The Cracked Vessel
Yu-yeong made it home holding her breath, and only then did she let herself replay everything that had happened.
Back on that horror-film set, the moment Cha-mu had taken her hand, she had distinctly felt her mind wash clean—like water rushing through it. It had lasted only an instant, but it was exactly the same sensation she'd had when she heard the ring of that bell.
And Cha-mu had said—
'If you're going to borrow someone else's body, at least have some manners.'
Someone else's body.
He had said it, plain as day. Those were words that could never come out of an ordinary person's mouth. He knew something. There was no doubt about it.
The moment she thought that, her heart began to pound.
She was bursting with questions, but she couldn't ask any of them in front of the others, so slipping her phone into his pocket had been the best she could manage.
Back home, Yu-yeong hesitated for a long while.
She wanted to call her own phone and ask him outright—but if she laid everything bare, and then...
What if she was wrong? What if he actually knew nothing and she'd been jumping to conclusions all by herself?
Changed out of her clothes, she sat on the huge sofa, gnawing at her lip. Then, suddenly, something her grandmother used to say drifted back to her.
Never do anything that hurts other people.
The way she'd been branded a wicked girl who tore open other people's hearts to seize her own happiness—the words stabbed into her heart all over again.
She didn't want to live like that anymore.
With that resolve, Yu-yeong picked up her second phone. Her fingertips trembled faintly as she dialed her own number.
“Hello.”
“Ah—”
“Go ahead.”
The person who answered was, unmistakably, the man from earlier.
“I, I'm... Yu-Yeong. It's Yu-yeong.”
“I know.”
At that curt, indifferent reply, Yu-yeong found herself picturing his face from earlier. That expressionless look, cold beyond words.
As soon as that face flashed through her mind, the words jammed in her throat.
Maybe she should just hang up and send a text instead. Tell him what she'd done earlier had been a mistake, ask him to return her phone...
“Give me your address.”
“I'm sorry?”
“Read me your address.”
“...”
“Can't hear you? Then I'll just—”
“No! No, wait! I—I'm in Yeonhui-dong—”
Startled by his prodding, Yu-yeong shot up from her seat. Like a child having her homework inspected by a teacher, she recited her home address in a trembling voice.
She knew perfectly well you weren't supposed to hand your address out to strangers. And yet she wanted it that badly.
“Close by.”
That was the entirety of his answer.
No promise to come, no telling her to wait, no word of when he'd arrive. With that single phrase—close by—the man had said everything there was to say.
And it turned out he really was close.
Barely ten minutes had passed before the intercom at the ground-floor entrance rang. Soon after, the man stepped into the lobby. Seen in bright light, his face was even more...
Intimidating, somehow.
As he looked down at Yu-yeong, frozen with the front door half-open, there was no emotion whatsoever in his eyes. No—if any feeling lingered there at all, its name was unmistakably annoyance. The instant she met that gaze, Yu-yeong couldn't help worrying that she'd gone and bothered this man over nothing at all.
“I, um...”
“May I come in?”
While she stammered through excuse after non-excuse, Cha-mu asked in a dry voice.
May I come in. It was the kind of voice that suggested the moment she shook her head and said no, he would simply turn around and walk away without a shred of regret.
“Ah—yes! Please, come in!”
Yu-yeong scrambled aside to let him pass. Stepping into the entryway, he stood there a moment and swept his gaze slowly around the apartment.
It was clearly a look that was searching for something.
“...”
After scrutinizing the interior—staring especially hard at the corners of the room—Cha-mu drew a palm-sized leather pouch from his pocket. Worn with age even at a glance, it was wrapped around and around with a leather cord.
He undid the cord without a moment's hesitation. What emerged from the unfurled leather was a talisman.
A bright yellow paper, painted with a design in paint red as blood.
Cha-mu pressed it against Yu-yeong's entryway.
“Oh.”
No glue, no adhesive of any kind—yet the thin sheet of paper, which had been fluttering loose only a second ago, stuck firmly to the door. Yu-yeong stared at it, letting out a dazed sound of wonder, and at that Cha-mu's gaze swung to her as well.
“If I don't put one up, it'll follow you inside.”
“...Wh-what will?”
Asking when you already know—am I an idiot or what.
“What do you think?”
Cha-mu asked this with the faintest curl at the corner of his mouth. At that icy smile, Yu-yeong shuddered from her shoulders down, as though she'd just glimpsed a ghost.
“Is—is there a ghost in this house too?”
“Why? Did you think there wouldn't be?”
“Ah.”
At his utterly indifferent reply, Yu-yeong's mouth fell slightly open.
Until now, Yu-yeong had believed—at the very least—that her own home was ghost-free. She'd never seen one here, after all. But judging by this man's reaction...
“Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.”
“...”
“You of all people should know that what the eye can see isn't everything.”
At Cha-mu's words, Yu-yeong gave a small nod and moved deeper into the apartment. Cha-mu followed, matching her short strides.
Once inside, Cha-mu caught sight of the enormous photograph hanging dead center in the living room and let out a dry, humorless laugh.
“Impressive.”
It seemed to have been taken on the day of some award ceremony—a radiant smile, a trophy in hand.
Cha-mu's eyes flicked to Yu-yeong for a moment.
She didn't seem like a narcissist. No, it had to be the work of that thing—the one coiled up inside her.
Cha-mu swept one more look around the room, then took the bell from his pocket.
The very bell that had rolled to Yu-yeong's feet a few days ago.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
The bell chimed three times, and Yu-yeong startled, eyes going wide as she stared at him.
It was the same ringing she'd heard that day.
“That...”
Even when she spoke to him, Cha-mu simply went on shaking the bell. Left with nothing to say, Yu-yeong could only watch him with a deflated expression.
Shaking the bell, Cha-mu examined every corner of the living room, then stepped right in front of Yu-yeong and rang it once more.
“Well?”
“I'm sorry?”
“Does your head clear up? Like it did back then?”
At Cha-mu's question, Yu-yeong rolled her eyes inwardly, focused on the sensation, and then nodded.
Come to think of it...
“I can't hear the voices anymore. I mean, it's not that—what I mean is...”
“You can't hear a child crying.”
The sudden drop into informal speech startled her, but Yu-yeong nodded readily.
For some time now, the sound of a child crying had lingered around her. Not a newborn—a young child's wailing. She'd assumed it was just the kid next door fussing...
“From next door—”
“It's been following you since the set. And you thought it was next door?”
Cha-mu shot back at her, his eyes saying he found her utterly hopeless. Only then did Yu-yeong realize it—the child's crying had begun the very moment filming had wrapped.
“It was crying out of sorrow because you abandoned it and walked away.”
“Who... did?”
“The thing that was inside your body.”
Cha-mu said this flatly, then fixed Yu-yeong with a steady gaze.
Up close, examining her at leisure, he could see her condition all the more clearly.
A cracked vessel. Yu-yeong was a vessel. And not merely cracked—she'd lost a piece of herself somewhere, leaving a gaping hole through which every stray spirit and its cousin came and went as it pleased. That was the kind of vessel she was.
There had to have been a cause. Something that had shattered the vessel so thoroughly.
“How did you end up like this?”
“I-I'm sorry?”
“I asked how it happened.”
“...”
“When did it start?”
The way Cha-mu drifted back and forth between casual speech and formal left Yu-yeong utterly flustered.
Honestly speaking, since she'd made her name as an actress, not a single person had ever treated her this way.
People cursed her behind her back and called her darling to her face. But Cha-mu seemed wholly indifferent to whether she was a celebrity, an actress, or anything else.
He carried himself like a man confronting an aggravating problem.
“Why don't you, um, have a seat...”
As Yu-yeong perched awkwardly on the sofa, Cha-mu scanned the room one more time and then sat down across from her.
“Excuse me, but... sir—”
“...”
“Can you—can you see what condition I'm in? What's wrong with me?”
Instead of answering, Cha-mu nodded. He could see it all too well—so well it was a problem.
If he couldn't see it, he could have simply ignored it. But face to face with a woman living her whole life cradling a gaping hole, something in his gut sat wrong.
It was like staring into a messy, disordered room.
That particular discomfort of a man whose compulsions and fastidiousness left him unable to look at scattered, disordered things without itching.
“I'm asking because I can see it.”
“...”
His voice was listless, flat. But against that deathly pale skin, beneath those eyes that gleamed with a cold edge, even that flat voice seemed to slice cleanly into Yu-yeong's chest.
“When did it start?”
“...When I was sixteen.”
“Why?”
Why.
At that single word, Yu-yeong's mouth closed. Why—why, indeed...
“I don't remember.”
“...”
“My grandmother said I was in an accident. I was in a coma for months before I finally woke up—and by then, my body was already like this.”