Part 6. Half-Baked Shamans Will Fear the Young Master (4)
GRIP!
With the male shaman shaking violently in front of them, Kang Hyeong-seok held Shin Jeong-a more firmly still.
"I-I'm sorry! I'm truly sorry!"
There is a saying that a person only comes to their senses after a beating.
Kang Hyeong-seok did not like the saying, but this wretched shaman was proving it with his whole body.
"Haah! Haah!"
Thanks to it Shin Jeong-a's anger had eased enough that she only breathed hard rather than lunging.
"Hold it in. You hit him enough. Hold it in."
When Kang Hyeong-seok said it soothingly, Shin Jeong-a let more of the tension out of her body and clenched her teeth.
Even so, he could not relax.
There was venom in her eyes; it would not be strange for her to go off at any moment.
"That's it? Nothing more to say?"
To mediate the situation, Kang Hyeong-seok threw a line at the man as well.
At that, like someone finding a Buddha in hell, the shaman sent him a grateful look and pressed his forehead flat to the floor.
"I-I made a terrible mistake. No, I committed a sin. I should never have done that to a client......."
Kang Hyeong-seok now turned his eyes to Shin Jeong-a.
"...Fine. Fine."
Meeting his eyes, she said it in a low voice and swept back her disordered hair.
Only then did Kang Hyeong-seok let go of her.
"How many talismans have you written so far?"
At the question the man's head shot up.
"T-two!"
Perhaps because of the beating from Shin Jeong-a, he answered obediently.
"Two?"
He raised his head slightly, saw Kang Hyeong-seok's face, and hurried on.
"The first one probably had no effect. The person who took it never came back. And of course I never got to do a rite!"
"What did you write them with?"
"Mirror-grade cinnabar! I didn't mix anything else in."
"And what's that?"
Kang Hyeong-seok answered Shin Jeong-a, who had cut into the conversation.
"The mineral powder used for writing talismans."
"Mineral? Is that something bad?"
"It's a good thing. Which is the problem."
Kang Hyeong-seok clicked his tongue in vexation.
Mirror-grade cinnabar is obscenely expensive.
Having used it, the effect was bound to be strong, though the fact that nothing else had been mixed in was at least some comfort.
If the bastard had put in animal blood or the ash of burned hair, this would have grown much larger.
'If he had... it would have gone the way of the dream.'
The thing his guardian god had shown him in the dream.
Shin Jeong-a going over that railing might have become real.
"What?"
Their eyes met and Shin Jeong-a bent one brow, but Kang Hyeong-seok only shook his head.
He had felt it before, but Shin Jeong-a was the sort who took influence easily.
Enough that it was a relief this was ending here.
"Um, so, did the talisman work?"
"What......?"
Seeing the look in Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes, the man drew his neck in.
That he could still be curious whether his own talisman had worked was beyond belief.
What on earth was to be done with this bastard?
As Kang Hyeong-seok deliberated, Shin Jeong-a asked the same thing.
"What are you going to do?"
With her eyes and the man's both on him, Kang Hyeong-seok tilted his head to one side.
"Something has to be done. He did what a shamanic practitioner must never do."
"Is there anything we can do legally......?"
Kang Hyeong-seok thought for a moment and clicked his tongue softly.
"It would not be easy."
"So we just let it go?"
Shin Jeong-a narrowed the space between her brows in frustration.
"It is hard to prove. This is not a matter for the law."
Kang Hyeong-seok looked down at the man, who was watching him far too closely, and went on.
"I will speak to a shaman I know."
"Wait, that's a bit too......."
"She will handle it better than you think."
He did not give Lee Geum-gyeong's name, since the man was listening.
But he could speak of her standing.
"She is someone this world calls Teacher. She is more than capable of making this public, and she can hold this man's spirit mother to account as well."
A half-baked shaman is still someone with a foot in the shamanic world.
And the fake fears the real.
If Lee Geum-gyeong, high in name even among the real, learned of this, the man and his spirit mother would have to prepare to leave the trade.
It was then.
The man's color went blue and he shook noticeably.
"J-just once, please forgive me."
He looked up at Kang Hyeong-seok as though the man held his life in his hands.
"I-I came out of an academy, so I don't even have a spirit mother. So please, please forgive me just this once. I'll never do anything foul again."
"What? Out of an academy?"
"Yes!"
While Shin Jeong-a wore a face that said, there are shaman academies?, Kang Hyeong-seok pushed a hot breath out between his teeth.
'So that was it.'
Now it all lined up.
Why a man who clearly had some talent was serving a thing like a false spirit.
Why someone who could have amounted to something had acted so carelessly, like a man with no spirit mother.
"If you came out of an academy you should have been more careful! You should have tried harder to do it right, you brat!"
"I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry!"
Kang Hyeong-seok covered his aching forehead with his palm.
There were a great many shamans these days.
Even people who never needed to take a divine descent were becoming practitioners.
He had heard the system had gone so far as to produce actual academies, and he had no intention of condemning that in itself.
One who takes the divine descent is called a god-descended shaman.
One who inherits the trade is called a hereditary shaman.
One who is taught is called a learned shaman.
Of these, there was room to read the academies as a modernized form of the learned shaman.
'Even so. If they take money for it, they should have made sure this sort of thing could not happen.'
"Sheesh. F*ck."
Kang Hyeong-seok let out a sigh and a curse and glared at the man with the space between his brows narrowed.
The man shook as if he had caught the eye of a death messenger, and Shin Jeong-a clicked her tongue with a troubled face.
She did not fully understand the situation, but seeing him shake like this she seemed to find him pitiable.
"If the academy hears of it I'll be blacklisted. And the penalty fees would be enormous."
Forehead pressed to the ground, the man spoke almost sobbing and put his hands together in supplication.
"I'll truly never do anything like this again. So please, just this once, be generous. Teacher, I beg you like this."
It is not easy for a person to be this desperate.
Kang Hyeong-seok bit his lower lip, then felt her gaze and looked at Shin Jeong-a.
Is letting him off the right thing here?
She was looking at him with eyes that said as much.
"I'll make restitution. I'll apologize for all of it and make restitution."
"Restitution?"
When Shin Jeong-a said it dubiously, the man hurried on.
"The reading fees. All the fees I've taken so far, plus something on top as an apology."
The man answered while looking at Kang Hyeong-seok.
The desperation of a man going this far to be let off came across almost excessively.
"What would you like to do?"
Kang Hyeong-seok asked it in a voice that had reached its own decision, and Shin Jeong-a hesitated before asking back in a low voice.
"If he's making restitution, then....... But is it all right to take it?"
"Because of the thing about not taking money a shaman gives you?"
Shin Jeong-a nodded awkwardly.
She had heard somewhere that taking money from a shaman got you killed, or your good fortune taken.
"N-no! Not at all! Absolutely not!"
Kang Hyeong-seok watched the man wave his hands in alarm, then turned his eyes to the bag under his arm.
The shaman's bells that warned him of danger were silent.
"If you mean to end it with restitution, you may."
If the man tried anything foul, the shaman's bells would ring.
But this looked neither like the situation nor like the man for it.
"Haah! All right. Let's do that."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm fine with it, I gue—"
"Thank you!"
Cutting her off, the man scrambled to his feet.
He wobbled from having been prostrate so long, but he ran into the back room.
CLATTER-BANG, CLACK-CLACK!
The racket pouring out of the back room filled the officetel.
With noise like that, the man could not hear Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Jeong-a talking.
"I'm not sure it's right to end it here."
"You're worried he'll pull something on someone else?"
"Well, it got resolved because you were there. Other people don't have that."
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at her as she said something so decent of her, and pulled up the corners of his mouth. Then he looked at the place where the false spirit had fled and shook his head.
"You do not have to worry about that. He will not be able to play at being a shaman for a good while."
Perhaps forever.
"Huh? Why? Don't tell me you did something."
"No. The false spirit ran off. To work as a male shaman again he will have to grind down body and mind and receive a proper god."
CLATTER-BANG!
The man went on rummaging in the back room, with no idea he was being discussed.
"Are you sure? Couldn't it come back?"
"It is not called a false spirit for nothing. A Child God sometimes flees a person of strong energy or a strong god, but it comes back quickly. A false spirit is different."
"Is... that so?"
"Yes."
That shaman could not harm a person now even if he wanted to.
He could not write a foul talisman, could not beguile anyone with a three-inch tongue, could not hold a rite.
Reading spirits was out of the question.
To become a male shaman again he would have to suffer bitterly, and if he did become one that way, all of that suffering would be repaid.
"He has talent. He will pave his own road well enough."
It was then.
The man came back with a thick white envelope.
"I put it all in here."
Today this shaman watched Kang Hyeong-seok's face a great deal.
The one he was handing the money to and speaking to was Shin Jeong-a, but his eyes were on Kang Hyeong-seok the whole time.
They were not eyes full of venom, either.
He dropped them the instant their gazes met; they were the eyes of a man afraid, and repentant.
"Is the amount right?"
"It seems so?"
"I put in extra!"
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at him and spoke.
"Take care from now on, and work to become a good male shaman."
"Sorry? Yes, yes."
The man would not know.
How much help the words Kang Hyeong-seok left him would be.
If he remembered them when living grew hard, he would become a great figure; if not, he would end shabbily.
"Let's go."
Kang Hyeong-seok turned with Shin Jeong-a.
The two of them left the shrine house, and the moment they got into the elevator they let out a large breath, as if by agreement.
There was fatigue in it, and the sense that this was entirely over.
HMMMMM.
So the descending elevator felt nothing like the one that had brought them up.
"Are you satisfied?"
"Hm?"
Shin Jeong-a, holding the envelope the way a sea otter holds a clam, met his eyes.
"It's over. I'm asking whether you're satisfied."
"Uh, yes. I should be."
The answer was ambiguous.
She was probably still reeling.
She had been tormented by ghosts twice running.
And on top of that she had been betrayed by a shrine house she had gone to often. It would be hard to keep one's mind entirely in place.
Stepping out of the elevator into the underground lot, Kang Hyeong-seok tossed out some small talk.
"You must have trained in combat sports. Your form was proper."
"That, ah, my parents made me learn it for self-defense, ages ago."
"Muay Thai?"
"No. Mixed martial arts."
So they had fitted steel teeth to a savage tiger.
Kang Hyeong-seok got into the car, wondering why her parents had done that.
"Get in. I'll drive you back."
Shin Jeong-a hesitated and then got into the passenger seat.
Kang Hyeong-seok started the engine, and Shin Jeong-a, who had been blankly clutching the envelope, yanked the contents out.
"What are you doing?"
"Hold on."
She riffled through the stack of bills, split it in half, and held out one half.
"What's this?"
"Your share."
"Sorry?"
"Take it. You're always going through trouble because of me."
Watching him flounder, Shin Jeong-a drew up the corners of her mouth.
"Put it away. It's because I'm grateful."
She said it wearing a smile that was hard to refuse.
When Kang Hyeong-seok still did not reach for it, she pulled open the glove box.
"I'm putting it in here, all right? Make sure you take it later."
"Manager."
"I don't want to hear it. I gave it to you!"
Shin Jeong-a stuffed the far thinner envelope into her pocket, folded her arms, and closed her eyes.
At the sight of her insisting with her whole body that she would hear no more, Kang Hyeong-seok smiled, the corners of his mouth lifting.
"I will accept it with thanks."
Then, with Shin Jeong-a busily pretending to sleep beside him, he drove toward her apartment.