"Eurk!"
Hyechang let out a repressed yelp as Grand Master Kim Yunae left a smoky scar on his arm. It consisted of what Hyechang could only assume was the insignia of the KSPI, a phoenix with lilies.
"Grand Master," Juhwan called out sternly. "...You're burning him."
With a gasp, Kim Yunae let go. "...M-My deepest apologies."
She cleared her throat before snapping her fingers. Do Junseo quickly came to her side, handing her a wallet-shaped badge of premium black leather.
"This is your badge," she explained, handing the badge over to Hyechang. "You're a Trainee-class Agent for the Field Operations Division. Your first assignment will be given to you within the next few days. You are now dismissed."
Hyechang inspected the badge in his hands. His identification was PIA-0137-XR.
Something within Hyechang compelled him to bow with the utmost respect as she walked away from him. With his face pointing towards the floor, his mind was beginning to stir.
"She… sounded like she was on the verge of tears," he thought to himself. "Maybe because Chu Sung-hoon is gone. He was a high-ranking agent."
A twinge of guilt pecked at him, but he shook his head back into reality.
"Mr. Do… I mean– Juhwan…" Hyechang spoke with an odd amount of melancholy.
"Yeah, I know…" he responded, snapping his finger. The surface of the floor in front of Hyechang began to swirl and ripple like water. "You want to go home, right? Step through there. You'll be summoned when your assignment comes."
Hyechang nodded. He stepped into the water and found himself back in his Seoul apartment.
* * *
"Hye– I mean, Dr. Sa?!"
A group of nurses, doctors, and other employees of Baekchon General stood awestruck at the entrance, staring at the anomaly that lay before them. Sa Hyechang, but he wasn't there to clock in.
"What are you doing here?!"
"Aren't you out of work because of an accident? What was it?"
Hyechang found himself overwhelmed and bombarded with questions. Maybe it was a mistake coming here.
"I uh…" he scrambled for an excuse. "I'm not able to come here often because I was called for work someplace else. The chief knows all about it. I just have some things to take care of here."
Thankfully, that seemed to get him off of their radar.
"Now, I need to get to…"
He expertly walked through Baekchon General like it was the back of his hand.
"The morgue."
Why?
* * *
"Wait— Hyechang," Juhwan called out while the rookie agent was sinking through the water.
"?"
Juhwan handed Hyechang a small paper rectangle. It was yellow with red hanja characters.
"A bujeok?" he questioned, feeling it between his fingers. "Why are you giving this to me?"
Juhwan took out a cigarette and lit it in his mouth. "Consider this your first unofficial assignment. I need you to find Chu Sung-hoon's body and put that talisman anywhere close to it."
Hyechang raised his brow. "His body? What for?"
"It's the body of a Tengoku, obviously," Juhwan responded condescendingly as if Hyechang was supposed to know the weight of that word. "It's just for security. You don't want humans to have that kind of body."
"Okay…"
* * *
Hyechang stood between two glass doors, reinforced with metal. Amongst the employees dressed in white doctor's coats, Hyechang looked like an intruder with his pitch-black attire. It was a good thing that his reputation made him recognizable.
Hyechang fidgeted with the paper talisman in his pocket. "I just need… to find his body…"
He tapped his keycard against the scanner while sucking in his breath. With a quick, conspicuous motion, he forced himself into the morgue and immediately closed the door behind him.
Bzz…
The fluorescent lights and emptiness created an excellent, unsettling atmosphere, especially for a morgue.
"Been a while since I've been in the morgue…"
Before Hyechang stood a long, narrow corridor with walls of metal cabinets, with each of them having an I.D. card plastered in the middle. They were organized alphabetically from surname, so Hyechang walked to the end of the room, to the "C" section.
"Byun, Chang… Ah, Chu Sung-hoon."
He found the I.D. card labeled "S. Chu". He reluctantly opened the cabinet, finding a cold, pale corpse with skin wrapped even tighter around its body. His eyes were sunken in, and his chest was stitched closed.
Hyechang's breath hitched.
"Ah…"
Hyechang promptly closed the cabinet. He was well accustomed to seeing human organs and dead bodies, but to see the body of someone whom he had previously tried so desperately to help was a different story.
"Just put the talisman here…" Hyechang stuck it onto the floor before Chu Sung-hoon's cabinet, before speedwalking to the exit. "And get the hell out."
Just before Hyechang scanned himself out, he felt a cold, shaky breath on his neck.
"Dr… Sa…"
It was a warped voice that did not seem fully alive, or even human. Hyechang immediately rotated his neck.
"Dr… Sa… Why…"
A bloated, organic monster with barely human features. It had a gaping jaw like an abyss and too many arms for a human. It was trapped in damp fabric that he could barely make out to be a hospital gown.
What's worse, Hyechang recognized its face. Hopeful, passionate brown eyes, now sunken and dull, as though the life that had previously filled with had been corrupted.
"You're…" he muttered in disbelief.
"Dr. Sa… why… couldn't you… save me?"
"Sun Yo-han."
Pwoom!
Hyechang's body acted completely on reflex. He tackled his mutated patient with such extreme force that they found themselves hurtling airborne through the narrow corridor, maintaining a vice grip on its gown.
"S-Sun Yo-han… what… what happened to you?!"
Hyechang's chest began to pulse turquoise light in response to his emotional distress. The talisman on the floor that he had previously placed seemed to glow in sync with his heart. It quickly expanded into a convulsing whirlpool of water.
Whether it was intentional or not, Hyechang tried to force himself and Sun Yo-han into the portal using their airborne speed. But just before the whirlpool closed, one of Sun Yo-han's many arms desperately grabbed onto the steel wall in defiance.
And what he had grabbed had only moved with him.
Because, in an odd twist of fate, it was the cabinet containing Chu Sung-hoon's body.
* * *
Vwoom… splash!
Hyechang, Sun Yo-han, and Chu Sung-hoon's body were now in the Samdocheon. From a different area, a spire of water rose, and out stepped the Do Twins. They beheld Sun Yo-han's pale, bloated, and mutated form growling at Sa Hyechang, who was protecting Chu Sung-hoon's body.
"Agent Sa?!" Shoyu yelled out.
"JUNSEO! Juhwan!" Hyechang screamed at the top of his lungs. "This– this thing… I don't know what it is, but it's a threat!"
Juhwan quickly sprung into action, sprinting at the Sun Yo-han mutation while looking back at Shoyu. "Grab Chu Sung-hoon's body. Hyechang and I will take care of that."
"Dr… Sa…?! Why couldn't you save me…?"
Juhwan quickly came to Hyechang's aid. "What happened?! All you had to do was plant the talisman."
"I did…" Hyechang gasped. "But he came out of nowhere. His name is Sun Yo-han. He's… the first patient to die by my care."
Juhwan focused his attention on Yo-han's grotesque form. "I see… okay. Time for a little lesson."
"Huh?"
"What you see there is a Revenant. It's a ghost that lost its sense of self and reason. So that's not Sun Yo-han anymore. That's just a puppet moving on instinct and ectoplasm."
The monster's various hands began to glow with turquoise energy.
"And…" Juhwan continued. "They can use ectoplasm. But so can you. So be careful."
Hyechang looked at Juhwan in disbelief. "You're not gonna help me?!"
"This fight is yours. Besides, I've never had a Revenant inside the Samdocheon. So I want to see how this plays out. Kill him and put his soul to rest, Tengoku."
Hyechang groaned, shocked at Juhwan's carelessness. "This thing can literally kill me. There shouldn't be time for a lesson."
He quickly stepped forward, taking on his best fighting stance.
"But…" his Ghost Heart pumped, and he unsophisticately channeled ectoplasm to his fists. "If killing him will free him from that… monstrous form… then I have no choice."
"Dr. Sa… why…"
"Why couldn't you save me?"