Chapter 8 — The Sorcerer Lost In A Dream (3)

He dreamed of a fox.

A fox who followed him faithfully and was loyal to him; one who, true enough, others found a little frightening, but whose nature at heart was good.

There was something a touch obsessive and blindly devoted in her, yet that too was a virtue of the strong, and so he had taken her in with a magnanimous heart and entered into a pact.

“You must stay by my side always. Not for a single moment may you leave me.”
“That is no promise to be made lightly. How can a fated bond be held by human will alone?”
“It must be so. You must be at my side, without fail. You may not leave me. If you do, I shall curse you.”

Even as she spat the words out, the fox’s eyes blazed with anger, as though she were already picturing the scene of their parting.

He laid his hand on the fox’s head and stroked it gently as he spoke.

“If you could turn that obsessiveness in some other direction, you would grow far stronger. So let us think of it this way. If you become strong, will it not mean you can stay together with me longer?”
“Mm… If I just got rid of all the others, then, ye—”
“That is exactly the kind of violent thinking you fall into. Strength is reared not in order to fight, but in order not to fight. Even should there be one who would try to take me from you… there, there, calm yourself.”
“All such ones I shall kill, every one of them…!”
“Must you flare up at each thing one by one? Hold leisure within yourself. The strong are always at leisure.”
“Leisure. Leisure….”

Repeating the word over and over, the fox barely managed to master herself.

He smiled faintly at the fox who followed his words so obediently, and went on.

“Just so. Grow truly strong, become able to govern many of the yokai-folk, and naturally you will hold leisure within yourself. You will be able to cut a fight off before it begins, and to protect more surely the one you wish to protect. Only by accomplishing self-cultivation can one set one’s house in order, and then aspire to govern the country and bring peace to all under heaven.”

“All under heaven is no concern of mine. So long as I can live together with Master, that is enough.”
“If you would live together with me, you ought to aim at the very least at governing the country.”
“Then… I shall do my best.”
“Hoho. Good. That is well.”

He nodded, gathered into his arms the fox who nestled against his breast, soothed her, and calmly went on.

“Then remember this. To accomplish self-cultivation, one must investigate things and extend one’s knowledge, and one must make one’s intent sincere and one’s heart correct.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“How could I myself wholly understand it? Yet if I may tell you, however imperfectly, what meaning I have grasped of it…”

Gyeokmul-chiji.

To inquire into the principle of things as they truly are, and not of illusions, and so make one’s knowledge complete.

Seong-ui jeongsim.

To allow no falsehood into the heart, and to keep it straight and well-ordered, so that it is not lightly shaken by joy or anger, by grief or pleasure.

“So you must put away this habit of fixing names one by one upon things that cannot be seen, and clinging to them. Turn yourself not toward illusions but toward what is real…”
“Master?”
“What is real. Illusion?”

His words came to a halt, and the fox looked up at him with a puzzled expression.

But he, no. Shin Hweein had already realized that this was illusion.

In the dream he had received the teaching of his past-life self, and so recovered his upright heart.

He closed his eyes slowly and opened them again, and once he had confirmed that he could now move within the dream at his own will, he quietly asked the girl in his arms,

“Who are you. The air of you is different from Moa’s.”
“My, my….”

At that the girl let out a small exclamation, blinked her eyes several times the way he himself had done a moment before, and opened them once more.

The eyes that had been clear as jadestone were now stained the soft pink of cherry blossoms scattering on a spring day.

“To say such a thing — this maiden is quite hurt.”
“Hurt indeed, when your eyes are smiling.”

This, Shin Hweein was certain, was the very one who had laid the curse upon him.

To think he could meet her in the flesh without even performing a curse-absolving.

It was a thing made possible only because his opponent was a mongma (a dream-demon), one who manipulated dreams.

“No more mimicking Moa. It is unpleasant.”
“It’s not that. This little wench wasn’t called by that name in those days. But think on it more carefully, and might you not be able to recall the name of her past life?”
“While I hold in my arms one who is not her? I decline.”

A bewitching smile on her lips, the woman teased him, and Shin Hweein resolutely let her slip from his arms.

“How sad….”

She put on a sorrowful expression, yet stepped back obediently all the same.

With a step light as dance she widened the distance between them, and with each pace she retreated, the face and body that had resembled Geum Moa shifted into another’s.

When at last she had withdrawn five steps, what stood facing him was no longer Geum Moa, no longer any ordinary human, but something strange; and if one had to put a name to it, a mature woman whose beauty ran nearer Western than Eastern.

The pink eyes that held the magic of seduction were opened wide as she looked up at him, and the effect was almost uncanny.

“To take into your arms one you have once cast away will be no easy thing. If it were now, I might still let it pass, you know?”
“Even should I one day come to regret it, what matters is the I that exists now. It is such a me, gathered together, that becomes the me of the future, and so I shall never doubt my own choice.”
“Hoho, you still say that sort of shameless thing without so much as wetting your lips. That is the very part of you I love.”

Whether she truly found him to her liking he could not say, but for his own part Shin Hweein did not at all like her word still, and his brows drew together.

Not that he had any intention of taking issue with it one by one now.

The instant he had become aware this place was a dream, the boundary of the world, faint to begin with, had begun crumbling slowly at its edges.
So, having grasped his enemy’s identity at least in rough outline, Shin Hweein meant to wring as much from her as he could before the collapse came.

“For what purpose are you making me dream this kind of dream?”
“Why, that’s obvious, isn’t it. Because I want you to recall the memories of your past life, every one of them. That’s why.”
“…Even supposing I had what they call a past life, and one day recovered those memories, this is not the way. It is to cut away the body to fit a garment that does not fit; it gives no thought whatsoever to the I of this moment.”

At Shin Hweein’s cool voice she chuckled and agreed.

“Why, of course. The you of this moment is nothing I care about. The only thing that matters to me is the you I know. Once all your memories return, you’ll understand me. And then you’ll hold me close.”
“You speak the same sort of thing as Moa.”
“…What?”

In that instant the look in her eyes changed.

What had been seductive and yet faintly warm turned boundlessly fierce, sharp.

Just as he had thought. There had to be some reason she had taken on Geum Moa’s appearance specifically, and the light provocation he had thrown out landed perfectly.

“I’m like that wench? That’s hard to take.”
“Yet she herself spoke in much the same way. Only when I scolded her for being buried in the past and blind to the present did her bearing improve a little. You, it seems, are even worse than she.”
“How amusing. You’re trying to provoke me now, aren’t you. I really didn’t want to use such crude means… but truly, if everything were just the same as it was before, there’d be no fun in it.”

The woman snapped her fingers.

In that instant the crumbling world halted, as though paused.

Nor was that the end of it.

The fragments of the collapse, large enough to be visible even to Shin Hweein’s eye, perhaps shards of an ill-ordered mindscape raining down piece by piece from the falling sky, were honed one by one into sharp blades, and every last edge of them was aimed at him.

“Though you’d never know it, in truth I’m very fond of you. So I’ll give you one chance, just the one, to take it back. Now — who did you say I resembled? Who did you say I was worse than?”
“It seems your ears are even worse than Moa’s. Cough!”

Blades beyond counting drove themselves into every part of Shin Hweein’s body.

He had been stabbed a fair number of times of late by actual blades and had thought he might be able to bear this too; but this pain cored out not his body but his spirit.

A headache that bore no comparison to the everyday migraines he was used to.

It was as though a hammer were splitting open the bone of his skull, and the brain drawn out from within minced by several knives at once.

That he had lived his whole life beset by pain and grown used to it was now, simply, something to be grateful for.

“Khuk, haa….”
“Not everything you say is wrong. It needn’t all be the same as the past life. So this time around it would suit me well if you became my slave instead. If that came to pass, that fox-of-flame would go mad and want to die, wouldn’t she? I’d love to see that sight, just once.”
“Even if it was a word meant for Moa, cough! —”

The instant the name Moa left his mouth, the blades drove deeper still into his body, and at last he could not help coughing up blood.

But dreams are wonderfully convenient.
Even in pain enough that consciousness ought to snap off at any moment, so long as she, the master of the dream, did not permit it, Shin Hweein could not so much as die.

For one who had to draw information out of her by any means, that was a fortunate thing.

Yes. A fortunate thing.

“Whew… You must have heard it too. How is it you forget so quickly.”
“What?”
“If you would accomplish self-cultivation… ‘investigate things and extend the knowledge; make the intent sincere and the heart correct,’ so it was said.”
“That sort of thing, I don’t remember. So you must stay by my side and teach me kindly. My whole life long, whenever I ask.”

It was hardly something one should say after riddling a man’s body into a beehive; but starting with Geum Moa and on through one tangle after another with all manner of yokai, Shin Hweein had long since given up trying to measure them by ordinary human sense.

“Hwuk, kheugh!”

By way of experiment, he tried drawing out one of the mindscape-shards that had pierced through his own body.

The pain was hideous, yet holding it directly in his hand he felt something.

So this is how unstable, how frail, the substantiated form of the heart is.

The moment he grasped it, even the chaotic mindscape-shards trying to break down his spirit felt a touch more familiar than before.

The pain he felt this very instant did not lessen much, but that too would soon change.

“You make no effort to change yourself and only throw tantrums at others. The road of self-cultivation is long indeed.”
“And so what do you mean to do about it? Let me tell you in advance, I have no intention of letting you go until your attitude is to my liking. This place alone is mine. A world that not even that fox-of-flame, nor anything else, can intrude upon. Whether you remember everything and accept me, or whether I take in you, crumbled and unable to bear it any longer… one of the two will be accomplished.”

I hadn’t meant to be so hasty about it, but it’s your own fault for provoking me. So declaring, the mongma bore down with fresh strength on the shards that had pierced through his body.

But the one shard Shin Hweein had drawn out did not obey her control.

“So… that is how it is.”
“Eut?!”

And as if that were not enough, Shin Hweein, who had been watching and learning the mongma‘s manner of handling mindscape the whole while, was even now reshaping that shard’s form, clumsily, to be sure.

Before long a sharp-glittering eun-jangdo (a traditional Korean silver-dagger) sat in his hand.

The mongma, reading his intent from its shape, opened her eyes wide and cried out.

“It can’t be.”
“This is my will.”
“It can’t be!”

Crying out at the top of her voice, the mongma leapt across space to stand close before his face.

But Shin Hweein had already driven the eun-jangdo into his chest, exactly where his heart lay.

“Aah—!”

Unlike when she had pierced him with the shards she controlled, this one carried his own clear intent inside it, and that intent was reflected at once throughout the whole world.

— Kwung.

A heavy, dull tremor began from him and spread outward.

“Within the dream that I rule… though it be your own mindscape, even so!”
“Cough. Did you take me too lightly?”

While the mongma stood frozen in shock, Shin Hweein, even as he coughed up a thread of blood, knew that his will had been done, and smiled.

The world was crumbling once again.

By his own will he had chosen death within the dream, and so he had succeeded, exactly as he wished, in closing this dream-world.

“There is one thing I have come to know.”
“Ah, how can this be….”

To the mongma, who wore a face stunned past belief at the growth he had managed in a single instant, Shin Hweein spoke in a calm voice.

“You have interest only in me. The one on whom you play your dream-tricks, too, is only me.”
“For a succubus to draw a man into a dream means that sort of thing! Of course — I have eyes only for—”
“Knowing it, I am at ease.”
“Aht, what is this. So you do love me after all! Why couldn’t you simply have said so from the start, why take the difficult way around…!”

That was not what he had meant.

He had meant only that he was at ease, having learned she was not the one behind the narcolepsy incident in the capital.

But unfortunately, before he could tell her so, Shin Hweein lost consciousness.

And when he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw right before his face was Geum Moa’s, thoroughly furious.

“To make ill matters worse….”
“What’s that you say? Say it once more, young master.”
“I said, ‘icing on the cake.’ To meet your fair face the very moment I wake — what a fine feeling.”
“Ah…! No, I won’t be fooled!”

For a moment Geum Moa wore a pleased expression, but it seemed it wasn’t so easily settled, for her face soon turned grim again.

“That sort of dodging won’t work on me! Just what kind of thing did you suffer in your dream, to throw such a violent fit? When I saw the myodusa clinging close to you and whimpering, I thought this snake had gone mad and was trying to mate with you, young master!”

— Mi-aong….

“Once again I am helped by you. My thanks.”

Geum Moa had misunderstood and, it seemed, actually struck it, for the myodusa, a face full of all the world’s grievance, was whimpering as Shin Hweein gently stroked and soothed it.

Though it had been struck by Geum Moa, the creature was still coiling itself over his belly to treat him. Was that not exceedingly admirable.

“So, then. What happened?”
“You know already. A curse. I succeeded in meeting the woman called mongma face to face and escaping unharmed. Whether it was her true self I have no way of knowing, but…”
“A mongma… kek. Had it been her true self, you’d not have got away so easily. It will have been a very small fragment.”
“As I thought, then.”
“From here on it grows dangerous. If you faced it and forced it off to escape, then surely from next time the thing itself will come for you, young master…”

With a grave face, Geum Moa offered a proposal.

“You may find it a little stifling, but would it not be best to lay a sorcery on you that keeps you from dreaming? Surely among the sorceries handed down in the Shin House there was one that borrowed the power of the baku (a creature that devours nightmares) to swallow nightmares whole.”

The baku is a famed yokai handed down through the three kingdoms of Han, Jin, and Hwa.

It is said to wear an elephant’s trunk upon a bear’s body, with an ox’s tail, a rhinoceros’s eyes, and a tiger’s claws, and is renowned in name and in truth as a spirit-beast that devours iron, copper, snakes, bamboo, and the nightmares of men.

Naturally the Shin House held its connecting-thread to this baku, and could lay a sorcery to keep a person from dreaming nightmares, by way of protection.

“Now that you mention it, that too is among them. …But do you think it would prevail against the powers of a mongma?”
“If I add my own spiritual power to it.”
“Not permissible.”
“Young master!”

At Shin Hweein’s flat refusal Geum Moa raised her voice in protest, but he only smiled faintly and said,

“It is not merely that I dislike borrowing your strength. There is something I have to gain from this dream.”
“And what is that?”
“The sorcery of handling dreams.”
“…Young master, you cannot possibly—”

Geum Moa spoke in a tone of utter exasperation.

“Are you telling me you mean to hold out against the queen of the mongma and steal her ability away, learning it for yourself?”
“That she is the queen, I did not know. In that case it will be all the more useful.”
“This really is the most absurd—”

Judging that the wounding of his spirit by the nightmare had left him momentarily out of his right mind, Geum Moa was just bracing herself in earnest to take hold of him and treat him.

And then the guest-room bell rang, announcing a visitor.

A sense of déjà vu came over Shin Hweein, but fortunately the visitor was not Father Lucas.

It was the owner of the call he had not been able to take earlier.