Translator: Wan ED/PR: Personal Ghost
⟨Chapter 1⟩
First story
⟨Receiver of misfortune⟩
The son of a certain Hapcheon’s county official couldn’t live up to his position as he was born haughty and arrogant. But immediately after receiving the teachings of the Haeinsa Temple’s head monk, he reformed himself and rose to the position of the Pyongyang’s first local official[1].
On a certain day of a month, the head monk pleaded with him to make sure that he sleeps in one room with a monk he will send.
After a few years, a monk from Haeinsa Temple indeed came to him, and the official did as the head monk asked him to. Then in the middle of the night, as he lit up a candle, because of the fishy odor, he found the Buddhist monk dead, his stomach pierced by a knife and the floor soaked in blood.
Upon investigation, it was found to be an action of the official’s slave. He, who held a grudge against the official, naturally thought that it’s the official laying in the araenmok[2] and stabbed that person with a knife.
Because the head monk knew all kinds of things about the future, he sent a monk to receive misfortune instead of the official.
The woman in the funeral portrait seemed to be roughly in her thirties.
The child kneeled in front of it and stared at the picture without the slightest twitch. Perhaps because of the black clothes, the two eyes on his sickly pale face were enormously big.
Whispers were heard behind the child’s back.
“Dan, your name is Dan, right? Do you remember me? I’m the great auntie Mogdong[3].”
“Leave him. With his mom in front of him like this, will he even have ears to listen to our words right now?”
“Ouch, but he is just seven, how can I leave him alone like this? Where is this child’s dad and what is he doing? Is he mourning?”
“Dunno. Died so prettily, but suddenly doesn’t bother about the child.”
“I somehow know why. The son survived alone, so he must be disgusting to him and fell out of love.”
“That’s not the only thing. It’s because that child is strange. Take a look at his left eye!”
The child, who only stared at the picture of his mom, looked back with a swish.
At that moment, the child’s left eye turned bright red.
The appearances of mourners, who were acting nosily, also changed. The benevolent faces of the gray-haired elders split into horizontal mouths and started to cackle.
The bastards, who talked while pretending to be the child’s relatives, weren’t humans. They were the bad things which mixed among the people. The beings called wicked creatures or small spirits[4].
“Hiss…”
The child’s face turned green as he looked around.
However, no one among the adults looked at him. Seeing how no one worried about this much strangeness, it was clear that those bastards were up to something.
「 Such eye is very precious! Where the hell did you get that? Did you obtain it in exchange for offering your mom as sacrifice? 」
「 If we just leave such humans who can see us, it will be a trouble. I should just rip out that eye right now! 」
「 Baby, come here! It’s mommy. 」
Everyone giggled as they approached, and then one of the bastards turned into his mom.
Even midst fright, blood rushed into the child’s head.
“Get out!”
As if courage rushed from somewhere, he hit the pouncing bastards with his fist and kicked them with his foot. Then he had a thought and untied the Buddhist beads his aunt slipped into his hands before, and threw them.
「Kieeeek!」
The bastards immediately turned into black smoke and disappeared.
At last, the child dropped his shoulders, panting.
At that moment.
Together with ‘Pang!’ sound, blunt impact hit the back of the child’s head.
“…..!”
Yu Dan abruptly opened his eyes.
His left eye flared up red, and then gradually returned to black. The bleak scenery inside the room reflected in that eye.
… That dream again.
Ten years passed, but the memory was still as vivid as if it was yesterday.
Yu Dan sat blankly for a while, and then angrily shook his messy hair.
He had a precognition that today wasn’t his lucky day.
As expected, his bad precognition wasn’t wrong.
Why did he want to take subway today of all days?
“…”
Yu Dan wordlessly stared at the opposite side of the car.
In the middle of everything being dyed red by the light of the setting sun, there were only two people in the subway.
“Cough! Cough!”
A female student, who sat on the opposite side, kept coughing with a pale white face since a moment ago. Then she was suddenly startled and tried to look back or at her legs, or try to free her neck even though there was nothing there. As if…
… No.
Yu Dan turned his head away.
Let’s not bother with it.
He took out a mobile phone with a stiff face. He skimmed through the text on the screen with upturned eyes, but nothing caught his attention.
「So fun. So fun.」
He overheard the sound of whispers from somewhere.
Damn it.
Yu Dan put up his tightly wrapped scarf and shut his eyes. However…
“Cough! Cough!”
He opened them straight away at the sound of breathless coughing.
The face of the female student was bloodless. It seemed like she was going to suffocate any moment.
He could no longer pretend not to see it. But he would regret it later. While thinking like this, he quickly closed his right eye.
The interior of the subway car fogged. Instead, ‘that’ started to be plainly visible.
That’s identity were snakes.
The disgusting snakes hung on suckers and were choking the girl. Even at this moment, they kept descending from the ceiling one after one.
Should he call the culprit behind this a subway shelf’s cryptid or perhaps yokai[5]?
It had an ugly appearance, with furuncles spotting its entire body and puss dripping down, and it kept taking out smaller monsters from a black bead, and sending them down.
Why the hell would you do something like this?
Anyhow, one thing was sure.
It was expected, but it truly thought that no one would see them and was committing harm in secret even today, and then got caught red-handed.
“Can’t you stop?”
At Yu Dan’s voice, the yokai at the shelf was startled and stopped its movements.
The female student was also startled as she looked at him.
“My apologies, sir. Suddenly I didn’t feel very well…”
“Not you.”
Yu Dan responded bluntly and stared at the shelf.
“Fun? This is fun? Get down here! Hand over that unlucky bead right now!”
The yokai went pale.
Each one of them was the same. They commit cowardly acts and when they get caught, they panic exactly like this.
It couldn’t look straight at him, and was only hesitantly glancing over. Just in time, the subway door opened, and it fled outside as if thinking ‘great!’.
Yu Dan clicked his tongue.
Look at that. As expected, it ended up being annoying again.
He abruptly stood up and quickly jumped out before the door closed while stretching his hand out towards the female student at the same time.
The female student shrunk in surprise.
Besides, she was already terribly frightened because the highschool oppa with a bad impression was glaring and shouting at the air.
But that male highschooler’s hand caught the air just in front of her neck. As if there was something there.
Her chest instantly lightened. And the pain that blocked her breathing also faded.
“Uh….?”
The female student looked at his back with a confused face.
The door soon closed.
The street was already dark. The bar signs were flashing much earlier than stars. The yokai slipped between people coming home from work.
“Ah, annoying…”
Yu Dan grumbled as he followed it.
As if it couldn’t imagine he would run after it, the moment it got out of the roadside, it started to search for another student again. It discovered a young miss waiting alone for a bus at the bus stop and approached her quickly.
Just when it was about to sneakily attach itself to the young miss’ back, Yu Dan snatched it by the neck.
“Hick!”
The yokai was scared out of its wits.
He truly hated that slippery feeling. However, he couldn’t help it but catch it first. Yu Dan dragged the struggling thing and then threw it at the wall of the backstreet.
“Do I sound fun to you?”
“I did wrong, sir!”
The yokai got up on the ground to beg straight away. The disgustingness of that covered by furuncles and pus appearance couldn’t be matched.
“I truly did wrong, sir! It’s too difficult because I ended up looking like this, and because I couldn’t bare at all not to harm anybody…”
“Noisy! Who asked about it? I don’t want to hear your story or something, and have no interest in it, so hand it over! And then don’t show up in front of me, please!”
“Ab-about that, usually normal people shouldn’t see us.”
The yokai glanced at Yu Dan’s left eye.
“That eye, how did You[6] get such an eye…?”
“Noisy!”
“M-My apologies. I did wrong. I’ll disappear.”
“Wait.”
Yu Dan stepped on the tail of the yokai which took a little step back to stop it.
“Give me that and get out.”
“Yes? Ah, something like this?”
The yokai put its crushed hand in its bosom and took out a money bundle. When Yu Dan stared at it with absurd eyes, it personally put the money into his bag.
“What are you doing? Who wants your money? I’m talking about that black bead! The monster summoning bead!”
“What are You saying? That bead?”
The yokai asked back in surprise.
He expected it but was annoyed when looking at it feigning ignorance.
It was the source of magic[7] of those who wandered around and caused such harm. Weapons like wide knives or spears, decorations like necklaces and pouches you couldn’t know what was inside of.
There were all kinds of them, but most of them were beads. The moment you see them, you have to shatter them, whatever the method. In the first place, you have to eradicate it at its roots, right? And if you don’t do that, then it’s going to be bothersome as you will run into it again.
“Give it to me obediently. I’m going to chase after you and make noise until you give it. And a passing by shaman, monk or priest… Someone may notice us. Then who among the two of us is going to be in more trouble?”
After that, the yokai was bewildered.
Usually they gave up around that moment. Because everyone has a lot of things to worry about.
“Ah, I understand.”
A strange expression appeared on the yokai’s wicked face.
“If You’re asking for it, I’ll give it to You. But are You truly asking for it? Are You not going to think about it again?”
“What nonsense are you talking about?! Give it quickly!”
“Ah, yes…”
The yokai hastily put its hands into its bosom again and soon took out the black bead and stretched it out towards him.
Yu Dan stretched out his hand and accepted it.
It was from a strange material, like that of a shell of a crustacean, but it seemed it would break if you applied just a bit of force. The bead’s surface was matt, yet inside it held a strange brilliance.
What was that?
As he stared hard at it with his left eye, a small ripple formed. From a dimly undulating darkness, a wicked smell he couldn’t bare wafted over.
He really hated to think about it, but…
It was exactly the same as that time.
Even when he tried to remember, he could recall nothing but that there was some sort of incident. He heard people screaming, and then in the next moment, two, four, six, eight lights appeared in turn among the darkness.
When he came to his senses, everyone collapsed. Including his mom.
And his left eye hurt like hell.
Yu Dan unconsciously tightly grasped the edge of the scarf.
“I’m sick of it.”
His other hand pressed on the bead.
The instant a slim crack formed on the black surface, cold wind brushed against the back of his neck. When he realized that something was wrong, it was already too late.
The bead’s shell broke and black like ink energy burst out and pounced towards him. He had no idea how it came to this, but he felt pain on his forehead as if it was burned by fire.
What?
Yu Dan was confused and looked at the yokai.
Its squashed shape was gradually straightening. An enormous silhouette that was easily taller than a human. The pus and ooze covering its whole body disappeared in the instant.
“I thought there is no way, but you really did it, eh?” [8]
The voice of the yokai. No, the voice of the thing of unknown identity became very dignified at some point.
“You truly have no idea about anything, right? You can only see things with that eye, eh! I pity that eye, huh!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It was an evil bead full of misfortune. I mistook it for a terribly old-looking treasure and mistakenly picked it up. From then on, my fate was to only helplessly receive terrible misfortune as the owner of this thing, but I could never expect you to ask for that misfortune. Thanks to you, I’m free now!”
As the thing stood upright, it shed its hideous appearance and spread its wings wide.
“Because you became the receiver of misfortune instead of me!”
“What? Receiver of misfortune?”
Yu Dan asked back.
The ground under his feet vibrated.
The cement ground split and a black hole appeared. The darkness that he saw inside the bead a moment ago now became a bottomless pit. From the far, far away bottom, the desperate screams of beings, which couldn’t be living creatures, rang out. They were calling Yu Dan.
What the hell was that?
He barely avoided being swallowed by the hole by a hair’s breadth. Then he escaped the backstreet and fled towards the road full of passersby.
Usually, those things avoided places swarming with people, no matter how wicked they were. They would hide for a while and aim for a moment when he was alone instead. It was a fact he realized through numerous chases before.
However, this time wasn’t like this.
The hole kept chasing him. It approached him without a sound, like a predator, while swallowing everything. As he fled, it followed after him even faster.
His vision darkened.
Misfortune or whatever it was, how was he supposed to know? He wasn’t involved in this. He should have stopped worrying about what happens to other people.
Even though he regretted it, it was already too late.
Someone already warned him before. ‘If you recklessly punish those things like this according to your mood, you will one day face a disaster. You won’t be able to do anything and it will be over in an instant.’
However…
The wicked creature which transformed into his mother. The small spirit which secretly approached the child who climbed the peak of the jungle gym to try to throw them off towards the far away ground.
And…
Someone like that female student who was suffocating alone in the subway car and collapsed without reason.
Such sights touched something in the depths of his mind. He thought to himself, ‘Aren’t you crossing a certain line?’. Every time, it felt like that very old rage raised its head, and he couldn’t at all pretend not to see and ignore it.
It wasn’t that he did wrong, but…
Yu Dan bit his lips.
Anyhow, he had to survive first, right? Because though his mom was already gone, if he also ended up dying, the aunt, uncle, Mia noona and Su-hyeok hyung would be deeply hurt.
Ah, right. Mia noona.
While running, Yu Dan searched through his bag and took out the mobile phone.
Na Mia.
Noona was his maternal cousin, moreover, she was a person who could also see those things, though not as well as him. And it wasn’t only that, she was also working part-time using that ability.
“If you work with such things, you will sometimes run into life-and-death crises, but even so, in theory there is always a way to survive.”
“What is that?”
“Aha! I don’t know! It’s possible because of ME.”
While recalling the conversation with Mia, Yu Dan tried to call her a few times, over and over.
「Hallo.」
Mia finally picked up. Her voice was blunt.
「I’m currently on a way to see a movie. I don’t know what’s going on, but can you please not disturb me?」
On the other side, he heard the chatter of her female friends. He was well aware that if he disturbed Mia when she was pretending to be an ordinary university student, he would pay a price for it later, but it couldn’t be helped.
“What movie?! I’m being chased by a huge hole! What should I do?”
「What? Hole?」
“Yeah! It’s trying to swallow me up! Misfortune! It said I became the Receiver of Misfortune!”
In the instant, he felt the air on the other side of the call stiffen. The sound of chattering friends was abruptly cut off.
「What was that just now? Receiver of Misfortune?」
“Yeah! I stole a bead of some kind of a yokai and smashed it…”
「How many times did I tell you not to wander around doing things like this? First, don’t run. It gets faster if you run. You have to stay calm. How big is the hole?」
“Dunno. Its diameter is roughly… five meters?”
Silence fell for a while.
「Just die. You brought it upon yourself. Don’t become a vengeful spirit.」
“Don’t spout nonsense! Quickly, tell me how to solve it!”
「Dunno. I also can’t do anything.」
His heart sank.
“Why? The hell you acted so almighty! Why don’t you know?”
「Because it’s supernatural[9].」
“Supernatural?”
「I can’t catch it. However, they should be able to do that there. Because it’s ‘real’ there. But will they really lift an entire curse? Okay, you have to bring a tribute! 」
“What are you talking about? Do you know some people?”
「Not people.」
He felt a chill at that flat reply, even though he didn’t know why.
「Listen carefully. The place you have to go now is a traditional shop called Banwoldang[10]. I’ll tell you how to find it…」
Mia started her explanation.
Even though he was puzzled, Yu Dan soon memorized the address she gave him.
***
Did he find the right place?
Every time he looked around, something in his hand cramped.
Really, he should be careful.
Yu Dan glanced down at his fingers. What he was holding in his hands was a rather big gift box. The bright and pretty ribbon was terribly awkward.
…. Honestly, he wanted to just throw it away.
However, he couldn’t do that. It was ‘tribute’ Na Mia was begging for.
In the past, usually a pretty virgin was offered, but times have changed. Nowadays, rather than loud crybaby virgins, they prefer high quality handmade cakes. Bring that and blindly beg to be saved while offering it. Like this, your survival chances will increase, even if by little bit. That was what Mia roughly told him while instructing him frantically.
“Where the hell did you send me?”
Half worried, half looking forward to it, Yu Dan mumbled.
*~*~*
[1] first local official — 감사 (gamsa)
[2] araenmok — the warmest place in the ondol room (Ondol is Korea’s traditional floor-heating system).
[3] Mogdong — could mean shepherd.
[4] wicked creatures and small spirits — wicked creatures: ‘요물 (yomul)’, literally means wicked things and can refer to both living entities and objects. Small spirits: ‘잡귀 (japkwi)’ are miscellaneous spirits that are created from souls of people who died in unfortunate circumstances. They aren’t always evil, some of them may become a miscellaneous god protecting a house, but are usually looked down upon.
[5] yokai — this translator has a bit mixed feelings about using yōkai as Korean word ‘요괴 (yokwi)’ could be used for all sorts of fantastical phenomena, and not only to strange, fantasy creatures as represented by Japanese’s yōkai. But considering how this novel uses this word, this word is suitable. (Also, if you excuse me, as I’ll just call them yokai.)
[6] You — for this translation, whenever polite form of a word is used in raws, like polite You, She, He, They or That Person, I’ll capitalize it. I’ll also always use capitalized You if the speaker is using a polite or formal tone. For reference, the yokai here uses formal (highly polite) tone.
[7] magic — ‘주술 (jusul)’, rather than mana based magic you can find in fantasy novels, it refers to folk magic we can find in our real world. All kinds of luck rituals, witchcraft and mystical arts may fall into this category.
[8] “I thought there is no way, but you really did it, eh?” — from this point on, the yokai is using a casual tone.
[9] supernatural — ‘괴이 (kwii)’ means strange, bizarre, ghostly, but here it refers to a ‘supernatural’ part of the world which isn’t visible to normal humans.
[10] Bangwoldong — these days, name ‘bangwoldong’ refers to a certain market area in the Seoul, but the name comes from a department shop located there, which was very popular during the Japanese occupation. This novel doesn’t seem to refraining that place though. Its name translates to ‘Half-moon Pavilion’ or ‘House of Half-moon’.
Translator’s note: Hello, dear reader~! Welcome to another bizarrely good novel. Please take a comfortable seat and enjoy the story, characters, jokes and this translator’s thousands of footnotes~
Note about names: For all names I’ll be using Revised Korean Romanization, as being neither a Korean nor English native speaker, I refuse to take on a challenge to try to reproduce Korean sounds with English sounds.
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