Chapter 42

Seo Mu-yeong kept silent. “……”

Hong Soon-ja shook her head wistfully. “If Mother hadn’t fiercely driven everyone away, people would have doted on the poor thing. Her fortune seemed so harsh and ill-fated… I wonder where and how she’s living now.”

Experiencing that harsh ill fortune firsthand at this very moment, Seo Mu-yeong blinked quietly. Hong Soon-ja arranged the sliced apple on a small plate, carried the tray over, and set it down before them.

“That is all I know,” she said, gesturing toward the cups. “Wet your throats and be on your way. I have nothing more to tell you.”

Seo Mu-yeong reached for a cup, only to freeze mid-motion. He had assumed it was water, but catching the scent, he realized it was alcohol. A sharp, stinging odor wafted up, smelling potent enough to be high-proof liquor. He swiftly placed the cup back down.

“Ah, I’m sorry.” Seo Mu-yeong offered a polite, apologetic smile. “I have to drive.”

“Then the one who isn’t driving can drink,” Hong Soon-ja retorted flatly.

Her reply was curt. Choi Yook, however, did not drink. He merely held up the cup, studying the clear liquid in silence. Watching him, Hong Soon-ja pressed him with a taut expression.

“What are you waiting for? It isn’t as though you’re offering a memorial rite.”

Her hands resting on her knees trembled convulsively. Choi Yook raised his eyes to meet Hong Soon-ja’s gaze. With an empty, chilling expression, he let out a dry observation.

“There are three people in the room, yet your cup is the only one missing, Hong Soon-ja-ssi,” Choi Yook pointed out.

Seo Mu-yeong stopped chewing the dried-out piece of apple. A frosty silence gripped the room, making the low hum of the refrigerator motor seem all the more pronounced.

Hong Soon-ja stood frozen, keeping her mouth clamped shut as the tremor in her age-spotted hands worsened. Choi Yook leisurely scanned her face before turning his gaze toward the bottles stacked beside the kitchen.

“This doesn’t look like common infused liquor, but precious spirits distilled personally with an earthen still,” Choi Yook remarked smoothly.

“……”

“Have a drink yourself,” Choi Yook urged.

He gestured toward Hong Soon-ja with a subtle tilt of his chin.

“Or would you prefer I pour it down your throat myself?” he challenged.

Her breathing growing ragged, Hong Soon-ja’s face twisted in fury as she lunged straight at Choi Yook. Seo Mu-yeong hastily scrambled backward. In that very instant, Choi Yook splashed the cup of liquor directly into Hong Soon-ja’s face.

Shrieking in terror, Hong Soon-ja stumbled toward the sink and frantically doused her face with water. It was an excessively violent reaction for someone merely splashed with alcohol.

Something was wrong. Seo Mu-yeong had clearly watched her pour the liquor from the side, and he hadn’t detected the slightest furtive motion to taint it. Moreover, the contents of the cup had possessed the unmistakable color and scent of traditional soju.

Yet Hong Soon-ja had insisted that Choi Yook drink, even if she spared Seo Mu-yeong. Whatever suspicions Choi Yook had harbored, her manic panic seemed to have confirmed them. Carrying the remaining cup, Choi Yook closed in on her.

“Hong Soon-ja-ssi,” Choi Yook called out in a low, deadly voice.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back. Hong Soon-ja’s drenched eyes were bloodshot, tears streaming down her face as copiously as the gushing tap water. Choi Yook held the cup right beside her eyes.

“If you don’t want to wash your face with this, you’d better start speaking clearly,” Choi Yook warned coldly. “Why did you pull such a pathetic stunt?”

“A stunt? Me?” Hong Soon-ja gasped out.

She scoffed, her fingers digging tightly into the edge of the sink.

“What you’re pulling is the real stunt!” she shrieked. “Did you honestly expect me to believe you’re searching for that child with noble intentions?! The vengeful spirits of the dead are clinging thick and pitch-black to your back! Their gouged-out eyes are nowhere to be seen, and their split bellies are spilling their entrails!”

She glared with bloodshot eyes, hurling descriptions far too vivid to dismiss as ordinary spite. Despite her withered, frail stature, the vicious ferocity she radiated was overwhelming.

Hong Soon-ja cried out in agony, “Was causing my mother’s untimely death not enough for you? Are you here to eradicate that poor, helpless child out of fear of retribution?! As long as I draw breath, I will never let that happen!”

Choi Yook drawled in cold indifference, “So what, you tried to kill me because you were afraid I’d find out?” He spoke with total nonchalance, without the slightest hint of self-defense. Hong Soon-ja, whose voice had reached a fever pitch, shut her mouth in an instant.

“Scum like you wouldn’t understand in a lifetime what it feels like to gather a mother’s charred, blackened corpse and lay her to rest!” she hissed between clenched teeth. “Rather than witness such a gruesome sight ever again, I’d far rather dirty my own hands and be forsaken by the gods a hundred times over!”

The venomous words leaked through her gritted teeth. Seo Mu-yeong swallowed dryly, feeling an uncomfortable tightness in his throat as if a piece of apple had lodged in his esophagus. With a detached face, Choi Yook gave a slight nod.

“I fully appreciate what a noble and solemn conviction you harbor,” Choi Yook murmured coldly. “Still, ordinary people don’t try to slaughter two strangers they just met today over a few hallucinations. Then again, anyone hoarding bottles of methanol in their refrigerator can hardly be considered sane.”

Hong Soon-ja offered no response. “……”

Choi Yook gave a disdainful click of his tongue. “I’m not particularly thrilled either, but I’ll write it off as diminished mental capacity. We’re busy looking for the kid, so we’ll be on our way. Go ahead and scrub your eyes out thoroughly, Hong Soon-ja-ssi.”

Hurling the cup into the sink, Choi Yook shoved Hong Soon-ja aside. He strode over toward Seo Mu-yeong with an irritated scowl.

“Did you finish stuffing your face with that apple?” he demanded gruffly.

“…Yes,” Seo Mu-yeong answered meekly.

Seo Mu-yeong swallowed down the piece remaining in his mouth. Choi Yook stepped out into the narrow entryway first and slipped into his shoes. Just then, Hong Soon-ja, barely managing to steady herself against the sink, let out a venomous shriek of rage.

“Do you truly believe you will ever find that child?!” she screamed.

Choi Yook met her screech with icy silence. “……”

Hong Soon-ja bellowed with manic fury, “Never! You won’t recognize that child even when she is right under your nose! That is your karma! Your evil deeds blind your eyes and deafen your ears, leaving you with nothing but a handsome shell while you’re utterly crippled within!”

Seo Mu-yeong nearly clapped his hands in sheer astonishment. After all, he truly was right under Choi Yook’s nose.

Yet Choi Yook’s expression was far too foreboding for Seo Mu-yeong to cheer Hong Soon-ja on. Though Choi Yook had remained thoroughly unfazed by every curse hurled his way until now, his jaw was visibly clenching tight.

Choi Yook shoved the door open violently and stalked out into the hallway. Seo Mu-yeong quietly grabbed the bottle containing the clear liquid and slipped it into his backpack. Struggling to pull herself upright, Hong Soon-ja failed to notice his theft entirely.

“Ma’am,” Seo Mu-yeong called out softly.

Only after neutralizing the dangerous element did he turn his attention back to her.

“Do you happen to know anything about Kim Seo-gyeong and Yang Eui-joo?” he asked gently. “Kang Shim-soo’s other spiritual disciples.”

Bracing herself against the sink, Hong Soon-ja stared toward him in utter bewilderment. Her expression was disoriented, as though gazing into empty space. Her cloudy eyes scanned Seo Mu-yeong repeatedly, yet seemed completely incapable of locking focus on his form.

“You’re completely empty,” she whispered, trembling, her breath rattling in a ragged, hoarse wheeze. “I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but no matter how many times I look, it’s the same. Utterly empty. Devoid of fortune, you are doomed to suffer relentless hatred, fail in all you attempt, and waste away. Yet without a single vengeful ghost clinging to you, you are clean—the unmistakable shape of a human devoured whole by another human.”

Her hands shook uncontrollably. Her bloodshot eyes wandered aimlessly, incapable of fixing upon him.

“I’m nearing seventy years of age, yet I have never once seen a fate like this,” she asked in horror. “What on earth happened to you? Did that man turn you into this empty husk?!”

A fleeting glimpse of genuine pity surfaced in her clouded eyes. Seo Mu-yeong carefully steered the conversation back on track.

“It’s something like that, but… excuse me, I was asking if you knew anything about the other disciples,” he reminded her gently.

He had never asked for a fortune reading. Dropping her head, Hong Soon-ja let out a weary sigh. In stark contrast to the venomous fury she had unleashed earlier, every shred of strength seemed to have drained from her body.

“I lost touch with Seo-gyeong years ago,” she confessed tiredly. “She was even more stubborn than I was. She insisted she couldn’t believe some report written by human hands, and our relationship fell apart long ago because of it.”

Seo Mu-yeong listened in silence. “……”

Hong Soon-ja rubbed her temple with a weathered hand. “The last time she called, she claimed she was staying in Gangwon Province, but that was ages ago. She might have moved to another room salon somewhere else by now…” Rubbing her wet face with the back of her hand, she trailed off. Seo Mu-yeong focused intently on the phrase ‘room salon.’

“What did she say had vanished?” Seo Mu-yeong inquired.

“I don’t know for certain,” she admitted with a heavy sigh. “My hearing was failing, and I took Seo-gyeong’s words for nonsense back then. It sounded as though some crucial piece of evidence had remained in the burned-down house. But there was no mention of that in the police report… none at all…”

Hong Soon-ja scowled deeply, her hand clutching the rim of the sink. What on earth had the police siphoned away and concealed? Seo Mu-yeong gently placed his hand over her trembling fingers.

“You did nothing wrong, ma’am,” Seo Mu-yeong consoled her softly. “What about Yang Eui-joo, then? Did he have anything to say?”

“That bastard doesn’t even deserve to be called a spiritual disciple!” she snapped bitterly, her expression hardening in an instant. “He was always resentful that the deities he served weren’t as grand as Mother’s, and he ended up seduced by petty sorcery and esoteric curses. When I last saw him at Mother’s funeral, his body harbored no deity—not even a wandering spirit possessed him!”

Seo Mu-yeong remained silent, letting her speak. “……”

Hong Soon-ja shook her head in sheer contempt. “And yet that wretch wailed at the top of his lungs for the whole neighborhood to hear, ranting about how he never imagined Mother would fall so low as to try to murder a pitiful child. If I hadn’t held Seo-gyeong back, she would have smashed a brass tray over that bastard’s skull.”

Yang Ui-ju seemed to have resolved to thoroughly trample what remained of his grandmother’s honor, all to prop up his own petty pride.

Why was the world choked with so much suffocating frustration? Resolving to investigate Yang Ui-ju’s background thoroughly, Seo Mu-yeong stroked her wrinkled hand. He still had one more question for Hong Soon-ja.

“Could you tell me where the late Kang Shim-soo-ssi has been laid to rest?”

Hong Soon-ja stepped out of the kitchen with unsteady footing. Rummaging through a small handbag beneath the clothes rack, she produced a business card for a columbarium. Bearing the name Mangcheon Municipal Memorial Park, the card had the precise location of the ossuary urn inscribed along the bottom edge.

“My health is so poor now that I can’t even go visit her,” Hong Soon-ja muttered, while Seo Mu-yeong listened in heavy silence. “Just looking at that bastard who walked out makes my skin crawl, but you don’t seem like the type to do anything reckless, so I’m telling you.”

Seo Mu-yeong offered a polite nod. “Thank you. I wanted to go pay my respects sometime.”

Clutching the card tightly in his hand, he smiled.

“Then I’ll take my leave now. I’ve intruded far too much today.”