KTC | Chapter 13

“Will going to that crappy village bring back all my memories? Maybe remembering everything from start to finish would help with my therapy?”

“You’re talking crazy.”

Choi Seonwoo cut him off sharply.

“Think about it, brother. What kind of ghosts do you think were trapped in Yunseul Village?”

“The children who were sacrificed?”

“Short-sighted thinking. You think only children died there?”

Seo Jihan blinked for a moment and quickly realized the error in his words.

“There must be dead ones for me too. Not just the cultists, but villagers as well.”

“Yeah, exactly. They died horribly because of their own faults, but those are the ones who usually linger in this world as vengeful spirits.”

“If those bastards are really vengeful spirits, is it okay to kill them? You can just send them all to hell, Priest.”

“You think I’m some kind of madman?”

Choi Seonwoo laughed incredulously. Seo Jihan, watching him, suddenly felt a wave of nausea and looked away, feeling a slight embarrassment.

It was strange. Every time he saw Choi Seonwoo, a torrent of conflicting emotions tore at his heart. Feelings of fondness and dislike, joy and sorrow, longing and wanting to avoid – truly strange emotions.

“The reason an Exorcist Priest exists is to help living people suffering from evil spirits. Whether they are vengeful spirits, evil spirits, or benevolent spirits, they were all once people, and still part of life, which means there are boundaries a priest cannot cross. Even if I wanted to, the diocese would talk me out of it. If I handled it alone, I’d have to be prepared for excommunication.”

“You consider even such shameless souls as life? Even when it’s clear they’ll harm the living someday?”

“It’s similar to how we can’t punish criminals with a high risk of reoffending in advance. As a priest, I can’t just participate in indiscriminate killing, can I?”

Just then, Lee Jeongae yelled from the kitchen, “Breakfast is ready!”

Choi Seonwoo stood up and continued.

“Anyway, to answer your earlier question, brother, don’t even think about going near Yunseul Village for as long as you live. Going back to a place where you’ve accumulated so much karma in the past is like throwing your body into an auction for local evil spirits.”

Considering the state of High Shaman Yuksun’s body as reported by the media, it seemed many strong evil spirits had escaped from her body, though not all of them. Even a shaman as powerful as she couldn’t handle all the spirits lingering there by herself.

The curse of spirits imposed on Yunseul Village was still intact.

The SU Team, directly under the Director of National Intelligence Service Go Changhyun, was a secret team known only to high-ranking officials and the president. They operated both domestically and internationally, but given the ongoing truce with North Korea, they spent most of their time inside the country, identifying spies or monitoring defectors, and occasionally getting involved in major criminal investigations that were on the brink of turning into cold cases.

However, the bolt from the blue that had hit the SU Team this time was due to an entirely unexpected incident—the sudden death of High Shaman Yuksun in Jeonan County.

The chaos during a shamanic ritual attended by local councilors had inevitably made the news and personal broadcasts, and naturally, it had unsettled the president greatly.

During the Unknown Cult incident, South Korea had been portrayed internationally as a country where child rights were in the gutter and where heinous crimes were frequent at the village level. In reality, South Korea had indeed not prioritized child rights protection, and it was true that overt crimes committed in some insular rural villages were tacitly condoned by local law enforcement, but the coverage had been exaggerated and distorted.

Consequently, Koreans living abroad had been in distress for a long time. Stores owned by Koreans were attacked overnight, people were assaulted on the streets simply for being Korean, and there were even cases where Korean restaurants operated by non-Koreans were set on fire. It was a painful period for all Koreans.

The president, who was hardly pleased to see the incident resurface, had summoned Go Changhyun and issued a rather aimless command to restore public confidence and find a way to restore Yunseul Village.

After much deliberation, Go Changhyun had assembled all available members of the SU Team, excluding those who were out on assignment. Together, they had first reviewed the body of High Shaman Yuksun. They managed to interpret some of the things she had said before dying.

The evil spirits that had possessed and harmed each other on the day of the disaster were still stagnating in the village, without a king to follow or a vessel to transfer to, their existence fading into obscurity.

“Just like High Shaman Yuksun said, it seems the Ghost King has indeed awakened,” Lee Juhee concluded carefully after a thorough vision through the eyes of High Shaman Yuksun.

“It seems like the awakening of the Ghost King has instilled a sense of purpose in the spirits, just at the level of common ghosts. They’ve gained an ability to discern again, finding vessels. High Shaman Yuksun, who happened to be conducting a ritual in a neighboring village, provided them with a perfect bottleneck. They gained the strength to leave the village by feeding off her spiritual power.”

This was both good news and bad news.

Yunseul Village had become a ghost village because there were simply too many lingering spirits there. The souls of the children and vengeful spirits that these evil spirits had clung to were also numerous.

Now that a significant number of these spirits had left, the others would naturally decrease, and if the memorial rituals were properly conducted, their numbers could be reduced even faster. This was the spark of restoration that the long-neglected Yunseul Village needed. That was the good news.

The bad news was that they had no idea where these liberated spirits had gone. These were the spirits that the Ghost King had summoned to kill the living. They were not like the ordinary spirits of human folklore that played simple tricks.

These were fearsome spirits that could turn the bodies of strong men into minced meat in an instant.

Even if the memories were gone, the emotions remained. For the SU Team members, witnesses and survivors of the Unknown Cult Massacre, the fear of that time was still vividly etched in their minds. The psychological trauma was significant, which is why Go Changhyun had never involved the SU Team in any Unknown-related cases until now.

However, as much time had passed, and Lee Juhee had even reported that many dangerous spirits had left, Go Changhyun decided to deploy the SU Team to the case for the first time.

Thus, Lee Juhee and Goo Seungjun, known as the ace of the team, were now heading to Yunseul Village.

The highway was quiet on a weekday morning, and the car was silent with neither radio nor music playing. Both Goo Seungjun, who was driving, and Lee Juhee, sitting in the passenger seat, were deep in their own thoughts.

“Have you remembered anything, sister?”

As they passed the last tollgate entering Jeonan County, Goo Seungjun broke the silence. Lee Juhee, who had been slowly chewing on walnut cookies bought from a rest area, shoved another cookie into his mouth as she replied.

“Nothing.”

Goo Seungjun swallowed the half-chewed cookie and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

“It’s really strange. All eight of us barely remember anything from that day.”

“It’s strange but maybe it’s for the best. Self-protection, psychological defense mechanisms or whatever… that’s what the therapist said.”

After a moment of silent contemplation, Goo Seungjun refused the next cookie Lee Juhee offered and spoke up.

“But, sister. Lately, I’ve been seeing something else in my dreams.”

“Something else? Since when?”

“Exactly since I returned from the Philippines.”

Goo Seungjun had been dispatched to the Philippines on Go Changhyun’s orders to monitor the investigation into Kwak Jaepil’s situation. But even staring into the eyes of the man who had turned into a chunk of meat in the morgue, he saw nothing, and no substantial physical evidence could be found. Naturally, the culprit remained at large, leaving the case highly likely to remain unsolved.

“Just a tiny silhouette moving around. It’s pitch black all around, but strangely, I can make out that small moving silhouette. It’s tearing people apart like those crazy bastards, and I…”

Goo Seungjun paused, lost in his recollections.

“I’m cheering. Like those mad cult followers. Kill them! Kill them more brutally! Shouting with ecstasy and shaking.”

Lee Juhee had no experience with such dreams. She too occasionally saw fragmentary and unclear scenes in her dreams, but upon waking, she couldn’t remember anything at all, just shivering drenched in cold sweat.

“Just a crazy dream, don’t read too much into it. Worrying won’t give us any answers anyway.”