Even just watching him hunt ghosts right now made that evident. He was catching and dealing with them with hands far rougher and more savage than usual — to the point where the ghosts themselves were flinching and retreating, overwhelmed by the vicious killing intent radiating off him.
Sim Seowoo also stared at him with curiosity before asking.
“Ah, by the way — how did you know to come here?”
“You mentioned to the Precious guest that you were with your university classmates, so we assumed it was somewhere near the school and set out first. The exact location was confirmed afterward, and that’s how we made it to the movie theater.”
Do Seonhwa explained that the moment Sim Seowoo had told her on the phone that he was with his university friends, Cheon Yijae had already arrived — and upon learning that, he had immediately ordered the information division to pinpoint the GPS location of Sim Seowoo’s phone and departed. Jin Gwangmin muttered beside her, “It was practically ripped out of them,” giving his shoulders a shiver. The atmosphere around Sojunim at the time had been truly terrifying, he said.
Honestly, Do Seonhwa herself had never expected Cheon Yijae to come along. She gazed at his back with a curious expression before simply shrugging.
“Well, thanks to him, the ghosts aren’t even thinking about coming this way — so let’s quickly look for the exit!”
Sim Seowoo nodded. In truth, it had been difficult to fully grasp everything Do Seonhwa had explained, but he figured that if he just wandered around, something would come into view eventually.
Whoooosh——
But just as the three of them were about to turn the corner of the hallway, the flames chased after them. Jin Gwangmin clicked his tongue at the sight of the fire spreading along the walls.
“Ugh, this evil spirit is sharper than it looks.”
It was a ploy to prevent them from finding the exit. Fire was especially useful as a weapon for blocking people’s approach. The evil spirit must have been thrilled at the fact that the trauma it had read from Sim Seowoo was a fire.
Jin Gwangmin shook his head and pulled a spray bottle out of his bag. The second out-of-place item to appear after the thermos, he shook it vigorously before spraying it at the flames with a long hiss.
And strangely enough, the fire blocking their path scattered just a bit.
“It’s water infused with red beans and salt. Strictly speaking, this fire is closer to a hallucination created by the evil spirit, you see. It’s a pain to carry around talismans and throw them every single time, so I use this spray instead. The effect is a bit weaker, but it’s surprisingly versatile.”
He explained that red beans and salt were effective at driving away ghosts, and by combining the two, they could also hold back malevolent energy. It could be used in a much wider range of situations, and there was no need to collect it afterward, making it convenient……
So in other words, he was sprinkling salty red bean tea.
Sim Seowoo pondered how to react to the fact that the items Heun used tended to take rather practical forms. Given that they had disguised themselves as a construction company to blend into society, it made sense that they had a good grasp of the real world — but was it old-fashioned to find this sort of thing surprising?
Then he was struck by something in the information he’d been turning over.
“……This fire is fake? So it won’t burn if you touch it?”
“Ah, no, that’s not the case. Right now, because we’re perceiving this as ‘fire,’ the pain comes through just the same. The malevolent energy induces that sensation. It’s a bit like the situation where someone gets trapped in a malfunctioning freezer and freezes to death without realizing it’s malfunctioning.”
Guiyeoks with consciousness linked in were especially potent in their hallucinatory power. Because they stirred up the target’s trauma and weakened their ability to distinguish reality, they became more dangerous as time went on.
“But this is definitely a hallucination! It may look just like vivid reality, but it absolutely, absolutely is not. We’re simply trapped in a Guiyeok, and we’re going to get out of the evil spirit’s tricks for sure.”
Do Seonhwa cried out with deliberate firmness. It pained her to think that the Precious guest had gone through something like this in the past. It was unfortunate enough that he’d been targeted by such an evil spirit and suffered, and he must have been terribly frightened.
She looked at Sim Seowoo with sympathetic eyes.
“You must have been really shaken, coming face to face with an evil spirit like this? It must have been so scary…….”
“Ah, it just looks all black to me, so I’m fine. Like a pitch-black fog swirling around, roughly?”
But Sim Seowoo’s response was remarkably matter-of-fact. He explained that while he had seen a large black mass in the restroom mirror, even then the shape hadn’t been clearly distinguishable — and Do Seonhwa was left bewildered.
No matter how much his lack of spiritual sight meant he couldn’t see the evil spirit’s true form clearly, wasn’t the boy’s half-crumbled face unsettling enough in itself? She had been thinking he was unusual since before, but……
While Do Seonhwa nodded with a peculiar expression, Jin Gwangmin glanced back and gave his shoulders a shiver.
“Well, actually, evil spirits are pretty grotesque looking, so not being able to see the real thing is probably for the best. It’s not like they’re labeled ‘evil’ for no reason.”
Grumbling that the ‘evil’ in the name was probably because they were harmful to look at, Jin Gwangmin muttered as Sim Seowoo diligently scanned his surroundings.
He had felt considerably more at ease since learning that the fire here was a hallucination. Yes, it brought pain just like real fire, and contact with malevolent energy was dangerous in its own right — but knowing it wasn’t truly fire brought him a measure of comfort.
Still, he needed to escape the Guiyeok before the barrier protecting his friends dissipated. Sim Seowoo steeled his resolve and looked around.
Sting——
His eyes hurt the more he peered into the flames, but he stubbornly continued to scan the space. Searching through everything in the hallway one by one, he eventually came to a stop at a single point.
“This wall doesn’t have red flames — it has pitch-black fog swirling around it. Could this be the exit, perhaps?”
“Huh? You can see it like that?”
“Hmm, hearing that, it almost seems like he does have spiritual sight after all…….”
Do Seonhwa and Jin Gwangmin were genuinely surprised by Sim Seowoo’s words.
They had asked him to find the exit earlier, but they had expected him to find nothing more than a clue at best. Something along the lines of a pillar in the hallway being strangely warped, or a door handle being flipped the wrong way — the kind of flaw a person trapped in a Guiyeok for the first time would typically be able to pick up on. It wasn’t a matter of underestimating him; it was simply that for someone encountering a Guiyeok for the first time, even that much would have been more than enough.
From there, Do Seonhwa and Jin Gwangmin had planned to use various methods to draw the door out — but Sim Seowoo had gone beyond simply finding a flaw, and had actually read the malevolent energy concealing the exit. Something neither of them could see that clearly either.
“……Is this not the right spot?”
“A-ah, no. It’s correct. Now that I hear you say it, I can indeed slowly see it that way.”
Do Seonhwa shook her head and approached the door. She pulled out a piece made from Dongdoji from the hair clip that held her hair up, and drew it lengthwise across the top of the door.
Swoosh—— At the precise moment the sacred power pushed back the malevolent force and it scattered momentarily, she quickly pressed her palm against the door. As though flinging open the gates of a palace, she slammed both hands against it with a firm pat — and a change took place.
It didn’t open in the form of an actual door, but the moment the Guiyeok cracked, the flames filling the hallway turned black and began to die down. The illusion had been seen through, and it had lost its power.
At the very same time, a scream pierced through from the other end.
[HRRAAAAAAGH——!]
It was a horrified cry from the evil spirit. Even from a distance, it had immediately grasped that the exit had been opened, and was seized with fury. The entire space rumbled as though shaken by an earthquake, and the ground beneath them began to tremble violently.
It was a phenomenon caused by the crack in the Guiyeok.
“Poured all its power into the hallucination, did it? The damage looks severe.”
Cheon Yijae let the corner of his lips curl up. The fact that an exit found by pushing through the flames dealt such a blow meant that the evil spirit had invested a tremendous amount of energy into the hallucination.
Cheon Yijae’s eyes, gazing down at the thrashing evil spirit, cooled to a chill. The evil spirit, which had at first cockily mocked him as a ‘dog’ and then had been quietly slipping behind its ghosts, was now being approached by Cheon Yijae step by step. The dozens of ghosts that had been there before had already all been dealt with.
The evil spirit stumbled backward as he approached, before finally letting out a howl.
[I — there’s no way this body is going to die like this!]
The boy frantically pulled something out of his pocket and swallowed it whole. The sight of him swallowing a pitch-black orb the size of his palm in one gulp made both Jin Gwangmin and Do Seonhwa recoil.
“Ugh, that bastard has a Hyungok!”
“A Hyungok……!”
In an instant, black malevolent energy began swirling around the boy like a vortex. The evil spirit’s presence, which had been staggering about as though drained just moments before, shifted in an instant.
The moment the violently swirling energy exploded with a deafening boom, Sim Seowoo stumbled and buckled.
“Ngh.”
His eyes were in agony.
A pounding headache had set in the moment the evil spirit swallowed that orb, and he was swaying with one hand covering his face — and then a violent gust of wind came barreling toward him. Coming directly at him, as though shot with precision, was the evil spirit itself.
The evil spirit, having detonated its malevolent energy as a surprise attack to evade Cheon Yijae, had come charging after the weakest target to latch onto. Abandoning the boy’s form entirely, it came hurtling forward as a pitch-black mass.
[I need to dig deeper into your despair!]
The deeper a human’s despair, the greater the evil spirit’s power grew. The evil spirit knew that the memories it had read from Sim Seowoo before had been extraordinarily dark. It had only peeked at a small portion, yet that alone had been enough to conjure powerful flames — so the power it could wield by thoroughly rummaging through his mind would undoubtedly be even greater.
The evil spirit sought to use Sim Seowoo as its host and flip the tide.
Swoooosh——!
In the end, the darkness swallowed Sim Seowoo whole.
The black fog poured over him like ink, wrapping around him tightly and forming a prison-like space. But the very moment his vision was dyed pitch black, paradoxically, he felt as though his eyes were being wiped clean.
He didn’t know since when, but it was as though a thin film that had been covering his eyes cracked with a sharp sound —
“……Ah.”
Now, at last, Sim Seowoo could see the evil spirit’s true form.
Up until just before, he had only perceived it as a murky, indistinct mass — but now he could see the dozens of pairs of eyes densely packed into that pitch-black mass. Rolling and swiveling in every direction, the dozens, hundreds of eyeballs were each shaped differently.
He also realized that the movement he had thought looked like wastewater gurgling was actually caused by the human arms and legs attached to its body. A form that looked as though it had devoured hundreds of humans — Sim Seowoo instantly understood why Jin Gwangmin had said evil spirits were harmful to look at.
The evil spirit cackled.
[Oh, our eyes have met, have they? Now you can finally see me properly, Hyung!]
……He wasn’t even sure which eye he’d locked gazes with.
But Sim Seowoo couldn’t give any answer at all. He was being held in an iron grip by roughly the evil spirit’s sixteenth arm, making it difficult to breathe, and the largest of the eyeballs drew closer to his gasping form.
Within the glistening red eyeball, a scene from some distant day began to surface.
‘Seowoo-ya. Shall we go visit this break?’
‘It’s hot! It’s hot! It’s hot!’
‘Do you know how important this ritual is? You need to do it properly——’
‘Oppa…….’
‘Our son, just as I thought — you really are special.’
Sim Seowoo’s breathing faltered as the memories tumbled over one another in a chaotic jumble. The sounds from that day rang vividly in his ears.
The sound of curtains catching fire, young children screaming at the top of their lungs, pounding on doors desperately wanting to get outside, and fingernails scraping against walls……
[Hahahaha, Hyung! You really had quite the experience, didn’t you!]
The evil spirit was beside itself with excitement. As though it had struck a vein of gold, it gleefully rummaged through Sim Seowoo’s mind without restraint.
Sim Serewoo felt as though a rake was tearing through his brain, but he was held fast by the evil spirit and couldn’t flee — and he couldn’t even close his eyes of his own will.
A scream from someone far away faintly brushed against his ears. The urgent cries that the malevolent energy swirling around Sim Seowoo made it difficult to get close scattered in his head like sand, failing to properly reach him.
[Wait, you…….]
But the evil spirit’s assault, which had seemed as though it would continue indefinitely, came to a halt. The evil spirit, which had been enthusiastically rummaging through Sim Seowoo’s mind, went rigid upon encountering an unexpected scene.
[You…… could it be…… you were at ‘that place’ on that day?]
Hyungok (흉옥) — A pitch-black orb swallowed by the evil spirit; dramatically amplifies its power
