Tucked within one of Daegu's oldest neighborhoods, the back alley of Chilseong-dong harbors a secret that has gone unspoken for years. By day, the alley appears unremarkable — just another forgotten passage between aging walls. But when night falls, even the most indifferent passersby find reasons to take a different route. They say the spirit of a woman named Lee Seon-hui still wanders here.
Lee Seon-hui met her end in the late 1980s, in a small inn somewhere along Chilseong-dong. The man who had promised to marry her betrayed her instead — locked her inside that room and fled without looking back. She died in anguish, her tears still wet on her face. From that night forward, her spirit has never left the alley, and her hunger for vengeance has never quieted.
As the hours grow late, a cold that has nothing to do with the weather settles over the lane. Those who pass through feel it crawl up their spines, feel the creeping certainty that something is following just behind their heels. Men walking alone are especially susceptible. They hear it first — a soft, broken sobbing — and then, sliding in beneath it, a low and hollow laugh. When they spin around, there is nothing there. Nothing at all.
Those who have lingered long enough speak of a silhouette standing at the far end of the alley. A woman with long hair hanging loose, dressed in the white mourning clothes of the dead. Her eyes, they say, hold something unbearable — grief and fury wound so tightly together they can no longer be told apart. More than a few who have seen her returned home only to spend the following days burning with fever, their nights torn apart by dreams they refuse to describe.
Urban redevelopment has been steadily erasing Chilseong-dong's back alleys, block by block. Yet Lee Seon-hui, it seems, has not moved on. Her resentment does not diminish with the years. If anything, it waits — patient and cold as the alley itself — as though she means to collect a debt that was never paid. Everyone who passes through carries something of her away with them. A chill. A memory. A fear they cannot quite name.
