A Night of Misty Drizzle (6)

"Madam CEO, come this way. The ground is slippery there."

Before the words had even finished, Gaon—who had just wobbled stepping on a moss-slicked stone—meekly offered her wrist to the hand Ji-won held out on reflex. Gripping that slender wrist, Ji-won pulled her up onto the rock with a firm tug, and then had to summon a truly heroic reserve of patience to let go of her hand again.

So this is why people put hiking on date itineraries. Staring at each other's flushed, sweat-soaked faces hardly seemed like it would help sustain a relationship, and yet this had its own considerable merits. Classics really can't be dismissed, no matter how old-fashioned they are.

"Would you like some water?"

"Yes."

"You're not finding it too hard, are you?"

"I'm still all right."

Are you, though? Your breathing already sounds a little off…. If a stroll-in-disguise like this was enough to wind her, she was clearly out of shape. Some foundational conditioning was in order. That would do wonders for her low blood pressure and sleep troubles too. What kind of exercise could I recommend without it feeling like a burden? Swimming would be genuinely ideal, but doing something like that together would only be possible once they'd grown considerably closer, wouldn't it?

While Ji-won turned these schemes over in his head, the moment Gaon lowered the bottle from her lips, he peeled open a bar of plain chocolate and held it out. His heart wanted to pop it tenderly into her mouth, but he couldn't quite bring himself to go that far.

"This is good."

"I'm relieved. They say one or two pieces of unsweetened chocolate a day helps with low blood pressure."

"You know a lot, Director Cha."

"I didn't know any of it until I went to London."

I studied it like a madman, purely for you. Of course, that roundabout appeal landed nowhere on Gaon, who was long accustomed to being cared for, but Ji-won kept his contented smile all the same. Fine, I wasn't expecting much when I said it anyway. Just being out here with you, alone, far from Seoul, is more than enough. Even if we had to head back right this second, I'd still be guaranteed at least three more hours.

"Madam CEO, do you have any theory as to why the spirits vanish from this place?"

"Nothing certain until I see the site for myself…. But the likeliest possibility is that a soul with very high spiritual power has taken up residence here. The kind of being ordinary people would call a sinseon. When one settles into a spirit mountain, lesser souls can no longer gain a foothold."

"Does that power reach people as well? I was told the Guides couldn't even approach."

"It's rare, but a soul that has lingered in the mortal realm long enough to grow strong can turn a certain space entirely into its own domain. Then even the living are affected. Someone whose spirit sight has never opened might be ignored and waved through, but to the eyes of Guides—so sensitive to spiritual energy—something wrong would have been plainly visible. They would hardly have dared step inside."

Still, as long as it did no direct harm to humans, it wouldn't be much of a problem. Those who earned the name of sinseon were souls that had chosen to remain in the mortal realm on the very eve of ascending to the heavens; they almost never committed misdeeds, and more often than not they quickened the mountain's energy to the benefit of the living. Should some circumstance ever turn one dark, they could simply be dealt with according to protocol. If the worst that came of it was spirits being bounced away, they would be discovered somewhere eventually—all it would take was widening the scope of management.

But the closer Gaon drew to the destination the Guides had described, the less confident she became in her own hypothesis. Clever wards restricting the movements of the dead had been woven into the ground at every turn—which meant this was no accident of chance, but something done deliberately, by someone with a purpose.

Walking briskly with a sharp gaze sweeping the surroundings, Gaon stopped before a small waterfall and murmured with a grave face.

"Not a sinseon."

"Do you see something else?"

"A barrier. No—I should call it a kind of trap. Someone has built a snare here to cage the dead, starting at that waterfall and looping around the whole area."

Tracing the line Gaon's finger drew, he at last caught sight of the subtly warped space. Fresh green forest bathed in warm, dazzling sunlight—and yet, unlike moments before, a heavy, ominous air pressed down on everything.

"Who would do something like this?"

"Hard to say…."

Gaon looked around slowly, tilting her head with a troubled expression. Two or three possibilities came to mind, but not one of them felt like a clean fit.

"I've heard of shamans who've lost the god they served seeking a new one by choosing a place of strong energy and calling down a powerful spirit…. But this seems far too inefficient. There's no trace of an offering anywhere."

"An offering?"

"To command a ghost, a price must always be paid. Usually a living animal is killed and its blood offered—most often a chicken."

"Hm. Being a shaman isn't easy work either, is it."

"…No. It isn't."

"They told me if I didn't serve a god, I'd die a terrible death. Me, and my children too…. Are you saying I should have simply died holding my baby in my arms? Is it my fault I was born this way?"

The cry of a pitiable woman to whom Gaon had never managed to find a single word of answer rose in her memory, and her chest grew tight. She believed she hadn't let it show on the surface—which meant she never knew that the person standing beside her had observed, in exacting detail, the faintest tremor in her breath.

"It could also be a malevolent spirit with intent to harm humans, like the one who imitated Archibald Rosenbalov. Gathering darkened souls to swell its ranks. Be they men or ghosts, a group becomes strong."

"But wouldn't the presence of the dead be unmistakably palpable, then? We knew right away when we entered Rosenbalov Castle. Right now, I don't sense anything malicious nearby at all."

"It may simply be drowned out by the sun's energy being too strong."

Or perhaps it's something capable of hiding its presence altogether. In that case, this could be dangerous…. Judging there was no need to needlessly unsettle Ji-won, Gaon swallowed the rest. In any case, something was certainly here, and it had to be properly investigated—which meant waiting until nightfall. Apology filled Gaon's face as she turned to Ji-won.

"What should we do? I don't think we can make it to that gallery today. We'll have to come back here at night."

"That's perfectly fine."

"There are too many people around right now for me to use my power properly. I can't risk anyone getting caught up in it and hurt. And if I can't fight at full strength, the danger could fall on both of us…."

"I truly don't mind, so there's no need to worry yourself over such small things. Just don't push yourself too hard."

Hm? Hadn't she said there was an exhibition she was dying to see? As Gaon regarded that face—devoid of even a flicker of regret—with puzzlement, Ji-won met her eyes gently and broke into a radiant smile. She couldn't begin to guess the reason for his suddenly improved mood, but that fresh, buoyant smile, one capable of lifting the spirits of anyone who beheld it, drew the corners of Gaon's mouth upward despite herself.

"Then let's hurry and get some lunch first. If we're late, we'll be stuck waiting ages for a table."

The two of them slid into the restaurant just before the lunch rush began and, mercifully, were seated without any wait at all. The neatly arranged side dishes raised their anticipation for the mains to a fever pitch, and the humble, unadorned kalguksu—simmered into a rich, savory broth with no garnish to speak of—carried that satisfaction to its very peak.

When Gaon bit into a crispy potato jeon, fried nearly to the point of being tempura, Ji-won thought he would likely never forget the look on her face for the rest of his life. A moment that made every hour he'd spent sitting bolt upright deep into the night, poring over hundreds of reviews, feel entirely worthwhile.

"It's worth the trip from Seoul. I really will be thinking about this for a long time."

"I'm glad it suits your taste."

"Anything you recommend turns out delicious, Director Cha. Come to think of it, this was the first trip where everything I ate in London was actually good. Normally at least one place ends up being genuinely terrible."

"Ah…, yes. For a gourmand, it's a truly cruel city. I spent a year there after finishing my master's, and I suffered terribly just trying to find restaurants that suited my palate."

As Ji-won blissfully watched Gaon demolish two palm-sized pieces of potato jeon, he casually slid his own remaining portion across the table to her, offering the excuse that greasy food didn't much appeal to him today.

He had meant to have their coffee at the most famous café in Taebaek, but Gaon said she wanted to stop at the little café directly visible from the restaurant. The two grueling hours he'd spent agonizing over three finalists evaporated into meaninglessness, and Ji-won nodded without a word of protest. He staked his very aesthetic on such things and normally wouldn't set foot in a café with tacky interiors—but in his current mood, if Gaon wanted it, he felt he could walk right into some old tea house doubling as the neighborhood seniors' center.

"This coffee is definitely not as good as yesterday's."

"I think it's tasty, though. Very nutty. I noticed the aroma was lovely from the moment we got out of the car."

"Did you, now."

"Mm. Yesterday's had a wonderful fragrance, but it tasted a bit like underripe fruit. I prefer my fruit practically overripe—borderline rotten, honestly. This one tastes of nuts. Mm, and there's a hint of chocolate too. Somehow it even has a touch of a mocha character… anyway, it's not bitter, and it's smooth. I like it. Very good."

Watching Gaon sip her coffee in evident contentment, Ji-won was thoroughly shell-shocked. The razor-sharp tasting notes he'd never dreamed of hearing left his mouth hanging open. No, wait. Madam Kwon, how could you say that about someone with a palate this discerning? You told me she doesn't have any particular tastes in food. She is separating and identifying every flavor in this blended bean as we speak. I'd suspected she was secretly a picky eater, but I had no idea it went this far.

"Madam Kwon seems to believe you have no particular preferences when it comes to food, Madam CEO."

"Haha. That's not something I could ever tell her, is it. She puts such care into balancing nutrition at every single meal. If I added my own tastes on top of that, it would be far too much labor. The vegetables on my table are ones Madam Kwon grows herself, organically, in her garden plot. How could I fuss at someone like that about whether the food is too salty or too bland? You eat what you're given."

Unable to summon a single thing to say in reply, Ji-won silently took a sip of his coffee. Things are dangerous enough as it is—what am I supposed to do if she makes me fall even harder now? A faint flicker of resentment stirred in him, but it wasn't something he could very well voice to her.

Then again, drinking it a while, it's actually rather decent. What Ji-won usually favored was a clean, bright coffee with citrusy acidity and crisp fruit notes, but savoring it while mulling over Gaon's words, that dense, nutty richness layered with so many different flavors wasn't bad at all.

And like I said yesterday—bean pod suits are truly terrifying. Look at this. They turn a person into someone with no tastes, no preferences, nothing of his own.

What was most serious of all was that he showed not the slightest will to throw the suit off. Watching Gaon with a complicated look in his eyes, Ji-won caught her gaze and instantly softened his expression into a small smile. Truly shameless, he thought—but he couldn't, for the life of him, come up with a reason he ought to manufacture one.