The fog in Haedam village never lifted completely.
Locals said the mountain was in mourning, that a spirit had been buried in the cliffs and wept each morning into the valley. The mist crept low, thick, and tender, wrapping the pines and softening every outline. It was like someone placing their hand over your eyes, not to blind you, but to let you rest. It clung to the earth like a whispered secret, damp and cool against the skin, filling the lungs with the scent of moss and distant rain. A silent caress that seemed to soothe invisible wounds.
In the early hours, the fog pooled between the narrow hanok rooftops, carrying with it the sound of temple bells in the distance. It curled under wooden doors, swept over stone courtyards, and tangled itself in the bare branches of persimmon trees. Women walking to the market with their woven baskets pulled their scarves tighter and whispered prayers to unseen ancestors. The old men gathered at the tea house no longer argued over politics in the haze. Instead, they stared into their cups of green tea, watching steam curl and vanish like lost spirits returning home.
Sometimes, if one stood still enough on the path near the forest, the fog would seem to whisper. It was not a voice, exactly, but a feeling—something ancestral, something bone-deep. Grandmothers said that long ago, a shamaness had sealed herself within the cliffs to protect the village from sorrow. Now, the mountain wept for her.
Children were told not to climb too high, not to shout in the woods. The silence was sacred, and those who disturbed it often returned with strange dreams. A boy once said he saw a woman with white hair standing in the mist, her hands bleeding ink. Another claimed the trees whispered his name in voices that did not belong to anyone he knew.
Still, life went on in Haedam. The village was small, the pace slow. People rose with the sun and bowed to the peaks before touching their feet to the earth. Offerings of rice cakes and rice wine were left at the base of the cliff during festivals. The mountain was not feared, but respected. It was a grieving god that had chosen to remain.
Minho arrived in the middle of the seventh lunar month, when the fog was at its heaviest. It was said that during this time, the border between the living and the dead blurred like ink dropped into water. Travelers often waited until noon to set out, hoping the sun would thin the mist enough to make the roads visible. Minho did not wait. He stepped into the fog as if into a memory.
He carried with him a single suitcase with wheels that caught on every stone, every knot in the road. It thumped behind him like a reluctant companion. His breath was visible in the air, and his fingers were stiff from gripping the handle too tightly. He wore a long gray coat, frayed slightly at the cuffs, and his hair had grown long enough to brush the collar of his shirt. His eyes were wide with fatigue, but there was no trace of panic in his movements. Only quiet resolve.
He found lodging behind the herbalist's shop, a wooden building that leaned ever so slightly to the left as if bowing to time. The woman who ran it was called Halmeoni by everyone, even those older than her. She wore thick socks with flower patterns and kept pickled garlic in every cupboard. When Minho bowed and asked for a room, she peered at him as if reading a story printed behind his eyes, then nodded.
"The spirits are louder in the fog," she said simply, as she handed him a brass key. "Listen, but do not answer."
His room was small. The floor was warm with ondol heating, and the window looked out toward the mountains. On his first night, he sat with his legs folded beneath him, watching the fog drift past the glass. It moved like breath. In and out. A living thing.
The scent of the herbalist's work permeated everything. It was earthy and sharp, the perfume of drying roots and crushed leaves. Minho found himself drawn to it, though it clung to his clothes and hair. He pressed his face into the borrowed pillow and inhaled deeply, letting the mingling fragrances of wild ginger and fermented ginseng wrap around his thoughts.
That night, he dreamed of water. Not the sea or the river, but of a still pond hidden deep within a pine forest. In the dream, something waited beneath the surface, watching him.
In Seoul, the nights had been filled with sirens and advertisements glowing red and blue on glass towers. Noise had stained his bones. But here, the silence was not empty. It was full of things that breathed differently. He awoke not afraid, but filled with a strange peace that tasted like snow.
On the second morning, he walked the length of the village. The mist still hovered just above the ground, brushing the tops of his shoes. Wooden wind chimes hung from every porch, carved with hanja characters he could not read. Their tones were low and dissonant, like old songs trying to remember their melody.
He passed a group of women pounding rice cakes in a courtyard, their sleeves rolled up, their laughter echoing briefly before being swallowed by the fog. A child ran past him, giggling, his cheeks red from the cold, trailing a string of paper talismans in his hand.
The air was filled with smells. Soybean paste bubbling in a clay pot. Charcoal smoke from breakfast fires. The sweet perfume of yuzu and the salt of seaweed. His senses, dulled for so long by concrete and fluorescent light, flared awake. Every smell, every sound, seemed richer here. Textured. Alive.
He stood in front of the village shrine and bowed, uncertain if it was expected or not. A bowl of rice had been left out, still steaming slightly in the cold. Someone had lit a candle that flickered despite the absence of wind. He looked up at the mountain that loomed beyond the village, its face veiled by the fog. There was no path that he could see, only the idea of one.
He did not yet know what he was looking for. Only that whatever it was, it was not behind him. It was ahead. Somewhere inside the mist.