WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 22: Twilight Market (3)

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‘Should’ve brought sunglasses.’

That was my first thought the moment I crossed into the alley draped in white light. The entire space had no depth.

Intermittent flashes of white light cast shadows at strange angles, making some things look like drawings on paper.

I closed and opened my eyes until they adjusted. Gradually, the white and the combination of drawings and lines turned into an alley lined with shops.

Low buildings stood crammed together along narrow paths that spread like a net. Power lines sagged low enough to touch.

Whenever the wires fluttered with electricity, the ground boomed like pulsing veins. Each time, the scenery trembled.

‘At least I made it into Music Alley.’

I turned up my earphones slightly, and the scenery swayed.

“Everything in Music Alley is made of sound. It is where you can find the sound you desire most, and where all sounds come to an end. Listen closely. But do not let it steal your heart. If you close your ears, pitch-black darkness will come for you, and you will never leave again.”

The sharp smell of burnt-out vacuum tubes, the plastic scent of old records, and the odors of oil, wood, rosin, and dust mingled in the air, carrying sound with them.

It was a place where the sounds of metal and wood being carefully carved, and the rhythms of every kind of music, regardless of era or nationality, flowing through pipes, could be seen.

‘One wrong sound and I’m done for.’

I hurried on, singing any song I knew in my head. Instrument makers with spider-long limbs and compound eyes strung red, trembling strings onto cellos and tuned them.

Whenever liquid sloshed, sounds sprang up from its surface. They changed color, whispering brief death cries, declarations of love, and unknown numbers.

A white being drank the music dripping from the pipes. Fractal shapes swayed to a metronomic beat, ticking along with the sheet music spread across the street.

I alone walked through the street with an irregularly pulsing heart and footsteps. Every time I exhaled, sounds fell from my mouth onto the ground.

I walked over the breaths I had made.

“Hey, what is this place? Was there somewhere this hip in Euljiro?”

“Should we go somewhere with goooood lighting for a fourth round? A fourth round?!”

‘Huh?’

Clear Korean, something I should not have been hearing here, reached me. I reflexively turned my head.

People staggered in one corner of the alley.

Takeout bags printed with restaurant logos swung from their hands as they lurched into one shop window, then stumbled toward another. Their faces were flushed with alcohol.

‘How did they get in here?’

“This alley is all flashing colors. How did I not know about this place?”

“Hey, your face looks like a sheet of paper. Hahaha!”

“Let’s hit that bar! This beat is insane!”

The drunkards banged on pipes and spilled loud sounds like sugar cubes in time with the noise.

‘I need to stop them. Without making any sound myself, how...?’

I hurriedly took out some paper from my backpack, but I was too late.

One eye of the person in front had begun to turn backward. Creak. Creak. Blood vessels and muscles showed red beneath their inverted eyelid.

“Sound... Can you hear it? Huh? This sound is totally my style.”

“What sound? I can’t hear anything. Ah, I hear it. I hear it. Sound. I hear it. I can hear it...”

“I have to buy it. I have to buy it. I found this sound. I have to buy it, I have to buy it...”

The staggering figure smashed through a shop window. Crash!

The color-shifting liquids inside all turned black at once and burst upward with a crack, scattering as musical notes.

It was not one of the group who grabbed the staggering person, but the shopkeeper.

Their arms twisted like musical notes. When their gaping mouth opened up and down like a lid, a huge gramophone panted where their tongue should have been.

“Fuck, I’m buying it. I’m buying it all. I’ll pay for it, won’t I? Aaah.”

Their speech stretched out. Sounds flowing from their mouth dropped in limp pieces like powerless squid tentacles. Cash, cards, and identification spilled from the hand digging through their wallet.

“The price... Fuck, why doesn’t it add up? I have it! I can buy it, I caaan!”

They flailed their arms and threw off their clothes and tie. Their remaining eye rolled wildly, then one hand suddenly grabbed their own throat.

“I, I, l-look, glurk, guh. Gllurk.”

The man started pulling open his throat and the flesh beneath his jaw. Saliva and blood bubbled in his throat.

His jaw opened beyond its limit. His mouth split apart. He shoved his other hand into it.

“Hee, hua, hua, ah.”

Something red came out tangled in his blood-soaked hand. Bundles of red and pale flesh, riddled with holes, swayed between veins and muscles.

The shopkeeper took the man’s raised Adam’s apple and vocal cords, then chewed and swallowed them into the gramophone.

Thud.

The man collapsed. Blood surged in pulsing bursts from beneath his nose to the top of his neck.

“Wow, incredible! This song is really good! Hey, this song is amazing!”

Instead of screaming at the sight, the remaining members of the group began clapping with blissful expressions.

“I want to hear it too... I’m jealous. Jealous. The other sounds are too loud. They’re so loud I can’t hear it. I want to hear it because I can’t. I have to hear it. I have to hear it. Right.”

The man who had been clapping grabbed his own ears. His fingers dug into his ear canals, and his outer ears stretched.

Soon, his eardrums, cartilage, and cochleae were torn out whole.

“Now I can hear it! I can hear the cleanest sound in the world!”

“Me too! I’ll buy one too! I’ll give you this! I’ll give you this!”

They followed the shopkeeper and vanished deeper into the store.

‘What... what could I have done just now...?’

It had felt like slow motion, but it had actually happened in an instant.

Before I could even take half a step, everything had unfolded and ended.

The bloody splatter before me slowed my thoughts for a moment. I could not process what had happened. Cold sweat mixed with fear and ran down my back.

‘There’s no guarantee Hertz’s frequency will save me like it did in Mangnyang Tunnel.’

I gritted my teeth and started walking again. At least, not in that direction.

I entered a side alley, trying not to step on the countless sounds hanging from the shops.

“An item, you not buying, are you?”

‘Eek.’

A merchant suddenly thrust their head out from a tilted shop counter.

“Got something good. Like your heart-beat.”

A metronome ticked in place of pupils in their eyes. The inside of the shop, where the merchant craned their neck, was packed full of red.

“In here. In here.”

I quickly dodged the hand they reached out. While it waved through empty air, I pulled a toy from my bag and shoved it into their hand.

The merchant, having accepted payment before the deal had even begun, froze for a moment.

“Please show me the fastest way to the next alley.”

The merchant’s metronome stopped.

The hand holding the toy almost crushed it, then pointed toward a door on one side of the alley.

“Thank you. I hope business goes well.”

I quickly left.

My phone light pointed at a pitch-black door. When I opened it, another section of Music Alley lay beyond.

I should consider using doors instead of only going around the alleys.

A new alley followed, and the sounds gradually weakened. Once I crossed one more alley, another grid-shaped intersection appeared.

“The time... around twenty-one minutes this time.”

I still had about an hour left. If I crossed the next alley within ten minutes, I would be comfortably safe.

‘Couldn’t I just ask a merchant for directions again?’

Of course, it was not recommended to buy too many things at Twilight Market. The more things you bought, the easier it was for them to consume you.

By then, you would not even be able to tell which items were safe and which were not. There had even been a story about someone returning with thirty eyeballs embedded in their body.

I reviewed the transactions I had made so far.

I gave a child doll eyes and got directions to a shop.

I gave up bone and flesh for eyes that never slept.

I gave a toy for directions.

‘Normally, I’d have room for about two more. But I can manage another four.’

I turned up the music in my earphones. The music Hertz played was helping me stay sane.

If I made the goblin fire oil my final transaction, I would have one deal I could make immediately in the next alley, one for an unexpected variable along the way, and one to head directly for an exit as a last resort.

‘Taking a shortcut would be better.’

After checking the lights, I ran into the area that seemed safest.

The suppressed volume of old jazz in my earphones came alive, and the air changed.

A faint medicinal smell. The feel of dusty, musty velvet somewhere nearby.

Achoo!

An alley appeared where a heavy powdery fragrance clung to sofas. Gold shops and jewelry stores lined both sides of a straight, golden street thick with roadside trees.

“Get something that will make you shine.”

“Members only.”

“We turn stories frozen while still fresh into necklaces.”

Dazzling display windows and elegant sales signs protruded toward me one by one. Whenever the shadows of gems stretched long in the light, people hanging from those gems fell and covered the paving stones.

These were expensive goods. If I entered the wrong shop, I could end up putting my own body on the scales while trying to pay the price.

I searched the alley endlessly from the corner of my eye. I needed to find a shop that was as cheap and unlikely to cause trouble as possible.

I walked among people with gems embedded in place of eyes, running through the street before being pierced on skewers and dragged away. The smell of blood began to overwhelm the scent of metal, and my pace gradually slowed.

‘Ugh... I feel sick...’

At last, I found a shop that looked shabby enough, but not too shabby. It was a pawnshop with something like a gold price chart posted outside.

“Ex, cuse me.”

I went straight inside and lightly tapped the display glass.

Beyond it appeared an attendant in a neat vest, with a coiled thing like a pearl necklace in place of their head. Beneath the attendant’s elegantly waving, gloved hands was no body.

‘Don’t look too directly. Just what I need. Keep it as brief as possible.’

A rolling sound came from the attendant’s head. They waited for my order with perfect politeness and elegance.

“...I’m going to the next alley. Is there a fast way there?”

It did not seem like a question the attendant liked. The pearls began changing color as though soaked in vinegar.

“Of course, if you tell me, I’m willing to buy something I need here.”

The pearls glittered again.

Whew. What should I order? I wracked my brain, looking for the cheapest item that seemed least likely to cause problems.

The attendant opened the display case and stacked several boxes before me. Each box contained a single body part from some desiccated, mummy-like thing, adorned with jewelry.

‘...A person? Is that a person?’

I blurred my focus to avoid looking at anything resembling a human body part, then found something that looked inexpensive.

It was a small set of two flat, playing-card-shaped cards made of metal.

Looking closer, it was not merely the texture. They really were metal. Still, liquid sloshed inside them as though each card consisted of two extremely thin metal sheets placed together.

The attendant held the card set out to me, apparently asking me to inspect it. There was no visible instruction manual.

When I lightly touched it, the cards rippled blue.

‘This definitely can’t be expensive.’

“Fine, I’ll take these. How much are they? Including the price for the information.”

The attendant’s pearl necklace slid down once, then wrote the answer on paper and showed it to me.

Blood, flesh, and bone. One person’s worth.

“...”

Why was this suddenly such extortion?

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