The Abyss-Eyed Serpent
“Looks like you ran into a mugger on the way here, Heeseo-ssi.”
Kim Jeeon spoke to her while leaning against the entrance stairs. Heeseo glared at him, too drained to answer.
Come to think of it, it was because of that. If it weren’t for the ghost possessing that body.
A sarcastic retort slipped out on its own.
“Yeah. You’ve got plenty of money—maybe worry about the security around here. The road was rough as hell. There was a shady bastard just like you, so I was late beating the crap out of him.”
“Oh dear. Someone like me? I’m hardly such a common character that there’d be someone who resembles me. Next time, come with me. There won’t be any rough business then.”
“You’re the roughest one here, so what’s with the confidence?”
“You’ll hurt my feelings saying that, Heeseo-ssi.”
Kim Jeeon slowly rose. It wasn’t just words—he truly looked hurt. A face that, if seen on a screen, would have made anyone take his side without knowing the situation.
Disgusting bastard.
Of all the bodies to possess, it had to be that one. Heeseo shook her head.
Mixing words with a ghost would only leave her more confused. She tried to ignore him and walk past, then paused. Her gaze settled on a pair of men’s dress shoes resting on the stairs.
“They’ll be far too big for Heeseo-ssi, but think of them as slippers and wear them just while you go up to the room. It’s cold to walk barefoot. Even for that short climb.”
Kim Jeeon himself was barefoot as he said it.
Heeseo fell silent for a moment and looked down at her own feet. She hadn’t noticed while stomping here in a rage, but both were a mess. Belatedly her soles stung as if something had stabbed them.
“…Should you really be treating that body so roughly when it isn’t even yours? You’ll have to return it to its owner someday.”
She considered putting the ruined shoes she’d been carrying back on just to make a point, but like the dress with its torn side, they were wrecked. Heeseo casually stepped past Jeeon’s shoes and climbed the stairs.
Then, exactly as if he’d expected it, Kim Jeeon picked up his own shoes and followed her. And what he said next grated.
“Your skin’s showing, Heeseo-ssi.”
“I know.”
“Hmm. Perhaps you’re trying to seduce me?”
At the mutter that sounded almost like talking to himself, Heeseo—who had been climbing several steps ahead—stopped. She turned, and Jeeon looked up at her.
Looking down on a man she had always had to look up to felt strange, but she had no leisure to savor it.
“If a bit of skin would seduce you, I’ll show you. Not just that—I’ll show you everything. Will you leave that body then?”
Heeseo meant it. Even if she stood naked instead of merely showing her side, she felt no shame against a ghost. It was something she had already endured from the first night.
She intended to drive the ghost clinging to Kim Jeeon out by any means necessary.
“Lee Heeseo-ssi.”
Their gazes locked—his dark, deep eyes. Heeseo stood with her back to the building; Jeeon faced her. While she remained silent, the clouds covering half the sky were pushed aside by the wind. The moon that appeared between them lit Jeeon’s face.
A face with nothing on it. No sin whatsoever clinging to it.
Heeseo was suddenly tormented by an inexplicable guilt. Like her stabbed soles, one side of her chest stung—as if she were doing something terrible to the man looking at her with that innocent face.
“…Saying all sorts of nonsense to a ghost.”
It was because she was exhausted and had even run into Choi Jinwook. Heeseo muttered to herself and turned away.
And in that instant she completely froze, doubting her own eyes.
“What… is that.”
Faced with a massive presence, the terrified Heeseo sucked in a breath. The sound of her hurried inhale was loud enough to reach her own ears.
Yet she could neither run nor scream. She simply stood as if nailed in place, unable even to close her eyes, forced to watch.
At the same time an overwhelming pressure she dared not approach crushed down on her. Unconcealable fear seeped into every exhaled breath. With finely trembling hands Heeseo groped at her waist. Instinctively she searched for the Three Buddha Fan, but in a dress without even pockets there was no way she could have brought it.
“Haa… haa… hoo…”
While she remained motionless before that helpless fear, it fully revealed itself atop the mansion’s roof.
In the darkness where the moonlight had somehow vanished, a red haze moved along with it. The massive dark-red snake reflected in Heeseo’s eyes flicked its long tongue and slid very slowly along the roof.
Its pitch-black eyes blinked vertically as the snake slid as if materializing, then draped half its body over the second-floor balcony. Then it stared at Heeseo as if searching for prey.
What… the hell is this.
A primal fear she had never felt even when facing any ghost invaded her.
Those eyes, deep and dark like an abyss, were looking precisely at her. The moment their gazes met, Heeseo felt an inexplicable sense of déjà vu.
But she ignored it and bit her lip. Blood flowed from the lip torn by her sharp canines, quickly filling her mouth.
Amazingly, at that moment—as if smelling blood like a beast—the snake raised its head. Then it opened its jaws as if to swallow her at once. The inside was horrifically grotesque.
Dozens, hundreds of fang-like teeth continuing all the way down the snake’s deep throat.
Heeseo tried not to be mesmerized by what was before her eyes and moved the tip of her blood-soaked tongue. The yeom drawn with her tongue on the inside of her lip quickly completed into a single character.
Please take effect…!
The effect of a yeom written with Heeseo’s blood was always powerful, but it was the first time an opponent had taken the form of such a grotesque ghost.
Heeseo raised her right hand to shoulder height in the Abhaya Mudra, then extended it; with the opposite hand she stretched only thumb and middle finger and pointed downward.
While her mudra took form, the snake made a ferocious sound and, jaws wide, plunged down toward her.
The red poisonous energy flowing from it blurred every sense as if paralyzing her nerves.
Kyaaaak!
…Kim Jeeon!
With the forked tongue approaching right in front of her nose, Heeseo was seized by the urge to flee at once.
But if she dodged, Kim Jeeon—who had been behind her until now—would be swallowed. She suppressed the desire to escape and chewed her torn lip to draw more blood.
Yet despite her efforts, the hideous snake soon swallowed her in one gulp.
“Haa, haa, ha… ugh—Kim Jeeon, dodge!”
The struggling Heeseo hurriedly sat up. She put so much force into it that she tumbled straight onto the floor as she rose.
Thud! A dull sound followed. Even after falling she couldn’t collect herself; she flailed about, then shook her head.
“Quickly—run. Run… away?”
What? What happened? Heeseo blinked with a blank face.
This familiar place was clearly the room where she had been staying for days—more precisely, the floor beneath the bed. Hastily sitting up from her prone position, she checked her body.
I was definitely swallowed by the snake…. What is this?
The snake’s countless fangs were still vivid in her eyes as if she had just seen them, yet there wasn’t a single scratch on her body. It made no sense.
She had clearly felt the poisonous energy the snake was pouring out only moments ago—so how could she have woken up in bed?
Heeseo hurriedly checked her feet. Peeling off the bandages stuck all over them, she found the stabbed and scraped wounds still there.
But then… how on earth…?
“Your sleep-talking is quite noisy.”
At the voice that reached her, Heeseo immediately grabbed the stand lamp from the bedside table. Aiming it toward the sound, she found a man sitting at the foot of the bed; he frowned.
She forcibly suppressed her startled heart and caught her breath. She was relieved at least that it wasn’t the snake, but discovering a strange man in her room wasn’t pleasant either.
“Who are you? What? Are you staff?”
“How about putting that down before asking? To the person who’s been nursing you until now.”
“What?”
“Jeeon asked me to look after you and left. Said you suddenly collapsed? You don’t look delicate enough to have anemia.”
The man pointed with his gaze at the antipyretics, painkillers, thermometer and the rest sitting on the vanity.
But even though he mentioned Jeeon, Heeseo’s wariness remained. She had only tried to protect Jeeon’s body from that house-sized snake; to her, Jeeon himself was likewise not someone she could feel at ease with.