The Butterfly on the Vase (3)

Ji-won, staring sharply at the spot Hae-soo pointed to, gave a curt reply.

"I see it."

It was a soul who had been dead for a good ten years, by the look of it. Impressive, honestly. So close to Seoul, and she'd held out this long without getting caught? Judging by how corrupted she'd become, she'd already taken several lives, too. A young woman who couldn't have been much past twenty—what grudge could weigh so heavily that she'd twisted into a malevolent spirit over it? No. Never mind. Whatever sob story lay behind a woman's lingering resentment, that was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to know absolutely nothing about.

Ji-won studied the spirit's face with a piercing gaze, then quietly swallowed a sigh the moment their eyes met. The spirit, who had been lounging in ease at Hae-soo's helplessness, visibly tensed at the arrival of Ji-won, whose aura was anything but ordinary even at a glance. After lightly dismissing her drooping shoulders with a tilt of his head, he pulled a sketchbook from his pocket and began drawing her face in swift strokes. Cases like this—ones clearly bound for somewhere unpleasant—always left a bad taste in his mouth, but there was no hesitation in the hands filling the white paper edge to edge.

"Seriously, thank you for coming, hyung. I was so worried I'd lose her, I was honestly debating whether to just shoot."

"Excuse me, you lunatic? Do you seriously have no tomorrow? You think a few hundred in fines is nothing? That goes on your record, you idiot. You'd be a convicted criminal. Worst case, you could get kicked off the national team."

"Oh, right, that was a thing. Come to think of it, the Olympic qualifiers are coming up soon."

Ji-won kept his hands moving even as he lashed out, then stared at Hae-soo with a look of utter disbelief and let out a hollow breath. To think a human mind could be this simple. It was, frankly, awe-inspiring.

"Ha. Right. Must be nice, living with not a single care in the world, belly full and blissful. How on earth did your parents raise such a pure-hearted son in this cruel world, hmm?"

"Hm... was that a compliment?"

"It was an insult!"

Having barked that out, Ji-won roughly tore free the portrait he'd finished in record time, folded it in half, and slipped it into his pocket. There was no lighting a fire in the middle of a forest, so they'd have to get off the mountain first.

"Why aren't you burning it? We need to hurry, hyung. That's a malevolent spirit that killed eight people."

"They say a dog sees nothing but dung, huh? Was a fire-prevention banner the only thing your eyes could find? We're in a wildfire-alert period right now. If I pull out a lighter here, you and I get to enjoy a lovely stretch behind bars together. Maybe not me, but you'd definitely make the news."

"Ah, I see."

"'I see'? Good grief, forget it. Why do I even bother talking to you."

Shaking his head with an expression of complete exasperation, Ji-won faced the spirit directly and addressed her in a calm voice.

"Departed soul. You can hear me, can't you?"

The woman flinched for a moment, then made a show of pretending not to hear. Paying her no mind, Ji-won recited the Zenith Principle in a flat, mechanical tone.

"I am Cha Ji-won, a Guide of Jungcheon. As a departed soul who no longer has the right to remain in the mortal world, you are required to proceed to Jungcheon immediately and receive judgment on the merits and sins of your life. Your merits and sins are being recorded even at this very moment, and I inform you that refusing a Guide's instructions or attempting to flee may result in severe consequences for your final destination. Furthermore, from this point forward, the Guide is authorized to initiate a compulsory summons procedure—"

"Excuse me, wait! I won't run away, I swear. So please, just hear me out. I had reasons I couldn't help."

Judging the situation to be spiraling out of control, the woman closed the distance in an instant. She seized Ji-won's arm and began clinging to him with desperate pleading. It was a harrowing, heart-wrenching supplication that could wring anyone's heart, and Hae-soo's expression dimmed a little—but Ji-won, without so much as a twitch of an eyebrow, coldly peeled her hands away.

Everyone in the world has a story. But a spirit with this much influence over the material realm was precisely the kind that must not linger among the living.

"Just one left. One more death and my revenge is complete. If you let me finish that, I'll go anywhere—Jungcheon, hell, wherever you want. So just give me a few days, okay? Please. I'm begging you."

"In that case, I'd better hurry, then."

"They beat a person to death like a dog! My little sister—my sweet, gentle little sister! Six of them ganged up on her and beat her to death! And do you know what they said afterward? That they did it for fun. That the way she wheezed, gasping for breath, was funny! Those demons served barely two years for involuntary manslaughter. And since then, they've been living high and mighty, fat and happy to this very day!"

Leaving the woman behind as she beat her chest and poured out her grievances, Ji-won descended the mountain at a rapid pace. The moment he stepped into a restroom and set the portrait alight over the sink, the woman—who had chased after him wailing with enough anguish to burst one's eardrums—vanished like smoke in an instant. Hae-soo, who had watched the whole process with uncharacteristically grave features, finally spoke up in a somewhat heated voice.

"I know it's a terrible thing for a Guide to say, but honestly, people like that deserve to die, don't they?"

"Where the hell did you go to elementary school?"

"Why are you bringing that up now?"

Ji-won regarded Hae-soo with a look of helpless disdain, then stole a glance at his ruined shoes and clenched his jaw. His pride would never allow him to discuss the price of his shoes with a kid, but the more he thought about abandoning the pair he'd worn for the first time today, the more it grated on him.

"Did they not teach you arithmetic in school? Can't do single-digit math in your head? What did that woman just say? Six people killed her sister. And yet she's killed eight. Then she said one more was left. That means at least three innocent people are already dead."

"Oh...."

"And where's the guarantee that everything she said was even true? You think someone making a living as a Guide can afford to get jerked around by a departed soul like that? Once a spirit turns into a malevolent one, it inevitably does harm to the living, regardless of its original intentions. So no matter what circumstances they claim, a Guide simply follows procedure. Period. You don't get to inject your personal feelings into it. Understood?"

"Wow, hyung. You sounded just like the CEO just now. Though you were way scarier, of course.... Do you see her often?"

Often, my foot. He hadn't caught so much as a glimpse of her nose in over two months. In all the time since Ji-won had joined Zenith Company, he had crossed paths with Gaon exactly four times, and every one of those had amounted to nothing more than an exchange of greetings. Once, a Gaon who looked quite busy had merely acknowledged his bow with the faintest lift of an eyebrow from a distance and swept on past.

Retracing his memories now, the only time he'd ever had anything resembling a real conversation with Gaon was the day they first met.

Though that was less a conversation than him demanding answers, unreasonably. Even he could tell his tone had been excessively emotional, but Gaon's expression had remained nothing but serene, without a trace of displeasure. Why exactly that had gotten under his skin so badly, he still couldn't understand.

The first face that surfaced in his mind was, without question, his aunt's. No matter what happened, he could not die before Lisa. He couldn't put her through burying him. If his feelings for Lisa were the most beautiful, pristine shard within him, then his searing curse upon his uncles was the darkest and most vile. He wouldn't give those wretched creatures a single coin. Rather than leave them an inheritance, he'd drain every last drop and drink it himself before he died.

At Ji-won's outrageous demand, the Security Chief—who at some point had lost every last trace of a smile—bowed silently in protest, but Gaon apparently judged that his words had some merit. After a stretch of quiet thought, she ultimately reversed her decision—a rarity, as Ji-won would learn later, though he had no way of knowing it at the time.

Of course, having had his stubbornness indulged so grudgingly, the outcome hadn't left him entirely satisfied. There were moments he wondered if he'd mounted pointless defiance against someone who'd been trying to send him off graciously. But weighing everything together, the gains far outweighed the losses. For one thing, enduring the tedium of each passing day had been quite the ordeal—yet the incidents kept coming, spectacular one after another, leaving him no room to be bored.

Above all, he had learned that colleagues with the same ability as his existed, and the reassurance of doing officially recognized work alongside them was the greatest harvest of all. He had spent his whole life straining never to let it show, but the nagging fear—what if I actually am a madman?—had tormented Ji-won for a very long time.

"What business would a Guide have meeting the CEO for, anyway?"

"Fair. I guess that is how it is. Hyung, what car did you bring today? Can't you let me take a look at it?"

Would I have been able to live as guilelessly as this kid, if only I'd set foot in this world a little younger? Watching Hae-soo's eyes sparkle, Ji-won gave a faint smile and shook his head. No—that's just his nature. Getting away with acting this shameless and still being liked is a talent in itself. Ji-won was a man of considerable skill when it came to brushing people off, and yet, strangely, he found it difficult to be outright cold to Hae-soo, who clung like a puppy.

"Don't have it with me. I told someone else to drive it back. We'll take yours."

"Huh? But I don't have my car today.... Hyung, the weather's so nice—want to walk to the bus stop? It's only a forty-minute walk, good exercise."

But for better or worse, Hae-soo was also supremely gifted at hardening Ji-won's softening heart right back up.

"What the hell is wrong with you, you lunatic? You can't hail a taxi right now?!"

Breakfast with his aunt was, as expected, deeply uncomfortable and awkward. She wasn't someone fudging the truth would work on, but he couldn't exactly come clean either. Faced with her relentless interrogation—what on earth was he getting up to—Ji-won deflected with something about environmental monitoring work. He knew perfectly well it wouldn't pass as a plausible excuse with an aunt who knew him so well, but no other suitable lie came to mind that could explain why he'd bolted headlong into the mountains.

"You do volunteer work that involves physically running around?"

"Well.... it just sort of happened. Some complicated entanglement with gallery business."

"What's the organization called?"

"The name... uh... it's an organization run by Zenith Company. So I have a desk at Zenith headquarters, too. Though I don't go often."

"Really, now."

The suspicion in Lisa's eyes never fully vanished, but the sheer weight of the name Zenith was formidable. Lisa didn't press the matter any further, and the two of them managed to finish the meal in tolerable warmth. Having hurriedly parted with his aunt, who had to return to New York soon, Ji-won was all but fleeing the hotel when an unexpected call came through, and his brows twitched in irritation. Ugh, seriously. I'm on vacation, remember?

"Haaah, Cha Ji-won speaking."