The Soul in the Bamboo Tube
Gangwon-do.
A lone boat was cutting across an unnamed lake in a deep mountain valley.
Creeeak. Groaaan.
The man plying the oars wore a traditional white jeogori.
He looked to be in his late thirties, and the man in black seated before him had a face that seemed three years older still.
A bloody stench pulsed through the boat.
It came from the blood seeping out of a pig's carcass.
Creak. Creak.
When the boat reached the middle of the lake, the man in white bowed his head deeply to the man in black. Then he let go of the oars and took up a drumstick.
Doom-doom-doom-doom!
The drumbeat, a sound that seemed to rattle the very soul, quickened and spun a strange atmosphere through the air.
Doom-doom-doom! Doom-doom-doom-doom-doom!
Setting a steady rhythm, the drummer fixed his gaze on the man in black.
The rite was underway — one that had to stay hidden from every eye in the world, one at which no one could be allowed to open their mouth, and yet one that had to rouse the long-slumbering dead with the thunder of the drum.
With a sharp, wrenching pull, the man in black cinched a glass bottle filled with rice tight in white cord — and hurled it down into the lake.
It was a soul-fetching rite — a neokgeonjigi gut.
Clunk. Clatter.
Flung far out, the bottle was drawn along the lakebed by the white cord, scraping against the bottom.
What it knocked against were the bones of people and beasts.
Countless remains had lain submerged so long that their very shapes had crumbled away, and they crowded into the bottle's path like hands reaching up for help. But the bottle passed them by without a flicker of pity, pulled onward by the white cord.
"Fweeeeeee!"
Calling in the souls with his whistle, the man kept hauling on the cord.
Jangle, jangle, jangle.
Wrapped around the man's fingers like rings were the Mudang Bang-ul — the sacred shaman's bells.
Whistling, shaking his hand to set the bells ringing, he drew the bottle toward him.
Doom-doom-doom-doom!
The drummer's beat wove into the sound, and the air turned sinister and damp.
At the same time, the bloody reek sharpened until it seemed to come striding closer with every beat.
Jangle, jangle, jangle.
As the shaman bells crashed together in a feverish clamor, the man hauled the bottle up out of the lake.
The drummer froze — stick and breath alike — and looked up at him. Before the drummer's eyes, the man undid the cord and unscrewed the bottle's lid.
Shhhrrrrr.
The first thing to pour out was white rice.
Scooping a measure of it into his palm, he rang the bells and raked his fingers through the grains.
Tension deepened on the drummer's face, and ripples spread out from their boat like a serpent undulating across the water.
Then — a snag. The man raking through the rice stopped, a finger standing bolt upright.
Mixed among the grains was a clump of hair that had never been placed there.
Tiger fur, and human hair from a scalp.
The souls of those devoured by tigers on this land long ago — and of the tigers that devoured them.
"The soul has been fetched."
The man spoke in a voice rusted shut from long silence.
"Hwah!"
Doom-doom-doom-doom!
With a shout, the drummer thundered on the drum, and into that roar the man pushed out his breath. Exhaling air drawn up from the depths of his body, he murmured in a low, rapid voice.
"Miyuldu gapaje, miyuldu bullyakri."
Chanting the Esoteric Buddhist mantra, the man rubbed his palms together as though twisting a rope.
The tiger fur and the human hair began to tangle together.
From this moment on, this person's soul would become a Chang-gwi — a spirit enslaved to the tiger for all eternity — doomed to hunt down the next sacrifice in its master's place.
The resentment of a departed soul that could now never, ever pass on grew thicker in the air.
"Miyuldu pilsaga, miyuldu garanda, miyuldu pasacha."
Shaking the shaman bells, the man drove his mouth faster and faster; then he drew a bamboo tube from his pouch and slipped the tangled hair inside.
The moment he sealed the lid, the hostile energy that had saturated everything around them vanished as though it had never existed.
And the bamboo tube began to shake, as if it were alive.
"Ripen. When the time comes, I will draw you out. You have work to do — for this country, and for me."
Still murmuring against the bamboo tube, the man turned his head to the drummer.
"It is done. We go."
"What shall we do with the pig?"
The man shifted an indifferent gaze to the pig lying amidships. It had been brought along for a tasal gut, a rite of blood sacrifice — but with the day's business finished, it had lost all purpose.
"Feed it to the departed as their meal."
The drummer laid down his stick and shoved the pig toward the edge of the boat.
A short while later, from the spot where the pig had gone over, dark crimson blood spread across the water like fog — then died away just as fast.
As though the vengeful dead beneath the surface had swallowed it all, down to the very last drop of blood.
"Assistant Manager Kang, did you hear the news?"
It was the morning of a day one week after the Chang-gwi incident.
The moment Kang Hyeong-seok settled into his seat, Namgoong Min-ah at the desk beside his leaned her head over and struck up a conversation.
"What rumor is it this time?"
"Well — you know how Deputy General Manager Noh left, right?"
"Yes."
"A new job posting went up, and apparently it came down last night. Sounds like they've already found their person."
"Really?"
It was welcome news, and Hyeong-seok heard his own voice lift a little before he could help it.
"Yep, yep! It's a good thing. Right?"
"It is."
A company is a place where the seat someone fills may go unnoticed, but the seat they leave empty never does.
The past week had been a stretch of time that made Noh Soo-chul all the more hateable. Part of it was that he'd quit without so much as a handover; part of it was that, once people dug through his work, it turned out he had done nothing but push things aside — almost nothing had actually been handled. Things got so bad that even the ever-so-kind Department Head Kwak Young-ho was overheard growling, that bastard.
"I hope the new person is nice this time."
"As long as they're good at the job, that's enough. You don't know who's coming, though, do you?"
"Not a clue!"
Her energy was a delight. Hyeong-seok gave a small nod and opened his laptop on the desk. He plugged in the charger cable; the mouse ran on Bluetooth, so there was nothing else to hook up...
"Assistant Manager Kang!"
"Yes, sir."
Hyeong-seok, who had been about to connect the laptop to his monitor, turned to find Kwak Young-ho. Standing in the doorway, the man wore an exceedingly awkward expression — so awkward he looked like someone with something very hard to say.
"You're in early. Had your coffee yet?"
Seeing that Young-ho clearly had something on his mind, Hyeong-seok rose from his seat.
"Not yet, sir. And you?"
"Haven't yet myself. How about a cup?"
Sure enough, Young-ho looked like a man with something to say. Hyeong-seok mixed two paper cups of instant coffee in the pantry, and the two of them went up to the rooftop.
"Aigoo, what is with this weather? All gray and gloomy."
"They're saying rain this afternoon."
"Really? Aw, that's a shame."
One of Hyeong-seok's eyebrows arched as he raised his cup for a sip.
"Heading out on a call this afternoon, sir?"
"No, it's just... haah."
It was clearly hard for him to get out.
"It's all right. Just say whatever it is."
At those words, some of the worry crowding Kwak Young-ho's face lifted a little.
"I'm really sorry to do this to you."
"Did something happen...?"
"It's nothing much — or maybe it isn't nothing. You know we're hiring someone new, right?"
"Yes. You told me before that the posting went up."
He did not mention that Namgoong Min-ah had already told him the posting had come back down. It felt like the kind of thing that needed to come out of Kwak Young-ho's mouth anyway.
"You know Executive Director Shin Chang-yong?"
"...Pardon? Ah — yes."
One of the company's founding members. Older than Kwak Young-ho, he technically held a management post, but it was a title in name only; the man's real daily routine was reading the news on his computer. Even so, he was good-natured, and the moment any problem arose he moved at once to set it right, so his reputation was a solid one. If you had to name a flaw, it was only that his mindset belonged to a bygone era.
"His niece is joining us."
"...Pardon?"
"Not that she's being shoved in through connections, mind you. Apparently she'd been scouting job changes lately, and the Director simply suggested she give us a try."
"If she's an experienced hire, that's no problem."
An incompetent superior was its own torment. Every bit as much as one with a vicious tongue.
"Solid credentials, too. Coming in at Section Chief level, and they say she handles both Chinese and Japanese."
"Then isn't that a good thing?"
"If it were all sunshine, would I be wearing this face?"
Kwak Young-ho took a cigarette from his pocket, set it between his lips, and lit it. Then he smoked it halfway down without uttering a single word.
"Ah, hell — why am I even asking you for something like this. Tsk."
"Has something happened, sir?"
Young-ho scratched at his furrowed brow with the hand holding the cigarette.
"Says he wants to borrow a hand."
"Sorry?"
"Says she found a place nearby on short notice, and he's asking for a hand with it."
Hyeong-seok said nothing for a moment, then took a sip of his coffee. Damn it all. Now he understood at once why Young-ho had struggled so to bring this up. It wasn't a hard favor. But neither was it a reasonable one. It was the kind of request that made him understand, with cruel clarity, exactly why their company was not a major corporation.
"I don't get why he wouldn't just call a moving company instead of asking his own staff. Aigoo — honestly."
"What reason did he give?"
"Says he can't trust outsiders. Company people are the same household, so they can be trusted — strangers, not so much."
Coming from Executive Director Shin, well... Hyeong-seok supposed he could see it. Beside Young-ho as he burned through his cigarette in hard drags, Hyeong-seok sipped his coffee with a conflicted face.
There was still something Young-ho hadn't brought himself to say. And that was surely the real reason he'd hauled Hyeong-seok up to the rooftop.
"I'll go."
"...Haaah."
"I'm fine with it, truly. I know you're always looking out for me, sir."
"...Assistant Manager Kang."
Kwak Young-ho looked genuinely touched.
"I appreciate you saying that. Honestly, there's no one else I could ask. Haaah."
"It's nothing."
It was labor for the body. Sending Namgoong Min-ah felt wrong somehow, and sending that stone-faced Lee Jin-pyeong would be its own ordeal — so Hyeong-seok had judged that it fell to him and no one else.
"It should be my job to shut this kind of thing down, and I'm truly sorry. And grateful, too."
"Will there be much to move?"
"Nothing difficult. The fridge and the washing machine should come with the place as options. You just help her sort through her things and take care of whatever she asks — no need to break your back over it."
That much wouldn't be hard. Half a day, give or take, and it would be done. If the Director's niece pitched in, it might be over even sooner.
"Strike up a conversation while you're at it. Think of it as getting to know her ahead of everyone else. And think of it as banking points with Executive Director Shin while you're at it."
Kwak Young-ho made a point of stressing the upsides. Not that he was wringing out virtues that weren't there — winning favor with a Director who was a founding member could only help; it certainly wouldn't hurt.
"Understood. Then when should I head over?"
"She should sign the lease sometime today. So sleep well tonight, and head straight over there around lunchtime tomorrow."
Hyeong-seok's brows drew together. He wondered whether this really warranted letting actual work slide.
"Right at lunch?"
"What, you were planning to work on top of that?"
Kwak Young-ho gave him a look of half-admiring exasperation, cigarette clamped between his teeth.
"Whew! Forget it. Don't you worry about company work — I'll take care of it. You just focus on that side of things, Assistant Manager Kang."
He couldn't block the unfair request. But he could smooth the path as much as possible. Kwak Young-ho spoke with force, as if to make certain of it.
"When this is all wrapped up, I'll put in a good word upstairs and see you get something out of it. Just think of it as a business outing."
"Understood."
Hyeong-seok smiled, as if mirroring the man's grin. At that, Young-ho took a rueful sip of his coffee and opened his mouth.
"Still — I can't tell you how glad I am to have you here. Thank you, Assistant Manager Kang."
Hyeong-seok answered only with a soundless smile, and sipped his coffee.
"Have a good look around."
Before a middle-aged woman with a file folder stamped Golden Real Estate tucked under her arm, the young woman gave the vacant house a careful once-over.
Two rooms, one bathroom. A two-story house built twenty-five years ago.
Even so, with the interior renovation recently finished, it showed nothing of its age.
"It's south-facing, so it never gets cold — very comfortable. Open that window over there and the bathroom door, and it ventilates beautifully."
Shhhhhhhh!
Without a word of reply, the young woman turned on the kitchen tap, then narrowed her eyes and studied the wallpaper.
"You had it redone?"
"Of course. The second the last tenant moved out, we had the whole place redone in silk wallpaper."
"No hidden defects, though?"
"None. Zero. And you know there's no house this good at this deposit price."
The young woman nodded along, her face full of deliberation. It was true enough. Move up even a single grade in condition from here, and the budget leapt nearly one and a half times over. What she liked most of all was the natural light.
"Then you should take it."
"Oh, wonderful! Great decision."
Lest the young woman's heart change, the agent hurriedly spread the contract flat.
"You can write your name right here."
Taking the pen the agent had already uncapped for her, the young woman paused for the briefest moment — then wrote down her name.
Swish. Scratch.
She was Executive Director Shin Chang-yong's niece.