A Nightmare on a Peaceful Saturday
Kang Hyeong-seok passed a perfectly peaceful Saturday. He binge-watched a drama he'd been saving on his streaming service, sorted out his meals with the mobile gift voucher that had arrived on his birthday, and even allowed himself a lazy stroll around the neighborhood.
It was a holiday with nothing at all demanding his attention. Nothing from the office, nothing from the shamanic side of his life, either. With no way of knowing when a day like this would come again, he wrung every last drop of satisfaction from it.
Which meant there was not a single reason in the world for him to dream a nightmare.
Tap.
Lying in bed with his phone, Kang Hyeong-seok set the device down as drowsiness rolled over him. Then he surrendered himself to the sensation of the bed pulling him under, and slept.
Wooooooong.
The dream began with a low, heavy resonance — the kind of sound that fills a person with dread.
A dining table. Kang Hyeong-seok was sitting at the table in his own home, staring at his phone. He couldn't have said why. Dreams were, after all, sudden things that answered to no logic.
Riiiiiing.
As if it had only been waiting its turn, the ringing phone answered itself.
"Hello?"
(Assistant Manager Kang.)
"Yes."
(I think I'm going to die soon.)
"Yes."
Shin Jeong-ah's voice, coming through the receiver, was every bit as dry as the wooden calm of his replies.
(I just wanted to hear the voice of someone I knew. One last time.)
"Yes."
In an instant, the dreamscape changed. A brand-new apartment he had never seen before — almost certainly the one Shin Jeong-ah had moved into.
Whoooooosh.
A heavy wind was pouring through the open veranda window, and the white silk curtains billowed as though caught in a whirlpool. Shin Jeong-ah stood between them. More precisely, she was perched on the railing, phone to her ear, talking to him.
"I don't want to die."
(Yes.)
"I really don't want to die."
Contrary to her words, her body kept tilting farther and farther out past the railing. The cars and the residents far below looked dizzyingly small. Not one of them had noticed her, and they went on with their peaceful routines as though nothing in the world were wrong. Only Shin Jeong-ah — the woman about to drop into their midst — gave off an alien presence, like a note played hopelessly out of key.
"Save me."
Those were her last words before she flung her body out beyond the railing. Her terror as she fell came flooding into him, vast and drowning. And in the instant he wanted nothing more than to shut his eyes—
KRA-KOOM!
"KYAAAAAAAH!"
"Waaah! WAAAAAAH!"
"Wh-what the—?! AAAAH!"
"Don't look! You mustn't look!"
An enormous crash, and then the screams of passersby came piercing his ears. The scene snapped back to Kang Hyeong-seok. He stood with the phone pressed blankly to his ear; he ended the call and stayed where he was. He did nothing at all — no tremor, no shock, as if the whole thing were a stranger's affair. He simply stayed still, and nothing more.
That was when Kang Hyeong-seok woke.
"Hah—! Hah—hah! Hah—!"
Eyes blown wide, he gasped for breath and wrapped his arms around himself in a clumsy self-embrace. Thump-thump-thump-thump. His heart was raging as though he had sprinted flat-out.
Fuck's sake. Of all the dreams to dream.
Shin Jeong-ah's end had been chilling enough — but the self he had seen inside the dream was more grotesque, more glacial, and that was what truly made his skin crawl. A person had died. She had begged for help, and he had looked away. Dream or not, how could anyone do that? Was there some side of him buried so deep that even he had never seen it?
Still mired in the confusion, he scrubbed hard at the gooseflesh on his arms and climbed out of bed.
"It was a dream. Just a dream."
Really? His subconscious walked straight up and asked him point-blank: You serve a god, and you dreamed something this vivid — do you honestly believe it was an ordinary dream?
Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed hard past a dry throat and picked up his phone.
Damn it. He really had slept deep. He hadn't gone to bed late, and the dream hadn't run long, yet it was already morning — half past eight. An awkward hour to be reaching out to anyone. And as he hesitated, he found himself remembering how he'd been in the dream, still and silent in a way that crawled under the skin. Someone else, maybe. But himself, like that? Dream or not, he couldn't stomach it.
He exhaled one long, deep breath, as if purging every last pocket of stale air from his body — and then dialed.
Riiing... riiing...
Every thought under the sun crossed his mind as he waited for Shin Jeong-ah to pick up. Please, let it have been just a dream. Even if she answered half-asleep, snapping at him in a voice pressed flat with irritation, that would be fine. Just be alive. Go ahead, then — cuss me out as hard as you like!
Riiing... riiing... riiing...
The longer the tone droned on, the more his composure frayed. A dread — no, it couldn't be — swelled fast, and he was sweeping the room with his eyes for his car keys when—
(Hello?)
The call finally connected.
"Section Chief!"
(Uh— huh? What is it?)
At the sound of her flustered voice, Kang Hyeong-seok let out a breath of relief and spoke.
"I had a strange dream, so I wanted to check — is everything all right with you?"
(A dream?)
"Yes."
Once it was out of his mouth, he wondered if he hadn't been rash. A simple word about the move would have done the job just as well.
(No, hold on. You really are something.)
But there was something off-kilter about her reaction.
"What happened?"
(Well, it's... haah. Aaah.)
Shin Jeong-ah vented a frustration laced with something stifled, then went on.
(I saw a ghost. In my apartment.)
"...At the new place?"
(Yes! I mean, seriously — how does this kind of thing happen again the very moment I move in?)
"Hold on a second. Are you inside the apartment right now?"
(No. I got so spooked I came outside. I was going to head back to the shaman's house the moment it opened.)
He had just felt relief — at least she wasn't teetering on a railing like in the dream — when the words shaman's house turned him to stone.
"The shaman's house?"
(Yeah. The thing is, I went to one on Friday night.)
Before he could think, a single word came whipping into his head and planted itself there: seonmudang — a would-be shaman, one fated to carry a god without ever having been properly ordained.
Fuck. The curse moved his lips alone as Kang Hyeong-seok began to pace beside the bed.
"What did they tell you at the shaman's house?"
(Huh? What?)
"Tell me honestly. Something's been nagging at me."
(They, um — put up a talisman for now, and if anything still felt off, come back. Then we'd hold a gut, a full cleansing rite...)
Kang Hyeong-seok pressed his lips into a hard line and picked up his car keys.
"I'm coming now. Don't go anywhere. Stay right where you are."
(No! This isn't something you need to trouble yourself over, Assistant Manager Kang. I just feel bad, that's all. I'm going to the shaman's house anyway, so I'll be fine.)
"That's exactly what worries me."
Already moving through his preparations at speed, Kang Hyeong-seok kept talking.
"I'm asking this as a favor — don't go anywhere, and stay where you are. Don't set foot back inside the apartment, either."
(Assistant Manager Kang...)
Her voice was apologetic. But the feeling dissolved into it was unmistakably gratitude.
Damn it all — it wasn't as though he wanted to spend his Sunday driving out to meet his own supervisor. But he had dreamed of a person dying. He suspected his Momju-sin had delivered a revelation through that dream — and he had no intention of carrying the guilt of a man who knew exactly how things would end and helped them along anyway. He did not want to live like that.
"Just text me the address."
After he hung up, Kang Hyeong-seok looked up at the ceiling before stepping out. Nothing there — plain, blank, ordinary. Even so, he sent the empty expanse a look tinged with regret and spoke.
"One request, please. The next time you send a revelation... make it a little gentler on me."
The dream had been too chilling, too grotesque. He had been left with no choice but to petition his Momju-sin this way. Leaving behind the silence of an apartment that gave no answer, Kang Hyeong-seok closed the door.
Vroooooom.
The entire drive to Shin Jeong-ah's place, his mind crowded itself with thought after thought. Was he entangling himself too deeply with Shin Jeong-ah? Was it the seonmudang in him? Or — what if she truly was more capable than he was, and had simply glimpsed something he'd missed?
HONK!
He had slowed down without noticing, and the car behind him blared. He flicked on his hazard lights in apology, pressed the accelerator, and ordered himself to focus on the road.
Everything gets answered once I'm there, anyway.
This was a situation where action had to outrun deliberation. With the heart of a man wading in after a drowning stranger, he turned into the apartment complex Shin Jeong-ah had told him about.
"Over here!"
Shin Jeong-ah, standing at the barrier gate, spotted his car at once and rapped on the security office window.
"Sir! He's my guest — Building 112, Unit 1501!"
The barrier arm rose smoothly, and Shin Jeong-ah came straight for the car.
"Get in first."
She climbed into the passenger seat and rubbed at a face where anxiety and relief sat side by side. Then she turned her head toward him — and the whites of her eyes glistened, damp and unnaturally bright.
"I'm sorry. It's your day off."
"It's nothing. Building 112, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah."
Kang Hyeong-seok stretched his neck toward the windshield, eyeing the numbers painted on the buildings' outer walls. Building 112, it appeared, sat deeper inside the complex.
As they rolled slowly through the grounds, Shin Jeong-ah's sunken voice drifted over from beside him.
"Could it be because of the talisman...?"
The drive in had taken him ten minutes, and in that time Shin Jeong-ah had begun to lay out everything she had been chewing over.
"You said you saw a ghost. Do you know what kind of talisman it was?"
"One that chases ghosts away."
"Do you have a photo of it?"
"No, I..."
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded — that figures — and asked on.
"Did this start after you put it up?"
"I put it up last night, once I finished unpacking, and I saw the ghost this morning, so... yeah, I guess."
"What kind of ghost was it?"
A shudder ran through Shin Jeong-ah's shoulders before she forced the words out.
"I was washing my hair, and for a split second I saw it — a hand, corpse-blue."
It was not the hand of a living person. A corpse's hand. And it had been reaching, he understood, toward Shin Jeong-ah's face in the middle of her shower. Panicked out of her mind, she must have bolted from the apartment without even rinsing off properly — the thick scent of shampoo said as much, and so did her clothes, which looked nothing like something put on with care. An oversized white T-shirt under a black cardigan. And on her legs, pink pajama pants printed with cartoon characters — the sort of garment worn, until today, strictly for an audience of no one.
Rustle.
Aware of his gaze, Shin Jeong-ah tugged the hem of her cardigan down as if to hide them. That was when Kang Hyeong-seok turned his eyes back to the road.
"Well then — first thing's first. I'll need to see the apartment."
Shin Jeong-ah clamped her lips shut.
Right now, she looked exactly like the clients who come to a shaman's house at dawn. That was how desperate she appeared — how utterly cornered. And there was only one reason a person that desperate would press her mouth shut and say nothing.
Vrrrm.
As he slotted the car into a space, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke, as if breathing out a sigh.
"I'll go up alone."
"...I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Just get me a visitor's pass."
It would be a genuinely bitter thing, he thought, to drive all this way and come back to a no-parking sticker on his windshield.
"Got it. Need anything else?"
"Just text me the door code."
Reaching back, Kang Hyeong-seok grabbed the backpack holding the sacred shaman bells and stepped out of the car. It happened the very next second.
FWOOOSH!
The sound of something heavy plummeting toward his head. At the same instant, the sacred shaman bells in his backpack gave a sharp, urgent chime! He flung himself sideways on pure reflex, and—
KRAAANG!
A massive brick crashed down on the exact spot where he had been standing.
THUNK! WEE-oo, WEE-oo, WEE-oo!
The rock caromed off, slammed into a parked car, and set off its antitheft alarm. In a blink, every eye in the vicinity swung toward him, and even a uniformed guard came running.
"Hey! Young man! Are you okay? You're not hurt?"
The guard's questions came urgent and fast, while Shin Jeong-ah — practically tumbling out of the car — stared at him with shocked eyes.
"A-Assistant Manager Kang!"
Their words never reached him. Drawing thin, shallow breaths, Kang Hyeong-seok looked up. Nothing up there suggested a brick could come loose — no work, no weathering, no reason at all. And yet the profane energy pressing down from above hardened his face even further.
Damn it.
An uneasy premonition spread through his mind like black ink dropped into clear water — the sense that this affair might be far more serious than he had thought.