Chapter 11 — The Sorcerer And The Shrine Custodian (1)

A drinking session that had left rather too many riddles behind it came to an end.

Unsettled, he thought he might pour himself another cup.
But at some point the bottle had been firmly resealed, a fresh sigil affixed to it, and when he asked Geum Moa whether she had done it, she only shook her head.

“Couldn’t the head of the house have arranged this himself, young master? In truth, the one cup you just drank is the absolute maximum your body could accept of a spiritual elixir right now. Perhaps he set it to reseal itself like this on its own, to give you the rest-time until your body could take the elixir in once more.”
“Even if it is Father, would such intricate design truly be possible? More to the point, this wine…”

Two cups had been poured off.
By rights its potency should have lessened, and yet it had not.
If anything, it felt as though fresh power had flowed in and reinforced what was already there.
If there had been a moment for that to happen, it was likely when Shin Hweein drank the wine and drew the energy of heaven and earth into himself.

“Then it must be Her Ladyship’s gift. How splendid. Next time, you really must drink it with me!”
“Yes, yes. Let us do so.”
“You promise!”

The moment he gave her any opening, Geum Moa moved to attach herself to him, and Shin Hweein pried her loose and rose to his feet.
He cleared away the table and the straw mat, paid his last respects to his mother, and turned to go, when all at once his mother’s voice seemed to brush against his ear.
Shin Hweein gave a small, amused laugh, and Geum Moa cocked her head.

“What is it, young master?”
“Nothing. Mother just said I am handsome.”
“Her Ladyship and her unnecessary remarks.”
“To a mother’s eye, I suppose any son must look handsome.”

Shaking his head as he answered, Shin Hweein turned abruptly to Geum Moa with a serious face.

“By the way. Does a younger sister normally find her own brother handsome as well?”
“Hmm… yes, naturally. Just look at how Sister Barbara clings to Father Lucas. Isn’t it obvious?”
“So it is so, after all…”

Geum Moa thought for a moment, then answered as if the question were too obvious to bother with.
Shin Hweein accepted that and nodded.
He had seen jokes drifting around the internet about how siblings are designed to murder one another. Was that, in the end, meant ironically?
Then again, if it were truly the case, kinslaying would not be such a rarity.

“Coming from the same genes, it makes sense that we should feel a natural fondness. And it would have to be that way, or else strife among kin would never end. The human species is conveniently designed indeed.”
“Of course, of course. It’s only natural that Shin Myeongin finds the young master handsome.”

Then it would have been nicer still if we had been designed to feel a closeness between brothers, too.

Shin Hweein muttered that only inwardly, then shook off the weak thought and offered Geum Moa his thanks.

“Now, at last, the puzzle is resolved. Thank you, Moa.”
“It was nothing. Come, the night is deep. Let us hurry back.”
“So we shall.”

The two cut off their conversation and slipped out of the forest park before anyone else could spot them.
Perhaps it was the strain of having hurried through a tense situation, but only after he had passed clear out of the Shin domain and reached the street did Shin Hweein let out a breath of relief.
And only then did he realize he was still carrying the wine bottle in his hand.

“Give it here, young master. The moment you can drink again, I’ll fetch it out for you.”
“No. There is something I wish to try before that.”

Geum Moa stretched out her hand as if to take it into safekeeping, but he shook his head and intoned:

“Open.”

At his word, a crack ran through the empty air and the rift opened, revealing what lay within.
Astonishingly, it was a space without end, much like the one in his dream.
Perhaps it reflected not his usable spiritual power but the whole of it, Shin Hweein thought, as he tossed the bottle inside.

“Oh my. You’ve already got the storehouse working, too.”
“It would be stranger to handle a flame-hound as a shikigami and not be able to handle a subspace storage.”

For reference, Flame-tail and the rest of his shikigami had already returned to their lodgings ahead of them that day.
The Shin family graveyard was a spiritually sensitive place, and merely concealing the presence of Shin Hweein and Geum Moa had been hard enough on its own.

“Heh heh. It would be amusing to threaten the mutt that we’ll lock him in the storeroom if he doesn’t behave.”
“Where else would you find a shikigami as well-behaved as Flame-tail? Neuldam and Arong, too… they’ll all be waiting. Let us hurry back. …No, before that.”
“Before that?”

Shin Hweein thrust his hand into the darkness and groped about.
When his fingers brushed something hard, his face lit up and he drew it out.
A mysterious lump of metal that did not lose its luster even in the dark.
Looking at it, Geum Moa let out a frank cry of admiration.

“How lovely. And the quality of the spiritual power it holds is unique, too. Are you going to make our wedding ring from it?”
“Your jokes are still as inopportune as ever. This is what I obtained when I defeated the yokai today. I had no certainty I could bring it back out of the dream, but…”

In truth, he had rated the chances of bringing it across rather higher than that.
It had been a yokai met in a dream, yes, but the materials from which the thing was forged came from reality.

“Aha. I see why you’ve shown it to me. You mean for me to use this and make a fox ornament for the head of your staff, don’t you?”
“…Can you truly not let go of that?”
“Sob, sob. Until we left the family it was just the two of us, living happily together, but the moment you became a Gatekeeper you’ve been tangled up with all these shikigami and people, and you don’t pay me any mind at all anymore…”

The moment she heard his clearly reluctant reply, Geum Moa squeezed out fake tears as if she had been waiting for the cue and began pouring out her grievances in a steady stream.
Shin Hweein, no matter how he turned it over, was of the opinion that the better choice would be to craft a bird-finial standard¹ of deeper sorcerous import, but…

The metal itself is too peculiar, and the truth is I cannot trust myself to handle it without Moa’s help.

The metal already held its own distinctive force within it.
If he were to build something like a bird-finial standard on top of it and the inscribed charms clashed, that would be a problem.
So long as the Three-Year Pact stood, Geum Moa had no reason to do anything deliberately harmful to him, and perhaps it would be no bad thing to leave the work to her as she wished.

“Then let us do as you wish.”
“Truly?”

Geum Moa’s head snapped up and her eyes glittered.
Even as he caught an ominous gleam in those overbright pupils, Shin Hweein could not bring himself to take the words back in time.

“Yes… it is true that the time we spend facing each other in conversation has lessened. If I fix an ornament you made onto my staff, then even when we are apart there will be no chance of forgetting you.”
“There won’t be any apart. Absolutely none.”
“Yes, very well. You are right.”

Geum Moa laughed hee-hee as she took the metal, examined it, and put on a fascinated expression.

“To attune it so the energies don’t conflict will take quite some time. Even so, it really is a rare material. I’ll finish it splendidly for you. Look forward to it!”
“Yes, I leave it to you. Hm?”

The bus stop where one boarded the van that ran direct to their lodgings.
At that bus stop, where moon-shadows lay, stood a remarkably handsome man whose own shadow stretched unnaturally long.
Though no rain was falling, he held a black umbrella over his head, and when he spotted them he smiled brightly and folded it.

“I’ve been waiting, my lord.”
“Leon.”

Shin Hweein watched as the shadow of Leon, walking slowly toward them, stretched and shrank as it pleased and at last vanished altogether.
It was the moment his own shadow had grown large enough to swallow and conceal Leon’s.

“If your business was settled, you ought to have gone back to the lodgings.”
“Haha. Even if I cannot escort you to your workplace, surely I must escort you home. I thought that if I waited here, you’d come.”
“Tch. A mosquito with no sense of timing, on top of everything…”

Geum Moa, displeased that her hard-won time alone with Shin Hweein had been interrupted, scowled, but Leon ignored her cleanly and stepped to Shin Hweein’s side as he spoke.

“In truth, I had something I wished to report to you quickly.”
“You said you were going to clear out the den in Zone 3. Did you gain anything from it?”
“Yes. Information regarding the narcolepsy.”

Leon’s expression was confident, as if certain of the worth of his intelligence.
Geum Moa looked at him with an expression that said pathetic, and said:

“So I take it you really did lose all your thralls. That whole affair has already been settled by the young master, you know.”
“Oh. So it really was you, my lord. I had heard the patients were beginning to wake. And as luck would have it, support is being quietly arranged for them from behind the scenes, so recovery is said to be quick. Likely the work of this country’s power-holders.”
“Support for the patients, you say. The Yun House is probably involved. They got hold of the information rather quickly.”

Perhaps the Royal House as well, or perhaps some other house had lent a hand.
The thought that even the Shin House might have feigned ignorance and given quiet, alms-like support dampened a mood that had only just lifted.
In his stead, Geum Moa picked another quarrel with Leon.

“So that’s all the information you’ve got? Really, it’s nothi—”
“And also, I have obtained information on persons believed to have illegally entered the country by way of the Specter Realm.”
“Ho.”

So there had been a real point after all.
At Leon’s words, Shin Hweein let out an unconscious sound of astonishment.
The methods for crossing into another country by way of the Specter Realm were extremely uncertain and dangerous beyond measure.

The ones who took such methods even so were either criminals with trouble entering or leaving by ordinary channels…
Or aspiring criminals who did not wish to leave a record of their comings and goings.

“Are they, by chance, Hwa-guk men?”
“Hwa-guk? Ah, you mean Japan. Yes. Three Japanese men… have you obtained that information as well, my lord?”
“I have, though it seems it will prove useful. And from now on, call it Hwa-guk. Aeshin does not acknowledge the name ‘land where the sun rises.’”

Of course, those who knew nothing tended to be swept along by Hwa-guk’s outward claims and call it Japan.
But the sorcerers of Aeshin, who believed that every word spoken from the mouth carried into a charm, did not dare refer to the neighboring country in such a way.
This stood apart from the relations between the two nations.
They could not, for any reason, surrender the foundation of so powerful a sorcery as “the sun” to the country next door.

“Understood. Hwa-guk it is. Then must I call this sword a Hwa-guk blade rather than a katana?”

Leon nodded and then, transforming one of his hands into a katana to demonstrate, spoke, and Shin Hweein only shrugged.

“No, you may call that whatever you like. What Aeshin chiefly regulates is how one names a country and its people. Beyond that, the sorcerous weight is not so great, they say.”
“Hearing that, the sorcery you wield seems rather flexible.”
“There is a saying. ‘Hang it on the ear, it’s an earring; hang it on the nose, it’s a nose-ring.’ More importantly…”

Just as Shin Hweein was about to probe further into the information Leon had brought, the van arrived.

“The rest we’ll hear back at the room. We’ll most likely be moving from tomorrow.”
“How exciting! This time I shall step forward myself.”
“…”

Leon said only that and sank down into Shin Hweein’s shadow.
Shin Hweein, gazing quietly down at his own shadow, turned to Geum Moa and asked:

“Will it be all right?”
“You can insist he’s a shikigami who can transform his body into metal. Nothing at all to do with vampires.”
“So a yokai resembling that Bulgasari the Seo House brat wanted so badly was right here all along…”

The next morning.

Despite having been tormented by Lyl for a considerable stretch of time in his dreams while training in dream sorcery, Shin Hweein woke without a trace of fatigue lingering in him, feeling refreshed, and cocked his head at it.
Perhaps it was because what he was learning from Lyl was, after all, the art of handling dreams themselves.
When one has a good dream, sleep is restful; when one has a bad dream, the body too is often left in poor shape.
Dream sorcery allowed one to control such things freely, and so, naturally, it produced the side benefit of raising the quality of his sleep.

Considering my own poor health, I must master this without fail.

He was nothing but grateful to Lyl.
And yet still, he would have been more grateful if she would lift his curse, even a little, and a great deal more grateful if she would remember that even in dreams men and women ought to keep some distance and restrain her clinging in moderation.

“Young master.”
“Hm?”

By this point one might wonder whether whoever placed the desire-extinguishing curse on me had some prophetic foresight, he was thinking as he sat up, when Geum Moa, who had brought a damp cloth and a basin, spoke with a sullen face.

“Calls keep coming in on your phone, young master.”
“Hm? Ah.”

After a quick wash of his face, Shin Hweein turned on the phone beside his bed and saw that messages had arrived from a handful of people.
First, from Yun Juna, with whom he had agreed to work this matter together, came a politely punctuated text whose stiff manner of speech conveyed her personality perfectly through the writing alone: “When shall I join up with you?” He gave a small smile at it.

And from Shin Myeongin had come the message “Dad gave me permission, so if you move without me, I’ll really kill you,” at the sight of which he agonized over whether his father had truly lost his mind.

“It seems Shin Myeongin truly did obtain authorization for activity.”
“The head of the house must really have gone mad. A child who hasn’t even gone through her coming-of-age rite. Seriously? It was conveyed to him, I trust, that she may end up entering the Specter Realm?”
“It was. No, even if it had not been, there is no way Father would fail to know it. Is Shin Myeongin treated coldly in the household? Or is this for the sake of not provoking Little Mother’s mood, now that she’s drawn the Seo House’s glare over this matter, as a kind of punishment… no, he is not such a man.”

He recalled hearing that Shin Myeongin, even among Little Mother’s daughters, was on the more outstandingly talented side.
Her only flaw was that she was a little young; once she reached adulthood, it would not be long before she could plainly outstrip her elder sister.
Given that her sister, two years older, already held a Second-Rank Sorcerer’s certification, that was no small thing to say.

“But for now, she is still merely a brat. …Haa, I do not feel inclined.”
“Let’s settle this quickly and part ways. Whatever else, that girl seems to be thinking of using a glimpse of the young master’s abilities to drag you back into the Shin House. You mustn’t dance to her tune. And delete her contact straight away.”
“What useless worries. As if I would dance to that girl’s tune. It’s only that the prospect of nursemaiding a child, when it was never in my lot… hm.”

There had been a message from Father as well, among the rest.
But the messages even now setting his phone to its periodic buzzing came, no less, from Ham Seoyeon.
It seemed the commission from the Yun House had been formally entered with her, and on realizing that Shin Hweein was involved she was flooding him with a deluge of contact.

— Hey, you! Pulling off something this big without saying a word to me!

Apparently Ham Seoyeon had noticed at once that he had read her message, because she immediately phoned him.
The moment he brought the phone to his ear, her voice came through ringingly, and Shin Hweein scoffed and answered.

“It was useful, was it not?”

— It’s way more than that! I did say I’d hold a gut, but to think you’d set up a gut on a scale like this…!

“Hmm. It seems there is still more you have to say?”

When Shin Hweein played innocent, a high-pitched cry of thanks came back at him as if to split his eardrum.

— Really, thank you, truly, it’s the greatest chance of my life! But how am I supposed to repay this kindness?

“There will come a time, next, when I’ll need your help. For now, set such useless thoughts aside and concentrate on preparing for the gut.”

— Let’s meet up first. Wrapping this up only over the phone feels too lacking in sincerity.

“Ah. My apologies. It’ll be hard to see your face until the gut is over. I’ve a job I’ve taken on at once, you see.”

— Hm? I heard something rather like that from Myeongin too…

Ham Seoyeon caught it sharply.

— Are the two of you, by chance, moving together?

“That we are. With the Yun House’s branch-line daughter on top of that. It’s Yun Jinseong’s doing.”

— …Yun House branch line? Branch-line who. Ghost-Sword Maiden Yun Juna?

“How did you know at once?”

— In the Yun House, female, around our age, and holding a Second-Rank certification. There’s only her. Yes, Yun Juna…

Ham Seoyeon’s voice, rattling off the explanation at speed, somehow felt a touch deflated compared to a moment before.

— That uncle of yours… all right, let’s hang up for now. I’ll call as soon as the gut is over.

“Do that.”

The call cut off.
Shin Hweein, feeling somehow chilled, was raising his head with the thought that perhaps too much curse still lay accumulated in his body, when he found before his eyes Geum Moa wearing an even more sinister expression than before.

“What is it?”
“That woman… before she gets truly suspicious, the only choice is to make her suspicious directly…”
“I cannot for the life of me follow what you’re saying.”
“My lord.”

Fortunately, before the two of them could plunge their conversation completely into the labyrinth, a savior appeared.
Leon, rising up from his shadow, wore a confident smile as he spoke.

“I’ve discovered that there are others besides us tracking the men I mentioned yesterday. Just now, through that very same Specter Realm Gate, there are Japa— I mean, Hwa-guk men who have crossed over.”
“Excellent intelligence indeed. We move at once.”

Shin Hweein sprang to his feet, and in the very next moment narrowed his eyes at Leon and asked:

“So in the end, just how many of your thralls are left?”
“Hahaha. A few remain, my lord. A few.”

Vampires really were not to be underestimated, after all.
Clicking his tongue, he set about reaching out to this matter’s allies and dead-weights alike.