TFN C42

Chapter 42

On the business card the child had torn and hidden in his pocket, there was a line on the front that had not appeared before.

Patterns in the background that Wonhyo had only vaguely guessed at—knowing only their general purpose without seeing the complete design—were also present.

The upper portion of the reverse side contained no contact information or name, only the icon of a praying angel alongside the words “Bethany Evangelical Church.”

“I ran a search, and there are more than thirty churches in Seoul alone with either the same or similar names, or that once used that name.”

It was well known—Cheongmun himself had heard the name before.

After a brief pause, he turned to his team members.

“Was the identity check I requested completed?”

“Ah, yes. The missing student.”

One member of Team 3 carried a card identical to the one found with the partial remains of the trousers.

It might have been mere coincidence, but any doubt needed to be confirmed.

As he was being escorted away by the Audit Team, Assistant Officer Jeong chuckled to himself like a man who had lost his wits.

Cheongmun stopped the Audit Team officer as he was leaving the office with extracted data and posed a question.

“When was the first time Assistant Officer Jeong accessed unauthorized information?”

“December 29th of last year.”

When Cheongmun turned his gaze toward him, the deputy exhaled sharply.

“That was the very day the missing-person report was filed. At the time, the police dismissed it as a simple runaway.”

“Can the cell phone movement be traced?”

“I’ll look into it.”

The child was still missing, and discovering the last known location was of critical importance. They also needed to determine whether anyone else in that area had acquired more of these cursed items disguised as church invitation cards.

Cheongmun first sent the additional card they had secured to the lab, to check whether it matched the others and bore any common fingerprints.

“Team Leader, there’s something I’d like to report.”

Officer Nam, who handled cybercrime, spoke cautiously.

“The very first post connected to this case—I wondered whether Assistant Officer Jeong might have been the one who uploaded it, then pretended to be other people by adding comments. But it turns out the post was uploaded while logged into another account. That account belonged to someone who had already been declared deceased.”

“What?”

The deputy, listening nearby, widened his eyes.

“You mean he used the account of a dead person? When did this person die?”

“On the 29th.”

“What? There’s no way that’s coincidence. Has the deceased’s identity been verified?”

“Y-yes. Normally the ID isn’t immediately suspended without the family’s consent. It could have been hacking or impersonation. But I scraped what data I could from the source.”

Nam shared the findings over the team messenger.

Cheongmun opened the attached file and reviewed the personal information of the account’s owner.

“This… huh?”

“What is it? Huh? That—!”

Assistant Manager Kim, who had studied most closely the image of the vengeful spirit that appeared at regular intervals in the video Wonhyo had provided, jabbed his finger at the screen.

“It’s that bastard.”

The vengeful spirit who had butchered people with such cruelty still bore the face of a living man.

“It’s him. No mistake. But when did he die?”

“December 29th. He was killed instantly in a traffic accident.”

“Then who wrote the post? Was it Jeong?”

“No, it wasn’t from here.”

Nam rubbed the bridge of his nose with the edge of his hand before continuing.

“But perhaps we can’t dismiss it as mere impersonation. If a ghost is capable of killing people, who’s to say it doesn’t also have the ability to post on the internet?”

“This is insane.”

They had found their most suspicious candidate—yet he was already dead, and could not be prosecuted.

“Team Leader.”

At a loss for what to do, the members called for Cheongmun.

“Can’t we summon him? At least visit the site?”

Cheongmun’s eyes narrowed.

If they claimed to have identified the vengeful spirit, he would have to go out again. But if Wonhyo transformed into an animal while trying to subdue it, the situation would collapse.

“What comes after the rooster in the zodiac cycle?”

“The gangdari.”

“What?”

At Nam’s reflexive answer, the deputy scowled.

“There’s no such thing in the zodiac.”

“What, you don’t know gangdari? Monkey, kiki, gangdari, jingjingi, shin-yu-sul-hae—doesn’t ring a bell?”

The youngest looked at him as if incredulous at his ignorance. The deputy clicked his tongue.

“That’s some silly rhyme people our mothers’ age used to chant. The strange thing is that you even know it.”

“It’s sad you don’t know such classics, Deputy. Anyway, after rooster comes dog, Team Leader.”

Cheongmun gave a slight nod.

“But why do you ask? Are you checking if there’s some affinity between the vengeful spirit and the zodiac animals?”

“Affinity? What affinity? It’s not as if the zodiac beasts leap out of your pocket to battle.”

“Well, who knows? But judging by the way you use talismans, summoning doesn’t seem impossible.”

Leaving behind the increasingly wayward conversation, Cheongmun sent a message to Wonhyo.

Judging by what had happened that morning, it was unlikely he would appear again that day—but it was worth asking.

Remembering the rescue operation at dawn, Cheongmun’s brow furrowed faintly.

When he had first asked Wonhyo to hold his hand, the man had been visibly unaccustomed to physical contact. Yet within just a few days, he had changed noticeably.

Unable to even hold hands, and yet begging with practiced ease for pleasure—it was suspicious enough to raise doubts.

If someone else was helping him shoulder the burden of his quest penalties, that would prove troublesome.

Because there were future tasks that could only be resolved with his aid.

Cheongmun opened the old quest window, then closed it, brushing away a subtle distaste. He flexed his fingers.

“The more I think about it, the more mortifying it is.”

Wonhyo slammed his forehead against the wall of the laundry room with a thud.

He hadn’t struck hard enough to leave pain, only enough to feel the chill of the tiles seep into his skin.

He glared at the washing machine, rattling in his stead.

The season’s end had not yet come, yet the temperature had already plunged to five degrees below zero. Still, he felt he ought to wash the borrowed clothes, and so he had steeled himself to turn on the machine.

These days, they said even top-loaders could dry clothes, boasting technology that defied belief. But his was a 16-year-old hand-me-down from his mother, a small washer meant only for pre-washing.

Normally, he used a 24-hour laundromat nearby for his clothes, while this little washer was reserved for socks and underwear—things that had to be washed daily. Never had he imagined using it to launder another man’s clothing.

Thankfully, the fabric could be water-washed, so he had simply set it going.

As he stood with arms folded, the washer finally ended its spin cycle, sagging as though it had given its all.

Unplugging it, Wonhyo retrieved the shirt and trousers, then carried them into his room. Standing too long in that semi-outdoor laundry space had left him chilled to the bone.

“Once I hang these up, I should find some medicine.”

He had learned that if he took cold medicine in advance, he would not suffer too harshly when ill.

His sister had chided that if he already needed it, then he was sick, not preventing it. But to him, it was prophylactic.

He shook the garments hard to prevent wrinkles, then hung them on hangers. Afterward, he climbed onto the large mattress that filled one side of the room.

The warmth of the electric blanket, spread beneath him, thawed the ice in his hands from handling wet laundry.

“Ahh… that’s better.”

Snuggling under the blanket, he twisted about until he found the most comfortable position. His back was deliciously warm, and he felt he could fall asleep like this—yet his eyes remained wide open.

There had been too many shocks today, and sleep had slipped away.

Kicking his legs irritably beneath the blanket, he rolled over and reached for his charged laptop.

Piling two pillows beneath his spine in the worst possible posture, he logged into Hunternet.

The Special Bureau had promised to deal with the posts, but he could not help worrying.

“My personal info isn’t completely exposed, is it?”

Even if his identity were revealed, he had committed no crimes. He had earned his living by his own skills, and if misfortune had forced him to avoid people, that was no sin to be scorned for.

He had not been like those shamans who, while tossing rice, made pronouncements about husbands or children.

His neighbors already knew he was a shaman and that his house doubled as a shrine, but there was no need for people far away to know.

He opened the message board and logged in.

Though comments could be left anonymously, he had no choice but to log in for searches.

Unless one lurked perpetually like a ghost haunting every post, this was the quickest, easiest method.

“They said something about a shaman, right?”

Wonhyo searched the board with three keywords: taxes, Special Bureau, shaman. Only a single post appeared.

The title was familiar. He instantly recognized it as the post Cheongmun had shown him that morning.

“There’s bound to be more.”

That was the way of this community: rootless, like duckweed, following whatever caught their fleeting interest.

If a topic risked being buried in muddy waters, people would simply post again and again, dragging it back by the hair. It was routine. No way this would end with only one post.

He frowned and returned to the front page, this time sorting by highest view count.

Yet even there, no posts about shamans appeared.

Had the moderators really cut them?

This time, he searched by most recent posts with the most comments.

[Tower Bus is Back in Operation]

It was the sort of title impossible not to click.