Cooperative Relationship (3)
Getting struck hard in the head at the moment of death damages your memories in that instant. Since you die on the spot, even as a spirit you carry those damaged memories with you. This ghost, Seong Si-hyuk, couldn’t recall several things—including the exact circumstances of his own death. The odds were high that his cause of death involved head trauma. I still didn’t know how it had happened, but head injuries aren’t exactly everyday occurrences. It could have been something heavy falling on him from above, or him falling from a high place, or… …maybe someone smashing him in the head with a weapon.
Considering the tall buildings in Centum City, the first two possibilities were plausible enough. Any of them made sense.
“Si-hyuk, where did you live before you passed?”
“I lived in Trump World Centum.”
Trump World Centum? He didn’t look that old, yet he’d lived in a very expensive apartment complex. Being right next to the department store and prime commercial district, those units carried a hefty price tag.
“What did you do for a living…?”
“I ran a business.”
So he wasn’t an ordinary salaryman—he’d been a boss. The wealthy ghost CEO scratched the back of his head lightly.
“I know it sounds a bit obnoxious to say this, but I lived a pretty successful life. I got into the university I wanted, started the work I wanted, and succeeded at it… I was genuinely happy with my life.”
“Yeah, it does sound like a good one.”
“That’s why it’s so puzzling. You mentioned I didn’t seem to have any lingering regrets, and…”
“Well… dying young might count as a regret, but from what I’ve seen in the gallery, that alone isn’t enough to keep someone wandering the mortal realm.”
It was true. If it were, the whole world would be packed with young ghosts. Simply dying at a young age didn’t give you the right to haunt the living.
“And even though I died early… I feel like I lived a fully satisfying life.”
Looking at him as he reflected on his own existence, I didn’t see any trace of unresolved longing. He really did look like someone who had lived contentedly. Whether that was because the head injury had erased the memory of his regrets, or because he truly had none… I couldn’t tell yet.
That was when Baek Seol-hwa suddenly seemed to think of something and asked him,
“Were you married, by any chance?”
“Ah, I’m a confirmed bachelor. No regrets on that front either.”
“Hmm.”
It had been a sharp question, but it didn’t lead anywhere. A young man who had accomplished everything he set out to do, never forced himself into things he hated, and had zero interest in marriage—what kind of regret could someone like that possibly have? It probably wasn’t resentment. If he’d carried that kind of grudge, he wouldn’t be an ordinary spirit; he would have turned into a vengeful ghost. Even if he couldn’t remember the grudge itself.
“For now, how about we visit the places you lived or frequented while you were alive? We might find some clues there.”
“Oh, would you really do that?”
“Of course! Let’s go!”
It was a solid idea. Standing around wasn’t going to get us anywhere. We started walking around Centum City together with Seong Si-hyuk. He guided us to the spots he used to visit often.
“This is the snack shop I went to all the time.”
…The guy had bought a luxury residential-commercial apartment worth nearly 1.5 billion won, yet his favorite place was a humble snack shop. How interesting.
Baek Seol-hwa’s eyes sparkled with curiosity, as if she thought it looked tasty.
“Is the food good here?”
“Their pork rice bowl and tonkatsu are highly recommended.”
Typical guy taste buds.
“But would there really be any lingering attachment left here?”
“Maybe he wanted to eat pork rice bowl one more time?”
What the…
“That actually sounds plausible!”
“…Excuse me?”
“Then let’s go in and order some!”
“Wait, what?”
Before I could stop her, Baek Seol-hwa dragged us inside and ordered three pork rice bowls.
“How is it?”
“Hmm…”
“Wait a second. This isn’t a memorial offering. How is a ghost like Si-hyuk supposed to eat it?”
“Oh… you’re right.”
Was she seriously an idiot?
“Just looking at the meat makes me think it would taste good, but I don’t feel any strong pull toward it. It doesn’t seem to be a regret.”
Of course it wasn’t… Who the hell gets stuck in the mortal world because they want pork rice bowl?!
In the end, since Baek Seol-hwa doesn’t eat meat, I had to finish all three portions by myself before we left the snack shop. My stomach felt like it was going to burst… Why on earth did she order three?
“Ah, maybe I should have ordered the tonkatsu too?”
“No, Si-hyuk can’t eat it anyway.”
“Oh, right.”
Sometimes this girl acts like a total airhead… Or maybe she just wanted to eat it herself? But she doesn’t eat meat, so that can’t be it.
“Where should we go next?”
“If we’re talking about places I visited as often as that snack shop, it would have to be my company.”
“Where is it?”
“I ran a business supporting restaurant openings and franchising. Come this way.”
We passed the snack shop and entered a street lined with cram schools and clinics. A short walk later, we arrived at the location Seong Si-hyuk had mentioned.
“This is it.”
“It’s a cram school now?”
“It looks like it was sold and changed hands. It used to be my headquarters. I only moved the main office, but my company still seems to be operating.”
“Now that I think about it, how long ago did you become a ghost?”
“Hmm, I didn’t keep exact track of the date, but… it’s been about two years.”
Not ancient history, but long enough.
“Do you feel anything?”
“Not really. The company didn’t have any particular problems, so I’m not sure. Everything was already established and running smoothly. It could operate fine without me, so I don’t think I had any regrets about it.”
Then where to next.
“Shall we head to the house you lived in now?”
“That would be good.”
But would the house still be the same? Two years was plenty of time for it to have been sold.
“Wouldn’t the house you lived in have been sold by now too?”
“No, that shouldn’t be the case.”
“Really?”
“I lived with my younger sibling. They were the vice president, so they would have inherited both the house and the business.”
“Ah.”
So he had a sibling. He’d never mentioned family before, so I hadn’t known.
“If there’s family involved… that makes things easier, doesn’t it? We can ask about the cause of death too.”
“You’re right!”
“Oh, that’s true. I couldn’t speak to them directly, so I never asked, but this is convenient.”
Once we settled on visiting Seong Si-hyuk’s house, Baek Seol-hwa spoke up.
“But how are we going to get inside? If we just barge in, they’ll definitely misunderstand…”
“We’ll have to call on the intercom. Not sure if they’ll believe us though.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Seong Si-hyuk said. “If you tell them what I say, my sibling will believe that I’m with you.”
The intercom rang. Ding-dong.
It was a state-of-the-art video phone that could control security from the building entrance all the way to the apartment door and even included hallway CCTV. The woman inside the house scratched her head lightly, rose from the sofa, and looked at the intercom screen.
On the display were a young man and woman she didn’t recognize.
“…Who the hell?”
Strangers. She was about to ignore them completely when the intercom rang again.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong.
“Ugh, what is this…?”
They clearly planned to keep ringing until she answered. She considered calling the security office but decided it would be more annoying if things escalated, so she connected the audio.
“Who keeps pressing the doorbell?!”
“Ah, hello! We thought you might not be home.”
“Hello my ass—who are you people….”
“We’re here at Seong Si-hyuk’s request!”
“…Pardon?”
Why was her brother’s name—who had died two years ago—suddenly coming out of a stranger’s mouth? The woman frowned deeply, ready to hang up, when the young man pushed the woman aside and stepped forward.
“See, you’re doing it again. Let me handle this. Hello, you must be Seong Si-yeon?”
“…What do you people want?”
“We’re exorcists.”
Exorcists? Si-yeon didn’t know much about exorcism, but she understood it involved driving out ghosts, helping them pass on, that sort of thing. The highly suspicious statement made her stare at the intercom screen with wary eyes.
“Your brother can’t move on because he has lingering regrets. Could you help us?”
“What are you even talking about? Showing up out of nowhere… I’m hanging up!”
“He also says he wants to see you. He still remembers how you fell into the rice paddy while riding your tricycle at age four and cried. He says he misses you.”
“……What?”
Si-yeon was stunned. That incident was something only her family could know. It was an embarrassing family memory they had never shared with outsiders.
“Your brother says he has no idea why he’s stuck here. We’ve been going around with him trying to figure out the reason, and of course we need to check his house. He really wants to see his little sister after so long.”
The man continued.
“Could you let us in?”
Si-yeon had no choice but to let them inside. She didn’t believe in exorcism, but the words that had come from the young man’s mouth were things no one outside the family could possibly know. When she heard the doorbell, she opened the front door.
There stood the two people she had seen on the screen. They bowed politely.
“Hello!”
“Hello.”
She hadn’t noticed on the intercom, but the woman had a very striking appearance. Pure white hair with blue eyes that made her seem non-Korean, yet her face had distinctly East Asian features and was strikingly beautiful.
“I’m Baek Seol-hwa!”
“I’m Yoo Se-hwan. Thank you so much for believing our story.”
“…Did my brother really send you?”
“He’s standing right next to me, though you can’t see him. He suddenly started crying when he saw you after so long… You’re not going to cry again, are you, Si-hyuk?”
Watching him speak into thin air with an awkward smile, anyone else might have thought he was mentally ill. But Si-yeon, who was family, couldn’t dismiss it as nonsense.
“……Is that crybaby tearing up again?”
“…He seems to have cried a lot even when he was alive.”
“Seriously…”
At this point she had no choice but to believe them. Si-yeon wiped at her own reddening eyes without realizing it and invited the two inside.
“I don’t have any tea, so water is fine, right?”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you!”
After watching them empty their glasses, Si-yeon asked,
“So my brother wanted to come home… to find his lingering regrets?”
“Yes, and we also have some questions for you.”
“For me?”
“Normally, a spirit like Si-hyuk would remember how they died and what their regrets are. But right now he can’t recall either. There’s only one situation where this happens.”
Se-hwan asked Si-yeon directly.
“Did Si-hyuk die from a head injury?”
“How did you…”
“If the brain was damaged while alive and memories were lost, the spirit carries those lost memories with them. It seems that’s the case with Si-hyuk right now.”
“So that’s why you’re trying to find his regrets?”
“Exactly. Only then can he rest in peace.”
He didn’t say it out loud, but staying in spirit form for too long also carried the risk of being devoured by malevolent spirits or yokai and suffering total annihilation. Just like how many of the school ghosts had been wiped out by the vengeful spirit Jin Chae-young.
Se-hwan asked carefully,
“Could you tell us how it happened?”
“…Sigh. The truth is… the trial is still ongoing.”
“Pardon?”
“My brother was killed in a ppeok-chigi.”
Ppeok-chigi. A vicious robbery where the perpetrator strikes the victim on the back of the head to knock them unconscious, then steals their valuables or commits further crimes. It used to be fairly common, but these days streets are well-lit at night and there are too many CCTV cameras, so the crime had almost died out.
“The criminal hit him in the back of the head with a cement brick. It must have been a really bad blow… He died instantly. People always say you never know when your time will come, but… it was just so absurd.”
“That’s…”
“So yes, there was head trauma. I never thought someone would commit such a low-class crime in the 21st century, but apparently they do. The perpetrator was caught immediately, of course…”
Si-yeon let out a long sigh.
“The criminal is claiming diminished capacity, so the trial isn’t ending easily. My brother won’t be able to rest easy unless the criminal receives proper punishment.”
“That could be Si-hyuk’s lingering regret,” Baek Seol-hwa said.
Se-hwan thought it was possible too as he glanced at the ghost who was sitting just like he was.
“Hmm… maybe?”
But Seong Si-hyuk looked somewhat doubtful. Se-hwan observed his strange reaction for a moment before turning back to Si-yeon.
“Do you know where the incident happened?”
“I do. It was on the route we both used for commuting. That day I left work first, and my brother was leaving late when it happened.”
“Could you guide us there?”
“It’s a bit uncomfortable going there, which is why we moved the company headquarters too. Still…”
Si-yeon wiped away a few tears.
“If it’ll help my brother move on peacefully, I should help.”
“We’d really appreciate it.”
“Then shall we go right now!”
When Baek Seol-hwa stood up, Si-yeon did too. Se-hwan looked around the interior briefly before rising and saying,
“You lived with your brother, right?”
“Ah… yes.”
“It must have been lonely living alone after that.”
That was why many families of crime victims ended up leaving the house. Staying there kept reminding them of the family member they had lost, so they tried to forget by moving somewhere new.
“It was very lonely at first, but I got used to it.”
“You don’t live with any other family?”
“It was just me and my brother. Our parents passed away when we were in our twenties.”
“Ah… I see.”
“Why is he suddenly asking about that?”
Baek Seol-hwa tilted her head in confusion, but Se-hwan didn’t bother explaining. It didn’t seem very important, so she let it go. She and Si-yeon walked ahead while Se-hwan quietly asked the ghost,
“Si-hyuk, now that you’re home, does anything feel different?”
“Hmm, not really. When I thought about coming home, I wondered if I was worried about my sibling being left alone, but that doesn’t seem to be it.”
“You learned the cause of your death. Doesn’t anything come to mind?”
“Well… hearing the story, I definitely feel like there’s an unfair aspect to it. So I should resent the criminal, but strangely I don’t feel any hatred. Am I weird? Or is it because I can’t remember…?”
Se-hwan narrowed his eyes.
Then he said abruptly,
“There are memories engraved on the soul.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m not talking about the memories a person consciously holds. I mean memories carved into the soul itself. You can’t perceive them consciously… but those memories definitely exist. It may be impossible to recall the soul’s memories, but they cause instinctive emotions. It’s similar to having a gut feeling.”
“Oh… I see. Why are you telling me this?”
“If you really were killed in a ppeok-chigi, even if you don’t remember the feeling from that time, the soul’s memory of the event should naturally cause negative emotions toward the perpetrator. Yet you say you feel nothing at all.”
“Yeah… now that you mention it, that really is strange. Why am I like this?”
Se-hwan ended the conversation there and walked forward. Toward Baek Seol-hwa and Si-yeon, who were already waiting with the front door open.
……
He didn’t want to think this way, but everyone knew reality could be far crueler and more vicious than any drama or movie. Something had occurred to him, but to confirm it, Se-hwan quietly followed the two women.
“This is the place.”
The spot Seong Si-yeon guided them to was an ordinary stretch of sidewalk. At first glance there were no traces left, but two years had already passed since the incident, so that was only natural. Still, there were many things invisible to ordinary eyes.
“This area seems to have quite a few accidents.”
“Yeah.”
I agreed. Around the place where Seong Si-hyuk had been attacked, there were quite a lot of spirits. Especially a high proportion of bound spirits—the kind that tended to form from accidental deaths. Given all the bars nearby, it did look like the perfect spot for either crimes or accidents.
“Si-hyuk, does anything come to mind?”
“Umm… not really. I don’t remember anything specific, and I don’t feel any particular regrets either…”
“Whoa! How can a human talk to us?”
When I spoke to Seong Si-hyuk, the nearby spirits who noticed drifted closer. The moment all their gazes focused on me, my body stiffened slightly.
…Again.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of them approaching. The trauma from my childhood had simply resurfaced, making me react involuntarily. My face tightened on its own and my head lowered. My breathing grew slightly ragged without me realizing it, until Seong Si-hyuk asked,
“A-are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fi—”
Baek Seol-hwa suddenly shouted.
“If you don’t back off right now, I’ll devour every last one of you!”
“…?”
When I looked up, Baek Seol-hwa had revealed all nine of her fluffy tails and was threatening the spirits.
“Eek!”
“I-it’s a gumiho…!”
The spirits naturally fled the moment they saw the nine-tailed fox.
What the hell was she doing…
“Hey, you okay?”
“…Did you do that because of me?”
“Your face looked really bad just now.”
When I lifted my head, even Seong Si-yeon was watching me with worried eyes. I must have looked pretty bad.
“…Still, yelling like that? Everyone’s staring at us strangely now.”
“Who cares? Let them think we’re crazy.”
…The fact that she genuinely didn’t care was impressive in its own way.
“…Thanks.”
“If you’re thankful, buy me tonkatsu later.”
…You don’t even eat it. Asking me to buy something she won’t eat—she really is insane.
I pulled myself together and spoke to Seong Si-yeon and Seong Si-hyuk.
“I’m going to do some investigating.”
“Investigate? The police already finished their investigation and caught the criminal.”
“I know that, but I need to understand the exact situation. Especially since Si-hyuk feels no emotions even after learning how he died.”
“What?”
Seong Si-yeon looked at me as if she had no idea what I was talking about. She seemed just as puzzled that he felt nothing after hearing about the perpetrator. It really was extremely strange. Even if he wasn’t a vengeful spirit, hearing that your death was a homicide should at least produce some negative feelings, if not outright resentment. That was only natural for a person.
But Seong Si-hyuk felt none of that.
That left two possibilities.
First, it wasn’t homicide. However, I considered this extremely unlikely. For it not to be homicide, Seong Si-hyuk would have had to kill himself, but there was almost no way to commit suicide in the middle of a sidewalk like this… and dying from head trauma would be even harder. If he had fallen to his death, there wouldn’t have been a criminal caught and put on trial. The fact that the perpetrator was claiming diminished capacity rather than denying the act itself proved that the ppeok-chigi had definitely occurred. So the first possibility could be ruled out.
That left the second one as the key.
To confirm it, I need to ask.
About what the situation had been like at the time.
“Did your brother forgive the criminal?”
“I don’t know. It seems even Si-hyuk himself isn’t sure. That’s why we need to look into what happened back then.”
“But… it’s already been two years. Who would we even ask?”
“It’s fine. There are guys who have been staying here the whole time.”
I pulled out a crumpled talisman from my pocket. It was one that would bind their movements so they couldn’t harm me when I got close.
“If they’re bound spirits, they should know something.”