The first thought that crossed my mind the moment I woke up was this:
“Ah, shit. It really did get inside me.”
Which meant last night hadn’t been a dream. That sensation of a black lump lodged somewhere below my chest was still there. It had quieted down a little overnight, but it hadn’t disappeared. It felt like some foreign pebble had found its way into my body. Though, technically, the vengeful spirit was a bigger problem than the pebble… Either way, it wasn’t comfortable.
Still lying down, I raised a hand and looked at my palm. Naturally, I couldn’t see anything. No blood, no black smoke. It looked perfectly normal.
But the sensation in my fingertips was different.
I felt something drifting through the air brush between my fingers. Barely, but it was there. Usually, my skin reacted first when I went somewhere with yin energy, but today I could feel it even in my room. My fingertips had gotten strangely sensitive. It felt different from the cold air slipping in through the door.
‘Is this a good thing?’
I had no idea. In my experience, when your body suddenly got more sensitive, it usually wasn’t a good sign. It meant you were about to get a fever, or a nosebleed, or a ghost was right in front of you. None of those were great.
I heard dishes clinking outside my door. Grandma was making breakfast. I sat up. My chest felt heavy, but it wasn’t writhing like it had last night. For now, it was behaving.
When I went into the kitchen, Grandma was warming up soup. She looked a lot better than she had last night. Her forehead wasn’t as red, and her breathing was easier.
That was a relief.
“You’re up.” “Yeah.”
I found myself taking another look at her face. I could barely see any yin energy. The damp, oppressive presence that had clung to the room was gone. It really had lifted.
“How’s your fever?” “I’m fine. Since when are you a doctor?” “I’m basically a home-use diagnostic device.”
It sounded weird even to me, but Grandma gave a little chuckle. That was enough.
As I sat down to eat, Grandma pointed to an envelope on top of the cupboard.
“Something came for you yesterday.” “For me?”
Official mail addressed to a student usually wasn’t good news. Report cards, scholarships, or notices about winning competitions didn’t tend to come to our house. If anything showed up, it was usually telling you to submit something, show up somewhere, or confirm something.
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of stiff paper. The writing was just as stiff.
— Mandatory measurement notice for constitutionally gifted persons aged 17 — Failure to attend at the designated time may result in a compulsory summons — Please visit the Seoul Branch measurement room
“Constitutionally gifted person?”
It sounded even weirder when I read it aloud. The phrase made it sound like I was in possession of some rare metal.
“What’s this?” “I don’t know either.”
Grandma said it that way, but there was the slightest delay at the end. And the hand setting down her spoon trembled ever so faintly.
I noticed.
Maybe her hand was just shaking because she was getting old. But it didn’t feel like that was the whole story. Grandma stared at her soup like she was trying not to look at the paper.
‘Does Grandma know something?’
I wondered, but didn’t ask. She probably had a reason for not telling me. I wasn’t the type to ask questions just because I was curious. Or, to be more precise, if I thought I wouldn’t get a straight answer, I’d rather go see for myself.
Anyway, “Failure to attend may result in a compulsory summons.” That was a lovely way to make someone feel. Didn’t seem like the kind of appointment I could skip.
After breakfast, I changed clothes. As I put on my shoes in the entryway, Grandma called from behind me.
“Be careful on your way.” “Okay.”
She paused, then added, “If it’s somewhere weird, leave right away.” “I go to weird places all the time.” “Don’t talk back.” “Okay.”
I closed the door and left.
I sat by the bus window and looked outside.
The city looked the same as always. People heading to work, students crowding around a crosswalk, a middle-aged man eating cup noodles in front of a convenience store. And mixed in among them, things that didn’t belong.
A woman with her neck turned slightly to one side stood behind the bus stop. An old man with blurry legs passed among the people crossing the street. It was an ordinary scene for me.
But today, something felt off.
Every now and then, they looked my way.
Or, more accurately, it felt like they were looking. You didn’t need eyes to sense someone’s gaze. As if they could tell something about me had changed since last night, the shapes beyond the bus window turned toward me one by one.
I turned my eyes back inside the bus for no particular reason.
‘Why are you looking at me?’
I said it only in my head. If I said it out loud, the person next to me might move seats. Honestly, I’d understand. It’d be a little weird if some perfectly normal high school boy started muttering at empty air on a bus.
When I got near the address, the building looked more ordinary than I’d expected. It didn’t feel like a research lab or a secret organization. It just looked like a reasonably large public office building. Glass doors, a sign, even potted plants out front.
But to my eyes, there was one thing that stood out.
The Other Side was thin around the building.
There were ghosts around, but they couldn’t get anywhere near it. They seemed to circle just beyond the building’s perimeter, as if there were an invisible wall. I stood in front of the building for a moment, watching.
‘What is this place?’
Whatever it was, it wasn’t ordinary.
The waiting room was crowded. Most of the people there looked around my age, and some had come with their parents.
That surprised me a little.
‘Were there this many people like me?’
Of course, I had no idea if all of them could see ghosts like I could. But at least the “constitutionally gifted persons” mentioned in the notice didn’t seem to mean just me.
The atmosphere was strangely tense. Everyone was quiet, but not in the same way. Some looked like they were about to walk into an exam room. If you looked closely, a few even seemed excited. The parents were worse. Every time someone called their kid’s name, they seemed to hold their breath.
I was watching all this for no particular reason.
Mostly because I still had no idea what they were doing here.
Names were called from inside, and people went in and came out one at a time. Then numbers were announced.
“Thirty-four.” “Seventy-eight.” “One hundred sixty-seven.”
The reactions around me changed with each number. When a low number came up, everyone moved on as if nothing had happened. When a number that sounded high was called, the guardians’ expressions changed. I didn’t know what the numbers meant, but I could more or less read the rules of this world.
High number = better treatment. Low number = treated like you don’t exist.
I guess it’s pretty much the same everywhere.
Then the waiting room stirred slightly.
“Se-ra Yoon.”
A girl with her black hair neatly tied back went inside. She might have been a year older than me, but her presence was different. She didn’t have the body language of someone who was nervous. She seemed like someone who’d been sitting in the seat that was rightfully hers, and had stood up because her turn had naturally come.
A little later, a number came from inside.
“Eight hundred twelve.”
The atmosphere in the waiting room changed in an instant.
Even without knowing what the number meant, I could tell. Ah, that was a high one. The staff shifted their posture ever so slightly. The people around me turned to look, too.
The girl came back out and headed for her seat, passing right by me.
That was when I felt it.
‘She’s different.’
The quality of the yin energy coming off her was different. It didn’t feel anything like what I’d inhaled in the boiler room last night. If what I had was wet mud, hers was like ice that had been filtered and frozen solid. I couldn’t explain it well, but it was orderly. Not raw.
But she didn’t look at me. Or, more precisely, maybe she did, but she didn’t count it as looking. Her gaze passed over me without stopping.
Well, I got it. I didn’t consciously register every telephone pole I passed, either.
A little later, they called my name.
“Jin-oh Seo.”
I stood up.
The measurement room was bright. Too bright, which I didn’t like. It wasn’t that I preferred dark places, but getting assessed under lights this intense wasn’t exactly pleasant.
A man behind the desk was flipping through a clipboard. He looked to be somewhere north of forty. His face didn’t show much. He had the look of a tired civil servant, I guess. Maybe I’d find out more about him later, but at the time all I thought was, ‘He looks incredibly busy.’
The examiner said, “Place your hand on it.”
A translucent sphere sat in front of me. I figured this was the measuring thing mentioned in the notice.
I put my hand on it without a word.
It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t warm, either. When my palm touched it, the structure inside rotated quietly. A faint sound came from it.
A moment later,
it stopped.
A number appeared.
0.
I looked at the number.
‘Zero?’
The examiner glanced at the device, then looked at my hand again and said briefly, “Again.”
I put my hand back on it.
It rotated again. Stopped again. Another 0.
The third time was the same.
0.
The man behind the desk wrote something on his clipboard. His pen didn’t pause.
“Grade Zero.”
He wrote that down, then turned to the next form without even looking up. There was no malice in his voice. It was just the voice of someone filling in the appropriate box with the appropriate information.
That almost made it stranger.
‘Grade Zero?’
I didn’t know exactly what it meant. But it probably wasn’t a good thing. You can tell that sort of thing from the atmosphere.
I was about to take my hand away when I felt something strange.
Just for an instant.
Something pushed and pulled from my palm toward the inside of the sphere, then from the inside of the sphere back toward my palm. It couldn’t have lasted even a tenth of a second. I tried to look again on reflex, but it was already over.
At the same time, the black lump inside my chest twitched once.
The thing I’d forced down inside me in the boiler room last night.
Quietly. Just for a moment.
‘What was that just now?’
The examiner was getting ready for the next person, and the man with the clipboard was already looking at another form. They didn’t seem to have noticed anything.
Only me.
I looked at the sphere once more. It seemed fine. Like nothing had happened.
That was when I realized.
Oh. It can’t read what’s inside me.
I wasn’t sure, of course. Maybe the machine had made a mistake. Maybe I really was empty. I didn’t know yet. But the sensation in my palm didn’t lie. Something had touched me, then slipped away. Like it had tried to read me and missed.
“You can go.”
The examiner said it.
I just turned around. I didn’t argue or ask any questions.
Because I couldn’t exactly say, “So, I actually inhaled a vengeful spirit last night.” At best, they’d think I was crazy. Or things would get even more complicated. Either way, I didn’t want it.
I opened the measurement room door and went out.
In the hallway, I passed the girl with the eight hundred twelve again. She didn’t look at me this time, either. I just kept walking.
The waiting room was still revolving around numbers. Who ranked high, who ranked low, who was worth something and who wasn’t. Everyone there seemed to know where they stood.
I’d thought I was the only one who didn’t know. Turns out there was one more.
That machine didn’t know, either.
It bothered me a little. It felt a little strange.
And oddly enough, as soon as I thought that, the black lump inside my chest felt clearer than before.
A twitch.
A tiny one.
As if it were saying, ‘See?’
Without thinking, I slipped my hand into my pocket. My fingertips were cold.
The notice probably had more information on the back. What Grade Zero meant, what I was supposed to do next, what would happen if I didn’t. I hadn’t read it yet. But I thought I understood one thing.
Here, the number zero didn’t just mean low.
It meant they treated you like you didn’t exist.
Sigh…
Today was looking like it would be a hassle, too.