FACELESS
A person’s face is a record of their life.
The traces of laughter.
The traces of tears.
The wrinkles that come with age.
The expressions they wore
when they loved someone—
and when they hated someone.
Even after death,
a person leaves behind a face.
At least—
that was what Han Jae-min had always believed.
Until the day he walked into
the autopsy room
at the National Forensic Service.
Under the cold fluorescent lights,
a man lay on
a stainless-steel examination table.
Choi Seong-ho.
Thirty-four years old.
Found in his studio apartment.
No signs of forced entry.
No signs of a struggle.
No traces of poison.
And—
he had no face.
More precisely,
where his face should have been,
there was only skin.
No eyes.
No nose.
No mouth.
Smooth,
as though hot wax
had been poured over his face
and left to harden.
Jae-min stepped closer to the body.
No matter how many times he looked,
he could not get used to it.
“This isn’t a burn, right?”
The medical examiner gestured
toward the dead man’s face
with a gloved hand.
“No.”
“Chemical damage?”
“Not that either.”
The examiner brought up
the CT images.
Jae-min narrowed his eyes.
“If you look here,
the surface wasn’t covered
from the outside.”
The examiner enlarged
part of the image.
“The tissues fused
from within.”
“Fused?”
“The eyelid tissue,
the tissue around the nasal cavity,
and the tissue around the mouth
have all abnormally
joined together.”
Jae-min looked at the body again.
“While he was still alive?”
The examiner was silent
for a moment.
“That appears to be the case.”
Jae-min’s eyes sharpened.
“Cause of death?”
“Asphyxiation.”
“Because both his nose
and mouth were sealed?”
“Yes.”
The examiner added quietly,
“He would’ve had
no airway left
to breathe through.”
The autopsy room fell silent.
Without realizing it,
Jae-min drew in
a deep breath.
Then the examiner spoke again.
“There’s one more thing.”
He lifted
Choi Seong-ho’s right arm.
The moment Jae-min saw the wrist,
his gaze stopped.
Circular marks
ran around the entire wrist
at perfectly even intervals.
One.
Two.
Three.
Deep indentations,
as though thick beads
had been pressing into the flesh
for a very long time.
“A bracelet?”
“There wasn’t one.”
“Not when the body was found?”
“No.”
Jae-min pointed
to one of the marks.
“For it to leave
a groove this deep,
he’d have had to wear it
for quite a while.”
“That’s what’s strange.”
The examiner looked at the wrist.
“The tissue damage is too deep
to be simple pressure marks.”
Jae-min was about to answer when—
the autopsy room door opened.
“Hyung.”
It was Detective Kim,
his partner.
He was holding
a thick document envelope.
“You need to see this.”
* * *
Inside the envelope
were records of four cases.
First—
three similar unexplained deaths
from across the country
over the past three years.
Different police jurisdictions.
Different locations.
Different occupations.
Different ages.
There seemed to be
no connection between them.
But when Jae-min opened
the autopsy photographs,
his face hardened.
The first.
No face.
The second.
The eyes, nose, and mouth
had vanished beneath the skin.
The third was the same.
And on the right wrist
of every body—
the same circular scars.
Jae-min spoke slowly.
“How did no one connect these?”
Detective Kim pulled over a chair.
“Different jurisdictions.
When they were first found,
they were treated as
severe burns,
chemical injuries,
or some kind of rare disease.”
“Autopsies?”
“One case had a full autopsy.
The others didn’t.
In some cases,
the families pushed
for cremation quickly.”
Detective Kim pulled out
the final file.
The paper had yellowed with age.
“And this one is much older.”
Fourteen years ago.
A small village
below the mountain.
Sinduri.
Victim—
a wild ginseng hunter,
Mr. Park.
Jae-min read the file.
“Temple-stay participant?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“He just went into the mountain.”
Several days later,
Mr. Park was found dead
below a mountain slope.
And the face in the photograph—
was smooth.
No eyes.
No nose.
No mouth.
Jae-min’s hand stopped.
The wrist.
The same circular marks.
“There was one
fourteen years ago too.”
“Yes.”
Detective Kim nodded.
“Five confirmed cases,
including this one.”
Choi Seong-ho.
Three others
from the past three years.
And Mr. Park,
the wild ginseng hunter,
fourteen years ago.
Jae-min placed
all five photographs
side by side.
Different places.
Different times.
No record
that they even knew each other.
And yet—
their faces
and their wrists
were the same.
“What do they have in common?”
Detective Kim shook his head.
“Nothing yet.”
Jae-min stared
at the smooth faces
in the photographs.
Bodies that looked
as though someone had erased
their faces—
and nothing else.
At that moment,
he had no idea
someone else
was already asking
the exact same question.
* * *
Seo Yuna had been following
the same people
for eleven days.
Choi Seong-ho.
His family.
His job.
His card records.
His social media.
His calls
before his death.
Nothing stood out.
Then,
while going through
the last social media post
he had uploaded
one week before he died—
Yuna’s hand stopped.
One photograph.
The entrance gate
of an old mountain temple.
Rainwater clung
to the edge of the roof,
and the mountain
was barely visible
through the mist.
The second photograph.
People in gray practice clothes
stood in front of a Dharma hall.
They looked like
temple-stay participants.
Yuna enlarged the image.
And noticed
something strange.
Not everyone.
Only a few people
had black prayer beads
wrapped around
their right wrists.
Choi Seong-ho
was one of them.
Yuna checked
the location information
under the post.
Nothing.
Almost no hashtags either.
But among the card
and bank records
provided by Choi’s family,
there was one unfamiliar charge.
[Muyeongsa (無影寺) — 300,000 won]
Yuna typed the name
into the search bar.
Muyeongsa (無影寺).
An old Buddhist temple
deep in the mountains.
The homepage
looked completely ordinary.
Children.
Families.
Foreign tourists.
People smiling
with their palms pressed together.
The reviews were good too.
Yuna scrolled down
through the gallery.
Recent photos.
Last year.
Five years ago.
Ten years ago.
And almost at the very bottom—
one old post.
[14 Years Ago — First Group Photo]
Yuna clicked it.
An old photograph
filled the screen.
People in gray practice clothes
stood in neat rows.
Yuna scanned their faces
without thinking.
Then—
her hand stopped.
Back row.
Third from the left.
Yuna leaned closer
to the screen.
“…Dad?”
Seo Dong-ho.
There was no mistake.
Her father,
who had died
when she was sixteen.
The man she had been told
had taken his own life.
Seo Dong-ho,
then a violent crimes detective—
was standing
inside an old group photograph
from Muyeongsa.
For several seconds,
Yuna did nothing.
She looked at the date again.
It was the same year
her father died.
Then—
her phone rang.
No Caller ID.
Yuna stared at the screen,
then answered.
“Hello?”
No reply.
“Hello?”
Static.
Very faintly.
Sssshhh……
And far away—
Dooong……
Yuna’s expression stiffened.
A temple bell.
Deep.
Long.
As though it were ringing
from somewhere
far inside the mountains.
Again.
Dooong……
“Who is this?”
Click.
The call ended.
* * *
A few minutes later,
an email arrived.
No sender information.
No subject.
No message.
Two attachments.
Yuna opened the first image.
Her father’s autopsy photograph
from fourteen years ago.
Her hand began to tremble.
Seo Dong-ho’s right wrist.
Evenly spaced
circular scars.
The same as Choi Seong-ho.
Yuna opened
the second file.
A photograph
of the inside of his left forearm.
There were letters
scratched into the skin
as though carved
with fingernails.
Not once.
Again.
And again.
The skin split.
The wounds overlapped.
Dried blood covered
parts of the letters.
HOLE
Yuna stared at the screen.
“Why…”
What had her father seen
before he died?
And why—
had he carved
the word HOLE
into his own body?
Then her phone rang again.
This time,
it was Han Jae-min.
“Reporter Seo.”
“Yes?”
“Can you come in now?”
His voice was lower than usual.
“Why?”
“We recovered
a home camera
from Yoon Mi-jeong’s apartment.”
Yuna’s gaze sharpened.
Yoon Mi-jeong.
One of the three similar deaths
from the past three years.
And—
like Choi Seong-ho,
she had been found
without a face.
Jae-min continued.
“There’s footage
from three days
before she died.”
* * *
Police video analysis room.
The lights were off.
Only the glow
from the monitors
faintly lit
the faces of three people.
Jae-min.
Detective Kim.
And Yuna.
The date appeared
in the lower-right corner.
Three days before death.
In the footage,
Yoon Mi-jeong
stood in her living room.
Alone.
In front of a mirror.
At first,
she did not move.
For several minutes,
she simply stared
at her own face.
Detective Kim said,
“This is where it starts.”
Yoon Mi-jeong
slowly raised her hand.
Her right thumb.
And—
pressed it
against her eyelid.
Hard.
Yuna frowned.
Static crackled
through the recording.
Yoon Mi-jeong’s lips moved.
Jae-min said,
“Turn it up.”
Detective Kim
raised the volume.
A voice emerged
through the static.
Very faint.
“…Why…”
Static.
“…are they still there…”
Yoon Mi-jeong
lowered her hand.
This time,
she grabbed her nose
with both hands.
And twisted.
Crack.
A short,
dry sound.
Yuna flinched.
Blood ran
from Yoon Mi-jeong’s nose.
But she did not stop.
She rubbed the blood
across her entire face
with both palms.
Eyes.
Nose.
Mouth.
Touching them one by one.
As if checking.
No—
as if trying
to make them disappear.
Detective Kim
paused the video.
“Again.”
Rewind.
Play.
Yoon Mi-jeong
was crying
as she stared
at herself in the mirror.
“…Why won’t they disappear…”
The video ended.
No one spoke immediately.
Yuna finally managed,
“She did it to herself…”
“Yes.”
Jae-min answered.
“It looks like she was trying
to get rid of
her eyes, nose, and mouth.”
“But three days later…”
Detective Kim brought up
the autopsy photograph.
Yoon Mi-jeong’s face.
The broken nose
from the footage.
The torn skin.
Even those injuries
were barely recognizable.
Her eyes.
Her nose.
Her mouth—
had completely fused
beneath the skin.
Yuna whispered,
“She didn’t do that.”
Jae-min nodded.
“At least not from
what we saw in that footage.”
Yuna thought of
her father’s photograph.
HOLE.
Yoon Mi-jeong had tried
to erase the openings
in her own face.
Why?
What had frightened her
that badly?
* * *
Detective Kim put down
the files.
“But there’s something else
that bothers me.”
“What?”
“If these cases are this bizarre,
why is almost none of this
public knowledge?”
Jae-min leaned back
in his chair.
“In some cases,
they probably misread
the condition of the body.”
“Even with faces like that?”
“After death,
skin discoloration and dehydration
can make severe damage
look like burns
or chemical injuries.”
Yuna continued,
“Most of the victims
also lived alone
or were estranged
from their families.”
Detective Kim looked at her.
“You mean their families
didn’t properly identify
the bodies?”
“In cases where
the body was badly disfigured,
some families chose cremation
almost immediately.
And unless they went as far as
CT scans or a detailed autopsy,
they might never have known
the tissues had fused
from the inside.”
Detective Kim pulled out
another document.
The initial report
from Choi Seong-ho’s case.
One line had been highlighted.
Confirmed stay at Muyeongsa
prior to death.
Then—
the final report.
That line was gone.
In its place:
[Possible sudden death caused
by unidentified pathogen —
preliminary inquiry closed]
Detective Kim said,
“The initial report
mentions Muyeongsa.
The final one doesn’t.”
Yuna asked,
“Who removed it?”
Jae-min shook his head.
“Don’t know yet.”
“Could someone
have covered it up?”
“We can’t conclude that yet.”
Jae-min closed the file.
“Could be someone
inside the police department.
Could be the hospital.
Could just be something
that got dropped
during the investigation.”
Yuna looked again
at Choi Seong-ho’s
social media photograph.
Gray practice clothes.
Black prayer beads.
Muyeongsa.
And her father.
Everything pointed
to the same place.
“Shouldn’t we go there ourselves?”
Yuna asked.
Jae-min answered immediately.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Let’s not go in yet.”
“Then what?”
Jae-min looked at
the group photograph
from fourteen years ago.
“First,
we find someone
who made it back alive.”
Detective Kim asked,
“The participants
from fourteen years ago?”
“Check all of them.”
Jae-min tapped the photograph.
“Not the dead ones.”
He paused.
“The living ones.”
* * *
That night,
Yuna returned
to the Muyeongsa website.
At the top of the main page
was a small banner
she had not seen before.
[Special Six-Night,
Seven-Day Practice Retreat —
Now Recruiting]
Yuna clicked it.
It looked different
from the ordinary
temple-stay pages.
Almost no photographs.
Very little explanation.
A time to step away
from the complexity
of the world
and empty yourself.
Through six nights
and seven days
of intensive practice,
lay down
the burdens of the mind.
Number of participants.
12.
Current applicants.
7 / 12
Yuna stared at the screen.
A few seconds later—
the number changed.
8 / 12
Her eyes narrowed.
Again.
9 / 12
And not long after—
10 / 12
Two spots left.
At the bottom of the page
was an application button.
APPLY
Yuna’s cursor
stopped over it.
But she did not click.
Jae-min’s words
came back to her.
Find someone
who made it back alive first.
Yuna reopened
the group photograph
from fourteen years ago.
And looked
at the faces one by one.
One of them—
was still alive.
And that person
might know.
What happened
at Muyeongsa.
Why black prayer beads
appeared on certain wrists.
Why the dead
lost their faces.
And—
why the last word
her father left behind
was
HOLE.
Yuna closed the laptop.
Before entering Muyeongsa—
she had to find
someone who had already
made it back out alive.
