Part 2. Walk the Right Path (2)
VROOOOM.
Kang Hyeong-seok sipped the coffee in his tumbler as he drove.
Yongin, in Gyeonggi Province.
He passed the area with the industrial complex and turned into a quiet stretch, went by a site deep in construction, and drove up onto a mountain road.
RATTLE, RATTLE.
Then a roadway made of poured concrete appeared.
Climbing the narrow track that shook tremendously, Kang Hyeong-seok checked the time.
It was getting on toward eight o'clock.
'Did I sleep too long?'
He had meant only to close his eyes for a moment at a rest area, but he had fallen fast asleep.
He half thought it was just as well.
GRRRRK.
Perhaps halfway up the mountain.
A stretch of ground appeared, not wide but level, and Kang Hyeong-seok parked in the corner of it and got out.
It was the shaman Lee Geum-gyeong's house.
It was a traditional Korean house that gave off the feel of a temple, and Kang Hyeong-seok did not go straight inside but looked at the yard.
'Every time I come here, that comes back to me.'
The memory of kneeling in the middle of that yard and undergoing the divine suppression rite.
It was twenty years ago already, but it was as vivid as yesterday, and Kang Hyeong-seok could not easily take his eyes off the yard.
It was then.
"What brings you here?"
A woman's voice came, standard speech with a strong Jeolla accent laid thick over it.
When Kang Hyeong-seok turned his head, he saw a young woman in a sportswear-brand tracksuit.
She glared at him as though on her guard and rubbed her nose.
"You reek of a rank animal stench. What have you come here for?"
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded slightly.
She was a stranger, but he felt he knew who she was.
"You're her disciple, aren't you? I've come to see Teacher."
That woman was a shamanic practitioner.
In crude terms she was one of those people called a baby shaman, which you could think of as an intern learning it all one step at a time, from how to live as a shaman to how to perform the rites.
"It is late. Please go back."
"There is something I must ask her in person."
"I said go back."
The woman's expression grew steadily fiercer.
"One look and it's clear you went off doing some haunted-house stunt and picked something up. Why do you crawl into a place like that on your own two feet and then come asking for help without a shred of decency?"
She must have been put through a great deal of this, because the woman poured out words like a machine gun.
To her, Kang Hyeong-seok must have looked like a man who had forced his way up a mountain closed to hikers and then called emergency services for a rescue.
But Kang Hyeong-seok was not the sort of person she took him for.
"I'm Kang Hyeong-seok."
"And?"
He had said it in a tone that asked to be recognized, but what came back was a so-what.
Kang Hyeong-seok closed his lips, then opened them again as if letting out a sigh.
"If you tell her the bastard who never became her son is here, she will know."
It was a hypothetical, of course.
If he had taken the divine descent rather than the divine suppression rite.
Lee Geum-gyeong and Kang Hyeong-seok would have become spirit mother and spirit son.
A bond as tight as blood, one that can never be severed.
It was then.
The woman's eyes went round, and her folded arms loosened.
"Huh? You're the young master?"
"...Young master?"
"I have heard a great deal about you. You should have called ahead. The road must have been rough. You have had a hard time of it."
The woman's manner toward Kang Hyeong-seok had changed completely.
Her voice was far more courteous than the one she used for Lee Geum-gyeong's guests, and her face had softened.
There were several reasons for it.
His relationship with Lee Geum-gyeong, and Kang Hyeong-seok's guardian god.
If Kang Hyeong-seok went through the proper procedures and accepted the god, he would become a Grand Shaman, respected by every shaman there was.
And that Kang Hyeong-seok had kept up his ties with Lee Geum-gyeong for twenty years.
In the shamanic world, nobody who knew him could treat him carelessly.
"How is it that you carry a rank stench on you?"
"That is actually why I came."
"Oh dear, you must have been caught by a nasty bastard. Any bastard that could do the young master this much harm would be no ordinary one."
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded with a bitter face, and the woman stopped before a wooden door papered with mulberry paper.
"Teacher, a guest has come."
"Come in."
At the old woman's voice from inside, the woman stepped aside.
Along the path she cleared, Kang Hyeong-seok first pressed his palms together in greeting.
"Teacher, it is me, Kang Hyeong-seok."
"I know. Come in quickly."
Kang Hyeong-seok smiled, gave the woman a silent nod, and stepped toward the door.
KNOCK, KNOCK.
When he knocked politely and opened the door, the incense smell pooled in the room greeted him first.
Then the Buddha statues and the dais received him, and an elderly woman in white traditional robes sat on the floor with a faint smile.
"It has been a long time since you stopped by, Hyeong-seok."
Late sixties in age.
White hair she had never dyed.
Eyes with force behind them, and lips that showed a firm character.
So from a distance she looked old, but up close she looked younger than her years.
The commonly spoken-of image of a shamanic practitioner with strong energy was captured in Lee Geum-gyeong perfectly.
"Have you been well, Teacher?"
Lee Geum-gyeong smiled as though drawing back her red lips, and beckoned to Kang Hyeong-seok.
"Come in. And Cheong-geum, would you bring some tea."
"Yes."
The woman who had been standing outside the door bowed at the waist and left.
"She must be a new disciple of yours."
"Did she not misstep with you?"
"I do not think the first impression was a good one."
"Be understanding with her. Perhaps because she received a General God, her temperament is not like other people's."
Whatever it was, there seemed to be a story there worth telling for laughs, judging by the way Lee Geum-gyeong pressed her temple and sighed.
"Even so, I could see why you took her as a disciple."
"Did she say something about the smell of beast on you?"
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at Lee Geum-gyeong with startled eyes, then smiled bitterly.
"So you knew."
"With you giving off the stench in waves, it would be strange not to know."
Lee Geum-gyeong's eyes said she roughly knew the circumstances.
Lee Geum-gyeong was a shaman skilled at spirit divination.
Her guardian god must have told her everything from the moment Kang Hyeong-seok arrived on this mountain.
Perhaps it was still telling her things even now.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked behind Lee Geum-gyeong, but there was nothing to be seen.
"More to the point, do you not have something to tell me?"
Kang Hyeong-seok pressed his lips firmly shut, then opened them.
That was when it happened.
"Teacher, I have brought the tea."
At the voice from outside the door, he lost his timing to speak.
Cheong-geum came in with two cups of green tea on a small tray, and a cup was set down before each of Lee Geum-gyeong and Kang Hyeong-seok.
Lee Geum-gyeong gestured for Cheong-geum to sit at one side of the room.
The quiet settled over them again.
SIP.
His mouth felt strangely dry, so Kang Hyeong-seok took a mouthful of the green tea before speaking.
"You will already know that I was chased by a Tiger Ghost."
Lee Geum-gyeong kept her heavy expression and said yes with her eyes alone.
A brief sigh passed across Cheong-geum's face like a gust of wind.
It was because the source of the rank stench was nastier than she had thought.
"I received my guardian god's help, and I came to take up a set of shaman's bells."
"Are you saying you received the god?"
"That is right."
Cheong-geum was more flustered than before.
If Kang Hyeong-seok ever took the divine descent, she had always assumed he would naturally take it from Lee Geum-gyeong.
'Has the young master taken another spirit mother?'
The thought that he had taken the divine descent from some shaman other than Lee Geum-gyeong brought a deep sense of betrayal, and her brow furrowed.
But once again, Lee Geum-gyeong showed no agitation at all.
"I have not taken a spirit mother, Teacher."
"I know."
Cheong-geum flinched without meaning to, looked at Kang Hyeong-seok with a face that understood nothing, and then felt Lee Geum-gyeong's gaze.
Lee Geum-gyeong only sent her a look telling her to stay still.
There are worlds and heights you do not know.
So stay still.
Reading the look, Cheong-geum sat obediently again and stared at Kang Hyeong-seok with a complicated heart.
"While I was being chased by the Tiger Ghost, I heard bells. When I followed the sound, there were shaman's bells there, and the moment I took them up, I felt my guardian god enter me."
"The resolve it took to lift those bells cannot have come easily."
Kang Hyeong-seok pulled up the corners of his mouth without a sound.
"Strange, isn't it. It was a moment I had waited for so long."
"Your fate hung on it, so that is understandable."
Lee Geum-gyeong watched Kang Hyeong-seok in silence for a while.
It was not a fierce gaze, but it was one that ran a person through.
It was also the eye of a shaman looking into the past.
"There was someone at your side."
"Yes. My superior at work."
Lee Geum-gyeong had picked out something he had not said.
Even so, Kang Hyeong-seok went on as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"He was badly shaken by the Tiger Ghost. Enough to decide to quit his job."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk."
Lee Geum-gyeong clicked her tongue with a face that had already grasped how frightened Noh Su-cheol had been.
But there was no pity in her eyes.
"Would some measure be needed?"
"He treated you badly, and still you worry for him?"
Kang Hyeong-seok glanced at Lee Geum-gyeong and smiled faintly, as if copying the smile she wore.
"Because he is like me when I was young."
There had been a time when Kang Hyeong-seok too, frightened by ghosts, pulled the blanket over his head and would not even go to school.
He was a man Kang Hyeong-seok disliked, but he could understand how great the terror Noh Su-cheol must be living through was.
"It is not for you to worry about. He was merely frightened."
"Do you think so......?"
"Only it will take time before he can shake it off and get up again. He was knocked flat by a foul experience, so he will look back over his own past."
Why did this happen to me?
Did I do something wrong?
Is this punishment for running my tongue carelessly?
Those were the thoughts that must be filling Noh Su-cheol's head.
"Only with deep reflection and repentance will he be free of it."
"...That will not be easy."
Given Noh Su-cheol's character, there was no telling how many years it might take.
Perhaps he would have to live his whole life in fear of when a ghost might put him through something foul again.
"Karma is like that. It is not something another can carry in his place, so it is not for you to concern yourself with."
"I understand."
That was after Kang Hyeong-seok nodded with a face that said the taste was bitter.
"How did it feel when you received the god?"
With his lips shut, he recalled the moment he drove the Tiger Ghost away.
It had felt as though someone were guiding his body.
But it had not been unpleasant.
If anything, it had felt like becoming whole.
"It was a mysterious experience."
Union with a god.
For that moment at least, the guardian god was Kang Hyeong-seok, and Kang Hyeong-seok was the guardian god.
"They were plainly shaman's bells I was holding for the first time, and yet they felt like part of my own body. And the scriptures I had only ever memorized felt as if they had become mine."
"Do you have those shaman's bells with you now?"
"Yes."
"Let me see them."
Kang Hyeong-seok took off the bag he was carrying and drew out the shaman's bells.
"These are them."
Lee Geum-gyeong and Cheong-geum.
Neither of them could get a word out.
The uncommon energy the shaman's bells gave off announced that this was no ordinary object.
Lee Geum-gyeong held out her hand, and Kang Hyeong-seok passed the bells over.
The moment the shaman's bells were in Lee Geum-gyeong's hand, Cheong-geum frowned.
'What is this? Something feels off.......'
The energy she had felt from the shaman's bells until a moment ago was gone.
Strangest of all, no bell sound could be heard.
CLUNK, CLUNK.
Lee Geum-gyeong had noticed the same thing, so she shook the bells, but only a dull metallic clatter came out.
"This is no ordinary object."
Lee Geum-gyeong examined the shaman's bells closely and marveled.
"It is a divine object. I heard of them from my own spirit mother, but this is the first time I have seen the real thing."
"A divine object?"
"It means an object that chooses its owner."
Lee Geum-gyeong handed the shaman's bells back to Kang Hyeong-seok.
JINGLE.
Unlike when she had held them, the shaman's bells rang clear. And the energy that had vanished returned as well and filled the room.
As if to prove that the owner of the shaman's bells was Kang Hyeong-seok alone.