Chapter 23 — The Sorcerer And The Cursed Mask (5)

A Rank-One ability-user, and an upper-tier melee-class one at that, had thrown herself into the fray, and the whole situation was settled in a matter of moments.
The more so because ‘she’ had no sooner appeared than she hewed the head clean off the enemy’s own Rank-One; the cult’s morale dropped through the floor.

From the perspective of the one in question, he would dearly have liked to ask back, ‘She’s wearing a mask. How can you be so certain she’s a beauty?’ Yet on the strength of a masked beauty appearing on their side, the allies’ morale shot through the roof.

“The cult’s atrocities have angered the gods, and they have sent us reinforcements.”
“It is the heavens that are punishing you!”
“Confess your hideous sins, every one of them, lie down upon the ground, and meet the coming death with composure!”

Among them, for some reason, the Onmyo Bureau people were positively elated.
When Shin Hweein turned it over carefully, trying to work out why those people in particular were so worked up, he realized the obvious: right now he was both wearing an oni mask AND wielding a katana, so that if anything he gave off the air of Hwa-guk’s own rather than Aeshin’s.

This is exactly why I did not want to wear this mask. This is exactly why I did not want to use the katana —!

Steeling himself that he had best escape this state at the earliest possible moment, Shin Hweein cut down, one by one, the enemies who had begun to hesitate.
He had to fell evil men and accumulate karma if he was to perform a curse-absolving at all.

‘It is some small mercy, at least, that there are few rank-and-file believers here. …No, perhaps it is not a mercy. It may merely mean every one of them has already been killed, just now, by that Aztec priest.’

Shin Hweein struck one of the few rank-and-file believers across the head with the hilt of his blade to knock him out, and when he looked back, it seemed that one had been the last; the rest were all either dead or captured.
Nodding to himself, he swung the sword to flick the blood off and slid it back into its sheath.

“Look at that clean noto¹ — surely she is a swordswoman who has made a name for herself.”
“And that iaijutsu (the drawing-cut) that cleaved a Rank-One in a single stroke?”
“No, but — among the Rank-One female ability-users of our Japan, I’ve never heard of anyone quite that… ahem, of that level of talent —?”

Once the situation had been put to rest, sure enough, the people began whispering and trading talk about her.

When Shin Hweein noticed the one who had earlier been squaring off against Yun Jubaek now approaching him, he hurriedly sent a mind-flame to Yun Jubaek.

— Brother, I have found a lead — speak with the Onmyo Bureau yourself. Among the torii near Ichinomine, the first peak of Fushimi Inari Taisha, one of them is the gate through which they have been offering up sacrifices. There is a high probability it connects to the Specter Realm.

Naturally, that Specter Realm Gate was different from the one Shin Yuhyeon had tracked down by following the kudan’s location.
That one had nothing whatever to do with Aeshin, and lay concealed at the outskirts of Gyeongdo, where it was difficult even to find.
Nearby, not so much as a person was easy to find, nor even a building, so one could guess how thoroughly the cult had laid a trap to receive Aeshin’s sorcerers.
Of course Hwa-guk, having been told the precise location by Aeshin’s royal household, had moved out generation upon generation; but by the time they did, the ruling forces of Honwondorae had already begun pulling out of the whole of Gyeongdo…

— No, eh? Brother, you said? Wait a moment — surely, surely you’re not — you’re Hweein?!

The mind-flame that came back, though a slight grade below the mind-flames Shin Hweein had met up till now, was a no-frills mind-flame befitting a Rank-One.
The content of it, of course, was preposterous.

Shin Hweein only just barely held back from turning his gaze the man’s way.
He had been fighting, comrade-in-arms, beside one who did not even know that, and had voiced not a single question?
Who had let it pass even when Makoto was kicked over?

— That is how it came about.
— No-no-no, is that the sort of thing that ends with so simple an explanation?!
— In trying to extricate myself from a critical situation I used a cursed sorcerous implement, and ended up this way. I shall return to my original form before long, so do not trouble yourself overmuch.
— Huh? Ah, really? In any event — nice work on the intel. As ever, our Hweein is the best.

…Why did his voice sound just a little bit regretful?

Unable to bear it any longer, Shin Hweein turned his gaze on Yun Jubaek; Yun Jubaek gave a small cough and called the Onmyo Bureau’s representative over.

“We’ve found a decisive lead. Let us talk.”
“Hm?”

The Onmyo Bureau’s representative, just as he was approaching Shin Hweein with the intent to speak, turned around with a frown.

Shin Hweein, with no wish to be needlessly mistaken for a Hwa-guk native, at once asked Eulha to teleport him somewhere out of the way.
Free at last of the gazes that had seemed to cling to every inch of him, a sigh slipped out of him in spite of himself.

“How tiring this is…”

— You look perfectly fine, though? If anything, you seem more brimming with vitality than ever before.

“It is the spirit that is tired, I mean.”

The place was the rooftop of a building, and from it the streets of Gyeongdo, where until just now the party had been doing battle, could be plainly seen below.

Watching Yun Jubaek deftly carry the conversation against the Onmyo Bureau’s representative, Shin Hweein nodded with satisfaction and spoke to Eulha once more.

“Watch them well, and let me know if any change shows itself. In the meanwhile I shall see to myself.”
“Still can’t break the curse, master?”
“Unfortunately not. It is a curse left by a great yokai brimming with resentment. Of course it would not yield easily.”

The other curses laid on his body, even those left by monsters greater than Ushi-gozen, he had been able to absolve, if only gradually.
The curse on him now, though, demanded no small quantity of karma simply to restore his body to its original state, whether because it was so heavily attended by transformation, or because the curse Ushi-gozen had left in her dying moment had been strengthened a further degree by the peculiar karmic tie of Shin Hweein himself.

‘No — better this way, in fact. It is not as though the Indulgence were the only means of breaking a curse. Even if only to develop a resistance to curses, I ought not to rely on the Indulgence alone, but steel my own heart and strive to throw off this state by my own power as well.’

A curse that switched one’s sex outright could be more dangerous than one that worked upon the spirit, and Shin Hweein knew this deeply.
If, in some moment of carelessness, he assimilated to his present state, in that instant he would be wholly devoured by Ushi-gozen.
However at ease and unbound the body, however superior the ability and however strong its force, he must not mistake these for his own and indulge in them.

“I shall have to distinguish them clearly… For a start, I had better put a name to this state.”

— Shall I name it for you?

“No, it seems to me I am the one who must name it.”

— Oh my — your instincts have been growing sharper lately, haven’t they.

At Geum Moa’s words, sing-songing into his ear, Shin Hweein abruptly went still.
For no particular reason, on nothing but a hunch that the naming was rightfully his to do, he had answered her so.

He considered for himself what meaning there could be in this naming, but for the moment he could not tell.
It was only that, watching the cord of fate stretch out from himself and connect to Ushi-gozen’s mask, he had naturally come to think so.
It was much like the feeling he used to have as a boy, watching from his father’s side as the man cast the lots, reading information out of dots and lines, smoke and the flow of spirit-force that, on their face, carried no particular meaning.

“If that is so, then it would mean I am truly coming to resemble Father. Unpleasant.”

— Surpass him, and there is no problem.

“That, too, is a sound thing to say. Good advice. Even so, my mood is not yet improved.”

— Tsk.

Shin Hweein opened his subspace storage and drew out a mirror he had bought some time before.
When Eulha, quick-witted as ever, approached and took it from him, Shin Hweein removed the mask and faced the mirror.

And in that instant, he froze.

“Mother…”

For the figure reflected in the mirror was as though he stood before his late mother in life.

He had taken on the curse through the Ushi-gozen mask, and so he had supposed that beneath the mask, too, there might lie an oni’s face, or a face like a cow’s.
But this was merely the figure of Shin Hweein turned into a woman.

“How could it be — so completely.”

No.
In becoming a woman, the parts of his face the original Shin Hweein had disliked, namely the sharply tilted eye-corners and the firm-set mouth inherited from his father, had softened and gone gentle; even the more masculine, angular places had rounded out, so that he had become a beauty one might genuinely believe to be his mother returned to life.
He had not so much as put on any rouge, and yet why his lips should be so red, he could not say.

“At this rate I shall draw rather a lot of stares…”
“You speak only of the obvious, my lord.”
“It’s worse than that. Right now, master, you’re dangerous. You could topple a country or two, easy.”

At Shin Hweein’s distasteful murmur, Leon and Eulha at once nodded along and chimed in.

“You must wear the mask without fail, my lord. Though — this is something that has always applied to you regardless, in fact.”
“You were spectacular as a man too, but right now you’re dangerous. Don’t go making more work for us — keep your face hidden when you’re out.”
“…I shall.”

Shin Hweein answered the two thralls’ overblown remarks with a still more distasteful expression, and strove to shake off the trace of his mother that he felt in the figure in the mirror as he faced it head-on.

If Ushi-gozen meant, through the mask, to take Shin Hweein for her own, in what manner would she try to seduce him?
A healthy body, a strong power?
Even so, surely there was no chance that within Shin Hweein lay any desire to become a woman, of all things.

The thought came to him that Ushi-gozen having a female body was not, on its own, enough to turn Shin Hweein into a woman.
There is a law of things: for one to come to resemble something, there must from the start be in oneself some part that already resembled it, and only then can the resemblance proceed.
For his figure to have changed this way, there had to be a hidden reason, a reason that Shin Hweein, of all people, was meant to understand.

‘When no one would treat me as a person, what did it matter whether man or woman. At all times, I wished only to be myself. I have hidden my fragile self, and I have striven to stand upright as the direct-line heir of a noble house. If, as the reaction to that, I have come to take on this figure, I can only accept it.’

Even so, unchangingly, within Shin Hweein there is no twisted longing.
This is merely the result of a desire long held down running amok, bewildered by its sudden release.

“From its very essence it is misaligned — to keep wanting more from this state would only burn my own body away; therefore, you shall be Shinhwa (body-flame).”

Ushi-gozen, an unmistakable great yokai, is said to have been born when Sugawara no Michizane, revered in Hwa-guk as a Heaven-God, entered the womb in a conception-dream²; so that Shin Hweein’s becoming entangled in Ushi-gozen’s curse may, in the end, be called the machination of a god as well.

“Since this is a contrivance wrought by a god to toy with a man, then also you shall be Shinhwa (god-making).”

Even so, this is a possibility the original Shin Hweein did not possess.
If a part that had not existed in him before now reveals itself, there will be something to learn from that.
And if, in becoming a woman, parts that had been there from the start are altered, that too will be an awakening.

“That I have been remade into a new possibility, then again you shall be Shinhwa (new-making).”

And, well, since she is beautiful enough that one might truly think a god had shaped her with his own hands, there is no reason she cannot also be called Shinhwa (god’s bloom).
This last, however, is too embarrassing to dare speak aloud as a name he has given himself.

“Whew…”

Only after he had defined the female figure in four ways did Shin Hweein at last feel certain he had succeeded in distinguishing perfectly between the original self and the present self.
When he smiled at the satisfaction welling up in him, Shinhwa in the mirror smiled with him, and though it was unmistakably his own action, his mind seemed for a moment to swim.

“I see now how the narcissus came to bloom. That a person could come to be this foolish.”

— Right now, young master… no, if it’s the young lady, then yes — I agree.

“Do not call me ‘young lady.’ I am Shinhwa.”

Shin Hweein, having put the mask back on, took the mirror from Eulha to stow it away in subspace storage, and then, unable to trust his own eyes, lifted the mirror once more.
And there, within it, the face of Shinhwa still smiled, beautiful as before.
Even though right at this moment he was wearing the mask.

“In the end, I have gone and done it.”

— Shall I smash it right now?

“No, leave it be.”

If what the mirror held were Shin Hweein, he would have to take measures at once; but since it was not him it held but Shinhwa…
He had not, after all, had his true self taken from him. What was there to be greatly worried about.

“On the contrary, this may yet turn out to be the way out of the curse.”

— Hmmm… young master. If you should succeed in fully overcoming Ushi-gozen’s curse, then — perhaps, just perhaps, you might ascend to the Rank-One realm.

“Why, all of a sudden, did such a thought come to you?”

— Hee-hee, just a hunch of mine. And once you’re a Rank-One, you ought to go see that no-good man and learn divination by lots from him.

He had always said that once he became a Rank-One he would return to the family with his head held high, so, since he was going to return anyway, settling in advance on one thing to wring out of his father was, perhaps, not such a bad idea.
It was only that Shin Hweein, who had lately been told over and over how much he resembled his father, felt that learning divination would be like stepping forward of his own accord to grow more like the man, and the feeling it stirred in him was a deeply unpleasant one.

Right after that, his body again came to a sudden halt.

“…I see. Yes — perhaps my having become, of all things, a woman carries just that sort of meaning.”

It was not that the traces of his beloved mother had been added.
It was that the traces of the father he disliked had been subtracted.
If that were so, then this could also be seen as the manifestation of a desire to flee from reality.

Having grasped one more meaning of his present form, Shin Hweein looked into the mirror once again.
Whether it was his imagination or not, Shinhwa’s smile seemed to have grown even deeper; but he was no longer swayed by that smile, and put the mirror away inside his storage.

“Now then — the party, by the look of it, is about to set out. Let us go too.”

And he hurried his steps toward the land of the decisive battle.