Part 8. O Soul, O Soul, O Soul (3)
RUSHHHHH!
The bamboo tube shook and something surged up out of it.
The vibration carried through his hands, and yet there was nothing at all to be seen.
Holding even his breath, Kang Hyeong-seok watched the tube pour out what could not be seen.
'It is being released.'
The Crown Prince Ghost caged in this tube, the girl's soul, the spirit of a child murdered by her mother.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
Kang Hyeong-seok shook the bells and opened his mouth wide.
"With my whole heart I take refuge and bow to the ever-abiding Three Jewels of the dharma realm of the ten directions. Namo Ksitigarbha King Bodhisattva Mahasattva."
It is said that the one who guides a Crown Prince Ghost freed from a Bane Charm is Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva.
"The Bodhisattva of great compassion and great vow, of great holiness and great mercy, is furnished with every subtle merit, is the place from which the great treasure of great liberation arises, is the clear bright eye of the bodhisattvas, and is the guide who leads to nirvana."
Reciting the scripture in praise of that bodhisattva, Kang Hyeong-seok prayed that the girl's soul, bound up in the Bane Charm, would be released entirely.
'This is a spirit murdered by her mother.'
Wrap her in the hem of your robe.
Wipe the girl's tears.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
Shaking the bells, he carried the scripture on until the bamboo tube grew still.
He did so for a long while.
At last, everything having left it, the tube went quiet.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked inside and let it fall limply from his hand.
CLUNK.
The bamboo tube struck the ground with a clear sound.
There was nothing inside it.
Neither the girl's severed arm, nor her soul, nor her spirit. Not one thing remained.
***
BZZZZZZZ!
Sunlight came in through the motel window and stabbed at his eyes.
"Nnngh."
Kang Hyeong-seok groaned, pushed himself up, dragged over the phone plugged into its charger, and checked the caller.
Ha Jang-seo.
With the sleep gone from his face in an instant, he sat up on the bed and pressed answer.
"Yes, sir! Has something happened?"
(L-listen, Assistant Manager Kang.)
"Yes, go ahead."
There had been no greeting, and he had heard only the first words.
Even so, Kang Hyeong-seok could tell that nothing worrying had happened.
Ha Jang-seo's voice was urgent, but there was no negative feeling in it.
(That hike we were going to do today. Let's put it off!)
It was an abrupt cancellation, but Kang Hyeong-seok raised the corner of his mouth without a sound.
Because he thought he knew what had happened to the man.
"Has something come up?"
Even so, he asked while feigning complete ignorance.
(I, I think I need to go to the hospital. I woke up and all the blotches on my body are gone!)
Just as he had thought.
Having expected all of it, Kang Hyeong-seok kept his smile.
The Bane Charm was gone.
He had removed it.
A Bane Charm sickens anyone who comes near merely by existing, so with it gone Ha Jang-seo's unexplained illness had no choice but to vanish as well.
"Really? That's wonderful. That's truly wonderful."
(It's....... No, how on earth did this happen.)
Ha Jang-seo's voice was thick, like a man meeting a miracle he had prayed hard for.
(My wife is beside herself. She was so startled. The woman doesn't flinch at a wild boar and she's turned inside out over this, hahaha.)
"Your heart must have suffered a great deal all this time."
(Oh my. Really. Hah.)
Ha Jang-seo, who had worried so long, could not go on.
"Sir, get to a hospital first. And be sure to let me know the results."
(Yes, yes. I'll do that. I think it'll be good news. My body feels so light.)
"I'm glad. Truly. And I hope they pronounce you fully cured!"
(That would be the best of it! And even short of cured, at this level the farming is no trouble at all!)
"Really?"
(Of course. And if they say I'm cured, I'll take back every word about giving up farming and plant garlic for a thousand years and ten thousand more, so come down again next year!)
Kang Hyeong-seok let out a silent breath with a relieved face.
Then, hearing Ha Jang-seo's wife shouting "Hurry up and get ready!" in the distance, he spoke.
"Good! Then get yourself to the hospital!"
(Yes, yes!)
When the call ended, Kang Hyeong-seok set the hand holding the phone on his knee.
The smile was still there, but his face was full of thought.
There was a great deal to think about.
Recalling the woman who had murdered the girl, and the Bane Charm, he let the corners of his mouth fall.
But soon he thought of Ha Jang-seo's health and of the girl freed from the charm, and let out a large breath.
"Think only about the good things."
Rising from the bed as lightly as his eased heart, he got ready to leave the motel.
He washed in hot water, changed into the clothes he had brought, and sent Namgung Min-a a text.
BZZZZ!
At the call that came straight back, Kang Hyeong-seok startled and pressed answer.
"Are you up?"
(Yes, sir.)
Namgung Min-a's voice was low.
Kang Hyeong-seok did not know that the girl who had suffered the Bane Charm had been her friend.
So he felt only puzzlement as he went on.
"Come out when you're ready. The hike is cancelled and we're heading back to the office."
(Yes. I'll be right out.)
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at his phone strangely and ended the call.
Then, after a simple breakfast with her at a rice-and-soup place nearby, they got into the car.
Namgung Min-a stayed quiet until he had set the navigation, and spoke as they were leaving Danyang.
"I had a dream last night."
"Your face has been bad since morning. Was it a nightmare?"
"No."
Namgung Min-a smiled bitterly and shook her head.
"You know the friend I told you about yesterday."
"Ah, the one you did Bunsinsaba with."
"She was in the dream."
"Was she?"
"Yes."
The flow of the conversation cut off and an awkward air held in the car for a moment.
Then Namgung Min-a drew a deep breath, as though she had settled her thoughts and her heart.
"The funny thing is, even in the dream she wanted to do Bunsinsaba with me."
"Ha."
It seemed such an absurd dream that Kang Hyeong-seok laughed without meaning to.
"You must miss her a lot. Try meeting her on your next holiday."
"No. I can't meet her anymore."
"Isn't it easy to find people through social media these days?"
Namgung Min-a smiled bitterly and shook her head.
"I'm going to be satisfied with having met her in the dream."
The way she looked told him a great deal, so Kang Hyeong-seok closed his mouth.
Then he drew a deep breath through his nose and spoke.
"What did you say your friend's name was?"
"Yun Bo-mi."
Kang Hyeong-seok looked ahead with troubled eyes as he drove.
'So that was it.'
The reason her face had been bad.
The girl who suffered the Bane Charm and Namgung Min-a had been friends.
'Is this your will too?'
He wondered whether his guardian god had sent him and Namgung Min-a here to finish what had to be finished.
"Are you all right?"
Namgung Min-a sent a startled look at the man who seemed to have read her mind.
Then, her eyes low, she raised the corners of her mouth against them.
"What would there be to be not all right about?"
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at Danyang receding in the rearview mirror and spoke in a quiet voice.
"Leave it as a memory."
"I think that's right."
"You said you did Bunsinsaba in the dream. Did you ask it anything?"
Namgung Min-a blinked a few times and turned her head to the window as she answered.
"She asked for me whether I'd be happy."
"Did the answer come out well?"
Perhaps she had wanted to hide her expression.
But her face was reflected in the car window, so he could see it.
"Yes. She said my friend was the gift."
Kang Hyeong-seok pretended not to have seen and turned his eyes forward.
It was not only the girl's soul and Ha Jang-seo that had been brought to an end.
Namgung Min-a's memory had been brought to an end as well.
"You must be tired. Get some sleep. I'll wake you when we arrive."
"I'm sorry, sir."
Namgung Min-a rested her head against the window.
But she did not sleep; she looked out at the view sliding past, drifting away toward Danyang.
Kang Hyeong-seok knew she was not asleep.
But he said nothing aloud and drove on in silence.
It seemed the better thing to do just now.
***
DRIP, DRIP, DRIP.
Murky water fell from the ceiling at a regular interval, like an hourglass.
It was daytime, and yet the surroundings were dark.
In a deep cave there was no helping it.
SSST, FWOOOOSH!
The man struck a match and lit a candle whose wax had melted down into an ugly shape.
He lit them one by one with a practiced, careful bearing.
As more of the candles took, the space around him grew bright with red light.
A shrine, ritual implements, flags, a bowl holding blood.
Before them the man in black clothes let his long hair hang and raised his head toward the wall.
A single crow hung there like a mounted specimen, rotting.
"Miyuldu agade, miyuldu agasa, miyuldu parani."
Reciting the incantation, he watched the maggot-swarming crow with eyes strained to bursting.
"Miyuldu sarana, miyuldu jutana, miyuldu witari."
At the incantation that bars the approach of foul things, the maggots eating the crow dropped away and squirmed off the dais as though fleeing.
"Haaaah."
The man let out a breath drawn from somewhere deep and moved his white, dry lips without sound.
Turning through the Great Void, at the first calling of the blade.
Descending thus and so, black invades and black floats.
Wandering the five directions, what remains of a single passage.
Heaven, earth, and the waste of men; peace shall surely be written.
The man was a shaman.
Though he recited the incantations of Daoism and Esoteric Buddhism, he shook shaman's bells and carried a Spirit General Blade; he was a shaman.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
As if to prove himself a shaman, he shook the belled cord wound between his fingers and made it sound.
"One who holds what must not be held throws his arms wide, and one who made the wrong choice shelters him."
The man looked at the crow on the wall and murmured in a voice as low as the cave.
"To set the wrong right, though one's life burn out and wither, that is the true road."
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
When the man rang the bells, dark red blood ran from the crow's beak and eyes and streamed down the wall.
When the stain, spreading like a shadow, reached the dais, the candle flames burned more violently and lit the space hard.
"This lies with heaven, and it is the law of earth. To affirm the negative and acknowledge the affirmative: acknowledgment is heaven's mandate, and heaven's mandate is acknowledgment."
The man's voice ringing through the cave was calm.
But the candles danced as though a typhoon were blowing through them, and the shadows flapped soundlessly with them.
RUSTLE.
The man took a paper from inside his robes and held it to a candle.
On the thin paper used for writing talismans, someone's Four Pillars and Eight Characters and their name were written in Chinese characters.
FWOOOOSH!
Burning it in the flame as though offering it to a god, the man spoke.
"Mantanina, damani, samanima, hanira, moganiorani, motatata, jaechapidumail."
The man drew parts of animals from inside his robes.
A crow's feather, a rat's tail, a snake's head.
When he set the dried things one by one over the flames, the wax collapsed and the fire caught them.
Working the sorcery with a reverent heart, the man brought his hands together and bowed his head three times.
Then, last of all, he took a bottle from his robes and opened it.
He drew out a thread twisted from human hair and tiger fur, and burned that in the flame as well.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
The man shook the shaman's bells, pressed his palms together, and bowed deeply.
At the same moment a wind came and put out the candles one by one.
The man's shape seemed to dissolve into the darkness swallowing the space, and a vicious fishy stench spread through it.
PFFT!
The last candle went out and the cave was wrapped in perfect darkness.
And the sound of a tiger's low growl rang briefly through the cave, and was gone.