Borrowed Manners

Don't eat that! I told you it'll make you fat!

I'm scared! Stop moving me around without my permission!

Ever since a child had hijacked her body, Yu-yeong had been powerless again, dragged along at the kid's every whim. Neither warnings about macarons and weight gain nor protests about being scared made the slightest dent. There was no way Yu-yeong's timid little pleas could reach the ears of a child already swept up in pure, breathless excitement. The kid had eyes only for satisfying her own curiosity.

"Hey."

Talk of ghosts, and they come — that was how it always went. All the more so on a film set for a movie full of ghosts. It would have been stranger if the place weren't crawling with them.

And even though a ghost had taken over her body, Yu-yeong's eyes were still Yu-yeong's own. Whatever the child saw, Yu-yeong saw too.

Which meant that Yu-yeong was watching the spirits against her will. Gazing at the sinister shapes lurking in every corner of the set, she wanted nothing more than to burst into tears.

Then, from behind her, a man's voice sounded.

"If you're going to borrow someone else's body, at least have some manners."

Yu-yeong's eyes went wide. The child occupying that body, of course, froze in absolute terror.

Cha-mu had appeared. Right in front of Yu-yeong and the child.

"...Huh."

A frame so tall you'd have to crane your neck to look up at it, eyes that seemed perpetually annoyed at having to bother with the world, a nose perhaps a shade too high, lips red as vermilion. He was, undeniably, handsome.

"He's sooo handsome..."

Those were not Yu-yeong's words.

"A brat's gone and fallen for someone."

Murmuring in a bone-dry voice stripped of any feeling, Cha-mu closed the distance to Yu-yeong. With every step he took, the child tensed up like a frog before a snake.

"If you're going to play, you play quietly."

As he spoke, Cha-mu stared straight into Yu-yeong's eyes. The eyes were windows to the soul, and through them he looked at the child lodged inside her.

For better or worse, the child had latched onto Yu-yeong for the simple, innocent reason that she wanted to play. The most famous, most beautiful person the kid knew — to those young eyes, Yu-yeong must have been a pretty princess come straight out of the television. Cha-mu could not fault the child's heart.

But that didn't make it right — stealing someone's body on a whim and even dropping a lighting rig for fun.

"Out. Now."

Cha-mu's words were never long. He preferred to persuade spirits who could be reasoned with, and send them on their way.

Shake, shake.

The child, wearing Yu-yeong's face, shook her head hard and firm, as if to say there was absolutely no chance of that.

"You don't listen worth a damn, do you?"

"Can't I just stay here a little longer?"

"No, you can't."

"Aww!"

"'Aww' my ass. Out. Now."

Cha-mu was unyielding. At his flat refusal, Yu-yeong's borrowed lips pushed into a pout — and then the body swung around as if to storm off on the spot.

Cha-mu was already reaching into his pocket, thinking to pull out a talisman and slap it on. Sending her off was, after all, the right thing to do.

"Owww!"

The instant Cha-mu seized Yu-yeong's wrist, the child's cry of pain was cut short by the arrival of Seul-a.

"Yu-yeong! Filming's back on—!"

Word was that the shoot, canceled at the director's whim, was resuming. Rushing to find Yu-yeong, Seul-a stumbled onto the scene and went white.

A pitch-dark set with not a single soul in sight. An actress on the verge of tears with her wrist caught in someone's grip — and the man clutching that wrist in a vise.

It went without saying that every possible picture painted itself in Seul-a's head.

"Yu-yeong-eee..."

The moment Yu-yeong called out to her, Seul-a dashed over and yanked Yu-yeong's wrist free of Cha-mu's hand.

"I don't know who you think you are, but what is wrong with you?!"

Her eyes sparkled with relief at the escape route that had just opened up.

"Unnie, you said filming's back on. Let's hurry."

"Right — let's go, fast."

Sheltering Yu-yeong behind her back and shooting Cha-mu a look of open hostility, Seul-a hurried away.

"Treated like a sex offender, of all things."

Left alone, Cha-mu let out a long sigh as he recalled Seul-a's expression of utter wariness and the way Yu-yeong's eyes had sparkled and smiled.

Nothing good had ever come of entangling himself with humans.

"This is exactly why I hate helping people."

He sighed again as he said it. He could have simply ignored it all, and he couldn't help feeling pathetic for chasing after trouble all the way here out of pointless meddling. If he'd left her alone, the spirit would have worked its way out on its own — or swallowed her whole — and some kind of end would have come of it. Instead he'd stuck his nose in and gotten himself branded a pervert.

Cha-mu ran a hand back through his disheveled hair. After Yu-yeong had vanished from the set, he had followed on her heels almost immediately, searching out wherever she'd gone.

He'd been indifferent. He'd thought he was indifferent. And yet he couldn't just stand by and watch her slip away into a corner of the set. Even as he swore he wouldn't entangle himself with humans, his feet had carried him there anyway.

The child had left because of the yeong-ga that had been haunting Yu-yeong's body all along. If the canceled shoot resumed, the child's spirit would have no choice but to be driven out of Yu-yeong's body. A mercy, if nothing else.

Cha-mu kept watching Yu-yeong from his corner all the while. He also tracked where the young spirit went once it slipped free of her.

And then, from amid the wreckage of shattered debris, Cha-mu picked up the red ball the child had been searching for and handed it over.

"Take it with you."

At his words, the child beamed, hugged the red ball tightly to her chest, and went scampering this way and that. Watching such innocent delight, a faint shadow of worry settled over Cha-mu's face.

A child who had died before she could ascend to heaven — pity was the only word for what he felt.

"Excuse me! Um, excuse me!"

"...?"

Several hours later, once filming had wrapped and Cha-mu was on his way out, Yu-yeong called him to a stop.

At the urgency in her voice, he turned — and watched her approach through half-lidded eyes.

The half of her that had been acting was gone. The real Yu-yeong, the one with the broken vessel, was walking toward him.

"Did you call me?"

"Yes! Yes, I did!"

"Why."

At his utterly indifferent reply, Yu-yeong couldn't bring herself to speak right away, her lips just fluttering wordlessly.

"I, um... I..."

Her face wound tight with nerves, she kept biting at her lip. While the others had been acting, Yu-yeong had remembered Cha-mu — the owner of the bell she'd picked up. She remembered, vividly, the sensation of that day: how, after hearing the bell's chime, her mind had cleared as if by magic. The moment that memory surfaced, she knew she couldn't let him slip away. She had no idea exactly who or what he was, but he clearly understood the things that kept happening to her.

"Um, here, this is—"

Yu-yeong glanced around warily at the people nearby, then swiftly slipped her phone into Cha-mu's pocket.

Cha-mu's brow creased at the sudden weight dragging his pocket down.

"What is this."

Even as he asked, Yu-yeong was already backing rapidly away from him, as though afraid he might return the phone on the spot.

"What the hell was that."

Cha-mu had, quite literally, reduced her to that.

He was a man who kept people at arm's length by nature, so it was only natural that Yu-yeong's absurd behavior drew such a curt response. He wanted nothing more than to chase her down and shove the phone back into her hands, but she had already climbed into her van.

Watching Cha-mu stride out of the set toward the van, Seul-a fixed him with a glare of pure ice.

She'd recognized him instantly — the man who'd been gripping Yu-yeong's wrist in that empty set earlier.

"Ha."

Again.

Under a gaze that saw nothing but a shameless pervert, a deranged stalker, Cha-mu couldn't take another step and stopped where he stood. He heaved a deep sigh, then pulled the phone crammed in his pocket back out. He wanted to toss it straight into the nearest trash can, but he couldn't quite bring himself to.

"..."

He had tried so hard to avoid it, and in the end, entangled he was.

So thinking, Cha-mu swallowed a long sigh, turned back into the set, and set about his work. Trying to forget the weight in his pocket, he moved faster than usual — tidying the props within reach, hauling equipment over to one corner — and only after a long while did he finally straighten his back.

Mister-eee...

Then, a child's voice reached him.

She'd been running around gleefully with her red ball, but she must have seen something frightening in the meantime, because she came toddling up to Cha-mu, lip trembling, on the verge of tears.

Of course she had.

The Paju set. The place was thick with ghosts — beyond merely many, it was full of outright malicious yeong-ga. Such things would never leave a young spirit in peace. The mischievous ones here, always itching for trouble, had no doubt taken the chance to scare a little one they hadn't seen in ages.

The child looked up at Cha-mu, her lips pushing into a wobbly pout.

She'd tried to follow Yu-yeong, but the earthbound spirits lingering here seemed to have snagged her by the ankles.

"..."

Cha-mu looked down at her in silence, then drew the shamanic bell from his pocket.

Chime. Chime.

A few shakes of the bell, and the spirits that had the child cornered drew back and dispersed. Those who had sinned in life recoiled from the bell's ring with loathing — but the child, who had died before she'd had the chance to sin a single sin, feared the sound not at all. Instead she crept closer to Cha-mu.

Quietly stowing the bell away, he said only two words.

"Hold on."

He couldn't very well grant her ascension here.

At that single remark, the child wrapped herself around his leg. Feeling one side of his body grow heavy, Cha-mu swallowed a silent sigh.

A phone in his pocket that belonged to Yu-yeong, and the child Yu-yeong had left behind clinging to his leg.

Somehow, his chest felt tight and heavy all at once.