The outcry was so loud it echoed through the empty corridor. ‘Did it— did it— did it—’ As the sound reverberated, Sim Seowoo blinked his eyes slowly and merely tilted his head slightly.
The two seemed to be in extreme shock, but in truth, he didn’t understand what they were talking about at all. He only thought they were expressing the act of dusting off the doll in a very unique way.
The woman with the hairpin stuck in her hair cried out in a tone full of emotion.
“The dream I had must have been pointing to this person. Brilliant light! My hope!”
She poured out her words almost tearfully, then hurriedly rushed to Seowoo and grasped both his hands tightly. No, she tried to grasp them, but just before she could, Seowoo stepped back.
Whether he looked at her half-heartedly or not, the woman looked at Seowoo and the doll alternately with a delighted face and said.
“Do you happen to know the ghost story related to this library?”
“……Yes? The story about the librarian who got angry because books were shelved incorrectly?”
“Hm? Well, it’s similar, similar!”
The woman tilted her head with a confused look for a moment, then straightened her posture again. As if it was enough that he knew of the ghost story’s existence regardless of how he remembered it, she clapped her hands together.
“The protagonist of that terrifying ghost story was dwelling in that very thing!”
“……This teddy bear?”
“Yes! Because it looks cute, people passed it by without thinking it was the cause of the ghost story. A cunning method that exploited human carelessness! It’s an object that’s been sitting in the corner of the reading room for so long that no one knows when it first appeared.”
In Seowoo’s mind, the image of ‘bright red eyes encountered between library bookshelves’ changed from a librarian’s bloodshot eyes to the teddy bear’s glossy eyes. It became much smaller.
……No, actually encountering a bear might be far more dangerous than a human?
While he was quite seriously letting his imagination run wild, the woman explained enthusiastically.
“Schools happen to be good places for ghost stories to spread, so the evil spirit’s power gradually grew stronger. The school authorities found it unpleasant for things to get noisy over idle talk and simply tried to demolish it just because the building was getting old, but in the process, an accident occurred where a construction worker was seriously injured. Only then did they judge it was unusual and commissioned ‘us.'”
The woman carefully took out a business card from her bosom. Holding only the edges of the paper with the thumbs and index fingers of both hands, she lifted it so Seowoo could see it well. Gold-foiled letters glittered in the sunlight on thick, deep crimson paper.
[HN Business Management Department Field Team 2
Director Do Seonhwa]
The small man next to her tactfully joined in. Unlike Do Seonhwa’s crisp business card, his was a thoroughly crumpled paper that seemed to have rolled around in his pocket. He was Chief Jin Gwangmin of the same organization.
While he silently stared at the two business cards, Do Seonhwa spoke confidently.
“Let me introduce ourselves properly. We’re from ‘Heun,’ an organization whose goal is to balance the world of the dead and the world of the living. An organization that erases the traces the dead dare to leave on the living!”
“To put it straightforwardly, we hunt evil spirits and purify cursed objects.”
Jin Gwangmin added his words. He summarized that it was an organization that prevents the harm evil spirits inflict on people, nothing complicated to think about.
“That’s right. Those two are Heun’s main tasks, and while hunting is dangerous, purification is work that must be performed very carefully. But you, honored one, just eliminated the curse dwelling in the object with a few touches! Originally, it would be a deep-rooted curse that purifiers would need to work on for several days……!”
She explained that it was an object imbued with considerable impurity, having drained the vitality of university students in the library for a long time. The reason the construction worker was injured was also because he carelessly touched this doll.
While this series of explanations continued, Seowoo only blinked his eyes, then asked.
“……Do ghosts really exist?”
“Ah, I should have started from there.”
Jin Gwangmin sighed deeply. He had seemed bewildered throughout the introduction, but he hadn’t expected they’d need to address the very existence of ghosts first.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never even seen a ghost……”
If he had seen ghosts until now, no, if he had witnessed something even slightly suspicious and experienced strange things, he would have been delighted to hear about ‘Heun.’ Normally people would be happily relieved that they weren’t the strange ones, but this person had no such reaction at all.
In this case, there was a high probability that his spiritual sight hadn’t even opened.
“……Did that person really purify it? Can someone use purification techniques without even knowing ghosts exist?”
Jin Gwangmin whispered quietly to Do Seonhwa. Doubt began to creep in that perhaps they had seen wrong.
“Maybe last night that person hunted so intensely they eliminated even the curse……”
“Then the curse would become stronger, there’s absolutely no way it would weaken!”
“That’s true, but……”
While Jin Gwangmin scratched his cheek, Do Seonhwa made a groaning sound. In fact, she too sympathized with Jin Gwangmin’s doubts, but nevertheless, she had an intuition that they mustn’t let go of the person before their eyes.
From the moment she faced him holding the doll under the gentle sunlight pouring through the window—no, perhaps from the moment they met on the tree-lined street last night—she’d felt this emotion. A gladness as if meeting someone she’d longed for a very long time.
The pure white light I witnessed in my dream must surely be this person.
“Honored one, could you spare us just a moment? I’d like to go to the company and talk……”
Do Seonhwa clasped her hands together and pleaded earnestly. To confirm whether the doll had truly been purified, they needed to go to the organization and investigate. While they were at it, it would be good to convince him of the existence of ghosts and also introduce him to ‘this’ industry while showing him around the organization building.
However, the honored one gave no answer. Still with a dazed look—no, now with a rather reluctant expression—he looked back and forth between the doll and himself, so Do Seonhwa spoke with the most harmless smile possible.
“Your soul looks so pure—”
“I don’t believe in cults.”
Seowoo left just like that.
He had been reacting slowly with a blank face until now, but suddenly moved at an incredibly fast speed. At the sight of him disappearing sharply with a serious expression, Do Seonhwa let out an “Aah!” cry. It was an exclamation filled with grievance.
“Honored one! We’re not a cult!”
“Ah, Director! Have you ever seen a cult say they’re a cult?!”
While Do Seonhwa desperately reached out her hand, Jin Gwangmin shouted loudly. In the meantime, Seowoo had already left the library and was quickly heading toward the tree-lined street.
“P-please, honored one! Just a moment……!”
“I’m busy because it’s exam period.”
Seowoo walked almost at a run, avoiding the two chasing after him. Whatever they were saying behind him didn’t enter his ears at all.
If it was a cult, he was sick of it.
It was a disgusting aversion that went beyond being tired of frequently encountering them in front of the university.
Actually, Do Seonhwa’s proposal had only made him uncomfortable, and he’d been troubled by it. For him, there was a very bad memory related to following others to unfamiliar places.
‘Seowoo-ya. Should we go on a trip this vacation?’
Suddenly, a certain moment from the past came to mind.
Something he’d buried deep in his head suddenly raised its head and surfaced, making Seowoo let out a sigh. Even for him, who usually let things pass, there had been something that shouldn’t have happened.
He became tired in an instant, and just as he was increasing his walking speed to shake off his thoughts, he saw someone trembling while clinging to a tree by the roadside.
[Run away. Run, run, I must run away. Run away from the monster……]
It was the man he’d encountered while taking a walk yesterday. The person who had put on a late-night fashion show wearing a dark red fur coat.
[Hide, I must hide, I must hide, to avoid that monster, where on earth should I……]
His behavior of rapidly muttering something was strange.
However, Seowoo, who discovered him, merely thought that he was frequently encountering people he’d met last night today as he passed by. There was no need to greet him particularly, so he was walking past when suddenly the man jerked his head up!
[You……!]
“Yes, your fashion is great today too.”
Seowoo casually gave a thumbs up and moved. No, he tried to.
[I must devour your soul! I must replenish my vitality……!]
If only that man hadn’t suddenly flown at him.
As he jumped up and spread both arms wide, the man’s fur coat tore open in the air. He clearly remembered the coat had been worn inside-out, but now it spread out like a curtain, and the man’s body seen that way was very strange. A body so emaciated that bones protruded, bluish skin, and…….
Seowoo thought he should be arrested for public indecency.
“How dare some petty ghost rush at our honored one!”
Thwack!
Just before the dark red fur coat covered Seowoo, something flew over and hit the man’s forehead. What was deeply embedded in the man’s face was none other than a wooden hairpin with strings of pearls hanging from it.
