The Guardian Weeps Blood
Scuff.
Kang Hyeong-seok walked the night road with Yoon-sang. His steps were light—partly because the night air was cool, but mostly because all their gear had already been stowed in the car.
"Kind of a shame I left the camera behind, though."
Yoon-sang let the regret out with a trace of laughter—then caught the look on Kang Hyeong-seok's face and shut his mouth.
But let no one be mistaken. This was no leisurely night stroll. This was the road to the jangseung—the old guardian totems—and the road to speak with a god.
Scuff, scuff.
Lips pressed firmly shut, Kang Hyeong-seok kept walking toward the place where the jangseung stood.
Perhaps three more minutes passed underfoot. At the village entrance, before the jangseung that stood in silence beside a sotdae—a slender guardian pole crowned with a carved bird—he came to a halt, and raised his palms together first of all.
Gulp. Yoon-sang swallowed dryly and edged cautiously backward.
And then, slowly, Kang Hyeong-seok lifted his head to look up at the jangseung.
An ancient jangseung.
Two of them. Their surfaces long since weathered, the faces once carved by nothing but a knife now worn to little more than traces—so old that it was hard to say whether any god still remained within them at all.
And yet what dwells in a jangseung is a guardian deity.
"A disciple of the gods offers you his greetings."
A guardian god does not leave easily. Not when the world has changed and no one offers it respect or thanks anymore. Not even when people come to treat the jangseung as nothing more than a relic of a bygone age. Through it all, the jangseung would have kept watch over the mouth of this village with a parent's heart. That was what a guardian deity was.
"The mudang who came here to perform a gut shed her blood, and there is one who turns the dreams of this village's people savage."
Offering his bow to the jangseung, Kang Hyeong-seok lowered his gaze.
"That one does not belong to this land. It is a malignant thing that leads people astray."
Rokurokubi. A yokai of Japan. A vile thing that scatters calamity wherever it goes.
"I intend to bar its path. Great General Under Heaven, Female General Under the Earth—hear this disciple's petition."
Kang Hyeong-seok raised his joined palms high toward the jangseung. The figure he cut was reverent, grave.
Behind him, Yoon-sang watched with his mouth hanging slack, hands gone damp with sweat clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Is that really the same Kang Hyeong-seok? Meeting him again after so long, Yoon-sang felt as though the man had stepped much farther, and much deeper, than the man he remembered.
"Show me what that thing truly is, and where those bound to it may be found."
Having spoken in a low, slow voice, like a man reciting sacred scripture, Kang Hyeong-seok gradually lifted his head.
Prayer is an act rooted in the shamanic craft. And for precisely that reason, while it resembles sorcery, it is not the same thing. Beneath prayer lie the wish for aid, the pleading entreaty, the longing for blessing; sorcery, one might say, rests upon wanting—upon hope, upon the desire to see one's aim made real. What Kang Hyeong-seok was performing was prayer: an act that waited upon the god's answer.
Jrrrrang—!
He shook the sacred shaman bells as well.
His praying heart sank deeper, and even the air around them grew heavier and heavier. And then—
"Uh……"
Watching from behind, Yoon-sang opened his mouth even knowing this was no time for it.
"H-Hyung-nim! Hyung-nim! Hyung-niiim!"
Yoon-sang's frantic cry scattered the stillness of the night. It was the scream of a man who had seen something he was never meant to see. That was exactly what it sounded like.
"There, there! The jangseung—look at the jangseung!"
Kang Hyeong-seok's head snapped up toward the guardian totem. Through the prayer he had drawn near to the god. And so the god, too, had drawn near to the human.
"…What in…"
The brows of the man who had been gazing up at the jangseung with a face gone slack began to tremble.
"Uh—uhh. Uhhhh!"
Behind him, Yoon-sang made a sound like his breath had failed and crumpled where he stood.
Kang Hyeong-seok did not move so much as a muscle, only stared up at the jangseung. What in the world had happened here? What could the guardian deity within the jangseung possibly have witnessed?
Drip. Drip. Drip.
From the eyes of the two jangseung, something red was falling. Four eyes in all, between the two guardian totems. Four trails of bloody tears spilling down from them.
Kang Hyeong-seok exhaled a trembling breath.
Vrrrmmm.
Inside the moving car, Shin Yo-sep held a cigarette between his lips. It was late—so late that he might well have been the only man in the city clocking out at this hour. The roads had a deserted feel to them, and he drove slower than usual as he lit up.
Phewww—!
He was exhaling smoke thick with fatigue and rubbing at his dry, gritty eyes when—
Bzzz. With the vibration, the Gregorian chant he had saved as its ringtone began to play. He'd discovered only recently that you could set a different tone for every contact. The caller was Kang Hyeong-seok. The Gregorian chant was deliberate insurance—so that no one would ever so much as guess the man was a mudang.
Click.
"Find anything?"
"Haah."
The sigh was heavy. Heavy enough to make him want to exhale along with it before he knew what he was doing.
"What is it?"
"For one thing, I can tell something out of the ordinary is tangled up in this."
"Evidence?"
"A jangseung weeping tears of blood. That's not supposed to happen, is it?"
Shin Yo-sep mouthed a curse—lips only, no sound.
"Is that a joke, or for real?"
"Would I joke about something like this?"
Phew.
"More than that, I need information. This factory owner—what the hell kind of man is he?" Far more raw emotion ran beneath Kang Hyeong-seok's voice than usual.
"I was already digging into him, as it happens. But he's clean. There's nothing legally actionable, not one thing."
"Anyone who worked under him and quit?"
"Working on it."
It wasn't easy. He was gathering information through aides he trusted, but the man had muzzled mouths with thorough-to-a-fault care. And if Shin Yo-sep went digging blindly, word would find its way back to the factory owner—that Shin Yo-sep himself was sniffing at his heels. If that happened, everything Kang Hyeong-seok had labored to set in motion would come to nothing.
"I'll dig as deep as I can. It's not as if only one or two people ever worked under the man. Keep at it and something's bound to surface."
"How long do you think that'll take?"
"Won't take long."
In the end, it was a race against time. And time like that could be bought with money. Guarantee watertight secrecy, slip over enough cash that no one could call the sum stingy, coax and cajole—and at least one person was certain to open their mouth.
"Then here's another favor."
"Anything."
He was driving; taking notes was out of the question. So Shin Yo-sep pressed the record button, and a moment later Kang Hyeong-seok's voice followed.
"I believe there's a Japanese person tied to that man's past."
"What?"
"An employee, a family member, a daughter-in-law, a child's sweetheart—someone Japanese could be entangled somewhere in it."
Shin Yo-sep eased onto the brake, slowing the car as his mind whirled. The rokurokubi was a yokai of Japan—a being human by day, monster by night. And it was usually depicted as a Japanese woman.
Damn it. Why hadn't I thought of that? If the rokurokubi had an origin, it would lie with a Japanese woman.
"How did you come up with that?"
"I saw it. The rokurokubi."
"What?"
"I took a photo. It's blurry—you can barely make anything out—but want to see it?"
"…This is a joke, right?"
"I happened to catch it."
Just how much had this man accomplished in so short a span of time? Privately awed, Shin Yo-sep scratched at his brow with the hand that held his cigarette.
"I'm glad I left this in your hands."
"Whew. There are more victims than I expected."
"…Tsk."
"I'll look into it on my end too. However trivial, anything helps. The moment you learn something, tell me right away."
"Got it. And I'll handle things on the Daejeong Mulsan side, so don't worry about the work."
"If it comes to that, we can just pick it up again over the weekend."
That part stung with guilt. Looked at one way, this was a Daejeong Mulsan employee helping out a director of Shinjin Construction, their own partner company—and Shin Yo-sep knew all too well how precious a weekend was to a working man.
"Focus on this for now. I have something in mind for you."
A reward for Kang Hyeong-seok. Naturally, he had one planned. It would depend on how well things went, but it was the kind of reward that would let Kang Hyeong-seok square his shoulders with pride—and Kwak Young-ho with him.
"Understood for now. Trivial's fine—if you dig up anything at all, call me immediately."
"Yeah. Thanks."
And with that, the call ended. Shin Yo-sep dropped the burnt-down stub into the empty coffee can that served as his ashtray and clamped a fresh cigarette between his lips. Then he dialed his personal aide and passed along Kang Hyeong-seok's request. As fast as possible. As much as possible. Find whatever there was to find.
Click.
Call ended, Kang Hyeong-seok pulled a portable charger from his bag and plugged in his phone. Then his gaze drifted to the flickering glow spilling in through the driver's-side window, where Yoon-sang stood with his phone in hand.
"Everyone, seriously—wow! No, no, he's right here with me. That hyung-nim!"
The snatches of voice drifting in made it plain: the man was streaming. Unbelievable, really. Generous souls might even have called it dedication.
"Obviously I can't show you! I gave that hyung-nim my word, didn't I? No harm comes to him—my lips are sealed."
This little punk.
Everything was fine, except why did the phone's camera keep angling, ever so subtly, toward him? Hardly had Kang Hyeong-seok's brow darkened than Yoon-sang twisted his body and swung the lens in another direction.
"Whoa, and I really did salvage a few pics! I'm absolutely revealing those on stream later. A collab, though? Ha! Can't do it until hyung-nim gives the green light!"
Haaah.
Kang Hyeong-seok let out a single sigh and sank back deep into the driver's seat. Then, sucking at his lower lip, he fell into grave thought.
Why did the jangseung weep?
Which meant the thing's influence had reached even the village's guardian deity. If so, then far from the tidy versions passed down in the lore, this was a yokai even more virulent than he had imagined—but he had never once faced a Japanese yokai, so he couldn't say for certain. One thing was sure: nothing good ever came of entangling with Japanese ghosts. A neighbor close at hand and yet a world away—the ghosts of Japan and the ghosts of Korea simply did not share a temperament.
Don't treat this as some ordinary vengeful spirit.
There was something more here. So much more that he could almost feel intent behind it.
"And during the day, they even held a gut near the factory! No—not this hyung-nim, a different mudang did it. But then she suddenly started throwing up blood, and this hyung-nim did something right away, and just like that she calmed down."
Amid Yoon-sang's excited clamor, something shot through Kang Hyeong-seok's furrowed mind.
"…The factory?"
Bang! He flung the door open at once, and Yoon-sang, startled, could only turn his eyes toward him. Afraid his hyung-nim might be caught on camera, he covered the phone with his palm—but Kang Hyeong-seok's gaze was fixed somewhere else entirely.
The factory.
The villagers' nightmares. The disrupted gut. And the jangseung's tears of blood. Kang Hyeong-seok looked toward the factory still under construction and dragged his tongue slowly across his teeth. Only now did something click into place.
"H-Hyung-nim?"
Without a word of answer, Kang Hyeong-seok started the engine. The instant it gave off its low, heavy growl, Yoon-sang hastily cut the stream and yanked open the passenger door.
"Hyung-nim, what is it? Where are you going all of a sudden?"
"Get in—now!"
"Huh?"
"The factory. We have to check the factory first."
Clack. Yoon-sang buckled his seatbelt, shooting him a look laced with fear and questions alike. By then Kang Hyeong-seok had already released the handbrake; stepping down on the accelerator, he spoke.
"That rokurokubi thing? It's at the factory. Right now."
The thing had gone so far as to wreck a gut just to keep people away. The rokurokubi that had veiled the eyes of the jangseung—the village's own guardian—with tears of blood was now standing watch over the factory in their place.
VRRROOOM! The engine revved as impatiently as his heart, and the car surged forward.