Ten Years Ago — Gyerim Year 302
Foot of Mount Daebong, near the village of Jeongsan
Seventeen-year-old Chorae was a curious sight. Dressed in her patched-up hanbok with dried herbs stuffed in one sleeve and nails clinking in her pocket, she had the wild look of a girl who hadn't brushed her hair in a week and didn't plan to. Her dark, waist-length hair was in a loose braid, and her skin was sun-kissed from mountain sun. Her sharp eyes—too bright, too knowing—gleamed with mischief.
She wasn't beautiful in the noble sense. But to the villagers, she was terrifyingly unforgettable.
And right now, she was crouched under a pine tree, grinning like a fox.
"You're not even a third-level household ghost," she scoffed, poking a trembling spirit with a long iron pin carved from a rusted nail and soaked in garlic and dog blood. "Look at you, acting like you own the mountain. Do you know who I am?"
The spirit hissed. It was shaped like smoke with faint human features—a child's ghost, barely formed.
"I'm Chorae," she whispered, leaning close. "You know what that means? Bead of divine essence. You know what people used to do with beads? They wore them. Ground them. Swallowed them. But I don't let people use me. I use you."
She raised her little homemade talisman, a stone dagger tied with string and ginseng root.
The spirit shrieked.
Chorae laughed. "Oh no, we're just getting started."
She began to chant—not a real ritual, more like mocking theater:
"O spirit who thinks you're bold, I bind you now with string and mold. Cry, cry, cry like a fool, You've just met Chorae—ghosts are my tool!"
The air crackled. The spirit writhed.
Just then, a gnarled wooden staff cracked against Chorae's head.
"AAHH! Halmoni!" Chorae yelped, grabbing her scalp.
From behind her, an old woman in a faded white robe with bright red embroidery emerged, glaring with eyes that could make monks cry.
"I sent you for rice and you're torturing a lost laundry spirit? You think you're a shaman? You're not even a good errand girl!"
The grandmother muttered a real chant under her breath, waved her staff in one fluid motion, and the spirit poofed into mist with a relieved sigh.
Chorae rubbed her head. "He was rude. And arrogant. And floating near our spring again."
"You're worse. That spirit died in wet underpants during the famine! Let him float!"
"But he said I smelled like fermented turnips—"
"Because you do. Go bathe. Then go to the market. Touch one more spirit today, and I'm making you eat the talisman. Raw."
As her grandmother hobbled back down the path, Chorae muttered, "One day you'll thank me when I exorcise an emperor."
From behind a bush, a squirrel dropped dead.
---
Her grandmother, known only as Halmoni to the village (and Old Ghostbasher to mountain spirits), was a compact old woman built like a mortar pestle—short, solid, and always thudding against things. Her robe was faded with time but still carried the faint outlines of tiger charms and lotus seals stitched into the hem. Her long white hair was always tied up with what suspiciously looked like dried chili strings, and her face was one great permanent scowl, as though the world owed her incense and never paid up.
She had no patience for nobles, monks, or "ghost-chasing brats who can't even boil rice."
Her staff wasn't ceremonial. It was just a big stick. But when she hit a ghost—or Chorae—it always worked.
"Back when I was young," she muttered as they walked, "I only needed to breathe funny and the dead would beg to be reborn."
"I breathe funny all the time," Chorae said. "No one listens."
"Because you're cursed with sarcasm and rotting luck."
Chorae wrinkled her nose. "Is that why I'm pretty in the dark?"
"No, that's just because your face disappears at night."
They passed an old stone stele where spirits were known to gather. One tried to peek out.
Halmoni glared.
It vanished with a foof.
"See?" she said. "Respect."
Chorae, sulking, pulled her basket over her head. "When I'm older, I'm making a ghost farm. I'll sell haunted ink and screaming pillows to rich people."
Her grandmother stopped walking. "You do that, and I'll haunt you myself."
Chorae grinned. "Promise?"
Halmoni paused at the fork in the mountain path, tapping her staff three times against the earth. The sky overhead had begun to shift—sunlight cutting through the fog like knives.
She didn't look at Chorae when she spoke.
"The air feels too warm for spring," she muttered. "Fox spirits are hungry. Birds are flying backwards. And I saw a blood spider crawl into my rice bowl this morning."
Chorae blinked. "Sounds like you need new rice."
Her grandmother ignored her. Instead, she looked to the sky, squinting as if reading something only shamans could see. A gust of wind lifted the edge of her robe.
"You'll go to the village market today," Halmoni said slowly, as though testing the words. "Buy glutinous rice. Dried jujube. And cinnamon bark. Use the good coins, not the ones you buried in that spirit's grave last month."
Chorae opened her mouth to argue.
Halmoni raised a hand.
"And if you smell chrysanthemums where there are none," she added, eyes sharpening, "do not run. Do not speak. Just go where the wind tells you."
"…That's vague and creepy, even for you," Chorae muttered.
Her grandmother leaned in closer, resting a wrinkled hand on her forehead as if measuring her heat.
"Your blood's finally boiling the way it should. Something's coming, girl. The kind of fate you can't poke with a pin."
Chorae, for once, didn't reply.
Not because she was scared.
But because, behind her annoyance, something inside her had stirred. Like a drumbeat. Or the call of a long-sleeping thing just waking up.
---
Later that afternoon, with her basket slung on her back, Chorae descended the path humming under her breath and crunching leaves underfoot. She sniffed the air once.
No chrysanthemums.
Good.
She passed the spring, kicked a rock at a frog spirit, and continued down the path toward the market trail.
That's when she heard the flute.
Not a real one—no breath, no reed. A haunting, high-pitched tune that felt like it was made of spiderweb and mist. It came from the bend in the road.
She frowned. "Musicians don't come this far up unless they're dead."
Before she could take another step, the air shifted.
She saw no chrysanthemums.
But she smelled them.
Chorae froze.
The scent curled around her like silk. Heavy. Sweet. Wrong.
Her first instinct was to throw a nail.
Her second instinct was to run.
Unfortunately, she hesitated—just a heartbeat too long—and the flute stopped.
The wind dropped.
And something clicked behind her.
She spun—
—just in time for a cloth to slam over her face.
"Agh! What—?!" she shrieked, biting wildly. "I'll curse your toenails!"