“Everyone’s staying home,” Gyuvin observed. “I think things like that don’t happen here often. They don’t seem to know how to deal with it.”
“Based on the help request, it doesn’t seem like they’re sure if it’s a ghost or an actual corpse,” Ricky added. “They’re probably frightened out of their minds, then.”
Raintree Town was a peaceful little farming town, located far away from any of the known danger zones, places where the border between the human realm and the underworld had worn itself thin. Those places were the ones that saw higher incidences of demonic activity and fierce corpses or resentful spirits returning from the dead. From the looks of it, this seemed to be a one-off event. Most of these people had probably never seen a ghost even once in their lives.
“We must be near,” Gyuvin said. “Can you smell it?”
The air carried the faint aroma of wisteria blossoms in full bloom. They found the House of Wisteria without much trouble soon after, a large building almost the size of a small inn, its dark wood-paneled exterior walls covered with trellises crawling with purple wisteria clusters.
As they neared the building, turning the corner to the front of the treasure house, the problem immediately made itself apparent. There was a figure of a young girl sitting hunched over on the front steps, silently staring in front of her, unmoving in the slightest. She was dressed cleanly, in a long white dress with her hair done up neatly and secured with a purple and gold hairpin, likely the outfit she’d been buried in. Other than some dirt on the soles of her bare feet from the journey between the graveyard and the House of Wisteria, there was no other sign of dirt or unclean spiritual energy on her. Though she was a walking corpse, she didn’t seem to harbor any malice or resentment, at least, none that Gyuvin could sense.
“Hello?”
The corpse girl looked up at the sound of his voice, peering around her as if she were trying to place the origin of the noise.
“She’s blind,” Gyuvin said softly. “It means there’s no evil in her.”
Eyes were often one of the body parts on a corpse that began to decay and rot first, meaning a corpse that had simply reanimated within seven days of passing would likely be partially or almost entirely blind. Some of them regained sight in the process of turning into a fierce corpse, due to the demonic energy within them altering the speed of decay of the body, but that wasn’t the case here.
“Why are you here?” Gyuvin spoke gently, stooping down in front of the girl so they were somewhat at eye level.
The corpse girl looked up with blank eyes. “I live here. I want to go home.”
“You live at the House of Wisteria?”
The corpse nodded. “My family and I live upstairs, but I can’t open the door…”
Gyuvin stood up, turning back to ricky. “I’ll go in and speak to the people inside the house. They must be the ones who sent the request. Can you stay out here with her and make sure she doesn’t go anywhere?”
Ricky nodded and Gyuvin left his side, knocking softly on the gilt-painted front doors of the treasure house. The ghost girl looked up again at the sound of the knocking, but she didn’t make any move to stand up.
Gyuvin spoke to the distraught family inside, piecing together the details of the corpse girl’s death. She’d been the second daughter of the family who owned the House of Wisteria and had been taken ill very suddenly two weeks ago. After she’d passed, a short funeral was held before she was buried at the town’s graveyard, but not even two days had passed before the family got a rude shock opening the doors of the treasure house in the morning to find their dead daughter waiting at their doorstep. The resultant panic and fearmongering had sent the rest of the town scuttling back into their homes to hide, and the poor family of the deceased had been pacing the corridors of the treasure house ever since, terrified to leave or even look out the window.
“Your daughter isn’t an evil corpse,” Gyuvin explained gently, trying his best to calm the wailing mother down. “She didn’t try to break into the house, or attack anybody. Her spirit may have returned because there’s unrest of some kind, but I think this most likely happened because the burial process was done improperly.”
“I knew that little buffoon couldn’t get it right!” the mother took the opportunity to screech. “We should have waited for Old Hwang to come back before we had our daughter buried…”
“Old Hwang is the one who handles all the burials and death rites in this town,” the father, who was considerably less hysterical, explained. “He’s been out of town visiting family and we didn’t want to wait, so we let his son do it instead. It seems he really didn’t do a good job…”
Gyuvin excused himself from the family and stepped back outside. The corpse girl was still sitting on the steps, Ricky watching her from a distance away.
“The family says she died suddenly of sickness in the middle of the night,” he said. “They had thought she was getting better, but the next morning she was dead. There were no curse marks or signs of evil on her, so they assumed it was a natural death.”
Ricky had been watching her the entire time Gyuvin was speaking, as if he were thinking hard. “She’s just a little girl, she can’t be more than ten years old. I don’t even think she knows she’s dead.”
“That would explain why she came back home,” Gyuvin reasoned, nodding. “Someone who thinks they’re alive wouldn’t stay in their coffin. And since there’s no demonic energy on her at all, it’s likely she’s just really confused.”
Gyuvin went back to the corpse girl, sitting down on the staircase next to her. She startled a little as he sat down, but he spoke gently to put her at ease.
“My name is Kim Gyuvin,” he said softly. “I’m a cultivator. What’s your name?”
“My name is Seo Jung.” The girl spoke slowly, hesitantly, as if the action itself hurt her throat. “Can I go home now? Nobody will let me in…”
Gyuvin’s heart ached for the poor corpse girl. She was hardly ten years old. He could hardly imagine how frightening all this would be for her. “Seo Jung-ah, do you remember falling sick a while ago?”
She frowned, nodding. “But I was getting better.”
“I’m afraid you didn’t,” Gyuvin continued. “It’s been five days since you died. Do you remember waking up at the graveyard?”
Her little eyebrows furrowed. “Yeah. I was lost, so I came back home. My family wouldn’t open the door no matter how hard I knocked.”
“They were afraid of you. They thought you were a vengeful spirit. I know you want to go home, but you have to go back to the graveyard again, okay? You can’t stay here anymore.”
“I can’t?” The little corpse girl started to cry, though no tears could fall from her empty eyes. “I’m scared. I don’t want to go back there…”
Gyuvin patted her back gently, soothingly. “Don’t be scared. I’ll go with you, and I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep. Will you come with me?”
Seo Jung cried for a little longer, before calming down. “Okay. You’ll stay with me?”
“I will. I promise.”
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