Chapter 4 — Little Sister And Big Sister (1)

In the dream, he was holding a conversation with someone.

Just who it was, he could not say for certain. Only that they were not human, and that they possessed a beauty that captivated every soul regardless of sex. That much came through clearly.

“Don’t go scattering your heart among so many. Wouldn’t it be better to choose just one? Love is not arithmetic, but the heart is. Sooner or later, someone among them is bound to bear you a grudge.”

— You? X, of all people, with that line in your mouth? If you’ve no mirror handy, shall I make you one?

“And I’ve heard tell that ‘making something for you’ is your usual ploy for luring guests into your nest.”

— Caught out, am I. But I mean it. You above all, X, had better make up your mind in earnest, or you’ll be the one taken down. You’ll get stabbed before I do, at the very least. That much I’m certain of.

“It isn’t like that with me. You know that, don’t you? They’re all good friends. Comrades. Sharing the same purpose…”

— Do you really think every one of them feels the same way?

“…”

— You’ve always had this tendency, from the very beginning, to take each situation in its most ideal light. But you said it yourself just now, didn’t you. The heart is calculating. More than any vague dreams or hopes, every soul moves according to its own desire. You must acknowledge that. You must accept that you cannot bring everyone into harmony.

“Even so, I want to see it through.”

— Hmph… For now they all seem to be pulling their feet back a step. But you can’t keep it hidden forever. Every desire will be laid bare, and they will collide, and it will be brutal.

“Love can keep it in check.”

— Love and the like is a phantom. The world is governed by desire. Remember that. Every soul is selfish, every soul jerked about by its appetites. I only hope that you, gentle and good as you are, won’t be swept up in it and hurt.

“…Then for a start, I’d like it if you took your hand off my backside.”

— Aiya, caught out again.

The conversation with that somewhat lecherous friend was great fun, and sorrowful, too.

Perhaps it was.

Because he had already begun to sense that an end he could not avoid was drawing near.

When Shin Hweein woke, for a moment he could not grasp where he was, and lay quietly staring up at the ceiling.

The memory of the dream scattered as fleetingly as morning mist melting under sunlight, and one last drop of dawn-dew fell onto his brow.

— Plip.

“Every soul… jerked about by its appetites.”

“What was that? Could it be the young master just said he means to be jerked about by his appetites, throw off all restraint, and pounce upon me?”

“As if.”

Geum Moa had been waiting at the bedside, and she caught the words that slipped from him and tossed back the joke.
Meeting her eye, Shin Hweein gave a small snort of a laugh and answered.

“To begin with, I haven’t the desire even to lift my head and rise. Have I?”

“Grrrnnnh… As if I weren’t already going to make that one — the one who laid that curse on you — my very first kill…!”

Even as she fetched Shin Hweein a cup of drinking water, then a basin of washing water with a hand-cloth, Geum Moa pronounced her vow in a voice thick with grievance.
Shin Hweein drank the water, finished washing his face, and answered.

“There is no need. Another curse is far more urgent.”

— A curse to make him impotent, no less. He must have racked up a fair lot of resentment from women in his past life. Ugly, filthy creature of a man… hm?

Flame-tail had hit the name of the curse squarely, undoing all the trouble Shin Hweein had gone to in speaking around it.
He had hopped up onto the quilt that covered him and was sneering, when he broke off mid-sentence, came face to face with him, and trailed away.

Most likely this was the first time the creature had gotten a proper look at Shin Hweein’s bare face.

Just please, let him not feel only disgust. So Shin Hweein was thinking, when the creature gave a peculiar reaction instead.

— Ho, indeed, hmmmm…

Flame-tail studied his face quietly for a moment, then nodded with the look of one who had grasped something, and spoke.

— Now it makes a bit more sense. With a face like this, even in your past life you must have been quite the racke— Yowp!

“There he goes, talking nonsense. As if anyone needed reminding he’s a mongrel.”

Geum Moa swept Flame-tail aside and set a tray bearing a bowl of rice-gruel down upon Shin Hweein’s lap.

“You must be terribly hungry, no? You haven’t taken a thing all day. Even if you’ve no appetite, just a little, please.”

“Ah… I had noticed my spiritual power was draining faster than usual. So that was why.”

Only then did Shin Hweein realize he had been sustaining his body by spending spiritual power in place of nourishment.
Ordinarily his spiritual power had been so tied up in shielding him from every manner of curse that the portion he could freely command was no more than a sparrow’s tail. But with the curse now eased and a great share of that power released, he had not yet got a feel for the upper bound, nor for the rate of consumption.

“With my thanks. …So, then. How much time has passed?”

“It’s full daylight now. I’ll draw the curtains.”

“Daylight?”

When Geum Moa drew the curtains, the room being on an upper floor of the hotel and free of any obstacle nearby, sunlight poured in dazzling and dyed the interior with its light.
His skin was by nature so frail that direct sunlight had always burned him as though setting him alight, yet now he met the sun with his bare face, and as he did, even the lingering ill-feeling left behind by a dream he could no longer recall seemed to dissipate.

And yet not even that joy could mask his astonishment.

“When was it that we came in here?”

“It was morning when we came out of the Specter Realm, so… about four hours, I’d say.”

“Only four hours of sleep…”

Shin Hweein murmured, full of astonishment.
When he had collapsed into the bed, he had thought he would need to sleep a full day round before his body would be the least bit recovered.
That his condition could improve so dramatically from a small unbinding of the curse…
Could it be owed to the recovery the newly increased spiritual power afforded?

— Myao!

“Quite right. There was your help, too. My thanks.”

Shin Hweein had been stroking the head of the myodusa, which lay coiled opposite him and had asserted its presence, and now, his astonished heart quieted, he resumed eating the gruel.
His stomach was still in a poor state, yet because his whole body had improved, even the gruel felt rather good to the tongue.

“Shall I turn the news on?”

“…Yes. The Shin House’s response should be looked at, I suppose.”

It was by no means out of any lingering attachment to the Shin House.
It was to make certain that, if by any chance the House had said anything inopportune about him, he would know of it.

— …a distinguished line counted among the Eight Pure-Blood Houses representing Aeshin Korea, known also as the Three Capital Houses*, the third son of the head of the Shin House, Shin Yuhyeon — one Mr. Shin Hweein…*

Geum Moa nodded and turned the TV on with the remote, and news about Shin Hweein came flowing forth, as one might expect.
Yet contrary to his worry over how the House might have spun the matter, it was merely a flat report: that the youngest son of the Shin House, having come of age and undergone the Gatekeeper Rite, had gone missing within the Specter Realm, and that the House was searching for him with every effort at its disposal. That was all.

“That’s a surprise. I’d thought that, never mind talk of you being dead, they’d be heaping every kind of slander on you, true or false, to make the young master’s name as ugly as possible.”

“It is not an unaccountable line to take. To those who are forever determined that ‘officially’ the House’s face shall not be lost, what good would it do to heap further disgrace on me, whom they have already judged dead?”

“True. Then what’s all this about a search? Wouldn’t it be cleaner to put it out on the news for certain that the young master is dead?”

“That part I think I understand. It is most likely not me they are searching for, but you.”

“Ah.”

Above all, the Shin House’s eldest son, Shin Uin, had a fixation on Geum Moa stronger than one might imagine.
Whether Shin Hweein dropped dead in a ditch or not was no concern of his. But Geum Moa had followed Shin Hweein into the Specter Realm, so the moment the entry-ban on Ember-Blood Gate was lifted, he might well lead the household retainers in and search there.

And perhaps there were also those who, judging that Shin Hweein was still alive thanks to Geum Moa, meant to track him down and dispose of him themselves.

“…Looking at it that way, perhaps I have taken the situation too lightly. Moa, would it not be better, to be sure of it, if you took on a wholly different form?”

“It’s quite all right, young master. They wouldn’t know me even nose-to-nose. Not that I’d ever let any of them get that close in the first place!”

— And now for the next item. Two days ago we reported that Mount Vesuvius, in Campania, Italy, dormant for over eighty years, had erupted again.

Shin Hweein had been puzzling over how the news could be so unexpectedly short, given that the missing person was the youngest son of the Shin House, one of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses, and indeed of the Three Capital Houses based in Seoul, of higher standing than the others still.
Then his brows twitched at the report that followed.

— What is more, astonishingly, dormant and extinct volcanoes around the world have begun to stir again, one after another, over yesterday and today, and it has become the topic of much discussion. According to geomantic experts, for the energy of fire to rise in unison across lands unrelated to one another is something that ought to be impossible… For the details, we go now to reporter XXX.

“What did they…?”

Volcanoes all over the world, erupting in concert?
Unless someone had seized the entire globe and given it a shake, what was happening was something that could not happen.
Long before geomancy entered into it, there was certainly a spiritual matter behind it.

Had the situation been understood accurately, it would not be a geomancy expert but a sorcerer occupying that seat, laying out his commentary and putting on his airs.
That there was none was a sign the authorities had yet to grasp the cause.

“Now that I think on it, Eul had made his appearance. Could it be that the upheaval¹ bearing down is not merely on the scale of this country, but of the whole world…”

— That one is having quite the noisy stretch awake.

Shin Hweein had grown grave alongside a situation extraordinary enough to make the brevity of his own news understandable, and there he faltered.
Then Flame-tail, having confirmed that the gruel was finished and the tray taken away, hopped once more onto his lap and spoke.
Shin Hweein had been stroking the creature’s head without much thought, and only belatedly caught the meaning of what he had said, and asked back.

“What did you say, just now?”

— You’re worrying about that one too, aren’t you? But it’s no use. For five whole years, until that one comes for you, you can fret yourself and tremble with terror!

“That part I have already heard. So, what you are saying is that that one, having now woken from sleep, is the reason volcanoes the world over have begun erupting…?”

— That’s right.

What in the… nonsense was this.
If so, was that any different from being a god?

Shin Hweein gave up trying to make sense of it on account of its sheer scale, pressed a hand to his brow, and turned to look at Geum Moa.
He was opening his mouth to ask whether she, too, had known of this, when, of all moments, the doorbell rang.

“Looks like that idiot’s here. Young master, quick, your mask.”

“So I must. Quite right.”

Shin Hweein took up the mask that had been laid at his bedside and put it on, and Geum Moa opened the door of the suite.
Sure enough, the one standing there was Father Lucas.

“Brother Shin Hae! Thank goodness you are up. I know it is impolite of me, but the situation is so urgent that I have come to call.”

“As it happens, I was just about to dress and head out. What has changed in the meantime?”

“That’s… well…”

As Shin Hweein rose from the bed, Geum Moa stepped over and briskly changed his undergarment and helped him into his clothes.

Father Lucas had been about to speak, but stopped at the sight, his face going slack.

“Brother? Could it be that you are using a devil as your handmaid?”

“A shikigami, I told you.”

“But even so… is that not depending on her overmuch?”

At those words Shin Hweein flinched.

Now that he thought about it, until now his body had been so unwell that of course it had been only natural for him to receive Geum Moa’s help in everything. But with his body now in tolerable shape, ought he not be trying to do things on his own, rather than leaving every task to her simply because she was his handmaid?
Could this not be a violation of the Three-Year Pact with Geum Moa?

But contrary to Shin Hweein’s worry, Geum Moa, having heard Father Lucas’s words, hissed like a cat that had caught the scent of kimchi dumplings, and declared with finality.

“This is my right as a handmaid. Take even this from me, and you’ll see me not stand quietly for it.”

“Are all handmaids like this?”

“Of course they are. Most of them, anyway. Isn’t that right, Father?”

“Y-yes, that’s so…”

On the heels of her sharp-edged retort, Geum Moa turned her head to Father Lucas.
What sort of face she made was beyond knowing, but seeing Father Lucas avoid her eye and concede that his thought had been mistaken, it must have been a rather frightful expression.

“That reminds me, Brother. The Sister’s symptoms have worsened further, they tell me. We must hold the exorcism rite as quickly as possible, but the moment I try to draw near the inner chamber, I feel the same sensation as before…”

“Before? You mean when you were dragged into the Specter Realm?”

“That’s right. No matter how I recite the prayers, it does no good. Most middling devils crumble at one strike of the Prayer of Saint Michael, but against that power, which forces me out of this world into another, I have absolutely no means to resist!”

It must have been that, during the few hours Shin Hweein slept, the Father had been laboring at it ceaselessly on his own.

Seeing him speak with that vexed look on his face, Shin Hweein felt a curious stir of feeling.
That Father Lucas was capable of standing up for another, with a sincerity in which not a thread of falsehood was woven, struck him as a remarkable thing.

“And yet you’ve managed to come all this way without being driven back into the Specter Realm. Well done.”

“I remember the sensation from that time. I may not look it, but I’m a man who’s had proper training. A danger I’ve encountered once will not catch me again.”

“Where did that sensation begin? And now?”

“Ah, now I’m fine. It’s only when I try to approach the house — to be exact, the inner chamber where the Sister lies — that I feel it.”

“Do Yuna, was the name? She can’t be brought outside, I take it?”

“The Sister, on account of the curse, is in such poor condition she cannot stir from her bed at all. Fortunately the husband and the Sister’s younger sister can still go in to attend to her without any trouble. But if something were to befall them, too…”

While the conversation with the Father went on, Shin Hweein, with Geum Moa’s help, finished changing into his clothes, and let out a thin sigh as he spoke.

“There are several things that come to mind, but I’ll have to go to the house again to be sure. The house itself, at any rate, had nothing wrong with it. This must surely be a matter between people.”

“What sort of person would do something so wicked! And to a new bride freshly married, who ought to be passing happy days with her husband, pregnant, no less!”

“Pregnant?”

At those words, Shin Hweein’s movement halted in an instant.
The moment he had closed his eyes hard and opened them again, his anger broke upon the Father like a surge of waves.

“You fool, that should have been the first thing you told me!”

“Ah.”

That a woman should bear a child in her body is a thing most sacred and blessed. Yet with two souls dwelling in a single body, the sorcerous significance is amplified without limit.
The negative side outweighs the positive by far, and in that respect, it is the worst possible case.

One must inquire whether the curse was laid upon the child or upon the mother, and it may even be that the child is too extraordinary an existence, and has been the one exerting influence on the mother.

…Just as Shin Hweein had been born, leaving in the body of the mother who bore him an illness that could never be shaken off.

“Let us make haste.”

“Hahah…. Has even you, Brother, been put on edge by the words ‘a pregnant woman’? Truly, the eye I have for souls does not err.”

“Don’t laugh.”

Father Lucas let a faint laugh slip, and his face warmed with it, but Shin Hweein only knit his brow.

To the man making to follow after the Father, Geum Moa stepped over and laid a black overcoat over his shoulders, one he did not remember.
Western-style outerwear, naturally.

“It’s a tailored jacket. Pairs nicely with the shirt you have on. Handsome, no? While the young master was sleeping, I went to the department store and bought it for him.”

“And from where did you get the money?”

The fabric was plainly not run-of-the-mill, and not the sort of thing one could come by cheaply.
To Shin Hweein, who could no longer pull rank as the scion of a distinguished house, money was, little by little, becoming a sensitive matter.

But Geum Moa answered with no shame at all.

“It’s my wages, what I’ve been setting aside all this while. I’d been keeping it apart against the day young master and I would leave the House together.”

“…I shall pay you back in full when I receive money from the Father. Mark the price down.”

“In that case, with the money I’ll be receiving from young master this time, a fine silk top hat—”

“Absolutely not.”

After cutting her off with a sharp word, he took up his staff.
He was about to follow the Father out, when something occurred to Shin Hweein and he opened his mouth.

“Is there a Western-style confectioner here?”

“Yes, there’s one on the ground floor. For a get-well gift, perhaps…?”

“No.”

He let out a low sigh and said,

“An offering.”