Nightmare
The nightmare. The scene we'd just recorded kept replaying on a loop.
It was right around the moment when that fishy, seawater stench had hit. I'd naturally assumed it was the smell of the cosmetics used for the special effects makeup.
“...W-wait, there was a woman in a white dress standing in front of that tree, right?”
“Uh… Si-hoo, did you see her?”
“No….”
“What about you, Chul-min?”
“I didn’t see anything either.”
“So… it was only Seo-ah who saw her?”
The staff members’ expressions gradually relaxed. Were they seriously writing this off as my imagination? Did they think I’d gotten scared and started seeing things?
The footage on the camera continued to play.
“Writer-nim, are you all right?”
I kept speaking into empty air. There was nothing there. No writer, no woman in white, no strands of hair. Only the tree leaves swaying in the wind.
“She was there! I’m telling you she was really there!”
I shouted, indignant, but the screen showed absolutely nothing.
That was when the audio director ripped off his headphones and let out a scream.
“Aaaagh!”
“What—what’s wrong?!”
“Just now, that sound…”
The audio director handed the headphones to Kim Chul-min PD. Kim PD cautiously pressed them to his ear.
“…It’s nothing.”
“You didn’t hear that?”
“I heard it. It’s nothing.”
“Excuse me?”
When the audio director stared at him like he was talking nonsense, Kim Chul-min glared right back.
“If you understood, kill the audio.”
“…Yes.”
The whole incident was buried on the spot. The story became that I’d gotten scared and hallucinated the whole thing.
Does that even make sense? I was busy teasing Park Si-hoo right up until that moment.
Kim Chul-min smoothed over the chaotic atmosphere. Mom calmed me down from my shock, and Park Si-hoo and the other kids returned to the lodging under their guardians’ watch.
Normally we would’ve thrown an after-party with drinks, but that night no one took a single step outside their rooms.
No one knows the truth of what happened that day. What sound the audio director and Kim Chul-min PD had heard. What the identity of the woman I saw truly was.
After that, the cast and crew of Kkureogi Tamheomdae carried on with the next day’s filming as if nothing had happened the night before.
Six in the morning. A loudspeaker blared through the quiet pension, signaling the wake-up mission.
Normally I would’ve already been up and stretching, but whether it was from rolling around in the mudflats or from encountering that ghost, my entire body felt as heavy as waterlogged cotton.
I dragged myself out of bed at the loudspeaker’s call, quickly brushed my teeth, and headed to the yard.
The original wake-up mission had been to plant a flag at the courage-training site from the day before, but after what had happened yesterday they couldn’t exactly send us back up that hill. So they changed it to the simple task of pulling up the flag planted in the yard.
First place: Irowoon. Second place: me. Third place: Park Si-hoo.
Breakfast was clam kalguksu. The refreshing aroma of the broth tickled my nose.
“Whoa, that looks amazing!”
“I’m gonna finish this and then fry up some rice with it!”
“Oh… Now that’s someone who truly understands flavor.”
Even though it was a broadcast, they didn’t strip the audio, but the aftershock from last night seemed to have drained everyone. The other kids didn’t seem to know the full details of what had happened, but with both Park Si-hoo’s and my energy completely flat, plus the crew staying unusually quiet, the whole set naturally fell silent.
After we quickly shot the insert cuts and finished the unusually subdued meal, we went straight into the ending.
It was the kind of schedule that would never happen on a normal episode of Kkureogi Tamheomdae.
“See you next week with even more exciting adventures! Bye!”
The cast transformed back into bright, lively fairies as if nothing had ever happened and wrapped the ending.
“Thank you for your hard work.”
“Good job, kids.”
The moment the tension broke, my legs turned to jelly.
“Whew…”
Normally after filming we’d chatter and laugh noisily until we were exhausted, only then exchanging goodbyes. Today was different.
“I’ll head out first.”
“Good work, Seo-ah. Get some real rest.”
Unusually, I was the first to climb into the car. The second I sat down I passed out like someone had flipped a switch.
When I opened my eyes again, we were already home. Chae Kang-hee gently shook me awake.
“Seo-ah, we’re here. Let’s go inside and sleep.”
The face staring back at me from the elevator mirror looked utterly drained. The shock of seeing a ghost combined with the fatigue of a two-day, one-night forced march was apparently too much even for an eight-year-old Energizer bunny.
The moment I stepped into the house I saw Yoon Ji-ah sprawled across the sofa.
“You’re back, Mom.”
“Yes, Ji-ah. Did you eat? Where’s Dad?”
“I ate. Dad’s napping.”
Yoon Ji-ah gave me a once-over and tilted her head.
“Why does your face look like that? Like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”
“Wow… How’d you know? Wait, are you the ghost?”
I sank onto the sofa with a weak retort. Yoon Ji-ah closed the academic paper she’d been reading and looked at me with clear interest.
“For real? Tell me everything.”
I laid out the entire night’s events without a single grain of MSG: the empty eye sockets, the woman with no feet, the black tears, even the audio director’s scream. Yoon Ji-ah’s expression grew more serious the longer I talked.
“Hmm. The PD told you to bury it?”
“Yeah. From the way they were acting, it seemed like the audio director heard something and they wanted it kept quiet.”
“Then I guess the ghost was real.”
“…I tell you the whole story and you still don’t believe me? You really are the worst!”
Yoon Ji-ah adjusted her lens-less glasses and gave a sly grin.
“Congratulations. Your variety show’s about to blow up.”
“…What?”
“There’s a broadcasting superstition that seeing a ghost means massive success.”
If you hear ghost sounds in the studio, the song becomes a hit. If you spot a ghost during filming, the show’s ratings shoot through the roof. The industry had that kind of superstition.
Yoon Ji-ah stared at me for a long moment, then let out a small snort of laughter.
“But… were you scared? Of a ghost? Weren’t you a discharged Marine Special Search Unit soldier? Didn’t you say you’ve even caught ghosts before?”
“…Yeah. It wasn’t scary at all, actually. I was just… intrigued.”
I almost launched into one of my past-life war stories, but then realized an eight-year-old body spouting that kind of talk would never be believed, so I shut my mouth.
Yoon Ji-ah smiled brightly at her older sister.
“Sure, sure. Let’s say you weren’t scared.”
“It’s not ‘let’s say’—I really wasn’t.”
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, you worked hard.”
“Oh my, yes. This humble one is overwhelmed with gratitude.”
“Are you indirectly suggesting your next project should be a sageuk?”
“…There’s just no winning with you.”
I walked into my room and flung myself onto the bed. The smell of the mudflats still clung to the back of my nose.
Empty eye sockets, black tears, and that creaking neck joint kept floating through my mind. I forced the memories out of my head and fell asleep.
…Someone is chasing me.
In the dream I was the version of myself from my past life, running from something. Thankfully the body felt both foreign and familiar, so I kept sprinting without end. My ragged breaths felt like they would rip my lungs apart. The ground beneath my feet was a tangled mess of rotting leaves and dirt.
I wanted to stop, but the woman in the white dress clung to me like a shadow that refused to let go. I couldn’t hear any footsteps, yet the heart-crushing anxiety followed right behind me.
…She’s stepping exactly where I stepped.
I’d been erasing my tracks as I moved, yet she followed perfectly. That meant she had serious tracking skills. I decided this wasn’t sustainable.
Without hesitation I pulled out wire, tied it to a tree, and linked it to a grenade. I removed the safety pin, slipped it onto the handle, and lightly covered everything with dirt. The wire was set at shin height—impossible to miss while walking. The moment it was triggered, the grenade would explode.
After finishing the trap I ran without looking back.
And just as I expected, an explosion soon thundered behind me.
I hid behind a tree and watched. No matter what she was, nothing could walk away unscathed from a direct grenade hit.
The dust slowly settled. Shredded pieces of white cloth fluttered through the air.
But the woman who had been chasing me was nowhere to be seen.
Did I get her? Or did she flee?
Whatever the case… I need to get out of here first—
That was the moment.
Creak—
A grotesque sound came from directly behind me. It was the exact noise a human neck makes when its cervical vertebrae are violently twisted sideways to kill.
Then an ice-cold hand clamped down on my shoulder. The skin-crawling chill. The harsh breathing right beside my ear.
…
Thinking was a luxury now. Only instinct could keep me alive.
The close-quarters combat drills I had repeated thousands of times moved my body faster than my brain. Reflexively I seized the wrist of the hand gripping my shoulder.
“Uwaaaaagh!!”
…?
A scream loud enough to burst my eardrums rang out. It was a familiar voice I’d heard somewhere before.
“Hey! Stop it! That hurts! Heyyyy! Yoon Seo-ahhhhh!”
“…Yoon Ji-ah?”
My eyes, which had apparently been open the whole time, snapped open again.
The familiar ceiling. The fluorescent light. And Yoon Ji-ah sprawled on the floor beside the bed, clutching her arm.
“Hmm. It was a dream.”
“Are you insane?!”