Part 1. Follow the God's Guidance (3)
It was an urgent situation.
Even so, Kang Hyeong-seok asked in a voice like a man bewitched.
"...Do you hear bells?"
"What are you talking about? I'm dying here!"
Perhaps because his breath was up at his chin, Noh Su-cheol screeched his answer.
It was the answer Kang Hyeong-seok had hoped for.
'It isn't an actual sound. It's spiritual.'
A sound only Kang Hyeong-seok could hear.
By common sense it made no sense at all.
But they had passed the point where anything could be taken by common sense long ago.
JINGLE, JINGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
'Those are shaman's bells.'
Shaman's bells carried great meaning.
A ritual implement for calling the god, for opening the rite, for driving off evil spirits.
These days they could be had for money, but originally a shaman spent years in practice making her own.
An evil spirit like a Tiger Ghost could not imitate the sound of bells like that.
WHOOSH!
"Gah!"
Kang Hyeong-seok wrenched his body toward the sound of the bells so abruptly that Noh Su-cheol let out a scream.
SSHAAAAAA!
It lay a little further back from the direction the Tiger Ghost was driving them.
JINGLE, JINGLE. JANGLE-JANGLE. JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE.
"Where are we going? Hey!"
Noh Su-cheol's complaining got in the way of hearing the bells.
"Be quiet! Come on!"
When Kang Hyeong-seok shouted it like a thunderbolt, Noh Su-cheol's face hardened and he shut his mouth obediently.
Yes. Just stay like that for now.
That is how I live, and how you live too.
JINGLE, JINGLE.
The bells kept moving ahead of him, as if telling him to follow.
SSHAAAAAA!
The Tiger Ghost's movements turned violent.
It shot past right beside them, and it swept between Kang Hyeong-seok and Noh Su-cheol like wind.
"Hnnnnngh!"
Each time, Noh Su-cheol tried to sink to the ground in terror, but Kang Hyeong-seok's hand stopped him.
They must not halt, and they must not turn.
If they did, they would truly die.
What made a Tiger Ghost frightening was not that it was a ghost.
A Tiger Ghost guides the person it has marked to the tiger.
Whether that was a real tiger or a tiger in spiritual form he did not know, but if he let go of his mind, he would not live to see tomorrow.
SSHAAAAAA!
No matter how the Tiger Ghost interfered, Kang Hyeong-seok clung doggedly to the bells alone.
JINGLE!
The bell suddenly rang out loud,
WHOOSH!
and out of the fog a wooden wall abruptly appeared.
THUD!
He had stopped so suddenly that Noh Su-cheol, following behind, slammed hard into his back.
"Haah! Haah! Haah!"
Kang Hyeong-seok gasped for breath and backed up to take in the whole of the wooden wall.
'A shrine.'
It was not a properly built shrine.
Still, it had been raised with care, and since it had no door panel, he could see inside.
"Wh-why did you come here?"
Kang Hyeong-seok looked into the shrine without answering.
"S-say something! Assistant Manager Kang, are you doing this because I gave you a hard time?"
It would be a lie to say he felt nothing of the sort.
But examining the shrine mattered more than that.
'The bells stopped. This is the destination.'
A statue of the Heavenly Maiden, and statues of the Presiding God and the Lesser Shrine God.
A straw mat was laid across the floor.
There were no fallen leaves or cobwebs, but he could tell it was a shrine without a shaman.
A dais holding an incense burner and candlesticks.
It was because of the shaman's bells set there.
SSHAAAAA!
The sound of the Tiger Ghost darting about outside came dank and biting, like a night wind.
But it could come no closer, and only poured out a foul energy as though filled with rage.
WHOOOOSH.
Branches shaking in the wind, leaves pouring down.
His breath, strangely quickening.
His heart, settling calm in the opposite direction.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at the Presiding God and the Heavenly Maiden, their paint flaked away in patches, and pressed his lips firmly shut.
"Answer me, would you! Assistant Manager Kang! Hey!"
Noh Su-cheol pressed him for an answer again and again, but it did not last long.
"...Assistant Manager Kang?"
A strong sense of wrongness.
An air that said one must not act carelessly.
Ever since they had arrived at this shrine, Kang Hyeong-seok had given off the feeling of a different man than usual.
SSHAAAAAA!
The sound made by the Tiger Ghost and the bleak wind rang out.
Even as Noh Su-cheol shook all over with terror, Kang Hyeong-seok looked only at the shaman's bells.
It felt as though something unknowable were opening its eyes deep in his chest.
'Was it you who guided me here?'
An abandoned shrine and a set of shaman's bells.
He wanted his guardian god's answer about this.
SSHAAAAAAAA!
Listening to the Tiger Ghost's sound, like a kitchen knife slicing the air, Kang Hyeong-seok squeezed both eyes shut.
And as he opened them, he brought both hands neatly together.
"Tell me, please."
"Hey, hey! What are you doing right now?"
It was not ordinary behavior, so Noh Su-cheol clung to him with a voice shaking with fear.
Even so, Kang Hyeong-seok kept his focus on offering the prayer.
"I came under your guidance. I wish to know the intent with which you called me to this place."
He continued the prayer with an earnest and sincere heart.
"Speak to me, please. Is this the moment I have waited for all this time?"
Noh Su-cheol's uneasy gaze turned to Kang Hyeong-seok.
Kang Hyeong-seok was speaking to a god.
Even he could feel a strength and a sincerity he had never sensed before.
"Are you telling me the time has come for me to receive you?"
JINGLE!
In the shrine, without a breath of wind, the bells rang of their own accord.
"Th-the bells just......."
Startled, Noh Su-cheol hurriedly covered his mouth.
He did not know why, but he felt he must not speak. Never mind speaking, even the sound of his own breathing felt irreverent.
Something was about to happen here and now.
JINGLE, JINGLE.
As Noh Su-cheol's eyes trembled, the bells went on ringing.
"...Are you telling me to take this up?"
JINGLE.
The bells rang as though answering the question.
Bells connect god and human.
That was why Kang Hyeong-seok could understand his guardian god's will.
JINGLE, JINGLE, JINGLE.
Kang Hyeong-seok felt his mouth going dry.
His guardian god was speaking.
Telling him to take up these shaman's bells.
It was the moment he had waited so long for.
But his hand would not readily reach out.
Because his fate hung on it.
JINGLE.
The bells, ringing on and on, seemed to be saying this to him.
Face your fate.
Follow the god's will.
I will be with you.
SSHAAAAAAA!
The sound the Tiger Ghost made drew gradually closer.
The air trembled bitingly, and the rank animal stench the Tiger Ghost gave off stabbed at his nose.
It was then.
THUD.
The Tiger Ghost stepped into the shrine.
"Hwaah! Hwaaaah! Aaaaaaagh!"
At the Tiger Ghost rolling its eyeballs around as it studied Kang Hyeong-seok, Noh Su-cheol screamed hard enough to tear his throat.
"S-save me! A-Assistant Manager Kang! That thing, that thing came in!"
The Tiger Ghost began to approach with slow, dragging movements.
Wind pushed in like a typhoon.
With the hems of his clothes and his hair whipping, Kang Hyeong-seok slowly opened his mouth.
"I understand."
Kang Hyeong-seok reached out his hand with a face set in resolve.
Then, as he lifted the shaman's bells, a mysterious tone spread through the air.
Shaman's bells he was holding for the first time in his life.
But they felt so familiar, as though they had always been one body with him.
At the same time, an unfamiliar sensation came over him.
His guardian god.
A General God whose name he did not even know.
That was what was settling into Kang Hyeong-seok.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE, JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE.
The shaman's bells shook fearsomely, and Noh Su-cheol, slumped on the ground, looked up at him with startled eyes.
He did not know what it was, but Kang Hyeong-seok seemed not to be the man he had known.
"Assistant Manager Kang......?"
A shaman.
A human who has accepted a god.
That was the image Kang Hyeong-seok gave off with the bells in his hand.
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
Kang Hyeong-seok shook the bells hard and turned his gaze to the Tiger Ghost.
The Tiger Ghost that had threatened him had its fur standing on end.
Kang Hyeong-seok felt his mouth open of its own accord.
"Heavenly Spirit General, Great Spirit General, Underworld Spirit General, Great General God, Five-Direction Spirit General, Great General God."
The Jade Pivot Scripture.
One of the scriptures he had memorized in order to resist ghosts.
He had not known its meaning, and it had had little effect, but now it was different.
He could understand its meaning in full, and it was working.
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE!
United with his guardian god, he glared at the Tiger Ghost, and the Tiger Ghost curled its lips back and bared its teeth.
It raised the fur along its back and unsheathed its claws, but it could not lunge.
"Divine Empress of Great Fortune, Great General God. Blue Emperor of the East, Great General God. Red Emperor of the South, Great General God. Moon-Duty Messenger of the West, Day-Duty Messenger, Star Lord of the Sun, Star Lord of the Moon."
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE!
Instead, the Tiger Ghost faltered and drew back little by little.
"Unreturning, unswerving, the heavens struck and shaken, the divine gold blazing on the mountain, the light held straight, foul wind, fire god, golden tiger."
The Jade Pivot Scripture was plainly taking effect.
It brought fear to the Tiger Ghost and peace to Kang Hyeong-seok.
Now the Tiger Ghost no longer frightened him.
Reciting the Jade Pivot Scripture as though driving the Tiger Ghost back, he shook the bells as if bringing them down like a blow.
"Vermilion Bird of the South, turn it aside. Slander subdued and laid bare. Sickness broken and gone. Spirits and ghosts, be moved. Ten thousand thousand auspicious moons. Begone, a thousand ri!"
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE!
"Om! Quickly, quickly, as the law commands! Svaha!"
The bells rang like thunder and a numinous energy spread outward.
SSSSSS.
Glaring at Kang Hyeong-seok, the Tiger Ghost backed away and melted into the fog.
At the same time, the clammy, ominous energy that had been squeezing everything around them faded fast.
"Uh, uhhh, uhhhhhh."
Slumped on the ground, Noh Su-cheol looked up at Kang Hyeong-seok with a face smeared with tears.
A look that asked whether it was all over now.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at the fog where the Tiger Ghost had vanished and answered with dry lips.
"I don't know either."
But it did seem certain that the Tiger Ghost had withdrawn for now.
***
Kang Hyeong-seok stood watching from beyond the guardrail as Noh Su-cheol climbed over.
Was this really the same Noh Su-cheol?
His face had gone so pale that he did not look like the same man, and he followed along silently, staring at the ground.
"Whew."
Kang Hyeong-seok sighed with a tired face and set off toward the car.
It was deep in the small hours, and the strangely dense fog was vanishing as if dissolving into the moonlight.
TRAMP, TRAMP.
He was tired.
Very much so.
Enough to wonder whether all of it had been a hallucination.
But the shaman's bells in his hand told him otherwise.
As he neared the car, Kang Hyeong-seok turned his eyes to the carcass lying on the damp asphalt.
"It was a water deer fawn."
Why had this looked like a Tiger Ghost?
Seeing this, he had definitely been bewitched.
Kang Hyeong-seok moved the water deer's carcass to the edge of the roadway and said a short prayer.
FLING.
Then he opened the passenger door for him, and Noh Su-cheol recoiled and covered his face.
His trembling eyes made it plain that he was afraid of Kang Hyeong-seok.
"Get in."
Kang Hyeong-seok, by contrast, spoke calmly and climbed into the driver's seat, and once Noh Su-cheol was in as well, he started the engine.
VRRRRRM.
As if nothing had happened, the car sped off into the fog.
Noh Su-cheol, pressed tight to the passenger window the whole way, sat blankly like a man whose soul had left him.
Relief at having survived?
More than that, he seemed to have taken a great shock.
He had been chased by a foul thing.
It was not the sort of thing one forgets easily.
VROOOOM.
In the silent car, Kang Hyeong-seok raised the hand that had gripped the shaman's bells.
It was an unconscious gesture, but his brow narrowed in an instant.
Three dots that had not been there before were giving off a numinous energy from his palm.