Footprints in the Flour
Tap! Tap-tap! Tap!
A sound so loud and urgent it seemed to be fighting for its life.
Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes snapped open. Adrift on the border between dream and waking, he turned toward where the noise was coming from.
Tap! Tap! Tap-tap! Tap!
It was coming from the curtained window.
The sun was up, and he sensed no ghost qi — nothing truly dark. And yet, drawn by some faint, ugly stirring of energy, he drifted slowly toward the window. Then, the instant he flung the curtains wide—
Fwapapapap!
A crow that had been clinging to the glass outside burst into the air in a frantic beat of wings. It wheeled once in a wide circle overhead and vanished from sight.
"What the..."
From the dream itself to the moment he woke, everything was strange. Wide awake now thanks to all of it, he sat on the edge of the bed with a sour expression on his face.
The Momjusin he'd seen in his dream — the figure carving down the Chang-gwi — the hilt of a blade turned toward him.
Just a dream? No. Too vivid for a dream.
An ordinary dream would have evaporated the instant he opened his eyes. This one stayed, sharp and clear, nailed into his memory.
When it came to this, the best move was to ask someone who could actually help.
Tap-tap-tap-tap. He found Cheong-geum's number on his phone and pressed call without a second thought.
"Young Master, is that you?" Cheong-geum answered before the first ring had even finished, her voice bright.
"Yes. Have you been keeping well?"
"Oh, I'm always just gettin' by, same as ever. What brings you calling?"
"Is the Grand Shaman in, by any chance?"
"Ah... she's not here just now."
"Ah, dear. She still hasn't come back?"
"No. No telling when she will."
Hyeong-seok clicked his tongue, disappointment plain on his face. Lee Geum-kyeong was always busy — so busy that he had learned to call Cheong-geum first rather than reach out to her directly. Even so, word that she still hadn't returned nagged at him.
Is her workload that heavy?
It had only been a few days since they'd gone down together for the funeral. Lee Geum-kyeong had come back up alone, saying she had business to attend to, and several more days had passed since. He'd assumed she'd be home by now — unless something there still needed settling, she was still away.
"What's this about, then? Is it something urgent?"
"No, nothing urgent."
"Tell me and I'll pass it along the moment she's back. Or you could simply ask me, if you like."
Perhaps because Cheong-geum was a shaman herself, she was quick on the uptake. Hyeong-seok huffed out a laugh and confessed, a touch embarrassed.
"The thing is, I had a dream, and it's been weighing on me."
"A dream?"
"Yes."
Had Cheong-geum and Hyeong-seok been ordinary people, the conversation would have fizzled right there. But the two of them were vessels who served the gods, and so a dream could not be brushed aside as nothing more than a dream.
"I can't help thinking it may be my Momjusin sending me a revelation."
"Mmm... And what exactly did you see?"
Hyeong-seok answered, calling up the figure he'd seen in the dream. "Like a wrathful deity. Fierce beyond words."
"Hmm..."
"There was a reek of blood on his body, and blood on his blade. And then he turned the hilt toward me."
As if to say: take this. That, unmistakably, was the feeling the dream had left behind.
"Did you take hold of the blade?"
"No. I woke before I could."
Should I have taken it?
Before he could even voice the question, Cheong-geum's reply came, smooth and sure. "It doesn't matter. The way I see it, it was a revelation all the same. The blade is only symbolic."
The ease of her answers seemed to wash away a little of the unease that had taken root. "If it's symbolic — something to do with blades, with force?"
"Perhaps. Though that's a question you'd answer better than I, Young Master."
Hyeong-seok nodded silently. He had majored in folklore studies. And he had learned what the sword symbolizes.
Purification and the slaying of evil spirits. Power. Decision. Change. Protection and defense...
The blade carried many meanings, and it was hard to claim that any of them stood entirely apart from the man Kang Hyeong-seok had become. They all connected to him one way or another — and then, as if something had just surfaced in his mind, he spoke up.
"The Sinjangkal did break, recently. This could be connected to that."
"Yes. I think so too."
Conceding that the theory held real water, Hyeong-seok carried on with the call. "Thank you. I feel like I've finally got a grip on the shape of it."
"I'm only glad my poor help was of use."
"Poor? Please. Don't sell yourself short."
"If you're not too busy, why not come by for a visit?"
Hyeong-seok considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "No, thank you. I've gotten the answers I needed."
"Ah..."
"And it's Saturday, after all."
He hadn't meant anything by it. But a gloomy note had crept into his voice all the same.
"The shop that sells ritual implements is closed today anyway. I think I could use a little rest."
A shaman and an office worker. He was living in two worlds at once — a path he had willingly chosen to bear, but even so, a person needs rest.
"It's... a great deal for you, isn't it?"
"...It is."
"Oh..."
Honestly, if he let a bit of joking slip in, he wanted to say, I feel like I'm dying. Incidents always broke out on rest days, after work hours — time that belonged to everyone else's downtime. Every time something erupted and he had to move, he'd caught himself wishing he had two bodies.
"Well, I— I can't very well tell you not to overdo it..."
"Just you understanding is more than enough."
"Oh..."
Cheong-geum fumbled for a moment, then brightened. "Oh! A gift of Gongjindan came in recently. So much of it arrived that even the Grand Shaman said she was at a loss for what to do with it all — shall I send some your way?"
"Gongjindan... what was that again?"
"A restorative tonic. Comes as little round pills."
Come to think of it, he did have a vague memory of Kwak Young-ho fishing something round out of his desk drawer and popping it into his mouth. Namgoong Min-ah had asked, 'Department Head, chocolate?' — and Kwak Young-ho had only shaken his head, hard and fast. So that was Gongjindan.
"If you send it, I'll take it with thanks."
"Yes, well— no, I'll have it sent by courier!"
"...Thank you. Really."
"Then rest up well, Young Master! Your health is your fortune!"
"...Yes."
"Rest well. I'll let you go now!"
Somehow, Cheong-geum hung up as though fleeing the scene. Hyeong-seok sat quietly in the room gone still again, then burrowed back under the covers — hoping that this time he could sleep in peace, without any dreams at all.
"Sshoo... sshooo."
Lee Ha-yoon was dead asleep in the inner room of the office suite.
She'd met Shin Jeong-ah the day before; what was meant to be a light get-together had stretched on into the night, and they'd only parted after one more drink here in this very office. Besides, today was a holiday — no one would say a word about sleeping in — and so Ha-yoon had dropped into a deep, oblivious slumber.
That was when it happened.
"Mmmmgh." Ha-yoon's face contorted.
Then consciousness returned — but her body wouldn't move. Sleep paralysis. It felt as if some unseen weight was bearing down on her whole body with all its might, and even her eyelids refused to open.
Ughhh, so annoying.
It wasn't her first time being pinned like this in her life. A natural phenomenon; it would pass with time anyway. Ha-yoon was straining to wiggle her fingers little by little when—
Creeeak.
A door opened.
Who is it? Jeong-ah? Maybe she'd been wrong to think Jeong-ah had gone home last night. Ha-yoon thought that wouldn't be so bad — but no footsteps came closer.
What are you doing? Wake me up already.
Squelch. The sound of a bare sole peeling off the floor.
Even as Ha-yoon registered that something was off, the sticky footfalls — shk, shk — drew nearer, little by little. And then they stopped, right in front of her.
Something's wrong here... The feeling was different. It wasn't Jeong-ah standing there. It felt like someone else entirely.
Only now did ice creep down her spine. Ha-yoon prayed to be torn free of the paralysis, to have her eyes open — and then, slowly, her eyelids began to lift. Not of her own will. By another's hand.
Hsssssaaah.
With her eyes fully open, Ha-yoon learned what had pried them apart. A hand, pale as paper. A blouse soaked through with blood. From the clothing she might have said a woman — but she couldn't swear to it. Because above the neck, there was nothing at all.
—!
Paralyzed, unable even to scream, Ha-yoon could only lie there and watch the thing before her eyes. She wanted, more than anything, to shut them. But the thing was holding her eyelids open, and she couldn't even have that.
"Hnngh— hah— hnngh— hah."
Toward her — her breath heaving through her nose alone — the thing began to lean closer, inch by inch. Its upper body bent forward, the severed stump of its neck facing her dead-on. Boiling maggots churned there, around a hole black as pitch.
"Hnngh! Hah! Hnnnngh!"
Ha-yoon's whole body shook harder and harder — and she saw something rising up out of that black hole. Then she learned what it was. A pair of scissors, bloomed over with red rust.
Sssskrreeeee—
The blades spread apart, left and right, an inch from Ha-yoon's eyes. Just as she convulsed at the sight of steel that looked ready to gouge out her eyeballs—
Snick.
The blades snapped shut.
"KYAAAAAAAH!"
Ha-yoon shot upright and flailed her arms wildly, as if to shake the thing off her face. Then her hands flew straight to her eyes, checking — were both of them still in their sockets?
"Hah— hah! Hah!"
Both eyes were perfectly fine.
"Ah, god. Scared the hell out of me. Haaaah."
What kind of sick-joke scissors... Hand pressed to her racing heart, Ha-yoon slumped. Is it because of the ghost rumors? What a nightmare to have.
She didn't believe in ghosts. But if dreams like that kept coming, she'd have no confidence left to keep living here.
Ha-yoon hauled herself up to go wash her face — and when her head swung back toward the door, her whole body locked up all over again, as if the paralysis had never let her go.
"...What is this."
White powder lay scattered across the floor. And stamped into it, footprints — distinct down to all five toes.
Seeing the prints, Ha-yoon remembered what Shin Jeong-ah had done last night.
"Hey! You sprinkle this and no ghosts'll come out!"
"You're unbelievable. Aigoo, young mastah."
"I'm telling you, it's real!"
Sssshaaaah—
The glutinous rice flour Shin Jeong-ah had scattered in front of the door right before leaving.
Ha-yoon frantically checked the soles of her own feet. Not a speck of white powder anywhere.