A Candy for the Drowned
A Susalgwi. A ghost of someone who drowned. A Susalgwi can never leave the spot where it died—water is heavy with yin energy, and yin energy binds a spirit fast. That is what makes guiding a Susalgwi to the afterlife so difficult, and why, if it is ever to leave its place, it needs another person. Someone who will drown in its stead.
Splash, splash! Knowing nothing of any of this, Kwak Young-ho was the first one into the water, letting out a delighted whoop.
"Current's not even strong—this is just right. Not deep, either."
"I'm coming in too, Boss!"
"Don't run! You'll hurt yourself."
Splash! Namgoong Min-ah leapt straight into the valley stream.
"Aigoo, I keep telling you—that's dangerous!"
"Whoa, it's so refreshing! I love it!"
"Yeah!"
While his teammates whooped and splashed, Kang Hyeong-seok watched the Susalgwi with a tangle of feelings.
"...Is it dangerous?"
Shin Jeong-ah murmured the question with her eyes fixed somewhere else entirely—deliberately, so as not to draw the ghost's attention.
"Got any snacks?"
"Huh?"
"Something to eat. Even something small."
Shin Jeong-ah dug through her pocket and fished out a single hard candy—lumpy under its wrapper and intensely sour, the kind she'd probably been saving in case Hyeong-seok started nodding off behind the wheel.
"Will something like this do?"
"Yes."
They were still trading words in low voices when Kwak Young-ho's boomed in out of nowhere.
"Section Chief Shin, Section Chief Kang! Come on in. How on earth is this water this good?"
"I'll join you later!"
"Suit yourself. And you, Section Chief Kang?"
Tucking the candy into his pocket, Hyeong-seok answered him.
"I'm going to take a look further up."
"Why?"
"In case there's anything dangerous up ahead."
Kwak Young-ho broke into an admiring grin—the look of a man thinking, That's our Section Chief for you!
Well, it wasn't entirely untrue. Removing a hazard was exactly what he had in mind.
"Be careful."
Hearing Shin Jeong-ah's low words behind him, Kang Hyeong-seok started toward the Susalgwi.
He had left the shaman bells and the Sinjangkal both behind at the pension and come empty-handed, yet he could still manage well enough.
He received the god.
Squelch. The Susalgwi, swollen taut as a balloon, turned its head toward him—and the skin of its throat split open, spilling out rotting water. A ghastly, sickening sight. Had he not received the god, it would have been enough to send him fleeing on the spot.
Thump. Thump. Even so, Kang Hyeong-seok kept walking toward it.
It was all right now. The god was with him. He had faced things far worse than this.
And because this, too, was simply his fate, he closed the distance to the Susalgwi and drew the hard candy from his pocket.
Crinkle. He held the candy up where the ghost could see it, then laid it down on the ground. The Susalgwi's gaze dropped after it with a wet, crunching rasp, and a reek of stagnant water and corpse-rot stabbed at his nose.
"Seventy years among men—rare, as it has been of old; eighty among women—rarer still."
Quietly, so that no one else would hear, he began to recite the Gateway Scripture for the Departed. The Susalgwi's ruined face stayed turned toward him, and his own gaze stayed locked on the departed soul.
"Fair as the flower's bloom, this hundred-year life strung upon glass-bright time; a hundred lives of sin, thirty grievances—every soul a sinner from its first breath."
He was not driving the ghost out. He was soothing its soul.
"On the empty slopes of Mount Mang, where no one lives, mournful smoke drifts as your heartbroken soul departs—how wretched you look, how pitiable. Where can you be going? It is a road you cannot refuse, a road you must walk."
The Susalgwi watched him recite the scripture to the very end—and when the final verse faded, it vanished without a sound.
"Section Chief Kang! What's over there?"
Kwak Young-ho's question came flying across the water. Hyeong-seok looked down. The candy he had set down was wedged between two rocks, dissolving slowly into the stream.
"No. Nothing at all."
"Ahh, that was something. When did I last soak my feet in water like this?"
"About a year ago, for me."
Namgoong Min-ah popped in with her answer before anyone else could, while Lee Jin-pyeong rolled his eyes upward and did some quiet arithmetic.
"You were in there far too long!"
Shin Jeong-ah, who had spent the whole time staring blankly at the stream, grumbled, and Kwak Young-ho smiled sheepishly.
"Sorry about that. I clean forgot I didn't pack a spare pair of socks, that's all."
They hadn't so much as a towel to dry anyone's feet, so talking him out of lingering had eaten up extra time.
All the same, they had certainly gotten their fill of the valley, and though the mood on the walk back to the pension was loud and rowdy, it wasn't a bad one at all.
"Then Section Chief Kang, you can just grab your keys and come along. Or should we take my car?"
"This is about the grocery run, isn't it? Take mine."
Just then, Kwak Young-ho picked up a ringing phone, and the smile slid off his face.
"I'm sorry—a guest?"
The bewilderment in his voice made everyone fall silent at once. Kwak narrowed his brows and readjusted his grip on the phone.
"No—who is this? We're here on a company workshop. There's no way we have a visitor... I'm sorry, what?"
Kwak's gaze swung to Kang Hyeong-seok, and his speech quickened.
"Yes, yes, we're coming right now. Would you ask him to wait just a little longer? And coffee—ah, he's already having some? Understood. We'll be right there."
The call cut off with a click.
"Someone came looking for us?"
Hyeong-seok asked quickly, but Kwak Young-ho looked like a man with fire licking at his heels.
"Now hold on. Section Chief Kang—was there something going on between you and Director Shin of Shinjin Construction?"
"Pardon?"
"I mean, the man showed up just now and he's waiting. At the pension."
"I'm... sorry?"
"This is no time to stand around. Let's get back fast, and first thing, we find out why he came."
Kwak Young-ho didn't merely look like a man with fire at his feet; he looked like a man already ablaze.
"Boss, I'll come with you!"
Even with Shin Jeong-ah trying to hold him back, he was already off at a dead sprint—the very picture of it.
"Haah—haah!" The moment Kwak Young-ho pulled up short in front of the pension, he wiped the sweat from his face and made straight for the man seated on the terrace.
Black dress shirt, tall frame. The man wearing silver-framed sunglasses with effortless style was Shin Yo-sep.
"Goodness! You've been waiting a while, haven't you?"
"Not at all. I've only just arrived."
Shin Yo-sep took a slow sip of his iced coffee, then raised a hand toward Kang Hyeong-seok coming up from behind.
"Oh—you came to see Section Chief Kang?"
"They told me you were at a workshop and wouldn't be receiving visitors. So I swallowed my pride and came anyway."
"Oh, oh my—then you should have just told me! S-Section Chief Kang, hurry over and say hello."
Amid Kwak Young-ho's flustered fussing, Hyeong-seok bowed with careful courtesy. His face was smiling, but his molars were clenched tight.
This bastard. I told him to contact me after it was over.
No one knew. No one knew what Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Yo-sep were to each other. To all the world, Shinjin Construction was simply a major client—the kind even Kwak Young-ho could not afford to treat lightly.
"Section Chief Kang can be a bit blunt at times. If he caused you any discomfort, I'll apologize on his behalf."
"Please, there's no need for that."
Shin Yo-sep swirled the ice in his coffee cup, then tipped his chin toward Hyeong-seok.
"He's a hard worker, and good at what he does. To tell you the truth, I opened an account with Daejeong Mulsan for Section Chief Kang's sake alone. So he's quite all right."
"Ah—y-yes, of course! Of course!"
Kwak Young-ho was utterly outmatched by Shin Yo-sep. It was no exaggeration to say that a single word from this man's mouth held Sales Team 1's entire performance in its grip.
"But then, how did you even find this place...?"
"I phoned the office, and they were kind enough to tell me you'd come this way."
"Oh! Aigoo, we should have picked somewhere closer. I'm terribly sorry."
"It made for a pleasant drive. I enjoyed it."
Shin Yo-sep waved the apology aside and took another unhurried sip of coffee. Then he picked up the car key resting beside his cup and pressed it—and the trunk popped open on its own.
A black SUV, the kind that would take unpaved roads in stride. When the enormous trunk swung open, every gaze swung with it.
"I heard you were at your workshop, so I brought some meat along. Eat well."
"Y-you really didn't have to go this far..."
"No need?"
"We absolutely needed it. It's practically mandatory!"
Shin Yo-sep let out a burst of laughter and beckoned Hyeong-seok to follow. He had barely turned toward the trunk when Kwak Young-ho sprang into action with Lee Jin-pyeong, hurrying to carry the load for him.
"Goodness, you've bought enough for a feast. I'll see to all of this—please, take your time and talk with Section Chief Kang."
"You really don't have to do all that."
"I insist!"
Kwak Young-ho dug in his heels, absolutely determined not to intrude on Shin Yo-sep by so much as a step. And so Yo-sep got what he wanted: an easy conversation with Hyeong-seok behind the pension.
Click-click. Fwoosh. Shin Yo-sep lit a cigarette off his lighter and breathed out a long ribbon of smoke while Hyeong-seok dragged a palm down his forehead.
"You..."
"See? We could have just met from the start. Better for both of us."
Hyeong-seok gave him a look of pure incredulity; Yo-sep readjusted his sunglasses and drew hard on the filter.
"Hoo—! I'm pressed for time myself, you know. So don't you forget you've shaken hands with me."
Hyeong-seok pressed his lips together. Then he gave a small nod and breathed out a sigh.
That man had his own buried grief, Shin Yo-sep. It was why the whole performance—the second-generation chaebol act, the cigarette burning lazily between his fingers—was nothing more than a mask turned outward.
"What is it?"
Yo-sep made a show of adjusting the nose pads of his sunglasses—a silent signal to keep his voice down. Kwak or any of the others might come around the corner at any moment; best they both stayed careful.
"Those scissors from before—I've traced where they came from."
Hyeong-seok said nothing, only stared at him with his brow knotted. Those were the scissors that, merely by lying hidden in a building's ceiling, had birthed ghosts until the place was a full-blown haunted house. Everything about them had suggested a tool for human sacrifice, and both he and Yo-sep had reached the same conclusion: no ordinary object, that pair.
"It's the heretic sect, all right. The location is believed to be Gapyeong."
Northern Gyeonggi Province. Hyeong-seok narrowed his eyes, chewing the words over and over. The more he turned them, the more a cloying unease filled his mouth, bitter enough to taste—because the place was Gapyeong.
"Heretic sect, you said?"
"It'll be tied to whatever's on your mind."
"Tch."
Gapyeong, and a heretic sect. If Professor Kim Jae-sik had overheard those two keywords, he would have named a certain religion without so much as a beat's thought.
The Baekbaek Sect.
The Baekbaek Sect was a pseudo-religion that had spread like wildfire across three decades beginning in the 1920s. It beguiled the masses with terror of a coming apocalypse, while its leader, with a serpent's tongue, stripped them of their fortunes and ordered death for any who resisted. Three hundred and forty-six bodies were recovered—and the true count was surely higher. The work of a demon, if anything was.
"But isn't the Baekbaek Sect more of a Donghak offshoot?"
It was the kind of question that asked, in so many words, whether that would be a problem for a man who hunted demons.
"Religions adapt fast. Cults faster still."
The Baekbaek Sect had been at its height during the years of Japanese colonial rule. If it truly aimed at resurrection, it would have changed its name and its skin—into something friendlier, something familiar to people, wrapped in the shape of Christianity like every common cult on the street.
"And demons don't ask what you believe."
Yo-sep looked briefly stricken; he ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and spat.
"I once saw a girl that demons had fastened themselves to. She wasn't a Christian."
She had been Buddhist, of all things.
"...I see."
"Hoo—!"
Yo-sep lit a fresh cigarette and flicked the burnt-out one into the ashtray.
"If the one I'm hunting really is there, I can't manage it alone."
An Eastern gut rite, a Western exorcism—neither was ever meant to be worked solo. Even hidden behind the sunglasses, the plea for help in Shin Yo-sep's eyes burned bright enough to read.
"All right. Just pick the day."
"You'll come with me, then?"
"As if saying no would stop a man like you from hanging on."
Hyeong-seok shot a disgruntled look at the man who had chased him all the way out to the pension.
"Hmm. I'll see the reward leaves nothing to be desired."
"And when I'm the one who needs help someday, you'll be repaying it."
"But of course."
Shin Yo-sep was smoking with a face that looked somehow lighter when—
"Director Shin?"
Kwak Young-ho's head popped out from the side of the pension building.