Seak Akjin Lireugyo.
It was the name of a cult that had once thrown the world into an uproar.
It was an era rife with cults, but that particular religious group was somewhat unique. They claimed that the world was steeped in malice, and that one could only live safely in society by properly handling that ‘evil.’ They spread teachings along the lines of know thy enemy, know thyself, and victory is guaranteed.
And so, having peered into that malice and gone mad in the process — or so it seemed — they rallied together with the notion that they must summon an evil god to create an antidote for the diseased world. The reasoning was that society had already fallen so hopelessly ill that it required a powerful shock treatment.
People gathered in the mountains to prepare for the ritual of summoning the evil god. After spending several months cut off from society, they finally held a peculiar ceremony — and in the process, a fire broke out, sweeping away and killing the hundreds of due gathered at the facility.
But among them were victims who had been forcibly dragged to the facility and held captive. The revelation that even young children had been kidnapped and killed sent shockwaves through society.
Articles with sensationalist headlines about the evils of cults poured out day after day. Interviews came out in which relatives of the deceased testified to just how grotesque and maddening that religion was. For a while, mourning and memorials in honor of the unfortunate victims continued.
And yet, there was one survivor who had lived through that incident.
A 19-year-old high school student who had been forcibly dragged along by his parents to participate in the ritual. He had been a minor at the time, and due to the long hospitalization that followed from the shock of the event, he was never exposed to the media, and so he naturally faded from memory. Now, a not-insignificant six years had passed, the incident had been buried, and many people didn’t even know there had been a survivor in the first place.
But Do Seonhwa seemed entirely convinced that Sim Seowoo was that survivor.
“…….”
Sim Seowoo gazed at Do Seonhwa in silence. With his light brown eyes — unusually pale, giving the impression of being almost translucent — he watched her quietly for a moment before dropping his gaze slightly to the side, and asked,
“By any chance, is Heun able to investigate people’s backgrounds?”
But even as he asked, he anticipated the answer and let out a quiet ah.
He tried to convince himself that, being an organization with a long history, they could very well have deep ties to the police, and that he had asked a rather pointless question — when Do Seonhwa shook her head.
“No, we figured it out because of the evil spirit at the movie theater.”
“……Hm?”
A flicker of bewilderment crossed Sim Seowoo’s face.
It was true that the memories the evil spirit had stirred up were from that very day — the moment the Seak Akjin Lireugyo ritual had taken place. That was why the flames in the corridor had risen so violently. But could they really have pieced it together from that alone?
The evil spirit had peered closely into his memories and then become terribly agitated while talking about ‘that day, that place’……
[Ah, it must be precisely the reason I was chosen — to find that human. Because that person is the very human who was there, on that day!]
[You dare survive that place, and tarnish ‘that person’s’ special day!]
It had lunged at him while spouting nothing but words he couldn’t make sense of. The killing intent the evil spirit had shown at the time still puzzled him to this day — but Do Seonhwa and Jin Gwangmin didn’t seem to share that confusion.
On the contrary, they seemed to have had all the puzzle pieces fall into place upon confirming that Sim Seowoo was indeed ‘that survivor,’ exchanging looks and nodding at each other. A mutual understanding passed between them — so that’s why.
“The world at large sees that cult fire incident as having ended with everything burning down, but for Heun, that’s not the case. For us, that’s when it all began.”
At the end of that weighted preamble, Do Seonhwa met his eyes seriously.
“Because on that day, in that place, the Hyeongsin truly did awaken.”
“……What?”
“It is an incredibly terrifying and dreadful god that brings about calamity and spreads plague and pestilence. It is a recorded existence in ancient texts — the very first time the Hyeongsin came to this world, villages burned and people perished without exception. The blood that poured out along every road it traveled was said to form crimson valleys, which is why that era came to be called the Era of the Blood Valley.”
Sim Seowoo opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before shutting it. In truth, he had initially thought Do Seonhwa was joking in order to lighten the serious atmosphere, but her expression said otherwise.
The word ‘god’ felt entirely unrealistic — and yet it truly exists?
“And our ‘Heun’ is the organization that was created to eliminate that Hyeongsin. During the Era of the Blood Valley, spiritual mediums who gathered to deal with the damage caused by the Hyeongsin united in purpose — but one day, the Hyeongsin vanished without a trace. Heun has been preparing ever since, believing that it would move again someday……”
Sim Seowoo listened in a daze as the story continued — how, ever since the Hyeongsin’s arrival, ghosts seeking to break the balance of the world had grown far more numerous, and Heun had been fending them off while waiting for the time to come. Jin Gwangmin’s explanation followed shortly after, just as a hazy image of a middle-aged man with a manic expression was beginning to form in Sim Seowoo’s mind.
“That cult leader probably didn’t truly know about the Hyeongsin or intend to awaken it. The guy was an 18-time convicted con artist. He just got drunk on his own worldview and held some bizarre ceremony, and just by bad luck happened to awaken the Hyeongsin that had been sleeping there — that kind of unfortunate……”
Jin Gwangmin trailed off. He seemed to be gauging the atmosphere, and Sim Seowoo found it odd before quickly managing to piece together the information from the earlier explanation.
He let out a quiet sigh and asked,
“Ah, so then the fire — it wasn’t caused by a mistake on the part of the cult members, but by the Hyeongsin?”
“……Yes. That’s right.”
Do Seonhwa answered in a tone heavy with gravity. She seemed deeply sorry and guilty about discussing the truth of that day in front of a victim, but Sim Seowoo, after a brief silence, simply nodded.
No matter what, that day had met a terrible end.
It was unfortunate that the Hyeongsin had awakened and caused the deaths of young children, and a flicker of anger toward the cult leader who had performed the ritual there also briefly surfaced — but none of these thoughts could change the past.
Do Seonhwa was inwardly startled by his calm acceptance.
In truth, part of the reasoning behind her deduction that Sim Seowoo was the survivor of the cult fire incident had also been his behavior at school. He had taken offense at being told he had a ‘pure aura’ and left with a stern expression, thinking it was a cult, after all. The reaction at that time went beyond simple, exhausted rejection — it was closer to a deep-seated revulsion.
That was why she had started the conversation so carefully — but the other party’s composure threw her off in return. It didn’t necessarily mean that someone who had been through an unfortunate incident had to be forever plagued by trauma and grief, but there was something subtly off about his calm demeanor.
Had he perhaps found peace early on from enduring a childhood under parents who had fallen into a cult, or had he developed a habit of resignation? Considering that the ‘despair’ the evil spirit had read from him was tied to that day’s incident, it was certain that the event was not a light matter for Sim Seowoo either……
Do Seonhwa cut off her train of thought with a dry cough. In any case, if he was willing to listen calmly, there was still more she needed to convey.
“So we also deduced that the hostility the evil spirit showed toward you, noble guest, was connected to the Hyeongsin. In the past, when the Hyeongsin first awakened, it is recorded that every single person in the surrounding area died. So naturally, this time should have been the same — but one person survived, and so it saw that as a blemish on that day.”
Sim Seowoo nodded slowly at the explanation that the Hyeongsin was an existence that all ghosts obeyed and worshipped. Now, at last, the words the evil spirit had spat out at the movie theater made sense.
[I will kill you and make that day perfect!]
……Wasn’t it their fault for not having awakened properly in the first place.
Honestly, I’m the one who has more cause to be upset about this.
Sim Seowoo mentally tucked away the thought that had suddenly surfaced and finished putting the situation in order. As he matched up the information he was hearing now with the commotion at the movie theater piece by piece, he soon arrived at a new realization.
“Then, by any chance, is that ‘Hyungok’ — that bead — also connected to the Hyeongsin?”
The pitch-black bead had made the yin energy several times stronger after the evil spirit had swallowed it, and moreover, the evil spirit had boasted about having been chosen by ‘that person.’ Perhaps the ‘it’ that had been mentioned when he first heard from Heun — cited as the reason why the evil spirit’s attacks had intensified recently — was the Hyungok after all.
And, just as he had predicted, Do Seonhwa nodded.
“Yes, that’s right. The Hyungok contains the power of the Hyeongsin within it.”
“In game terms, it’s like a buff item that strengthens evil spirits. With it, they can even command other ghosts, which is why the recent disturbances caused by spirits traveling in packs have been such a headache.”
Even a simple stray ghost would become stronger than before upon drawing close to the Hyungok, and so ghosts hungering to cross into this world gathered beneath the evil spirit. That was why, when they had spoken on the phone while Sim Seowoo was trapped in the movie theater and he had mentioned ghosts coming after him in droves, they had deduced that the evil spirit possessing the Hyungok — which Heun refers to as the ‘Hyeong Akgui’ — was involved.
While Sim Seowoo was mentally picturing the organizational chart of a multi-level marketing company, the two continued their explanation.
“So Heun is currently collecting those beads in order to track the Hyeongsin in reverse. More precisely, we are working on piercing through a fog……”
“Piercing through a fog?”
“Yes, yes. The mountain where the Hyeongsin awakened has been completely shrouded in fog. Ever since the awakening, it became a place so thoroughly sealed off that no one has been able to enter.”
Hyeong Akgui (흉악귀) – Heun’s name for an evil spirit that possesses the Hyungok
