TFN C22

Chapter 22

The instant Deputy Manager Choi realized those traces were on the very clothes he’d been wearing until moments ago, he raked his neck and shoulders hard with both hands.

It was like discovering late that an insect had touched the body and trying to brush it off.

“No, no, no! What is—no way—have I been like this since yesterday?”

He couldn’t even form proper words; pounding his chest in frustration, he burst out in indignation.

Seeing the all-too-familiar reaction, Wonhyo pinched the bridge of his nose.

“It doesn’t look like it touched the body, so for a day or two, rinse the mouth with salt water, and pile a little salt by the pillow when sleeping.”

He prescribed small packets of salt he’d divided in advance.

At a glance, someone might mistake them for the salt that comes with a plate of blood sausage.

But Choi snatched the packet like grabbing a lifeline thrown from the sky.

“Thank you, really. The salt you gave me last time turned black, so I was wondering what to do going forward—this is perfect.”

“Ah…”

Wonhyo had wondered if something was off because no ghostly energy had touched Choi’s body when he bowed, but fortunately the protective charm he had given his uncle that day seemed to have worked.

Having seen it take effect once, this batch of salt would likely do its job as well.

Relieved, he turned to look at the clothes trapped in the cube Cheongmun had summoned.

When wrapped around a human body, they had spiked ghost-load aggressively; now, they were relatively tame.

Even the rise in ghost-load was manageable.

“Was the deceased in the morgue you visited wearing those clothes the hunter who died that day?”

“Ah, yes. That’s correct.”

In cases where cause of death is clear, an autopsy is usually skipped; in this case, to identify a perpetrator, they had sought the guardian’s consent and proceeded with difficulty.

Even so, it was quick.

At Choi’s explanation, Wonhyo erased one of the possibilities he’d been considering.

“It looks like the original grudge… followed the deceased.”

The energy lingering on the clothes, and what he had found outside the apartment earlier today, both matched exactly the sentiment sensed from the grudge’s thought-form.

At Wonhyo’s words, questions surfaced one by one across team members’ faces.

So they still didn’t believe?

Even so, he had no intention of arguing.

He would simply state what was; acceptance and understanding were for others to manage.

“Why can’t they understand me?” If he barked at them to just get it, it would only be tiring and awkward.

“But, uh.”

Two words of intent—to object—came out together.

Wonhyo turned toward the speaker with a feeling that he didn’t care what they said.

The face was familiar—this was the person who had kept insisting at the scene that he must not use a skill.

Deputy Manager Kim, wasn’t it?

On that narrow, sharp face, something indescribable flickered.

“So, um, ghosts… come out at noon?”

“Right? If it’s a ghost, shouldn’t it come out at night?”

“No. Maybe its day and night got flipped too.”

Others, wanting to ask something similar, murmured in succession at that barely restrained question.

It wasn’t the reaction he expected.

They looked at him like they assumed an answer would naturally follow from a question; Wonhyo averted his eyes slightly. Locking gazes felt like it would invite trouble.

“…It depends on the ghost. And it’s not like people only die at night, so there’s no reason for them to appear only at night.”

Wonhyo didn’t know the precise workings or principles.

He only knew because the dead had hovered before his eyes at every moment of his life.

From a roughly tossed explanation, each seemed to find a point to understand; nods bobbed here and there.

“Ah, I see.”

Whatever they “saw,” he didn’t know, so he let that pass.

Besides, why ghosts appear by day wasn’t the point now.

He looked to Cheongmun, who was still examining the traces on the clothes.

Perceptive as ever, Cheongmun turned back to him.

Should I just call out, “Excuse me”? After a moment’s thought, Wonhyo brought up the reason he had come today.

“I mentioned on the phone earlier that I’d found something.”

He pulled out an old phone—kept charged for emergencies, not actively used—and held it out.

“When I went to the apartment, I found traces left by the grudge. The time they showed up there was similar to the morgue visit time.”

Cheongmun accepted the spare phone.

“You captured it on video?”

Wonhyo nodded.

Since payment had been offered, he figured he should collect what was fair; he’d recorded everything without leaving anything out, so while the length ran long, the quality was good.

At the word “video,” team members who had been standing back surged forward like fish to water.

“If you brought something like that, you could’ve given us a heads-up.”

Had you done so, we’d have set up perfectly.

The deputy muttered, glancing at Cheongmun.

But Cheongmun, too, had just learned of the video here. Exhaling, he passed the phone from his hand and looked back to Wonhyo.

“Mind if we review it together?”

“No.”

Wonhyo nodded emphatically.

He’d brought it for them to see; now that it had left his hands, they could stew it, stir-fry it, or make soup with it—he didn’t mind.

Gear of unknown inventory provenance quickly landed on the conference table.

Watching the prickly Deputy Manager Kim queue up his video first, Wonhyo wondered what his role was; then, seeing the adjacent device, he presumed they might project through it and watched.

“Playing now.”

But instead, Kim set the phone on his palm and started the video there.

What is—he thought, when—shrrrk—an illusion at full scale unfolded before their eyes.

It felt so vivid it was like being taken back to the narrow path between the park behind the apartment; he felt he could touch it if he reached out.

“What’s that on the ground?”

At someone’s question, Wonhyo bowed his head.

There appeared the tripod and sanctifying rope he had set on the ground.

“A sanctifying rope.”

He wasn’t sure why that mattered, but as soon as he answered, people bent to their laptops to search, and he tilted his head.

In the meantime, the video rewound quickly until what Wonhyo had discovered surfaced.

“Huh? Is that like psychometry?”

“Old memories?”

“Don’t know, but the bicycle just moved backward. And that man who passed earlier is walking in reverse.”

Seeing how they spotted the hazy traces rising inside the rope boundary and анализed them, Wonhyo simply kept silent.

They watched, holding their breath, as the footage spooled faster. After night and day flipped several times, the playback returned to normal speed at a certain point.

When playback paused, everything in the illusion froze.

“Wind it back 0.5 seconds.”

“Winding.”

So that could be done with a skill-rendered illusion—apparently so.

While he marveled, the team peered intently—until it revealed itself in the illusion.

“The same one?”

“Looks a bit different to my eyes.”

“No, it’s the same. The protrusion at the acromion over the rotator cuff—there; the humerus length matches exactly what I remember.”

“But how do you know that from seeing it upside down that day? Also, from the short shadows around, it looks like noon.”

“You can see a ghost’s shadow?”

“Before the rewind, a person passed in front—didn’t you see their foot-shadow? Its length matched the sun being overhead.”

Not watching slowly but fast-forwarded—yet gabbling over found clues—Wonhyo considered going home.

They could handle all the analysis themselves without him, it seemed. No need to stay seated.

It felt like he had spent the year’s supply of social energy in these early days; his heart was tired.

“I should lie down now.”

There had been too many overwhelming things; two days melded with a bed felt necessary for healing.

The quest would be delayed accordingly, but he needed to refill the social meters, now running into overdraft, if he hoped to climb the Tower with strangers.

Paying to climb the Tower was closer to sightseeing than adventuring—but package tours always drained the soul more.

“I’ll be going now; best of luck with the investigation. If possible, clash with the grudge to leave a trace…”

“Ah…”

A sigh escaped him.

“Is something wrong?”

Even while watching with the team, it felt like Cheongmun never took attention off him; Wonhyo whispered.

“Um, that office where the gentleman stayed—we should probably purify it once. There’s… something else in there.”

Not exact, but there’d been one big presence and one… ambiguous one, hadn’t there?

“Something else?”

“Yes. Something else…”

The moment he recalled the thick, murky air in the office where he hadn’t even managed to set a foot properly, his nose ached, and he frowned.

His body felt unwell, his mind was exhausted, it was a hassle, and with nothing prepared as offering, he’d have to shoulder it personally—yet the thought that he had to clean that place filled his head.

It wasn’t his will.

Those lending him power were pushing his lazy back toward it.

“Is it dangerous?”

He couldn’t answer easily.

Usually, what’s in an office is considered dangerous because it can harm others; for him, the grudge-energy left in the clothes still trapped in the cube was more threatening.

“Mm, possession-type, so it needs verification.”

“There’s someone possessed in our office? Oh—sorry.”

So she’d meant to speak quietly—apparently not quiet enough.

Glancing at the team eavesdropping by ear, Wonhyo scratched his chin with a finger.

“Not quite a ghost, per se.”

It was somewhat in that vein—so not entirely off-base.