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Chapter 15
Sssk, clang! Kkigik—!
The moment Wol swung her sword, a long black pair of shears intercepted it. The shears didn’t merely block the attack—they diverted it, letting the creature twist its creaking body back into balance. Its many-jointed arms writhed at unnatural angles as they altered the sword’s trajectory.
It was over six cheok tall, yet only slightly taller than Wol. Either the ghost was unusually small, or Wol was simply far too big. Keeping a body that size must require a lot of food.
Sa-yeol thought this as she studied the ghost’s movements. Those shears, plastered with talismans—that was probably the true body.
“Break it.”
She extended her hand as she spoke. At her gesture, the ground froze with a crackling sound and surged upward toward the ghost like a massive icicle.
— Kiyaaaah!!
A huge spike of ice pierced the ghost from the back through its torso. The ear-shaped corpse it wore spilled rotting entrails as it screamed, the sound like someone clawing at their own throat.
But only for a moment. The opponent was not human, but a gui.
Kakakakak!
Another burst of eerie laughter. Its spine bent at a grotesque angle, the ghost snapped the icicle apart and lurched forward, its shears clacking as it dripped viscera.
— I shall make your pretty face just like mine.
Its torn lips curled up, revealing raw red flesh as it laughed.
Sa-yeol examined the ghost’s condition. It was definitely made from a corpse—a corpse filled with deep resentment, bound together with a lingering spirit. Sa-yeol glanced briefly at Wol.
“Can you buy me some time?”
“I can.”
“Buy it.”
With that, Sa-yeol closed her eyes. As her vision dimmed, she began to feel every breeze around her. And she felt the cold aura pouring off the ghost on her skin. Clack, clack. The ghost, its spine broken, noisily worked the giant shears with both arms.
Kaang! Ching!
The sound of Wol’s sword clashing against the shears rang out. The dead feel no pain. They cannot die again. Which is why, when facing them, one must find another way.
Sa-yeol slowly began murmuring under her breath. It sounded like language… or perhaps just the whisper of the wind. Susususuk—her small mouth whispered rapidly, like a dialect spoken by a ghost pressing upon a sleeper’s chest. The ghost realized something and shrieked.
“Kyaaaaah!”
Jjang!
Crack.
The moment her murmuring stopped, all the wind abruptly died. And the ghost’s scream split the air, ringing loud enough to tear eardrums. Wol covered her ears, and Sa-yeol, still with her eyes closed, whispered the final words.
“Reveal what lies within.”
— You wretched bitch—!
With that scream, Sa-yeol’s consciousness collapsed like a snuffed flame.
More than a hundred years earlier—
Choyeon and Choryeong were the most expensive courtesans in Myeongdo’s largest brothel. Two of the most beautiful flowers of Hwamyeongru. That was the name given to the twin sisters, so alike in appearance that no one could decide which was more beautiful. Many men claimed their only wish was to hold just one of their hands.
“Idiotic men.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
Choryeong and Choyeon were twins abandoned at the brothel at birth, but they supported each other and lived as best they could. They had no choice but to become courtesans, yet they dreamed of saving enough money to buy their freedom one day.
Choyeon loathed the filthy things men made her do, while Choryeong worked tirelessly to earn more. Her desire to leave and live an ordinary life was so strong it sometimes surpassed Choyeon’s understanding. Choyeon was negative about everything; she never dared imagine they could escape.
“We’ll die here, won’t we.”
“No. We’ll get out. I know we will.”
Whenever Choyeon spoke bleakly, Choryeong always refuted her. Her longing for the outside world grew until eventually she scraped together money however she could.
But then, tragedy struck the two sisters.
The head of the prestigious Geum family—wealthy patrons of Myeongdo—visited Hwamyeongru. The problem was that the family head was not merely eccentric but sadistic. Any courtesan who spent a night with him died before morning.
Each night he came, he paid an astronomical sum, and the brothel’s owner willingly traded the women’s lives for gold and jewels. The twins, however, were the brothel’s pride and had been kept out of his reach—until he finally set his sights on one of them.
And the one he chose was Choryeong. Choryeong fell into despair. His unthinkable payment would go straight into the madam’s hands, and she herself would lose her life.
So that night, when he visited, Choryeong clung to him.
“Choyeon—she’s more beautiful than I am!”
She wanted to live.
Even if it meant abandoning her twin sister.
“So she is more beautiful?”
“Y-Yes! Far, far more beautiful than me!”
Choryeong grabbed at his trousers and begged him not to choose her. The Geum patriarch chuckled darkly and left her room. Creak, creak—the old wooden floorboards groaned as he walked toward Choyeon’s room.
Thump, thump.
Choryeong felt her heart tremble. She didn’t know if it was the thrill of surviving or crushing guilt. All she knew was that she wanted to vomit everything inside her throat.
No one knows what Choyeon thought when the Geum patriarch entered her room. Because—
“Ah… ah….”
The next morning, she was found strangled to death.
“A—Aaaaaaah!!”
Choryeong screamed. The corpse, face blue and frozen, was laid outside the brothel. The madam had surely pocketed a fortune, and the other courtesans whispered behind their hands. No—because they knew the patriarch had visited Choryeong’s room first, they blamed her.
“She abandoned her sister, didn’t she?”
“Well, she had to survive. Anyone would. It’s life or death.”
Choryeong wept over her sister’s body. Because the moment she saw it, she realized something—
She had never wanted to escape to live freely alone.
She had wanted to escape with Choyeon, her own flesh and blood.
She realized it far too late.
“My sin… my ignorance… mine, mine…!”
She shed tears of blood as she repented. Red tears dripped onto the white shroud covering Choyeon’s face. She held her sister’s body and cried for three days without eating. Perhaps out of understanding, the madam did not remove Choyeon’s body during that time.
After three days, Choryeong finally held a funeral for her sister and returned to her room. The lavish brothel room felt meaningless. She took out the scissors used for cutting fabric.
“My careless tongue… brought this.”
She could no longer bear the weight of her ignorance and her sin.
Slice.
Slice.
She cut open both sides of her mouth. Blood dripped. Flesh tore. The shredded sides of her cheeks burned with searing pain. Fibers of flesh fell away; scraps of skin that barely clung on peeled off and dropped to the floor. Yet she stared into the torn, grotesque mouth that looked almost like a smile.
“I won’t forget…”
With slurred speech, she shed tears of blood as she died.
“Even in death…”
And so the foolish woman died exactly seven days after her sister. Foolishly—when she could have ended everything with her own death alone, she instead had taken her sister’s life as well.
