The Broken Vessel

"Miss."

"......"

"Miss, we're here."

She must have dozed off once the tension drained out of her. At the low voice calling her, Yu-yeong opened her eyes.

"Ah—how much do I owe you?"

"Oh, never mind that. Miss."

"Yes?"

Yu-yeong wondered if the driver had recognized her and was about to ask for an autograph. But she quickly realized they had arrived somewhere other than the address she'd given at the start of the ride, and she couldn't hide her bewilderment.

The place she'd asked to be taken was her own home. Instead, the taxi had stopped in front of an unfamiliar old hanok.

Now what is this?

Thinking that, Yu-yeong stole a glance ahead.

A middle-aged taxi driver with a kind, comfortable face glanced back at her.

"This is still Yeonhui-dong."

"......"

"I won't take your fare today, so get out and go take a look inside that house."

What is he even saying? Is this some new kind of abduction? She stared at him as the thought crossed her mind. If she got out of the car, Yu-won's fans hiding somewhere might spring out and drag her away — but if she just sat there, she was afraid the taxi would simply drive off with her in it.

"Um......"

"Miss. You can see ghosts, can't you?"

"......"

"And you get possessed often, too."

At those words, Yu-yeong's face went white. This wasn't some shaman's shrine she'd sought out — she had only gotten into a taxi. She couldn't believe the driver was speaking as if he could see straight through her situation.

"D-Driver...... wh-what do you see?"

Her voice trembling, Yu-yeong asked him. The truth was, very few people ever caught on to her condition that quickly. Even at the most renowned shaman houses, not a single mudang had ever noticed what she was before Yu-yeong said a word.

That wasn't all. The real reason Yu-yeong — so unsuited to it — had appeared on that variety show featuring shamans was her desperate hope of finding someone who could recognize what was happening to her.

But among all those famous practitioners, no one had ever seen through her.

And now a taxi driver she'd met for the first time in her life, a man who simply looked good-natured, had read her condition at a glance.

"Go inside that hanok."

"......"

"And then it'll all make sense."

It'll all make sense? What will?

But Yu-yeong couldn't bring herself to ask anything more and got out of the taxi. Even as she stepped out, her feet dragged, because she was dying to ask what he saw in her — how he could possibly have known.

The moment she was out, the taxi pulled away as if hurrying back to its own business.

Morning sunlight came crashing down over her head in dazzling shards.

Yu-yeong tilted her head back toward the sky for a moment, then let her gaze fall to the towering gate of the hanok. It looked like a house that had stood for well over a hundred years.

Clusters of plum blossoms reached over the stone wall, and the sight caught her eye and held it.

Yu-yeong had seen ghosts since she was very small.

She couldn't remember exactly when it began. She only knew the moment she realized it — the moment she understood that her very best childhood friend, the one who always came running to greet her at the neighborhood playground, still had exactly the same face, the same height, even after Yu-yeong had started school, shot up in size, and grown able to eat spicy food she once couldn't touch.

The realization that the first friend she had ever made in her life was a ghost.

When she was little, she only saw them. She couldn't tell what was a ghost and what wasn't — but the man who sometimes perched on top of the wall of the house she shared with her grandmother, grinning down at her with that beaming smile, was unmistakably one of them.

"Gwamma...... the wall uncle keeps smiiiiling at meee......"

The very day Yu-yeong said those words, her grandmother glued jagged shards of soju bottles all along the top of the wall.

And the next morning, when Yu-yeong came outside, the man was still sitting up there.

Amid the bottle shards glittering like stars.

It's a ghost. It's a ghost.

For the first time in her life, Yu-yeong foamed at the mouth and threw a fit. She still remembered how the man who had always smiled so warmly at her wore a stricken, bewildered expression for the very first time. And how, from that day on, he never appeared again.

And so Yu-yeong grew up as a child who saw ghosts, whether she wanted to or not. Then one day, there was an accident she herself had no memory of. After that day, Yu-yeong stopped merely seeing spirits — they began to enter her. No, not entering — possession was the more accurate word.

Seeing horrifying ghosts was, if anything, the tolerable part.

Possession was an entirely different matter.

She had to watch, in full possession of her senses, as some unknown ghost slid deep inside her body and did whatever it pleased. She could scream at it to stop, demand to know what it thought it was doing — nothing ever answered back.

The things that borrowed Yu-yeong's body used it however they wished, fulfilled whatever they had come to do, and then simply discarded it and moved on.

And whatever wreckage they left behind became entirely Yu-yeong's burden to clean up.

That wreckage took many forms. One day she was a trainee at a famous agency; then an idol; then an actress; a woman who seduced men she felt nothing for and manufactured scandal after scandal.

To be honest, the hours unknown spirits spent inside her body outweighed — overwhelmingly — the hours Yu-yeong herself lived in it.

Like last night, when she lured Yu-won to that hotel.

How many spirits had used her body to have their wishes granted? Yu-yeong herself could no longer count them all.

'That's fate, kid. Plain and simple fate.'

'......Fate?'

'Nobody ever outruns their fate. You live the way you were made. And look how much you've accomplished because of it, hmm?'

Look how much you've accomplished.

Those words cut her deeper than anything. They weren't even wrong. Because of the spirits who had achieved their wishes through her body, Yu-yeong had undeniably gained a great deal.

A girl with nothing to her name but a pretty face becoming a trainee, debuting, and now being called an actress — those were things the real Yu-yeong, shy and pathologically quiet, could never have achieved on her own.

It was the spirit of a trainee who had never managed to debut and ended her own life; the spirit of an unknown actor whose dream was to become famous; they poured into Yu-yeong's body and lived through it as though divinely possessed — and the result was the place she stood now.

Yu-yeong admitted that.

But still.

"Ah."

The moment Yu-yeong took a single step toward the hanok, her feet stopped dead.

Then, smoothly, her body slid one step backward. It was not Yu-yeong's choice.

"Oh, right — don't I have a shoot today?"

Yu-yeong said it herself. It was not the trembling voice that had stammered questions at the taxi driver. It was far brighter, far more lively.

Her body whipped around. There was no time to waste standing here.

I have to get to the shoot. Do you have any idea how important today's scene is?

Yu-yeong glared at the black ball cap in her hand — Yu-won's cap — then hurled it into the corner of the alley and strode out of there.

Any thought of entering the hanok was long gone.

What mattered to her right now was something else entirely.

"Hey! Where the hell are you?"

"Unnie, I'm in Yeonhui-dong. Come get me. I have a shoot."

"Did you really go to a hotel with Yu-won?"

"And if it is true? What are you going to do, print a retraction?"

"Yu-yeong!"

"Stop yelling and get over here. People are staring at me."

A long sigh came down the line at the sheer audacity — past confident and well into bratty — of the voice on the other end, but Yu-yeong couldn't have cared less.

Actress Yu-yeong — no actress in the business was closer friends with scandal than she was.

And to Yu-yeong, scandal was nothing but a medal. Proof that Yu-yeong was still on top — the very top. If an idol could come and go from hotels with her and not a single article appeared, that would be the truly sad thing.

Thinking so, she curled her lips upward.

Well, what can I say? Being pretty isn't a crime.

At the clamor of ringing bells, Cha-mu frowned and stepped out into the courtyard.

Weariness clung to the corners of his eyes as he tilted his head back toward the sky. Even after the bell-tolling that had shaken the whole world fell silent, an unnatural air still lingered in its place. He could feel it — some nameless, clammy chill of an energy that had been hovering close by until only a moment ago.

"Tch."

Cha-mu unbolted the gate and stepped one foot outside. His sharp gaze swept down the alley at once. Someone had passed through, trailing energy behind them like a leaking wound. To Cha-mu's eyes, the things staining the alley floor were vividly clear — a black mist, thick as ink, pooled deep across the ground.

"What a nuisance."

With that short mutter, Cha-mu went back inside. When he emerged a moment later, two finely honed blades hung from his hand.

"Fweeee — fweeeeee—"

A whistle slipped out between Cha-mu's lips. Lips slightly pursed, strikingly handsome even so, he paced back and forth in front of the gate, and a melody laced with something unsettling followed his footsteps, echoing through the space for a long while.

"......"

Stopping his whistle, Cha-mu swept a cold, level gaze over the alley — then hurled both blades out of it.

"Goddammit."

The two razor-sharp blades clattered to the ground. Their tips pointed not out of the alley — but squarely at Cha-mu's own front gate.

Cursing under his breath, irritated, Cha-mu picked the knives back up and flung them skyward again.

Over and over, the blades soared up and came plunging back down.

"......"

At last, the instant the blades finally turned to point out of the alley, the faint traces drifting across its floor dissolved — and everything grew clear and clean once more.