A Trace Left Behind
The golden holiday had come to an end.
He hadn't been able to rest the whole way through, but Kang Hyeong-seok had spent what time remained with his parents before heading back. He'd managed a single dinner with Shin Jeong-ah, who had endured the ordeal at his side, and the company — dormant throughout the holidays — was running normally again. Everything had settled back into the everyday.
It was the same for Kang Hyeong-seok's maternal uncle, who worked as a safety manager on a construction site.
Bzzt!
The voices of laborers crackled out of the walkie-talkie.
"Materials coming through! Move it, move it!"
"What good are you doing standing there? Clear a spot first!"
Busy as ever today.
Even so, his uncle managed to pick out Mr. Kim, darting about amid all the frenzy.
"Mr. Kim!"
Mr. Kim, who had been sprinting hard enough to rattle his hard hat loose, caught the man's eye, dipped his head with a smile, and then tore off again toward wherever he'd been headed.
The uncle looked over the others as well. Every one of them had been hospitalized because of the Mugo liquor — every one of them a person who had miraculously regained consciousness in a single instant.
It was then that he heard them: employees lounging around the smoking spot just past the corner, burning through their cigarettes at an unhurried pace.
"Did you hear about it? I hear the holidays were pure mayhem for them."
"Ah, the whole hospitalization thing. They're calling it mass food poisoning."
"Come off it — food poisoning, and look how fast they're back at work."
"Desperate for the pay, all of them, I'd guess."
"I mean, look at Kim over there. Kim. Man's flying all over the site."
"Well, you know what — word is a shaman even came out."
"Yeah?"
"The safety manager's nephew supposedly called in shamans and had them do something or other."
At the mention of Kang Hyeong-seok, the uncle stopped dead in his tracks and pricked up his ears.
"His nephew's into that line of work? How did he even think to bring in shamans?"
"Beats me. But from what I hear, there really was something to it. The shamans were all bowing and scraping to the nephew, they say."
"Like our foreman groveling in front of the site manager?"
"Pwahahaha!"
The uncle felt the corners of his mouth pull upward.
Strictly speaking, he ought to have checked whether they were observing safety rules while they smoked. But they weren't the sort of men who needed that, and more than anything, it hardly felt like the moment for it. He walked on.
Above all, the biggest reason was surely this: they had nothing bad to say about Kang Hyeong-seok.
Fsshh.
"Whewww."
On the building's rooftop, Shin Jeong-ah burned a cigarette between her fingers as she scrolled through the news on her phone.
She had lived through something she would never forget for the rest of her life. That was no figure of speech — she had come within a hair's breadth of dying of fright, and some small part of her had half hoped the world might find out about it. So she had combed through the news, but no article connected to Cheongdeok Mountain turned up anywhere.
Shame. After everything I went through, too...
Shin Jeong-ah was still skimming the headlines, eyes brimming with disappointment, when a single article slipped into her sight — the way a surprise party does when someone pretends to have forgotten your birthday.
Tap.
A suspected case of animal abuse has occurred on Cheongdeok Mountain in Gangwon-do, and police have launched an investigation. The prime suspect is a man in his fifties surnamed Kim, who continues to claim innocence despite clear evidence of animal abuse. Police, however, have judged Mr. Kim's mental state to be unstable and intend to press on with the investigation.
In particular, police confirmed that Mr. Kim had purchased animal feed and traps in the area over a period of several years, from which they estimate he carried out illegal trapping activities over a long stretch of time. The police plan to examine Mr. Kim's motive and the circumstances of the crime in close detail to uncover further facts.
The case has sounded an alarm for society on the protection of animals, and a thorough police investigation is being called for.
The article was short.
And yet Shin Jeong-ah smiled, faintly, the way a person does when some knot in her chest she never knew was there finally comes undone.
So it wasn't that no one knew after all.
A small trace had been left in the world. It wasn't the kind of story to shout from the rooftops, but still — something had been left behind.
"Whewwww-!"
Her heart considerably lighter, Shin Jeong-ah exhaled a long ribbon of smoke. Then she tucked the phone into her pocket and pushed open the emergency door. Her steps going down the stairwell were light.
Pop!
"Hello, hello! Yoon-sang here! You all had a good holiday, right?"
Yoon-sang, the BJ of an internet channel devoted to horror and the occult, opened the broadcast in a bright voice.
"None of you have forgotten me, have you? It's been ages!"
The flood of chat made Yoon-sang smile bitterly.
Ever since he had crossed paths with Kang Hyeong-seok at that abandoned warehouse in Osan, he hadn't managed a single proper broadcast. Embarrassing as it was to admit, he still hadn't even found the man.
"Honestly, that's kind of what today's stream is about — but no, I haven't found him yet."
Yoon-sang leaned back deep into his chair and let out a long sigh.
"So, see — on the last day of the holiday, I went out there looking for stream material?"
"It's somewhere I'd had my eye on for a while. People said you could hear animal cries out there? And there'd been quite a few reports of ghost sightings around the area, too."
Yoon-sang shook his head with a look of pure regret.
"It's over. Done. That place doesn't seem to have anything left in it now."
"Nothing special happened. No, wait. Was it special?"
Racking his memory, Yoon-sang took a sip of water and opened his mouth.
"That mountain — you know the one. Seriously. For real. It was such a bizarre place."
"I went up the mountain, and about halfway up I spotted this strange building. There was no sign of anyone around, so I went in — the stench was unbelievable, and there were talismans plastered all over the walls."
It was such a fair point that Yoon-sang laughed before he could help it. He'd gone in broad daylight — had it been night, the place would have knocked him clean out of his senses. The more he mulled it over, the more certain he became that nobody short of a properly trained shaman should ever have set foot there.
"I'll pull up the photos, too."
Click, click.
Yoon-sang moved his mouse and brought the photos he'd taken inside up onto the stream.
"Oh, the thing lying down here? Looks like a person, right? Well, it isn't — somebody had bunched a blanket up into the shape of one. See, they even drew the whole face on. That is not normal. Here, this spot."
"Intense, right? I looked that talisman up afterward — supposedly it's for pinning a ghost in place? Can't vouch for how accurate that is, but they told me it's some seriously sinister stuff."
"No idea. I heard it called something like... 'flesh-turning'? Something like that. Though even that gentleman said he couldn't be sure. Oh, right — this is the talisman-covered blanket doll. Apparently whoever that thing represents is fated to wander the netherworld even after death."
The chat was so painfully relatable that Yoon-sang caught himself clapping.
"I was so scared I sprinted straight back down the mountain — and that's where I ran into the guy. The mister from the article."
The warehouse where the cursed effigies had hung. The place where the Mugo liquor had been brewed. Remembering Seok-woo, the man he'd crossed there, Yoon-sang's face scrunched up as though he'd glimpsed something filthy.
"Some raving lunatic was wandering around stark naked, reeking of booze. Wow. Even now I can't make heads or tails of it."
The memory surfaced then, and Yoon-sang warped one corner of his mouth as he shook his head.
"You know what that man did with the abused animals?"
"Well — apparently he tortured the animals and steeped them into Mugo liquor. You all know what Mugo liquor is, right? The kind where you soak things in booze."
Laughing, Yoon-sang waved it all away. Then he looked at the chat pouring up the screen and went on.
"I'm fine. I told you earlier — I went to the shrine and back. They said it's completely taken care of, so there's nothing to worry about."
"Hmm, apparently there really was something there. Anyway, they say it's all wrapped up. Nothing to worry about, nothing to lose sleep over. I got personally verified down at the shrine before I came home."
It was right after Yoon-sang declared this with such confidence.
A message had appeared in the chat window that he couldn't just brush off.
Watching the chat scroll up in a torrent, Yoon-sang's face went blank.
The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed — that Kang Hyeong-seok, the man who had performed the Cheondo-gut at the abandoned warehouse in Osan, had also been connected to Cheongdeok Mountain.
"Huh? For real? Then did I just... miss him?"
Yoon-sang chewed it over, and at the thought that they truly had slipped past each other, he seized his own hair and pulled.
"Ah, damn it! I should've gone just a little sooner! Argh!"
"Ugh, whatever! Everyone, I swear — someday I WILL find that man. For real! Wow, this is so unfair."
"Ah, forget it. I'm ending the stream. Thank you all so much for coming today, as always! I truly, genuinely love every one of you. Come back soon, you hear? You HAVE to!"
Yoon-sang killed the stream.
Then, staring at the PC webcam that had gone still, its little red light burning, he scrubbed roughly at his face with both hands.