Part 2. Walk the Right Path (3)
Kang Hyeong-seok, who had been looking at the shaman's bells, worked his lips and then opened them.
"I did think they were no ordinary object, but I never imagined they were something like that."
It was an object that even Lee Geum-gyeong was seeing in the flesh for the first time.
A divine object that would draw the eyes of every shamanic practitioner simply by being owned.
Now that he owned such bells, Kang Hyeong-seok felt the weight settle on his shoulders.
"Your guardian god guided you to it. That is not a thing to make such a face over."
"...I am not sure."
"There must have been some good in receiving the god as well."
Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes snapped to Lee Geum-gyeong.
She wore a placid smile, as if she already knew.
It was a mother's smile, the kind meant for a child who had risen from a long illness.
"I don't see petty ghosts. No, it is less that I simply cannot see them than that the feeling is different."
It was not that his spirit eye had closed.
Whether it was because he had received the god or because of the bells' power, his senses had grown sharper beyond comparison.
"I think I have become able to control my spirit eye."
The petty ghosts that used to appear at all hours were no longer visible.
It had been so when he looked in the mirror that morning, and when he woke from sleeping in his car.
Before, savage things he would rather have looked away from would have flitted into his field of view, eating away at his mind.
"You have taken your first step now."
"My first step?"
"It was not the formal procedure, but you have received a god. And you obtained a divine object. What are you, if not a shaman?"
Kang Hyeong-seok felt as though he had been struck on the head.
It was obvious, and yet it was something he had not brought himself to realize.
A shaman, and Kang Hyeong-seok.
The combination was far too unfamiliar.
"Might it have something to do with the dots that appeared on my hand?"
Kang Hyeong-seok showed her the three dots that had risen on his palm as well.
"I think they appeared the moment I obtained the shaman's bells. I do not know what they are either."
Lee Geum-gyeong took his hand and stared at the dots with narrowed eyes.
Then she ran her wrinkled, callused hand over them, and in that position she spoke.
"So it is a precept mark."
"A precept mark... that is a Buddhist term."
Lee Geum-gyeong nodded and released his hand.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at the dots on his freed hand and stayed silent for some time.
He could not help it.
Because if these were precept marks, the meaning they carried was no light thing either.
"Do you know what they mean as well?"
"Yes. It differs by sect, though......."
Kang Hyeong-seok worked his lips for a moment, then went on.
"Let all your deeds be upright and good."
The hand is where action begins.
A precept mark stamped in such a place emphasizes right action.
And three of those dots were stamped there.
Each surely had its own meaning, but none would stray far from the teaching to act rightly.
His head suddenly felt clear.
'I see. That was the meaning he left them with.'
It was his guardian god who had left these precept marks.
He was telling Kang Hyeong-seok indirectly to walk the right path.
But one question arose.
"Why would he leave precept marks rather than tell me directly?"
Kang Hyeong-seok muttered it almost to himself, wondering whether he had not received his guardian god after all, but Lee Geum-gyeong gave him a clean answer.
"Because the divine descent is not yet complete."
"Then should I take the divine descent from you, Teacher?"
"I? To you? Nonsense."
At Lee Geum-gyeong's words, Kang Hyeong-seok blinked.
He had naturally assumed that, having taken an incomplete divine descent, he had to take a proper one.
"There will not be many shamans able to bring the divine descent down upon you. Perhaps not even a Grand Shaman could. And what need has one who has already received a god of a divine descent?"
"But you just said the divine descent was not complete......."
"Because you are not yet a vessel fit to accept your guardian god."
It sounded like a rebuke, so Kang Hyeong-seok had no choice but to close his mouth.
It was not that he had drawn a hard line against shamanism all this time.
But neither had he lived like a religious man or a shamanic practitioner.
He knew he could not help falling short, so he had nothing to say for himself.
But what Lee Geum-gyeong said next was not reproach. It was comfort.
"Your guardian god is not one who can be received lightly. Even had you lived your whole life as a male shaman, you would not have received him."
"......."
"What is it that confuses you so?"
"I do not know what I am supposed to do."
He could not take a proper divine descent, and yet a god had already lodged in his body.
A state that was neither shamanic practitioner nor ordinary person.
And along with it he had the shaman's bells, a divine object that had acknowledged him as its owner, and on his hand the precept marks that told him how he was to live.
His head was in turmoil over how to interpret it all.
"He gave me a shamanic practitioner's power, and yet there is a great deal I am not prepared for as a practitioner. And it does not seem he wishes me to live as an ordinary person either."
Kang Hyeong-seok met Lee Geum-gyeong's gaze, hoping for an answer.
A shamanic practitioner gives answers.
They lay out a single road leading out of confusion.
That was why so many people sought practitioners out, and why practitioners became guides for them.
Lee Geum-gyeong understood his heart, and she drew up the corners of her mouth in a bitter smile.
"How pitiful. You already know the answer, and yet you walk in the fog."
"I know the answer?"
"Are you not already saying it with your own mouth?"
Lee Geum-gyeong took a sip of green tea with a quiet movement and continued in a placid voice.
"It is exactly as you said. So what, then, must you do?"
Kang Hyeong-seok blinked and sank into thought.
He deliberated long and deeply, and around the time the green tea had cooled and stopped giving off steam, he caught hold of a single thread.
"Surely not......."
Kang Hyeong-seok opened his mouth with an awkward look on his face. Lee Geum-gyeong nodded, urging the rest out of him.
Kang Hyeong-seok drew a deep breath, drank some tea, and spoke.
"I wonder whether he does not want me to become a shaman."
At that, Cheong-geum very nearly opened her mouth.
'Nonsense.'
It was an absurd thing to say.
A guardian god wants the human it has marked to become a shaman.
If they refuse to become one, it makes them suffer spirit sickness.
Harsh torment, and in severe cases the loss of precious bonds.
A guardian god went that far to make a shaman, and Kang Hyeong-seok's guardian god was not trying to make him one?
It was something every shaman in the world would have wished for at least once.
But as far as Cheong-geum knew, no such guardian god existed.
Nor did any person who had been granted such a privilege.
Just as Cheong-geum's concentration reached its peak, Lee Geum-gyeong smiled as though pleased with him.
"That is so."
Both Kang Hyeong-seok and Cheong-geum looked at her in surprise.
But Lee Geum-gyeong held her calm and looked only at Kang Hyeong-seok.
"You have put your finger on it exactly. Your guardian god does not wish you to become an ordinary shaman."
"But, Teacher."
"It means the place for you is not a shrine house."
Kang Hyeong-seok's face hardened, and Cheong-geum grew more confused still.
Meanwhile Lee Geum-gyeong raised her head slightly.
Her gaze went behind Kang Hyeong-seok.
The place where his guardian god would be.
Staring there, Lee Geum-gyeong slowly parted her lips.
"Your guardian god wishes you to live among people."
"That is true of all of them. There is no shaman who does not."
"Is this house next door to yours?"
At the question tossed out so lightly, Kang Hyeong-seok found himself lost for words.
It was then that Cheong-geum and Kang Hyeong-seok finally understood what she meant.
A shaman among people.
A being who helps people from closer than any shaman before.
One who lives with the teaching of the precept marks as his compass.
This was exactly what Lee Geum-gyeong was speaking of.
The answer had come, but Kang Hyeong-seok's face was not clear of it.
"I do not understand. Why would he expect that of me, of all people?"
What on earth does he expect of me?
Does he want me to walk a different road from everyone else?
As his questions deepened, Kang Hyeong-seok suddenly felt the hair at the nape of his neck stand on end.
A strong presence was there behind him.
His guardian god.
He was right behind him.
Kang Hyeong-seok felt something familiar.
JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE! JANGLE-JANGLE!
As when he had been chased by the Tiger Ghost, bells sounded that only he could hear.
At the same time came the same sensation as when he had received the god.
So he was able to take in his guardian god's thought. Far more vividly than what Lee Geum-gyeong felt, and clearly enough that he knew the will behind it even without hearing a voice.
Do what is right.
Having taught him the precept marks' lesson again, the guardian god vanished as if it had never been there.
"What is it?"
At Kang Hyeong-seok's suddenly rigid face, Lee Geum-gyeong sent him a questioning look.
Kang Hyeong-seok shook his head and rubbed his forehead, which was damp with cold sweat.
"There was a divine contact."
"A divine contact......?"
Lee Geum-gyeong looked behind Kang Hyeong-seok with a puzzled face.
She had certainly felt the guardian god's presence, if only briefly.
But even she had not been able to see that a divine contact had taken place.
"What did he say?"
"He did not speak. He only made it known. To do what is right."
"Hmm."
Lee Geum-gyeong rubbed the corner of her mouth with a face that said she had thought as much, and Kang Hyeong-seok wet his mouth with the tea that had gone cold.
It had been a very brief divine contact, but it was not something he was used to, and his throat had gone dry as though he had exercised hard.
"I understand clearly that he wants something from me."
It must have been because he had received his guardian god's direct teaching.
There was more strength in Kang Hyeong-seok's voice than usual.
"I think I will try living by that will."
Neither Lee Geum-gyeong nor Cheong-geum spoke for a moment.
Even if his form differed from theirs, Kang Hyeong-seok had decided to enter the shamanic world in his own way.
They knew that such resolve did not come easily, so their lips did not part readily.
"Will you be all right?"
Lee Geum-gyeong asked it in a pressed voice, and Kang Hyeong-seok nodded with a composed face.
"I think this is my road."
With Cheong-geum and Lee Geum-gyeong watching, Kang Hyeong-seok smiled bitterly.
"I resented having my spirit eye open from childhood. But looking back now, I wonder whether it meant that I was to understand what it feels like to be tormented by ghosts."
Kang Hyeong-seok looked down at the precept marks on his palm.
Then he looked at the shaman's bells as well, smiled more bitterly still, and spoke.
"I resolved myself when I lifted the bells. That I would never live an ordinary life again."
"Hmm."
"And yet I am told not to set up a shrine house, so it feels almost like a favor beyond my deserving."
For the first time, Kang Hyeong-seok turned his eyes to Cheong-geum.
"Enough that I even feel sorry toward other shamans."
Cheong-geum's eyes widened, and then she gave a wry smile.
It was not something Kang Hyeong-seok needed to feel sorry about.
A god had decided it, so how could a human go against it? And yet she was grateful that Kang Hyeong-seok thought of her at all.
And she felt she understood a little of why he had to walk a different road from everyone else.
"It will not be easy."
Kang Hyeong-seok turned his eyes to Lee Geum-gyeong and answered.
"I have resolved myself."
"You will see many nasty things, and you will hear words you do not want to hear."
"I have resolved myself to that as well."
"There will be those who thank you, and there will be those who envy you, hate you, and try to hurl a malefic at you."
"That is all right."
Lee Geum-gyeong smiled with a face full of approval.
The young Kang Hyeong-seok who had taken the divine suppression rite from her long ago flickered before her.
That child had grown into a man and was facing his own fate.
"I will ask you. What is a shaman?"
"One who connects god and human."
"A shaman is also called a supplicant. What does that mean?"
"One who prays."
"Then for whom do you pray?"
"For those in need of help."
At answers that came so briskly, Lee Geum-gyeong's smile deepened.
"You know it all. You know it all."
"To be truthful, I have no confidence."
"Do not speak weakly. If your heart wavers, you have only to trust your guardian god."
"Yes."
The conversation was clearly heading toward its end.
"Nothing else you want to know?"
"I will look up the rest myself."
Lee Geum-gyeong smiled with even greater approval and drained the rest of her tea as if shaking it out.
"Come to me any time it grows hard."
"Next time I will come to pay my respects, not for counsel."
"If you were that sort of bastard, you would have shown your face long ago."
At Lee Geum-gyeong's joke, Kang Hyeong-seok wore an easy smile too, and they traded small talk.
"Next time I will bring the sweet red bean jelly you like."
"No need. I have eaten plenty of it in my life."
"You eat it when it is there, do you not?"
An easy mood had settled, and thanks to it Kang Hyeong-seok felt his heart lighten.
But if he stayed any longer he would be eating into Lee Geum-gyeong's bedtime, so he had to get up before long.
"Then, Teacher, I will see you again."
Kang Hyeong-seok made a deep bow to Lee Geum-gyeong and went out into the yard.
A mountain was certainly a mountain.
His arms and legs were heavy from lack of sleep, but the air was unbelievably clear, and it seemed to wash that fatigue away.
Looking at the moon, hanging unusually bright tonight, Kang Hyeong-seok walked toward his car.