The Snake, the Flower, and the Tiger - Chapter 9

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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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Episode 9

Hee-seo knew her own weaknesses well. Hae-jeong, whose Spiritual Power was so weak she couldn’t even properly inscribe a single Talisman, had opened her Spiritual Sight early and could see and hear spirits. Yet Hee-seo, despite undergoing the Shamanic Spirit Descent Ritual twice, could perceive nothing. This was why she relied on the Spirit-Detection Talisman and Bone-Breaking Powder.
That was also the reason she’d become dependent on them.
“Still, don’t worry too much. Even if I’m spiritually blind…”
Hee-seo closed her eyes as she looked at the half-full Glass Bottle, then opened them slowly. The familiar vertigo rippled across her vision.
Deftly, she pressed Gauze against her torn finger. The white fabric quickly darkened with moisture—the same color as the liquid pooled in the Glass Bottle.
“But when it comes to driving them out by force, I’m confident.”
Hae-jeong called out to Hee-seo again and again, her voice tight with worry, but Hee-seo hung up the phone decisively. If she had truly stumbled into a trap, she couldn’t drag someone so fragile into it.

Standing by the window, Hee-seo tucked herself behind the curtain. Even near midnight, the garden bristled with so many lights that it blazed like broad daylight.
‘Doesn’t look tired at all.’
Twelve hours had passed since Kim Je-eon left that morning—after their tussle over clothes and undergarments—yet he looked exactly as he had when he’d walked out the door.
The neat sweep of his hair back from his face meant his features were sharp and distinct even from the second-floor window.
‘…His shirt’s changed, though.’
But Hee-seo noticed the difference in Kim Je-eon as soon as he returned. Unlike when he’d left for work, he now wore a pale sky-blue shirt. And looking closer, his trousers were different too.
‘Did he change clothes because he was afraid I’d confiscate what he was wearing?’
The thought struck her as absurd, and she let out a quiet laugh. It was an overactive imagination.
And yet, considering what Kim Je-eon—or more precisely, the spirit wearing Kim Je-eon—had been doing, it wasn’t entirely implausible.
‘This isn’t an ordinary spirit. I checked the Sheets and Pillows with Bone-Breaking Powder and found nothing. And the way it recognized the Spirit-Detection Talisman… What exactly is that thing?’
The longest-lasting traces of Spirit Possession were sometimes tested with Bone-Breaking Powder mixed into Purified Water—markings could appear depending on the spirit’s type. But Kim Je-eon’s Sheet, difficult as it had been to obtain, showed no trace whatsoever.
‘I’ve become someone who just washes bedding diligently.’
The look the housemaid had given her flashed through her mind, and her shoulders grew heavy. She had physical endurance to spare, but there was no way to ignore mental exhaustion entirely. Hee-seo leaned against the window frame and steadied her breathing.
There was a reason she’d forced herself to stay awake waiting for Kim Je-eon to come home.
According to the butler, Kim Je-eon always returned around midnight. He left for the office before 9 a.m., which meant more than half his day was spent at work. Whatever he earned, the man was relentless.
‘I can’t tell if it’s a relentless person or a relentless spirit, since I don’t know the degree of possession.’
Unlike what horror films and ghost stories suggested, Spirit Possession unfolded in stages. Recognition came first. The moment a spirit-possessed person becomes aware of the entity, everything begins.
‘Once the possessed person senses the spirit’s presence and can visualize its form, then it accelerates beyond any ability to stop it. Someone must have noticed something off…’
Those born with sharp intuition, or whose sensitivities heightened due to some trauma, could sense spirits this way.
Feeling a chill at the sight of a Haunted House with a Bound Spirit was mild. Dreaming a Premonition Dream sent by an Ancestral Spirit fell into the same category.
The real problem began when someone actually saw the spirit—when they could visualize its form.
See, and you’d hear. Hear, and you’d be enthralled. From that point on, the possessed person became prey to all manner of spirits.
‘If they’d been tormented by spirits day and night like that, it would be impossible to hide while living surrounded by people like this.’
Spirit forms varied as much as human forms did. Some appeared perfectly normal, spoke coherently, and seemed more human than humans themselves. Others had shapes that were difficult to discern at all.
An ordinary person would be so terrified just by seeing a spirit that they’d behave like a nervous wreck. Certainly their surroundings would have noticed. And if someone like Kim Je-eon spent more than half each day surrounded by staff, signs would show in some form.
“But none of them said anything. So it’s one of two things: either they’re all conspiring to hide something…”
Or the spirit had devoured him far longer ago than anyone realized. Hee-seo murmured this to herself, eyes sweeping across the hallway.
Two hours after Kim Je-eon returned home, the Estate settled into silence and sleep.
It was past midnight—the time when resident staff would be dozing in their dedicated break room. Hee-seo glanced at her Wristwatch and moved carefully.
She stepped out of her Bedroom and saw Kim Je-eon’s room at the far end of the long corridor. No light seeped beneath his door—the hallway was complete darkness.
She closed her eyes, then opened them slowly. Her vision adapted to the dark quickly, much more comfortably. To muffle her footsteps, she wore thick Socks instead of Slippers as she began walking.
‘Check the Basement first, leave the first floor for last.’
The housemaid’s room was on the first floor. Hee-seo bypassed it and headed for the stairs descending into the Basement.
The Estate had unusually high ceilings, and the staircases between floors were correspondingly long. By the time Hee-seo reached the bottom, the depth felt like two or three Basement levels down.
‘Is there really a need to dig a Basement this expansive?’
The Estate was already built on grounds rivaling a massive park. There was no need to excavate this deep; land was the one thing they had in surplus.
Hee-seo clicked her tongue softly and glanced both directions.
Long corridors branched left and right from the staircase leading to the first floor. She paused to consider, then turned. When direction eluded her, there was only one method.
The most scientific method of all: trusting her instinct. It was the approach she’d relied on her whole life. Her footsteps disappeared into the darkness.
As the corridor stretched on, Hee-seo found nothing suspicious. None of the usual signs that marked a spirit-possessed dwelling—no insects clustering as they would around such places. The spider webs she spotted in high corners suggested the staff’s diligence wasn’t responsible for their absence.
‘Insects drawn to spirits don’t disappear through cleaning.’
To vermin, the spirit-possessed were like corpses—walking meals exuding the stench of decay. Kill ten, and a hundred would swarm back. Such was their nature.

Yet on the second floor where Kim Je-eon and Hee-seo’s bedroom lay, they’d found nothing but a single cubic zirconia that had fallen from someone’s hairpin and a couple of strands of hair wedged deep beneath the bed.
The basement yielded little more. Hee-seo’s spirits had flagged momentarily, but she quickly pivoted her strategy. She’d examined the right side; now the left demanded her attention.
‘It’s cold…….’
Security lights ran the length of the corridor, making it easy enough to see. But situated so far underground, the air carried a chill sharper than anywhere else in the Estate.
The sudden, biting cold made Hee-seo exhale deliberately, a long measured breath.
‘Is something here? It’s unnaturally cold.’
Hee-seo glanced down at the wristwatch on her wrist.
Not yet three in the morning—the hour of ghosts. The Chou Hour, when negative spiritual energy thrummed with life. If a spirit lingered, it could reveal itself just like this.
“……There has to be something.”
Perhaps her whispered plea reached across the veil. Not long after, Hee-seo discovered something genuinely, undeniably suspicious.
It was suspicious enough that even someone without her purpose would have paused, unsettled.
“What is this?”
Clang, clunk. Thick metal struck metal with a sound that rang through the corridor. Hee-seo stared down at the rusted padlock, her expression momentarily blank.
“……Who keeps locks like this anymore?”
At the end of the basement corridor stood a door, sealed shut. But that alone wasn’t enough—a chain wound around the handle, fastened with a padlock.
It looked precisely like something designed to keep someone—or something—from getting out.
‘No, no. This is…….’
Hee-seo gripped the handle and pulled hard. Even with her full weight behind it, the door didn’t budge an inch.
She switched on her phone flashlight and spotted a door stop wedged beneath the door frame.
“This is…… it’s keeping whatever’s inside from coming out.”
The door stop was fixed firmly to the basement floor. Even if she broke the padlock, it would prevent the door from opening.

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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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