The Serpent's Tail
Ziiiiing.
Kang Hyeong-seok opened his eyes to the sound of his alarm. Reflexively, he reached out a hand and silenced the phone, then blinked his bleary eyes shut and open again.
Ah. Right. The motel.
For a split second he wondered why he wasn't home—then he collected himself. He had left the construction site last night, driven toward the city, and ended up checking in here.
"Haaam."
Rubbing his eyes, he pushed himself upright.
Where's Yoon-sang?
They had certainly fallen asleep together, yet he was alone in the bed.
Hyeong-seok was just reaching for his phone to call him when the motel bathroom door burst open.
Bang.
"Oh? Hyung-nim, you're up."
"Oh—uh, yeah."
"Guess you were pretty tired."
Yoon-sang looked no better himself. For all the brightness he was forcing into his voice, the shadows under his eyes were pitch dark.
"Why'd you get up so early? Sleep some more."
"Well, I just couldn't fall back asleep."
"Because of what we saw last night?"
"Yeah. Pretty much, Hyung-nim."
Hyeong-seok gave a wry smile and got out of bed.
"Give me a minute. I'll wash up, then we'll go get some breakfast."
"Should I just order delivery?"
"It's morning. Do they even deliver breakfast?"
"Of course they do! One tap on the app and it's here, Hyung-nim."
Tap-tap-tap.
With practiced fingers, Yoon-sang worked his phone and placed the order. The place they settled on was a modest home-style diner; Hyeong-seok chose sundae gukbap—a rice soup studded with slices of Korean sausage—while Yoon-sang went for ugeoji gukbap, a hearty beef soup with dried radish greens.
The food arrived just as Hyeong-seok finished his shower.
"Hyung-nim, go ahead and start!"
Sitting on the floor, Yoon-sang began tearing into the delivery bags.
Delivery food really had come a long way. He'd expected everything to be cling-wrapped tight, but it arrived in containers almost too nice to be disposable.
Clack.
The moment he lifted the lid, the smell of food filled the cramped motel room. Sundae gukbap, with cabbage kimchi and kkakdugi on the side.
For all his dainty looks, Yoon-sang was putting the ugeoji soup away with surprising gusto, spooning it down in great swallows.
That was when it happened.
Ziiiiing.
His phone rang. He checked the screen—Shin Yo-sep.
"Hang on. Phone call."
Yoon-sang was still lowering the piece of kkakdugi he'd been about to pop into his mouth when Hyeong-seok pressed the answer button.
"Yeah. What is it?"
"Got a minute?"
"Go ahead. It's fine."
"You know what you said yesterday—whether there might be a Japanese person around that factory owner."
There was a weight to Shin Yo-sep's voice, as though it were foretelling the kind of conversation about to unfold.
"There was one?"
"You were right. His mother is Japanese."
"...What?"
"I know. It's strange. But the only Japanese person involved really was the mother. Her name is Hara Seiko."
How could that be? Hyeong-seok couldn't make sense of it.
"But she's his mother?"
"Which means either I'm barking up the wrong tree, or the man is even crazier than we thought."
"Hoo..."
Every so often, among the truly deranged killers, there are those who murder their own families. But the victims are more often than not a wife or children. Laying hands on one's own parents is comparatively rare.
"Find out anything else?"
Hyeong-seok exhaled through his nose and answered.
"We found an altar at the construction site yesterday."
"An altar?"
"It looked like a rice offering for spirits, some form of sorcery. Inside the jar there was blood-soaked rice and a ring. And there was a cat too—hung up with electrical wire, rotting where it dangled."
Now he thought he knew whose ring it was. The mother of the man building the factory. Hara Seiko.
"So he's made up his mind, then. The photos?"
"I took some."
"Send them right away."
"I'll send them in a bit. They weren't taken on my phone."
Hyeong-seok glanced over toward Yoon-sang, and Shin Yo-sep's voice followed at once.
"Understood. That's a big help, thanks to you."
The words sounded like the matter was settled. His voice didn't.
Shin Yo-sep had made the request because of the contract proposal. Push the deal forward with someone trustworthy, he'd said—but now they had secured proof that the man was nothing of the kind.
"So what are you going to do?"
Hyeong-seok asked, wearing the expression of a man craving a bitter iced Americano the way a smoker craves a cigarette.
"About what?"
"Are you going to let it end here? Or keep digging?"
The answer didn't come right away. That was fine. Sometimes silence was an answer too.
"Hoo!"
"There's still too much that doesn't add up. Why he made his own mother into a rokurokubi. And why he went so far as to build an altar at the factory."
A man who had turned even his mother's soul into a shikigami. That such a man had raised an altar at the factory as well—it gnawed at him.
There was something important here. Something he absolutely could not afford to miss.
"The people in the villages nearby are being hurt. Even the jangseung—the guardian totem poles—wept tears of blood. I'd bet a hundred percent there's something more to this."
There were old stories about wells foretelling disaster. When a well overflows, calamity is not far behind—tales of that kind run through many countries. So he couldn't simply brush it aside. Perhaps this affair, too, was tied to some disaster yet to come.
"If you won't do it, I will."
One way or another, he would see this through to the end. That was what his tone conveyed.
"I've got no intention of backing out, either."
Shin Yo-sep went on in that faint, barely-there voice of his, stripped of emotion.
"No telling how the man who introduced me to that factory owner will turn out, either. And evidence only gets better the more you have."
It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth. Having said it in exactly that spirit, Shin Yo-sep let out a sigh.
"I got through to one of the former employees. He says he'll cooperate."
"Did he know anything?"
"I figured it'd be better for you to go in person rather than me, so all I got was his address."
"Text it over. We're leaving right away."
"Sorry about this. Feels like I've dragged you into something huge for nothing."
"It's my fight too."
Before Shin Yo-sep's request had come the Momjusin's revelation.
There is one like a serpent.
Sever the serpent's tail, and let the serpent breathe its last.
And that serpent's tail was swaying right before his eyes. He could not very well turn back now.
"Oh, and keep all the receipts. I'll reimburse you separately later."
"More importantly—put in a good word for me with the Department Head."
"That goes without saying."
Hyeong-seok snorted a laugh and nodded.
"Hanging up."
Call ended, he looked down at his sundae gukbap, gone stone cold. The same soup he'd been enjoying so much only minutes ago. But his appetite had vanished, and now the swollen grains of rice looked like maggots, and the kkakdugi brine like blood.
"Tch."
He was pushing the sundae gukbap aside, his face empty of appetite, when—
"Hyung-nim, um... who was that you were talking to?"
Shin Yo-sep's identity was a secret, so Hyeong-seok thought for a moment before offering a suitable answer.
"A priest."
"A priest? As in, Catholic?"
"Yeah."
"Whoa, seriously. How is it that someone like that exists in your orbit, Hyung-nim? He's not an ordinary priest, is he?"
"He's even less able to appear on your broadcasts than I am, so don't go nursing any vain hopes."
If Shin Yo-sep ever showed up on Yoon-sang's stream, the fallout didn't bear imagining.
"R-right, I know. Of course, Hyung-nim."
"Your food's getting cold. Eat up."
"I already finished mine."
Whether or not he was actually full, Yoon-sang began cleaning up without a trace of hesitation. He transferred all the leftovers into one big container and wiped the floor clean with wet wipes.
"By the way, Hyung-nim."
"What?"
"You've changed a lot since the first time we met."
Hyeong-seok gave him a look that asked what on earth that was supposed to mean, and then—
"I already thought you were incredible back then. But now? It's like you've powered up even more."
"What?"
"Before, you felt like some insanely powerful shaman, you know? And now, how do I put it... like you've reached some higher plane entirely?"
Grandiose phrasing, but Hyeong-seok had a fair idea what he meant.
"I've probably just gotten used to it."
"Huh?"
"To all of it. One way or another."
If there was one difference that stood above the rest, it would be the Sinjangkal. Yoon-sang had seen it back during the Beomgwi affair, but at the time Hyeong-seok hadn't yet been comfortable with it. Since then he had been through matters large and small, and thanks to all of that, the Sinjangkal now felt far easier in his hand than it once had.
"Anyway—how do we throw all this out?"
"Just tidy it up nicely and leave it behind."
"Yeah? What time's checkout?"
"They said to have the room clear by eleven a.m."
Which meant it was about time to be going.
Hyeong-seok readied himself to leave the motel, and together with Yoon-sang he stepped out the door.
Vroooooom.
In the car bound for the address Shin Yo-sep had sent over, Hyeong-seok sipped at his coffee—an iced Americano bought at a café they'd passed along the way.
Hooo... hooo...
Yoon-sang was sprawled across the passenger seat, dead asleep, and Hyeong-seok had no complaints about it.
He must be exhausted.
Haunted-house-hopping streamer or not, in the end Yoon-sang was an ordinary man. He'd seen one thing after another that ordinary people could scarcely bear. The mental fatigue had to be considerable—and Hyeong-seok knew a bowl of soup and a night's sleep would not wash it away so easily.
Sluuurp.
Draining the last of his coffee through the straw, Hyeong-seok set the cup back in its holder and turned down the navigation volume. He only had to follow the road straight ahead anyway; the directions hardly mattered.
Let's see. Time remaining...
About ten minutes.
In the quieted car, Hyeong-seok let his thoughts churn.
What's the reason?
Why make his own mother into a rokurokubi and wield her as a shikigami? And why build an altar like that at the factory?
"Tch!"
It struck him without warning: gaze into the abyss, and the abyss gazes back. By now, the factory owner had to know someone was on his trail. The altar's jar had been smashed. For all Hyeong-seok knew, the rokurokubi itself had told him so.
Which meant the man would come looking for him.
Which of the two would move faster? Him, coming to stop me? Or me, tracing out his intent and crushing it flat?
"Mmmnnnh."
Perhaps caught in a nightmare, Yoon-sang groaned, his face contorted, and thrashed an arm. When Hyeong-seok eased the head slumped over his shoulder back into place, Yoon-sang's expression smoothed out considerably.
Crack. Crick-pop.
Hyeong-seok cracked his neck side to side, shaking off the stiffness.
It came to him all at once: brooding was getting him nowhere.
His hand clamped down hard on the steering wheel, and he bit his lower lip until it went white. Right. Worrying was meaningless. For now, he had to meet the retired employee and learn even a sliver of what the one commanding the rokurokubi intended.
"You will arrive at your destination shortly."
The navigation unit, volume lowered, guided him like a whisper.
An ordinary-looking residential district. It was 1:10 in the afternoon; the man would be resting from work, so he should be home.
Hyeong-seok parked near the retired employee's house, glanced once at Yoon-sang sleeping deep, and stepped out of the car.
Step, step.
Cautiously closing in on the house, Hyeong-seok curled his hand into a fist and knocked.
A man opened the door as though he had been waiting all along.
"Uh—you're, um... the one, right?"
"I was told to come. Someone introduced me."
A short, elderly man. The old man peered up at Hyeong-seok with eyes that were unusually large, then nodded and urged him to hurry inside.
And the moment Hyeong-seok stepped into the house, the man shut the door behind him at once.
Creeeak. Thud.
Oddly, the sound of the door closing boomed far louder than it should have.