Joseon Records of the Strange
The PR Director, who had been sitting there blank as a broken robot, finally managed to open his mouth.
"You... what are you?"
The question came out rough. Above his head, though, White Lines were whipping around in a frenzy—a sure sign he was thick with goodwill.
"As you said earlier, my memory's a little good."
The PR Director clicked his tongue.
"A little good doesn't begin to cover it. You've got insight, and you think on your feet. You were hauled in here out of nowhere today. There's no way you could have prepared this in advance."
"You're too kind."
The deputy head of the PR office looked faintly dazed himself. He had only brought the man along as a stopgap, something to keep the PR Director mollified, and he clearly hadn't expected this.
I wasn't particularly surprised. If I opened the books already stored in my head, the answers were simply there. It wasn't that hard a thing.
"Ah... this isn't the time."
The PR Director glanced at his watch, then hurriedly packed his things and stood.
"Deputy Head, I've got to go attend the Chairman. See you Monday."
"Ah—yes, Director. Take care."
"Yeah, yeah."
He started out of the office, then paused and turned back to look at me. His eyes were bright with yearning and appetite. Strangely enough, the few Black Lines I had seen on him in the elevator were gone without a trace. There was nothing but White Lines, everywhere.
"Han Jiwoo. I'll see you Monday, too."
"Yes, Director. Take care."
"Mm."
The PR Director nodded, thoroughly pleased with himself, and walked out.
The office door shut.
The deputy head of the PR office rushed me.
"Jiwoo! What on earth was that just now? No—I knew you were smart! But this smart?"
"I just got lucky. It happened to be a part I read not long ago."
The deputy head blinked.
"Read what...?"
"The Malaysia ESG casebook, and the five-year R&D plan."
"...We have those in the Information Documentation Department?"
"Yes."
Pungjeon Group is built a little strangely. Most owners do everything they can to hide what goes on inside. The owner of Pungjeon Group does the opposite, and lays the whole workings of the company out in the open.
Everything is made into books and sent out, and whatever copies are left find a home on the shelves of the Information Documentation Department. The trouble is that nobody reads them. I myself had gotten a fair bit of use out of those books back when I was a trainee.
The deputy head clicked his tongue.
"This guy... I knew he was smart, but... he's a serious talent... Do you happen to have plans tonight...?"
"Yes, I do."
The deputy head looked apologetic. Even so, he couldn't quite let go.
"Ah... right... it's Saturday, isn't it... Aigoo, I'm sorry. I only asked for five minutes of help, and somehow twenty went by. I'll treat you next week, I mean it. Somewhere expensive!"
"Thank you. I'll head out, then."
"Ah—! G-get home safe...!"
He started to bend at the waist before he knew what he was doing, then startled and waved his hands instead. I left the executive office and made my way back to the Information Documentation Department.
The ginseng seed in the pot I had left in the Information Documentation Department was growing with a will. In that short span, the blue lines had multiplied quite a bit.
"Hm."
If all that mattered was that it was growing, it wasn't bad. Set beside the blue lines I had seen at Joo Chaeyeon's mother's ginseng farm, though, it didn't even come close.
That place had good land, and the soil and the air themselves were nothing like Seoul's. To raise ginseng to farm quality in a space like this, I would need a cheat—something along the lines of a high-potency nutrient.
"Then I'll just have to go catch more of those."
Now that I had made it all the way to the 2nd Circle, taking down an agwi—one of those hungry ghosts—was bound to be far easier than it had been at the 1st Circle. I left the company at once, passed the bus stop, and wandered the park in search of yellow lines.
"Hmm..."
Yellow lines, though, were hard to find. I looked this way and that and didn't catch so much as a hint of one. The only place they had poured out without end was the shrine I had visited then.
"I ought to get at least a hint."
I headed for the shrine. The moment I arrived, Bodhisattva Chuyeon greeted me brightly. I had only been gone a day, and her complexion had changed completely. The dark circles were nowhere to be seen, and the eyes that had looked like a dead fish's had life in them again.
"Teacher! Please, sit!"
She offered me her own five-colored cushion. I refused a few times, but her resolve won out, and I ended up seated on it.
"Ah. Thank you."
"Not at all! Our General Cheonji says he's grateful, too. If he and I go too long without communing, the divine descent breaks off in the end. I've never seen General Cheonji use honorifics before, Teacher!"
"Honorifics?"
I looked above Chuyeon's head. Yellow lines were shifting this way and that in hard right angles. She had called him a general; that rigid temperament seemed to be showing itself right there.
"Yes, yes. He said, 'You must attend to him well. That person.'"
She watched me the whole time she spoke, smiling a bright, foolish little smile. Laughing like that, she had the fresh air of someone in her early to mid-twenties.
By all rights it should have been a flower-bright age—college, or her first years out in the world. Scraping by in the dim semi-basement of a villa, she made me ache for no good reason.
"But what brings you here? Is it the agwi?"
"Ah, yes. That's right. Where do agwi usually stay?"
For a moment Chuyeon's eyes went perfectly round.
"A-agwi? You're looking for them...? Those dangerous agwi? Agwi are seriously dangerous, Teacher! People don't believe in ghosts, but you and I... we see things! An agwi is on a completely different level from an ordinary ghost!"
She looked at me, her face full of worry. The fact that I had already put a hole clean through one agwi's head was probably something I ought to keep secret for the time being.
"Mm. But where do agwi like that usually turn up? I need to know, so I can stay away from places like that."
Chuyeon's expression smoothed out at once. She was someone whose feelings sat right on the surface.
"Oh! That's what you meant! An excellent choice! People like you and me can see things, but we can't actually do anything about them physically. Get caught by an agwi and you're in real trouble."
She brought a book out from the corner.
Kindly enough, the title was written out in hangul as well, along with the author and the publisher. There was even an ISBN. She must have caught where my eyes had gone, because she smiled, a little shy.
"Ah, there's a bit of artistic styling in it, and some mass appeal mixed in, but the traits line up almost exactly with the real thing, Teacher. A monk who's quite famous in our circles wrote it."
"Huh. That's unexpected."
"Yes, yes. Not for someone like you, who can improvise at a moment's notice—for beginners like me, it's required reading. One moment..."
Her face brightened as she ran through the table of contents.
"Ah, found it!"
"May I take a look?"
"Of course, Teacher."
She handed me the book. Inside was an illustration that looked a great deal like the agwi I had seen.
An agwi is a ghost born of those who were greedy, in mind or in matter, after they die. They are always hungry. That is why they dwell in great numbers around farms, where there is plenty to eat. Certain agwi, in particular, make a game of corrupting innocent people with wealth and the like, dragging them down just as they themselves fell in a former life. The end, of course, has something to do with hunger...
Reading it, I understood why there had been no agwi nearby. Seoul simply didn't have farms one could easily find.
The book said the reason agwi were seldom seen even in restaurants—places as full of food as any farm—was the lack of natural energy. A ghost was a being that ran against the laws of the world, and so, paradoxically, it could live well only where the energies of yin and yang were in proper harmony.
The method was genuinely complicated. Strange. All I had to do was point a finger and send a blue line straight through.
The book didn't call the catching of a ghost like an agwi an exorcism. It called it setting them right. They had been human once, so I supposed that was why.
I closed the book.
"Bodhisattva, would it be all right if I borrowed this?"
"Aigoo, just take it, Teacher! I can order another one online."
"One moment."
Right there, I transferred the price of the book to the account number written on Chuyeon's low table.
"I sent the money for the book."
Chuyeon bowed her head.
"If it were up to my heart, I wouldn't want to take it, but... you know, don't you, Teacher? Offerings given by people like you are spiritually potent. So I'm going to leave this account exactly as it is for the rest of my life, and keep it safe. Thank you, Teacher!"
Well. If she didn't want to use her own account, that was hardly my business. And that so-called potency might actually be real. In a world that already had magic and agwi, potency existing was the more natural assumption.
"Then, thank you."
"Please come again, Teacher!"
I left Chuyeon's shrine and headed for the bus stop nearby. I boarded the Gyeonggi intercity bus I had looked up earlier, the one bound for a farm.
A chime, and luckily one seat was free. I sat and looked out the window. Ordinarily I would have been pouring sweat right about now, out on my afternoon delivery shift.
But I didn't need the afternoon delivery work anymore. If I brought in ginseng thick with blue lines and sold it, I figured I could make dozens of times what delivery paid. It would be a great help to me as a mage, and a greater help still to ordinary people. It might even erase Red Lines, if only in part.
"And I can eat some myself, while I'm at it."
It was a chance to practice, in earnest, at sending blue lines out of my hand like a laser. If things like agwi existed, other ghosts certainly did as well.
I drew open Joseon Records of the Strange, the book I had taken from Chuyeon, buried my nose in it, and began to read.
The bus droned on toward Gyeonggi Province.