An Office Worker Is Good At Exorcism - Chapter 2

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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 2
Part 1. Follow the Divine Guidance (2)
A sticky, suffocating sensation clung to me.
An unease far deeper than what the mist alone could bring.
A metallic, acrid stench pierced through my nostrils.
It emanated from the darkness surrounding us.
Shiiiiiii.
An auditory hallucination, like wind howling through the void, assaulted my ears.
Dozens of voices—men, women, children—murmured rapidly in low, guttural tones.
Inexplicably, I understood their meaning.
—Come here. This way. Hurry.
Thud.
My feet moved against my will.
I walked toward the mist as if compelled, and behind me, I heard what sounded like Noh Su-chul’s desperate shout.
But the voices drowned it out, rendering it unintelligible.
—Come. You’re doing well. Yes, that’s right. Come now.
Thud, thud, thud.
As I trudged deeper into the mist with leaden steps, my breathing grew ragged.
I knew I should resist, yet an invisible cord seemed to coil around me, dragging me forward.
Ding.
A bell chiming directly beside my ear halted my steps.
The bells multiplied.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
Soon the sound overlapped as if a dozen small bells were being shaken at once.
The sound—like the bells shamans use in their rituals—jolted me back to consciousness.
“Gasp! Huff, huff!”
My eyes snapped wide open as I frantically surveyed my surroundings. The car was trapped in mist, visible only in silhouette, and Noh Su-chul’s face had gone deathly pale with terror.
“Hey! What’s wrong with you! Snap out of it!”
I wiped the cold sweat from my brow and shook my head vigorously.
‘Damn it. Again.’
I had succumbed to something that defied logic and reason.
Just as the spirits that had tormented me countless times before.
This darkness too sought to ensnare me.
“What are you doing over there! Why aren’t you coming back? Damn it!”
Noh Su-chul called out to me with more venom than usual, his voice trembling with fear.
But there was no real threat in his tone—only dread.
“It’s nothing, sir.”
I stared into the darkness with eyes transformed from moments before. Though nothing appeared in my field of vision, I sensed something sinister ready to burst through the mist at any moment.
We had to leave this place immediately.
“Let’s get back to the car, Chief.”
“What? What?”
“I’ll explain the details in the car.”
“Report it? We need to report this to someone, don’t we?”
“Let’s just go for now.”
I grabbed Noh Su-chul’s forearm and pulled, but he didn’t budge an inch.
“What are you saying? We have to report this first! You bastard!”
Noh Su-chul’s stubbornness was incomprehensible.
His reaction was so unsettling that when I looked into his eyes, I saw pupils that seemed to be gazing at a distant mountain.
Damn it.
I cursed silently, moving only my lips.
‘Noh Su-chul is bewitched.’
Being bewitched is dangerous.
Those things called malevolent spirits bewitch people into performing incomprehensible actions.
That’s how they obtain what they desire.
What Changgwi desires is human life.
More precisely, my blood and flesh—and Noh Su-chul’s.
Thwack!
“Snap out of it! This isn’t the time!”
I gripped his shoulders firmly and shook him, but Noh Su-chul’s facial muscles were growing slack.
Smack!
I struck Noh Su-chul’s shoulder with my palm.
His body swayed from the blow, but he only muttered, “I need to report this.”
“Get your head straight! Now!”
I raised my fist to shoulder height. But I hesitated before striking, unable to bring it down immediately.
It was because he was my workplace superior, but my resolve hardened.
That workplace superior was Noh Su-chul.
Crack!
Noh Su-chul’s head snapped to the side as he tumbled to the ground.
“Cough! Ugh! Ahhhhh!”
Noh Su-chul snapped back to awareness, clutching his cheek as he glared up at me with fierce eyes.
“You… you bastard… did you just… hit me?”
“Snap out of it! Dammit!”
I shouted at him with far more venom than he’d ever directed at me at the office.
It was a side of myself I’d never shown at work.
So Noh Su-chul, gripping his cheek, could only gape silently without daring to speak.
Whoosh.
“Get up.”
I extended my hand, and Noh Su-chul flinched in surprise.
Ridiculous—for someone with such weak nerve, I don’t know what gave him the audacity to mouth off like that.
Whoosh!
Kang Hyung-seok seized him by the collar and hauled him to his feet, then strode toward the car.
“Follow me. Quickly.”
“Y-you, I—”
“I said follow me!”
When Kang Hyung-seok turned his head and barked the command sharply, Noh Su-chul trailed behind him, trembling with fear.
‘Damn it. This is a disaster.’
Noh Su-chul had no way of knowing.
How perilous this moment truly was.
Danger lay strewn about like fallen leaves.
Changgwi lurked in the shadows like a tiger concealed within fog.
Having endured relentless torment from spirits, I could sense through bitter experience just how dire our situation had become.
‘Lose focus, and we die.’
Clinging desperately to consciousness, I stood before the vehicle.
The front bumper was crumpled, smeared with blood and fur, but otherwise the car appeared intact.
Click!
Yet cruelly, the door refused to open.
The relief that had settled across my face drained away in an instant.
“We’re finished. Damn it.”
Uttering a genuine curse, I threw my full strength into wrenching the handle.
Click, click, click!
At this rate, the handle itself would snap clean off.
I pulled at the door handle with such force, yet it remained immobile.
“You didn’t unlock it.”
“It’s a smart key!”
Noh Su-chul, who had only ever ridden in this car during business trips, spouted his exasperation.
“What are you doing? Help me pull!”
“Y-yes!”
Before I could finish speaking, Noh Su-chul rushed over and grasped the handle alongside me.
“On three, we pull.”
“Y-yes!”
“Two, three!”
Crunch!
The entire vehicle shuddered, yet the door remained stubbornly sealed.
Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
“Huff, huff!”
Releasing the handle from the unyielding door, I gasped for breath.
Something was profoundly wrong.
Could the car or key be malfunctioning?
It wasn’t impossible, but for such a thing to happen now defied all logic.
Someone—or something—was orchestrating this phenomenon, determined not to let Kang Hyung-seok and Noh Su-chul escape.
“Haa, haa, haa.”
An ominous dread pressed down upon my chest, my breathing growing rapid and shallow.
I had been tormented by spirits countless times before.
But never had I faced a moment this perilous.
Perhaps I would die here today.
At the hands of whatever dwelt within that fog.
Kang Hyung-seok stood beside the car, staring into the thick fog and darkness. When Noh Su-chul followed his gaze to the same spot,
“Excuse me. Is someone there?”
A deep male voice echoed from beyond the fog.
“It’s, it’s a person.”
For a moment, Noh Su-chul moved to respond with relief in his voice.
But Kang Hyung-seok immediately clamped a hand over his mouth.
‘That stench.’
The moment that voice reached me, I caught the smell.
It was like the raw, pungent reek of a fish market.
The kind of odor that had no place in these deep mountain mists.
‘The scent of a spirit…’
The smell of a ghost.
The stench of a malevolent spirit.
It had brushed past my nostrils the moment that voice sounded.
“Looks like you’ve had an accident. Are you alright? You seem to need help. Come here.”
Kang Hyung-seok kept his hand clamped over Noh Su-chul’s mouth as he slowly backed away.
With his other hand on the man’s shoulder, I could feel his entire body trembling.
“I’m not a strange person. I’m a resident from the village below, just passing through on some business. Is there something you can’t speak of? Hey, are you alright?”
Gulp.
Kang Hyung-seok swallowed hard.
The spectral stench, reeking of fish, was growing stronger by the moment.
It was drawing closer.
“Say something!”
Kang Hyung-seok glanced behind him.
Beyond the guardrail, a steep slope dropped away sharply.
The thick fog obscured what lay below, but the slope seemed a better escape route than the open road stretching straight ahead.
It was then.
“Noh Su-chul! Kang Hyung-seok!”
The creature bellowed their names with a voice that made the mountain itself resonate.
Feeling every hair on my body stand on end, Kang Hyung-seok yanked Noh Su-chul forward.
“Run!”
“Ugh, uuuugh!”
“Run if you want to live!”
Kang Hyung-seok bolted toward the guardrail, with Noh Su-chul scrambling frantically in his wake.
Whoosh!
I hurled myself over the guardrail and glanced back.
I was checking on Noh Su-chul, but that’s when I saw it approaching from behind him.
It was not human.
Tiger-like stripes covered its entire body.
A mass the size of a calf.
But the head was human.
The face was twisted in agony as if to announce it had been devoured by a tiger, yet only the lips were split wide open all the way to the ears.
As if it were smiling.
Screech!
I grabbed Noh Su-chul by the shoulder and collar, yanking him back over the guardrail.
“Ugh! Ahhh!”
I pulled him up as he shrieked, then bolted down the slope at a desperate pace.
“What—what’s behind us! Kang, hey!”
“Don’t look!”
If Noh Su-chul became entranced again, I had no confidence I could handle it.
Crash, crash, crash, crash!
As I fled down the dark mountainside path, I replayed the creature’s form in my mind.
My spiritual sight had opened since childhood, and I had witnessed many ghosts, suffered their torment.
A shaman who had not received a divine spirit.
Such people attract malevolent and vicious spirits.
One careless mistake and I would become a shaman possessed by a false spirit, and even if not, I would endure cruel suffering from divine affliction.
I had been fortunate enough not to suffer a fatal divine illness, yet I had seen many evil spirits.
But I had never once seen a spirit in such a form.
‘What on earth? Why something like that?’
Crackle, snap!
I pushed through the grasping branches and flying insects, racing through the darkness to escape Changgwi.
“Gasp, gasp! Gasp!”
My breath came in ragged heaves.
The mist-slicked stones seemed to eagerly await any chance to twist my ankles.
Behind me, Changgwi seemed ready to snatch my neck.
The desperate situation I had never experienced before dredged up old memories.
‘Teacher, why couldn’t I receive a body-protecting spirit?’
I must have been around thirteen.
I had maintained a relationship with the shaman who performed my spirit-pressing ritual, and I often asked such questions.
‘I see ghosts. I’m so scared. I don’t want to see them anymore, but I keep seeing them. You said everything would be fine if I just received a body-protecting spirit? When will I be able to receive one?’
‘Poor child.’
The shaman back then had stroked young Kang Hyung-seok’s head.
‘There is no need to fear. The spirit you will receive is a great one, and that being will protect you—so what is there to be afraid of?’
‘Even though I haven’t received a spirit yet?’
‘He chose you. How could he not protect you?’
‘But I’m so frightened. If this continues, I want to receive him soon.’
I couldn’t understand it.
A household guardian spirit who ignored the sight of ghosts.
A shaman who simply told me to wait.
When I, as a child, suffered so terribly.
‘It is not yet the time.’
‘Then when will I be able to receive him?’
‘That is for your household guardian spirit to decide. So endure a little longer. When you are perfected as a vessel, when you are prepared enough to receive him, he will come seeking you.’
Thud! Bang!
“Aaaahhhhh!”
Kang Hyung-seok turned to see Noh Su-chul stumbling over a protruding tree root.
Changgwi, with eyes gleaming ominously, was closing in rapidly.
“Damn it!”
“P-please, Manager Kang! S-save me….”
Kang Hyung-seok grabbed the outstretched hand of Noh Su-chul and bolted forward again.
Whoooooosh!
The mountain wind that swept past made his ears ring like the screams of a malevolent spirit, raising the hair on his skin.
‘I wish I had received my household guardian spirit sooner.’
Young Kang Hyung-seok had once spoken this very thought to the shaman.
‘Hyung-seok, remember this one thing. Your household guardian spirit waits for you just as desperately as you wait for him.’
‘He waits for me?’
‘Yes. Just as he longed for nothing but your birth.’
That conversation with the shaman had ended there.
‘Isn’t this the moment you spoke of!’
It was the instant when Kang Hyung-seok harbored regret toward his silent household guardian spirit.
“W-wait! Just—huff! Huff-huff-huff!”
Noh Su-chul, his arm seized, followed behind gasping for breath. But Kang Hyung-seok continued descending the Mountain, glancing back.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Changgwi moved to the left flank behind them, pursuing relentlessly.
As if deliberately herding Kang Hyung-seok and Noh Su-chul in the direction he desired.
Grit.
Kang Hyung-seok clenched his teeth, his mind racing through countless thoughts in mere seconds.
‘Which way should I go?’
Back to the car?
Or right? No, left? Straight ahead?
As he wandered, lost as to which path to take.
Ding.
A clear, bright bell sound brushed past his ears.
Ding.
Ding-aling.
Ding-aling.
The bell continued to ring as if guiding the direction Kang Hyung-seok needed to go, drawing his gaze toward it.

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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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