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There’s a ghost in the hanok.
With a house so old that’s seen many people take their last breaths, you’d think there would be plenty of ghosts around, almost as old as the place itself. But there’s only one. And a quite young one.
The ghost haunts the hanok ever since that night; that terrible night that took her from them, her body dissipating into the air, disintegrated by Gwi-ma’s flames.
Celine sees glimpses of it in the hallways and the gardens, where she used to run around barefoot and giggling before its innocence got taken away, and with it, the lightness of its soul.
Whenever Celine tries to get close, it disappears, leaving her second guessing her sanity and longing for the sightings to last just a second longer, if only she could look at her face for one last time.
She leaves it offerings — a cup of her favorite kind of tea on the kitchen table, a candy on her childhood bedroom’s pillow, her old stuffed animal on the couch, herfavorite flowers on Celine’s bedroom window.
They always remain untouched, but Celine can feel the ghost’s gratitude.
At night, she feels its presence curled up in bed next to her, but if she opens her eyes, it disappears, the empty spot only being occupied by her shadow, and the sheets remain too neat.
Celine tends to its grave everyday, although she knows its body doesn’t lie there.
She still sets a gravestone next to its mother’s and keeps the weeds at bay and the stone so clean it sparkles. She brings it offerings once a week, the ripest tangerines and the shiniest apples she could find, all neatly cut and peeled and laid in a bowl like the ones she would bring to the child's desk.
She always senses a presence behind her as she works and wills herself out of turning around; she selfishly doesn’t want it to leave.
In the middle of the night, she catches another glimpse at it through the living room’s window. It’s accompanied by a huge tiger, tugging on its arm toward the mountains, and Celine wonders with an aching chest if the Sansin didn’t come to take it to Jeoseung, where its mother awaits.
In the morning, she goes to the Sansin’s shrine to clean it up, light a stick of incense and leave the deity soju and food, in hopes that it will finally come to take the lost soul home and into its mother’s arms.
But when she goes to visit the grave on the afternoon, the presence is still there, and so is it on the next day and the day after.
So, Celine dresses in sinbok and summons her ssanggeom to call upon Baridegi to open up the gates of Jeoseung for the poor lost soul and arranges the ghost’s old clothes in the shape of a body.
She chants the and dances for the deities, until her throat is sore and her body threatens to collapse to the ground, hoping that it will be enough to guide it home.
“Your mother is waiting,” she whispers, knowing she is once again being watched.
It is not enough.
Days and weeks go by, and the purple glowing silhouette never leaves her peripheral vision.
She wonders if she was the one who made it think it needed to stay; she wonders if ignoring it will make it leave.
It’s not cruelty, it’s caring, she tells herself as she stops visiting its grave, stops leaving it offerings, moves from one room to another when she senses its presence, as much as it hurts her to do so.
She can take the pain of that means it will be able to rest.
She tells herself it’s for the best, after all, wandering souls become restless spirits, obsessed with the world of the living because of something they couldn’t get from it.
So she ignores its existence; an act so painful it tears her soul apart again and again, telling herself it’s necessary for her to find peace; until one day she’s taken out of bed and rushed out of the house by the same tiger she saw accompanying the ghosts so many days ago.
The tiger leads her to the cemetery, to the ghost kneeling at its mother’s grave and its own, its hair arranged around itself like petals of a chrysanthemum. It doesn’t disappear when Celine looks at it.
Or when she kneels down next to it. She wants to take it into her arms and never let it go again, but one of her duties as a mudang is to help spirits move on.
“For how long do you plan on staying?” She asks it.
The ghost doesn’t acknowledge her, but Celine knows it can hear her.
“You don’t belong in this plane anymore. The longer you’re here, the more it will hurt you.” She tries to reach for its face, but her hand pierces through its incorporeal form. “What do I need to do to help you move on?”
Silence.
“You don’t have to be scared. Your mother will be with you. Don’t you want to meet her?”
Again, there’s no response.
She doesn’t know how long they stay out there for, but as the first rays of sunshine wash over the cemetery, the figure starts to disappear.
Celine sheds a tear and goes back to bed. She isn’t able to fall back asleep.
The ghost doesn’t appear again for over a week, and Celine would think it has moved on if it wasn’t for the weight in her soul telling her otherwise.
The tiger once again takes her out of bed and into the cemetery, where the ghost sits on the same spot as before, this time looking at Celine.
“Are you ready to go now?” She asks, kneeling down next to it.
Instead of replying, it raises its hand, slowly, with visible difficulty, and threads of the Honmoon wrap around it.
And then she reaches for Celine’s hand.
This time, she can feel it.
It doesn’t feel the same as if she was touching something solid, but she can take it in her hands and hold it. The static from the Honmoon threads spreading from the tips of her fingers into her soul. She holds herself back from shedding a tear.
The threads of the Honmoon starts spreading to the rest of its body from its hand, wrapping itself so carefully around the ghost it seemed like it cradling it to sleep.
And after that, the ghost collapses into Celine’s arms. Weak, but tangible. Not alive, but not dead anymore.
Its eyes aren’t closed, but they’re fighting to stay open. Celine thinks of taking it to the shrine and asking for the deities to heal it, to take away its pain. But it deserves more comfort than the hard, cold rock of the altar under its body.
Instead, she carries it to the angeori, to its childhood bedroom — herchildhood bedroom.
She lays it on the bed and tucks it in, carefully and gently. She drags a chair next to the bed and starts singing, quietly and softly, traditional sacred chants slowly blurring into old lullabies she would sing to her. To Celine, they’re just as sacred.
The not-so-ghost-anymore’s eyes start to fall closed, but it doesn’t let itself drift away, shaking its head and whining softly, it reminds Celine of when she used to fight off sleep when Celine was trying to put her to bed.
With a chuckle, she strokes the bridge of its nose.
“You can sleep now.”
As it drifts off, looking more peaceful than Celine has ever seen it, she catches herself falling asleep as well, but she can’t bring herself to leave its side, and instead grabs a blanket in the closet and settles back down on the chair.
“Good night, Rumi,” are Celine’s last words before giving into sleep.
When she wakes up the next morning, she’s scared that last night had been a dream, and that she will open her eyes to see an empty bed.
It’s not empty. It still lies there, soundly asleep.
The color has come back to its body just slightly.
Celine reaches for it, still hesitant, to feel it under her fingers. Solid, but so fragile.
She calls them — the two other people hurt the most by her loss.
The two girls shed their tears together in its bedroom, holding its hand in theirs like it’s the most precious thing, while holding each other like they’re the only thing keeping the other up.
It doesn’t open its eyes again. But they can all agree, they can all feel it; it’s alive. She is alive.
Time goes on, the bedroom becomes a shrine on its own. The three woman take care of it, keep it in perfect condition.
Hours are spent in the room everyday. Talismans are hung on the walls, healing chants are sung around the bed, offerings are placed on its bedside table as if it was an altar.
But stories from their days are shared as well, music is played on their phones, jokes are told with no response, but with the certainty that they have been heard.
Its body gets stronger everyday, until it’s her body again.
They change her clothes and keep her clean, brush her hair and braid it, knowing she’ll like it best that way when she wakes up.
After a long time of her eyes being closed, with her chest rising and falling steadily, she twitches in her sleep.
It alsmost looks like she’s having a nightmare. Celine sits on the bed and pulls her into her arms, laying her head on the crook of her neck and rocking her gently, humming as she does it.
She then starts mumbling incoherently, but after not hearing her voice for so long, it sounds more beautiful than almost anything she’s heard before.
She continues to stir, and Celine cradles her head to keep her steady.
Then her eyelids start trembling, and after three long years of deep sleep, her eyes open, slowly, hesitantly, taking in the sunlight for the first time in so long.
Celine holds her breath at the sight of one earthy and warm brown eye and one golden cat-like eye.
Celine feels her tears starting to pour and fall on her daughter’s face.
She wipes them away with her thumb and holds her daughter’s face in her hands.
“Good morning, Rumi.”