Please, Save My Son
Kim Yeong-chan's eyes were fixed hard on Kang Hyeong-seok — the look of a man who seemed to know something he had no business knowing. Kang Hyeong-seok returned the stare with a slight frown, and Kim Yeong-chan took the cigarette from his lips.
"Hoo—!"
Thick smoke sank over the table and spread in a slow, round haze — and no sooner had it settled than Kim Yeong-chan spoke.
"Department Head Kwak."
"Ah, yes, yes."
"Give us a moment, would you?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Step outside for a bit."
Though the tone bordered on an order, the voice was far gentler than before. Kwak Young-ho rose to take Kang Hyeong-seok and Lee Jin-pyeong with him, but the hand clutching the cigarette swung around and pointed at Kang Hyeong-seok.
"Not you. Stay seated a minute."
"...You mean me?"
When Kang Hyeong-seok pointed at himself and asked again, Kim Yeong-chan gave a nod. And so, wearing a face full of mixed feelings, Kwak Young-ho led only Lee Jin-pyeong out — though just before he left, he gave the back of Kang Hyeong-seok's hand a quick tap.
He couldn't say for certain what it meant, but it surely meant: have a good talk.
The latch clicked shut, cutting off the factory noise that had briefly seeped into the container office, and a solemn hush descended.
"Did you have something to say to me...?"
Kim Yeong-chan answered only by burning his cigarette. Then he ground it out in the ashtray and opened his mouth with deliberate care.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Kang Hyeong-seok, a manager at Daejeong Mulsan."
Confusion flickered in Kim Yeong-chan's eyes. It was the look of a man half-suspecting a deliberate act, and half-uncertain whether what he'd seen earlier had simply been a mistake of his own eyes.
Kang Hyeong-seok stole a glance at the window and found himself locking eyes with Kwak Young-ho, cigarette still clamped in his mouth. The look plainly begged the conversation to go well.
Withdrawing his gaze, Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed a sigh and began, calm and measured.
"It seems you're carrying some worries."
"Huh?"
"I don't know what they are, but would you care to tell me?"
Kim Yeong-chan fished out his cigarette pack, watching Kang Hyeong-seok with eyes brimming with suspicion. He drew out a cigarette and set it between his lips, but only wrapped his fingers around the lighter without lighting it.
The ashtray slid across the table with a soft scrape as Kang Hyeong-seok lowered his voice.
"Could it have something to do with your son?"
That was the moment.
The look in Kim Yeong-chan's eyes turned razor-sharp.
"What the—? Who the hell are you, really?"
"I'm with Daejeong Mu—"
"I'm not asking about that!"
The shout burst out loud enough to make Kwak Young-ho, visible through the window, flinch from head to shoulder. Kang Hyeong-seok went on, watching Kim Yeong-chan's face flush red.
"Kang Hyeong-seok, manager of Sales Team 1 at Daejeong Mulsan."
"Hooo—!"
"Go ahead and light up."
At Kang Hyeong-seok's prompting, Kim Yeong-chan pressed his lips shut for a moment, then flicked the lighter to life.
"Hoo! Hooo—!"
Kim Yeong-chan burned through the cigarette like a man letting out sigh after sigh, and to Kang Hyeong-seok he looked nothing short of anxious. A reaction like this could only mean something was there.
And yet the man carries no Sin-gamul...
Not a shaman, and never a man who could become one — that was the Kim Yeong-chan Kang Hyeong-seok had seen. And yet this same man had glimpsed the Spitz's ghost as if he possessed Yeongan, and had sensed something otherworldly in Kang Hyeong-seok himself. That could only mean something was clinging to him — at the very least, that he'd come into contact with something recently, or perhaps for years on end.
"My father is a rather blunt man."
The remark came barreling in out of nowhere, and Kim Yeong-chan looked at Kang Hyeong-seok as though the puzzle had only deepened.
"But even without saying a word, he worries himself sick over his son. He was quite pleased when I visited him before, too."
Kim Yeong-chan and Kang Hyeong-seok's father were of the same generation — which meant the man's son had to be around Kang Hyeong-seok's age as well.
"You must treasure your son a great deal, sir."
The most important thing in sales was, in the end, building common ground. To win the deal — and to pry loose the history this man was hiding — Kang Hyeong-seok reached for exactly that.
"Your expression isn't good, if you don't mind my saying. Has something happened to your son?"
The words had barely left his mouth.
"Mnngh."
Kim Yeong-chan groaned as though a blade had found its mark, squeezing his eyes shut. Then he twisted his lips and looked at Kang Hyeong-seok, utterly thrown.
"What did you hear from Department Head Kwak?"
"Nothing. He hasn't told me a thing."
"..."
"It's only that you seem a man carrying heavy worries. My father did, too."
Kim Yeong-chan heaved out something between a sigh and a lament and dragged his rough, callus-covered hands down his face. Then he raised bloodshot eyes and looked at Kang Hyeong-seok.
"You don't seem like the sort who belongs under Department Head Kwak."
"He's a good man, sir. The Department Head."
"Heh, heh, heh."
Kim Yeong-chan laughed without an ounce of strength in it, sagged back into the sofa, and pulled out a fresh cigarette. He lit it off the stub of the old one, then fell silent for a long while.
Kang Hyeong-seok simply waited. Sometimes a man needed silence to gather his thoughts — all the more when those thoughts were tangled and hard to bring into the open.
"Hooo—! Have you ever been to a shrine?"
"You mean a shaman's shrine?"
Kim Yeong-chan nodded, his eyes laden with deep suspicion.
"Yes or no. Have you been?"
"I have."
"And they didn't tell you anything there?"
His face was blank, but his eyes were desperate — desperate enough that he looked like a drowning man thrashing in open water.
Kang Hyeong-seok held his silence a moment before answering.
"I was told I needed to receive a god."
"...And now?"
Kang Hyeong-seok drew a slow breath through his nose. Having settled his thoughts, he judged that a man this desperate wouldn't act rashly.
"I have."
Kim Yeong-chan set the cigarette between his lips with a look that said so that explains it, and took a long, deep drag. Then he murmured, his eyes brimming with thought:
"Damn it all. No wonder you never struck me as an ordinary man."
"If there's something you're dealing with, please tell me."
Kim Yeong-chan seemed to find the words as hard to wring out as Kang Hyeong-seok had found his. Still, borrowing courage from the cigarette, he soon began to speak.
"...They said there's something in our family line."
Kim Yeong-chan's eyes glinted like a shaman's as he clenched and unclenched his fingers.
"That it touches my son too. That I had to send him overseas, or he wouldn't live."
Now it made sense — why a man utterly devoid of spiritual energy had sensed the Spitz's ghost.
People come to resemble what they keep close. Live beside someone base and filthy, and you start to turn the same way; stay among honest, decent people, and somehow their ways seep into you without your ever noticing. Kim Yeong-chan had kept shamans close.
"What else did the shaman tell you?"
"You take a guess."
Kim Yeong-chan's tone carried the same testing edge as a diviner hunting out the fakes, and Kang Hyeong-seok pressed his lips together before answering.
"They told you he wasn't to set foot in Korea until he was grown. Isn't that why you sent him abroad to study in such a hurry?"
That was the moment.
The suspicion that had simmered in Kim Yeong-chan's eyes churned — and scattered. His jaw went slack while his shoulders and neck turned to iron.
"How...?"
"That he was never to enter the country before coming of age. Isn't that why you rushed to send him overseas to study?"
Kim Yeong-chan's eyes went wide, darting between Kwak Young-ho outside the window and Kang Hyeong-seok across the table.
"You— you— you."
"You've worried over your son for a long time, haven't you. You were never a man meant to be tangled up with shamans, and yet it took hold of you all the same."
Deeply enough to sense the presence of the Spitz's ghost. Deeply enough to feel something inhuman standing before him in Kang Hyeong-seok, a man who had received his god. For long years, Kim Yeong-chan had been tormented by something unseen and forced to go knocking on one shrine after another.
"And if you're worried about your son now — that would be because he's coming home soon."
Kim Yeong-chan stared at him now with eyes carrying outright terror and awe, and with lips alone mouthed the words: how could you possibly—
"It may be that I can help you."
"Wh-what! Is that— is that really possible?"
A reaction like that told its own story: no shrine had ever given him a straight answer. Kang Hyeong-seok briefly pictured the man before him — begging, pleading, desperate for anyone to help.
"I'd have to see it for myself to say anything for certain."
It was said in passing, but Kim Yeong-chan's expression turned extraordinary — earnest and desperate all at once.
"Please. Please, I'm begging you."
The man who had roared at Kang Hyeong-seok only minutes ago now trembled like the most fragile creature in the world.
"Please, help my son. Please."
"You mustn't do this."
Kang Hyeong-seok hurriedly caught Kim Yeong-chan before he could bow his head to the table, then flicked a glance toward the window. Thankfully, Kwak Young-ho was busy smoking and chatting with Lee Jin-pyeong.
"It's not that I don't understand how you feel, sir. But if you carry on like this, I can't help you, however much I might want to."
Kim Yeong-chan snapped back to himself and hastily straightened up, and Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed a sigh of relief.
"You understand the position I'm in."
"R-right. Of course. You do."
Kang Hyeong-seok was an office worker first and foremost, bound hand and foot to his company. Outside that window sat his direct superior, Kwak Young-ho, alongside Lee Jin-pyeong, who had plainly been brought along to do little more than show his face and stamp the paperwork. The fact that Kang Hyeong-seok hadn't come right out and announced he'd received a god from the start — that alone told Kim Yeong-chan it was a secret to be kept.
"If you agree, sir, I'll come back."
Kim Yeong-chan looked at him with the face of a man who had swallowed something scalding. Then he forced down a dry swallow and wrung the words out of his throat.
"Can you really... help us?"
"I have no love for empty hope either."
Nothing is crueler to a desperate man than hope that comes to nothing. Kim Yeong-chan's heart heaved; he scrubbed roughly at his lips and took a great, shuddering breath, shoulders rising and falling. When he finally spoke, it was in a voice that fought to hold every feeling down.
"My son comes home tomorrow."
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded his understanding, and Kim Yeong-chan stole a glance out the window before going on.
"Help me. I'll bend the situation however you need."
Kang Hyeong-seok regarded him with a faintly complicated feeling. Right up until his talk with Kwak Young-ho, this had been a man seriously considering winding down his business altogether — and now he was offering to accommodate a mere salesman from Daejeong Mulsan's Sales Team 1.
"And the business?"
"I only thought of shutting it down because of my son. If my boy is safe, I can keep the business going as long as I like."
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded as though he understood, and Kim Yeong-chan let his gaze fall between his knees, his voice sinking low and heavy.
"...So please. Help me."
"I will."
Kang Hyeong-seok gave a solemn nod, took out his phone, and set it on the table — without turning on the screen. It was a signal: record this, or write it down.
"Our schedules may not line up later, so I'll tell you a few things now."
"Yes, yes."
Kim Yeong-chan whipped out his phone, opened his memo app, and readied himself to take dictation.
"Have your son lodge somewhere other than the house. The house itself may be the cause, so you must never bring him inside it."
Kim Yeong-chan nodded hard, transcribing the words into his phone exactly as they fell.
"For lodging, choose somewhere with plenty of people around. Ideally, a motel beside a four-way crossroads. And be sure to scatter coarse salt at every corner, along the window frames, and in the gaps of the doors. Don't let him step outside the motel, either — whatever has to be done, it must be settled from within."
"Yes, yes!"
Bent nearly in half at the waist, Kim Yeong-chan scribbled into his phone, then looked up at Kang Hyeong-seok with eyes in which awe and fear lived side by side.
Kang Hyeong-seok was looking elsewhere. Perhaps because the conversation had stretched on so long, Kwak Young-ho was outside the window, sneaking anxious glances their way.