What Was in the Warehouse
The engine droned on. The next day, when they set out for their destination, Shin Jeong-ah was riding in the seat beside Kang Hyeong-seok. His mood sat uneasily in his chest, but the scenery, by contrast, was far from unpleasant.
They were in Hongcheon, in Gangwon Province.
"I didn't know places like this even existed." Shin Jeong-ah murmured as she watched the trees stream past beneath the blue sky, and Kang Hyeong-seok nodded in agreement.
But the feeling was not good. The engine hummed on. The lush-leaved trees flowing past, the clouds overhead—both looked peaceful enough at a glance, yet the energy itself was anything but.
'Something's wrong with this land...'
Kang Hyeong-seok knew next to nothing about geomancy. But he knew a little about cursed ground. The energy of the mountains, the structure of the terrain, the aura of the site itself—everything his eyes could see read as negative.
"Why the serious face?"
Shin Jeong-ah, who had been gazing out the window with her chin propped in her hand, asked with careful lightness, and Kang Hyeong-seok sucked in his lower lip before opening his mouth.
"The land here is bad."
"...Huh?"
Shin Jeong-ah's face registered pure disbelief, as if to say, The scenery is this beautiful? Kang Hyeong-seok ran his tongue across a canine tooth and continued.
"It's strange, isn't it? Land this ill-omened ought to be crawling with stray spirits."
He shifted his gaze to the trees stretched in long ranks along both sides of the road. Willows. Willows symbolize yin energy.
"Hoo..." He let out a slow breath. Yin energy wasn't inherently bad, but even those trees seemed deliberately planted, and the thought only tangled his mind further. Either way, they were driving toward an answer—whether this place really was as strange as his unease insisted.
"If it's at all possible, I'll make sure nothing happens."
Kang Hyeong-seok said with quiet force, and Shin Jeong-ah, who knew better than anyone at the company what that meant, nodded without a word. Then she laced her fingers together as if in prayer, as though hoping above all else that she wouldn't have to witness anything gruesome.
"You will arrive near your destination shortly."
Gravel crunched beneath the tires as they rolled onto a thickly graveled lot. Kang Hyeong-seok took in the nearby buildings, the objects draped in blue tarps—and beside them, jars stacked in heaping piles.
"Well, they do make funeral goods. Very old-school, huh."
"They make burial shrouds here too, all right."
Around the tarps, neatly folded paper boxes sat stacked in tidy rows, making clear what had been delivered. Ramie and hemp cloth—the raw materials needed to weave a proper burial shroud.
The door swung open, and a man with a full head of white hair emerged. For an instant, bewilderment flashed across Shin Jeong-ah's face.
"Huh. He looks so kind."
At first glance the man could have passed for a master craftsman, and Kang Hyeong-seok was thinking much the same. Stepping out of the car, the two of them bowed to the man who appeared to be the owner.
"Hello. We're from Daejeong Mulsan."
"Thank you for making the long trip. Let's talk inside."
Following the owner as he led them to the office, Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Jeong-ah took a closer look around. There were no other employees, and the kiln for firing urns had gone cold.
"I take it today's a day off?"
"Ah, I had meetings backed up today, so I gave the staff the day off."
"Meetings?"
"Yes. Actually, I've been reaching out to a few other companies as well. We can go over the details inside."
A trace of apology had settled into the owner's eyes as he opened the office door.
The door swung wide. The office, too, was cramped and worn, and Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Jeong-ah sat down on a sofa beside a narrow cabinet that looked a good twenty years past its manufacture.
With a soft clatter of cups, the owner prepared jujube tea on top of a mini fridge and struck up a conversation.
"A bit surprised, aren't you? With the factory closed and all."
"Not at all."
Shin Jeong-ah answered in her polished, client-facing tone, and the owner chuckled and shook his head. Then he carried over three cups of jujube tea and set them on the table, where binders sat neatly arranged.
"I prepared these. Please, have a look."
Holding out a binder with one hand, tea in the other, the owner watched as Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Jeong-ah opened it with the same thought in mind. Financial statements and every manner of supporting document. He seemed prepared to lay all his cards on the table—not a common thing.
"I suppose he has his reasons."
"Who in this world doesn't?"
Even with that faint smile, deep furrows creased the owner's face. He looked so much like Kwak Young-ho that Shin Jeong-ah pressed her lips firmly shut.
Pages rustled as Shin Jeong-ah began going through the documents, and the owner went on, sipping his jujube tea.
"As you can see, I've gotten old. I intend to hand the business over to someone I know."
"The owner's changing?"
"Yes."
So he really does intend to open everything up. Kang Hyeong-seok studied the man's face for a moment, then picked up another set of papers Shin Jeong-ah had left on the table. He didn't read them, though, keeping his attention on the conversation.
"As you can imagine, a change in the contracting party puts us in a somewhat awkward position. Would you mind if I asked why?"
"As I said just now, keeping the business running has become more than I can manage."
The owner smiled bitterly and wrapped both hands around his cup. He didn't seem aware of it, but Kang Hyeong-seok found himself wondering whether that teacup, too, had come off the same line as the urns. Its surface and finish matched them unsettlingly well.
"I've worked honestly my whole life. You'll see for yourself when you look everything over later—there isn't a single strand of nylon in my shrouds."
"Nylon?"
At the unfamiliar territory, Shin Jeong-ah looked up from the documents, and the owner nodded slowly.
"Now and then, people without a conscience mix nylon into even the expensive shrouds."
"Oh—the raw materials..."
"It keeps costs down. A wicked practice. Once the deceased is buried, the hemp rots away fast, and only the nylon is left."
As though the very thought horrified him, the owner's brow drew tight.
"And then it comes to look exactly as if the dead have been caught in a spider's web. How uncomfortable must that be for them?"
An image surfaced in Shin Jeong-ah's mind. A bleached skeleton with blackened nylon thread wound around its bones like a spiderweb. The picture was so viscerally wrong that she grimaced before she could stop herself.
"That's why we never make a single shroud carelessly."
"...I see."
Sincerity bled through his voice. Shin Jeong-ah, who had half-suspected the man of running some kind of con, clicked her tongue at herself, a bitter taste in her mouth.
That was when it happened.
"And the person inheriting the business—what sort of person might they be?"
Kang Hyeong-seok's question pulled both their gazes toward him.
"You needn't worry. It's someone I've known a very long time. But they've never run a business before, so I'm trying to have everything prepared in advance."
If that was the case, his wanting to join hands with a company like Daejeong Mulsan made sense. With distribution taken care of, he could devote himself to production alone. He wouldn't have to pour so much energy into the business, and the convenience would improve dramatically—not a bad arrangement at all.
And yet something kept nagging at him.
"Forgive me, but would it be possible to look over the production facilities as well?"
He hadn't expected them to press that far, apparently. The owner's face stiffened, if only for a moment.
"...Very well."
The owner said heavily and moved to rise, pushing off his knee. Shin Jeong-ah reached for her jujube tea—
Thump.
Kang Hyeong-seok had nudged the tip of her foot, hidden beneath the table, and now gave a small shake of his head the owner couldn't see. Don't drink it.
The message came through clearly, and Shin Jeong-ah's hand drifted away from the tea.
'Why?'
Her questioning gaze bore into him, but Kang Hyeong-seok only shook his head slowly. Because brief as it had been, he had caught a strange smell rising from the jujube tea.
'A fishy stink.'
Unless it was just the water, something ritualistic might have been mixed into it.
The lock clacked open. The owner undid the latch, and Kang Hyeong-seok stepped inside first. Even in broad daylight, the factory interior was pitch-black—and it felt deliberate.
"This is where we make the shrouds. The urns are made outside."
Click. When the owner flipped the lights on, the factory brightened. Facilities for weaving hemp cloth from raw fiber, tanks of chemical solution, a materials warehouse set off to one side. Kang Hyeong-seok examined each in turn, then pointed at the warehouse.
"Might we see inside as well?"
The owner checked his wristwatch.
"Ah—someone else is due to arrive shortly, you see."
"Just a formality. It'll only take a moment."
Kang Hyeong-seok smiled the smile of a man thinking, I work in sales—I know how to wear a face like this. A smile that looked friendly while hiding everything underneath.
"...Very well. But the materials are extremely sensitive to humidity. I can't let you stay long."
"Would photographs be alright?"
"That much is fine."
The owner opened the warehouse door, and the hum of the temperature and humidity controls greeted them first. The moment he set one foot inside—
'What the—'
Talismans on the walls. Their design was unfamiliar. They weren't shaped like any talisman used in Korea. Still, he had a fair idea of what they were meant to do.
To the naked eye, it was an ordinary materials warehouse. But what his Spiritual Eye showed him was entirely different. From ceiling to floor. In every corner, without a gap. Spirits lay tangled together, stacked in dense, orderly layers.
'What the hell... what kind of place is this...'
Like carelessly tangled balls of thread, the spirits' limbs were knotted into one another, and they wept tears of blood as they stared at Kang Hyeong-seok. His breath caught. Bitterness surged up the back of his throat, but he forced it down. The owner was standing right behind him.
'I can't let it show.'
Kang Hyeong-seok deliberately kept his eyes off the ceiling as he took out his phone. Then, with the owner watching, he stepped into the warehouse and raised the camera.
Click, click, click. Having photographed the stacked materials, he walked back out of the warehouse as if nothing were wrong.
"Thank you."
"Is there anything else you'll be needing?"
"Nothing for the moment. I'll need to report up the chain first. I'll be in touch as soon as we reach a decision internally."
"Oh—of course, of course."
Accepting the owner's business card, Kang Hyeong-seok returned a polite, smiling bow.
"We'll get out of your hair, then—you must be busy."
"Of course. Thank you again for coming all this way."
"Not at all. I hope it's good news. You have a good rest of your day, now."
Kang Hyeong-seok offered a courteous farewell and climbed into the car with Shin Jeong-ah. The doors thumped shut, and the moment they did, her questioning gaze locked onto him.
"What was that? Why the rush? And why didn't you hand him one of your cards?"
"Let's just get back first."
Unlike when he'd been talking with the owner, Kang Hyeong-seok's voice was low.
"...Yeah. Okay."
Shin Jeong-ah buckled her seatbelt, her face gone stiff. In the meantime, Kang Hyeong-seok swung the wheel around and set the navigation for the office, heading back the way they'd come.
The engine rose to a steady hum. Fast enough not to draw suspicion—but still quicker than usual. Watching him drive, Shin Jeong-ah's brows knitted together.
"What is it? What was in the warehouse?"
"Hoo!"
Letting out a long, hot breath, Kang Hyeong-seok glanced in the rearview mirror at the owner still watching him, then shook his head.
"We can't sign a contract with that place."
"Why...?"
"He seems like a good man. But it's a place we can't afford to get tangled up in."
"...What was in the warehouse?"
"There was something."
Kang Hyeong-seok answered gravely, recalling the scene from the warehouse, and his lips pressed shut before parting again.
"Something felt off. Strangely enough, I hadn't seen a single spirit anywhere in this whole area."
"...Huh."
"They were all gathered in there."
Just remembering it was horrifying. The way those spirits had lain tangled together, stacked in tight layers inside that cramped warehouse.
"How long has that place been around?"
"From the documents earlier... about twenty years..."
Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed dryly.
'Far too long.'
How many shrouds and urns must have come out of that place in all those years? And how many bodies must have been wrapped in those shrouds, sealed in those urns?
Suppressing the nausea that kept rising, strange and unbidden, Kang Hyeong-seok checked the rearview mirror. A considerable distance had opened up between them—yet for some reason, the owner was still watching his car.