Let me tell you something that happened in Jeju.
You know Route 5.16 — the road that cuts from Jeju City over to Seogwipo, running straight across the flank of Hallasan. In daylight it's almost beautiful, cedar trees standing tall on both sides in long, dense rows. But there's a strange story that goes around about that road. I heard it from someone. Listen.
I know someone who lives in Jeju. About five years ago, around eleven at night, she finished up some work in Seogwipo and headed up Route 5.16 to get home. She'd driven it plenty of times before, so she wasn't particularly on edge. But that night the fog had settled in thick. Her headlights reached only so far — a pale grey smear — and beyond that, nothing but black.
Partway up, there's a stretch where the road curves long and slow. She eased off the accelerator there, and that's when she felt the temperature inside the car drop sharply. The heater was running, but something cold slid in against the back of her neck — sudden and certain. She thought maybe she'd knocked the air conditioning by accident and glanced at the dashboard. She hadn't.
When she looked back up at the road, there was a figure walking along the right-hand shoulder.
A man in white. She could only see his back. Something was wrong with the way he moved — not fast, not slow, but stuttering somehow, like a film skipping frames. The car was drawing closer and he didn't turn around, didn't step aside, just kept walking. She pressed the horn once.
He stopped.
Then, very slowly, he turned his head toward the car.
His face — she couldn't see it. The headlights were shining directly at him, but where his face should have been there was only darkness. An outline with nothing inside. A shape with no depth.
She said she nearly stopped the car, like something was pulling her to. Then something snapped her back and she floored the accelerator instead. When she checked the mirror, there was nothing there. Only fog.
It's not certain, but there are stories about what happened when that road was first built — that the construction was brutal, that men were brought in with no names and no papers, and that some of them never went home when the work was done. Where they went, no one can say exactly.
So who the man in white was — she doesn't know. I don't know either.
What she does know is that she hasn't driven Route 5.16 at night since. Not once. When I asked her why, she went quiet for a moment, and then she said:
It wasn't the missing face that frightened her. It was that when he turned — it looked like he recognized her.
