Chapter 2
First Strange Tale
A Bolt from the Blue
Minjeong asked with a doubtful look toward Gyeong, who had introduced Siha.
“A hunter? This person…?”
“She may look like this, but her skills are solid, so don’t worry too much.”
At Dokgo Gyeong’s assurance, instead of being modest, Siha spoke to the woman in a businesslike tone.
“Yes, what seems to be the problem?”
“Well, it’s nothing serious…”
For someone saying it was nothing serious, Minjeong’s expression was quite dark.
“I know it’ll sound really strange if I say this…”
As she hesitantly began, Siha and Gyeong waved their hands as if to say not to worry.
“We’re professionals at handling strange things, so don’t feel burdened and just tell us.”
“I think my father has been possessed by a ghost.”
If it were anyone else, they might have thought she was crazy or been shocked, but Siha and Gyeong showed no particular emotion and merely nodded.
“Is there a reason you think that?”
Siha’s serious question—neither scolding nor pressing her—seemed to give Minjeong a bit of courage, and she continued.
“My father runs a business, but things have been going very badly, so he’s been in a bad mood for months. It’s awkward to say this to people I just met, but he even lost the money he invested as business capital… Lately, he hasn’t been able to pay his employees properly, and he’s on the verge of bankruptcy.”
“I see.”
“Because of that, he was depressed, but recently his personality has gotten strange too.”
Up to that point, it could be dismissed as simple irritability from stress. But Minjeong’s story didn’t end there.
“It’s not just that he’s changed. He talks to himself more, and what he says is things like ‘die’ or ‘let’s die.’ Sometimes he suddenly laughs by himself even though there’s nothing there.”
Her fingertips were trembling.
“Y-yesterday, he started choking his own neck. Only after my family and I forcibly stopped him did he come to his senses. Then he said something was seriously wrong with him… and begged us to help him.”
“Have you taken him to psychiatry or another hospital?”
“He’s been going for a long time already! But until now they only prescribed medicine for the symptoms, and when there was no improvement, his attending doctor told our family that in this condition, there was almost nothing the hospital could do. Even if he were hospitalized, they could only sedate him with medicine—his condition itself wouldn’t get better…”
As she spoke with tears in her eyes, thick drops streamed down Minjeong’s cheeks.
“L-later, the doctor called only the family except my father and said… that if it’s a condition hard to identify with modern medicine, or if medication doesn’t help, it m-might be caused by something shamanistic…”
There really are psychiatrists like that—doctors who accept the existence of shamans, spiritual phenomena, and beings from worlds other than this one.
After experiencing things that force them to acknowledge illnesses without clear diagnoses or what people call spirit sickness, they come to accept shamanism even if it seems like unscientific superstition.
So when patients suffering from spirit sickness go from hospital to hospital and are finally judged unsolvable by modern medicine, their doctors sometimes make a careful suggestion: to seek out a shaman.
Many people follow that advice, grasping at it as their last lifeline.
“That kind of thing happens more often than you’d think.”
Gyeong spoke as if it were nothing strange, offering reassurance. Sniffling, Minjeong asked desperately,
“Is my father suffering from spirit sickness? Or is he possessed by a ghost? What should I do?”
“Calm down. First of all, your father is neither suffering from spirit sickness nor being affected by a ghost.”
Startled by Gyeong’s words, Minjeong asked again,
“Then what is it?”
“It is true that the cause is something people would call a supernatural phenomenon, but it’s a little different from that. Originally, you went to see my mother, but she sent you to us for that reason.”
Dokgo Gyeong’s mother, Ju Hyeon, was a great shaman who served the gods. Her role was to build bridges so that things from this world and the afterlife, the other shore and this shore, the lower realm and the higher realm could pass between them.
In other words, she communicated with gods, performed rituals, and wrote talismans.
“My mother can deal with evil spirits and things like that… but this case is different.”
“Then what is it?”
“Yogoe, yumul, or something similar.”
Minjeong looked skeptical. She could somewhat believe in evil spirits, but the word yogoe made her doubt deeply.
She had come to a shaman feeling half like she was being scammed, and now she was being passed to two young women who talked about yogoe and yumul.
She wondered if she could really trust them.
But Gyeong continued in a serious tone.
“The kinds of things I mentioned are outside my mother’s reach. That’s the field of either me or Yun Siha here.”
Because they inherited shaman blood through the maternal line, Dokgo Gyeong and Yun Siha were also influenced by it.
Though they were not shamans themselves, they could see, hear, and interact with things beyond ordinary people while standing on the boundary between this world and the next, the other shore and this shore, the lower realm and the higher realm.
With such constitutions, they too had one foot in that line of work.
“I am an exorcist, Dokgo Gyeong. And this is Yun Siha, a eodukseoni hunter.”
If Ju Hyeon communicated with gods and spiritual beings, their work was a bit more violent. Gyeong and Siha used force rather than communication.
So if Ju Hyeon sent Choi Minjeong to Siha, it meant the problem couldn’t be solved through communication.
As Gyeong said, Siha’s job title when she worked part-time was eodukseoni hunter.
She dealt with troubles caused by things called eodukseoni—entities that ordinary people had never even heard of, let alone knew existed.
Hunting paid fairly well. It was a bit dangerous, but that was why it came with hazard pay, and she had no other choice if she wanted money.
This was Siha’s main source of income.
“Um… I think I roughly know what an exorcist does from novels and movies, but what is an eodukseoni hunter?”
Minjeong asked with a puzzled expression.
“Oh, you know what an exorcist is. That makes things easier. To explain roughly, there are beings called yogoe and yumul—also known as imemaengnyang. And besides those, there are many other spiritual beings and existences ordinary people don’t know about, but you don’t need to worry about those right now!”
Gyeong tried to explain as simply as possible.
“An exorcist deals with the problems caused by such beings. It’s not exactly the same as in dramas or movies, but you can think of it as similar. Eodukseoni hunting is a little different. Whether it’s a person’s bad energy, the energy emitted by a yogoe, or bad energy from the land itself—whatever the cause, when negative energy gathers instead of dispersing, things called eodukseoni are created.”
Gyeong checked Minjeong’s expression to see if she was following.
“When eodukseoni attach themselves to people, that person’s negative energy grows and causes problems—like your father now. They don’t have their own will like yogoe or yumul; strictly speaking, they’re a kind of natural phenomenon. Of course, you can scatter their energy through exorcism like I do or through prayer like my mother, but once eodukseoni are formed, they’re hard to purify. So instead of the difficult method of purification, we use the easier method—hunting.”
“Then he’s not possessed by a ghost, but by those eodukseoni?”
“You could say yes, or you could say no. Sometimes eodukseoni themselves cause problems, but those with strong yin energy can create new imemaengnyang. So often it’s not the eodukseoni themselves, but the imemaengnyang they create that cause trouble. At a glance, the symptoms look so similar to possession by an evil spirit that people mistake them for it.”
To ordinary people, yumul and evil spirits looked similar, since both caused bizarre, incomprehensible events.
But they were fundamentally different kinds of things. Even if the results were similar, the causes were different, and so the solutions had to be different too.
“But my mother judged that this case was related to eodukseoni rather than that kind of thing, which is why she sent you to Siha and me. Hunting requires physical force, so ordinary shamans or exorcists can’t do it. If it’s eodukseoni, Siha will handle it, and if it’s imemaengnyang brought about by them, I will handle it.”
“Then… can he be cured?”
Still anxious, Minjeong asked. Siha finally spoke.
“Of course. That’s what eodukseoni hunters are for.”
Without even finishing her drink, Siha stood up and gathered her clothes.
“Since we’re talking about it, shall we go take care of it right away?”
“What? Right now?”
Minjeong’s eyes widened, but Siha nodded quickly.
“Strike while the iron is hot. The sooner it’s dealt with, the better it is for your father.”
“Ah… then I’ll just call my father for a moment…”
After Minjeong excused herself and stepped away, Gyeong whispered to Siha.
“Hey, wait. We’re going right now?”
“Why?”
“Look at my leg.”
Gyeong thrust out her injured leg.
“I’m like this—are you sure it’s okay?”
Even at Gyeong’s worried words, Siha merely shrugged.
Eodukseoni hunting usually meant working in pairs: one hunter and one exorcist. That was because eodukseoni often appeared together with other yumul.
It wasn’t only eodukseoni that fed on negative energy—other yumul did too.
Eodukseoni could attract other yumul, and in the worst cases, yumul could be created from eodukseoni themselves.
That was why eodukseoni hunters usually formed teams with exorcists rather than working alone.
The hunter dealt with the eodukseoni, and the exorcist dealt with the other yumul.
That was the usual method of hunting.
