Chapter 10 — The Sorcerer And The Mother (5)

“Why don’t you all come dine at the Yun House this evening?”

Yun Jubaek spoke the words as they stepped out through the great gate of the Seo House, body and spirit alike wearied in every way.
The door had not yet swung shut behind them.
It was almost certainly deliberate.

“Huh, why? I’m tired. I kinda wanna go home.”

Shin Myeongin’s interest in Father Lucas had apparently cooled in earnest, or perhaps she simply wanted to brush off any dinner that included him.

“There are matters between the Yun and Shin Houses that still need discussing after today’s affair. And our guests — they helped us with something serious. We can’t simply send them off.”
“Ah, right. If it’s that, then, sure.”

She glanced sidelong at the rest of the party and nodded along with Yun Jubaek’s follow-up, though it seemed she hadn’t quite caught the full thrust of his intent.

Shin Hweein shook his head inwardly and answered.

“Gladly. I shall accept the invitation.”
“Ah, we’d best take our leave here — ugh.”
“We’ll come too.”

Sister Barbara stepped forward, cutting off Father Lucas’s attempt to decline and answering in his place.
Father Lucas had started to say something more, but the nun ground her heel into his foot, and his mouth hung open as he could only suffer in silence.

“Excellent. Then everyone, please, get in.”

Pitiable as the priest looked, here it was wiser to follow the nun’s lead.

This was, in a manner of speaking, a display.
A public signal that Shin Hweein was not merely a sorcerer Yun Jubaek had hired for a short job but something more, a man of close standing with the Yun, so that the Seo would think twice before nursing any clever schemes against him.
Contracts had already been signed, of course. But just as Shin Hweein himself had deceived the Seo when need demanded it, no law of nature said they would not do the same to him.

“We did nothing of any worth. To take a place at your table feels presumptuous…”

Even seated in the limousine, the priest still seemed ill at ease, and at length he spoke that one line.
Yun Jubaek shook his head firmly.

“In this business, if only the Three Capital Houses had been involved, protecting Sir Shin Hae would have been a far harder matter. It went smoothly only because the Church — an outside power — raised its voice.”
“What’re you talking about, worst case he could just join the Shin House. And conveniently he is a Shin — perfect fit!”
“Yes — what I mean is, without being folded into either the Yun or the Shin, he would have been very hard to protect.”

Shin Hweein, too, nodded quietly in agreement.
From the start, part of the reason he had chosen to forge a relationship with the Catholic Church was to leave himself an easy way out should he ever get tangled with the Three Capital Houses.

“And though I say ‘dine,’ the head of the house isn’t coming, so there’s no need to feel any pressure. Just us, a light drink together. …Though I can’t promise my uncle won’t try to muscle his way in.”

At that, Yun Jubaek shot a glance toward Shin Hweein and added the line, but it was Shin Myeongin who reacted, not Hweein.

“Ugh, Uncle Jinseong is so stiff, I hate it. If he’s there I really am going home.”
“All right. I’ll do something to head him off.”

Shin Hweein watched the exchange and let out a small huff of laughter.
But the situation was not as light as it seemed.
From the way matters were turning, it was now certain that Lt. General Yun… Yun Jinseong knew his true identity.
He could not quite believe the man would actually do it, but if Yun Jinseong chose to, Hweein’s identity could be exposed in a heartbeat.

Even setting that aside — under the guise of “keeping the secret” he may have any number of things he wishes to bring up. The best course was always to avoid meeting him in the first place…

Still, this once there was no helping it.
There was a favor he still needed to ask of the Yun House, so the best he could do was finish the meal as quickly as possible, make his request, and slip away…

“Hahahaha! Sorcerer Shin Hae, well now! How good of you to come all the way to our estate to see me!”

Of course, Shin Hweein’s hopes were entirely in vain.
Who would have thought a man with the rank of Lieutenant General, no less, would be standing in front of his own house waiting for them?

The line was aimed squarely at Shin Hweein.
Shin Myeongin cocked her head in confusion. Yun Jubaek, his face slack with disbelief, asked the question for all of them.

“Uh, Uncle… aren’t you supposed to be busy?”
“When even a Lt. Colonel who ought to be working himself to the bone is gallivanting about, what business have I to be busy?”
“Look, I was actually working! Just hear about today’s results and you’ll be amazed!”

Yun Jubaek shot back, looking endlessly aggrieved at the “gallivanting about” line.
Yun Jinseong only sniffed, as if he knew everything already.

“You were picking up the crumbs that fell off Sorcerer Shin Hae’s plate, that’s what. Let’s go over it slowly, see whether you caught them properly without spilling any.”
“Uncle Jinseong, the Shin House did its share too, you know? I personally vouched for this Shin Hae person. You could even say I was the one who first dug him up!”

Is this woman using “dug up” and “collided with” as synonyms?

Shin Hweein’s eyes narrowed.
Yun Jinseong, listening to her, laughed heartily and ruffled Shin Myeongin’s hair.

“That’s right, our Myeongin is finally old enough to look after the family. Though — what’ll your mother say? She’s a Seo by birth. Won’t you get scolded when you get home?”
“Hmph, what’s that got to do with anything? I’m a daughter of the Shin House. If anything, Mom married into the Shin House, so she ought to put the Shin House first. It’d be ridiculous of her to scold me!”
“Hahaha, that’s the truth! A person must know their origins rightly! Our Myeongin’s saying nothing but right things today.”

Yun Jinseong said it while sending Shin Hweein a sly wink.
That damned old man was, beyond any doubt, threatening him right now.
When Hweein sighed and nodded, Yun Jinseong’s face brightened and he nodded back in turn.
He would, almost certainly, have to face the man alone at least once before leaving this house tonight.

“Uh, um… are they the same person…?”
“Oh, our Lucas. How are you this innocent.”

Meanwhile Father Lucas, faced with a Yun Jinseong utterly unlike the cold examiner he had seemed during the rite, stood in dumbstruck bewilderment.
But that was simply how the great houses operated.
The more arrogant and high-handed they were toward outsiders, the more terrifyingly they took care of those inside the fence.
Only that way could they huddle together, prop one another up, and stab and drive out anyone who tried to force their way in uninvited.

“Right, right — everyone, inside! As our Jubaek says, we pulled off something big today, so first let’s eat something fine and put some strength back in our bodies. …We’ll save the scolding for a bit later, hm?”
“Why am I being scolded today?!”
“Just get inside.”

A scolding.
Shin Hweein had an inkling what for.
He had, of course, already prepared for that too, though he decided not to bother telling Yun Jubaek.

Fortunately Yun Jinseong, having had the servants prepare what was practically a full banquet table, withdrew politely on his own and left them to it.

The trouble lay in the food itself.
It was far too rich and oily, and Hweein worried his stomach might rebel.

Lucky my spiritual power has grown. If I keep it focused on my stomach, I shouldn’t have any embarrassing accidents…

Even as a boy of tender years, a direct-line scion of a great house was apparently a different breed.
The spiritual power Shin Hweein had taken from Seo Jungmin was only a portion of the boy’s total, yet the amount was considerable, comparable in scope to what he had gained from resolving the vampire incident.
Only, that time it had been merely a matter of the curse being lifted and his usable spiritual power expanding; this time his entire reserve had grown, which made the difference enormous.
With the total volume swollen, the rate at which his spiritual power would grow going forward should also accelerate, and now he could handle the techniques the Seo sorcerers wielded as well. He had not gone into the affair meaning to profit by it, yet the result had been a great gain.

Of course, this spiritual power was taken from another, so it’ll take time to make it fully my own. From here on I’ll have to put more care into my meditation. Once that’s done, I might start thinking about my next shikigami…

There were other things, too.
He had to confirm whether the subspace storage he had succeeded in opening within the dream could be summoned in waking reality as well, whether the metal a yokai had left inside it was truly there, and, if it was, what to do with it.

“…Hm?”

Slowly working out his list of things to do as he carried food to his mouth, Shin Hweein abruptly felt a weight of stares fall on him and looked up.
Father Lucas was eating along with him in pure, transparent admiration, but everyone else was sending him doubtful, unconvinced looks.

“Have I committed some discourtesy?”
“No, just — you seem awfully familiar with Aeshin noble dining customs.”
“…Ah.”

At those words he looked again, and yes, many of the dishes on the table required proper etiquette to eat.
Shin Hweein had never been able to eat them himself, but whenever he had attended family banquets in childhood he had at least watched how people ate, and had simply acted from memory…

He calmly set down his chopsticks, and to Geum Moa, who was watching him from somewhere even in this moment, he spoke through mind-speech.

— Why didn’t you tell me beforehand? That these dishes aren’t the ordinary fare outside.
— No, the truth is, I’m not so familiar with Aeshin commoner dining customs either… I just figured this was the sort of thing everyone ate at a banquet table.

Shin Hweein had been thinking precisely the same thing she had.
And yet here it was, food that even ordinary Aeshin people would not eat easily.
However expensive the ingredients, surely they shouldn’t rise to class-distinction territory; that the dining customs of nobles and commoners could differ at all was, truly, a lamentable state of affairs!

…Such reality-escapism would not undo his situation, however, and so in the brief seconds remaining he wrung his mind frantically and arrived at a passably plausible answer.

“The Bodhisattva of Contradiction… since Ham Seoyeon and I became close, I’ve had a few lucky chances to encounter such fare.”
“Ah…?”
“Ah.”

Selling out a friend’s name, that was.
Shin Myeongin wore a suspicious face, unable to believe their friendship ran so deep.
Yun Jubaek, by contrast, nodded with frank admiration.

“So you learned it for her sake. As natural as if you’d been born into one of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses. As one man to another, I’d like to take after you.”
“Hm? It wasn’t so much for her sake as…”
“Right, then, please continue eating. Come to think of it — we forgot the wine.”
“Wine!”

Shin Hweein sensed something off in Yun Jubaek’s framing and was about to push back, but before he could, Shin Myeongin and Sister Barbara whooped in unison at Jubaek’s announcement, and his voice drowned in the noise.

“Hey, Myeongin, you’re still underage. You’re not having any.”
“I worked hard today too, give me a glass!”
“No. You think I want to hear about it from the Shin House… Father, you’re all right with drink, aren’t you?”
“What choice is there. I can’t very well let Sister Barbara get drunk on her own — I’d best steal a bit of it down myself.”
“Lucas, you bastard!”

In an instant the table erupted.
Yun Jubaek had looked ready to give Shin Myeongin his liver and gallbladder both, so Hweein had wondered for a moment whether he had forgotten the girl’s age. Fortunately not, it seemed.

While Shin Hweein sighed inwardly, Yun Jubaek summoned a servant, received a wine bottle, then turned to him and asked,

“Sir Shin Hae, are you all right with drink?”
“Ah— my apologies.”

A faint, wry smile pulled at his mouth as he answered.

“I’m afraid I have a prior engagement tonight.”

Once the meal had wound down to a reasonable point, and Yun Jubaek, Father Lucas, and Sister Barbara had begun a not-inconsiderable drinking contest among themselves, he watched a little while before quietly rising from his seat and stepping out.

After he had walked a short way, on the toetmaru veranda that ran out from the great hall he spotted a middle-aged man perched on the edge, gazing up at the moon and tilting back a cup of liquor.
Reading the figure as someone who had been waiting for him, Shin Hweein sighed and spoke.

“What brings you to drink alone?”
“How am I supposed to wedge myself in among the young people? At times like this I can’t bear it — I think to myself, I should have stopped worrying what others thought and gotten married long ago.”

At Yun Jinseong’s words, Hweein let out yet another sigh, having lost count of how many that made tonight, and walked slowly over to sit beside him.
When the general gestured for him to come closer, he made no resistance; he settled in at his side, and Yun Jinseong held out the bottle.

“Have a cup?”
“My apologies. I am pledged to share the first cup with my mother.”
“Ah— so that was the bottle Big Brother sent for you to take to her.”
“He likely knew. …He might as well have cut in at least once, if he was listening.”

Yun Jinseong nodded silently at that and emptied another cup.
Then, looking up at the sky, he tossed off the line:

“Bright moon tonight. Mountain trails will be well lit.”
“Yes. So bright I worry it may dull the mood.”
“Bright moon or no, no one’s going to make out a face at midnight. Don’t worry about the grave-visit being disturbed.”
“Thank you for the consideration.”

Yun Jinseong smiled wryly at the polite thanks and spoke again.

“It’s best not to take the Seo too lightly. They’re vicious, and their grudges run long.”
“I’ll bear it in mind. For a while I shall keep a low profile. …More than that — there is something I would ask of you.”
“A favor, eh. Sure. What is it?”

Realizing Yun Jinseong, too, had something he was angling at, Shin Hweein worked to keep his face composed and said,

“The affair has been brought to a close, but the common folk do not yet know it. To leave it untended would not be wise. Voices may begin to rise blaming the King and the nobility. And if that happens… new yokai may be loosed by that very discontent.”
“Tch. We brought it to a quick close, all things considered. In an age before the internet, the voices wouldn’t have swelled at all. Funny, isn’t it? — that as vast volumes of information race round the world in an instant, the threat of the Specter Realm only grows. But…”

A pass, Yun Jinseong thought, and nodded.
This was precisely the piece Yun Jubaek, his mind only on his deal with the Seo, had overlooked.

“Put a capable shaman forward, stage a grand public gut (a Korean shamanic ritual), and after that issue an official declaration that the matter is settled. The Seo will be in no position to refuse to add their voices.”
“Ham Seoyeon?”
“Yes. From a little checking I’ve done… setting aside the established mu-gyeok (shamanic-class licensees) who guard the old ways, among the younger mudang and paksu she is the foremost figure of admiration. The qualifications are more than enough.”
“Hmm.”

Without warning Yun Jinseong tossed his cup to the ground and brought the bottle straight to his lips.
He drained roughly half of it in one bracing swig, then asked Shin Hweein,

“Are you seeing her?”
“It’s a contract relationship. There are no feelings between us — not even a little.”
“There’s a little, surely.”
“…I think of her as a good friend. Her nature is sound; I can entrust a task to her and trust it done.”
“That’s right, then… that’s fine. Good.”

What exactly was fine, Hweein could not say, but the general nodded weightily nonetheless.

“Then we’ll do it that way. His Majesty will gladly give his consent. Especially since Seoyeon has stepped away from the main current of Taebaek — all the more reason.”
“If we can have the nation’s sanction, it leaves nothing to be desired.”

Hearing that, Shin Hweein thought the Royal House might in fact want to absorb Ham Seoyeon as kin outright.
Of course, since Ham Seoyeon’s ambition was, above all, to become the head of Ham House herself, their interests would never align.

“Since I’ve granted your favor, I’d like you to grant me one of mine — what do you say?”
“My ability may fall short of what your esteemed self would have me do; might I hear it first before deciding?”
“It’s a simple thing. …In the matter of finishing this affair off, I’d like the Yun House to be allowed a hand in it as well.”

Shin Hweein’s movement halted.
As he wondered whether to gloss over it, Yun Jinseong’s voice carried on into his ear.

“If the matter closes completely with no perpetrator named, the ones who hid behind that Seo brat and pulled the strings will, in the end, slip away. You knew from the start, didn’t you? — that this wasn’t something the brat could have pulled off alone.”
“…That is so.”
“And conveniently the Seo fool’s lost his memory, has he? At this rate we’ll have to give up tracking the others… To my mind, that brat losing his memory has something to do with you.”

He likely wasn’t speaking from any hard evidence.
Yet every word Yun Jinseong tossed off so lightly, looking him straight in the face, came down anything but lightly.

I should have come wearing a mask after all, Hweein regretted, and in the end he answered honestly.

“As to how he came to lose his memory, I have nothing else I might say…”
“But?”
“But before that happened, it is true that I heard from his own mouth information about his accomplices.”
“There we go!”

At that Yun Jinseong let out a sound of triumph, drew his lips into a crescent, and snapped his fingers.
The door of a room some way off opened, and a woman stepped lightly out.
Her eyes slanted upward more sharply than Yun Jubaek’s, and her hair had been gathered to the left side and bound in a neat down-trailing braid; striking, both.
But more striking still was her body, taut, well-balanced, of a build that even traditional hanbok could not quite hide.
She was, beyond doubt, a powerful operator who had completed considerable training befitting the Yun name.

“Yun Juna. By my uncle’s order I’ll be working with you for the time being. Please look after me.”
“Juna, can’t you manage to be a little warmer than that?”
“Uncle, this is the warmest I get.”

He had no memory of her face from the banquets of his childhood.
Even Ham Seoyeon, who lived far off in Gangwon, had at least sometimes been brought to the same gatherings on the strength of her direct-line Eight Pure-Blood House standing.
He did remember Yun Jubaek’s siblings, so this woman was probably of the same generation as Jubaek by collateral line. A daughter of a branch house, then.
Working the placement out in his head, Shin Hweein rose from his seat and bowed.

“Shin Hae. To receive the aid of the Yun House is an honor without compare.”
“Shin Hae… committed to memory. First, let us exchange numbers.”

So his true identity had not been disclosed after all.
Exchanging phone numbers with the woman who had approached him, Shin Hweein turned to Yun Jinseong, who was watching them both with a pleased expression, and asked,

“Setting questions of station aside, then — would there be no issue in dealing with each other simply as colleagues solving a case?”
“Of course. That is precisely what I want. Strictly as equals! Once you’ve struggled through a thing together… ah, damn.”
“Keep talking, Uncle Jinseong.”

The owner of the voice was Shin Myeongin, who had at some point materialized behind them.
Like Yun Jinseong, Shin Hweein had been slightly late to register her approach, and inwardly he clicked his tongue.
He had not, after all, expected her to wield a presence-killing technique on her way in.
A good part of it was that his concentration had been on assessing Yun Juna, but excuses were meaningless.
He should have factored in that, Shin Myeongin being the only one at the table unable to drink, he ought to have been more wary of her free movement.

…Hard as it was to believe, he ought also to have kept in mind that she, too, possessed sorcery talent worthy of a Shin direct-line scion.

“Myeongin, the thing is —”
“This sounds completely interesting. The case isn’t over yet, right? And it’s just these two working together? What, what is this, this isn’t a matchmaking session, is it?”
“Matchmaking, my foot. I figured this might be a thing Sorcerer Shin Hae would have trouble solving alone, and I wanted to lend him a hand.”
“Then I can help too, right? I was thinking this case was waay too lukewarm anyway. A proper real fight! I totally wanna do one too.”

The expressions on Yun Jinseong’s and Shin Hweein’s faces crumpled in unison, and to equally horrific effect.
Trying to keep step with someone he didn’t know well while hiding his identity was already tiring enough, and now they were adding babysitting on top?
If it came to that he’d honestly rather take it on alone. Unfortunately he was in no position to refuse, so all he could do was rack up more sighs.

— Shall I just kill her after all, young master?
— …Restrain yourself.
— You hesitated just now, didn’t you?

He could not very well show up at his mother’s grave with blood on his hands.
He swallowed it down and bore it.