Chapter 4
“Excuse me, but… could you sleep with me just once?”
The request from the neat, respectable-looking woman was shocking.
“…What did you just say?”
This wasn’t in front of a club on a Friday night—this was a quiet alley by his house.
And to think those words had come from a woman he had only just recently gotten acquainted with—utterly unbelievable.
“I’m really sorry to ask this when we’ve barely met, but… could you please just sleep with me once?”
Cough.
A small cough escaped from the man’s tightly pressed lips.
He was not someone who easily lost his composure, but this situation was plenty bewildering.
Did some new trend spring up in Korea while I was away for a few years?
Since when did “Will you sleep with me?” become as casual as “Could you tell me the way?”
“Come to my house and sleep with me. Please? Just once.”
The man flinched instinctively, afraid someone might overhear.
With those watery, pleading eyes shining like that, saying it in such an unnecessarily earnest tone… how shameless can she be…
He even glanced around as though checking for a hidden camera.
“Tonight, a ghost is going to kill me. But they say if I’m with a man, it can’t take me. Please…”
She clasped her hands together under her chin, looking up at him with desperate, prayer-like eyes.
“A scam? Some cult trying to extort ritual money, maybe…?”
Sera shook her head vigorously.
“No, I don’t follow any religion. Really—you can trust me!”
“Even if you’re drunk, don’t you think you’re going too far?”
Sera sighed in frustration and quickly explained.
“Yes, I drank, but this isn’t drunken rambling. I’m not drunk.”
Or else… was she just the neighborhood crazy woman with a decent-looking face?
“I’m not messed up in the head, I’m not a bad person. Criminal record? Clean. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket. It’s just! I’m in a desperate situation, and by midnight tonight I must—”
“Must what?”
“…Sleep. With a man.”
“…Phew.”
So she claimed she lived in a haunted house, but maybe she was the one possessed by some lustful ghost.
The man rolled his eyes dramatically, exasperated, then sneered.
“A ghost, you say?”
Sera nodded eagerly, hope flickering in her eyes.
“Problem is, I’m not like that gullible guy earlier who fell for such nonsense.”
Sera’s face fell.
“Wait, no—I didn’t ask him for this. That was… an accident…”
Still, she had considered him, even for a moment, and that fact shamed her deeply.
Her self-loathing leaked out in a heavy sigh.
“I know how ridiculous this sounds. I’m not crazy from stress or anything. But if I don’t sleep with a man by midnight, today will become the day of my death anniversary… so…”
Her dark eyes looked unbearably sorrowful, as though she might burst into tears at any moment.
Her words sounded like the delusions of a madwoman.
But they say a drowning person’s eyes never lie.
Whether delusion or not, her eyes held the conviction of someone speaking her truth.
“I don’t want to die yet… no, dying doesn’t matter. But being dragged away as a ghost’s bride… I don’t want to die like that…”
Her voice trembled, her head drooped, and big tears rolled down like beads.
“I want to believe you.”
“…What?”
“My wish is to see a ghost just once.”
The man pulled out a small device from his jacket pocket—an EMF detector.
“I’ve searched this neighborhood night after night. Sadly, there are no ghosts. So, stop with this nonsense and just go home to bed.”
He turned on his heel.
“Then what about the ghost in my house?”
“Did you see it? That so-called young man ghost?”
“Not see… more like I feel him. Every day…”
The man smirked.
“If you’re that sure, should I go inside and take a look?”
Sera spread her arms to block him.
“No! I can’t just let some strange man into a woman’s home.”
Perhaps realizing his curiosity was excessive, the man stepped back.
“You can’t take a single step inside! If you absolutely must check… then… sleep with me instead.”
This woman was the ghost.
A lust demon.
The man decided not to waste another word and strode off toward the gate.
Sera hurried after him, babbling.
“Tonight is urgent. Just one night…”
“One-night stand? Drunken women aren’t my thing.”
“Once tonight passes, we’ll never have to see each other again. Just close your eyes this once—can’t you?”
The man ignored her, plugging in his earphones. But in her mind, the shaman’s words echoed—
“Why do you think they call it ‘sharing energy’? When a man and woman unite, their energies entwine. If she’s bound to another man’s energy, even the oldest ghost can’t take more than one soul.”
“Tonight I need a husband. Even a fake one to fool the ghost. Midnight is the deadline, my last chance to try this… Ah!”
He stopped abruptly, and she bumped into his back.
“What happens after midnight?”
He tilted his chin, glaring down at her.
So you were listening?!
Sera pouted before answering.
“Then… since I failed to find a husband to consummate with, my honeymoon will be in the afterlife. As a ghost’s bride.”
The man studied her vacant eyes.
She spoke of her death like it was someone else’s story, looking pitiful—like an abandoned puppy.
Why did her nonsense keep sounding strangely sincere?
“So desperate—what were you doing until now?”
At his question, she gave him a fleeting, resentful glance, then dropped her gaze humbly to her toes.
“At first, I was scared. What if the ghost hurt the man too? But then the shaman said there was a way. I was so frantic to survive… I didn’t realize I was drowning in quicksand. The more I struggled, the deeper I sank…”
The man just stared at her silently.
“A woman begging like this turns into an ATM, or a sample peach people want to squeeze recklessly… everyone treats her like easy prey…”
Without a word, Sera calmly wiped away the endless stream of tears running down her cheeks.
“Please help me…”
The man exhaled sharply, watching her bow her head, crying quietly before him.
He studied her face—maybe crazy, maybe not—with a troubled gaze.
And just as he opened his mouth to say something—
BEEP-BEEP!
A siren-like notification went off from Sera’s phone.
[Emergency! Groom secured!]
Sera’s eyes went wide and bright.
“See? I—”
“Sorry! I think I made a huge mistake asking you this. I must’ve lost my mind for a second. I’m so, so sorry! I’ll go now!”
“…What?”
She had just been crying buckets, and now suddenly—?
“Please just forget everything I said! That ghost stuff, it was all made-up. Ha… ha… Sorry for bothering you so late at night!”
She bowed politely and turned to leave.
“Your house is that way.”
“Oh, uh… I just want to sober up a little before going back.”
“You said you weren’t drunk.”
“Nope! I’m drunk. Totally. Everything I said earlier was drunken nonsense. Please forget it. Okay then, goodbye!”
She smiled with squinted eyes, then hurried off like she was fleeing.
This woman is beyond the limit of strange.
Her steady steps suggested she wasn’t drunk at all.
A woman walking alone down such a deserted street at night…
Forget it.
It was Sunday night. A working adult should be more worried about work tomorrow than the safety of some woman whose name he didn’t even know.
No need to imagine the worst-case scenarios.
But then, why did his steps home keep faltering?
If she keeps going that way… there’s nothing but the Han River bridge.
