Chapter 4 — Little Sister And Big Sister (4)

The presence he gave off was closer to a beast’s than a person’s.

The priestly habit and the red crucifix-pendant about his neck were unchanged.
What had changed were the two ill-omened eyes, sapphire gone to ruby, and the black iron chains that wound about his whole body as though to pin his every movement down.

“So that is why he could be made an exorcist priest.”

Shin Hweein murmured it under his breath, looking upon the transfigured form of Father Lucas.
The priest, without so much as troubling to wipe the blood from his body, shook his head and answered.

“That is why he had no choice but to be made an exorcist priest.”
“Understood. So your superiors judged you dangerous, but controllable.”
“You think they’re insolent too, don’t you? Those idiots, who couldn’t even catch on to my true name….”

In truth, he had braced himself even for the possibility of fighting the man.
Mercifully, the priest still seemed well-disposed toward him.
And then, Father Lucas was surely aware of this other side of himself.
Unless he had borne some ill will toward Shin Hweein from the start, he would never have proposed taking the mission on together while reckoning, in the same breath, with the chance of doing him harm.

“Pardon, though. We’ve drifted off the path. What do we do?”
“As it happens, the circumstances have changed. The thing has shown itself of its own accord. There is no longer any need to go hunting it the hard way.”

— As he says, the guiding is over. I have seen something amusing. My new master, henceforth too I shall serve you very, very much. Then I am off.

The two red eyes of Old Aengseol, which had been floating in midair, blinked out the instant her words ended.
Just in case, he tried to sense her, but she had already hidden herself away entirely.

That she had withdrawn meant the purpose for which she had been called was achieved, and there was no real cause for concern.
And yet a faint unease lingered in Shin Hweein at how unusually obliging Old Aengseol had been, for one bound by a family compact.
But this was no moment to dwell on it in earnest.

“Father. Do you see it?”
“Set the ‘Father’ aside for now. Call me, hmm… Zer instead.”
“Very well, Zer. That, there, is our quarry.”

Zer must have burnt through a great deal of power summoning, in a single blow, the yokai he had just dispatched.
Not so very far from them, drifting up into the air, having lost even the strength to conceal himself, was the form of a small child, weeping.

Shin Hweein did not fail to mark, either, that on the ground directly beneath the child a single human figure lay sprawled.
Reduced to the very brink of exhaustion, yet alive.
Beyond doubt, the servant who had been reported missing.

“Zer.”
“Right. All I need do is grind that devil to pulp, yes?”
“…First, we secure the living one.”
“Ah, of course. Weak humans die at the slightest neglect if one doesn’t tend to them….”

Where before he had hesitated even at the prospect of opposing a newborn infant, Zer now set about the killing of the taejagwi without the smallest pause.
The contrast left Shin Hweein, inwardly, taken aback.
It was, of course, the proper posture for an exorcist priest, but it brought home to him that the man was now wholly other than Father Lucas.

— No, no, no, no!

When Zer extended a portion of the black chains coiled about his body, meaning to lay hold of the fallen figure, the taejagwi suddenly screamed out a string of intelligible words.

— Don’t take her, don’t take her! No!

“He’s making a racket!”
“Not yet. Do not kill him. We must learn the sorcerer.”

When Zer turned the chain to lash at the taejagwi, Shin Hweein calmly restrained him.
His spiritual power, bottomed out entirely from making the contract with Neuldam, was slowly refilling.
The parts of his body that had broken down were normalising one by one, and little by little he could move again.

“The sorcerer? Ah, right. Wasn’t there talk that the aunt was suspicious?”
“…Unlike a certain someone, you go straight to the heart of it. A mercy.”

— Don’t kill, don’t kill! You mustn’t kill! No!

The wailing of the taejagwi grew still louder.
There ought to have been no further Thunder-Beasts coming now, and yet the wind and rain raged the harder, and the spectral, mournful cry, laden with malice and fury, lashed at the party.
Zer, for his part, moved as lightly as if he were out on a stroll and stretched his chains toward the fallen woman, but in midair they struck a violent counter-shock and were flung back.

“Tch. A barrier.”

— You can’t! You mustn’t kill!

To Shin Hweein’s eyes too, a barrier strong enough to warp space itself was wrapped about the woman.
He guessed that the taejagwi, having gained the power to cross the boundary of the world, was using it to tear a rift in space and confine the woman in some manner of sub-space within.
He was taken aback, of course, by the strength of the barrier such a taejagwi could conjure, but more than that, the wrongness of the thing struck him hard.

‘If he had power enough to throw up such a barrier, he ought to be sheltering himself with it. And yet he is not. Why? Is it not too much force, merely to secure a hostage?’

But before Shin Hweein’s question could resolve, Zer once again hurled himself at the barrier.

“A barrier is something one shatters and has done with!”
“What. Wait, that is a space-warping—!”
“HUAAAAAARGH!”

— KWAAAAAANG!

The instant the chains struck the barrier a second time, heaven and earth shook, and a skin-crawling burst-note tore loose.
The chains were flung back in the direction opposite to the force he had put into them, and Zer’s body shuddered along with them.

“Hah.”
“That is a barrier that cannot be broken by mere physical force! A power that manipulates space interferes….”
“No. There exists no power that cannot be broken.”

— Chrrrk. More of the chains coiled about Zer’s body unfurled and rippled out into the air.
When he gathered them into a single strand and lifted them up, they looked very nearly like a colossal sword.

“Woe unto you, who stretch your evil even unto your neighbour. You shall be slain in the netherworld. Woe unto you, who weigh out the scales of sin and falsehood, and bring suffering upon the men of the earth; for this cause, you shall be utterly cut off.”

A passage scarcely intelligible, chilling, and yet murmured as though it were a prayer.

“You shall perish soon, and find neither salvation nor joy!”

He spat the words out, words befitting no man of the cloth, more imprecation than benediction, and brought the heaped chains down upon the barrier a second time!

— You mustn’t kill! You mustn’t kill!

A great impact came crashing through, and Shin Hweein planted his staff and held his footing in desperation.
The taejagwi’s scream-like wail rose higher still, dulling his senses, and as it did, something landed in front of him.
It was Zer, the unconscious servant gathered into his arms.

“That barrier. You truly… broke it.”
“Of course.”

Nodding as though it were no great matter, Zer indicated the woman with his chin and spoke.

“But this one, she’ll go just like that. Stay even a little longer in the same space as this devil and she’s done for. What’s the plan?”

When Shin Hweein checked her, sure enough, he could feel the traces of a curse eating into the woman’s body.
What was strange, though, was that it was not the same as the sorcery-power he had felt from the aunt.

Was there another accomplice in the matter?
But for that, the breath of it is too fresh. Surely not.

“…No. This is no time for that. It is a miracle she has held out as long as she has. I’ll send her on ahead.”

— No! No…!

That powerful barrier had perhaps been the creature’s last recourse.
With the woman taken from him, the taejagwi could no longer even stir from where he hung in the air, and only cried out in piteous wails.

Shin Hweein laid one hand upon the woman’s brow and quietly intoned a spell.

“Thou who hast wandered into the path of the yokai, return now to the path of men.”

When Zer released the woman from his arms, a hole, large enough for a single person to barely pass through, opened beneath her body and swallowed her down.
She was in critical condition still, but if she made it back to the present world, she would live.

This was, in its way, also a kindness toward the taejagwi.
He had turned a murderer into a would-be murderer, and so, even leaving the creature’s breath in his body, surely now he could be forgiven.

“Young master, honestly…”

He could feel Geum Moa, who had seen straight through to his interior, let out a sigh.
Ignoring her, he raised his head and saw the taejagwi writhing in midair, screaming.

— No, don’t kill! Bad people! Bad grown-ups! Bad! Bad!

“Look who is talking… hm?”

The unease Shin Hweein had felt earlier surfaced once more in his mind.
Until now, he had taken the taejagwi‘s “don’t kill“ as, of course, a plea not to kill him.
And yet, hearing the creature wail and rail at them now, it sounded for all the world as though he were saying it was already too late, that the person had been killed.
What was more, that barrier had looked less a thing meant to confine a hostage than a thing meant to protect.

It made no common sense, but forcing it to fit the situation as best he could, perhaps the taejagwi believed they had just now killed the woman they had returned to the present world.
If that were so.

“Child.”

Shin Hweein, startled to find his own voice coming out harder than he had meant, did not let his words break off.

“Was it. Was it that you were trying to save that woman?”
“What is this idiotic—”

— Auntie said so, the woman was going to die! She said if I brought her here she would live!

For a moment, a stillness fell over the place.
It was as though even the wind and rain had paused.

Shin Hweein lifted his staff, planted it before him, and took a single step toward the taejagwi.
The taejagwi, still unable to stop weeping, gazed absently at him.

“Child. An ordinary person cannot endure the Specter Realm. We sent her back in order to save her.”

— Lies! I saw before, Grandma died! Because of me Grandma died, and now this time Mama is really in danger…!

“Aah, truly insufferable!”
“You will not.”

When Zer, no longer able to bear the taejagwi lifting his voice and crying out, made to spring forward, Shin Hweein’s firm voice stopped him.

“Zer. The child cannot distinguish good from evil.”
“And yet it was you who called him a sinner.”
“Just now, has it not become more than likely that what was done shall amount only to an attempt?”
“…Hah.”
“So if I hear the child out first, and judge after, it will not be too late.”

Zer must have felt something in the picture of Shin Hweein calmly checking him.
As if the steam had gone out of him, he gathered all his chains back in, gave a small laugh, and stepped back a pace.

“Well, then, do as you will.”
“My thanks.”

Having voiced his gratitude to him, Shin Hweein once more planted his staff toward the child.
He drew near the child, who, lacking even the strength now to weep loudly, had curled himself in upon himself in midair, and opened his mouth in the gentlest voice he could manage.

“Child. Just once, hear what I say.”

— No, she’ll die… no…

“That woman was, truly, on the brink of death. People must live in the world of people. So too with the mother you would harm, and the child within her belly. Bless this new life, I beg you. If you do, then you yourself will be blessed, and live out your next life in good fortune.”

— No, she’ll die. I died too.

Now there was no strength left in him to resist.
The child spoke in a tear-wet voice, whimpering, as if recalling the very moment of his own death, his face frozen in terror.

— Little sister… she’s in danger. I’m supposed to help her…. Mama again… little sister, she’ll die…

“Even that. Even that, you have been lied to about.”

A mother and a younger sibling, indeed.
The woman, a bride only newly wed, could not possibly be the taejagwi’s mother.

Shin Hweein, clenching his teeth and reining in his anger, quietly drew from his robes a single strand of hair.
From it, leading in a straight line to the taejagwi, the cord, the sign of a compact, stood vividly visible to his two eyes.

— Auntie. Her hair.

“So. Auntie told you that.”

— Yes.

It was the aunt’s.

“Hah.”
“Zer.”
“But it’s funny, isn’t it.”
“Not in the slightest.”

He had wished, rather, for some twist.
Ah, yes. Man is so very powerless before his own desires.
Zer was sneering, but Lucas, had he been here, would have sighed.

“Let us put an end to it now. Your mama, your little sibling, both, I shall protect them in your stead. There is no need for you to worry.”

— But Auntie said…

The taejagwi‘s manner, as of one thoroughly brainwashed, left him with nothing but astonishment.
The aunt’s sorcery-power had not even appeared to him as a particularly well-ordered thing, and yet how she had managed to deceive a taejagwi this thoroughly was, in itself, a thing to wonder at.

Shin Hweein caught the taejagwi, drained of strength and slowly descending, in his arms.
He handed off his staff to Geum Moa, who came rushing in, aghast, to stop him, and slowly stroked the child’s head.

“Auntie was only a little overworried, that is all. Come back with me, and we shall wait at ease together. If you make up your mind to bless the new life that is being born, then the spirits of heaven and earth shall surely point out for you the next best place to be.”

— Truly, is it… all right…?

“Yes, of course. Everything will be all right.”

— Then… please…. My little sister, Mama too…

He had never coaxed a child before, but perhaps the long-unfamiliar touch of a human hand had been enough, inexpert though it was.
The taejagwi slowly fell asleep.

He yearned, in the depth of him, to free the child outright into Buddhahood, but the taejagwi had attained too great a rank for an ordinary low-spirit release.
The mudang revered him as a Dongjasin, the Boy-God; this was no level a freshly-qualified novice sorcerer could send off into release.

“Seal.”

Instead, Shin Hweein used a basic warding-art he had learned in the Shin House to seal the taejagwi’s spiritual power for a while.
It would not hold long, but that long would be enough.
By then, all those who deserved punishment would already have received it.

“…Let us go back.”
“Young master…”

Sensing the heaviness of Shin Hweein’s mood, fallen quieter than before, Geum Moa came up and, without a word, quietly embraced him.
On any ordinary day he would have pushed her off, citing the propriety between man and woman, but his body and heart were too worn out now to think of any such thing.

“All of you, come. Iron-tail, you too.”
“…Iron-tail? Surely you didn’t mean me just now?”

When Zer spoke as if he could not believe it, Shin Hweein, well aware that through the mask the look would not get across, glared at him with cold eyes nonetheless and said:

“Yes. The way you go rampaging with no sense of heaven or earth, the very image of our Flame-tail.”

— What?! Why drag me, who’s been minding his own business, into it!

“Wow. If you weren’t a human I really like, you’d be getting branded with my chains right about now.”

Even grumbling, Zer came obediently along, and Shin Hweein, unlike before, opened a proper exit and said to him:

“That said, how long do you mean to stay in that form? If you can pass yourself off as the priest, well and good, but…”
“Wait a moment. …Right, that’s it.”

Zer, his eyes flashing, pointed straight at Shin Hweein and said:

“You. Gigolo.”
“What did you say?”

And then he leapt nimbly into the gateway.

Shin Hweein paused a moment, turning the word over in his mind, and presently realised it was a nickname directed at himself.

“…Gigolo?”
“It means kept man, young master. As in a man who knows how to seduce women. A playboy.”
“Gigolo??”