Vicious Spirits Read online

  Slipping into the dark room, Junu realized it was a storage closet. And Hyuk stood at the end, examining a box of gauze as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.

  “What are you doing here?” Junu asked.

  “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

  Junu ground his teeth at the title. “I’m not in the mood for cryptic riddles, Hyuk. What are you doing here?”

  “I was just wondering how you’re doing. How is your . . . friend?”

  This made Junu’s instincts tingle. Hyuk wasn’t one to waste his time on trivial things.

  “Why are you here?” Junu asked.

  “You know why.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t do whatever you came here to do to her,” Junu said.

  Hyuk shook his head. “You know you can’t stop me from doing anything.”

  “That’s why I’m asking you not to,” Junu said. “Please. For old times’ sake.”

  The reaper sighed before pursing his lips. The look he got when he was thinking things through. This was a good sign because, nine times out of ten, the reaper was so set in his goals that he didn’t even stop to consider. It was a trait all the jeoseung saja shared; once they’re given a task, they’re dogged in their pursuit of it. Nothing can change their minds. That’s why so many called them supernatural bureaucrats.

  “There is an energy connected to that gumiho,” Hyuk said. “It’s tying her to something in the Between.”

  “Do you know what it is?” Junu asked, even as he had his own suspicions.

  “You ever ask yourself how a gumiho could survive after not feeding for a hundred days?” the reaper said instead of truly answering.

  “Of course,” Junu said. “But we figured it’s because her bead is gone.” Even as he spoke, he was hit with a realization. “It’s not truly gone. It’s in the Between.”

  “And it’s still connected to her,” the reaper said.

  “How do we find it?” Junu wondered aloud. “And what could be holding it in the Between?”

  “That’s not my concern. I just want that connection cut. I don’t care how.”

  There it was, Junu’s in. “So give me a chance.”

  “A chance?” Hyuk laughed. “What can you do? A dokkaebi without his bangmangi?”

  That sliced at Junu, and he realized that he and the reaper were no longer quite so close. Hyuk had to know bringing up his dokkaebi staff would hurt Junu. “I’m resourceful. You know that.”

  Hyuk nodded. “You have seven days to sever her bond to the bead and the Between.”

  Before he could feel grateful, Junu realized it had been too easy. This is what the reaper had wanted all along. Junu had never stopped to wonder why Hyuk had come to him first instead of going after Miyoung directly.

  “Why are you giving me this chance?” Junu asked.

  “Because you can get me what I want without an unscheduled death. We don’t like to interfere in the world of the living. A reaper’s job is not to be judge and executioner but to guide the souls once they’re dead. I was ready to kill the girl, since it served the greater purpose of righting the balance between worlds, but I was surprised to see you with her.”

  Junu nodded. He knew there would be no use getting annoyed. It would make no difference with Hyuk. “So, what? You’ve been watching us?”

  “You’re attached to that gumiho for some reason. At first I thought it was romantic.”

  Junu’s eyes widened. “Oh no, definitely not.”

  Hyuk let out a chuckle, a surprisingly warm sound. “I figured that out. But you’re sticking around for her. I wonder what it is about her.”

  “I owe a debt,” Junu said. “And apparently I have seven days to repay it.”

  “I’m giving you this chance because I know your word is good,” Hyuk said. “But you know mine is as well. And if you can’t get rid of the connection between that energy and that girl, we’ll do it. I can promise you that.”

  “And who is ‘we’?” Junu asked, though he had a feeling he knew. When he’d known Hyuk before, they tried to pretend they were separate from the worlds that claimed them. Junu’s world of supernatural creatures that roamed the earth. And Hyuk’s world of the jeoseung saja—beings that reaped souls of the dead and brought them down Hwangcheon Road to the afterlife.

  Soon those worlds did come back to claim them. They were fools to think otherwise.

  And Junu wasn’t in the mood to meet Hyuk’s reaper friends. Or to watch them come and take Miyoung to the afterlife.

  “Fix it,” Hyuk said, instead of answering Junu’s question. “Or we will. You have seven days.”

  He left Junu alone among the bandages and clean bedpans in the cramped storage space.

  THERE ONCE WAS a boy named Sinui who grew into a fine man, then a great general.

  Though he was accomplished and respected in life, he wanted one thing above all: to cheat death.

  One day, a jeoseung saja came to Sinui’s house, and Sinui knew that the reaper had come for his spirit. The jeoseung saja tried to enter Sinui’s house, but he couldn’t cross the orange trees that surrounded it. In his studies, Sinui had learned that oranges warded off evil. So he’d planted them around his home.

  For three days, the jeoseung saja could not enter. But on the fourth day, he found a peach tree, a plant of evil. The jeoseung saja crossed the walls using the peach tree.

  However, when the jeoseung saja entered the home, Sinui stood with a silver pin piercing on his head. Sinui had learned that silver warded off evil gods.

  The jeoseung saja did not leave, but he hid himself under the floors. When Sinui went to wash his face, he removed the pin, and the jeoseung saja appeared and reaped him with an iron hammer.

  So Sinui was taken to the underworld, but he was not done fighting. For he was a clever man and had prepared for this eventuality. He fought the gaekgwi, the spirits between the underworld and the mortal world that barred reentry to the land of the living. And with his great fighting skills, he defeated them and reentered the mortal world.

  However, when Sinui reentered his body, he found that his family had already buried him. He had not prepared a way to escape his own grave. So he suffocated, returning to the underworld once more.

  Because no matter how Sinui fought, the reapers had marked him for death. And no spirit can escape the grasp of the jeoseung saja once they set their eyes on you.

  11

  MIYOUNG FELT LIKE a burden. She’d lived her whole life trying to be unassuming, to be invisible. And now she was the center of attention as Ms. Moon hurried around her apartment, cleaning up for an unexpected guest, rambling about going to the store to buy oxtail for soup. Jihoon’s small white dog, Dubu, jumped around, stopping every once in a while to snarl in Miyoung’s general direction. Dogs hated foxes, and Dubu had always seen Miyoung for what she really was.

  Somin and Jihoon were arguing over the best way to set the table for family dinner. The excuse for why Miyoung had to come here after the hospital. Ms. Moon said they used to have family dinner every Sunday when Jihoon and Somin were younger and claimed she wanted to start the tradition again.

  She almost got up and left half a dozen times, but every time, she could feel how weak her legs were. How her head spun. How she couldn’t seem to quite catch her breath. The doctor had said she was sleep deprived. That seemed like an understatement. She was afraid to go to sleep; she didn’t know what her mother’s constant visits meant. But she knew in her heart that Yena wasn’t fully gone, at least not for her. And a part of her worried that the dreams weren’t supernatural at all, but a sign that she was going slowly mad.

  “Somin-ah, where did you put my shoes, the ones with the tassels?” Ms. Moon called, digging through the shoe cabinet in the foyer. Shoes kept spilling out as she shoved t
he piles back and forth.

  “You threw them away,” Somin called from the kitchen. “You said they made your ankles look fat.”

  “No. Those were the loafers,” Ms. Moon called back, taking out a pair of white tennis shoes, studying them, then shaking her head and letting them fall at her feet.

  Somin came out of the kitchen and started picking up the mess. “The ones with the tassels were the loafers. You threw them away.”

  “I did?” Ms. Moon said with a frown, staring at a pair of sandals. “Ugh, I really loved those shoes.”

  Somin started shoving discarded shoes back into the cabinet. She took out the pair of sneakers her mother had worn to the hospital and handed them to Ms. Moon. “Last week you called them a waste of money and said you regretted letting the saleswoman talk you into buying them.”

  Ms. Moon bent down to put on her sneakers. “Yes, but that was last week. This week I remember that they’re my favorite.”

  “Well, if you still miss them next week, we can go shopping for another pair.”

  “Aw, thanks, Daughter, I’d love that,” Ms. Moon said. Then she turned to Miyoung. “You just rest. I’m going to go to the store to buy ingredients for miyeokguk.”

  “Seolleongtang,” Somin corrected her.

  “Yes, seolleongtang,” Ms. Moon said, kissing Somin’s cheek. “Call if you need anything.”

  As the door swung shut behind her mother, Somin bent to organize the fallen shoes.

  “She’s not like any mother I’ve ever seen,” Miyoung said before she could stop herself.

  “Yeah, I know.” Somin laughed. “Half the time I worry she’ll forget to put on shoes altogether when she leaves the house.”

  “But she loves you,” Miyoung said, and felt her chest constrict. “It’s so obvious how much she loves you.”

  Somin smiled and sat next to Miyoung on the couch. She picked up the forgotten tea that Miyoung hadn’t started drinking and held it out. “Drink your tea or my loving mom is going to lecture me about not catering to our guest.”

  “You’re lucky, you know, to have a mother like that,” Miyoung said, sipping her tea. “One that can love you with no strings attached.”

  “Your mother loved you—she just showed it differently.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Miyoung said.

  “And listen, just because my mom is fun and cool doesn’t mean it’s easy to be her daughter. Half the time I feel like I’m the parent.”

  Miyoung laughed. She could see that. Ms. Moon seemed so carefree. And she let Somin do pretty much whatever she wanted. Miyoung wondered what that was like. To have a mother who trusted you so explicitly.

  “I really shouldn’t stay the night. Your mother said there was barely enough room now with Jihoon. I can just go to a hotel.”

  “Are you not staying with Junu?”

  The way Somin said Junu’s name struck Miyoung as odd. Like she wanted to spit it out as quickly as possible. Like she was afraid to say it.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I will. It is someplace familiar. And I guess that would be nice right now. I just don’t know if I can trust him.”

  “Yeah, I guess he’s not the most trustworthy guy.”

  “You guess? I thought you were the president of the anti-Junu club.”

  “I am. I guess I’m just wondering if there’s anything else to him that I’m not seeing.” Somin turned to face Miyoung. “What do you think of him? Like, really think?”

  “I think he’s annoying. Presumptuous. Exhausting. Pushy.”

  “So the worst being to ever walk the earth,” Somin said with a nod. And for some reason, Miyoung thought she hadn’t given Somin the answer she’d wanted.

  “Well, he’s not all-the-way bad. But I’d never tell him that to his face.”

  “Are you happy he’s still here?” Somin asked.

  “I wouldn’t say happy,” Miyoung said, but she remembered what Junu had said to her in the hospital. Sometimes I think I want the chance to show that I’m more than a fairy-tale monster. Maybe all this time he’d been hiding his insecurity behind his bravado. It made sense. But that didn’t undo all the bad he’d done. “I think Junu is a complicated person. I think even he doesn’t know who the real Junu is most of the time.”

  “Do you think, underneath it all, he’s a good person?”

  “What is ‘good’?” Miyoung asked. “What is ‘bad’? Is a bad person someone who lies and cheats and kills? If so, then I’m a bad person.”

  “You don’t do that anymore,” Somin said with a frown.

  “But I lived like that for nineteen years. I can’t forget that.”

  “Are you telling me to give Junu a chance?”

  “A chance at what?” Miyoung asked. If she didn’t know better, she’d say there was a bit of longing in Somin’s voice.

  “I mean just in general.” Somin’s eyes wouldn’t quite meet Miyoung’s. “Like not being so hard on him or whatever. You know what? Never mind. I’m going to finish setting the table.” And with that, she zoomed out of the room.

  Miyoung was left to wonder what was going on between Somin and Junu. Then she told herself not to worry about it. She wasn’t one to get involved in other people’s business. Except, now that she had these people who wanted to take care of her, shouldn’t she be doing that right back? It felt unnatural to care, to worry. But wasn’t that what being a friend was about?

  “Miyoung-ah.”

  She jerked upright, then let her shoulders relax again as Jihoon returned to the living room and sat on the couch.

  Miyoung let her head fall onto his shoulder; the day had been too long.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Nothing. Just wait for Somin’s mother to get back from the market.”

  “I’m sorry for being such a nuisance,” she mumbled, blinking furiously, and she realized she felt like crying. Which was silly. Why should she cry now when she felt safe with Jihoon beside her?

  “You’re not a nuisance. You’re sick. We’re all worried about you . . . which bothers you, doesn’t it?” The realization in Jihoon’s voice made Miyoung’s burden deepen. He knew her so well. Too well at times.

  “It’s strange,” Miyoung mused. “I always thought I was the strong one. But I realize now it was a lie I told myself. I’m slowly uncovering all of my lies, and it’s not very pleasant.”

  Jihoon shifted so she had to lift her head from his shoulder and face him. “What do you mean? What kind of lies?”

  “Like when I’d say that I needed no one but my mother. When I said I didn’t care about the men I killed so I could survive. When I told myself I was strong. That I could handle anything that life threw at me, but now . . .” Should she tell Jihoon about her dreams? About her mother coming to her?

  “You are strong,” Jihoon said, caressing her arms. “You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

  Miyoung shook her head. “I’m not talking about physically. Though, I guess that’s gone now, too. I mean I’m realizing how much of this world my mother shielded me from. I don’t know what to do now that she’s gone.”

  Jihoon nodded. “I get it. She was your world. It’s not easy to get over that.”

  “So you understand that I can’t just move on.”

  “Are you saying you don’t like that we’re trying to take care of you?” Jihoon frowned.

  Miyoung didn’t know the right answer to that, so she picked up her tea, which had become lukewarm now. “I’m saying that I’m not used to this stuff. People waiting at the hospital half the day for me and insisting I come over for family dinners. It makes me feel like a burden.”

  “You’re not. This is what family does. And you’re part of our weird, abnormal family. You know that, right?”

  Miyoung couldn’t answer. If she said yes, did that mean she was throwing Yena away? If she sai
d no, did that mean she would never get this offer again? She’d always thought that being a human would make things easier, but somehow it had made everything so much more complicated.

  She shook her head. “Would you hate me if I said I don’t know what I know yet?”

  Jihoon took her hands in his. “Of course I wouldn’t hate you. I don’t know a lot of things. Just ask Somin.”

  Miyoung laughed at that and knew it’s what he’d intended. To lighten the mood. It’s what Jihoon did best. She rested her forehead against his. “I know one thing. And it’s that, no matter what, I can trust in you.”

  “Always,” Jihoon whispered, then leaned in, hesitating a moment before their lips touched. As if he was asking permission.

  Miyoung smiled and closed the last of the distance. The kiss was sweet. Meant to comfort. A gentle brush of lips to soothe away her anxieties. But she didn’t want something sweet right now. She didn’t want easy or comfortable. She wanted to forget the things that gnawed away at the back of her mind. She wanted to stop thinking. So she shifted until she was straddling him. He let out a sound of surprise, his hands fluttering to her hips. She nipped at his lip and heard his sharp intake of breath. She smiled at the power she had over him in this moment and tilted her head to find another angle of the kiss.

  His hands tightened as she took more and more. She wanted to lose herself in him completely. She wanted to become a part of him so she wouldn’t have to be herself anymore.

  She shifted, started to pull up his shirt, but Jihoon pushed at her shoulders until they separated.

  “We can’t. Not here. Not right now.”

  “I’m feeling much better,” she said, but he held fast, sliding her off his lap and back onto the couch. She let out a groan of protest.

  “Somin or her mother could walk in at any minute.”

  “So?” Miyoung pouted, annoyed that she was being reminded of her recklessness.

  A line of worry formed between Jihoon’s brows. “What’s going on? Please tell me.”

  “Nothing.” She crossed her arms and sank back into the couch cushions. “I guess you aren’t in the mood.”