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I see ghosts.
When I say that, I usually get one of two reactions. “Don’t make stuff up,” or “Okay, then, take a guess.” Neither is great. The first gets old, and the second gets even older. So I don’t bother telling people.
It’s not like anything good comes of it.
And honestly, even I get how it sounds. Say I’m standing in front of the convenience store fridge, choosing a triangle kimbap, and there’s a guy behind me with his head turned all the way around, checking the price tags too. How exactly am I supposed to explain that to anyone? “Excuse me, there’s a ghost next to the tuna mayo one.” I can’t exactly say that.
Anyway, I see them.
The dead.
It was four in the morning. I was standing outside the basement boiler room. Our home was an old multi-family building on the outskirts of a midsize city, and it was half-empty. I figured all the vacant apartments were because the rent was cheap. You find out why once you live there. It’s cold in winter, damp in summer, and at night there’s a lot of weird stuff around.
Grandma had been running a fever for days. The hospital said it was a cold. I didn’t think so. Colds don’t make black smoke come out of people’s bodies.
Yin energy was seeping through the crack under the boiler room door. It wasn’t weak. It wasn’t like damp fog so much as a wind that could slice your skin.
‘This is gonna make me puke three or four times…’
Thinking that, I opened the door.
Creeeak.
It was dark inside. The fluorescent light was half-dead. Flicker, flicker. A black shape was wrapped around the boiler pipes. It was big enough to reach the ceiling. Calling it human-shaped was a stretch. It looked like someone had taken a person, pulled them out of shape, and covered them in soot.
It looked at me.
More accurately, it would need a face to look, and it didn’t have one, so saying it looked at me wasn’t quite right… Anyway, it was facing me.
Cold.
My breath came out white. I could barely feel my fingertips. It was a boiler room, and it was cold. Something had gone seriously wrong.
The shape moved. The pipes shuddered with it. Metal rang out, and something burst somewhere. Instead of hot steam, an even colder rush of yin energy slammed into me. My chest seized up.
For a moment, I thought about running.
But Grandma was upstairs.
So I just reached out.
I’d never learned anything like exorcism. I didn’t know any incantations, and I had no talismans. I knew one thing: a method I’d tried a few times since I was little. More accurately, it was something I just did.
Not pushing it away.
Breathing it in.
The black shape wavered. The yin energy gathered toward my palm. At first, it came in a single stream. Then it came in a solid mass. The black thing wrapped around the pipes tore loose and got sucked toward me.
My nose started bleeding right away.
It was hot. No, cold. Weird as it sounds, both were true. Like someone had heated ice chips over a fire and shoved them into my veins. Does that make sense? Probably not. But that’s what it felt like.
My knees wobbled.
The black shape resisted. The walls of the boiler room groaned. The fluorescent light kept flickering on and off. A buzzing filled my ears. It felt like my heart was slowing down, one beat at a time.
‘I can’t stop.’
No one had taught me that, but I knew it. If I let go now, it was over.
I gritted my teeth and pulled in more yin energy.
Maybe forty seconds passed.
Then, all at once, it went quiet.
The pressure that had filled the boiler room just moments ago vanished as if it had never been there. The pipes stopped trembling. The fluorescent light stopped flickering.
But inside my body, things were noisy.
It felt like a black lump had lodged somewhere deep beneath my chest. It hadn’t disappeared completely. It had gone inside me. Deep. Really deep.
I leaned against the wall and sank to the floor. My fingertips tingled. Blood ran from my nose to my lips. It tasted like metal.
“Haah…”
My breath still came out white.
Then I heard someone cough upstairs. It was Grandma.
I stayed still for a moment, listening.
She coughed twice more, then stopped.
Her fever would go down. Probably.
Once I thought that, some of the tension finally left my body.
And at the same time, something inside me twitched.
‘It’s not over yet.’
That thought came to me. And it was right. It wasn’t over. What had entered me wasn’t dead; it had just been compressed. Like something forcibly folded up and stuffed inside.
I didn’t feel great about it. It was like someone had put an ice pack in my stomach.
Still, what could I do? It was already inside me.
I pushed myself up against the wall, closed the boiler room door, and climbed the stairs. It was four-thirty in the morning. The fluorescent lights in the hallway were yellow, and my footsteps sounded strangely loud.
When I opened the front door, Grandma was standing with her bedroom door half open.
“Jin-oh?”
“Why are you up?”
“I was going to get some water… Where have you been?”
“The boiler room.”
“Again?”
The word again stung a little. It wasn’t like she’d only caught me once or twice.
I gave her a vague smile. “I thought something was wrong with the boiler.”
Grandma looked at me for a long moment, then noticed the blood on my nose.
“Your nose is bleeding again.”
“It’s the dry air.”
I’ll admit, the dry air is a great excuse for everything in winter. Still, it was better than any other explanation.
Grandma came closer and felt my forehead. Her hand wasn’t as hot as before. That was when I knew for sure. Oh, it had gone down.
“Your fever’s down, Grandma.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you a doctor now?”
“Pretty much… a hands-on doctor?”
Even I thought that sounded weird after I said it. Grandma smiled tiredly. Seeing her smile was enough for me.
“Go get some sleep. What about school?”
“I have to go.”
“Wipe your nose first.”
“Okay.”
I stood in front of the sink and washed my face. The cold water touched my cheeks, and the chill inside my body became more distinct. I looked in the mirror. I looked ordinary. A high school kid. A little sleep-deprived, kind of skinny, with blood on my nose. I didn’t look like anything special.
But I could see it beyond the mirror.
A faint wisp of black smoke clung behind my shoulder. Like an afterimage of what I’d just absorbed. And deep in my chest, I could feel something I couldn’t see. Something pressed down.
‘What the hell is this?’
That was what I thought.
When I was little, I used to be scared. Really scared. I used to wake up screaming, and sometimes I was so afraid of the end of the hallway that I’d hold it until morning instead of going to the bathroom. But people are pretty good at adapting, and if you keep seeing something, even fear changes shape.
Now it wasn’t so much scary as annoying.
No, that wasn’t quite it either. It was annoying, but I felt like I couldn’t leave it alone, and like things would get worse if I didn’t keep an eye on it… Something like that.
My hand stopped as I wiped my face with a towel.
The air in the room had changed.
The damp yin energy that had been seeping out of Grandma’s room was gone. It was clean. At least for tonight.
For no particular reason, I looked toward Grandma’s room again. The darkness under the door was just darkness. Not some black presence.
Once I’d confirmed that, my body suddenly felt even heavier.
I lay down on the bed. The springs creaked. The ceiling was yellowish, and the wallpaper was peeling a little. It was the same old ceiling in our ordinary home.
But even with my eyes closed, I could feel the black lump inside my chest.
A throb.
As if it were lodged somewhere beneath my heart.
‘Is this thing insane…?’
Honestly, that was what I thought. There was no way a high school kid who sucked in ghosts and then went home was in his right mind. Other people were probably eating tteokbokki, playing games, and getting ready for bed after evening study hall. I was wrestling with a vengeful spirit in a boiler room at four in the morning.
My life was a little messed up.
Even so, I had this strange certainty.
My body could handle it.
I didn’t know why. I just knew.
I rolled onto my side. It was past five in the morning. If I got a little sleep, it’d be time for school. Life sure was diligent. Even if you fought ghosts at night, morning still came.
Just before I closed my eyes, I felt something twitch inside me again.
This time, it was weaker than before.
As if something deep inside me, not yet completely broken, were still breathing.
I pulled the blanket up to my chin.
“Be quiet…”
I didn’t even know who I was talking to. Maybe myself. Maybe the thing sitting in my stomach.
There was no answer.
I could only hear my heartbeat.
One beat, then the next.
A little heavier than before.