A Ghost Born of a Lying Tongue
It was broad daylight.
Which meant this was the hour of humans, not the hour of ghosts.
Bang!
Shin Yo-sep kicked open the door of the Italian restaurant as he stormed out, and there, far down the road, he spotted Kang Hyeong-seok, Shin Jeong-ah, and Lee Jang-woo.
The very next moment—
Ziiiiing.
"Yes, Secretary Cho."
With his gaze locked on the three of them, Shin Yo-sep answered the call, and Secretary Cho's low, unhurried murmur came through the line.
"Executive Director. I've done some digging on Mr. Lee Jang-woo."
The man in question was right there, far down the road.
Shin Yo-sep's eyes fixed on Lee Jang-woo as Secretary Cho's voice went on.
"The bar where he used to work was no clean establishment. And Mr. Lee Jang-woo did more there than simply wait tables."
Not a flattering way to describe the host bar trade. Secretary Cho had phrased it delicately, but it was a business that plied men eager to flaunt their money with expensive liquor and the company of women.
"Haaah." Only after Shin Yo-sep exhaled a long sigh did he speak again. "...I'm sorry—what did you say?"
"The victim was a woman in her twenties, someone who had worked alongside Mr. Lee Jang-woo. From what I hear, it was serious enough that people still speak of it to this day."
"And Mr. Lee Jang-woo had no part in it?"
"By all accounts, he was one of the witnesses."
That made no sense. Then why had that lingering spirit latched onto Lee Jang-woo?
"Executive Director?"
Secretary Cho's voice probed at Shin Yo-sep's silence.
Even so, Yo-sep said nothing. He simply shifted his gaze to Kang Hyeong-seok.
"I'll call you back."
He murmured the words and hung up on the spot.
He was still standing in front of the restaurant. They hadn't gone far; closing the distance would have been easy. And yet Shin Yo-sep remained rooted there like a statue, doing nothing but watch Kang Hyeong-seok.
Take a good look. See for yourself what really happened.
Kang Hyeong-seok was turning his eyes from Lee Jang-woo toward the roadway. As if, with a spiritual power no ordinary mind could fathom, he meant to peer into the past itself.
Screeeeee—! BOOM!
And that was exactly what he was doing.
With a roar only Kang Hyeong-seok could hear, Lee Jang-woo's memory began to play.
"KYAAAAAAAH!"
"AAAAAAAH!"
Drunks crossing the street shrieked in terror; a few grabbed the trees along the sidewalk and doubled over, retching.
So now you decide to show me.
Without a word, Kang Hyeong-seok posed the question to his Momjusin—the patron deity who had kept his silence all this while. It would mean look. See with your own eyes and judge whether this was truly a soul worth saving.
And so Kang Hyeong-seok fixed his gaze on Lee Jang-woo within the vision.
"Hah—hah! Heuk!"
A crosswalk in the dead of night. He hadn't been far from the accident, so droplets of blood had spattered Lee Jang-woo's face and clothes as well.
"...Fuck. Fuck."
They knew each other.
Kim Hee-hyun lay flung across the asphalt where the accident had scattered her—and Lee Jang-woo turned his back and ran without a shred of hesitation.
This was a vision granted by the Momjusin. Every detail burned clear, so clear that Lee Jang-woo's inner heart and emotions came through untouched.
So you were the cause of the accident.
None of the bystanders had noticed—not even the driver—but Kang Hyeong-seok could see it plainly. The cause had been the violent shake of Lee Jang-woo's arm, tearing free of Kim Hee-hyun as she clung to him.
"Hah, hah! Heu! Heuu!"
Passersby flinched out of his way as Lee Jang-woo tore down the street at a dead sprint, blood still spattered across his face.
He was laughing.
Laughing because he believed he was finally free.
Laughing because the thing that had sickened him for so long had finally torn away.
"Haha! Hahahahaha!"
He laughed so hard he didn't even register the stares thrown his way.
"A-an ambulance! Somebody call an ambulance!"
"AAAAAH!"
"Uuueegh!"
People were crowding around Kim Hee-hyun—around her upper half and her lower half, now two separate things.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Palms hammered against the car that had caused it all, while the driver exhaled breath reeking of alcohol, his body and eyes shaking without pause.
Through it all, Kang Hyeong-seok looked down at Kim Hee-hyun with pity in his chest.
Should it be called a mercy, that she had died at once? Or a misfortune, that even in death her ears remained open to the world?
Her gaze, which had never even sensed what was coming, was hollow.
"Hahahahaha!"
The instant Lee Jang-woo's distant laughter reached her ears, the tears pooled at the corners of her eyes spilled down her cheeks.
"What was your relationship with him?"
Kang Hyeong-seok posed the question as he looked upon Kim Hee-hyun, fallen on the cold asphalt.
"What were you to this man?"
Just then—as if in answer to his question—the world around them changed.
The back door of the bar where Lee Jang-woo and Kim Hee-hyun had worked.
"O-Oppa!"
"Aish, fuck! Get off me! Fuck! Hey!"
When Lee Jang-woo raised his fist in threat, Kim Hee-hyun threw up her arms to shield her face. Bruises stood out dark along them.
Watching her tremble, Lee Jang-woo's eyes twisted with fury—and yet, strangely, the feelings swimming in them were fear and irritation.
"Shit, just let go of me! Why can't you take a hint! Hey—you think I was good to you because I actually liked you? Huh?"
"O-Oppa, don't do this. Don't throw me away. Please."
"Throw you away? We were never anything of the sort to begin with! Fuck!"
Kim Hee-hyun's whole body shuddered, and the tears came flooding out. Even that only inflamed Lee Jang-woo further.
"God, what is wrong with you? Why are you crying! Hey!"
"Heuk, heuk! Heuu..."
"We were just fooling around, that's all! Just—just it was nothing!"
No.
Perhaps it had been nothing to Lee Jang-woo. For Kim Hee-hyun, it never could be.
Thwack! Wham! Thwack!
The scene shifted again. An old, crumbling villa.
"Gack! Kkh—!"
Kim Hee-hyun, being beaten by her father. A middle schooler, nothing more. A young girl still in her school uniform.
"Go get your mother! I said go get her! You little bastard!"
CRASH!
A poor household, a violent father, beatings without end. Love that was never filled. A hunger to be acknowledged.
And it was Lee Jang-woo who came to fill that emptiness...?
The scene changed once more. A cramped private room in the bar.
Heh heh heh.
"You're the new girl, right? Anything you're curious about, just come ask me anytime."
Lee Jang-woo held out a glass of whiskey. Barely of age, Kim Hee-hyun accepted it with a bashful face, and Lee Jang-woo smiled the smile of a good, kind man.
"If you can't down it in one go, sip it slow. And hey—you really are pretty."
"Oh—no, I'm not."
Even as she blushed, Lee Jang-woo's tongue never stopped. And that was the poison in her. That tongue, its true face buried deep, toyed with the heart of a girl starving for love.
"Don't hang around that bastard."
What appeared next was the bar's back door again. Plastic crates stacked with empty bottles, and a night street where spit and cigarette butts lay heaped along the ground.
"Wh-why?"
"Why? Why do you think? That bastard is trash. A son of a bitch."
"He is not! Don't you dare talk about my oppa that way!"
"Listen to her. Hey, look at this."
The woman who had been talking with Kim Hee-hyun started a recording on her phone and clamped a cigarette between her lips.
Click-click—fwoosh!
The lighter's flame and the burning tip lit her scowling face red, and from the phone came the voices of this same woman and Lee Jang-woo.
"How long are you planning to keep hanging around Hee-hyun?"
"The fuck. It hasn't even started yet."
"Don't tell me you're doing it again?"
"Again? What do you mean, again..."
"Don't. She's a poor kid."
"Noona, you know how this world works. She's practically begging, 'please, spend some money on me'—only a fucking idiot wouldn't milk that dry."
"Hey..."
"Just once. I'll pull every bit of credit she has and get one loan cashed out. A few thousand at most—she can pay that back in no time."
"You piece of garbage."
"If you're going to nag, hang up."
Click.
The recording cut off. Kim Hee-hyun's hand, wrapped around the phone, would not stop trembling.
"N-no. This isn't true. It's not."
"You know his voice better than anyone."
The woman took a long, sour drag on her cigarette and spat onto the ground.
"That bastard saved this and sat on it, just waiting for you to cross the line once so he could drown you in it. Pull yourself together and dump him. There's still time."
Kim Hee-hyun's body shook with the shock of it.
Now she knew everything there was to know about Lee Jang-woo.
And still, she loved him.
...Haah.
The human heart is not strong. That is why, for every one of us, a moment of weakness is always waiting somewhere ahead.
And there are those who come creeping toward that moment like evil spirits, looking for someone to strip bare.
Lee Jang-woo, who had come to Kim Hee-hyun, was exactly that kind of creature.
Vrrrrm.
A car engine rumbled, and every vision ended at once.
The world was bright midday again. Lee Jang-woo stared at the place where Kim Hee-hyun had died, then buried his face in his hands.
"Manager Kang...?"
Shin Jeong-ah's cautious voice came from behind him.
Kang Hyeong-seok turned, shook his head without a word, then moved his gaze back to Lee Jang-woo.
Two choices remained to him now.
Help Lee Jang-woo.
Or act for Kim Hee-hyun's sake.
Hehehe. Hahaha.
He heard Kim Hee-hyun laughing—the laughter of a sangsagwi, a lovesick ghost.
A person becomes a ghost according to the circumstances of their death. Just as one steeped in grudges becomes a vengeful spirit, Kim Hee-hyun, who had loved Lee Jang-woo, had become a lovesick one.
Do you still love him, even now...?
Even knowing it was never love to begin with?
Even knowing he only ever used you?
And still—after everything—you mean to believe the lies that soothed your wounds for a handful of fleeting moments?
...How cruel.
Her fate felt merciless—Kim Hee-hyun, toyed with by Lee Jang-woo, turned into a lovesick ghost out of feelings that were never allowed to reach their end.
Gulp.
Swallowing down saliva that tasted strangely bitter, Kang Hyeong-seok started walking.
Toward Lee Jang-woo.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
His footsteps rang out heavy with feeling, and Lee Jang-woo's eyes snapped to him—then he stumbled backward in alarm, toward the roadway.
HOOOOONK! Eeech!
Kang Hyeong-seok seized his arm and hauled him back, lips twisting as he looked into the man's eyes.
"Now I know everything."
"Uh—uhh. H-how? Here, of all places?"
"There's something far more important, isn't there."
Lee Jang-woo's pupils shook violently, as though he were staring at a ghost himself.
Don't make that face.
You have no right to it.
"Mr. Lee Jang-woo. What you suffer is not dongti—divine retribution for a broken taboo."
Lee Jang-woo flinched hard, eyes flying wide open.
"What clings to you is a sangsagwi, a lovesick ghost. And her name is Kim Hee-hyun."
"...A s-sangsagwi?"
"A lingering spirit born of your own silver tongue."
"...Wh-what are you— No! No!"
Lee Jang-woo's entire body shuddered.
Just as Kim Hee-hyun's had, whenever his fists came down on her.
"Not even a cheondo—the rite that guides the dead to heaven—is possible. How could it be, when being attached to you is the only happiness she knows?"
"A-Aaah!"
Thump.
His legs gave out, and Lee Jang-woo sagged to the ground, swaying. From a distance, Shin Jeong-ah silently mouthed a curse and looked away.
Shin Yo-sep, watching them, drew his clenched fist in against his chest. His expression had sunk deep, like a man offering a requiem for Kim Hee-hyun.
"I will not help you. Stay as you are now, until the moment your life ends."
Lee Jang-woo's face crumpled into something wretched. His lips split into an ugly gape, and his eyes turned desperate.
"P-please. Please. H-help me. Help me. Please."
"Mr. Lee Jang-woo."
"PLEASE! Fuck!"
The curse came out with his face mangled in misery.
"Please! Get this fucking ghost off me, you son of a bitch!"
He screamed it like a man in the grip of a seizure, then flung his arms around Kang Hyeong-seok's thigh.
"Please, please! I'm going to die like this! I can't sleep, I can't even eat! I'm really going to die! The living have to live! Isn't that how it's supposed to be!"
"No."
Kang Hyeong-seok went on in a voice with every feeling pressed flat, looking down at the man clinging to him.
"You do not deserve to be saved."
He was not a man who had any right to receive help.
Having said those words, Kang Hyeong-seok gazed down at him with eyes like ice.