Wedded to the Dead
Clatter!
Startled, Buyong dropped her phone, and its screen went dark in the same instant.
"Huh? Wh-what—"
[What was that? Just now...]
[What the...]
[For real?]
[Something's latched onto her.]
[Wasn't that her boyfriend...?]
"I-I'm so sorry! W-we'll end today's stream here!"
Sensing the chaos, Yoon-sang hastily killed the broadcast.
Kang Hyeong-seok pulled off his headset and let out a heavy sigh.
I'm the one who wants to ask.
What on earth had happened back there? What had been done to her? No matter how he looked at it, whatever bound that thing to Buyong went far beyond a stray ghost latching on for a simple haunting.
Bzzzzt!
His phone rang — the caller, naturally, was Yoon-sang.
"Hello?"
"Hyeo— Hyung-nim!"
Perhaps rattled by how abruptly the stream had died, Yoon-sang's voice was trembling ever so slightly.
"So, haa..."
What would the two of them normally have said at a moment like this? Glad we pulled such a crowd?Thanks for helping out with the stream? But the thing clinging to Buyong was unsettling enough that neither line would come.
"W-well, first of all — thank you so much for today. You really worked hard."
"...You too."
"Um, so... Hyung-nim?"
The air was thick enough to make small talk impossible, but he already knew what was coming.
"Just say it."
"R-right? This is bad, isn't it? Like, really bad."
"It's bad, all right."
Creeeak.
Hyeong-seok leaned forward, his back peeling off the chair, and pressed the phone closer to his ear.
"She's been hit with a Death Marriage Rite."
Or, to put it another way — a spirit wedding. A rite meant, in its proper form, to join the dead to the dead: a means of consoling and releasing the lingering regret of those who died without ever marrying. And someone had twisted it to wed the living to the dead.
"Is it really that bad?"
"Her marriage prospects are done for, obviously. Her whole life could come apart at the seams."
The wandering spirit had already shown a ferocious possessiveness. It was riding Buyong's back, which meant its jealousy and spite ran deep. Ordinary life could become an ordeal; one nagging illness could pile onto another; and if it decided it wanted her all to itself, it might well go about severing her from the world entirely.
But why?
Who? What kind of person would even do this? The questions lunged at him one after another, and the answer forming in his head was vile.
"Who... who do you think could've done it?"
"A shaman, most likely."
Since when could a spirit stage its own wedding? Someone had clearly set it all in motion, and Buyong had simply been swept up in it. She hadn't seemed to know a thing, so the shaman had probably done the deed in secret.
"Tsk... hoooh."
Yoon-sang was sighing an awful lot. It almost sounded like he was asking, Will she really be okay like this?
"Tomorrow's Saturday, isn't it."
"Uh — yes! Yes!"
God knew what was so delightful about that — Yoon-sang answered as if pouncing on the words, and then—
"Let's go take a look. You reach out to her."
"Hyeo— Hyung-nim, are you sure you're okay with that?"
"As long as you keep that camera away."
"Of course! I'm grateful enough that you helped out even once!"
Hyeong-seok gave a short laugh and told him to call once she'd agreed and a time had been set. Then he hung up — and the tangled weight of it all came flooding in thick.
How could a shaman have done something even an evil ghost wouldn't stoop to?
Hyeong-seok chewed at his drying lips, then buried his face in one hand. That the one person whose calling was to help others had pulled this — it made his chest feel like it was packed with lead.
Vroooooom.
Hyeong-seok held the wheel on the drive to Buyong's house, Yoon-sang in the passenger seat. It was 9:10 on a Saturday morning. The roads were wide open, but the sky was choked with cloud, giving the whole morning the strange feel of a sun going down.
"You're sure it's around here?"
The neighborhood felt oddly familiar, which was why Hyeong-seok asked with a frown already set.
"Yes. Positive, Hyung-nim."
"Tsk."
From inside the moving car, he studied the scenery rolling toward him, brow furrowed. Until this very moment he hadn't been able to place it. Now he was certain. This was the district where Shin Jeong-ah's home stood, not far from the law office of her friend Lee Ha-yoon.
Vroooom.
He passed the very restaurant where the three of them had once sat down to gukbap together, swung the wheel wide to follow the route the navigation fed him, and five minutes later rolled into a public parking lot, the handbrake rasping home.
Buyong's house sat in a residential district. Street parking had looked hopeless — not a bad call on his part, judging by how tightly the cars were wedged in along the curb.
Though what kind of nerve did it take to deliberately park right on top of a no-parking sign? An expensive imported car, at that.
Step, step.
"Hyung-nim, this is it."
Yoon-sang, navigating off his phone, stopped in front of a house.
Hyeong-seok looked up at it. He'd known the place since the stream had shown off the carefully appointed interior. The house showed its age here and there, yet it was anything but shabby — quaint, even. The picture-book home with a yard, the kind people always gush about.
And yet for all its handsome face, one thing did not belong.
That smell...
A musty, stale odor hung over the place. Even spirits that weren't evil ghosts gave off a scent. Just as a person leaves their body's trace behind after long enough in one room, a wandering spirit was little different. Which meant this ghost had been clinging to her for a very long time.
Hyeong-seok raised a hand toward the doorbell — and at that exact moment—
"Oh, right — Hyung-nim, one second."
Yoon-sang, struck by a sudden thought, fished a mask from his pocket.
"Put this on. We can't have your face getting out."
Yoon-sang had caught what Hyeong-seok had unconsciously let slip. He answered the thanks with a look and pulled the mask on — an ordinary black one, the kind sold in any convenience store. It smelled of fresh fabric, but that covered the musty stench nicely.
Ding-dong.
He pressed the doorbell, and—
Bang!
As if she'd been waiting on the other side, a door opened somewhere deep inside the house, and a beat later the front door itself. There stood a young woman — the tipster who went by the handle Buyong.
"Oh — hello. Thank you so much for coming."
"Hi there! I'm Yoon-sang!"
"Ah — yes."
Buyong dipped her head to Yoon-sang, then turned a hesitant, uncertain gaze on Kang Hyeong-seok. She'd heard he was a shaman who looked like an office worker — but he struck her as even more corporate than she'd imagined.
"Was there something you wanted to talk about?"
"Ah — no, not yet. Please, come in first."
"One moment."
Hyeong-seok slowly swept his eyes over the space around Buyong.
Whiiiish!
Then he tugged his mask down a fraction and even let out a whistle. Buyong, who had been lurching from one shock to the next since they'd arrived, stood there utterly at a loss — until Yoon-sang murmured an explanation: it was a technique for flushing out ghosts.
"Doesn't seem like there'd be much point in going inside."
"Sorry?"
"It's hiding right now. And it's quick to catch on."
Watching Buyong's face harden like stone, Hyeong-seok adjusted his mask.
"Which brings me to what I wanted to ask — you slept badly last night, didn't you?"
Her eyes quivered, and her throat bobbed. She understood exactly what he meant.
"Th-that's right."
"Mm. If possible, I'd rather we talked out here in front—"
"There's a table inside. Would that be all right for you?"
Buyong was remarkably forthcoming for a woman who ought to have been suspicious of him. Hyeong-seok dipped his head and stepped over the threshold. Yoon-sang trailed in behind him wearing the mournful look of a man thoroughly cut out of the conversation.
Tap.
Hyeong-seok patted his hand — don't worry about it — and took a seat at the terrace table set out in the yard.
"Can I get you something to drink?"
"No, thank you. The mask makes that a bit difficult."
"We've got straws!"
"Ah. Then... thank you kindly."
Buyong disappeared inside and returned a moment later with two glasses on a tray — tall ones, filled with ice and orange juice, and only Hyeong-seok's fitted with a stainless-steel straw.
Clink.
"Um, so — could you maybe do a ritual for me? Or a talisman, anything at all?"
Her voice shook as she set his glass down. Of course it did. It was true that a ghost was fastened to her — and the man she'd believed was her departed boyfriend had been an entirely different spirit altogether. It made her skin crawl. It terrified her past all bearing.
"Even if I did something right now, it would do no good. This is not a bond you can simply cut."
"Oh."
Despair welled into her eyes, and Hyeong-seok spoke in something close to a sigh.
"You've been through a spirit marriage. Which is why I have to ask — have you ever posted your saju — the four pillars of your birth — online? Chat readings and internet streams included."
It was the pivotal question. If she had, tracking down the shaman who'd pulled this vile stunt on her would get a great deal harder.
"Wh-why do you ask?"
"Because someone may have taken your saju and used it to forge a marriage pledge between you and the spirit riding your back right now."
In Taiwan, there is a superstition that one must never pick up a red envelope lying on the ground. If it holds money, a lock of hair, and a paper bearing personal details, then whoever pockets it marries a wandering spirit. Korea was little different. Neighbors in Northeast Asia share their customs, and the mechanics of a spirit marriage are far less foreign to one another than most would think.
All it required was a saju.
"I've never done that."
At her flat, certain answer, Hyeong-seok breathed out in relief.
"Good."
Then, holding her gaze, he put his next question to her in a grave voice.
"Then have you visited a ddangjip recently? One of those fortune-telling houses run by shamans."
"I haven't done that either."
Yoon-sang's eyes went round over his orange juice — and just as Buyong's clenched lips began to tremble and her gaze sank toward the table, Hyeong-seok spoke.
"No. You have — indirectly."
"Sorry?"
"You gave your saju to someone else recently. Didn't you."
Her lips fell slackly open, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Then, eyes blown wide, she nodded hard and fast. Something had surfaced in her memory.
"Y-yes. I did. A few months ago — there was a time like that."
Hyeong-seok shifted his gaze toward the front entrance. No one stood there. But his eyes saw something else entirely.
"You gave it to a woman, didn't you."
Rattle!
Startled, Buyong jolted hard enough to shake the table, hand still clamped over her mouth, and Yoon-sang lunged to keep his glass and Hyeong-seok's from toppling.
"H-how... how did you..."
Buyong asked, but Hyeong-seok never took his eyes off the entrance.
"A young woman with a bob haircut. Just who was it that took the paper with your saju written on it, Ms. Buyong?"
Because he could see it — a woman around Buyong's age, standing at the entrance, smiling as she accepted the paper bearing the saju and slipped it into her bag.