Chapter 8 — The Sorcerer Lost In A Dream (2)

As it turned out, something even more notorious than the vampire affair was making the rounds among the ordinary citizens of Seoul: a disease that put people to sleep for no reason at all, an epidemic of narcolepsy spreading through the city.
With his attention given over wholly to the vampire crisis, Shin Hweein had not noticed it.
But the internet boards, too, were thick with reports of narcolepsy cases cropping up across Seoul, no zone spared.

He wanted to believe the thing had not yet trespassed as far as Zone 0 or Zone 1.
Still, for an affair like this to drag on so long in Aeshin, a great sorcerous nation, was strange in itself.

“People are so afraid of it that hardly anyone goes out anymore. It was a peerless opportunity to expand my forces.”

Narcolepsy was not, of course, a contagious disease to begin with.
That sorcery or some other esoteric force had a hand in the matter was beyond doubt.
Sensing this was no light thing, Shin Hweein set his face hard.

“…But how is it that fewer people going out makes a good reason for vampires, who infect by biting, to be active?”
“Well, with no one about, there are fewer watching eyes, and any fools who insist on crawling out can easily be seduced and made into thralls.”
“Quite so. And being half-witted thralls made in such a fashion, it stands to reason they would be wiped out so easily.”
“Aigoo, you’ve just driven a silver stake clean through my heart.”

Leon spoke of turning people into yokai as blithely as if it were nothing, and Shin Hweein narrowed his eyes and delivered a barbed observation, whereupon Leon gave an exaggerated shrug.
That his comedic-actor manner married so neatly to the suit he wore was yet another infuriating thing about him.

“And yet the higher-rank vampires I brought along were quite splendid. Among them, Mila… you faced Mila, did you not, Master?”
“Mila? Do you mean the female vampire, the lone woman among them?”
“That’s the one! She was a subordinate I had been cultivating with a great deal of care. Had she grown well, perhaps even — tch — the Lord might have bestowed true blood upon her directly.”
“My thanks, then. Thanks to her, Arong has grown considerably.”

— Kyu.

Arong, who had been wreathing Shin Hweein’s body in the form of a faint mist, answered the call of his name with a cry.
He shaped a portion of that mist into the face of the vampire he had faced earlier, Mila, and thrust it forward.
Dreading that someone nearby might see, Shin Hweein hurriedly covered it, and Arong gave a kyu-kyu, laughing as though it were great fun, and let that part of himself dissolve back into mist.

“Wh— what.”

Leon, meanwhile, watched on agape.
He understood that merely imitating a face was a wholly different matter from “fetching” a person’s true likeness.

“A doppelgänger? Don’t tell me you handle doppelgängers? No — if it were Mila’s doppelgänger, it could never have attacked me in such a fashion…”
“Nothing of the kind. He will become far stronger than any such rabble of a monster; look forward to it. Don’t pull such a long face. Are we not allies now?”
“Ho — quite so. You truly are no small figure. But then, the man who is to be my Master must be exactly so.”

The reason Arong could mimic Mila’s face was simple.
After Mila offered up her own life to send Shin Hweein to Leon, Arong had eaten every last scrap of the corpse she left behind.
Had he not, the creature would never have gained the strength to chase Leon down; in many respects, Mila had served Shin Hweein well.

“Young master, it’s done! Thankfully, no one died.”

— Meow.

Just as their conversation was drawing to a close, Geum Moa appeared, the myodusa in tow.
She had come from tending the people in the van that crashed into the building and the people inside the building itself, treating the injured at Shin Hweein’s command.

“There was no trace of a sorcerer. And of course it is no epidemic, and no curse either.”
“Is that so. Not even a curse…”
“Heh, really? But that something esoteric is at work is plain enough. So what is it, then?”

Leon, who had as good as lied to his new master a moment ago, knit his brow and muttered the question, and Geum Moa stepped back closer to Shin Hweein and shot Leon a fierce, upturned glare.

“Mosquito. Don’t go talking to me so casually.”
“You’re terribly prickly for someone not particularly pretty… Master? What is it?”

Leon, seeing Shin Hweein standing motionless on the spot, lost in thought, asked it.
Hweein was turning over the words Attila had left him.

‘He did say the fellow who laid the curse that makes one dream strange dreams might have noticed my existence…’

The timing was too convenient to be mere coincidence.
What if some yokai had caught wind of his existence and his rough whereabouts, and was now turning Seoul inside out with its own ability?
A great many had already died in the vampire commotion, and if this matter too were to bring about as many casualties again…

“Young master? What’s wrong, did this mosquito perhaps trouble young master while I was away?”
“…No, it is well. I was only thinking for a moment. It struck me that this might be a matter I already know of.”

At Geum Moa’s words Shin Hweein returned to the present at last, and shook his head to throw off the grim imaginings.
True, the timing was extraordinarily convenient.
But had he not, more than once before now, come near to ruining everything by judging too hastily?
It was no Pure-Blood House figure but a taejagwi that had thrown open the gate of the Specter Realm of its own will, and the one who had laid the curse upon Do Yuna was not Do Yumi but Do Yuna herself.
However high the probability might appear, the answer’s lying hidden in the most unlooked-for place was the very nature of the world he had set foot in.
There would be time enough to conclude this affair was his own fault once the evidence had been found.

In that case, the best course was to absolve the dream-curse and then, just as he had done before with Attila, meet the one who cast it face to face and have it out directly.
But.

“It is empty.”

Drawing out the Indulgence to check it, Shin Hweein let out a long sigh and muttered the words.
He had been thinking even before this that the rise in spiritual power from this absolution was excessive, and the blood-curse authority obtained along with it besides, though he had not yet tested that.
And sure enough.
It seemed the Indulgence had consumed not only Shin Hweein’s blood and Leon’s blood but the karma accumulated up to that point as well, all of it cleanly burned away in the course of the absolution.
No wonder, then, that even Attila had been moved to bleed from the mouth in shock.

“Young master, I know your head is full, but you’ve overdone it all day. Please, let us go back and rest for now. People will be flocking here soon.”
“But Moa, I would gladly grasp the truth of this affair as quickly as I can. If there is no other lead, then for me to take the matter up myself…”

If no answer was to be had from the Indulgence, he had no choice but to fling himself into the affair directly.
The car had been in an accident, so the police or someone of the sort would arrive before long; and if Shin Hweein, a Rank-3 sorcerer, offered to cooperate with the case, surely they would find him a seat at the table.
As it happened, the vampire affair had been formally concluded too.
If he informed the capital’s sorcerers of all this and dug into it in earnest…

“Cough.”
“Goodness. What did I tell you.”

— Myak!

Shin Hweein staggered, coughing up blood, and Geum Moa caught him from behind as though she had been waiting for it and chided him.
The myodusa, too, perhaps because it took after its master, threw a tantrum at Shin Hweein even as it began to heal him with the blue light its body gave off.

“What! Were those the wounds you took fighting me earlier—”
“What’re you on about. It’s nothing of the kind, so you, hurry up and get into young master’s shadow. I’m taking him straight back to the hotel.”
“Eheh, just a moment—!”

With practiced ease, Geum Moa hoisted Shin Hweein onto her back and bounded into the air.
Jostled this way and that by her movements, Shin Hweein felt something nostalgic in it.
Come to think of it, this was nearly the first time he had felt it since obtaining the Indulgence.
Even when he had collapsed before, it had been from simple exhaustion.

‘I had wondered whether, with my bodily functions waking one after another, things had improved on their own — but since the root of it all is a curse, there can be no real improvement, I suppose.’

His insides churned, his vision split into doubles, and his head ached as though it would crack.
In his dimming consciousness, he recalled the way it had been before.
Before, when his luck was poor he would have several attacks in a single day; even at the longest, his condition worsened every three days and he would convulse.
Every organ in his body was ruined, his heart kept beating by miracle alone, and a tumor was growing in his brain.
Even with spiritual power holding the deterioration at bay, how could such a body ever be whole?
Today he had fought a battle so fierce that his spiritual power ran dry and his transformation-art unraveled, and several holes had been opened in his body besides.
It appeared his body had finally reached its limit.
The one fortunate thing was that, with the great progress of the absolution this time and his spiritual power now doubled, the time he needed to recover would be little at all, even with only the myodusa’s help.

‘Then, the very next time, ought I not to use the Indulgence to rid my body of its illness?’

Even as he thought it, Shin Hweein knew well the choice he would make.
Without doubt, he would absolve the dream-curse.
The body’s pain could be endured and healed, but the threat that came against the mind was a dangerous thing, one that might turn him into someone else entirely.

“Young master, your phone is ringing far too loudly. I’ll switch it off for a bit.”
“From whom has it come.”
“…Seoyeon. Young master, why have you saved this girl by name alone? It’s not as though you’re on those terms with her — saving it that way just looks needlessly intimate. Wait, now that I think of it, my name’s saved as just Moa too, so don’t tell me that in young master’s heart this girl and I are equal…”
“That is — because she had it saved that way… A red heart, I shall hang on yours alone…”
“Hearts on me alone! Truly? You promise, yes?”

Three years from now, of course.

The instant Shin Hweein was on the point of adding those words, he lost consciousness entirely.
Sensing it, Geum Moa smiled quietly to herself, adjusted her hold on him, and hastened back through the air toward the hotel.

— Perverted wench.
— Heugh, this really isn’t easy.

The schooling of the now-doubled hangers-on would have to be left aside for the moment.

In a fairly dim-lit room, two middle-aged men were tipping back cups of wine.
After several rounds of fierce distilled liquor had gone around without so much as a side-dish, the man at the head place spoke first.

“So… how was the child.”
“How indeed. He has grown quite well.”
“Grown well, you say…”

The man tossed back his cup in a single draught and screwed up his face.
Surely it was not because the drink was bitter.

“Cooped up in a cramped, cramped annex; his mother dead early, his father’s face never seen, a single handmaid the only one he had to lean on — and that child has grown well, you say…”
“That sounds rather like the lament of the very man who’d been hoping he would not grow well. If it troubled you so, you ought to have looked after him more, and sooner.”
“…”
“Hmph.”

At his counterpart, who could not bring out a reply, the man at the lesser place gave a snort of laughter and emptied his cup.
A young woman of striking grace rose up amid a faint vapor from beside the wine-jar, poured fresh wine into the two empty cups, then quietly bowed her head and stepped back.
The man at the lesser place glanced sidelong at the woman pouring the wine, the shikigami, and spoke again.

“And yet it doesn’t seem you neglected to look after him altogether. Having known you a long time, Elder Brother, I can say with certainty that what I saw was the shikigami arts of the Shin House. A signature art at that, one even the direct line can barely manage.”
“Whatever anyone may say, he is of Shin blood. He is the child who inherited my blood most deeply. There is no chance he could fail at shikigami arts.”
“And he inherited Sister-in-Law’s blood the most deeply too. Did he not?”
“…She was. Yes, that is so. So it would be.”

In a voice tinged with regret, slowly, as though by speaking slowly he might shed even a little of his feeling, the man took up the words.

“She was a woman past my understanding. I thought I knew everything there was to know of her… and then, after she bore Hweein, she changed. Perhaps her relations with me had only ever borne Hweein as their purpose. I had even gone so far as to think such things.”
“Elder Brother has the habit of brooding all alone over things and racing his thoughts off in some strange direction. Hweein, that child, seems to have inherited even that flaw of yours.”

It was hardly a flattering remark, yet the one who heard it bore a faint smile at the corner of his mouth.

“To that degree, then. Does he take after me.”
“Well, his sorcerous talent is even greater, no? He had altered his face perfectly; I was uncertain enough that I could not be sure of him. Had you not consulted the lots beforehand and told me, I would have walked away knowing nothing at all. The most I’d have managed was to be startled by a fire-hound.”
“Is that so.”

The man at the head place, Shin Yuhyeon, gave a quiet nod at those words and emptied his cup again.
The man at the lesser place, Yun Jinseong, took his measure with a sidelong glance, downed his drink, and pressed on.

“So, out with it now. How is it the child’s body has recovered? Before, he couldn’t even walk about outside, surely.”
“I know not, I know not. And even if I did, I could not tell. That is what manner of matter this is. It is bound by ju¹.”
“Tsk. As you grow old you grow more and more like a sorcerer, and in the worst direction. If that’s how it’s to be, what was the point of asking me to look after the child?”
“Even now I am regretting it. Was I trying, belatedly, to play the father at last? As if that could wash away my karmic sin.”
“Hah. Truly, you are vexing.”

The talk was full of things neither could say, and nothing would clear cleanly from the chest; instead, only the rate at which the cups emptied quickened.
As though to cough out the suffocation that even fine wine could not wash away, Yun Jinseong opened his mouth again at last.

“There is, in the Yun House, a daughter of suitable age. The single mark against her is that she’s a child of the collateral line — but as for matching Hweein in age, that’s about as close as it gets, so it can’t be helped. Fortunately her abilities are quite outstanding. I’ve wished more than once or twice that the child had been of the direct line. …If you have nothing against it, Elder Brother, I’m thinking of pairing her with Hweein.”
“Hweein’s illness is not yet wholly cured.”
“That’s how greedy I am, that’s what I’m saying. If you took me, of all people, to be speaking in falsehoods, then you’ve misjudged me badly indeed. Hweein, that child, is a genius. The only thing he lacks is spiritual power, and even that is climbing fast — soon enough no one of his generation will be his equal. When that time comes, he should be formally restored to the House, and a marriage with the Yun House made to bind our alliance tighter still. That’s what I’m saying.”

Shin Yuhyeon’s eyes narrowed sharply as he heard it, just the way his own youngest son so often did.
Sliding his empty cup forward and accepting the wine the shikigami poured for him, he spoke abruptly.

“Were anyone to overhear, it would be a tale they would not care for.”
“Yes! It’s because of that someone that I’m saying this, I am. The Seo lot grow more suspicious by the day! If you can’t manage your eldest son properly, Elder Brother, he’ll get wrapped up in the Seo lot’s skirts; how then am I to sit still?”
“Uin is my eldest son. He is not so foolish.”
“He takes after you, Elder Brother. Going mad over women is much the same with him. He’s a perfect target for the Seo lot to work their wiles on.”
“…”

Snorting again at Shin Yuhyeon, who once more could not bring out a reply, Yun Jinseong found the cup no longer sufficient, took the wine-jar straight from the shikigami, emptied near half of it at one draught, and spoke.

“In any case, I’ll take it you’ve given your permission. This nephew, whoever it is he takes after, is so gifted that already he has many women about him. He’s been trading looks with the Ham girl, too — if I don’t hurry, that talent will be carried off into the valleys of Gangwon Province.”
“Do you mean Ham Seoyeon. That child will not be going back down to Gangwon again.”
“Mm?”
“That is what the lots showed.”

So saying, Shin Yuhyeon flicked the few drops of wine remaining in his cup into the air.
Each one held spiritual power and glittered, gathering in the air like constellations, and reading a certain law within them, Shin Yuhyeon let a faint smile reach the corner of his mouth.

“Yes, it is certain. She is the child who will write the history of the Ham House anew, in the capital.”
“Write the history of the Ham House anew? …In the capital, not Taebaek? And by what cause.”
“That, even I cannot know.”
“…Hah. In any case, I’ve told you what is fit for telling, so I’ll be on my way. You take care of the Seo lot too, Elder Brother. They’re extraordinarily unquiet of late. Wait!”

At the sight of Shin Yuhyeon’s enigmatic expression, Yun Jinseong let out a sigh and rose to deliver his parting words, then sat back down mid-farewell where he stood and put it to him directly.

“The youngest brat of the Seo House has been making a great deal of noise about creating a shikigami or some such — the Shin House didn’t lend a hand in that, did they?”
“Creating? Surely not. That is no field the Shin House’s shikigami arts presides over. The ones we already have are hard enough to handle; what would be the point of a new one.”

So saying, and emptying his cup, Shin Yuhyeon felt Yun Jinseong’s gaze pouring on him, let out a thin sigh, and added to his explanation.

“Of late, certain shikigami that have served the House — not only of the collateral line but of the direct line too — have ceased to answer the summons, and we are now hard at work seeking out the cause.”
“That’s a serious matter.”
“A serious matter it is. That Old Aengseol alone can no longer be called upon halves the value of our lesser sorcerers. Even when we summon her in person to ask, she answers only with a smile and says nothing has gone against the contract… Will you believe now that we have no leisure to mix ourselves up with the Seo House?”
“In that case, well. …Still, it sits uneasily with me. Give me one casting of the lots, would you. Whether the Seo lot aren’t about to start something.”

Shin Yuhyeon hesitated a moment at the words, then took up a sealed wine-jar from the shikigami, murmured something into it as he poured in his power, and held it out to Yun Jinseong.

“Then I shall ask one favor of you too. This — get it to that child somehow, without it being awkward. Never open it.”
“As if you hadn’t been waiting for the chance…”

When Yun Jinseong took it in hand with a sigh, Shin Yuhyeon nodded and once again flicked the wine remaining in his cup into the air.
As before, but far more violently than before, the wine-droplets streaked and glittered across the air.
When Shin Yuhyeon’s color stiffened hard at the pattern they drew, Yun Jinseong called out sharply.

“What is it, is it truly a grave matter? Are the Seo lot about to mount an outright rebellion?!”
“There is a small affair to come very shortly, but in itself it will be resolved quickly enough.”
“Then why pull a face like that and frighten people?”
“My child… Hweein, will be caught up in it.”
“…Eh?”
“Is that child truly fated never to be spared the typhoons?”

Shin Yuhyeon sighed and looked up at the sky.
His gaze swam this way and that beyond the closed-in roof, as though seeking an answer from the stars, and in the end it had to come back down to earth without having found any answer at all.