Director, You’re Haunted

Chapter 1 · VAT Not Included

Soi · D-50 to the Solstice

Exorcism quotes did not include VAT.

Jin Soi used to put that line at the very bottom of her estimates in nine-point font. Last month she’d bumped it up to fourteen-point bold. Two separate clients had paid, said I didn’t realize there’d be tax on top, and asked her to put their ghost back.

Ghosts were non-refundable.

Two a.m. Unit 1407, the last door at the end of the hall in a Yeoksam-dong officetel. When Soi stepped inside, the motion-sensor light in the entryway blinked once and switched itself off. The room smelled of old paper—not a smell a three-year-old studio had any business having. It was the damp of a used bookstore, the back shelves where the sun never reached. The wallpaper was white and the floor was new, but the air had been sitting there for about fifteen years.

The client, a twenty-six-year-old office worker, was crouched by the front door with a comforter pulled over her head. She’d moved in three weeks ago. Every night at two, she said, the desk lamp turned itself on, and somebody sighed and turned the pages of a book.

“Even now?”

“Ev—even now.”

Soi pushed up the sleeves of her white ritual robes. Bells in her right hand, a fistful of coarse sea salt in her left. Ghosts laughed at the fine stuff.

Twenty-seven, a hair over five-foot-three. The bun she’d twisted up in the back of the taxi was listing to one side. People heard the word shaman—mudang—and pictured heavy eyeliner and a knife-edge stare. Soi was nowhere near that. She had round eyes and slightly round cheeks, and every client who opened the door to her asked the same thing at least once. You’re…the shaman?

At the far end of the room, the desk lamp by the window was on, and a man sat in front of it. A stretched-out gray tracksuit, bedhead sticking up in back, and on the desk a thick prep book no one else could see. General Principles of Administrative Law.

« Elder Sister. Yon fellow hath been here fifteen years. »

A seven-year-old boy poked his head out from behind the skirt of Soi’s robes. Bok-dong. His hair was tied up in two little tufts, and he was wiping his nose on the sleeve of his rainbow-striped jacket.

« Also, grape Maychu. Forget not. »

I’m working.

« After work, then. Two. »

Instead of answering, Soi shook the bells once. Jingle. The man in the tracksuit flinched.

“Sir.”

The man turned around slowly. The bags under his eyes had been fifteen years in the making.

« …You can see me? »

“Yes. I can see you.” Soi dragged over a chair and sat down beside him. “You’ve been studying here a long time, haven’t you.”

« The results never came out. »

“Results for what?”

« The 2011 civil service exam. Second round. I was going to leave once I saw the list. But the list never came out. Fifteen years now. »

By the door, the client sucked in a breath. All she could hear was Soi’s side. Watching a shaman ask an empty chair Results for what? at two in the morning was probably not a great feeling.

Soi took out her phone and typed 2011 civil service exam second round passed into the search bar. An old PDF came up. She asked his name and started thumbing down the list. It was a long list.

She stopped.

“Sir. Right here.”

She turned the screen toward him, and he leaned in. The lamplight went straight through his translucent face.

His name was on the twenty-second line.

He stared at the screen for a while before he huffed out a laugh. It was hard to tell whether he was laughing or crying.

« I passed. »

“You passed.”

« The night before the results… I drank way too much coffee. My heart felt kind of off. I figured I’d just check the list and then go to the hospital. »

“Well, now you’ve checked.”

« Yeah. » He closed General Principles of Administrative Law. His hand stayed on the cover, smoothing it. « I guess I can go now. »

Soi stood and shook the bells three times. Jingle, jingle, jingle. She scattered the salt toward the window. The man got up and bowed in the client’s direction. The client, of course, saw nothing. But in that moment, her hands went slack on the comforter.

The lamp went out.

« He is a deputy director now. » Bok-dong wiped his eyes with his sleeve. « But Elder Sister. Maychu. »

The fee was 550,000 won. VAT not included.

The first train of the morning was empty. Under the fluorescent lights, a second Soi floated in the window. She’d stuffed the robes in her bag, but the incense had soaked into her cuffs and stayed there. The man across from her, coming off a night shift, sniffed a few times and then glanced over. Soi pretended not to notice and looked out the window. Below the Dangsan rail bridge, the black river slid past.

Her phone buzzed three times on the ride back to Mangwon-dong.

[Landlord] Soi, if the two months aren’t settled by the end of this month, I’m in a tough spot too ㅠ [Hyundai Card] Upcoming payment: 1,284,300 won [Ga-young] yo your DMs exploded. wait is this real?? check it RIGHT NOW

Soi tapped the last one. Park Ga-young, her friend from high school who ran Soidang’s Instagram, had sent a screenshot.

Hello. This is the Office of the Chairwoman, Taesan Group. The Chairwoman urgently requests a consultation with Madam Shaman Jin Soi. A retainer of 30 million won can be paid in advance. We will receive you today at 11 a.m. on the fifty-second floor of our Euljiro headquarters.

« Thirty million. » Bok-dong counted on his fingers, sitting in Soi’s lap. « How many Maychu is that? »

A lot.

« And banana milk? »

For life.

« Elder Sister, thou didst smile just now. Thou smiled thinking of money. Is a shaman allowed that? »

Shamans pay rent too.

Taesan Group headquarters stood in the middle of Euljiro like a knife. Fifty-two floors of glass and steel. The lobby was open three stories high, and the lights hanging from the ceiling drew white circles on the marble floor. Everyone tapping their badges at the security gates wore black, navy, or gray. Soi, in a beige coat with a canvas tote, looked like she’d wandered in from a different channel. A fingernail-sized bell keychain dangled from her bag strap and jingled with every step. The security guard turned to look at her twice. At the fifty-second-floor elevators, a huge man was waiting for her. He had to be six-foot-three, and his suit was straining at the shoulders, but his face looked weirdly like a scared puppy’s.

“Madam Shaman Jin Soi? I’m Oh Tae-min, the Director’s personal secretary.” He lowered his voice. “Um. But… is there anything here right now?”

Soi looked around the hallway: marble floor, floor-to-ceiling glass, potted plants. The air was strangely cold, even with the heat running.

“Didn’t the Chairwoman call me in?”

“The Chairwoman made the request, yes, but the subject is the Director. And the Director doesn’t know about this. Well—he does. He found out this morning. So right now he’s a little…” Secretary Oh swallowed. “He’s not in a great mood.”

Bok-dong ducked behind Soi’s skirt.

« Elder Sister. I go not into yon room. »

Why?

« There is a scary lady in there. »

The door to the Director’s office opened.

The office was big and white and nearly empty, with Namsan hanging in the glass wall like a framed print. Behind the desk sat a man: shirt buttoned to the throat, tie not a millimeter out of place, two monitors packed with spreadsheets.

Han Mu-gyeol. She knew his face from the business section, but in person he was colder than his photos. Thirty-three, with a hard jaw, long single-lidded eyes, hair combed back with not a strand out of line. His skin was too pale, the pallor of a man who hadn’t slept properly in months. The shadows pooled under his eyes were more than concealer could hide. The two pens on his desk lay exactly parallel to the monitor stand.

He spoke without looking up.

“I will give you ten minutes.”

“Sorry?”

“I understand my grandmother has already sent the retainer. I do not need a refund. In exchange, please leave within ten minutes, and do not contact my grandmother again.” Only then did he raise his head. His eyes were very black. “I do not believe in ghosts. I believe in con artists even less.”

Soi was used to hearing this. So used to it that her mouth moved first.

“Oh—yes. Sorry. I didn’t believe in them either, at first.”

The second it was out, she wanted to bite her tongue. Apologizing again. Every time she introduced herself as a shaman, a sorry trailed half a beat behind. A habit she’d picked up after her ex said Marrying a shaman is kind of… and left. Four years, and she still hadn’t kicked it.

Mu-gyeol glanced at his monitor. Even from where Soi stood, she could read the tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet. Reasons for Failed Matches. Thirteen rows, and the last column said the same thing in every single one: Cause unknown.

“You are the third person my grandmother has sent this month.” He set down his pen. “The first scattered red beans around my office. The second told me I was a king in a past life. What will you be doing, Ms. Jin?”

“Did they say they saw a ghost?”

“Both of them said so.”

“Then they were lying,” Soi said. “If they’d really seen one, they wouldn’t have been calm enough to scatter beans.”

“Meaning what?”

Soi couldn’t answer.

It wasn’t because of what he’d said.

There was a woman behind him.

A red bridal robe, its sleeves stamped with gold leaf. On her head, a black jokduri, the beaded bridal crown. Round red dots on both cheeks and her forehead, vivid as blood. She stood behind his chair with her arms wrapped around his neck. One white finger was stroking his left wrist, back and forth, over an old gold watch.

The hands of the watch were stopped at 3:33. At eleven in the morning.

The woman had a smell. Soi caught it not with her nose but with the back of her neck. Camellia hair oil, and under it, the smell of snowmelt pooled in a gutter.

“…Ms. Jin?”

“Oh—yes.” Soi pulled herself together. Four years in the business wasn’t ten, but she was a pro. She put on her client smile. The one from her ad agency days, for when a client rejected the mock-ups for the third time. “Director. By any chance, have you been waking up around three a.m. lately?”

Mu-gyeol’s expression set, very slightly.

“Coincidence.”

“The elevators?”

“Aging equipment.”

“The matchmaking dates. How many have fallen through?”

For the first time, he was slow to answer.

“Did my grandmother tell you?”

“No.” Soi looked past his shoulder. “Someone else did.”

The bride raised her head.

The beads on her jokduri swayed and clinked, a sound only Soi could hear. The woman’s eyes met Soi’s straight on. Black eyes, almost no whites at all. The temperature in the room dropped like a stone. On Mu-gyeol’s desk, a thin skin of ice formed over his steaming coffee.

The woman’s lips moved.

« He is my husband. »

Her voice was strangely lovely and low. Like a song drifting out of an old radio.

« Touch him and you die. »

The ceiling lights flickered all at once. Pop, pop, pop. By the door, Secretary Oh shrieked. Six-foot-three, and the scream was higher than you’d think.

Mu-gyeol didn’t blink.

“Building electrical inspection. Secretary Oh, call Facilities.”

“D-Director, they did an inspection last week…”

“Then they can do another.”

The coffee cup cracked. Tk. Mu-gyeol looked down at it. For just a moment, his left hand closed over the watch, as if it had moved on its own.

Soi let out the breath she’d been holding, thin and slow. Her palm was sweating around the bells. The bride had laid her cheek on Mu-gyeol’s shoulder and was watching Soi. Smiling—blissfully happy, and absolutely bone-chilling.

« Elder Sister. » Outside the door, Bok-dong was half crying. « Yon is a son-gaksi. A girl who died before her wedding. The worst kind there is. »

I know.

« And as far as yon lady is concerned, she is already wed to Young Master Excel. »

Soi looked at Mu-gyeol. Mu-gyeol looked at his watch.

“Seven minutes left, Ms. Jin.”

Soi took a bag of coarse salt and a business card out of her tote and set them on the desk. Then she put away her client smile and spoke very seriously.

“Congratulations, Director.”

“On what?”

“You’re married.”

For the first time, Mu-gyeol’s eyebrows moved.

Soi pointed at his knees with one fingertip. A red hem had just settled softly over them.

“Your bride is sitting in your lap right now.”