Yellow Talismans
"That man, Cha Taekyung. I can't stand him anymore. Please get him out of the mansion."
The moment her uncle stepped out of his room, Gaon made the demand without preamble.
"Huh? Who?"
Baek Jeong-hak reeked of alcohol; he had clearly been drinking since early afternoon. His clothes were a mess—pajamas with a robe thrown over them. Bleary, drunken eyes struggled to focus as they settled on Gaon.
One of them with cigarettes, the other with booze. What a pair.
Gaon shuddered inwardly.
"Cha Taekyung. The doctor's nephew who just arrived. You said you brought him here to convalesce. I'm serious. He's a lunatic."
Gaon muttered, trembling. The heat that Cha Taekyung had driven into her head refused to cool.
"Ahh. That fellow. Why, what happened? He seemed decent enough from the outside. Handsome. Quiet. Didn't he say his hobby was growing orchids? You saw them too, didn't you? Those orchid pots. These days people have all sorts of bizarre hobbies, but that much makes him a respectable gentleman."
Baek Jeong-hak rambled on in a thick, slurred voice.
Of course.
Baek Jeong-hak always took the side of people Gaon disliked. Even when she complained about Kim Ju-yeon ignoring Gayoung, he would only urge her to let it go, to be nice. Sometimes she even suspected that he denied anything she asked for on principle. It was not an entirely baseless suspicion.
She had never expected much from her uncle. Still, she had hoped—only to find it was "of course" all over again.
"He smoked right in front of me. All I asked was that he not stay too long in the garden. I think that was a perfectly reasonable request."
"Why the garden?"
Baek Jeong-hak's eyes glittered.
"Gayoung…"
Gaon started to speak, then bit her lip.
Gayoung's seizure. The child's absurd claim that a demon had come. The dead rat. The blackened, dead pot.
Those black eyes. The smile. The cigarette. The more she turned it over, the more everything about Cha Taekyung made her skin crawl. She wanted him nowhere near Gayoung's sight. But if she told it straight, Baek Jeong-hak would only laugh and call her hysterical.
"Even if your personalities don't mesh, just put up with it a little longer. If we send that friend away, Cha Gil-ho won't be able to stay either. You have no idea how he dotes on that nephew. He begged me to let him bring the boy to Baekam Island even if it meant taking less pay."
She thought she understood why Baek Jeong-hak was so reluctant to throw Cha Taekyung out. He had used the condition of bringing Taekyung as an excuse to cut Cha Gil-ho's salary. Gaon's eyes narrowed. Sensing he had blurted too much, Baek Jeong-hak cleared his throat. The smell of liquor made Gaon frown.
"He didn't exactly look like someone who dotes on his nephew."
She thought of Cha Gil-ho—the doctor who had broken into a sweat and trembled at the mere mention of Cha Taekyung. A defiant note crept into her voice of its own accord.
Baek Jeong-hak smoothly ignored her words.
"Do you think it's easy to bring a competent doctor out from the mainland? How many times has it been already? Think about it for once, Gaon."
"……"
As he spoke, the injustice of his own hardships seemed to swell; Baek Jeong-hak's voice rose. Gaon shut her mouth. She did not have much to say about the fact that they had already gone through six doctors. But what was she supposed to do? Every last one of them had been a quack, more interested in side benefits than in curing Gayoung.
"Word travels fast in any field. Everyone already knows the patient on Baekam Island is extremely difficult. So just try to accommodate him as much as you can. We have to get Gayoung better."
Baek Jeong-hak tried to persuade her.
"As long as Cha Taekyung is here, I don't think Gayoung will get any better."
Gaon murmured, staring at the floor.
"What exactly did the man do? I'll give him a warning about the smoking myself. Beyond that, does growing orchids somehow harm Gayoung, who's shut away on the second floor? Does she have an orchid allergy or something?"
As if he had delivered a magnificent joke, Baek Jeong-hak snickered. When Gaon did not so much as smile, he soon stopped.
"If I catch him smoking even one more time, I won't hold back. I don't care how hard it is to find a doctor! Come to think of it, that doctor was strange too. Trembling at the mention of his nephew, unable to keep him in line, yet dragging him all the way out here!"
Gaon's voice grew louder and louder. Jeong-hak craned his neck to peer around the corner, clearly worried that Cha Gil-ho or Cha Taekyung might overhear—though there was no way Cha Gil-ho's room could even be seen from here.
"There, there. Calm down."
Jeong-hak opened his door and went inside. Through the wide-open doorway she could see her uncle pouring whiskey into a crystal glass.
"Have a drink and settle your nerves. Gayoung isn't a child who can be fixed overnight. Take it slow. Be patient. If you get this agitated, won't she feel anxious too? Hmm?"
Baek Jeong-hak pressed the glass into her hand, coaxing her gently. His hand was damp with some unidentifiable liquid; it made her skin crawl.
But Gaon was neither listening to him nor thinking of pulling her hand away.
Something else had seized her gaze.
"Uncle. What is all that?"
Gaon murmured blankly.
"Hmm?"
He turned to look behind him. The hallway was relatively dark, so the interior of the room stood out clearly. The curtains were drawn tight against the light, yet the faint glow seeping between them and the dim lamps revealed Baek Jeong-hak's space.
It was the largest room in the mansion—a king-sized bed and the various taxidermy pieces he treasured. Pheasants with their sleek plumage preserved, other stuffed birds he prized, a carpet made from the fur of some unidentifiable beast.
Her uncle's peculiar tastes had always been beyond her understanding. But what Gaon was speaking of now was not those gloomy things.
"Ahh. My dreams have been so troubled lately I can hardly live. I had a shaman I know write me some talismans. Now I can finally breathe a little."
Her uncle answered with a broad smile, as if it were nothing at all.
The entire ceiling of the bedroom was covered, without a single gap, by thousands upon thousands of Yellow Talismans. It was grotesque. That was why the room looked bright—as if yellow lights had been switched on, a sickly ochre glow filled every corner. The bizarre taxidermy, the yellow and red talismans plastered across the ceiling, and the man standing before them with a crooked grin. The moment her eyes met his alcohol-blurred gaze, Gaon took an involuntary step back.
"What's the matter?"
Her uncle smiled kindly, as though nothing were wrong.
He had always been incomprehensible, but now he was beyond all understanding.
Talismans, of all things.
Of course, in the past her uncle had once pressed a talisman into Gayoung's hand, claiming it would drive away the ghost clinging to her. He had even slipped one into Gaon's belongings in secret. Back then it had been a single talisman. He had never covered an entire ceiling. And when Gaon had recoiled in disgust and yelled at him, he had restrained himself afterward. Had that old affliction flared up again?
Of all times, when Gayoung is doing so poorly—why is everyone like this?
Gaon let out a deep sigh. She had returned to her own room and sunk into thought.
She could not spare any of the energy meant for Gayoung on her increasingly strange uncle as well. Driving out the strange doctor's strange nephew would apparently have to be a task she handled alone. Right now that problem mattered most to her. Even if her uncle papered not just the ceiling but the entire room in talismans, she would not care so long as it did Gayoung no harm.
"Then, Uncle… about that man smoking. You said you'd warn him. If he's caught even once more, he gets thrown out of the mansion. Promise me."
"Fine, fine. I understand."
Even in her fear she had refused to leave the doorway until she extracted the promise; Baek Jeong-hak had shaken his head as if exhausted. The glass he had pressed into Gaon's hand he drained himself in greedy gulps, like a thirsty man gulping water.
If Uncle won't throw him out, I'll do it myself.
She had wrung an answer out of Baek Jeong-hak somehow; now she needed to catch Cha Taekyung in the act of his insolence.
It would not be difficult.
A man who dismissed her words so lightly was unlikely to mind his manners just because Baek Jeong-hak or Cha Gil-ho issued a separate warning. All Gaon had to do now was wait for Cha Taekyung to light another cigarette.
She thought of the camera shoved into the corner of her desk drawer.
A very old disposable film camera. She could not even remember when it had gotten there—a battered thing. She had never found a use for it before, but it would be perfect for photographing evidence.