An Office Worker Is Good At Exorcism - Chapter 31

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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 30
Part 2. The Crow Cried (2)
Clank!
The moment I pulled into the hospital parking lot, I yanked the parking brake and thrust myself out of the car.
It was the night I’d signed the lease on the warehouse.
Only five hours had passed since I’d clocked out, and the taste of the coffee Lee Jin-pyung had given me remained vivid in my memory.
But Lee Jin-pyung had been in an accident.
A traffic accident.
“Kang!”
Gwak Young-ho spotted me in the hospital lobby and raised his voice before catching himself and lowering his hand, mindful of the stares around us.
“How badly is Lee hurt?”
“Let’s smoke a cigarette.”
I didn’t press further, reading the troubled expression on Gwak Young-ho’s face, and followed him outside.
A convenience store a short distance from the hospital.
Gwak Young-ho bought canned coffee and cigarettes there, then lit up in the alley where the hospital was still visible.
In the meantime, I rubbed my thumb across the logo on the canned coffee.
‘This was the same brand Lee gave me.’
Damn it, really.
My mood felt utterly ruined.
Click, crackle!
“Phew! How much did you hear?”
“I was only told he was in a serious traffic accident.”
“Ugh, damn it.”
“Is it… very serious?”
“He’s gone into surgery, so.”
I fidgeted with the innocent can of coffee while stealing glances at Gwak Young-ho’s face.
Had this man always looked this aged?
His face, looking older than usual, revealed just how deeply his insides were rotting away.
“The car was totaled. The truck driver claims he’s the victim, but I don’t see how he can complain when he crossed the center line himself.”
“…What?”
Gwak Young-ho inhaled deeply on his cigarette and exhaled like a sigh.
“At first I thought Lee had crossed the center line, but that doesn’t make sense. Apparently the truck driver deliberately swerved and crushed him. Even the police found it suspicious enough to take a blood sample.”
Whether he’d been drinking or on drugs.
Gwak Young-ho muttered it almost under his breath, but the words didn’t register with me.
A single thought consumed my mind entirely.
‘It’s the curse.’
The truck driver who’d crossed the center line as if possessed by a spirit.
Lee Jin-pyung, who’d suffered such a severe accident that his car was totaled.
I could only think that the curse I’d seen in the warehouse had extended its reach to Lee Jin-pyung.
The possibility of it being anything else was slim.
The truck driver’s reaction, as relayed through Gwak Young-ho, bore the unmistakable hallmarks of someone entranced by something beyond comprehension.
“…You came to mind.”
“Me?”
Kang Hyung-seok lifted his face, still lingering in the depths of profound contemplation, as Gwak Young-ho exhaled cigarette smoke while keeping his gaze fixed on the hospital.
“That thing you mentioned about energy or whatever. I wondered if it might be connected to that. Ah, no. I don’t even know what I’m saying right now.”
….
“Anyway, don’t worry too much about this. You understand, right?”
Kang Hyung-seok pressed his lips tightly together before forcing them open.
“I understand.”
Gwak Young-ho met his gaze and smiled bitterly.
For someone telling him not to worry, his smile was brimming with terrible concern.
***
“Visitors aren’t permitted.”
The surgery had ended at 2 a.m.
Gwak Young-ho, who had kept vigil until then, started to say something but let out a sigh and nodded instead.
“If anything comes up, please contact me at this number.”
Gwak Young-ho pulled out his business card, but the doctor posed a question instead of taking it.
“Are you family?”
“No. I’m a colleague from work.”
“And the patient’s family?”
“They’re coming from the United States. It seems it will take about two days because there are no available flights.”
Gwak Young-ho answered with a bitter smile, and the doctor accepted the business card as if understanding.
In the meantime, Kang Hyung-seok tried to catch a glimpse of Lee Jin-pyung behind the recovery room.
But he couldn’t see Lee Jin-pyung.
All that was faintly visible were nurses moving busily about and, between them, a blanket that didn’t stir an inch, along with IV lines hanging in profusion.
“Did the surgery go well?”
“We did everything we could.”
Both Gwak Young-ho’s face and Kang Hyung-seok’s, standing beside him, were clouded with unease.
Perhaps Lee Jin-pyung might die.
I didn’t want to think such a thing.
But the doctor’s expression and the heaviness of the atmosphere made it impossible to prevent this unsettling thought from taking root in my mind.
“Director.”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve worked hard late into the night. You must be exhausted—please go in first.”
Gwak Young-ho opened his lips as if to say something, then simply closed them. He then gave Kang Hyung-seok’s shoulder a light tap and nodded slightly.
“You’ve worked hard too, Kang. Go on in.”
“I’ll go in after I see you leave.”
Gwak Young-ho smiled with that same expression he’d shown in the office before—the look of “look at this guy.”
“All right. Be careful on your way in.”
“Yes. I’ll see you on Monday.”
Gwak Young-ho waved goodbye and departed, and with the doctor gone as well, I found myself alone in the hollow hospital corridor.
A hospital at dawn bears little resemblance to one in daylight.
Fewer patients admitted, a skeleton crew of medical staff.
Vast, empty spaces.
It created an atmosphere of desolation—like a school abandoned by its students.
“You’re worried about your master, aren’t you?”
I murmured the words while staring at the recovery room door.
Though no one stood nearby, a response came from near my feet.
-Whimper, whiiimper.
The Spitz Victim Spirit that Lee Jin-pyung had raised.
The small white creature stood beside my feet, tail drooping, caught between anxiety and helplessness.
With no one around, I reached out my hand toward the Spitz.
The Spitz approached eagerly as if it had been waiting, but I felt nothing in my palm.
That was truly unfortunate.
“…Your master will be fine.”
I pulled the spirit close and fixed my gaze upon the recovery room door.
-Whimper, whiiimper.
The Spitz continued to tremble, tears streaming from its eyes in distress.
I clenched my teeth and stroked the Spitz’s head.
Yet still, I felt no tactile sensation beneath my fingers.
Regardless, I continued to caress its head and back endlessly to soothe its anxiety.
My eyes fixed upon the recovery room door, burning with quiet resolve.
***
The sun had just begun its ascent over the horizon.
Vrrrroooom.
After catching a brief nap in the car, I navigated through Osan and headed toward Yongin.
It was where Lee Geum-kyung’s Shamanic Temple stood.
Turning the wheel sharply toward the mountain, I followed the concrete-paved mountain road and came to a stop halfway up the slope.
I didn’t exit immediately, instead shielding my eyes with my palm.
‘It was because of the malevolent presence.’
There was a reason I’d detoured through Osan.
I’d confirmed the warehouse, and I’d witnessed the malevolent presence seeping out in waves through the shattered glass.
A cursed house poses no great danger by itself. But once a person enters, everything changes entirely.
The violent.
The dormant.
The silent.
That which envies the living.
All of it descends like arrows upon those connected to the warehouse.
Who came to mind immediately?
Gwak Young-ho, Lee Jin-pyung, Shin Jung-ah, and the other Company employees.
Beyond that, the laborers who would move goods into the warehouse and their families as well.
If I didn’t resolve this malevolence, a string of deaths would follow.
Tap, tap, tap.
At the sound of knocking on the driver’s window, I lowered my hand from my eyes.
“Young Master? What brings you here?”
Chung-geum, Lee Geum-kyung’s disciple, had pressed her face so close to the driver’s window that condensation formed on the glass.
I turned off the engine and signaled that I would open the door, and only after Chung-geum stepped back did I exit the vehicle.
“I apologize for arriving without notice.”
“It seems you’ve become entangled in another matter.”
Chung-geum spoke playfully at first, but upon seeing my darkened expression, the smile faded from her face.
Then, in a low and solemn voice, she continued.
“What is the matter?”
“There is a malevolent presence in the warehouse contracted by the Company.”
Malevolence.
The moment this word left my lips, Chung-geum’s eyes deepened with gravity.
For a practitioner of Shamanism, malevolence was something that could never be treated lightly.
“It appears to be a particularly potent form—either Violent Death Curse, Absolute Doom Curse, or Ghost Gate Curse. The malevolence must be severed.”
My words came without hesitation.
Though Chung-geum knew this was not the time for it, she silently marveled.
Korean Shamanism categorizes twenty-one types of malevolence.
For someone only beginning to walk the path of Shamanism to identify the types of malevolence was no simple feat.
“You seem quite knowledgeable. Did your guardian spirit teach you this as well?”
“I studied it separately. You know how it is.”
Living under the torment of spirits was so harrowing that I had to do something—anything—to quell the anxiety that gnawed at me.
“…What happened to you?”
“I’ve been seeing them since I was young. Constantly.”
As Chung-geum’s eyes narrowed with curiosity, I rubbed at the bitter twist of my lips.
“I wasn’t even old enough for elementary school when the spirits terrified me so much I cried every single day. My mother would hold me whenever it happened, but that was all she could do for me.”
Understanding that sentiment, Chung-geum’s face hardened and her lips pressed into a thin line.
“Every day was suffocating with fear and pain. I wished I could die just to make it stop.”
“…Young master.”
“But what terrified me most was karma. Spirits, at least, you could avoid. But once karma entangles you, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Those haunted by spirits can flee from them.
But sometimes you step on a landmine and become ensnared by karma instead.
Just as Ha Jang-seo suffered after purchasing that field where a corpse lay buried.
“If it weren’t for my teacher, I would have died back then.”
Chung-geum’s expression grew as troubled as my own.
Karma is always around us.
Light karma and heavy karma.
All varieties of it, striking without warning from nowhere, piercing through people without mercy.
Chung-geum, who studied under Lee Geum-kyung, understood this all too well.
“Is there any way to contact your teacher?”
“…You know how it is.”
Chung-geum spoke quietly, her hands fidgeting as if to betray her troubled mind.
Despite her youth, her hands bore the hardened calluses of shamanic work, and she wrung them together while her gaze fell away in distress.
“She’s gone to perform a water spirit ritual. She’s been preparing, so she can’t be reached.”
“…Right, yes. Of course.”
Lee Geum-kyung had gone to perform a water spirit ritual.
A ceremony for the fishermen and local residents.
A ritual to pray for abundant catches and ward off disasters coming from the sea.
With so many people’s livelihoods and lives at stake, even Lee Geum-kyung had no choice but to prepare thoroughly.
“If it’s violent death karma as you predicted, the situation is dangerous.”
“It is.”
Violent death karma uses the same characters as sudden, unnatural death.
A perilous karma that could claim someone’s life at any moment.
The other two karmas I’d identified were equally cruel as violent death karma.
“My coworker’s life is already hanging by a thread.”
“Haven’t you taken any other measures?”
“I asked my supervisor to sprinkle salt around the company and near the hospital.”
Chung-geum nodded with relief on her face.
The best precaution someone without shamanic training could take.
While sprinkling salt or red pepper powder is widely known, it’s not ineffective.
In fact, it’s effective enough that it became widespread among the masses.
“It seems you intend to sever the karma yourself, young master.”
“I have to. If possible, I need to resolve it today, no matter what.”
Chung-geum regarded Kang Hyung-seok with a quiet, reverent gaze.
A shaman dwelling within human flesh.
She could sense the weight of the fate his guardian spirit had bestowed upon him.
“There was something the teacher mentioned before.”
“Yes?”
“If you ever asked for help, I was to assist you without hesitation.”
Chung-geum offered a faint smile, then released her anxiously fidgeting hands and clenched them into firm fists.
“If you need my help, please tell me.”
Kang Hyung-seok regarded her in silence for a moment.
Then he exhaled a laugh and nodded firmly.
“Thank you.”
This was the most formidable thing I had ever faced.
No one could know how much her words meant as a comfort in this moment before it.
“To sever the karma, I need information. So I’m asking—when you first saw me, you said I had just come from experiencing a haunted house.”
“Please forget about that.”
Chung-geum spoke as if embarrassed, but Kang Hyung-seok’s eyes remained thoughtful.
“That haunted house—was it the abandoned warehouse in Osan?”
It was then.
Chung-geum felt a sudden chill run through her, her fine hairs standing on end.
The warehouse contracted by the Company and the karma.
The possessed people she had witnessed countless times in the haunted houses she had seen.
“Surely not….”
Kang Hyung-seok kept his gaze fixed on Chung-geum as he turned his head toward Osan.
Chung-geum met his eyes and extended her hand toward the region where the haunted house lay.
They both pointed in the same direction.

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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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