Part 4. What Must Not Exist (3)
Shaman's bells are no ordinary object.
A ritual implement that connects god and human.
Something an ordinary person could not easily even lay eyes on.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
Purifying the space with the spreading sound and drawing nearer to his god, Kang Hyeong-seok gave off an air that overwhelmed everything around him.
Shin Jeong-a, flustered by the unfamiliar sight, watched him closely, while the landlord and the agent pressed their lips shut and dropped their eyes.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
It was partly because the violent sound of the bells stabbed fearsomely at their ears, and partly because they knew what he was about to do.
THWACK!
When the claw hammer in his grip bit into the door frame, they shook hard, as though a nail had been driven into their hearts.
SCREEEECH!
A nail gone black came out of the frame.
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE!
Shaking the bells still more fiercely, Kang Hyeong-seok drew out the nails that had sealed the door.
It was around the time the nails scattered on the floor passed twenty.
"The ghosts of the Ten Kings escort him forth. Seventy years of human life has been rare since of old."
Kang Hyeong-seok recited the Gateway Scripture of the Dead and swung the hammer.
THWACK, SCREEEEECH!
"A flower's face at play, a hundred years of a life, with fleeting light and shadow fastened to it."
THWACK, SCREECH!
"Of a hundred condemned souls, thirty are those whose given span ran out,"
THWACK, SCREEEECH!
"and seventy are the untimely, who fall to sudden violent death. The affairs of the world are like floating clouds, and human pleasure like running water."
It was a scripture that comforts the soul of the dead.
A scripture that soothes the soul of the departed spirit murdered in this room.
A scripture that releases the grievance of a departed spirit whose passage the landlord had blocked, fearing it might become a ghost that harmed his tenants.
THWACK, SCREEEECH!
The sound of the nails coming out was as sharp as a dead woman's scream.
The landlord sighed deeply and sank to the floor, and the agent sat beside him and put an arm around his shoulders.
THWACK! SCREEEEECH!
The last nail came free.
Kang Hyeong-seok shook the bells hard and slipped his hand into the gap of the door.
Then he slowly pulled it open.
CREEEEAAAK.
Light from a sun just past noon came in through the window and lit the pitch-dark room.
On the yellowed floor covering there was only pale dust.
But Kang Hyeong-seok, having grasped how the departed spirit had been sealed, looked up rather than down.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
An empty ancestral offering table was fixed to the ceiling.
"Th-they told us to make the ceiling look like a floor......."
Beside the landlord taking rapid deep breaths, the agent poured the words out in a trembling voice.
"That only then could the departed spirit not harm anyone....... So we put that up like that......."
Kang Hyeong-seok stared silently at the ceiling with the offering table fixed to it.
He already knew they had done as the shaman had instructed.
What he was seeing were the images entering his head.
The thing that had happened in this room.
"They were mother and son?"
"Ahhhhh!"
That was after the agent, aghast at his quiet words, buried her face in her hands.
"Gambling and drink turned the son strange, and even so the woman who was his mother went on waiting on him."
His eyes could see it.
What had happened in this room a very long time ago.
The departed spirit before him was telling him.
"Cruel. To do such a thing because she would not give him money for drink."
"Hnnngh! Uhhhhh!"
He said it almost as a mutter, and the agent shook violently as she wept, while the landlord looked up at him with eyes full of terror.
In their eyes Kang Hyeong-seok was a shaman.
A greater shaman than the one who had taught them the secret remedy for caging a ghost.
Kang Hyeong-seok was a shaman with the gift to see clear through even the things they wanted hidden, the things they had never told another soul.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
When Kang Hyeong-seok shook the bells, even the landlord now squeezed both eyes shut.
But closing one's eyes does not make what happened unhappen.
"...How can a person be this cruel."
The landlord and the agent.
And the son who had murdered his mother. The words were meant for all of them.
'M-Mom. Mom?'
The son, who had done it in a fit of rage, regretted it too late.
But what he did was not repentance.
'F-f*ck. F*ck! Wh-why did she have to! Agh, shit!'
The son was afraid.
He feared the punishment coming to him more than he feared having murdered his mother.
So he did what must not be done.
SQUELCH, SQUELCH-SQUELCH-SQUELCH! SQUEEELCH!
It must not look like my doing.
SCHUNK, SQUEEELCH! SQUELCH!
Never. It must not look like my doing.
SQUELCH! SQUEEELCH!
With eyes glistening with madness, the son hacked at his mother.
He mutilated the body as cruelly as he could and even smashed the window glass.
He staged the house to look as though a robber had broken in, and fled.
But he did not know.
His mother's breath had not yet been cut off.
Her eyes gouged out and her face slashed to pieces, she was alive, and she crawled slowly toward the door her son had left open.
Just as it had crawled across the ceiling.
SCRAAAPE, SCRAAAAPE.
She dragged her body along with both arms, crawling, and then her breath stopped.
"I-I'm sorry, Dharma Master."
The landlord, his color gone blue, wrung out his voice through trembling lips.
"I was afraid. I was frightened. A person died that cruelly, and every tenant said they saw a ghost. What was I supposed to do?"
"It was not a vengeful-soul ghost."
At his words the landlord's face went slack.
"...What?"
"I mean it was not a ghost harboring a grudge. It was a departed spirit that wanted only to be sent on."
The departed spirit did not resent the son who had murdered her.
"A mother's heart was that large, I suppose. She resented no one, and you caged her on your own mistaken assumption."
Both the landlord and the agent wore faces of deep shock.
The son was not the only one who had done something unforgivable.
Those two had also done to the departed spirit what must not be done.
"Ah... ahh, oh dear."
The strength went out of the agent's whole body and she collapsed, and the landlord pressed his lips shut and bowed his head.
Kang Hyeong-seok turned his eyes away as though he could not stand the sight of them, and gripped the shaman's bells.
Now that he knew the whole story, one thing remained.
To comfort this departed spirit.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
When the bells rang like thunder, the firmly closed lips of the landlord and the agent trembled, and Kang Hyeong-seok spoke.
"Pitiful. O vengeful soul. Whom will you follow, on whom will you lean?"
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at the departed spirit curled up on the ceiling.
Its shape was as ghastly as the ghosts that had tormented him all his life.
But what it stirred in his chest was different.
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
He knew this spirit's story.
So pity came before fear.
And so Kang Hyeong-seok recited the scripture, praying earnestly that the spirit would pass on safely.
"To be called forth to the far cliffs, is that not a wind-blown soul?"
It was his first time doing this.
But it was peaceful, and somehow familiar.
As though this were his fate.
"The blossoms that fall in the east wind bloom again next spring; the green grass of the prince's fragrant fields is green year upon year; the bright moon of the fifteenth night fills and wanes again."
SCRAAAPE, SCRAAAPE.
As if drawn by the bells and the scripture, the departed spirit came down the wall to the floor. Then it passed Kang Hyeong-seok and came out into the room full of light.
"Gone to the dark dwelling, parted forever beneath heaven."
It looked like someone who had long wanted to stand in the light.
"Riding upon those white clouds, arrived at the realm of the Emperor."
And then the spirit's form slowly faded, as though dissolving into the light.
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
Having confirmed that the spirit bound to this house for so long was freed, he finished the scripture in a low voice.
"Returned to the Paradise Realm, reborn into the human world."
Stillness fell.
Shin Jeong-a was watching him with her lips slightly parted, and the landlord and the agent hung their heads like convicts.
Was the feeling in them guilt?
Or fear of the karma coming to them?
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at them and put the shaman's bells away.
"The departed spirit has gone."
The landlord swallowed dry, and the agent brought her hands together.
"D-Dharma Master, I'm sorry. We only did exactly as the shaman told us."
"Th-that's right. Yes. And as for us, well, in a way aren't we victims too?"
Perhaps it was because the spirit had gone.
The landlord, who had been petrified, went on brazenly even as he floundered.
"A person died horribly. We were trying to protect the tenants. That isn't a crime."
"The hell! Is that something to say?"
Shin Jeong-a raised her voice, narrowing the space between her brows.
The landlord must have known his own remark did not hold up, because he could not even meet her eyes.
"Listen! I let it go earlier, but do you not realize you never told me this was that kind of house?"
"......."
"Why do you think he's here? It's because I saw a ghost!"
"...Well."
"Say something! You have a mouth!"
That was after Shin Jeong-a shouted, as if speaking on Kang Hyeong-seok's behalf.
Kang Hyeong-seok pushed a sigh out between his lips, shook his head, and met the landlord's eyes.
"You have a punishment coming."
The landlord's face hardened at once and terror filled his eyes again.
"...What?"
"For the tenants, you say? No. You caged that spirit because you feared the property value would fall, because you feared bad rumors would spread."
"......."
"You should have asked the shaman for a passage rite. But you did not even do that."
Just keep the ghost from showing itself.
That was what the landlord had asked of the shaman.
"Take that karma without complaint."
At his words the landlord's blanched face went rigid.
And his shoulders slumped.
He could not bring himself even to ask how the misfortune might be avoided.
"I am... sorry."
That was the only thing he could say.
"I am truly sorry."
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at him, pressed his lips shut, and took up his backpack.
"It is not me you should be sorry to."
With a last look at the landlord, head still bowed, and the agent with her arm around his shoulders, he walked to the front door.
Shin Jeong-a hurried after him.
"H-Hyeong-seok."
"Talk things through properly with them."
Kang Hyeong-seok opened the driver's door and faced her.
"I do not know whether you will move out or go on living in that house, but those people will do whatever you want."
Only then would the karma they had to take grow even a little lighter.
Shin Jeong-a worked her lips and then gave a small nod.
There was far too much she wanted to say, and so she could say nothing.
Watching her pass along so many questions with her eyes alone, Kang Hyeong-seok shook his head.
"I will see you at the office, Manager."
So treat me as ordinary too.
And do not look at me as a stranger, the way you are now.
It is easier for me if you treat me simply as a colleague in the same department.
That was the meaning driven firmly into his words.
"...Yes, all right."
Shin Jeong-a said it with a face that understood all of it.
Kang Hyeong-seok conveyed his thanks with his eyes, got into the car, moved the backpack to the passenger seat, and started the engine.
VROOOOM.
As he pulled out of the alley, he looked at Shin Jeong-a in the rearview mirror.
She was still watching him, without having moved a single step from where the car had been.
"Whew."
Kang Hyeong-seok pushed out a sigh and turned the wheel with a face full of thought.
It was his first act of exorcism since the Tiger Ghost.
He could not help thinking a great deal.
But soon he shook his head and cast off the excess of it.
That seemed the only way to be even a little at ease.
***
The rite had ended.
Two musicians packed up, and Cheong-geum, who had assisted with the rite, was rolling the Five-Direction Flags neatly.
There was a sour smell.
It came from the blood mixed with vomit spattered on the floor.
"Thank you. Thank you so very much, Teacher."
The middle-aged woman pressing her palms together before Lee Geum-gyeong was the client of the rite.
"The Ancestral God has gone, so all will be well now. You have suffered greatly in your heart."
The woman bowed her head deeply at Lee Geum-gyeong's consoling.
An Ancestral God had possessed her son.
It was not a good Ancestral God.
Her bright, good-natured son had been half a madman for three years.
"If it were not for you, I... we."
Gripping Lee Geum-gyeong's hand tightly, the woman trembled like an aspen.
There was nothing she had not tried for her son.
She had held rites and had talismans written, and once, on a moonless night, she had gone to the ancestral grave, held a knife in her teeth, and prayed while beating her head against the ground until it bled.
Her gratitude was enormous.
But the reason she trembled like an aspen was that she had something very hard to say.
"I am so sorry to say this, but the money......."
She had come to Lee Geum-gyeong by far too long a road.
She had spilled so much money along the way that she was in no position to pay for the rite now.
She was so ashamed and so sorry that it felt like a kitchen knife lodged in her throat.
CLASP.
As if she understood, Lee Geum-gyeong took the woman's hand in her own rough, warm one.
"Never mind. The Grandmother told me to wipe your tears just this once."
"...Sorry?"
"Never mind the fee. When your son gets his strength back, feed him well. He has been harshly worn down, so it will take no small amount."
The woman looked at Lee Geum-gyeong with wide eyes and then twisted her face in weeping.
Then she collapsed to the floor and gripped Lee Geum-gyeong's hand tightly.
"Thank you. And I am so sorry."
"Your coming to me is a bond in itself, is it not?"
Lee Geum-gyeong patted her and spoke warmly.
"Get up now. A mother must not show weakness in front of her child."
Lee Geum-gyeong soothed the woman for a long time.
She was a shaman.
A person who lives on the boundary between god and human.
What she follows is the god's will, but her eyes must always be turned toward people.
She could not leave a desperate person be, and if she did, her guardian god would not sit still for it.
"Teacher! We're all packed up."
At Cheong-geum's words, Lee Geum-gyeong embraced the woman and stroked her back.
"I will be going. Live well."
"Ngh, hnk!"
Lee Geum-gyeong wiped the tears of the weeping woman and got into the van with Cheong-geum.
One of the musicians drove, and in the back sat a box with the ritual implements neatly packed.
"Will it be all right?"
"You mean not taking the fee for the rite?"
Lee Geum-gyeong, seeing straight through what Cheong-geum worried about, smiled faintly and shook her head.
"Karma turns and turns and comes back around. It will be repaid someday as something good, so what is there to worry about?"
Repayment is not only ever monetary.
Good fortune, good people, mended relationships.
Things money cannot buy sometimes follow as repayment.
And that repayment sometimes goes not to oneself but to the people around one.
Lee Geum-gyeong counted Kang Hyeong-seok, who was like a son to her, receiving a god and obtaining shaman's bells that were a divine object, as repayment come back to her.
Cheong-geum smiled, drawing up the corners of her mouth, and spoke.
"Will the young master come to live as you do, Teacher?"
"He will do better than I. He is a child who will wipe the tears of a thousand and receive the respect of ten thousand."
Weariness pressed in, and Lee Geum-gyeong folded her arms and closed her eyes.
"But if someday he asks to borrow a hand, you lend him your strength."
"I will."
"You rest as well. You must be tired."
Soon Lee Geum-gyeong fell asleep, breathing faintly.
Cheong-geum reached back for a blanket and draped it over her.