? Three-line summaries really are the height of persuasion. Even I was persuaded.

"And if I don't break you, what's my compensation?"

Five-colored flags? Ah. It meant the five-colored banners Chuyeon used.

"You can dwell in any object at all?"

I thought back to what I'd read in Strange Beings of Joseon. If whatever sat inside the fountain pen really was a dokkaebi, it couldn't come out on its own anyway. More precisely, it wouldn't. It only emerged when there was an object it liked. A dokkaebi, the book said, would rather cease to exist than dwell in something it didn't care for. The one in front of me smelled faintly of a fraud.

I listened quietly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠while the fountain pen dokkaebi talked.

To frighten the man, it said, it had carved the mark of a rod into his right arm, then steered him toward finding a shaman. If the shaman showed up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠carrying five-colored flags or bells or anything at all, it had meant to transfer into that. The things shamans carry are spiritually potent, it claimed, and comfortable to live in.

It had liked the fountain pen very much, but the spiritual energy had nearly run dry, and it had been struggling. Only just enough power had remained for that roar of an attack a moment ago. The dokkaebi really did talk too much.

"Mm."

I took something from my bag. It was the wooden branch I'd received earlier as a down payment—the thing called a kyosaku, a switch used by Tibetan monks.

"Want to try going in here?"

But then yellow lines burst from the kyosaku by the hundreds, like open palms, and swallowed the fountain pen whole. At the sight of that yellow tsunami, the fountain pen dokkaebi shrieked in horror.

The dokkaebi screaming inside the pen was, an instant later, screaming inside the kyosaku. The move was over in a flash.

I drew a breath and wound the kyosaku in the blue line I sent out, then bound it tight again in the wrapping cloth I'd peeled away. Only then did the screams ringing from inside the kyosaku fall silent.

With a thin, whirring rush, the kyosaku's yellow lines deepened and multiplied. It seemed to have grown its power by absorbing spirits. That would explain why it had attacked me without warning the moment I first tried to handle it—to swallow my strength and get stronger. I'd taken the kyosaku out just in case, and the tactic had landed perfectly.

Mm. But kyosaku this, kyosaku that—it just didn't land. I ought to give it a new name. The name it already had was a bit much, so I'd pass on that. Still, throwing it out entirely wouldn't sit right in the mouth, so I'd keep the new one as close as I could.

There was a dokkaebi inside, and the switch was shaped a lot like a club, so...

"Dokkaebi Club."

Good name.

I stepped out of the room. Chuyeon came hurrying over.

"T-Teacher...! Are you all right? I felt an enormously unpleasant, massive energy from inside that room...!"

I held out the fountain pen. The old pen had been split in half. Unlike when I'd first seen it, the color had faded until you could feel the years on it.

"Looks like something was possessing this."

Only then did the man remember where the pen had come from.

"Th-this...! The person who hired me for a translation gave it to me as a gift to mark the contract...! Why did I forget that completely...?"

Her face grave, Chuyeon was already waving a fan she'd produced from somewhere. It fluttered softly.

"A terribly... heavy feeling is coming off that fountain pen..."

A dokkaebi had dwelled in it for a full five years. Of course some residue of that energy remained. I slipped the halved pen into my pocket, and only then did Chuyeon's face ease. She let out a sigh of relief. She'd apparently been worried I might tell her to deal with the pen herself.

"Teacher... thank you so much... It could easily have been a bother, and yet you handled it yourself... You really are the Teacher...! You'll burn it in fire purified with salt, won't you? That's the only way foul energy like that won't go wandering the world."

No. I'm going to plant it in a pot.