Chapter 5 — The Sorcerer And The Mudang (4)

The moment they were out of the shop, Shin Hweein decided to part ways with Father Lucas for now.

The Father seemed minded to stay with him the rest of the day, whether because he still had things he wanted to talk about or because he was worried, now that Shin Hweein had picked a quarrel with a scion of one of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses.
But Shin Hweein cut him off flat.

“Then I shall be in touch next time.”
“It can’t be helped, I suppose. As for what happened today… do not let it weigh on you, Brother. I will speak with the Cardinal and have it dealt with. After all, the discourtesy began on their side.”
“It’s fine. You, of all people, needn’t worry about it, Father. If one trots out the authority of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses for every little thing of this sort, it is the worth of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses that gets cheapened. So if anything does come of it, the possibilities are perhaps two…”

One: the Shin House sorcerers come after him in secret, choosing a moment that leaves no aftermath.
But a little inquiry would turn up his contractual partnership with Father Lucas, and provoking a Father already entangled with a man of consequence, drawing in the Catholic Church, would put the matter well past anything that could be “quietly settled.”
That possibility, then, could be discounted.

Which left the likelier of the two: gyeoljahaeji, let him who tied the knot untie it.
Shin Myeongin, who had thrown the first insult and so handed over the pretext, comes after Shin Hweein in person.

And even that would amount, at most, to a conditional duel where neither side was free to take a life.
The worst she could manage would be to force him to stake the very Flame-tail who had started the whole affair as the wager.

— What? But I don’t like that girl! It’s not that I like you — it’s that I dislike her more!

“Flame-tail. Do you take it for granted that I will lose?”

— Pfft. Well, of course you will. You’re so weak. She had way more spiritual power than you, anyway.

That was, of course, perfectly true.

For one thing, Shin Myeongin was a child of the Shin House too, brimming with talent, and unlike Shin Hweein she carried the bloodlines of other Pure-Blood Houses besides.
She held so much spiritual power that comparing her to Shin Hweein, who had to spend most of his simply keeping his body running, felt pointless to bother with.

But however much she had, Shin Myeongin had not yet undergone the Gatekeeper’s rite.
Naturally she had never once set foot in the Specter Realm. A greenhorn.
Shin Hweein had no great store of experience himself, but he was certain the gulf there would be vast.

…And the decisive point was this: right to the end, she had not noticed the baby Thunder-Beast asleep deep in Shin Hweein’s hair.

“Worry not, Flame-tail. There is not the slightest chance I would hand you over to another.”

— Wh— What? You— I knew it, you mean to seduce me too, do you?! Dreadful Gigolo!

His vow that he would not lose to Shin Myeongin must have sounded somehow off, because Flame-tail bristled, every hair on his body standing on end, and eyed him with open wariness.

Shin Hweein shot Father Lucas a sidelong glance, did you hear that nickname, which has now become a flat-out insult?, and the Father slid his gaze away, mumbled in his own defence that it was Zer who had said it first, and held something out instead, by way of apology.

“It is a debit card. You can use it to settle a payment anywhere, draw on it at any bank. It is linked to a passbook holding the gratuity for the work you have helped us with this time, Brother.”
“The promised remuneration, then.”
“It was issued, of course, by an international bank under Vatican administration, so there is no need to worry about being traced.”

It did not so much as cross Shin Hweein’s mind to ask what had become of the man’s vow of evangelical poverty at this stage.

As if he knew exactly what Shin Hweein was wondering, the Father quietly handed over the passbook itself.

“This is the passbook.”
“Look.”
“Oh, my. Five hundred thousand euros.”

At Geum Moa’s words, a small note of admiration in them as she checked the passbook, Shin Hweein nodded in silence.

In truth he had no clear idea what five hundred thousand euros came to in Korean money, but Geum Moa looking satisfied was enough to tell him it was no small sum.

“Then, since I have delivered all I came to deliver, I shall take my leave. I’ll be in touch shortly.”
“It needn’t be shortly. I shall be busy with preparations for the exam for a while yet.”
“Take care of yourself, Brother! When next we meet, perhaps Sister Do Yumi will be with me as well!”
“There is no need to bring her along!”
“Then I shall see you then! May the Lord bless you!”

Father Lucas waved a bright hand, brushed aside every single thing Shin Hweein had said as though he hadn’t heard a word of it, and walked off.

Shin Hweein watched his back recede for a moment in dumbfounded silence, then shook his head and turned away.

“And so, what will you do, young master? Are you going to meet the lass of Ham House?”
“…You heard, then, Moa?”
“Why, of course.”

She had quite plainly bent her spirit-power so that only he would hear it… but Geum Moa being remarkable in this way was nothing new.

“Your presence wasn’t seen through, was it?”
“Young master, really. Did either of those two so much as glance my way? I had hidden my presence altogether.”
“As I thought… Hm. Well, I mean at least to hear out what she has to say. But before that, we need to settle our approach. As it happens I now have some money to spare. Let us go to a tea-house and take a cup of tea or such.”
“As you like.”

Shin Hweein sketched the daughter of Ham House in his head, gave a small nod, then leant on his staff and set out first for the café where they had arranged to meet.

And then, having flung the café door open with bold and confident bearing, he caught sight of the register, the great big machine above it, the bright-faced clerk, and the people queuing each to recite some complicated order in turn, and balked.

‘What rite is this? Is it some kind of sorcery?’

His mother, while she lived, had told him that a technique one had not yet wholly grasped, even after carving it a thousand times into one’s heart, was not a thing to be used.

So Shin Hweein turned to Geum Moa and asked her, frankly,

“Moa… teach me how to order a green tea…”

Two hours later, as Shin Hweein sat alone gripping his empty green-tea cup, someone took the seat across from him in silence, an iced-coffee cup in her hand.

A neat, trim white blouse and beige cotton trousers, her hair tied tidily and draped over her left shoulder.
The barest, lightest touch of makeup on her face, and yet she gave off both beauty and poise.
In sum, a beautiful young woman with the polished air of a city-bred lady.

If Shin Hweein’s memory was right, she was his own age… but anyone who didn’t know her would have put her somewhere in her mid-twenties.

‘So she, too, would like to look a step older. Or, rather, it’s foolish of me to feel some lone-comrade kinship off a first impression.’

Chiding himself inwardly for behaving like a child in front of his younger sister, Shin Hweein found an unsanctioned closeness welling up toward the young woman his own age across from him, and recognizing that drew a wry smile out of him.

To his surprise, she caught it, and, frowning slightly, ran a hand over her own face and down her body and asked,

“Why are you smiling? Is something strange about me?”
“Can you see through the mask? Was that how you knew me? Still, that’s no small feat — I have kept my identity hidden, after all, and you’ve only seen me a handful of times in childhood…”
“Ah, no, no. I can’t see it. The General told me.”
“The General? Ah.”

Only then did Shin Hweein recall that the young woman before him was a scion of a shaman house, and he felt like dealing himself a clean blow to the head.

The Ham House was that storied line of mu-gyeok (shaman-class licensees), guardians of Mount Taebaek down the generations, the sacred mountain of mu-gyo (the orthodox Korean shamanic religion).
For centuries, perhaps longer, they had presided over the national rites performed at the Cheonjedan upon Taebaek¹, and the mudang dispatched from their house still served as god-officers in every corner of the country to this day.

They could be called the foremost house representing the seseupmu (hereditary shamans, who pass the office down by lineage, each managing one region).
At the same time, theirs was a house that produced gangsinmu (god-descended shamans, upon whom a god has personally descended) at a remarkably high rate among their direct-line heirs.

What was more, they did not serve the same god generation after generation. Each gangsinmu tended to channel a different god, which suggested they had inherited some constitution that made it easy for gods to descend upon them.

It was said that, in fact, those who were not gangsinmu were not even granted the standing to inherit the house.

…And there was also a rumour that, at present, the eldest son of Ham House had not yet received his god-descent.

“I see. So the household has every reason to be in a turmoil. And the reason you find yourself up in Seoul at just this juncture is that, then? Your naerimgut (the rite of accepting god-descent and so becoming a mudang) wasn’t all that long ago, I take it.”
“It was from long ago, though…”

She paused a moment there, then dragged one fingertip down the condensation on the outside of her coffee cup and, with the moisture, traced a few characters onto the table.

In that instant an invisible barrier formed itself around them, and their conversation no longer leaked outward.

A makeshift ward of this kind was something any jusulsa, not merely a Barrier-Master, was expected to manage as a matter of basic competence.

“Honestly, Mr. Shin Hweein, you always skip several steps in a conversation. Everything you said was right, mind you, but it’s annoying!”

Having at last spoken his name aloud, she grumbled and took a sip of the iced americano she’d bought herself.
Then blegh—, she stuck out her tongue, caught herself and snapped it back in.

“You ought to have ordered something sweet, like the well-behaved young lady you are.”
“Pretend you don’t notice things like that, will you.”

When she set the cup down, Shin Hweein began, first of all,

“So — what was it the ‘General’ told you about me, that gave you your certainty?”
“Just your face. The General remembers Shin Hweein’s face. You’ve changed so much it’s as though you’d had it remade, but the bones of it can’t be hidden, he says. On top of that there’s the… staff, and the shikigami too.”

His face? Shin Hweein took her meaning, and his expression turned grave.

“Has the spirit been with you since that far back? Why didn’t you take the naerimgut sooner, then—”
“Why do you think? Want me to explain it?”
“…No. Forget I said it. I’m sorry.”

For all that she was a direct-line heir of the Ham House, she was still only the youngest daughter, and she had every reason in the world to avoid the naerimgut (the rite in which a mudang-aspirant invites a god to descend upon her).

Nor could she request a nureumgut (the rite that begs the god to wait, asking that one not be made a mudang).
The moment she breathed a word of wanting a nureumgut, the elders of the house, desperate to see one more powerful gangsinmu born into the family at once, would never have let her receive it.

“It must have been hard for you.”
“…Thank you. You seem a little changed. It’s hard to ask just now, but — has your body got better?”
“Look at me, not a single cough so far. That ought to tell you, no? Though, of course, only a very little better.”
“All the same, congratulations. …I’m really glad.”

At the words flowing so naturally out of her, Shin Hweein narrowed his eyes behind his mask.

Come to think of it, among children, who are quick to shy from and reject the unfamiliar and the frightening, she alone had never once shown him any ill-will.

That had been a real gladness to him, and yet, thinking that coming too close would only end in his being disliked after all, he had on purpose held even further away from her.

Thinking about it now, that was perhaps because back then there had already stood beside her something more fearsome than Shin Hweein. The General-God himself, that is to say.

But the gladness was the same all the same.

When they were children he had only feared her and kept his distance, but for the grown man he now was, perhaps a proper distance shared with some measure of familiarity wasn’t out of reach.
Even if the other party was someone who held his weak point in her hands.

“I would like to know your name.”
“What? You don’t remember my name?”

Her honorific register collapsed.
For good measure her inflection seemed to slip a little too, but the instant after she came to her senses, settled her excitement, and opened her mouth once more.

“Ham Seoyeon. Don’t you dare forget it.”
“Yes, I’ll remember. You’ll know it already, but I am Shin Hweein. At present I go by the name Shin Hae.”
“All right. So in front of others I’m to call you Shin Hae.”

When Shin Hweein nodded in silence, Ham Seoyeon nodded back at him in turn.

“If your body’s got better and yet here you are still hiding yourself like this, that means there’s some sort of reason, doesn’t it? Myeongin was saying your elder brother is searching for you everywhere. The very fact Myeongin was even let out today is on account of that.”
“Hm?”
“The head of the Shin House is said to have remarked there was no need for any particular search, but Shin Uin, the heir, has personally stepped out to look for you. Myeongin, who up to now has been kept locked inside the bounds of Zone 1, used the opening to come forward herself, on the pretext of finding you. On her own part, of course, she only wanted to roam about and enjoy her freedom, the search her excuse.”

So that was why Shin Myeongin had turned up in Zone 2.

Why Ham Seoyeon was with her, he still didn’t know… but perhaps from here he might hear that too.

There was, however, one thing he needed to correct first.

“I have already been disowned. Shin Uin is searching, not for me, but for my handmaid Geum Moa.”
“Disowned?! And what do you mean, handmaid— ah. Aaah. That famous—”

If even someone of Ham House, its main seat down in Gangwon Province, knew of it, one could well imagine just how seismic an event it had been at the time, when Geum Moa broke through the wards of the Shin annex and forced her way in.

Perhaps her beauty was part of why the name had spread so far, too.

“Is she with you?”
“That would be hard for me to say. But he will not find Moa, that much is certain.”
“A woman the heir of Shin House is searching for. So there really was an entanglement of the heart mixed in. And if he’s hunting you, that won’t be for any wholesome reason either… how utterly exhausting.”

Right. And now to the heart of the matter.

Ham Seoyeon leaned forward a little, brought her face a bit closer to his, and, putting on a deliberately villainous look, said,

“If you don’t want to be even more exhausted, then cooperate with me, like a good boy.”
“I’ll listen first and decide. I have only to take the less exhausting option.”

Having come prepared, with no small resolve, to threaten Shin Hweein into compliance, she blinked a couple of times in puzzlement when he simply nodded.

“You’re really being nice about it.”
“Anyone who can offer a congratulations as pure as that, at hearing my illness had eased, won’t make an unreasonable demand, I should think.”
“…Ugh. Creepy.”

Ham Seoyeon scrubbed one hand back and forth across the front of her blouse and shivered.

“How can you say something so slimy without biting your tongue even once? Stingy of you, hiding alone behind a face-cover.”
“Slimy…?”
“Never mind, forget it. I really had no intention of threatening you. The General is watching, after all. He’s a touch particular about law and justice.”

Letting the strength drain out of her shoulders as if the fizz had gone out of her, she slumped back into her chair and took a long pull at her iced americano.
Then once more, blegh—.

“Khek, cough, cough.”

“Next time, order something sweet, like a well-behaved girl. Drinking a bitter drink you can’t even keep down won’t make you any more grown-up.”
“I told you to pretend not to notice…”

Ham Seoyeon shot him a look of pure disgust, then folded her arms and said,

“Right, let me put it plainly. How about we cooperate with each other? To begin with, for the time being I want to stay here in Seoul and build up my own standing. My immediate goal is to grow close with Myeongin and so put the backing of the Shin House behind me.”
“You want the heirship of Ham House, then. A splendid ambition. And what is it that I can help you with?”
“That’s exactly what I mean about you skipping three steps in a conversation… Ugh. Well, all sorts of things. You’re Myeongin’s brother. You might know something, mightn’t you? Like, key points to win her over, or such.”
“I know nothing whatsoever. The conversations I’ve had with her in the whole of my life don’t yet outstrip the time you’ve spent with me today.”
“…So that’s how it is?”
“You were grasping at straws, were you not?”

Ham Seoyeon nodded without a word.

Shin Hweein looked at her quietly for a moment, then asked, seriously,

“And the heirship of Ham House. You want it, by whatever means?”
“By whatever means.”
“They are at the point of congratulating themselves. Having driven you to Seoul, they reckon their victory more than ninety percent won.”
“There’s still less than a ten percent chance, isn’t there.”

Watching Ham Seoyeon sigh in plain frustration even as she said it herself, Shin Hweein thought how utterly opposite the two of them were.

He had been pressed all his life under the weight of the family name and had at last resolved to overcome the house entirely in pursuit of his freedom.
She, of whom her own house had taken almost no notice, was now waging her fight to become a gangsinmu and through that the heir of the family.

By Ham Seoyeon’s account the General-God remembered Shin Hweein’s face and could recognize him by it, but the transformation art Geum Moa had bestowed was hardly so feeble a thing.
Which meant the General-God had to be a god of correspondingly high divine standing…

“In that case, the prize you ought to aim at is not Shin Myeongin or anyone of her sort, but something higher.”
“Don’t tell me you mean for me to seduce Shin Uin. I can’t stand that man, you know?!”
“I am not telling you to aim at a person.”

Sweeping her a look that said he found her tiresome, Shin Hweein lifted a hand and pointed out the window.

Just then the sun, which had been hidden behind cloud, showed its face and dyed the world outside brilliantly bright, and beyond the glass the great mountain ridge rose up, vivid even through the pane.

For a beat Ham Seoyeon gazed at him and at his fingertip in a daze, then said in a dazed voice,

“A mountain…? Don’t tell me you mean Guksadang?”
“That’s right. Guksadang, upon Namsan².”

Guksadang. Together with the Cheonjedan upon Mount Taebaek, the sacred site that stands for the mu-gyo of Aeshin.

Every year, alongside the Cheonjedan, the great rites were held there as well, and as the place where the great kings who had defended the nation down the generations were enshrined as gods, its importance was beyond words.

“Are you stupid?”
“You’ve dropped the polite register now, I see. Wise of you, it didn’t suit you.”
“Why would I keep using polite register on a fool? You know Guksadang is administered by the Royal House!”

…And because the kings of ages past were enshrined there as gods, it was also a place into which only mudang administered by the Royal House could set foot.

“Yes. If you could pull such a place into Ham House’s purview, then heirship would hardly be the matter. You could ascend to head of the house on the spot, and not a single voice would be raised against it.”
“You’re a moron! A moron!”
“Put it the other way: anything short of an exploit of that magnitude would not suffice.”
“Ugh…”

To have sent Ham Seoyeon, newly a gangsinmu, off to the Capital meant this: we will grant you the most important post outside the house, so do not so much as glance at the seat of head of the house.

If one couldn’t inherit unless one was a gangsinmu? Well, of course a natural god-descent was best, but if it was truly impossible, one had only to seize some manageable spirit by force and put it through a naerimgut.
A house that had held its name as long as Ham House could hardly be without that recourse.

“I can’t even bring one Shin House pup of a brat to heel — how on earth am I supposed to talk the Royal House round!”
“And yet, if you set that as your ultimate goal, the tasks ahead of you are easy enough to find. To go on as you have been, growing close with the members of the other Pure-Blood Houses, that would be one. To render some service to the nation, that would be another. Or to bring in someone from outside…”

Even as he carried his words this far, Shin Hweein abruptly recalled something, and brooded over it with a faintly distasteful look on his face.

Either because she found it odd that he had fallen silent, or because the General-God had told her about his expression, Ham Seoyeon pushed her face nearer his and asked,

“What is it? What’s crossed your mind now?”
“Before I tell you that, I would hear this: what is it you can offer me? Mutual cooperation, you said, did you not?”
“Ah. Um…”

A silence followed in which it was plain she had thought of absolutely nothing, then she said, cautiously,

“…Help with hiding your identity?”
“That’s a matter of you simply keeping your mouth shut.”
“Then anything — whatever you like! For all I may look it, I’m a mudang of no mean skill, you know! Call on me any time, any time at all. Want me to read your fortune for you, by way of starters?”
“I’ll pass on the fortune-reading. …Still, though I cannot quite bring myself to trust it, having one mudang in my acquaintance is hardly a bad thing.”

In truth, that was what he had been after from the start.

If he could form a good relationship with a direct-line heir of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses, and an able gangsinmu at that, small bits of advice and a few introductions to people were well worth offering in exchange.

“Then I shall ask you this.”

Shin Hweein looked at her quietly and said,

“Would you have any mind to deepen ties with the Catholic Church of Aeshin?”