It Was You
Ring... ring...
On the expressway, Kang Hyeong-seok placed a call to Chae Young-sik. Lee Ha-yoon rode in the passenger seat — she hadn't needed the situation explained twice before coming along without a word of argument.
"He's not picking up?"
"Just a second."
The ringback tone had droned through several rounds, and Lee Ha-yoon was already fidgeting; it was only after he'd soothed her that the line clicked open.
(Hello?)
"Yes, Young-sik. It's me."
(Oh! Hello!)
He answered so easily, so comfortably, that nothing seemed to have happened yet. Relief softened Kang Hyeong-seok's face as he carried on.
"I'm on my way to you right now. Can you talk?"
(Sorry? Now?)
"I'm here too!"
Lee Ha-yoon raised her voice and cut into the call — and Chae Young-sik, caught off guard, could only ask why on earth she was there.
"You can talk right now, can't you? You're at the factory?"
(No. I just stepped outside for a minute.)
What a relief.
Kang Hyeong-seok gave a small nod, shot Lee Ha-yoon a look asking for a moment of quiet, and then spoke. "Did you hand in your resignation?"
(I-I did, but it got stopped at my department head.)
"I had a feeling that would happen. If you're nearby, head back inside for now — and pack your things, so you can walk out the moment you need to."
(Sorry?)
"You need to get out of there. Immediately."
Just then, Lee Ha-yoon's anxious eyes came to him. She must have been realizing, only now, just how serious this was.
Young-sik's condition was tied directly to the factory. This was no grudge held by one vengeful employee — the company itself had made up its mind to offer him up as a living sacrifice. His failing health, the nightmares that stalked him night after night. All of it was a sign that the curse was closing in on completion.
(O-Okay.)
"I'll meet you up front shortly."
(But — will you really be all right? Something about this feels wrong...)
That evasive reply did not sit well with him. Kang Hyeong-seok frowned and let his voice drop, heavy as a stone set down between them. "Leave the rest to me."
(O-Okay. Then I'll start getting ready.)
"We'll be there in thirty minutes."
He hung up, and Lee Ha-yoon simply watched him in silence. He knew. He knew exactly what she wanted to say. Lips pressed into a firm line, Kang Hyeong-seok gave her a brief smile before turning his eyes back to the road ahead.
"It's all going to be fine."
"What if they won't let him go?"
"With an attorney sitting right here? What's the problem?"
Lee Ha-yoon laughed awkwardly, and the corner of his mouth lifted a little. "And besides — they'll have no choice but to send him out quietly."
"Sorry?"
"It's a shaman thing. If they pull tricks and try to bar my way, I'll sever their line to their gods."
There was nothing in this world a shaman feared more — for when that happened, the bond between the shaman and their Momjusin, the deity dwelling within them, was cut for good.
No small feat, that. But for a shaman who had worked a curse demanding a living sacrifice, it was no great difficulty at all. Which was precisely why a shaman had to strive, all his life, to walk the straight path.
Vroooooom!
The accelerator sank as deep as the fury he was grinding down inside him, and the car lunged forward.
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
When the knock fell on the door of the container duty room, Chae Young-sik flinched out of his skin. "Young-sik, you in there? The guard says you're back."
Of course they knew already. His shoes were sitting right outside the door.
Chae Young-sik's lips flitted nervously before he wrung a reply out of his throat. "Yes."
The very next moment—
The door burst open. The department head strode in wearing a pleasant, good-natured face, but the smile fell away the instant he saw Chae Young-sik packing up his things.
"What do you think you're doing right now?"
"I was just... tidying up."
"Ha. Unbelievable..." The department head heaved a heavy sigh, scratched brusquely at his short-cropped hair, and jerked his chin toward the door. "Step out for a minute, Young-sik. The CEO wants a word with you."
"The... the CEO?"
"That's right. I told him how hard you work, and he said he'd like to see it for himself."
Under any other circumstances, it would have been a flattering moment.
But he had to get out of this company, and there was no telling when Kang Hyeong-seok would come through that gate.
"Come on, hurry. They're in the smoking room over there."
"Yes, sir."
The department head's arm settled around Chae Young-sik's shoulders. At a glance it looked like a friendly clasp — and just as much, a noose.
That was how the man steered him along to the smoking room beside the factory, where the CEO and the Director, cigarettes smoldering between their fingers, were waiting to greet him.
With a beckoning flick of his fingers, the CEO called Chae Young-sik over, and the department head stopped in his tracks as though to stand guard at the rear. So it was with the man's eyes drilling into his back that Chae Young-sik approached the CEO.
"I hear it's been rough on you lately?"
"No, sir. Not at all."
"Don't give me that. I've heard everything — that you've been working yourself half to death."
The department head glanced back for an instant, grinning ear to ear.
"Director Kwon — hand over the thing I asked you to prepare."
"Yes, sir."
Director Kwon drew an envelope from inside his jacket and passed it to the CEO, who in turn held it out to Chae Young-sik. A plain envelope, lined in two layers. The contents showed nothing through the paper, but the mouth of it stood open enough to make plain that money waited inside.
"Take it. This is something extra, just for you — my way of thanking Young-sik for working like this company is his own."
"No — no, sir, I couldn't."
"I said take it."
The envelope waggled, as if to say hurry up and accept it. With the department head watching from behind and Director Kwon from the front, the moment was cinched tight enough that refusing would have taken real nerve. Just as Chae Young-sik, cornered, began reaching his hand toward the envelope—
"Hey, you there! Stop! Stop right there!"
A guard's shout burst from the entrance not far away. "You can't come in here! No — I told you, you can't! Hey!"
A car had pulled up short, and the guard was failing utterly to hold back the young man and woman getting out of it. Thud, thud. Every eye in the yard swung to Kang Hyeong-seok as he shrugged the guard off and kept coming — and he planted himself beside Chae Young-sik, then snatched the envelope right out of the CEO's hand.
"Who the hell are you? What do you think you're—!"
Rrip! Riiiip!
Without a word of answer, Kang Hyeong-seok began tearing the envelope apart. When the doubled lining split open, a few strands of hair slid out into the light — hair that someone had hidden there, deliberately.
"Young-sik."
"Y-Yes?"
"Get back."
Kang Hyeong-seok pointed toward Lee Ha-yoon, and Chae Young-sik, flustered as he was, moved toward her.
"You little—! Who the hell are you, you punk!"
The department head came barreling in with his whole weight behind him and seized Kang Hyeong-seok by the collar. Then he hauled his fist up high — and Kang Hyeong-seok fixed him with a stare cold enough to kill. The man's brows twitched, and he swung the punch anyway.
Wham!
Kang Hyeong-seok caught the fist flying at his face on his forearm, then snapped the wrist of the hand gripping his collar.
Crack!
"Agh!"
In the same motion he hooked the department head's leg and wrenched the trapped wrist hard, dumping the man flat on his back. "Agh! Aaaagh!"
Lee Ha-yoon's hand flew to her mouth as the department head's screams tore across the yard like a siren. The CEO and the Director stood frozen, utterly at a loss before this man who had appeared out of nowhere—
Thud!
Kang Hyeong-seok flung the man's hand off like shaking loose something filthy, and his gaze slid to the CEO.
"Agh! Uwaaaah! Urrgh!"
As the burly department head rolled across the ground clutching his wrist, workers began hurrying out of the factory. Before the crowd swelling by the second, Kang Hyeong-seok fixed his eyes on the CEO.
The eyes of a shaman. The gaze of one who carries a god is never an ordinary thing.
The CEO's head had just jerked away, as though flattened by the force rolling off Kang Hyeong-seok—
Zip.
Kang Hyeong-seok drew the Sinjangkal and the Mudang Bang-ul — his cluster of sacred shaman bells — from his bag.
The department head sucked in a sharp breath, having taken it for a weapon at first glance — then recognized the Sinjangkal for what it was, and his face froze solid with horror. The workers began to murmur; Director Kwon's eyes blazed; the CEO, jaws clenched shut, made a low sound like a man in pain.
Jingle-jaaangle!
For all the bodies packed into that yard, the settled silence scattered as though the shaman bells had driven it out. Jingle, jangle, jingle. Ringing the bells as his gaze swept a full circle around him, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke.
"It's you."
The words were aimed at Director Kwon. "You're the one who's been playing shaman and using a living sacrifice."
Director Kwon's face shuddered.
"'Playing shaman'?"
"A living sacrifice? What's that supposed to mean? Who even is this guy?"
"Sir! Mr. CEO!"
The murmuring workers fell silent at a single look from Kang Hyeong-seok — and it wasn't simply that his glare was fearsome. These people knew what a shaman was. And the shaman here was Director Kwon.
Jingle-jaaangle! Ringing the bells out hard, Kang Hyeong-seok stared dead into Director Kwon's eyes, his lips twisting. "And the hair you'd tucked inside that envelope — that came from your living sacrifices too, didn't it?"
Director Kwon's pupils wavered, unmistakably. Then Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes slid to the CEO. "You were the one who ordered it. And the spirits of the dead you'd offered up were the ones clinging to Chae Young-sik like drowned ghosts, trying to keep him in their grip."
This time the CEO's face drained to white. He had stood beside Director Kwon for many years, and he knew the shaman's uncanny powers better than anyone. Which made the man now standing before him an unknown — something he did not dare oppose.
Jingle-jaaangle! Shaking the bells as if to rebuke them all, Kang Hyeong-seok turned his gaze on the workers. "So you were the shaman's assistant."
"Hah... hukk..."
The department head made a sound like a man drowning and clamped his numb wrist tight against his chest. The one who had stood at the shaman's side, helping work his rites — that was him. That was why he'd been the one pinning Chae Young-sik in place so he couldn't run. And no doubt he had done the very same for every soul who had died before.
"M-Manager?"
"Ugh... uhhh..."
A bewildered worker called out to him, but the man only shuffled backward, as though to bury himself in the crowd. With the air crushed flat around them, Kang Hyeong-seok, lips pressed hard together, glared at Director Kwon. "You bastard. A piece of trash that's barely even human."
"Hnngh... hnn..."
Director Kwon glared back even as he gulped down ragged breaths through his nose. He knew, too — he had received a god of his own. He knew that Kang Hyeong-seok was a shaman, and that the god standing guard over him was one far, far greater than his own.
"...Go..."
Director Kwon said it with eyes that begged them, just this once, to back away — but Kang Hyeong-seok shook his head. If he simply turned back now, there was no telling what that barely-human creature would do. He would come for Chae Young-sik and Lee Ha-yoon — and beyond that, he would pick up the ritual of feeding the company its living sacrifices all over again.
"Move."
Kang Hyeong-seok said it to the department head and strode forward without a flicker of hesitation. That path led not to the exit, but to the warehouse standing between the container duty room and the factory.
"N-Now, wait a minute!"
Director Kwon scrambled to stop him, but Kang Hyeong-seok kept closing on the warehouse. "S-Stop him! Block that bastard! What are you all doing!" Even as the shrieks tore out of him, not one person stirred — most likely because the CEO's head was hanging limp. Cold sweat streaming down his face, the man seemed to be racking his brains over how, in this moment, he might escape the punishment of a god.
Clank, clank!
All the while, Kang Hyeong-seok had begun unwinding the chain coiled around the warehouse door. The freed chain crashed to the ground with a heavy clang — and he flung the rusted door wide.
Screeeeee!
Blood-red rust poured from the hinges as the door swung open, and the afternoon sun, past its zenith and slanting west, laid the interior plainly bare.
An altar. And a Buddha statue.
They were the things Chae Young-sik had seen every single time the nightmares came, and a moan escaped him, his face locked in terror. But there was something here he had never seen in his dreams. A red cloth — draped behind the altar, in the shadow of the Buddha statue.
Without a sound, Kang Hyeong-seok reached out his hand toward the red cloth — a cloth that bulged and swelled upward as though it had been hung there to hide someone sitting behind it.