The Butterfly on the Flower Vase (7)

To think that I was ranked on the same level as that blockhead Yeon Hae-soo. The very fact that I had to accept it was simply beyond belief.

"When I'm dealing with a departed soul whose energy is strong enough to make even a High-Level Guide give up, I need to prepare myself as well. If he went outside and threw a tantrum, that would only cause trouble, so for now I'm confining him to the house."

"Even you have opponents who give you trouble, CEO?"

"Of course."

"Have you ever lost one?"

Gaon, who had answered every question without a moment's hesitation, paused for the first time. For a brief instant her face went distant, as if recalling something far away, and then she replied in a low voice, shortly.

"Once."

By the time Gaon and Ji-won stepped into the enormous mansion, the rain, which had been growing steadier by the minute, had swollen into a deluge so violent that anything a foot beyond their noses blurred into grey. At Gaon's instruction the house had already been emptied of every living soul, and in the cavernous emptiness only the echo of two sets of footsteps rang out, bleak and desolate.

"Director Cha."

"Yes, CEO."

"Is your breathing all right?"

"Yes."

"If you feel the slightest discomfort anywhere, you may wait in the car."

"I'm perfectly fine."

Gaon, who had been pressing the air inside the mansion down ever heavier to pin the departed soul in place, lifted an eyebrow when Ji-won answered so casually. Well, well. This one's something. Even among the living, no one blessed with spirit sight can escape the pull of my energy — yet here he is, walking and talking as if nothing were amiss. It took even that steely Director Kwon more than ten years to fully acclimate.

"Can you sense the departed one's presence?"

"Yes. I can't pinpoint his location, but he's definitely inside this house."

So even the veteran guides who fled in terror from this place stood unflinching beneath a killing intent sharp enough to prickle the skin. For a rookie of six months, he has considerable nerve. Gaon curved her lips into a faint smile, then smoothed her expression and started down the long corridor where the portraits hung in an unbroken line.

Ji-won followed a step behind, narrowing his eyes as he studied the row of near-identical faces. They were beautifully painted, certainly, and the shifting fashions and brushwork across the decades were genuinely interesting. But there was something about a hallway crammed wall to wall with portraits that sent a chill creeping up his spine. Imagine walking this at night. You'd never stop shivering.

When Gaon came to a halt before the portrait hanging midway down the corridor, Ji-won's gaze followed hers naturally to the canvas. It depicted a young man dressed to the nines in the height of his era's fashion — a figure so quintessentially the eighteenth-century English aristocrat that it could have graced a textbook as the definitive example.

Seventh head of the house, they said. Hmm. Even allowing for a generous degree of flattery, quite the handsome man. He doesn't exactly look the picture of virtue, but then, nothing about him seems wicked enough to become a murderer... Well. You can't read what's inside a person from the face alone.

"What do you think?"

"It's interesting."

"This painting is?"

"Yes. Noble portraits do tend to resemble one another, but this one seems to have been unusually concerned with how he appeared. For one thing, he died in his mid-sixties, yet chose for posterity a portrait painted in his thirties. For another, he doesn't face the viewer head-on but turns his head at a slight angle. He must have sat for portraits countless times and simply picked the pose in which his face looked most beautiful."

"...I see."

Gaon mulled over Ji-won's words for a while, then spoke with an expression that suggested she wasn't expecting much.

"Try handling it your way, Director Cha."

"Yes, ma'am."

Pulling out the notebook he always carried, Ji-won sketched with more care than he had ever exercised before. His rendering of the face was faithful enough to pass for a near-perfect copy, yet when he burned it cleanly away, nothing happened at all. Gaon, who had watched the entire process in silence, furrowed her brow slightly, a flicker of displeasure crossing her features.

"Then I'll have to see for myself."

Twirling her wrist a couple of times the way one loosens up before exercise, Gaon extended her right arm to the side — and the transparent sword Ji-won had once glimpsed in Jungcheon materialized with a ringing chime. In the same breath, a terrible bolt of lightning, as though the sky itself were being carved to pieces, came crashing down without mercy. A blinding flash split the air, and a split second later came a thunderclap so deafening it left the ears ringing. The summons of the Jungcheonju, which every departed soul was bound to answer, had fallen — yet from the mansion, silent as a dead mouse, came no stir of the dead from any corner.

"Not coming out, is he?"

Utterly fearless. Tilting her head slowly, Gaon murmured the words in a detached voice. But she had anticipated at least this much, and showed no particular surprise or impatience.

"You summoned him yourself — how can he possibly hold out without so much as twitching?"

"Old things have the power to hold a soul fast."

"Old things?"

"This house."

Running her palm gently along the solid stone wall, Gaon swept her gaze around the interior and clicked her tongue softly.

"They built this house far too well. No matter how sturdily a building is raised, time alone will crack it somewhere. But this house still stands on its original skeleton, exactly as it was first raised. Which means the building itself has accumulated power. It's the perfect anchor for a soul to cling to and grow strong on."

"Then to call him out, would we have to bring the whole building down?"

"That would be the simplest way. Not that I could bring myself to do it."

Drawing a slow breath, Gaon gripped her sword afresh and jerked her chin at Ji-won, telling him to fall back.

"Director Cha. From this moment on, you must never set foot inside my radius of activity. No matter what the departed one says when he appears, do not answer him."

"Understood."

"Stay near the entrance as much as you can, and if the house should happen to collapse, leave at once without so much as a glance back. There is no need for you to hover about trying to save me."

"But..."

"It won't come to that. But even if I were buried under a collapsed building, I would not die. At least not here, and not today."

"...I beg your pardon?"

What does that mean? Even dying has a set place and time? So if today isn't the day, that means she does die eventually? Her lifespan is long, but not eternal? Then what becomes of the seat of Jungcheonju? A flood of questions surged up all at once — but Gaon's eyes had already changed, and she had begun to swing her sword with savage force, leaving no room for another word.

The beautiful blade, glittering even in the dim interior, traced graceful arcs as it moved with fluid elegance. The air, which had lain heavy and inert, began to churn — and before long a sinister wind came whirling up from every direction. Thick fog, dark as storm clouds, soon blanketed the floor in heavy layers, and the rain hammering the windows now made a sound like gravel striking glass.

Wow. Retreating to a corner, Ji-won watched the astonishing spectacle of the Jungcheonju applying pressure in earnest — and when a counterwind entirely different in texture from Gaon's energy came howling back at them, he mouthed a silent exclamation of awe. So he's finally shown himself! He really is on another level from every spirit I've ever faced. If I'd run into him alone, I'd have been a little scared, honestly. A trace of fear mingled with an odd thrill, and his heart began to pound.

"Director Cha."

"Yes."

"Keep a good look at that one's face."

Ji-won turned toward the far end of the corridor — and there stood the young man whose features he had only just memorized, wearing an expression of profound irritation. The dashing hat, the sword studded with gems — the whole figure looked as though he had stepped straight out of the portrait. Ji-won was still clicking his tongue at the uncanny fidelity when the man opened his mouth, declaiming with the exaggerated intonation of a character in a Shakespearean play.

"Who goes there? Why do you intrude uninvited into another man's house and raise such a clamor?"

The refined diction, the ramrod-straight bearing, the figure so composed it might have been painted onto the air — every inch the archetypal nobleman. How can a soul gone fully black carry itself with such decorum? Noble to the marrow, I suppose. Ji-won was silently marveling when Gaon's frosty reply startled him anew. Right. She really is this frightening.

"Who I am is no concern of yours. And I'd say the one making a ruckus in someone else's house is not me, but you."

"Wh-what nonsense is this? True, I have passed it on to my descendants, but this is MY house — I built it with these hands! I have not the slightest intention of ever leaving it, so cease this insolent behavior at once and vacate my—"

"Enough. I did not come here to debate ownership of this house with you."

Severing the man's words with a voice of iron, Gaon fixed him with a long, piercing stare — and then began her merciless interrogation.

"You were one who tilled the soil. A tenant farmer of House Rosenbarov, were you? Was the injustice of your life so bitter that even in death you wished to play at being a nobleman?"

"...Wh-what did you say?"

"And why, I wonder, did you vent your spite on girls alone? Ah... did Archibald Rosenbarov — the true owner of that face — covet your daughter? And then, it seems, he never truly cherished her?"

The man, who until that moment had worn the baffled look of someone comprehending nothing, abruptly failed to conceal a flash of murderous rage. As he gulped down ragged breaths and bared his teeth like a beast, Gaon tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword.

Should I simply cut him down where he stands? Is it truly right to grant even a creature like this a chance at redemption? She wrestled with the question fiercely, but in the end her blade never swung, and she exhaled a long, frustrated breath. The man, of course, had no idea that he had barely just escaped a sentence of eternal punishment.

"And does that make it right to take your revenge on descendants who bear no guilt?"

"Then what crime did my daughter commit!"

The instant the man, his composure finally shattered, let out a roar, his polished facade blurred at the edges — and for a heartbeat the face of an old man in ragged, threadbare clothes surfaced beneath it. He hastily restored his appearance, but Ji-won, keeping his eyes fixed on him at Gaon's instruction, did not miss that fleeting instant.

"You swore you'd take my precious daughter as your concubine — kept her a few days for your amusement, then cast her aside without a second thought! That poor girl was abandoned even by her own betrothed in the end, and hanged herself. And yet your accursed brood lolls about in luxury in a mansion like this, and I'm meant to accept it?"

"Your precious daughter... How loathsome. You who sold your own child for a taste of luxury — how dare you stand there and invoke her as your excuse!"

While Gaon's voice cracked like frost across the air, Ji-won cautiously took out his notebook and hurriedly sketched the man's true face. At first the spirit paid him no mind, unable to tell what he was doing — but the moment Ji-won produced his lighter, the man unleashed a shriek like fingernails raked across the eardrum and hurled himself forward with the desperation of the dying. Yet Gaon, placing herself squarely in his path, would not permit him so much as to brush a single hair on Ji-won's head.

"There's no telling what havoc he may wreak next, so I must make a brief trip to Jungcheon. I will see him through the Myeonggye Water Gate and return. This mirror is my road back — take care that it is not damaged."

The moment the departed soul vanished like smoke, Gaon pressed an old Silver Mirror into Ji-won's hands as casually as if tossing him a trinket — and then, before he could ask a single question, she was sucked into the mirror's surface and gone in the blink of an eye. She returned a full three hours later, her face pale and drawn.