Chapter 25 — The Sorcerer, The Priest, And The Nun (2)

Once his talk with the Cardinal was done, he returned to sit with their guests.
When he relayed, word for word, what the Princess had told him, Shin Jain’s face clouded with worry.

“This is a matter we ought to act on at the soonest possible moment. A pity, truly. Is the Royal House’s coming-of-age ceremony so great an affair as all that?”
“They have asked me to enter the palace several days in advance and remain on standby. I am sorry I cannot take the commission. If, once the ceremony has concluded, you would consent to entrust it to me again…”
“Hm. Could we not have the Shin House’s commission seen to ahead of it, and quickly? You cannot imagine how my elder brother has been pressing me on it.”

At that, Shin Hweein tilted his head.

“Forgive a presumptuous question, but is this commission of yours something that can be finished so swiftly? I stand where I do; if the Princess summons me, I must enter the palace at once, whenever that may be.”
“…A pity, truly. From Master Shin Hae’s standpoint, the Royal House must of course come first.”
“It was the commission I received first.”
“Understood. Then there is nothing to be done. Once Princess Mirye’s coming-of-age ceremony has passed without trouble, I shall be in touch again. I trust that next time, too, you will not refuse me.”
“I shall be waiting.”

The weight of the Royal House proved more than Shin Jain could shoulder, for in the end he pressed no further and rose from his seat.
This, perhaps, was where he differed from Shin Yuhyeon.

Shin Hweein was idly turning the thought over when another arrived on its heels.

Then, does that make me the one who takes after Shin Yuhyeon?

His mood soured.

No. There could be no resemblance at all.
Shin Yuhyeon, even before the Royal House, held nothing in himself that fell short of theirs, and so had no reason to bow.
Shin Hweein, true to his teaching, merely played the bluffer in his stiff-necked way with nothing whatsoever behind it.
So if one insisted on weighing which of the two was the greater fool, Shin Hweein was a greater fool even than Shin Jain.

Even knowing all of that, he meant to hold to his present bearing all the same. Only…

“Ah. By the way.”

Shin Jain turned suddenly back around.

Could that have been a movement planned out to the last detail, Shin Hweein wondered, watching Shin Jain’s face. There was not the slightest trace of laughter in it now, only a grave seriousness.

“Might you happen to know the young bodhisattva of the Ham family, the one they also call the Bodhisattva of Contradiction?”
“I do. We crossed paths by chance and grew close. Is there something you wish to say of her?”
“No, no. It only struck me as a most curious coincidence.”

A bitter smile crossed Shin Jain’s face, and he shook his head.

“Long ago, my younger brother and I once competed over her. Though it may be she never noticed it herself.”
“Competed. What, precisely, do you mean by that?”
“Was the word too vague? I mean, of course, between man and woman. We were both young then, so it came to nothing more than childish bids for her notice.”

At this, the first he had ever heard of any such thing, Shin Hweein could not keep a flustered look from his face.
That a mask hid his face was, in that moment, a thing he could not thank enough.

That he and his middle elder brother had competed over Ham Seoyeon?

…When on earth had that been?

He searched his memory and called up the talk he had once had with her at the amusement park, but nothing in it touched on Shin Jain.
Was it that she, knowing how Shin Hweein shrank from his brothers, had deliberately avoided naming Shin Jain?

While he wavered over how to answer, Shin Jain came out with words that threw him into deeper confusion.

“And now, too, I find myself competing over her with Master Shin Hae. I bring it up because it strikes me as amusing.”
“Is that so. Now too, over her. Hm…”

So no matter how he had learned magic in the Western Land of Black-Arts, and even reshaped the course of his life along the way, the root of the man could not be changed.
That the man would suddenly speak of competing over Ham Seoyeon with him, Shin Hweein could in no way grasp how her own feelings were left out of the reckoning.

I ought to bear with it.

He ought to. Yet he could in no way bear with it.

“Competition, surely, means two parties contending for the same end.”
“Are you saying Master Shin Hae has no romantic feeling for her?”
“How a person’s feelings may turn, no one can say for certain. But at present I speak not of myself; I speak of you, Master Shin Jain.”
“…So what you mean is, at present I am no kind of contender at all?”

If Shin Jain had been wearing a mask until this moment, then perhaps it had now slipped a little.
The presence of a First-Rank sorcerer leaked faintly into the air, fierce indeed, and yet Shin Hweein’s own was no longer so easily pushed back by it.

Even to himself it seemed absurd, but his trip to Hwa had brought on yet another sudden surge of growth, and at last the threshold of the First-Rank stood not far off.
There was the sheer quantity of spiritual power, of course. But more than that, there were the bearing and the strength of mind that only awakeneds who had crossed the wall possessed, and above all, the resistance against another’s spiritual power.
It was the most valuable of all the abilities Shin Hweein had gained from the Ushi-gozen mask.

“That, of course, is exactly so.”
“You….”

Shin Jain’s expression hardened where it stood.
No doubt his too-composed answer and his unshaken bearing had let the man take a rough measure of the level he stood at.

And then, in the very next breath, the words that stripped the last of his mask from his face came spilling out of Shin Hweein’s mouth.

“There can hardly be a woman who wishes to have a love affair with a stalker.”
“What. A stalker?”
“You know it well, surely.”

At words that flowed out cold, as though reading off the count of his crimes, Shin Jain froze on the spot for an instant.
Then, having perhaps grasped his own offense at last by himself, the color drained from his face all at once, and without even a parting word he turned on his heel and bolted from the room.

“Always strutting about with his chest puffed out over being a direct-line Shin, and look at the unsightly way he runs off!”

Sister Cyriaca, seated beside Shin Jain, burst out laughing the moment the exchange between them ended.

Shin Hweein turned his gaze to her.

“Sister Cyriaca, do you not mean to go as well?”
“Me? Why should I?”
“Are you not in his party?”
“What on earth. The Shin family begged and begged the Vatican, and I was sent over as their cooperative partner. From the Vatican’s side, Korea has been looking unsettled of late, so it’s a fine opportunity. No, this isn’t the sort of thing I ought to be telling an outsider. Off you go. I came to see Lucas.”
“That is not what I heard from the Cardinal.”
“You did? Straight from the Cardinal himself? Not from some ordinary priest or other?”

It was rude of her to say so, but Shin Hweein did not bother to take her up on it.
There were, after all, moments when even he was startled by the Cardinal’s overly familiar way of going about things.

“That I had had no warning at all of an important guest’s arrival, and so was wholly unprepared; that since no advance notice had reached us, the side that invited her ought to see to her hospitality themselves…. So would it not do to go to the Shin family?”
“No thanks. I told you, I came to see Lucas.”

Shin Hweein heaved a deep sigh.

These exorcist nuns. Of the two he had met so far, both had personalities like dogshit. What on earth was he to do?
Do Yumi too would soon be an exorcist nun, which would make a full three. Though at least Do Yumi had, of late, begun to show some hope of mending, which was a mercy.

“I have plainly conveyed the Cardinal’s word. If you too are of the clergy, you will take its meaning well enough. I will say no more.”
“…Well then, how many days will it take? It’s not as if I came in secret. I have every permission from the Vatican; surely you don’t mean to keep me waiting outside the whole time, hm?”

She had not, it seemed, gone entirely mad, for rather than barge into the cathedral, Sister Cyriaca clung to him and would not let go.

Shin Hweein coolly peeled her off.

“Get in touch with Master Shin Jain and come back with him once ten days have passed.”

“Sister Agatha, am I out? You said I’d be out with three of these, didn’t you?”
“No, bisamgwang counts for only two points, so you’re not out yet.”
“Hey, hey, hey, Agatha! Godori. This is godori, isn’t it?”
“Whoa, how did I miss that one. I got too caught up teaching Father…! Sister Barbara, you’re sharp.”
“And that? Am I out?”
“You’re out with five points. Sister, if you don’t call Stop now, our gwangbak is in danger.”
“Then. Stop!”
“….”
“Ah, Brother!”

The three of them had gathered in his own room, spread a quilt across the table, and laid out hwatu cards over it¹.
At the sight, Shin Hweein was silently turning to leave when Father Lucas noticed him belatedly, caught hold of him, and spoke.

“How did the business go?”
“While the coward of a priest was playing hwatu, I settled the whole of it. Sister Cyriaca will not be setting foot inside Myeongdong Cathedral until my coming-of-age ceremony is over.”
“I knew I could trust in Brother all along…!”

While he had been locked in a contest of presence with men who were no easy match, Father Lucas had been playing hwatu.
At the thought, Shin Hweein’s hackles rose. He plucked one of the three gwang cards the man had so painstakingly gathered and stuck it to his forehead.

By chance, it was the November gwang, the phoenix one.

In Aeshin’s hwatu deck, November depicts the leaves of the paulownia tree, and the reason a phoenix is drawn on the gwang in particular is that, in the lore of the three nations of Han, Jin, and Hwa, the phoenix is said to alight only upon the green-paulownia tree.
That, beyond this, it feeds only on bamboo fruit and drinks only of yecheon (the spring from which sweet wine wells up), and being the auspicious creature that symbolizes a great age of peace, it is well enough that its habits have been embellished into something special.
But for even such a phoenix as that to be shut up inside a mere plaything of a card, humans truly are an amusing sort.

“I am sorry, Brother. I owe you a debt….”
“The priest owes me a great many already.”

Shin Hweein heaved a sigh and perched himself on the edge of the bed.

“Sister Agatha. Did the baptism go well?”
“Yes! Hehe, thank you for your concern, Big Bro.”
“That was nothing more than a courtesy, that was.”

Ignoring Sister Barbara, who could only throw cold water on things, Shin Hweein gathered Do Seonwoo into his arms as the child came flying into his embrace, soothed him, and asked,

“And why is it you are teaching these two hwatu?”
“It’s because Father told me to teach him some Aeshin traditional game besides baduk.”
“Hwatu….”

At the appalling state of Do Yumi’s grasp of these matters, Shin Hweein sighed.

“Hwatu is a game from Hwa.”
“What?!”

From the way she recoiled in shock, it seemed she truly had not known.

“It has already spread among the common folk and there’s no helping that now, but in the old days, even the bare sight of a hwatu card in a yangban household was enough to raise a great hue and cry. Of course, the deck holds within it any number of symbols, and as it has been enjoyed by so many over so long a span of years, it has gathered to itself an immense quantity of feeling and recognition, so as a subject for sorcerous study it would not be without value, but….”
“Did you hear that, Sister Barbara. In a yangban household, they’d raise a hue and cry.”
“…Shall we leave off?”
“Let us leave off.”

Father Lucas, freed from the brink of defeat, wore an unusually bright look as he overturned the board, and Do Yumi muttered ruefully,

“I don’t really know any other game besides hwatu that a group of us can play together.”
“Why must it always be a game… No.”

Looking at Do Yumi and her hurt expression, Shin Hweein swallowed the rest of his words.
That Seonu sat there wearing a pitiful look of his own helped considerably.

“Yutnori would do as well.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. Thanks to Princess Mirye I have been given a little breathing room, so by way of celebrating the baptism I shall play with you.”

When Shin Hweein gathered Seonu up in his arms, rose from the bed, and seated himself across from Do Yumi, the realization that he had been considerate of her dawned over her face, and her expression visibly brightened.

“Big Bro…!”
“Drop that nasal little simper of yours, would you. You’ve barely been a nun for any time at all.”

Ignoring Sister Barbara, who was uselessly hard on her junior, Shin Hweein lifted his staff with one hand and struck the floor.
Four small wooden sticks sprang up into the air.

They were the yut sticks.

“They couldn’t manage carving this fine before, could they.”
“What do you mean? I make scabbards and sword-hilts. If you’d like, I can change the kind of wood, too.”
“Then….”

While Do Yumi, having received the yut sticks in high spirits, was busy giving Sister Barbara a quick lecture on the true traditional games of Aeshin, Father Lucas, a somewhat tense look on his face, asked Shin Hweein,

“By any chance, can you produce the fruit that grows on a tree as well?”

That he had never once thought to try.

Shin Hweein consulted the staff and answered the priest.

“What sort of fruit do you want?”
“Dates. And if I could have the leaves and branches too, all the better.”
“You ask for the troublesome things, do you not….”

Grumbling all the while, Shin Hweein poured a fair quantity of spiritual power into the staff and tapped the floor.
In an instant, two branches sprouted; on one of them, flowers bloomed and just as quickly fell away, and so many fruits formed that the branch bent under their weight.

At the sight, not only the priest but the others as well were lost in admiration.

“Wow….”
“So it really works.”

Sweeping his staff to gather up the branches, leaves, and fruit and parcel them out, Shin Hweein shook his head.

“You could simply buy dates and eat them.”
“I wanted to eat them fresh. Among those who make pilgrimages to the Holy Land, that’s the sort of thing one boasts about.”

Receiving the fruits Shin Hweein held out, Father Lucas shared them among the others, and biting into one raw he gave a guileless laugh.

“Every time the other Fathers boasted of it, I was envious. But now I, too, have something I can boast of.”
“This place is not the Holy Land, you know?”
“Does the place matter? What matters is the company.”

There was much he wished to take the man to task for, but in the end Shin Hweein said only one thing.

“Your debt has grown again.”
“Ah.”

It was on the very day after Sister Agatha’s baptism was celebrated with a great heap of dates and a round of yutnori.
Shin Hweein, Father Lucas, and Yun Jubaek sat down together to drink.