Splitting Misfortune

"What the hell is that guy doing?"

Kwak Young-ho, who had never once liked Noh Soo-chul, muttered in a voice sharper than anyone had ever heard from him.

"Looks like he's scattering something?"

Namgoong Min-ah chimed in, craning her neck for a better look, while Lee Jin-pyeong simply stared off into the distance.

Between them, Kang Hyeong-seok kept his eyes locked on Noh Soo-chul's hands.

It was night, and the distance blurred the details. But one thing was certain: the man was scattering something.

Hold on. That's...

At first he'd assumed the man was dumping little bits of trash from his pocket. Looking closer, though, he could tell the glinting pieces were coins.

"Well, that works out. Assistant Manager Lee! Go bring that guy back here!"

The moment Lee Jin-pyeong, steady and dutiful as ever, moved to do as he was told—

"I'll go, sir."

"K-Kang? Assistant Manager Kang?"

Bewilderment flickered through Kwak Young-ho's eyes. He knew all too well that Kang Hyeong-seok had every reason to despise Noh Soo-chul.

"I'll be right back."

Before anyone could get a word in, Kang Hyeong-seok was already sprinting toward Noh Soo-chul.

As their colleague shrank into the distance, Shin Jeong-ah looked to Kwak Young-ho with one brow arched. Her expression plainly asked why on earth the man was tearing off with such a grave look on his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠face, and all Kwak Young-ho could offer was a vague gesture: those two didn't get along.

But that wasn't the only reason.

Tat-tat-tat-tat!

Running at full tilt, Kang Hyeong-seok caught a flash of glinting light.

The coins Noh Soo-chul had scattered.

Wham!

He kicked them straight into a storm drain, then called out as he bore down on the man.

"Deputy General Manager Noh!"

There was no need to grant a resigned man an honorific. Still less one with whom nothing but rotten feelings had piled up.

Noh Soo-chul raised his head, saw Kang Hyeong-seok, and turned the color of ash — like a child caught red-handed at something wicked.

"Ah, damn it!"

He crammed the coins he'd been about to scatter back into his pocket and bolted in the opposite direction.

"Huh? Money."

Just as Kang Hyeong-seok moved to give chase, a man coming out of the convenience store bent down to pick up the coins.

"Don't pick those up!"

Kang Hyeong-seok's razor-edged shout stopped him in his tracks.

Then he ground his teeth as he watched Noh Soo-chul's back careen away in a frantic jangle of loose change.

You insane bastard! What kind of nonsense are you pulling!

There was a reason Noh Soo-chul had run the instant he saw him. He had been scattering money. Why would a man who'd just quit his job go around throwing money away as though it had gone rotten? There had to be a reason — and the problem was that the reason was vile.

Splitting misfortune! The lunatic!

The practice was spread far and wide across East Asia: dividing up the calamity headed your way — the misfortune that was meant to be yours — and handing it out to others. No doubt the horror of being hunted by the Chang-gwi had left him desperate to carve away whatever misfortune might still be coming. Whatever the reason, though, the act itself was monstrous.

What he was doing was, in effect, a kind of misfortune-shifting rite. In plain words: a curse.

Tat-tat-tat-tat!

"Huaaagh!"

Noh Soo-chul glanced back at Kang Hyeong-seok, made a sound like a man choking on his own breath, and plunged into a commercial building.

He made straight for the underground parking garage and only surrendered after fleeing all the way down to the second basement level. There was nowhere left to run — and the lot, more open than he'd expected, was brightly lit, with nowhere to hide a body.

"Hah! Hah! Huaaah!"

Noh Soo-chul heaved for air, such a wreck that it was hard to believe he was the same man who had spent years mocking and humiliating Kang Hyeong-seok.

"Hah—hoo! Y-you—hoo, hoo—why the—hah!—hell are you following me."

He forced the words out between gasp after gasp, still playing the tough guy. Kang Hyeong-seok, whose breathing had already settled, ran his tongue over his dry lips.

"So what have you been up to, going around doing this?"

"Me? You little—!"

"You know full well I don't owe you any politeness."

Kang Hyeong-seok said it with his emotions pressed down flat. It was a face he had never once shown anyone at the office.

Noh Soo-chul flinched — then, recalling the Kang Hyeong-seok of the company, thrust his hand out all the same, crude and aggressive.

"You cocky little shit!"

Kang Hyeong-seok caught the hand reaching for his collar and kicked out his leg.

Wham!

With a satisfying crack, Noh Soo-chul toppled over hard.

"Aaaagh! Argh! Hey! That's assault, you bastard!"

At the chill in Kang Hyeong-seok's voice, Noh Soo-chul's face drained white. This was the underground garage of a commercial building so old he doubted it even had CCTV. And with hardly any cars parked nearby, there didn't appear to be a single dashcam to film what he was about to do.

"I put up with you because you were my boss. I never bowed my head because I was scared of you."

Noh Soo-chul swallowed dryly and gave a small, jerky nod. Then, still sprawled on the floor, he jammed a hand into his pocket and fished out his wallet.

"Assistant Manager Kang, I was— I was wrong. Yeah?"

Rustle.

Noh Soo-chul pulled every bill out of the wallet. The wad looked thick, but most of it was thousand-won notes; the whole thing probably didn't top 150,000 won — barely a hundred-odd dollars.

"Take this as a token of my apology and pocket it. Do it for my pride's sake, at least."

Kang Hyeong-seok looked down at the bills, his breathing still not quite settled.

Jingle-jangle!

The Mudang Bang-ul — the sacred shaman's bells — in his backpack rang out, like a warning never to accept those bills.

"So ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you never came to your senses at all."

"...What?"

"This is money you spat on. Isn't it."

Bills spat on and left to dry — carrying ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠defilement. His guess must have landed squarely, because Noh Soo-chul flinched in shock.

"N-no, come on. What..."

The man's pitiful string of excuses never reached his ears. This man truly was consistent — in the worst possible way. The man himself was rotten, in the office and out of it alike. Terrified half to death by a ghost, so he'd tried to hand his misfortune to strangers; and even now, in the middle of all this, he was trying to shove the largest share of it onto Kang Hyeong-seok. Every single act was uniformly twisted and filthy.

Grab!

Kang Hyeong-seok twisted his left hand into Noh Soo-chul's collar and slammed him against a pillar of the parking garage.

Thud!

Only when fear had spread across the face pressed to the concrete did he speak.

"This is going to hurt."

He said it short, then drove his knee up into the man's side.

Wham!

"Kgh!"

The blow had landed square in his gut. Noh Soo-chul couldn't even manage a scream — his mouth simply opened and closed, clear drool stringing from his lips. Kang Hyeong-seok forced him upright before he could crumple, and curled his hand into a fist.

Wham! Thud! Pow!

The tops of his thighs. His shoulders. Striking only what wasn't vital, only what would leave no mark — that much was the bare minimum of courtesy.

Crack! Wham! Crack! Crack!

With the first places he'd been struck burning viciously, Noh Soo-chul could do nothing but rasp out "kek—kgh"; even a scream refused to come. Kang Hyeong-seok thrashed him with all the mechanical detachment he could muster. He had to keep his emotions locked away. Otherwise Noh Soo-chul would spend the rest of his life drooling down his chin — a grinning simpleton who lit up at the mere sight of food.

Wham! Thud!

"St-stop. Stop i-it."

The moment the collar was released, Noh Soo-chul slid down the pillar.

"Kek—kheeek."

The retching man had the eyes of someone whose pride had finally snapped in two. Kang Hyeong-seok exhaled a gust of hot breath and kneaded his aching hand — and Noh Soo-chul flinched violently and covered his head.

The damned fool. If a few punches were all it took to make him this docile, why on earth did he have to live the way he did...

He let out one long, slow breath — hooooo — to smother the anger, then fixed Noh Soo-chul with a glare and spoke.

"Get up."

"Uu, uuuuh."

THUD!

Without a word, Kang Hyeong-seok kicked the pillar.

"Ugh! Uuuuuh!"

Noh Soo-chul scrambled to his feet with a face on the verge of tears, and Kang Hyeong-seok's mouth twisted as he looked down at the wad of bills strewn across the floor.

"Where'd you hear it? That scattering money like this splits up your misfortune?"

"O-on the internet..."

It was almost certainly not the truth. The way the man's eyes kept flicking about, reading Kang Hyeong-seok's reaction, said as much. When the collar was seized again, Noh Soo-chul trembled from head to toe and let his head hang.

"You went to a shaman's shrine, didn't you?"

"Uu, uuuuh."

"Deputy General Manager Noh. You saw me that day."

With visible effort, Noh Soo-chul lifted his trembling face until his eyes met Kang Hyeong-seok's.

That day. The day the Chang-gwi had hunted them. The mountain smothered in fog. The terror that the thing would spring at any moment. The memory of running mindlessly along the border between life and death. It was the kind of thing he could never forget, no matter how desperately he wanted to — and that included, naturally, the fact that his worthless life had been saved by Kang Hyeong-seok and his Mudang Bang-ul.

"I know without you saying a word. You learned it at that shrine — the trick of scattering money to split your misfortune. That's what happened, isn't it?"

Tears were welling openly at the corners of his eyes now. Noh Soo-chul nodded, slowly.

"You pathetic bastard. Your misfortune never needed splitting in the first place — so why did you have to go and wreck your own future with your own hands! You goddamn moron!"

Kang Hyeong-seok's voice was fury crammed down to the very bottom.

Noh Soo-chul would never know, not even in his dreams: that there had been no misfortune worth splitting to begin with. And so this fool, with his pointless little stunt, had done nothing but swell the very karmic debt that was owed to him. The beating he'd taken from Kang Hyeong-seok would come back around one day as retribution so vast ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it would make those bruises look trivial.

"Wh-what are you talking about?"

Noh Soo-chul's face said he understood none of it. It was pitiful — and unbearably stifling. The man had doused himself in oil trying to put out a fire that had never even caught, and he still had no idea what he had done. From now on, even the tiniest ember of karma would come down on Noh Soo-chul at full weight.

"You got played by a fake shaman, you idiot!"

They said barely ten percent of mudang deserved to be called genuine. And of those, how many were truly skilled, truly true? If a real mudang was a pearl buried in the mud, then Noh Soo-chul had fallen into the hands of a mudang that was nothing but a clump of mud itself.

"F-fake shaman? No, no! What are you even saying?"

Watching him — terrified out of his wits, yet still talking as though he refused to believe a word — Kang Hyeong-seok let out a sigh. Then he let go of the man's collar.

"From here on out, you're on your own."

"...Huh?"

"I've told you everything I have to tell."

If Noh Soo-chul had been even the slightest bit of a proper man. If he hadn't split his misfortune at all. The effect would have been marginal anyway — but if only he hadn't tried to shove the largest share of it onto Kang Hyeong-seok.

"You're off my hands now. Go back to that shrine if you want — have a gut performed, have talismans written, do whatever the hell you like."

No one was going to help Noh Soo-chul anymore. Even if he crawled back to the fake shaman, the man would simply bleed him dry down to the marrow.

Tap. Tap.

As Kang Hyeong-seok turned away, Noh Soo-chul's hand shot out on pure reflex. He knew this man could save him. But the last shred of conscience he possessed, and a pride that refused to bend, clamped his mouth shut.

Noh Soo-chul was still staring, hollow-eyed, at Kang Hyeong-seok's receding back when—

Bzzt. Bzzt.

Kang Hyeong-seok accepted the call from Kwak Young-ho and raised the phone to his ear.

Bang!

Kang Hyeong-seok shoved open the emergency exit door and was gone. Noh Soo-chul, who had watched him every step of the way, let his head sink at last. What came surging in now, aching worse than any of his bruises, was something he had no words for.