Chapter 4 — Little Sister And Big Sister (5)

Shin Hweein returned to the present world with the taejagwi held in his arms.
The woman he had sent out ahead of him was still in critical condition, and the blue-eyed Father Lucas bustled about her, administering emergency aid.

“Father Lucas.”

“Ah, Brother! Truly, thank you. Thanks to you, we kept yet another innocent from being made a victim!”

Father Lucas had just finished tending the woman.
He lifted his head with a smile so guileless and clear that Shin Hweein could scarcely credit him as the same person who, in the form of Iron-tail, had stuck him with that absurd nickname “Gigolo” and then run off.

Shin Hweein glanced at the servant’s face, damp now with consecrated water from the first aid, and spoke.

“She… ought to be sent to a hospital, I should think.”

“I’ve already called for someone. The Cathedral keeps a hospital of its own. Whoever it was that laid the curse on her, they shall do her no further harm.”

Perhaps Father Lucas was taking to heart the words the taejagwi had let fall, that she could only live if she were brought into the Specter Realm.

It startled Shin Hweein to find this man, by turns silly and dim-witted, surprisingly meticulous.
It startled him, too, that the priest carried over the memories from his time as Zer.

“And so, Brother, that child…”

“First, let us see the woman delivered to the hospital. Then I shall call them in.”

“…Quite so. Yes, of course.”

The ambulance arrived not long after.
The people who stepped out of it greeted Father Lucas with a uniform, formal courtesy that struck Shin Hweein as wholly unfamiliar.

“Father — and this gentleman…?”

“He is a very important collaborator. I’ll say it now: if you try to dig up information on him, I shall be the one who is angry.”

“I shall keep it in mind, and pass the word to everyone.”

The people who had been wary of Shin Hweein, the moment Father Lucas’s words fell, reversed their attitudes completely, gave him a respectful bow as well, and took the patient away.
The way they changed face at a single word from the priest sent through him a chill colder than the sight of Zer earlier had.

“…They aren’t a private army, surely?”

“What? A private army?! Hahaha. They are all simply comrades who serve the Lord with one heart. The one I might call my private… ah, no, my subordinate, is only one person. She isn’t at my side just now, though.”

Seeing the priest’s expression cloud with a bittersweet look, as though he were calling up some memory, Shin Hweein realized his blunder and hastily apologized.

“That was an idle question. I am sorry.”

“Originally she was to come to Korea with me, but her hangover was so terrible that she missed the flight, if you can believe it. I keep telling her: for a woman who has taken the veil, she really ought to ease off on the drink…”

“…”

Had his joints not been so weak, the fist he was clenching just now would already be flying.
That he could not strike it was a regret beyond bearing.

The two of them must, beyond doubt, make a remarkably well-matched pair.
Shin Hweein thought so privately, and only privately.

“Father, we’re back. What on earth has happened — an ambulance —”

“Th-th-that thing! Wh-what — !”

By happy timing, Kim Hyeonwoo and his sister-in-law were just then walking out of the parking lot.
Kim Hyeonwoo failed to recognize the taejagwi and only blinked in bewilderment, while the woman beside him recognized it at a single glance and threw her eyes wide in shock.

As her distance from him narrowed, the taejagwi in his arms gave a faint moan and trembled.
Shin Hweein soothed the child once more, softly, and lulled him back to sleep.

“Woman. Give me your name.”

“Wh-what is that thing?! You brought a monster into our house?! From the first I laid eyes on you, I knew something was off!”

“Sister-in-law? What are you —”

“Your name.”

Shin Hweein spoke with his spiritual power layered into his voice.
To one who had never been formally schooled in sorcery, that alone must have brought pressure enough to bear.

“Speak.”

“D-Do Yumi. Heuh — khekh!”

The woman, Do Yumi, unable to defy his will and so giving up her true name, coughed up blood and dropped to her knees on the floor.
When Shin Hweein levelled a cold stare at her, Kim Hyeonwoo, standing beside her and struck like a man by lightning out of a clear sky, cried out in shock.

“Sister-in-law! Sorcerer — what in heaven are you doing! If something has happened, at least say what it is so —”

“Brother Kim Hyeonwoo, it would be best for you to step back for a moment. …I mean to say, it is dangerous; please keep your distance from that woman.”

Now, at last, he must have realized something was going terribly wrong.
Kim Hyeonwoo, with a look that said surely not, turned to Do Yumi.
And, faltering, he took a step back.

“Father — what — what is the meaning of this —”

“I shall ask now.”

Shin Hweein ignored the man and fixed his attention solely on the woman.
If the man bore any guilt, it lay only in this: that until matters reached this pass, he had known nothing and treated his sister-in-law with an easy mind.

This anger, boiling up from no fathomable bottom, must not be spilled, even by accident, upon one without sin.

“The one who set the taejagwi on us. That was you, Do Yumi. Was it not?”

“I didn’t know! Keohk!”

Do Yumi denied his words on the instant and again coughed up blood.
This was a side-effect commonly seen in those who had not learned sorcery properly.
To bind another being by one’s own name was a clear and present curse; to wield that binding so as to harm another was likewise a curse.

Anyone meaning to work sorcery ought, at the least, to pile up the knowledge and the spells to match and brace against the recoil.
She had done the opposite, letting her spiritual power leak unchecked and firing off her power as the whim took her, so that when she pitted herself against one who had learned sorcery properly, she could not even bring her power to bear before she was undone.
From the moment Do Yumi had used the taejagwi to thrust Shin Hweein into the Specter Realm, a lethal round had already been pressed into his hand, his to fire back at her.

“If lies are heaped up, the weight of sin-karma shall press down upon your throat. Speak honestly. I am speaking of this child.”

“I don’t know — !”

Do Yumi denied it and again coughed up blood.
She had a certain hard backbone to her.
Even knowing already that she had no means of winning against him, she meant at the very least to refuse to admit her guilt, to cast Shin Hweein himself as a criminal who had laid harm on the innocent.
It was as though she had set her teeth to it; coughing up blood again and again, she nonetheless held out to the end with her denial.

“That you did not use the taejagwi to drag a woman into the Specter Realm.”

“That’s right!”

“Then naturally it was not by your will that we were sent into the Specter Realm either.”

“Yes…!”

“Very well. I shall ask you once more. If you lie again this time, you take damage to your internal organs.”

“I’m telling you it wasn’t me! Kuheek!”

She was already close to a state of mortal collapse.
Did she really mean to make a murderer of him?
Shin Hweein let out a low whoof of breath and opened his mouth to speak.

“If you lie again, you may become a body that can never bear a child.”

“Ngh…”

In that instant the woman shut her mouth completely.
Father Lucas, who already knew the circumstances, shook his head with a bittersweet look; Kim Hyeonwoo’s two eyes flew wide with disbelief.

Shin Hweein thought it a very fortunate thing indeed that his own face was hidden behind the mask.
Were the face he wore now to be seen, he would surely not have been able to keep up the interrogation.

“You cursed the child your sister carries with so light a heart, and yet you feel the weight of a child you have not yet so much as conceived?”

“What… do you know. What do you know.”

“It is because I do not know that I am asking. And so I am saying: if you have a defense to make, make it now.”

“No — it isn’t like that. How am I supposed to say it? I really… I really…”

In the end Do Yumi began to sob.
Then there was, after all, some truth not yet brought to light.
Shin Hweein closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, and asked quietly.

“The taejagwi — you set him on us, did you?”

“Yes. I… begged him to.”

“You used him to abduct that woman who worked at the house into the Specter Realm.”

“Yes.”

“And the first time, with the priest, and today, dragging us into the Specter Realm. That, too.”

“I didn’t know it would be so dangerous… I thought it would only be… missing for a little while.”

How foolish are the deeds that come out of ignorance.
The present world and the Specter Realm may look as though they touch, but to set one’s foot beyond the boundary is, literally, to step into a different world.
This is precisely why the Royal House and the Eight Pure-Blood Houses, who keep the gates between the two worlds, are held in reverence.

Too great a power, then, to be granted to a taejagwi who could not yet tell right from wrong, and a sorceress too ignorant by far to wield such power.
No, an inept taeju-mudang, more properly.

He had wondered what manner of force she carried that lay closer to her own being than sorcery-power, and now he understood.
It was divine power, the power that a mudang handles.

“What was your purpose. Was it that you meant to kill your own kin?”

“No.”

“…”

This time Do Yumi did not cough up blood.
At that sight some little life returned to Kim Hyeonwoo’s eyes, and the priest, too, threw his eyes wide.
Only Geum Moa watched her with a cold, unchanged expression.

“I shall ask again. Was it your purpose to kill your sister and the child in her womb?”

“No.”

“…Then perhaps.”

Feeling something like a thunderbolt strike through his mind, Shin Hweein asked her.

“The one who laid the curse on your sister, that was not you, was it? Not you using the taejagwi?”

“It wasn’t me. Nor him.”

“And there is no accomplice besides? About the curse laid on the servant, you really know nothing?”

“I don’t know, truly, I don’t…”

“Sister-in-law!”

When this time, too, Do Yumi gave no real reaction, Kim Hyeonwoo burst into weeping of relief and sank to the floor.
But Father Lucas’s expression grew only the more uncomprehending.

The situation was tangled in such confusion that one would more readily believe she had, in that brief instant, improvised a counter-spell to evade the curse’s recoil.

“Shall I assist you, young master?”

“No. There is yet one more thing I wish to confirm.”

Refusing Geum Moa’s offered hand, Shin Hweein turned over his exchange with Do Yumi inside his head.
There was certainly a part of it that still gave him pause.

Yes, the part where she had answered, how am I supposed to say it.
If it was not that she could not speak because she did not know, and not that she could not speak because she wished to hide a wrong, then it could only be the kind of thing one says when one knows, but has some reason that bars one from speaking.
And for a sorcerer, there is only one such case.

“It is a contract.”

“Ngh.”

“No, you needn’t go out of your way to answer. You know who laid the curse on your sister. But you are bound by contract, and so cannot answer. In that case… surely not.”

Turning over the taejagwi’s words and deeds, believing that Do Yumi was not the culprit, he found one new hypothesis spring up, astonishing as it was.

“Surely you did not, in truth, move the taejagwi in order to help your sister?”

“My sister, absolutely not. I only — the child in her womb.”

In the end she could no longer hold back the indignation; weeping in great droplets, she spoke.

“I could no longer bear to see a child die like that…!”

“How is it that abducting a person leads to a child’s salvation? Who is it that laid the curse on her, I am asking you!”

“Th-that — ueurgh!”

This time Do Yumi coughed up blood for a reason wholly different from the simple spell Shin Hweein had cast on her.
In sudden urgency Shin Hweein turned to Geum Moa; she nodded, and sent the myodusa flying onto Do Yumi.

By good fortune the action came not too late, and they kept her condition from worsening, but on that account she was no longer in any state to answer his questions.

“Sister-in-law, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you suffer like this…”

“Brother, Sister… khk.”

With matters come to this pass, Shin Hweein was now certain there was information these two knew and he did not.

And yet, from their reactions, he could roughly guess what it was.
He prayed it should not be so, and yet, in his heart, was already certain.

“Priest. Come close.”

“Yes.”

When the priest, his expression resolute, drew near, Shin Hweein whispered into his ear.

“You have brought a fine business to me, have you not. Did you dare to mean to force on me a choice between sins, no matter which side I took?”

“Ngh — no. If you would only resolve the Specter-Realm-related part of the matter, I shall take care of the curse…”

“Absurd. I have already set foot in the matter. Karma is not the sort of thing that fails to accumulate just because one shuts one’s eyes and turns one’s face away.”

“…I am sorry.”

Holding back the urge to land one good blow on the priest, Shin Hweein spoke again.

“From here on I shall speak; if I am wrong, correct me.”

“…Understood.”

“The lifting of the curse — curse-absolving — is itself possible. But the absolving demands a price. Is that not so?”

“That… is so.”

The new bride, pregnant, had been struck with a curse.
To resolve the curse, a person had come. But Do Yumi, who wanted to save the child, isolated that person in the Specter Realm.
She had wanted to keep the curse from being absolved.
And so it came to this.

“The price of curse-absolving is… the life of the child in the womb.”

“…”

The priest could not bring himself to answer, and shut his eyes tight.
That was answer enough.
Answer even as to what they did not know.

What had Do Yumi been thinking, blindly blocking the absolution like that?
And why, in the middle of it all, abduct the servant?

If she were the one to blame, then everything was explained.
The third party’s sorcery-power they had sensed on the servant, strange yet somehow familiar, explained too.
The taejagwi’s desperate stance toward Do Yuna and the child in her womb, explained too.
And the fact that Do Yumi, who could not wield a single sorcery properly, was being called Auntie by the taejagwi.

…And the way Do Yumi and the taejagwi had carried themselves, as though they had already lived through all of this once before. All of it.

“Whew…”

Shin Hweein let out a long, pent-up breath and pushed the priest away.
Then, to Kim Hyeonwoo, who clung to his collapsed sister-in-law and wept floods and played out a melodrama, he flung his words.

“From this moment I shall absolve Do Yuna’s curse. Kim Hyeonwoo, even so, are you content?”

Hearing the words, Kim Hyeonwoo’s face darkened, and yet he resolutely nodded.
Do Yumi, all her strength gone, knew already that there was nothing more she could do, and let her head fall weakly.

“Good. And priest, whatever her motives, Do Yumi is a serious offender who opened the Specter Realm Gate at her whim and very nearly killed others by drawing them through it. Properly speaking, there is nothing for it but to report her to the state, but —”

“I beg you, Brother. Could the Cathedral take Sister Yumi into its keeping? To leave her to be made a sacrifice as she is, she is too good a soul for that.”

“Too good, is it.”

This priest, after all he has been through, still understands people so little.

That Do Yumi was likewise no pure innocent was, to Shin Hweein’s eyes, perfectly clear; but he did not, in the end, set the words on his tongue.
In truth he had had no intention of reporting her to the state from the first.

To take on a sorcerer’s commission and resolve it formally, one must hold a sorcerer’s license, which the state issues, and Shin Hweein, of course, held no such thing.
The moment he reported Do Yumi, Shin Hweein too would become a serious offender.

“Then I leave her to you. It would be best to take her away at once.”

“In point of fact, I had them standing by.”

When the priest tapped at his phone, people dressed similarly to those who had come earlier with the ambulance entered from outside.
Once more, this man was without seam in such matters; Shin Hweein was shaking his head from side to side when he saw them at once moving to restrain Do Yumi.

“Ngh…”

“Father! What are you going to do with my sister-in-law?!”

“Be at ease, Brother. Sister Yumi has only strayed onto a wrong path for a little while; she did not act with evil intent. If that is so, then it is enough that she learn, hereafter, to do what is right, and that she practice not to spend her power in vain.”

“Oh — then, do you mean to give my sister-in-law baptism…?”

“Just so. I have no doubt that Sister, too, shall come to understand the Lord’s will.”

Fine words, but the gist of them was this: a taejagwi of preposterous power, and Do Yumi who bore the makings of the mudang who handled him, would be enrolled in the Cathedral and put to use.

Truly, he was not an Exorcist Priest for nothing.
That he looked dim-witted on the surface and at the decisive moment carried on with the slipperiness of a black snake was, in honesty, rather to Shin Hweein’s liking.
Except.

“Father Lucas.”

“Yes? Ah —!”

The man had forgotten, in his absentmindedness, that Shin Hweein was still holding the taejagwi in his arms.
In the end that made him look the very picture of a daydreamer.

Whether or not Shin Hweein handed over a captured yokai was, in the last analysis, Shin Hweein’s choice.
Do Yumi was, in fact, scarcely more than a bonus thrown in with the taejagwi, no, with the Taeju Doryeong, now nestled in Shin Hweein’s arms.

“Brother…”

Father Lucas turned upon him the most piteous gaze he could muster, but he was aiming it at the wrong man.
To attempt the pretty-face ploy on Shin Hweein, in whom the priest’s radiant looks set off a hidden, simmering irritation every time he saw them, was ludicrous past words.
He spoke in a cold voice.

“A debt. Do you acknowledge it?”

“Urgh — Brother, your words weigh heavily on me indeed.”

“That you have grasped the weight of words alone makes what Father Lucas has gained in this matter no small thing.”

“Quite so, yes. …I acknowledge it. I owe Brother Shin Hae a great debt.”

“Good.”

Shin Hweein laid a sealing-art upon the taejagwi over and over, then handed him to the men who had come up to him, instructing them to keep at least the taejagwi‘s spiritual power continuously sealed until Do Yumi’s education was complete.

And so, when the people had taken the taejagwi and Do Yumi and slipped out from the place, what remained behind was only Kim Hyeonwoo, stunned and motionless.

“Be at ease, Kim Hyeonwoo.”

“At ease, you say… haha. The one person who had been a prop to my heart, after all, was my sister-in-law. Of course, if my wife recovers, that alone is enough for me…”

“It shall, in time, be two again.”

At the words Shin Hweein had let fall as if it were nothing, Kim Hyeonwoo’s eyes flew wide.

“Two? Truly? Sorcerer — do you really mean…!”

“Of course. For words have weight.”

“Sorcerer!”

“Thanks I shall hear once it is all over.”

By the man’s reckoning, what came back to Shin Hweein should not be thanks but a curse, if anything were wanting.
Shin Hweein smacked his lips with a bitter taste, and turned away.

“Curse-absolving takes time and demands concentration; Kim Hyeonwoo, wait outside. The priest, and… Moa, come with me.”

“Oh my. And here I thought you’d be chasing me out too.”

In honesty he had wanted to.
He did not want her, of all people, to see what shape he would be in from this moment on.

“Yet you are my prop. What is there to be done? When I fall, hold me up.”

“Hee-hee. I really have no choice, do I.”

“How fitting — a Gigolo indeed…”

Shin Hweein shot a hard look at the priest who murmured this softly, recollected that the mask hid his face, ground his teeth, and stepped up onto the wooden veranda.

Striding without hesitation toward the master bedroom, he felt at his breast.
There already, warm to the touch, lay the Indulgence.
Doubtless the karma he had piled up over this affair, a far from negligible heap, was now gathering, readying once again to activate it.

“Young master, surely —”

“Of course. That is my best.”

“Oh, my… how splendid.”

That she was being sarcastic with him, Shin Hweein well knew.
And yet he simply could not bear it.

The freedom he wanted to win was not the kind of freedom by which, when one is thrust two unjust choices, one chooses between them.
It was to act according to his own will, and obtain the outcome he wished for.
Even if that was not what every soul wished, to make all things flow according to their proper course.

“Do Yuna.”

That was his freedom.

“From this moment I shall absolve the curse.”

“Hngh… aah…”

Inside the master bedroom, opened to him at last now that the taejagwi’s influence had been lifted, a woman lay set down upon a bedstead, her beauty something she could not entirely conceal even with all the unmistakable pallor of an invalid.

Ah — this is the one.

Shin Hweein gave a soft groan of recognition.
How he had hoped, to the very last, that it would not be.
The sorcery-power he was now coming to feel only too familiar with, that, she carried.
…It was the sorcery-power he had felt upon the servant.

“Curse-absolving… the child…”

“Both shall live.”

“…What?”

Do Yuna, whose face had been bent into a piteous look, opened her eyes wide at the words.
Shin Hweein drew the Indulgence from his breast and, pouring its power forth, spoke again.

“You heard me clearly. Both shall live. …I am sorry for you, though.”

The target of the curse-absolving was, in fact, the child in the womb.
The price of the curse would come back to her, and her alone, the one who had laid it.

The child would suffer no lasting harm.
The husband would be able to hold the child safely in his arms.
Whether the child the wife had tried to kill was, in truth, her husband’s child, that, one could not know.

“Aaah…”

“And further, I shall promise this. The one who laid this curse upon you shall, never again, work any sorcery. Shall not, again, make sport of life.”

“N-no — !”

“Indeed. It is unfortunate. This time, the failure is yours.”

Within the dazzling rite of light the Indulgence poured forth, Do Yuna let out an agonized scream.
It was the first time he had applied the Indulgence to another person, but perhaps because he had already handled its power any number of times, it went far more smoothly than he could have imagined.
So much so that one might almost wonder whether this was the use the thing had been meant for, originally.

The curse-absolving was extremely brief.
Of course it was. This was a curse some bumbling soul with scarcely any knowledge of sorcery had brute-forced together by pouring sorcery-power into it; how could it possibly be complex?
Just like her sister.
No, even more bunglingly, beyond comparison.

“…Ha.”

Choking back the rising urge to retch, Shin Hweein gathered the Indulgence back to himself.
Though he had spent the talisman’s power only moments ago, the Indulgence was already charged with karma to such a degree that it could activate again at any time.

Had the Indulgence judged the thing he had just done to be good karma?
Or evil karma?
Honestly, either way, it was all the same to him.
He was far too tired, and wanted only to rest now.

Why she should have laid a curse on the servant as well — that, I do find curious.

More than that, he did not want to exchange words with this woman.
Perhaps the servant had caught wind of the wife’s infidelity, and had tried to threaten her with it.
All of them were alive now; that would be enough. He wanted, at present, simply to let it pass.

“It is finished. Let us go back.”

“Yes… Brother? Yes, truly? But, sister, ah —?”

Shin Hweein, as though to linger here even a moment longer would smear his body with filth, quickened his step and came out of the master bedroom.
A moment later, when he could endure it no longer and was about to crumple, Geum Moa caught him.

“Our poor young master. You’ve worked so hard. You did wonderfully.”

“Moa-ya. Was I… right?”

At the softness and gentleness of the hand stroking him, Shin Hweein went so far as to put a feeble question.

“No.”

“Then was I wrong?”

“That, too — no.”

“Then?”

“Unless one were Sangje himself, no one could know the answer to that. How can you seek it from me?”

Geum Moa drew him close and whispered to him slowly.

“And yet, if you must seek the answer, seek it from yourself alone.”

“Why, you — so strict…”

His consciousness was reaching its limit.
Letting his body fall into Geum Moa’s keeping, closing his eyes, he thought, at the last, that every life had nonetheless the right to determine its own living and dying.
And so, after all, he had been right.