An Office Worker Is Good At Exorcism - Chapter 168

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 167
Part 3. As the Mist Rolls In (1)
Vroom.
Kang Hyung-seok drove with Kim Jae-sik in the passenger seat, following the navigation system’s directions.
The first day of the holiday break.
The highway was congested enough to draw heavy sighs, but fortunately, once they merged onto the national road, the traffic thinned considerably.
Vroom.
They were heading toward increasingly remote territory.
“It’s quite a distance.”
“It’s South Chungcheong Province, after all.”
More precisely, the southern reaches of South Chungcheong Province.
Near the border with North Jeolla Province, close to the coast.
Kang Hyung-seok lifted his gaze toward the sky.
A typhoon must be approaching.
The clouds were moving fast.
“Something’s bound to happen.”
As if reading my thoughts, Kim Jae-sik spoke up and checked the map on his phone.
‘Our professor’s already showing signs of presbyopia.’
The way he held his chin down and squinted at the phone screen was pitiful.
“Sigh, I’m not sure we’ll even manage to get any sleep.”
“If things get bad, we’ll have to push through to the lodging.”
Kim Jae-sik shook his head as if the mere thought exhausted him.
“This brings back old memories. Back then, I was so much younger than I am now.”
“During your university days?”
“Yeah, do you remember? That time we boiled ramen on a gas burner at the Boarding House, you and I.”
“Ah yes, I remember.”
The memory was so horrific that Kang Hyung-seok instinctively frowned.
“Right! We screamed and bolted out of there together.”
“It was horrible. Still is.”
It wasn’t that we’d seen a ghost.
A ghost would have been preferable.
Kim Jae-sik and I were boiling ramen with a pot between us, and just as I reached for the chopsticks, a massive cockroach fell from the ceiling straight into the pot.
The sight of its wings fluttering was so shocking that Kim Jae-sik and I simply fled the Boarding House without another thought.
“After that, I never ate anything at a Boarding House again.”
“…You didn’t?”
“At minimum, it has to be a Motel. At minimum.”
“Hmm.”
“Truth is, I can barely eat ramen anymore.”
“I still eat it fairly often.”
“But not frequently, right?”
Kang Hyung-seok answered with a heavy nod.
An unnecessarily solemn and weighty atmosphere had settled over them, yet Kim Jae-sik seemed to be enjoying it.
“Still, I feel reassured having you come along. It feels just like the old days, you know?”
Kang Hyung-seok nodded with a smile.
“I feel the same way.”
The warmth that had briefly left the car returned with a sense of “can I come back in now?”, and Kang Hyung-seok engaged in quiet conversation with Kim Jae-sik.
After driving for quite some time, the character of the road finally changed.
It became rougher in texture.
Crunch-crunch-crunch.
Small fragments—whether gravel or broken asphalt—rattled against the tires.
And gradually, their conversation dwindled.
There was noise rising from the tires, but there was a greater reason for the silence.
“Is it because we’re near the coast? This mist is…”
“Could it be the typhoon’s influence?”
“I’ve never seen anything like this. Let’s go slowly.”
Kang Hyung-seok drove with his hazard lights on, just to be safe.
Because they had left early, it was still morning, not yet noon.
Even so, the mist was so thick it seemed excessive.
Crunch-crunch-crunch.
As Kang Hyung-seok drove along the rough road, he confirmed through the navigation system that they were gradually approaching their destination.
About ten minutes left now.
Not much distance remaining.
“I should have stopped to eat somewhere along the way if I’d known it would be like this.”
It was the moment Kim Jae-sik muttered this.
Ding-dong.
The Shaman’s Bell rang out from the bag placed on the back seat.
Kang Hyung-seok glanced back briefly before turning his gaze forward again.
That was when it happened.
Screeeech!
“Ahhh!”
Kim Jae-sik’s body lurched forward from the sudden braking, and a musk deer that had appeared directly ahead stared at Kang Hyung-seok with its dark eyes.
“Phew.”
Kang Hyung-seok exhaled a sigh and immediately apologized to Kim Jae-sik.
“No, no. It happens.”
Kim Jae-sik looked at the musk deer with an uneasy expression and gestured for it to move aside, and the creature trotted past the car and disappeared into the brush along the roadside.
Both Kang Hyung-seok and Kim Jae-sik’s gazes naturally followed it.
But they should not have.
At the very least, they should have looked away immediately.
“…Ah.”
Kim Jae-sik let out a sigh while keeping his gaze fixed, and Kang Hyung-seok desperately hoped he was seeing things.
Yet what was visible above the passenger window was unmistakably a human foot.
Click.
As Kang Hyung-seok unfastened his seatbelt, Kim Jae-sik did the same and stepped out of the car.
The two men felt the sticky sea breeze and the dampness of the mist against their skin as they lifted their gazes upward.
A tree.
More precisely, an ancient one.
A tree so massive it wouldn’t seem out of place to call it a Guardian Tree—a towering sentinel watching over the village like a protective deity.
A body hung from that tree.
Creak, creak.
With each gust of wind, the corpse swayed like a pendulum.
With each movement, a stench like that from insects or snakes drifted through the air.
“…We should call it in.”
Kim Jae-sik, his eyes wide with despair and terror as he stared up at the body, squeezed his eyes shut as he spoke, while Kang Hyung-seok retrieved his phone from the car and dialed 112.
After providing their location and hanging up, his gaze remained fixed on the corpse.
‘Damn it. What kind of start is this.’
They had only just arrived at the village.
And their arrival was greeted by a corpse.
Kang Hyung-seok, thinking they had stepped into a far grimmer place than expected, turned his gaze back toward the road they’d come from.
The path was too narrow to turn the car around—as if it were telling them there was no going back now.
***
Screeeech.
After some time, police arrived along with an ambulance, asked Kang Hyung-seok and Kim Jae-sik a few routine questions, then placed the body on a stretcher and covered it with cloth.
The questions were perfunctory.
What were their names, and why had they come here.
How they happened to discover it, and so on.
There was no sense that the police suspected either Kang Hyung-seok or Kim Jae-sik.
Their identities were too solid, and the body’s time of death appeared to be quite some time ago—as clear as their identities were.
Judging by the corpse’s pallor, at least several hours had passed.
“Um, that person… who are they?”
Kim Jae-sik, still trembling from shock, asked with a sickly pallor, and the officer shook his head in response.
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that information.”
“They’re not an outsider or anything like that?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“No, never mind.”
Kim Jae-sik’s lips trembled with a troubled expression, and the officer turned away.
He then inspected the area around the body near the yellow police tape to see if there was anything else.
“Officer, may we leave?”
“Yes. Thank you for reporting this.”
Kang Hyung-seok bowed to the officer and climbed back into the car with Kim Jae-sik.
Thunk, vrrrrmmm.
As the engine roared to life and a subtle vibration rippled through the entire vehicle, Kim Jae-sik rubbed his parched face as if washing it.
“Sigh.”
“Still, they don’t seem to think it was murder.”
Kim Jae-sik’s expression grew heavier, his face darkening.
“Didn’t you notice?”
“Pardon?”
“There was nothing to step on to climb up.”
The corpse was a man in his fifties.
Weighing at least seventy-five kilograms.
Without anything to step on, it would be nearly impossible for someone of that size to climb such a massive tree and hang himself.
“….”
Kang Hyung-seok took a deep breath through his nose as he drove toward the village.
I know I shouldn’t be thinking like this.
Yet the image keeps forming in my mind—something far larger than a human, hanging the man from the tree.
“…Did you see any Victim Spirits?”
Kang Hyung-seok nodded heavily before answering.
“Damn, this is driving me crazy.”
“Would you like to turn back now?”
“What about you?”
Since the answer was painfully obvious, Kang Hyung-seok replied with a bitter tone.
“I have to stay.”
“Then where would I go?”
Kang Hyung-seok exhaled a laugh and drove into the village.
The destination was an ordinary rural village.
With the sea nearby, the buildings were low-rise, and the only structure that seemed recently built was a two-story building with a reddish exterior wall.
Except for the thick sea mist, it strangely overlapped with the village where I had once encountered a Goblin.
“Let’s start by checking the Village Community Center.”
“Yes.”
Kim Jae-sik retrieved Kang Hyung-seok’s phone from the dashboard, searched for the Village Community Center on the map, and placed it back.
It wasn’t an established rule, but whenever they came to investigate a village like this, they always stopped by the Community Center first.
Because the elders gathered there.
Having lived here for so long, they knew much, and if lucky, they could meet the village chief in one go.
Crunch-crunch.
It was while driving along an unpaved dirt road.
“Let go! You bastards! Let go!”
In front of the Village Community Center, a man in shamanic robes was flailing his arms, venting his fury at older people around him.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
“Is there a funeral to attend! Are you insane? You!”
“I can handle it! You damn fools!”
“This bastard is talking to his elders like that!”
Kang Hyung-seok kept the car stopped, watching the commotion unfold before him.
It seemed every villager had come out.
“Get out of the way, damn it!”
“Ugh, seriously!”
Young and old alike had gathered around the man in shaman’s robes, hemming him in from all sides.
“What’s this now?”
Kim Jae-sik muttered with a tone of exhaustion.
In that moment, Kang Hyung-seok shifted his gaze from the villagers to the man in the shaman’s robes.
Mid-forties, average height, average build, his expression was crude, and his eyes held a gleam—but a greasy, unsettling one.
“He’s a False Shaman.”
“Huh?”
“He received something, but it’s not a god.”
It happened sometimes.
A Malevolent Spirit claiming to be a god.
If someone mistook it for a true god and accepted it carelessly, they’d end up exactly like that man.
“Damn it, didn’t anyone get my calls? Another person died, another! How long are you going to let this go on!”
As the False Shaman bellowed, the faces of those restraining him darkened.
“Let go! Damn it!”
A sharp crack echoed.
The False Shaman flailed his arms, shaking off the villagers, and strode away with long steps.
As he passed right beside Kang Hyung-seok’s car, their eyes met for a brief moment.
The outsider seemed to irritate him.
“Ptui!”
Unable to contain himself, the False Shaman spat and disappeared into the distance.
“…The village atmosphere feels quite unsettled.”
“Yes.”
Kang Hyung-seok parked the car in a suitable spot and looked up at the sky.
The typhoon hadn’t arrived yet.
Perhaps, as always, it might veer toward Japan or elsewhere.
Yet the sky, already heavy with dark clouds as if the typhoon had already arrived, seemed profoundly chaotic.
Much like this village.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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