A Wedding for the Dead
"You will shortly arrive near your destination. Ending route guidance."
Kang Hyeong-seok stared straight ahead, brow furrowed.
The location Buyong had pinned for them sprawled far and wide — wide enough to swallow both the busy commercial strip and the residential blocks. Which was why, with no parking space in sight and his hand already moving to drive elsewhere—
Vrrrm. A car eased out of a public lot along the road.
A sign that things were about to go his way?
Sliding into the spot that had appeared like a small miracle at precisely the right moment, Hyeong-seok killed the engine and unclipped his seatbelt.
Click.
"Hyung-nim, where do we start—"
"Quiet, please."
Yoon-sang clamped his mouth shut and gave a crisp, soldier's nod, and Hyeong-seok pulled his bag out of the back seat — the one that held the sacred shaman bells and the Sinjangkal.
Slinging it over one shoulder, he checked his phone and set off toward the nearest dangjip.
"Tae-ho Bok-hee, Emperor Shennong, Yao and Shun, Yu and Tang, King Wen, King Wu, the Duke of Zhou..."
The road lay beneath a sun riding its zenith. Too many people were coming and going for him to let the scripture pass his lips aloud.
"Confucius and Mencius, the great perfected sages; piercing sight across a thousand li; reading every vein and pulse; heaven and earth in harmony, the ten thousand things in transformation..."
A petition, offered. O divine spirit, deign to bend your ear to my words.
"Nine by nine, eighty-one — the great axis of heaven's and earth's breath; eight by nine, seventy-two — yin and yang in accord, and so it is sealed..."
There are those who need help. I mean to aid them — so lend me your strength, O spirit, I pray.
"A thousand chapters, ten thousand myriads, a thousand thousands — two hundred and sixteen, and so it is complete..."
Mouthing the invocation like a silent prayer, soundless beyond his own lips, Hyeong-seok looked up at the officetel housing the dangjip — then headed for the elevator without a moment's hesitation.
The elevator was already rising toward the fourth floor. The dangjip he needed sat on the third.
Bang! Unwilling to wait for it, he flung open the fire-escape door and began charging up the stairs, with Yoon-sang hot on his heels wearing the face of a man begging him, for the love of everything, to please slow down.
"Need the receipt?"
"No, thanks. Take care."
Tucking away her card, Lee Ha-yoon stepped out of the taxi, and Shin Jeong-ah, wedged deeper inside, clambered out after her with an Agh!
They were on the exact opposite end from where Hyeong-seok and Yoon-sang had been dropped — the residential side.
"All right! Where do we start?"
"How is this anything to get worked up over?"
"Whaaat, it's fun!"
She finally had something to do this weekend. Watching Ha-yoon bask in it without a care, Jeong-ah rubbed at the warmth building on her forehead.
"Can you really spare this much time? Nothing on your plate? Your office hasn't even been open that long."
"...Yeah."
The sullenness hit so fast it was almost absurd, and Jeong-ah hurriedly grabbed her arm and pulled. "Hey, hey — let's go, we're going. I'm sorry, alright?"
"Yep!"
Aigoo. Flake. Honestly. Still grumbling, Jeong-ah pulled up the text listing the dangjip addresses — and Ha-yoon just stood there gawking at it.
"Hey, hurry and check your list too. It's not like there's only one or two places to hit."
"Can't you just do them all yourself?"
"Huh?"
"I looked it up in the taxi just now — that talisman you received is supposed to be exactly that kind."
A talisman for guarding the body. Or, put the other way around, one best carried by someone who took spiritual hits easily.
"So just start from the place you feel the strongest pull toward. You've been uncannily unlucky since way back — you used to go to dangjips all the time."
Ha-yoon asked with eyes shining as though she were beholding a genuine psychic, and Jeong-ah's face curdled.
"Huh. That actually tracks."
"Doesn't it? It's plausible. And didn't you say your old regular dangjip turned out to be some crooked place and it blew up into a whole mess? Hyeong-seok bailed you out then, too."
"How long ago was that? Why are you even dragging it up?"
"My point exactly — don't you have a knack for sniffing out shady dangjips? Talk about a gift nobody wants."
"Haah. Seriously."
Sweeping her hair back, Jeong-ah stared at the message again. She hated to admit it. But a few of the entries did stand out — and one of them caught hard at something in her chest.
"Pick one already. Come on."
"Jeez!"
"Well, look at that — her mind's already made up."
Scowling deeper, Jeong-ah drilled a hole through her phone screen with her eyes.
"Whewww—!"
After a long deliberation, she chose one from the list. It was the place that had been needling at her — she really did feel an outsized pull to go there.
"We start with this one."
"It's close, too?"
"No idea. We go. That's all."
"Hey, though — seriously, wouldn't it be hilarious if we find it before Hyeong-seok does?"
"You think any of this is funny?"
Trading grumbles with Ha-yoon all the while, Jeong-ah set off toward the dangjip's address.
Jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle! The bells shook and rang out — sacred bells held in a hand that carried the plain wear of many years.
A dangjip, and before the shaman sat a haggard-looking middle-aged woman, clutching her bag tight, wound taut with nerves.
Jangle!
The bells fell still, and a vast silence descended, as if conjured out of nothing.
"H-how will it turn out..."
Clack.
Setting the bells down, the shaman spoke on with eyes that were fierce and lit from within by an uncanny gleam.
"Good news, then. He says he's quite taken with your son as well."
"Th-then...?"
"Marrying him off won't be any trouble at all."
"Oh—! Thank you. Thank you so much!"
The woman opened her bag and drew out a thick, snow-white envelope.
"Th-this is — as an offering—"
"Oh come, come. You think a betrothal is sealed with a mere offering?"
"Pardon?"
"A ghost wedding is a wedding all the same. The blue silk and the red silk must be hung, the bride's journey properly seen to — you think all that comes out of one offering?"
The middle-aged woman's lips pressed into a hard line. The hand gripping her bag trembled.
"If you're straining a household that can't bear it, turn back. Your late son was so happy at the thought of taking a wife — you'll only be feeding his han for nothing."
"I'm sorry?"
When the woman lifted her head, the shaman twisted her mouth and brows and pointed past her shoulder.
"Can't you tell how heartbroken your son is, standing right behind you this very moment?"
Reflexively the woman whirled to look. There was nothing behind her at all.
"And besides — do you call this an ordinary wedding? A marriage between your dead son and a living person — where exactly do you imagine the room to pinch pennies is?"
"Ah..."
"If it's beyond you, go home. Even without you, there's no shortage of women to marry him to."
"N-no, please!"
"I said get out!"
The shaman's eyes glittered, hard and venomous.
"At the very worst, you're telling me you don't care if your son becomes a mongdalgwi — a bachelor ghost — doomed to drift through the netherworld forever. And you — do you think the woman I've matched for him is some common thing? A good family, her road ahead paved smooth — you think you're the only one begging me for her hand?"
"I'm s-sorry. I'm so sorry."
The woman groveled until it was almost pitiable to watch. Her forehead met the floor, and her whole body quivered as though the shaman before her were a god incarnate.
"I spoke out of turn! I'll raise the money somehow — please. Please."
"Have it here by next week."
The woman swallowed one great dry gulp and strained to lift her trembling face. She didn't dare ask — not with the shaman's temper balanced on a knife's edge. How much, exactly, was she supposed to prepare?
"The cost of marrying off one son is plain as day. What is there even to mull over?"
The middle-aged woman squeezed her eyes shut. Then, with great effort, she nodded, got her feet under her, pressed her palms together toward the shaman, and bowed deep at the waist.
"I understand..."
"Don't take it so ill. You're binding your house to a good family — that fortune will find its way into yours as well."
"Th-thank you."
"The living have to keep on living. Isn't that so?"
Among the "living," as the shaman meant the word, those fated to marry the dead were not included.
Tools, and a means of making money. To this shaman, the unmarried men and women of good saju were exactly that.
"Yes! Yes!"
As though she'd caught one small hope in the depths of despair, the woman's face lit up.
"Run along, then."
"Yes! Yes!"
The moment the woman — bowing over and over — had stepped out of the dangjip,
Bang.
the inner room's door swung open, and out came a young woman with a bob haircut and a razor-sharp gaze.
"Dirt-poor bitch."
She spat it with the venom of a knife strapped to her tongue — the shaman's own daughter.
Her name was Lee Ju-hyeon. Also, as it happened, a friend of Buyong's. A woman who talked the saju out of everyone around her through lies, and who owned — at last count — five cell phones.
Flip.
The shaman drew out a thick notebook and, underlining one of the names packed edge to edge across the page, said:
"A client all the same. Watch that mouth."
"Mom, you should be choosier about who you take on, too. What even was that? Even her way of talking is grimy."
The shaman glanced at her bob-haired daughter, her mouth curling at one corner.
"More to the point — are the preparations coming along?"
"Not easily. I've already milked everyone around me dry."
"Then next time, go sit in on a church. Poke around Cheongdam-dong while you're at it, and look into the department store culture centers. Mom will give you the money."
"You think?"
Ju-hyeon smiled at her mother, Jo Myeong-suk — sly, and faintly bewitching.
Mother and daughter had been running this trade for years. Ju-hyeon gathered up the saju of young men and women and handed them off to Myeong-suk, and Myeong-suk took no small payment from those who wanted a ghost wedding and matched the living to the dead.
"That friend from before, you remember. There's never been another like her."
"Who? Ahh — her."
Buyong came to mind, and Ju-hyeon shook her head as though the very thought revolted her.
"Do you know how many years I ground away trying to tear that woman's saju loose? Absolutely loathsome."
"And yet she went off as a bride at a handsome price."
"And you went through plenty of grief over her too, remember?"
"Ugh, don't even. Her dead boyfriend's spirit was so devoted it just had to keep circling her neighborhood. Even loosening it for a short while cost us grief of every kind. So — has she been in touch?"
"Who knows? Said she was going abroad and dumped the number."
"Our poor daughter suffers so. If only more young people would hurry up and die, she might finally get some ease."
The easiest matches of all were dead to dead. And dead to dead meant the young had to die, and die, and die.
Which was why, whenever some great calamity struck, the two of them had actually clapped their hands in celebration.
Died well! Died well!That's it, that's it — keep dying!Fucking hell, why are they rescuing them?!Ooh! They're dropping. They're dropping!There — that one! Watch them fish the bodies out!
They had not been human. Not those two, not back then.
"And Mom — quit being so scrupulous about it. Just tether a whole bunch to one man. Easier, no?"
"That's how you invite ruin. When the brides and grooms you married off come shrieking through your dreams, the mess afterward never ends."
"Then we move house again. Simple."
"Shh."
The shaman said it low, glaring at the door. Then she jerked her chin toward the inner room, and Ju-hyeon, throwing a glance at the front entrance, slipped inside.
And a short while later—
"Hey, this is the place, right?"
"Whoa, it's creepy. First time I've been anywhere like this."
Two young women's voices drifted in. Eyes on the door, Myeong-suk spread her notebook open and settled herself.
Knock, knock. A fist rapped at the door.
"What are you waiting for! Get in here, quick."
Myeong-suk barked, and the door opened.
Two women in the prime of marriageable age. Shin Jeong-ah and Lee Ha-yoon.
"Hello. We'd like to have our saju read, please."
At Ha-yoon's words, Myeong-suk swallowed down a sinister, scheming smile.