Chapter 11 — The Sorcerer And The Shrine Custodian (2)

“So. Are we going into the Specter Realm?”

That was the first thing out of Shin Myeongin’s mouth the moment she laid eyes on Shin Hweein.
He couldn’t quite smother the look that said he found her thoroughly disagreeable, but he nodded all the same.

“It’s a strong possibility. We have a witness who saw the men behind this whole affair entering the Specter Realm.”
“We only spoke to my uncle yesterday. That’s some seriously fast progress.”
“This sort of incident has to be dealt with as fast as possible. If they really have gone into the Specter Realm, then unless we go after them now, we could lose them for good.”

Meanwhile Yun Juna, who had turned up with a long bundle wrapped in red cloth slung across her back, said as much in that same stiff manner as before.
Then, with a quiet sigh, she murmured to herself.

“All the more reason, surely. If this is a matter of going into the Specter Realm, wouldn’t it have been better to send a direct-line heir than someone like me…”
“Right? I keep saying he should’ve let me do the gatekeeper rite without even waiting for my coming-of-age!”
“…”

At Shin Myeongin’s bid for agreement, Yun Juna went briefly silent.
Sensing that these two were no more likely to hit it off than anyone else, Shin Hweein stepped in between them.

“Most awakened can come and go from the Specter Realm without trouble, even with no direct-line heir of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses along. Did he say anything in particular?”
“He did not. He said it could take however long it needed, so long as the matter was settled for certain.”
“Oh — I brought all kinds of stuff. Borrowed a shikigami, too.”

Shin Myeongin clapped her hands sharply, and a rift in space split open beside her. Out of it walked a single robust-looking young man.
He bowed to the party in silent greeting, then began drawing assorted pieces of luggage from inside the rift and loading them onto his own back. The way he didn’t so much as flinch as the baggage piled up like a mountain made it plain he was no ordinary human.

“How about him? No looker, but he makes a decent porter! And I’ve packed everything we’ll need going into the Specter Realm and coming back out, so don’t you worry.”

It was galling to watch Shin Myeongin preen over what was, in truth, all on loan from the family.
Still, it was equally true that she at least had a grip on subspace storage. Had Shin Hweein not already trained himself in that sorcery beforehand, he might once again have tasted the bitter sting of being outdone.

What was more, the man wore thick shoes, and his feet appeared to have no heels.
From that, Hweein surmised the fellow might be…

No. There is no need to pry into an allied shikigami.

Shaking off the stray thought, Shin Hweein spoke.

“The Specter Realm Gate the men are presumed to have used is in Zone 3. Only, I’m told there was a countryman of theirs who used the same gate before they did. It would be best to make contact with him first. Do you agree?”
“What the heck, you — how do you keep getting your hands on information like this? Do you really have some backer behind you?”
“I agree. And please, feel free to speak more casually with me. Ah — and during the operation, kindly address me by my activity-name. ‘Ghost-Sword Maiden.’”

Yun Juna stole a sidelong glance at Shin Myeongin as she said it.
Shin Hweein nodded, then raised his staff and rapped it against his own shadow.

“Ghost-Sword Maiden, noted. Leon, lead the way.”
“But of course. I have been ready and waiting. Please follow me.”
“Eh?!”
“From the shadow…”

When Leon rose up out of the shadow, Shin Myeongin and Yun Juna both started at the very same moment.
More than the fact that a shikigami had been steeped within the shadow itself, what astonished them was surely that they hadn’t noticed it at all.
In truth, Leon was no mere shikigami but a thrall bound by blood, and thus exceptionally suited to concealment. Just now that quality had been amplified further still by the transformation art Shin Hweein had cloaked himself in.

“Handling a flame-hound, and now this. Really, the more I see of you, the more suspicious you get. You are an Aeshin man, aren’t you? Because if you are, there’s no way you’d be some no-name…”
“That puppy you’ve got cradled in your arms. Surely that isn’t a flame-hound? Well, well.”
“How embarrassing of you to point it out. What matters now is the case we’ve been handed, not my shikigami.”

For the record, the flame-hound in question was exactly as Yun Juna had said: sitting cradled in Shin Hweein’s arms, its mouth clamped firmly shut.
It had sulked so thoroughly over being left out of the visit to his mother’s grave the day before that he’d been holding and soothing it ever since.

“As it happens, my thr— my underlings have got hold of him, so there’s no fear of losing him.”
“You did not handle it with reckless violence, I trust? He is someone who might yet become a friendly contact.”
“My lord, what on earth do you take me for?!”

Leon clapped a hand to his forehead, his voice full of lamentation.
His habit of playing every line for the stage was honestly grating.

“Have no fear, my lord. We have him restrained by the most gentlemanly — no, the most ladylike of methods.”
“Ladylike…?”

The source of the unease that word carried, Shin Hweein was soon able to discover for himself.

“Big sisters are so pretty, I swear. Especially that snow-white skin — anyone who saw you’d take you for ghosts! What cosmetics do you use, huh? I want to bring some back to Japan. My little sister’s been on my case to bring her some Korean cosmetics anyway.”
“Little sister? Is that really your little sister, Big Bro? Sounds shady.”
“For real, for real, it’s my little sister! Wanna see? She’s super cute! Ah, but even so, you big sisters are cuter!”
“Liar.”

On his head sat a black cap resembling an Aeshin official’s headdress, an eboshi. Over his shoulders, a white outer robe with the characteristic wide sleeves, a kariginu. And for his lower garment, narrow-cuffed, loose-fitting trousers, sashinuki. A young man.
In one hand he held a narrow, elongated tablet that looked, oddly enough, to be made of black wood, a shaku. From any angle he was unmistakably a shinju¹, a priest who held office at a shrine of Shinto, the religion native to Hwa-guk.

“But I don’t have any pictures of her on my phone right now. Ah — big sisters, if you’ve got Hotline, want to swap IDs? I’ll send some once I get home.”

But the look, as it turned out, was no more than a look.
The sight of the man wedged between two women in a dark alley, that loose grin on his face, was utterly ill-suited to such sacred attire.
The vivid yellow he’d dyed his hair, the swarthy brown he’d tanned his skin. One knew it was unwise to judge a person by appearance, yet it only fed the impression that he hardly fit the part of a priest.
That he could speak Aeshin fluently despite being a Hwa-guk native was, however, commendable.

— Whoa, it’s been ages since I’ve seen such a textbook GoldSun. Honestly kind of refreshing.
— What does that mean?
— A blonde-tanned punk, young master.

Once Geum Moa had explained, Shin Hweein regretted asking.
Meanwhile Leon stepped forward and snapped his fingers, at which the two women entangled with the priest nodded in unison and withdrew cleanly.

“Well then, scary Big Bro, see you later!”
“Truth is, you’re not all that handsome anyway, Big Bro, so — bye now!”
“Eh? Big sisters, wait— ah, aaah.”

The shinju had reached out to grab the women as they vanished into the alley’s shadows in a flash. Now he took in the sight of Leon standing in their place, Shin Hweein’s party visible behind him, and let his shoulders sag.
And then he said something that startled most of the party.

“What? Those weren’t wild yokai, but shikigami?”
“Underlings serving a shikigami, more precisely. At any rate, rest easy — there’s no need to exterminate them.”

At Shin Hweein’s added remark, Shin Myeongin and Yun Juna both reacted with shock.

“That’s what you were about to exterminate just now?!”
“He looked like nothing but a man of poor character…!”

In truth, even Shin Hweein wouldn’t have noticed the man was readying himself to attack the two vampires, had he not opened his spirit-eye.

“Hey, big sisters, I’ll have you know I serve as guji at Hotenshi-no-Kami Shrine. There’s no way I’d fail to spot a yokai.”
“Don’t call me ‘big sister.’ You old geezer.”
“How unpleasant.”
“Khrk!”

While the priest, sunk by the two women’s words, swayed on his feet, Shin Hweein plucked out something the man had said and murmured it quietly.

“Hotenshi-no-Kami…? I’ve never heard of it.”

And on top of that, “guji.” In Aeshin the word named a court office, but in Hwa-guk, as he understood it, that was certainly what they called the shrine custodian who oversaw an entire shrine.
A shrine custodian in charge of a whole shrine, at that young an age. And a man like that slipping into Aeshin alone, no less.

When Shin Hweein’s gaze hardened on top of everything else, in answer to so suspicious a self-introduction, the man hurriedly tacked on an excuse.

“Of course, our shrine is a little — a teeny tiny bit — humble. But please, hear me out, everyone. The important part starts now, all right?”

The man went on for a good while about what a great figure Hotenshi-no-Kami was, how many things he had achieved in Hwa-guk, and in what ways he had brought peace to the region where he resided.
He stressed that, though Hotenshi-no-Kami was overlooked merely for not being native-born to Hwa-guk, he was in truth a hito-gami, a deified human spirit, of such standing that he yielded not in the slightest to the most exalted gods of Hwa-guk.

Having heard all of this out calmly, Shin Hweein boiled the contents down to a single sentence.

“In short. You are the shrine custodian of a minor shrine that isn’t even much recognized in its own homeland, and you were putting on airs about it.”
“Khrgh! No — our god is the kind of being who could bring down the heavens with just his little finger, I’m telling you!”
“Enough about the god you serve.”

He had taken roughly the measure of the man.
Ready to loose Flame-tail from his arms at any moment, Shin Hweein went on.

“What matters is that you — a Hwa-guk man who serves a Hwa-guk god — entered Aeshin illegally.”
“Ahaha — so it’s that, is it? You had me made the moment I came in?”

That the man didn’t even bother to deny the illegal entry made Shin Myeongin narrow her eyes sharply, and Yun Juna brought a hand to the red bundle at her back.

“You guys some kind of spy agents? Police?”

— How dare this riffraff, right before my eyes.

“Whoa now.”

The shinju, too, made a strained face and tried to slip a hand into the breast of his robes, but the Flame-tail in Shin Hweein’s arms huffed out a tongue of flame and checked the motion.
A single bead of cold sweat slid down his temple, and the man cautiously drew his hand back out.

“You Korean sorcerers really aren’t to be trifled with. Did you tail me from the very start?”
“Not you. From the three who slipped in before you.”
“…Three, slipped in? Uh — oh, oh-oh.”

At those words the shinju’s eyes brightened, and he raised both hands.

“Just a moment, friends. It’s not as if I came over here with any ill intent, you know. For starters, why don’t we talk it over in detail? We might just see eye to eye, mightn’t we?”
“Hm.”

He bites after all.

A smile rose to Shin Hweein’s lips, and he let slip a small measure of information about the criminals.
Without saying precisely what crimes they’d committed, going no further than that they’d tried to throw the Capital into chaos, he watched the shinju froth at the mouth in an instant and start to rage.

“That’s right, those bastards! It’s the radicals!”
“The radicals?”
“Huh? Ah, well — those guys who go around saying ‘Make Japan Great Again,’ or something to that general effect.”
“‘Again’?”
“‘Great’?”

The daughters of esteemed houses, touchy about their nation’s rivalry with Hwa-guk, each let a barbed remark drop at the shinju’s words. But this was no time for a contest of national pride.

“Then, shinju — what about you?”
“Call me Guji Mochizuki. Naturally, I’m here to catch the bastards. I took the commission from Head Office!”

By “Head Office” he most likely meant the Association of Shinto Shrines, which administered some eighty thousand shrines across Hwa-guk.

“You’re not in league with the radicals, then?”
“Of course not — guys like that get more than just struck off the Association of Shinto Shrines. The Onmyo Bureau that oversees Japan’s espers² has bounties out on them!”
“And you came to claim that bounty.”
“Sure did. Gotta let my little sister drink her fill of bubble tea or whatever she likes, so I had to make a killing this time… No! I’m telling you, I took a commission from Head Office!”

The shinju, refusing to fall for Shin Hweein’s leading question, defended himself.
Behind him, the two women were whispering to each other.

“Bubble tea? Hasn’t that trend been over for ages?”
“Isn’t it just a lump of sugar? I’ve never tried it. It puts unnecessary fat on you.”
“What?! Unnecessary, you say…!”
“…Where exactly are you looking right now?”

Ignoring the two women, Shin Hweein put a question to Mochizuki.

“Guji Mochizuki said he came to catch them as well. Must he take them back alive without fail?”
“From the looks of it, you weren’t going to let me anyway, were you?”
“Had their crime been a mere attempt, it might have been possible. But damage has already been done. …They must die on Aeshin soil. Their heads, however, I can let you have.”

Had the men’s identities been made public, even their heads could not have been sent back to Hwa-guk.
Even if it was no longer a matter of impaling them on stakes in the marketplace as in olden days, their bodies would still have had to be offered up to the Royal House.
It was only because he’d been asked to dispose of them entirely behind the scenes that he could even afford a magnanimity like handing over the heads.

“Mind if I have a quick word with Head Office? About whether I really don’t need to bring the bodies back, I mean…”
“Can the guji of Hotenshi-no-Kami Shrine not decide even a thing like that on his own?”
“…”

At that, Mochizuki sucked his teeth, clicked his tongue, and looked Shin Hweein straight in the eye.

“I’ve been thinking about what it is you’re trying to say, big bro—”
“Shin Hae.”
“Big bro Shin Hae. What you’re saying is, in exchange for handing over the bastards’ heads, you want me to help catch them — is that how I should be taking it?”
“It would be more reliable to put it in writing. Since neither of us can trust the other.”

Leon, who had been watching the exchange with a grin all the while, drew a sheet of paper from his breast and held it out.
Receiving it, Shin Hweein drew his own blood, wrote his name in it, and passed it to Mochizuki.

Mochizuki took it for the moment and examined the contract carefully, sending his spiritual power through it to check for errors.
Then he paused, of all places, at the spot where Shin Hweein’s name was inscribed.

“What is it?”
“No, it’s nothing. Must be my mistake. Still… mm, all right. Let’s contract. But what about the names of those two women over there?”
“Should the guji be betrayed by those two, I shall bear that cost as well. That should suffice, yes?”

Mochizuki watched Shin Hweein extend a hand without hesitation and append the clause the instant he raised it, and he regarded him with an expression of deep admiration.

“Quite the resolve, big bro…!”
“Do not call me ‘big bro.’”

He’d only done it because it was a tedious provisional contract and a bother to drag a third party into it.
But Mochizuki, having taken who knows what for a misunderstanding, had his eyes shining bright.
Could it be the man was painting him as some fool who shouldered the risk just to look good in front of women?
If that was the reason the man had taken a liking to him, then Hweein found it all the more distasteful.

“All right, I’ll trust you, big bro! It’ll be brief, but let’s cooperate!”
“…Sign your name in blood.”
“Of course. A contract’s foundation is blood, after all.”

Biting the tip of his finger to open a wound, Mochizuki swept his own name across the paper with a flourish.
In that instant the contract gave off a dazzling light, split itself in two, and was absorbed into both parties.
And all at once Shin Hweein felt his body shudder for reasons that had nothing to do with the terms.

…What is this?

Could this man be connected to him in some way?
But surely he was human, and could have no tie to those who had cursed him…

“Listen, Guji Mochizuki.”
“Say, big bro.”

Their words overlapped.
That this made him feel worse than he’d ever imagined, Shin Hweein held his tongue a moment. Whereupon Mochizuki, wearing an expression even stranger than Shin Hweein’s, was the one who spoke.

“By any chance, do you know about the god enshrined at our shrine? Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami.”
“It is the first I am hearing of him. …But since matters have come to this, I would ask something in return.”

It might only be that, until now, Shin Hweein’s own level had been too low to perceive it. But it was entirely possible the god this man served was the very yokai that had cursed him.
Without a trace of jest in his tone, he asked.

“How is that god’s name written?”
“…Like this.”

Mochizuki flipped over the shaku tablet he held in one hand to show him.
Many phrases were inscribed within it, but what first met the eye was the god’s name, written across the top.

Hotenshi-no-Kami.

“Heaven-shattering… finger.”
“You know it?”
“Nothing comes to mind at once… but this character. Finger.”

His thoughts ran at once to the night before, when he had drunk wine at his mother’s grave.
The one character on the slip of paper inside his cup that he’d managed to make out.
The hanja hadn’t been written beside it, so he hadn’t been able to grasp the exact meaning. But could it possibly be…

“This finger — what finger does it mean?”
“The little finger! Ah — I caught that flinch just now, big bro. You really do have a connection to our shrine, don’t you? My spiritual power got a definite reaction!”

The little finger.
Rendered into hanja, it became Sojy.
Had he known this in advance, he would have drafted the contract a little more carefully.

Letting out a sigh at the thought, Shin Hweein opened his mouth.

“I should like to hear about Hotenshi-no-Kami Shrine. Later — once this matter is settled.”
“Now that’s what I want to hear!”
“Yah! Don’t tell me you’re thinking of crossing over to Japan?! If you’re going to do that, come to the Shin House! I swear, if you sneak off to Japan I’ll kill you!”

Ignoring Shin Myeongin’s outburst, she who knew nothing, he spoke again.

“But first, the work. Guji Mochizuki, I would hear what you know about the criminals.”