When I got home, the sun was already sinking.
The smell of doenjang jjigae greeted me as I opened the front door. Grandma was standing in the kitchen. When she saw me, she set down her ladle.
“Come eat.”
“Okay.”
I took off my shoes and went to the sink. As I washed my hands in cold water, my fingertips felt strange. They’d been that way ever since I’d put my hand on the Spirit Gauge earlier. A faint vibration lingered inside my palm. Washing it didn’t make it go away.
I sat down at the table. Doenjang jjigae, rolled omelet, kimchi. An ordinary dinner.
I was about to pick up my spoon when Grandma spoke first.
“Did you look at the back of that paper, too?”
I stopped.
“The back?”
“Turn it over.”
I took the folded official document out of my pocket. I’d only looked at the front that morning before folding it up. I turned it over.
The writing was smaller. Packed tight. One sentence caught my eye.
— Those assessed as Grade Zero who fail to demonstrate Grade Seven or higher during a retest within six months will be classified as candidates for purification due to residual yin energy in their bodies.
I read the sentence twice.
Purification. I didn’t know exactly what it meant. But when the word “procedure” or “processing” got attached to something, it usually wasn’t good. Process milk and you throw it out; process paperwork and it disappears.
There was another line beneath it.
— Purification refers to a procedure that erases a constitutionally gifted person’s Other Side perception.
Erases.
I stared at the word.
Erasing Other Side perception. In other words, getting rid of my ability to see ghosts.
‘Can they even do that?’
Honestly, that was my first thought. I’d been seeing them since I was four. They could just take that away? It felt kind of hollow. Like saying you could laser off a birthmark. I guess it was possible. But I wasn’t sure what would be left of me if that part of me were removed.
Then another thought came right after.
‘Then I wouldn’t be able to see the things that latch onto Grandma.’
Once I thought of that, I didn’t feel much like eating.
Grandma was eating her soup without a word. But her hand was trembling. It hadn’t trembled when she held the ladle, but now that she was holding a spoon, it was shaking. Just a little. Not enough for anyone else to notice.
I noticed.
“Grandma.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you know about this?”
Grandma set down her spoon. She looked at her soup bowl, not at me.
“Your mother got one, too.”
The air changed with those words.
Mom. I didn’t remember her face. She’d died when I was four. I only knew her from photographs. In them, she was smiling. That was all I knew.
“She got one of these, too? This paper?”
“Something like it.”
“And then?”
Grandma pressed her lips together for a moment. Then she said, “She didn’t go.”
She didn’t go. For the retest. For the purification. To the Spirit Management Bureau.
“What happened to her, then?”
Grandma didn’t answer. Instead, she took another spoonful of soup. Her hand trembled. A little broth spilled.
I didn’t ask anything else.
I knew what happened to Mom. She died in a car accident. That was a fact. But why the accident happened—no one had ever told me.
I ate my dinner. I couldn’t really taste it.
After dinner, while I was washing the dishes, something stirred deep in my chest.
Jangmuk.
The fragment of the vengeful spirit I’d absorbed in the boiler room last night. It had been quiet all day, but as the sun went down, it started moving again. It felt like something was scraping at the walls of my meridians—or whatever you call the channels things flow through inside your body.
It didn’t hurt. Not yet. But it was uncomfortable. Like there was something alive sitting in my stomach, shifting around every now and then.
When I finished the dishes, I went to my room. I closed the door and sat on the bed.
I opened my palm.
I thought back to the feeling I’d had with the Spirit Gauge earlier. Something inside the sphere had tried to read my palm, then slipped off. I didn’t know why it had registered zero. But I thought I understood one thing. Whatever was inside me wasn’t the kind of thing that machine could read.
So being told to register Grade Seven or higher within six months meant it was impossible, didn’t it?
No matter how much was inside me, if that machine couldn’t read it, the result would be zero. Zero meant Grade Zero. And Grade Zero meant purification.
The clock outside started ticking. Six months.
Then I heard a sound from inside me, too.
A twitch.
Jangmuk’s fragment pressed against the walls of my meridians. Harder this time than before. The inside of my rib cage turned cold. It felt like something icy was seeping outward from inside me. My fingertips tingled.
I gritted my teeth.
What was this? Had the thing I’d forced inside me last night failed to settle in? Or was it trying to make itself at home? I couldn’t tell. One thing was certain. If this kept happening, it wasn’t going to be good.
I didn’t know how long I could hold out.
The clock inside me started ticking, too. I didn’t know the deadline. But it might be coming faster than the one outside.
I looked at the ceiling. Yellowed wallpaper. A corner peeling up a little. The ordinary ceiling of our home.
Two clocks were ticking at the same time.
Outside, the system was trying to erase me. Inside, what I’d swallowed was trying to gnaw away at me.
If I stopped, I’d be erased. If I kept going, I’d break.
‘What am I supposed to do?’
Honestly, that was what I thought.
But then I thought of something else.
I looked toward Grandma’s room. The darkness beneath the door was clear. That was thanks to me absorbing Jangmuk last night. It was fine for now. But what if something else latched onto her? What if it happened after I lost my eyes?
Then no one would know. Not Grandma. Not me.
That couldn’t happen.
I stood up. Something stirred in my chest again. Cold. The sensation of something scraping at the walls of my meridians traveled up my spine.
I endured it.
I opened the window. The night air came in. It was cold, but a different kind of cold from the chill inside me. The air outside was just cold. The chill inside me was—alive.
Far away, beneath the glow of a streetlight, I saw something wandering around. A shape with blurry legs. A lingering spirit. A weak one. Normally, it wouldn’t have been worth paying attention to.
But today, it was looking at me.
They’d been doing that ever since last night. On the bus, too. In front of the Spirit Management Bureau, too. It was as if the dead could sense that something about me had changed, and were aware of me now.
I closed the window.
I pulled the blanket up and lay down. I closed my eyes. Jangmuk’s fragment stirred once more inside my chest. Faintly. Like someone mumbling in their sleep.
Six months.
I had to do something within that time—reach Grade Seven or find another way.
If I didn’t, I’d be erased.
But what was inside me wasn’t something the Spirit Gauge could read.
So the answer was—there wasn’t one yet.
There wasn’t one, but strangely, I felt sure of something.
It had been the same last night. When I absorbed Jangmuk in the boiler room, I hadn’t known how. My body had moved first. My hands knew before my head did.
I felt something similar now. Deep in my palm, so faintly I could barely sense it, something seemed to be pointing the way.
I still didn’t know what it was.
But it was there.
I closed my eyes, thinking that.
I could hear my heartbeat. One beat, then the next. A little heavier and a little faster than last night.
Between two clocks, I fell asleep.