The Living Are Scarier
Ziiiing!
The phone propped on the dashboard rang out, and Kang Hyeong-seok reached for it at once. Yoon-sang, halfway through an ice cream in the passenger seat, jolted in surprise; Kang Hyeong-seok signaled that everything was fine and pressed the call button.
"Yes, Cheong-geum."
"I've secured the list—just going through it now."
"Thank you."
"The Teacher gave us a hand with it, too."
"Ah."
Kang Hyeong-seok smiled sheepishly, feeling indebted, and Cheong-geum's voice ran straight on. "There are rather more of them than I expected. If this is urgent, I believe you'll need more hands on it."
"But the area's small, isn't it?"
"As you well know, shrine houses have only multiplied lately."
Even the faint cluck of her tongue came down the line, as if the thought itself left a bad taste.
"Well... true enough."
"And as you know, it would be most reliable to send those who aren't shamans."
A shaman knows a shaman on sight. Kang Hyeong-seok above all—he was a shaman watched over by a supreme Momjusin, a patron deity who governed the body itself. Cheong-geum was little different. As the disciple of Lee Geum-kyeong, a grand shaman in her own right, her face had likely grown familiar in those circles as well.
"Do you happen to have someone in mind?"
The question was gentle, careful. Kang Hyeong-seok pressed his molars together, then gave a slow, heavy nod.
"Yes. If things go well, it might be possible."
"Whew. It's a blessing you have such a gift for drawing people in, Young Master."
"You give me too much credit. Um—I'm sorry to ask another favor, but."
"Speak freely. Anything at all."
Ashamed, he gave a wry smile, let his lips hover a moment, then opened his mouth. "I need forged saju—fake birth charts."
"Ah. Understood."
Quick on the uptake, as always. The plan was to send in proxies to smoke out the shaman conducting spirit weddings—and to keep those proxies safe, false birth records would have to be slipped in ahead of them.
"Please make one ordinary, and one good."
"And the gender...?"
"Women, please."
"Understood. I'll ask someone skilled and have a few made up."
"Send them over by text, if you would."
"Yes. Oh—and Young Master."
Just as he thought the call was about to end.
"Yes?"
"Do be careful. It is the living who are the more frightening kind."
Would it have been easier if it were an evil spirit? What was scarier than ghosts was people, and what people found hardest to deal with was other people. And he had to go up against exactly such a person now.
"Thank you for worrying about me."
"Call me once it's all over."
"I will."
Kang Hyeong-seok hung up. Silence settled over the car, every bit as heavy as the mood of the call—so quiet he could hear Yoon-sang sucking at his ice cream through its thick plastic sleeve.
"...Is it good?"
"Oh! Should I go buy you one, Hyung-nim?"
"Just asking."
Kang Hyeong-seok swept his hair back and let out a long breath. So much to weigh. The general direction was set and the method decided; only one thing remained—whom to ask—and it wasn't that he had no one in mind. It was that asking was never easy, not in any sense. He always seemed to come calling only when he was in a bind.
Slurrrp.
At the sound of Yoon-sang working on his ice cream, Kang Hyeong-seok's brow creased and his eyes cut toward the passenger seat.
"S-sorry!"
Yoon-sang hastily lowered the cone, and Kang Hyeong-seok shook his head without a word. Then, as though a long deliberation had finally settled into resolve, he picked up his phone.
"Huh? You've got someone to ask?"
"You know her too."
"Huh?"
Yoon-sang mulled it over for a second, then smacked his hands together. "Oh, that noona! The really pretty one!"
Apparently, at some point, he had become "Hyung" and Shin Jeong-ah had become "Noona." Not that it was wrong. She was his senior too, so the title hardly missed the mark. And so, carrying the heart of a younger brother about to ask his big sister for a favor, Kang Hyeong-seok dialed Shin Jeong-ah.
Brrring, brrring. The ringback tone felt unusually long—
"Oh—Section Chief Kang!"
Shin Jeong-ah's voice came through bright and high, evidently in a good mood, and beneath it lay the quiet clatter of a café settling in like white noise.
"Are you outside right now?"
"Yeah. I'm at a café with Ha-yoon—why?"
Lee Ha-yoon. Shin Jeong-ah's best friend, and a divorce attorney besides—one who practically ate and slept in her law office, and whom Kang Hyeong-seok had once helped through a bout of ghost-induced sleep paralysis. The two of them happened to be together right now. Thinking this might work out for the best, he broached the request carefully.
"Could you help me with something, just this once? If possible, I'd like Ms. Ha-yoon to lend a hand as well."
"Did something happen?"
"Yes. And I'm sorry to call in a favor on a weekend."
"Hold on—ohh, you know, that guy. It's Section Chief Kang."
Perhaps phones had simply gotten too good these days—every word of her talking to Ha-yoon came through as well. Tapping his knee with his index finger, Kang Hyeong-seok waited for the conversation to run its course.
"I stepped outside the café, just in case. So? What's up?"
"I've come across someone a ghost has latched onto."
"But isn't that your area of expertise, Section Chief...?"
It wasn't a 'why should I have to deal with it?' sort of tone. Her reaction was closer to genuine puzzlement.
"Well, the thing is—"
"Hey! Yah, what are you doing! Are you crazy?"
"Hello! Hyeong-seok!"
Lee Ha-yoon's voice rang out high and lively, a different flavor from Shin Jeong-ah's.
"Yah! Give me back my phone!"
"I was curious, so I picked up. What's going on?"
"Yah!"
Utter chaos. Still, the absurdity helped—he managed to grab hold of the one emotion that let the words come easier.
"I've found someone who was married off in a spirit wedding."
"...Sorry—what?"
"She was forced into marriage with a wandering spirit. Is Section Chief Shin still beside you?"
"Ah, we're on speaker right now, so she can hear everything. Go ahead."
"You little nutjob—! Mmph! Mmph!"
Judging by how clearly even Shin Jeong-ah's voice carried, speaker mode it was.
"In any case, I need to track down the shaman responsible. I'm sorry to ask, but would the two of you be willing to pay visits to some shrine houses, carrying forged saju?"
"I'll do it. I just go with Jeong-ah, right?"
Ha-yoon agreed so readily that all his agonizing over it felt ridiculous.
"And Section Chief Shin..."
"If I tell her to come, she'll come! Don't worry about it."
Was it really all right for a conversation to flow like this? Was it truly, genuinely okay?
"Haha! Anyway, we'll handle it between the two of us. But nothing's going to happen to us, right?"
She certainly didn't waste any time asking. Kang Hyeong-seok smiled awkwardly and brought the phone closer to his ear.
"As long as you stay with Section Chief Shin, you'll be fine."
"Oh? So Jeong-ah's got something too?"
She must have been picturing some kind of special ability. But Shin Jeong-ah's gift ran in exactly the opposite direction of protection—it would be no help here. There was something else, though.
"There's the Seonsinsuhobu."
From after the cult incident—the supreme protective talisman Lee Geum-kyeong had drawn in cinnabar and given to Shin Jeong-ah.
"What's that?"
"Pwha! Yah! That one's mine!"
"Just waaait a second."
Listening to the two of them scuffle over the line, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke with due gravity. "It's a talisman that guards the person carrying it. A grand shaman drew it herself, so its power is beyond question."
"Oho! So it's the good stuff."
"Yes."
With that talisman, the two of them would come to no harm. Even if the shaman saw through the forged saju and tried something vile, it would shield not only Shin Jeong-ah but Ha-yoon as well.
"Eek!"
"Hm?"
Just as bewilderment crept over him, a crash of clattering noise came tearing through, chased by Ha-yoon's machine-gun voice. "Hyeong-seok! I'll talk Jeong-ah around, so just text me the details!"
Click.
Kang Hyeong-seok stared blankly at the dead line. Then his gaze drifted to Yoon-sang, who wore much the same expression.
"You heard all that?"
"Hyung-nim, is that noona always like that?"
He hadn't been on speaker. But the car was quiet enough that it had carried anyway.
"Every now and then."
She wasn't usually like that, but with her friend Ha-yoon around, this was more or less the effect. Well—it had worked out. People were gathering around him, one by one.
Tap-tap-tap.
Typing out precautions and suggestions on his phone, Kang Hyeong-seok drew his brows tight. It had all begun with Buyong being forced into a spirit wedding—betrayed by a friend of many years. There was no telling when, or how, a bond would turn.
Tap-tap-tap.
Sometimes a bond became sin; sometimes, suffering. Sometimes it became strength; sometimes, solace. In the end, a bond was not a thing one sentence could settle. That was simply what a bond was. And what proved hard for one person alone could, with many hands, grow easy.
Ziiing.
Right on cue, a text from Cheong-geum chimed through. Two forged saju had arrived. Tap. He forwarded them, along with the notes he'd drafted, to Ha-yoon and Shin Jeong-ah, then leaned back against the seat.
"Hyung-nim, so what do we do now?"
Sensing, perhaps, that something was finally moving, Yoon-sang asked with gleaming eyes, and Kang Hyeong-seok looked over at him.
"We do our part too."
There were people lending their strength to this. He couldn't hand it all off to them and sit idle.
"How?"
"I can't go barging in on a fellow shaman. But she's one who presides over spirit weddings—so all we need to do is find a shrine house where wandering spirits gather in unusual numbers. That'll point us to her."
"Ooooh."
Yoon-sang's eyes lit with interest and questions in equal measure.
"You coming with?"
"Of course!"
"If you're scared, say so now."
"Aw, come on, Hyung-nim. After all the time I've spent trailing after you? I've earned my stripes."
Kang Hyeong-seok laughed, deep and easy, and tipped his gaze toward the seatbelt on the passenger side. "Then buckle up."
"Yep!"
Click.
Kang Hyeong-seok fastened his own belt, pulled up the location Buyong had pinned for him, and started the engine.
Grrrrrumble!
It turned over with a vigorous hum, as if it, too, were ready to be moving this very instant.
Vroooom!
As he pulled out of the parking lot, Kang Hyeong-seok clenched his jaw hard enough to crease the skin beneath his chin. Whatever it takes—this ends today.
Shamanism existed to help people. Yet this shamanism had dealt nothing but harm, and so Buyong's nights had turned to hell. And there might be more than one soul out there who had been married off to the dead without ever wanting it.
May rest come to find them. May their nights be calm. May no wandering spirit stand in their way—and may they live out the wide-open road ahead in plain, ordinary peace.
Vroooooom.
As if it understood exactly what was in his heart, the car shot off down the road, clean and unhesitating.