This is a story from back when I was an expat working in Thailand.
Over ten years ago, I was dispatched from Japan to Bangkok as an expat.
At my company, serving as a branch manager in Asia before returning to corporate headquarters was the fast-track elite career path.
Thailand really is a land of desire.
Especially when it comes to women and the nightlife industry—there were plenty of establishments catering to Japanese men,
and since prices were low, we frequented them often for both entertaining clients and personal recreation.
Pretty much all the single guys and men living away from their families had local girlfriends,
and I ended up getting myself a local girlfriend, too.
A lot of Thai women love taking care of their partners,
and their personalities go well with Japanese men,
so even though I had never lived with anyone before, I smoothly settled into a semi-cohabitation setup with a local girl.
Around my fourth year there, enjoying a fulfilling life both at work and off the clock,
a senior coworker of mine, Mr. A, got into a traffic accident.
In Thailand, there are these things called motorcycle taxis—
basically a motorcycle version of a taxi—
and while riding one, he got caught in a crash and fractured his left ankle.
Motorcycle taxi accidents are fairly common, but Mr. A was very good-looking and popular among the local staff, so it became a hot topic in the office.
A few days later, Mr. A came to work on crutches, but he seemed surprisingly upbeat, which relieved me.
However, another accident happened the very next week.
On his way home, Mr. A tripped and fell, and directly ahead of him,
a piece of rebar from construction debris impaled his thigh.
Fortunately, it didn't pierce too deeply, so it didn't turn life-threatening,
but having injured both legs, Mr. A was bound to a wheelchair for a while.
The Thai staff around us persistently urged him to go to a temple.
This is a classic Thai thing—whenever bad luck keeps happening,
or when work or love life isn't going well, or whenever people are in trouble or making a big decision, the culture is to head to a temple first.
It isn't a formal ritual like an exorcism in Japan; people go to temples casually and frequently.
In fact, my girlfriend dragged me to a temple at least once a month.
As expats, we made it a rule to go whenever the local staff invited us.
They held temples in high regard, and embracing their culture helped build smoother working relationships.
So the following week, Mr. A, several Thai staff members, and I set off for a temple.
Since Mr. A was in a wheelchair, I drove to pick him up in the morning.
When I rang the doorbell, Mr. A came out,
and to my shock, his left hand was wrapped in bandages.
He explained that he accidentally cut himself deeply while cooking yesterday
and had to get stitches at the emergency room.
I chuckled and said,
"Are you seriously cursed or something, Mr. A?"
making light of it,
and Mr. A replied,
"Shut up, haha,"
showing almost no concern.
However,
when we met up with the Thai staff at the temple
and told them what had happened to him yesterday,
every single Thai employee turned pale.
Usually, you just offer prayers to the principal deity,
burn some incense, and call it a day,
but that day, the Thai staff had apparently booked an appointment for a monk to examine Mr. A.
The monk chanted scriptures and examined my senior coworker.
Embarrassingly enough, neither Mr. A nor I spoke more than basic Thai, so we were completely clueless
and could only wait blankly until the staff translated for us.
I remember the staff having extremely solemn, serious expressions, though.
When the monk finished talking, he scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to the staff.
After leaving the temple, over lunch, we had everyone explain what the monk had said.
The breakdown was as follows:
Mr. A is currently suffering under a curse.
It cannot be exorcised at this temple.
It can only be broken at a specific location recommended by the monk.
The curse is known as a Khmer curse.
Apparently, Khmer refers to an ethnic group in Cambodia,
and the sorcery practiced by the Khmer people is said to be extremely famous and powerful across Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar.
To be honest,
I was like, "Huh? What is that supposed to mean?"
But the Thai staff had dead serious looks, insistently discussing going to the recommended place and even trying to lock down a date.
When Thais get like this, whether out of pure helpfulness or nosy curiosity, they become extremely proactive.
As for Mr. A,
he had no clue why anyone would curse him, treating it like someone else's problem and, like me, not believing a word of it,
but perhaps intrigued by the words 'Khmer sorcery,'
"Hey, man! Let's go together like a little trip!"
he was weirdly enthusiastic about it,
while I felt hesitant.
The location recommended was a village near the Cambodian border, deep in Surin Province,
and the Thai staff said it would require a one-hour flight followed by a two-to-three-hour drive.
Well, I couldn't just let Mr. A go alone, so I eventually agreed to tag along...
I don't know if the phrase 'strike while the iron is hot' exists in Thailand, but we set the date for next weekend.
On the day of the trip, Mr. A, three other Thai staff members, and I went.
Since Mr. A was covering the airfare and hotel costs, I thought,
"These guys are just taking a vacation anyway,"
taking a relaxed view of things.
Thais switch gears fast, so on the way, we drank, played games, and I ended up enjoying myself.
Our appointment was the next day, so we stayed at a hotel in downtown Surin and hung out late into the night.
Early the next morning, we chartered a taxi and headed for the village.
It seemed like a village quite famous for sorcery; I remember the staff and driver discussing magic-related stuff during the ride.
After driving for two hours along a road that was barely paved and thick with surrounding trees,
the view suddenly opened up,
and we arrived at a cluster of dilapidated brick houses.
Apparently, this was the village.
The moment we stepped out of the car, several children rushed over to us,
asking, "Where are you going? Where are you going?"
When the Thai staff showed them the piece of paper from the monk,
a few kids took us by the hand and guided us to the house.
Just as I was admiring how remarkably polite these kids were,
we arrived at a brick house in about five minutes.
When we thanked the children,
they held out their hands toward us
and started shouting, "Tip! Tip!"
Ah... man, these kids are way too used to tourists.
I hadn't believed it from the start, but now I felt this was definitely just going to be a tourist attraction.
Well, it wasn't much, so I gave the kids a couple dollars worth of tip money,
and when we knocked on the door,
saying, "I've been waiting for you,"
a shirtless old man emerged with a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
Stepping inside, a suffocatingly sweet, overpowering odor hit us,
making me uneasy as I thought,
"Is he smoking weed or something? Is this place actually okay?"
Subordinates or not, here we were just foreigners, so Mr. A and I shrank back, following the Thai staff deeper into the room.
In the back was an area draped in cloth like a tent, crammed with animal bones, burnt ashes, heaps of plants, and plastic bottles—it certainly had the atmosphere down.
Then Mr. A was called forward and prompted to sit right in front of the old man.
It looked like the ritual was starting.
As usual, I barely understood Thai, so it didn't feel much different from being at the temple.
After the old man recited something like a chant, he stuck plant leaves onto Mr. A's head and peeled them off,
and once he finished, he started talking to the Thai staff.
In the middle of it, the old man wrote the name 'BEE' in large English letters on paper and explained something to them.
At that moment, my heart jolted.
Mr. A must have felt the same way because our eyes met.
Because 'BEE' was the name of Mr. A's ex-girlfriend—or someone like that.
When the old man finished his explanation, the Thai staff turned pale and began explaining to us.
Mr. A was afflicted by Khmer sorcery.
He explained that the curses handled in this village roughly fall into two categories:
First, a curse to make someone dependent on you. Second, a curse to destroy someone's body.
While there are many specific variations, these two are the main types.
Mr. A had allegedly been struck by the second category of curse,
and an exceptionally strong variant of it.
It begins with the left leg, moves to the right leg, then the left hand, followed by the right hand,
next the head, and finally the heart—causing bodily ailments in that exact sequence.
Since his injuries had occurred in that exact order, even I started feeling a slight chill.
And the ultimate kicker was this:
The person who cast this curse was a woman named BEE.
The characteristics of the woman named BEE described by the old man matched Mr. A's ex-girlfriend perfectly.
According to the old man, the curse was likely cast in this village or a neighboring one,
by an extremely powerful practitioner.
Breaking the curse would rebound on the caster and the target; if it failed, at minimum, it would cause severe life-disrupting harm to both the old man and Mr. A.
Because of the risk of counter-curses within what might be the same village, he normally did not accept requests to break them.
However,
Classic Thailand—if we paid the fee he quoted, he would perform the ritual.
Though we were stunned by the amount.
The price quoted by the old man was roughly 3 million yen.
A huge sum of money you'd almost never see in a rural village like this.
In front of everyone, Mr. A said,
"I don't know anyone named BEE, and that's way too much money, so I want to go back to Bangkok and think about it,"
saying that,
but it was obvious he had zero intention of doing it.
Back at the hotel, once we were alone,
"That old guy is definitely a scam artist,"
he said.
"But the name and details matched, didn't they?"
When I pointed that out,
"Somebody told him.
I went to those hostess bars all the time, and I was tight with BEE.
Plenty of clients noticed us. It's a scam, a total scam!"
Since she worked at a bar in Bangkok's Japanese district and spoke fluent Japanese, that possibility was indeed very high.
"Besides, Mr. A, you didn't do anything to make someone resent you that much, right?"
When I asked,
"Uhhh... well, yeah,"
he muttered, looking somewhat uncomfortable, but refused to share anything further.
Given the astronomical fee, the Thai staff stopped aggressively pushing the idea,
and about two peaceful weeks went by.
Then, a major crisis occurred.
Mr. A collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage.
An overwhelming chill ran through me,
and when I exchanged glances with the Thai staff who had gone to Surin with us,
they were all trembling in silence, pale as ghosts.
In the end, the brain hemorrhage left Mr. A paralyzed on his left side, and his return to Japan was decided.
When I visited him in the hospital, Mr. A still didn't believe in the curse to the very end,
but he muttered that he didn't want to stay in Thailand anymore.
The paralyzed left side of his face was painful to look at.
After Mr. A returned home, everything was completely peaceful, and I finished my term and returned safely to Japan.
By that time, Mr. A had left the company, and his whereabouts were unknown.
And now, I am heading to Thailand again for the first time in years.
To take revenge on the woman who used me and threw me away.
I've already set up an appointment with BEE,
and I brought along her clothes and hair to boost the effectiveness of the spell.
She probably never imagined that I would place a curse on her from Thailand.
Its effectiveness is already proven.
I hear the landing announcement.
Suvarnabhumi Airport in Thailand comes into view below,
and my excitement has reached its absolute peak.
