The Lovesick Ghost
"Look at this, Manager Kang."
It was the next day, and Kang Hyeong-seok had only just settled Shin Jeong-ah into the passenger seat outside her apartment.
"Here! This — look at this!"
Shin Jeong-ah, who had seemed restless even before climbing into the car, thrust her phone out at him. Kang Hyeong-seok studied the mark stamped into her window glass, then clicked his tongue.
"So it came to you after all."
"What?"
"The ghost Lee Jang-woo claims to have seen. It appears it came looking for you last night."
It seemed she had kept the protective talisman on her person, just as he'd asked. If she hadn't, she would have been in for a world of hurt by now. The worst scenario he could picture was Shin Jeong-ah, entranced by the ghost, hurling herself out of her own window.
"Hoo."
Kang Hyeong-seok exhaled like a man with a splitting headache, and the security guard standing by the parking barrier shot them one uneasy glance after another.
"Let's get moving."
"Uh, y-yeah."
"There's nothing attached to you right now, so try to relax."
"Haa..."
Once Shin Jeong-ah had fastened her seatbelt, Kang Hyeong-seok turned the car around and pulled out of the apartment complex. Only then did the guard's expression ease; watching him recede in the rearview mirror, Kang Hyeong-seok finally spoke.
"I believe my hunch was right."
"Hm?"
"It's not dongti — divine retribution. It's the ghost that's attached to that man."
"W-wait, hold on. It came after me yesterday, didn't it?"
Thanks to the talisman, Shin Jeong-ah had been able to fall asleep without knowing a thing. But what if she hadn't had it? What if she'd left it lying somewhere away from her skin? The mere thought was enough to make her shudder down to her bones.
"There was a strange ghostly stench in that motel where Lee Jang-woo was staying."
Shin Jeong-ah swallowed drily and listened hard as Kang Hyeong-seok went on in an even, unhurried voice.
"It smelled like rotting perfume. A woman's ghost — and she's fixated on Lee Jang-woo."
"Th-then why did it come after me? Huh?"
She must have felt dreadfully wronged, judging by how her voice climbed higher with every word.
"Because she's a sangsagwi."
"A what?"
"A lovesick ghost. They say that people who die of lovesickness — or who die still obsessively loving someone — become sangsagwi."
Which was precisely the problem. A lovesick ghost refuses to let go of the one it clings to, and it grows fiercely hostile toward any living person who tries to get close to its beloved. Aside from never having been sealed by a formal betrothal, it was no different from a ghost marriage — and that boded nothing good for the living.
"Haa..."
Shin Jeong-ah rubbed at the corners of her eyes as though she'd seen every misfortune the world had to offer, and by the time her hand fell away, her gaze was blazing with anger.
"This is infuriating. Tsk."
He understood. Her constitution was unusually open to spiritual influence to begin with, and to have something like this happen in the one place that was supposed to be safe — of course it grated on her. Shin Jeong-ah, of all people, could hardly help being sensitive about seeing ghosts at home.
She'd suffered one ordeal after another in her own houses, after all...
In her first place, a ghost had crawled across the ceiling. In her second, a talisman had made her life miserable. And now a lovesick ghost had come banging on her window.
"So today we're going back to that Lee Jang-woo again?"
Perhaps because she now knew who the source of it all was, she didn't bother attaching any honorific to the name.
"No. I spoke with Executive Director Shin before we set out."
"And...?"
"That man hasn't been a heavy equipment operator for long."
"Hm?"
"He apparently dabbled in all sorts of work before that, but something in his old résumé struck me as off."
Shin Yo-sep had evidently sensed something strange as well. He'd looked into the man's work history on his own and had even cross-referenced it with what his coworkers had to say about him.
"So where are we headed now?"
"Ansan."
A direction entirely removed from where Lee Jang-woo had been holed up.
"The people who worked with him liked him. Said he was tremendous fun at company drinks and knew the bar trade inside and out."
Shin Jeong-ah's face grew stiffer by the second. Clearly, she had caught on too.
"He used to work as a waiter in the bars, you see."
"Ah..."
With a look that said, well, that does track, Shin Jeong-ah tipped her head back and stared at the car's ceiling. Lee Jang-woo's fine features, and that strange, seductive air that hung about him — it did fit.
"So the place he used to work is in Ansan, then?"
She no longer even said his name.
Kang Hyeong-seok gave a heavy nod and answered as he steered toward the highway.
"Get some sleep if you can. I'll wake you when we arrive."
"No, come on. I'm fine."
Shin Jeong-ah hooked her elbow against the passenger window and rested her head on a clenched fist. A bar. A lovesick ghost. A woman. And Lee Jang-woo, once a waiter. An uneasy premonition came creeping in — that nothing pleasant would be waiting for them in Ansan.
Vrrrm.
When Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Jeong-ah reached the destination Shin Yo-sep had pinned for them, it was Shin Yo-sep himself who was waiting to greet them.
"What — why'd you two come?"
"Figured no one around here would know my face."
Kang Hyeong-seok looked him up and down. Black cotton slacks and a loud, flashy shirt — he looked nothing like an office worker, and nothing like Shin Yo-sep, executive director of Shinjin Construction. Add the expensive lighter flicking a flame onto his cigarette, and the man read, in all the wrong ways, like some chaebol family's spoiled son.
Which was exactly the point. On a street where the bars stood shoulder to shoulder.
"So? Did you eat?"
"Ah, we're fine. We had breakfast before we left."
"No lunch, though, hm?"
Shin Jeong-ah cut in to check the time on her phone — and it was, sure enough, the lunch hour.
"There's an Italian place just up ahead."
"That's a first. You, passing on pork."
"I'd rather not let any touch my mouth today."
Shin Yo-sep burned his cigarette down in a few quick drags and set off ahead of them. He, too, seemed to be chewing over something every bit as uneasy as they were. Then again, everything they'd gathered so far pointed the same direction. Several possibilities were already crowding his mind, and the ugliest of them was Lee Jang-woo's murder.
No. No, it won't come to that.
A sangsagwi. A lovesick ghost. A vengeful spirit trailing its killer would make sense — but what on earth could she see in chasing after the man who took her life?
His head a tangle, Kang Hyeong-seok rubbed his forehead. Then he followed Shin Yo-sep into the Italian restaurant.
Squeak.
When his palm stuck to the tabletop with a faint tack, he gathered the place wasn't exactly famous for its cooking.
"One salad, a wood-fired pizza, and a pasta for each of us?"
"Yes. Yes."
Shin Jeong-ah answered tightly, and Kang Hyeong-seok took the menu Shin Yo-sep passed over. Bolognese. Pomodoro. Pescatore. The unfamiliar words made him squint, but the friendly little descriptions beneath them put him at ease.
"I'll take this one. What about you, Manager Kang?"
"Any cream pasta's fine."
"Then one pollack roe cream pasta, and aglio e olio for me."
No sooner had the order gone in than the smell and hiss of onions sweating in olive oil drifted over from the kitchen.
Tap.
Kang Hyeong-seok filled the water glasses and set one before each of them, then opened his mouth with a grave look on his face.
"You know that guy — Lee Jang-woo. Did you check whether he has a criminal record?"
"That was the first thing I looked into. Clean."
"Phew."
"If he's a victim, then helping him is the right call. But if he's the perpetrator..."
Clatter. A server set down wood-fired garlic bread and a dish of olive oil laced with balsamic vinegar, and Shin Yo-sep's sentence hung unfinished for a moment.
"...then it's our job to put him down."
Viewed one way, it was a shockingly cold-blooded thing to say. So Kang Hyeong-seok glanced over at him as Shin Yo-sep took a sip of water — and Shin Yo-sep answered with a look that said he understood perfectly.
"If he were a bumaja — a demon's possessee — I'd put my life on the line for him even if he were a criminal."
But Lee Jang-woo was no bumaja.
"I'm simply doing my job. And right now, my job is keeping the business running without a scratch."
"...Right."
Kang Hyeong-seok felt much the same. There were so many people who needed help — and just as many wandering spirits who needed it too. He had no margin to spare for those who had no right to be saved. And yet the three of them sat at this one table waiting for their pasta, because the chance that Lee Jang-woo was an innocent victim was not something they could bring themselves to ignore.
"They say that when your karma piles up, Heaven itself comes to punish you."
Shin Yo-sep and Shin Jeong-ah, both reaching for the garlic bread, turned their eyes to him, and Kang Hyeong-seok went on as he cleared a space in the middle of the table.
"That punishment belongs to Heaven. It isn't something humans get to carry out."
Heaven deals the blow. But it is human hands that can reach out to catch the falling.
"So just in case — let's keep watching him right up to the end."
Shin Yo-sep answered with a nod, and Shin Jeong-ah, her face full of thought, carried a piece of garlic bread to her mouth. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the food arrived.
Clatter, clatter.
The meal proceeded under a less-than-cheerful sky of its own. Still, with work waiting for them afterward, nobody ate slowly. The salad vanished first, and the pasta and pizza dwindled away at much the same pace.
That was when it happened.
Rriing!
The Mudang Bang-ul — the sacred shaman bells — chimed inside the bag Kang Hyeong-seok had set down at his feet. Shin Yo-sep appeared not to hear it, but Shin Jeong-ah must have caught the sound, for her eyes shifted. Then she spotted a passerby moving along the sidewalk behind Kang Hyeong-seok, beyond the restaurant's glass wall.
"Oh!"
"What is it?"
"There — over there!"
Shin Jeong-ah wiped her lips with her napkin and pointed out the window, and the gazes of both men snapped to the spot.
Lee Jang-woo?
The man who had been shaking in terror in that motel only yesterday was walking past them now like a corpse.
"Give me the card!"
Shin Yo-sep took the wallet Kang Hyeong-seok thrust at him and immediately drew out the same black credit card he'd handed over the day before. Then he threw the two of them a look that said: go, quickly.
"I'll call you!"
"We're going ahead!"
Bag in hand, Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Jeong-ah broke into a run straight after Lee Jang-woo. Careful not to close the gap too far and careful not to be seen, the two of them tailed him with such caution that they rationed even their breathing.
Where on earth is he going? What really happened at that bar where he used to work? Was that lovesick ghost someone connected to you?
Kang Hyeong-seok ran his tongue across the lingering taste of pasta in his mouth, and his eyes had just narrowed to slits when —
Thud.
Lee Jang-woo stopped walking.
By the roadside, not far from the strip of bars.
Vroooom!
It was a lonely stretch of carriageway, and the cars tearing through it showed no mercy on the gas. Lee Jang-woo stood staring blankly at the road, and his lips began to tremble. Then he buried his face in his palms, and through lips running with clear drool, he murmured a sobbing whisper.
"F— it, that son of a bitch... Kim Hee-hyun, f—ing..."
VRRROOOM! The wind thrown off by a passing car rippled through Lee Jang-woo's clothes.
And as Shin Jeong-ah silently mouthed the words — Kim Hee-hyun? — Kang Hyeong-seok's gaze slid to the road.
So it's you. Kim Hee-hyun.
Thud, sccrraaape. Thud, sccrraaape.
A lovesick ghost whose entire body was caked in dried, blackened blood. Her lower half was simply gone, and the scraps of clothing that clung to her torso were torn away scandalously — she was dragging herself up the road toward Lee Jang-woo.
"Hnnnnnngh! Hnnnnnngh."
As Lee Jang-woo moaned in torment, the lovesick ghost — who had come toward him as if he were the most precious thing in all the world — crawled up the length of his body. And watching her cling to his back like a small child, Kang Hyeong-seok's brow furrowed deeper than ever.
Now, at last, I see it.
The history behind that lovesick ghost was coming into view. The bond between one man and one lovesick ghost. And, too, the full weight of Lee Jang-woo's sins.