Chapter 12 — The Sorcerer And Hotenshi-no-Kami (4)

“By the way, Big bro Shin Hae.”
“…What.”
“Big bro, you’re the one working on getting in good with that lively young lady, right? Then the sexy big sis, she’s free at the moment, yeah?”

They were in the middle of seeing the two women off when the question came flying in from Guji Mochizuki, and Shin Hweein’s eyebrows twitched.

“Setting aside, for the moment, that you are quite firmly mistaken about the nature of my relationship with Shin Myeongin, have you taken a liking to the Ghost-Sword Maiden?”
“No, well, it’s not so much liking, but, big bro, you saw her too, so you know! Her figure is just absolutely killer!”
“What a remarkably honest man you are.”

Of course, if Yun Juna ever heard him say that, this time she really would try to split his skull with that greatsword.

“Sadly, I do not know whether she has a lover. But she is an attractive person and her abilities are outstanding, so unless she holds some conviction of her own…”

Mid-sentence, Shin Hweein stopped.
Come to think of it, hadn’t Geum Moa said that Yun Jinseong pairing Shin Hweein and Yun Juna together on this matter was a deliberate attempt to throw the two of them at each other?

In that case, the odds were high that Yun Juna had no lover.
However much Yun Jinseong was the real power in the family, and however much Yun Juna was branch-line, he surely would not have told a woman who already had a lover to go off and seduce another man.

“Why’d you cut off mid-sentence?! Do you know something, huh?”
“You really must have taken quite a liking to her.”
“Should I say she’s right in my strike zone? The way her personality’s so fierce, and the way she looks like she really wouldn’t be into men, it just kind of, you know?”

Guji Mochizuki’s symptoms appeared rather severe.
And the woman in question was someone he would more likely than not never meet again, at that.
Shin Hweein cast about for anyone who had ever made him so wholly captive, and in the end gave up.
For one thing, apart from Geum Moa he had bound no woman to himself in any deep way, and even if there were someone besides her, Geum Moa was not going to let it lie once she found out.

— Young master, are you really intent on crossing over to Hwa-guk? Other countries are dangerous, you know.

At Geum Moa’s voice arriving just then, Shin Hweein flinched for an instant, then let his shoulders drop and answered as though nothing had startled him.

— I want to verify the matter of Hotenshi-no-Kami. I am not going across for good; only stopping by briefly and returning.

While he was at it, he had an interest in the methods of crossing into other countries by way of the Specter Realm.
For a Gatekeeper it would be of much use in blocking smugglers who tried to slip into Aeshin, and just as useful, conversely, when he himself wanted to cross into another country.

— Young master, you’re a bad person—. You won’t allow people who try to slip into Aeshin in secret, but you yourself are saying you’ll be sneaking off into another country?
— It is not as though I intend to commit a crime, so what of it. There is no harm in learning ahead of time, since I may one day find myself in the position of a fugitive.

Shin Hweein had always been wary of the situation in which his true identity would be exposed to the family before his abilities were adequately honed.
He meant to avoid it as far as he was able, of course, but that was only his wish. As it stood, his identity had already been found out by his father and Yun Jinseong, and Shin Myeongin kept troublesomely interfering on top of it.

Even granting that they bore him no hostility, the more he became entangled with the Eight Pure-Blood Houses, the higher the odds that he would naturally come under the notice of his little mother and Shin Uin.
And then his identity being uncovered would be only a matter of time.

Moreover, what of those who set the curses upon me. If I am to resolve the grudges with them, I shall have to throw away the notion of acting solely within Aeshin.

Realizing that Shin Hweein’s resolve was firm, Geum Moa smacked her lips with a tsk and gave him a word of caution.

— On Hwa-guk soil there are yokai who hold past-life grudges against you, young master… and in foreign lands the blessings laid upon you without your knowing weaken in effect. You’ll be quick about your business and come straight back, yes?
— I know. This time I will only stop by the shrine and return at once.

The three talismans within Shin Hweein’s robes reached their maximum effect only upon the soil of Aeshin Korea.
The same went for the flame-hound, the yokai who stood for Aeshin.

— Hmph, you’re going to start cursing me again, aren’t you.

“That could hardly be the case. You worked hard today as well, so I shall hold you.”

— No, what — as if I’d enjoy something like that—!

Without the slightest resistance, Flame-tail folded himself into Shin Hweein’s arms, and as Shin Hweein stroked him, he thought of his other shikigami besides this one.
At least Leon, a vampire, and Neuldam, whose name was known across all of East Asia as a Thunder-Beast, would not be weakened.
Arong? Arong was the exception of exceptions.
That fellow, perhaps, would go strutting about even if dropped into hell.

Hmm? Looking at it this way, I might actually manage well enough on foreign soil too.

Once again he was certain that the teaching of the family elders was a wrong-headed business.
For whatever reason, they insisted that native is best and required the direct-line members to contract only with Aeshin’s yokai.
After all, the shikigami Shin Myeongin had borrowed was a shapeshifting tiger-yokai not particularly famous in Aeshin, was it not!

And for that matter, if one cracked open the shikigami those so-called elders possessed, perhaps they would all turn out to be plastered over with yokai whose Aeshin-native status was equally dubious.

— Hoho, I am formidable wherever I go. East Asia goes without saying. Now there is no stage in the world on which I would be outmatched.
— Yes, well, that is fortunate, but please do not suddenly appear before me in a clown’s getup.
— An idol! At the very least, please call me an idol!

The remark came as he recalled the scene of a kumiho woman appearing in a video-game advertisement on the lodging’s television not long before, and it drew a disgusted protest from Geum Moa.
Shin Hweein was leaking a faint laugh at her predictable reaction when Mochizuki spoke up. He had been repeating the work of pasting talismans on the corpses and sucking them in, and now, having recovered all three talismans, he rose.

“Hey, big bro, going over to Japan together is fine and all, but before that, can’t we drop by a Korean department store?”
“I would rather hurry and have it done, ideally… What for?”

Shin Hweein had no wish to be observed within Aeshin in the company of Guji Mochizuki.
The guji was here on a smuggled-in basis, after all, and there was nothing good to be gained by being seen acting alongside him; more importantly, he did not want it getting out that he was crossing over into Hwa-guk, even briefly.
Whether or not he understood Shin Hweein’s mind on the matter, Mochizuki shuffled bashfully and said:

“I promised my little sister I’d buy her Korean cosmetics…”
“That was actually true?!”

If the man had any improper intentions, he’d have shut his mouth and made for Hwa-guk, but there was nothing to be said against the pure thought of caring for one’s sister.
In which case they’d have to disperse, regroup, and then go to Hwa-guk. And at that very moment, while he was deliberating, two things happened at once.

“If that’s the trouble, have no concern, my lord. As for Korean cosmetics, I have them stocked by category: men’s, women’s, students’, professionals’, even the elderly!”

One was that Leon, both hands loaded with cosmetics, popped abruptly out of his shadow.

“It cannot be helped. There is no further need to hide my existence even in front of this man. I shall release a portion of my collection.”

The other was that Geum Moa, who had gradually grown bored of staying out of sight, naturally revealed herself behind Shin Hweein.

“Bishoujo!”

From Shin Hweein’s perspective, Leon appearing with that great heap of cosmetics was startling enough; the man looked to him like nothing so much as a priest of the Western Land of Black-Arts.
But Mochizuki seemed not to register the sight at all.
Catching one glimpse of Geum Moa’s face, he let out a one-syllable shriek and toppled over backwards.

“How can this be. How can a bishoujo maid actually exist…!”

The good thing about wearing a mask was that, at moments like this, one could make a face of utter contempt for someone without the other party reading it.
Surely it was not the case that all of Hwa-guk’s shinju were like this fellow.
Praying earnestly that they were not, Shin Hweein declared to Mochizuki, at least to put the matter on record:

“Let me say in advance: she, too, is my shikigami.”
“That’s even more nonsense! Using a beauty like that as a shikigami is something only possible in manga and anime, isn’t it?! Every onmyoji I know goes around with nothing but goggle-eyed monstrosities!”

There was no telling whom he was trying to blame, but his voice was full of indignation.
In point of fact Geum Moa was not Shin Hweein’s shikigami, so his complaint was not entirely off the mark.

“Big bro, no, Master! From today on I shall call you Master Shin Hae!”
“Do not, under any circumstances.”
“Ah, and the cosmetics. I beg of you, let them be ones the lady shikigami has actually used. If possible, ones about half-empty…”
“Young master, may I kill this bastard?”
“Restrain yourself.”

After suitably punishing Mochizuki for his revolting remarks, the party picked out an assortment from Leon’s and Geum Moa’s cosmetics, packed them up, and at last set off on the road to Hwa-guk.

“To think you’d actually be holding such high-grade goods. As I’d expect, the power to cheat the years really is all in the makeup, hmm.”
“Says the mosquito who can’t so much as walk under the sun without smearing on a thick coat of powder.”
“I was noble from birth, you know? I’d appreciate being called a true leader who looks after his subordinates well.”
“Yes, yes, King Mosquito. You’re unpleasant, so don’t talk to me.”

Geum Moa still bore an aversion to Leon’s attempts to play the role of Shin Hweein’s right-hand attendant. She traded a round of harsh words with him, then clung to Shin Hweein’s side.

“Young master, that mosquito keeps making advances on me. Wouldn’t it be best to cut off the head of a servant who dares to covet his master’s woman, while it’s still early?”
“So she says. What say you, Leon?”
“It is the deed of an unsightly fox-of-flame jealous of the deep bond between yourself and me, my lord. Furthermore, I too have an eye for women.”

— Hah?

It would have been better if the two of them had stopped there, but, provoked by Leon’s words, a new entrant joined the fray: Flame-tail, who had been quietly held in Shin Hweein’s arms.

— A deep bond, you, the newcomer who’s only just joined? I am the first shikigami, you hear? This fox-of-flame is just a crazy bitch who plays with men as if it were a pastime.
— Where matters of bond are concerned, since when does mere length of years count?

“This mongrel, what was all that whining about shackles before, and now he’s bragging about it?! And of course years are what matter most for a bond!”

While he gave a measured response to Geum Moa and his thralls, who kept raising their voices in argument and pestering him, Shin Hweein did not let his attention slip from Mochizuki’s movements at the head of the procession.
He had to learn the method of going between one country and another by way of the Specter Realm.

Only, the sight of Mochizuki wavering and staggering forward as though painfully reviving a memory sunk deep in his head was not inspiring confidence.
The single visible mark of sorcery was the long needle, similar to a compass, formed of spiritual power and hovering above the palm of one of his hands.

“Guji Mochizuki, is this perhaps going to take some time?”
“Hold on a bit, Master. The route is definitely this way… ah, sorry. Even so, I can’t really go into detail about this with you, see.”
“Of course I understand. I asked only in case my help might shorten the travel time, so pay it no mind and press on.”

Setting aside his adolescent-sounding speech and the way he turned abruptly revolting in the presence of a pretty woman, Guji Mochizuki was indeed a man in whom one glimpsed a simple, guileless side.
Even without hearing about the technique directly from him, simply experiencing it at his side was enough to learn it, and yet at the moment he was failing entirely to consider that possibility.
He was so excessively naïve that Shin Hweein felt a touch of guilt.

No, my own survival comes first, so guilt is not the thing. I merely worry for this man’s future.

Naïve nature aside, he was undeniably handling a tremendous ability, and in today’s battle Shin Hweein had indeed received various sorts of help from him.
Just as Mochizuki had wound up coming all the way to Aeshin, if he did not study society a little more from here on, would he not keep being used and tossed about by others until at last he met some real danger?

— Young master, while you are seriously fretting over him, I’m sorry to say this, but as a rule one cannot learn a spell-art merely by experiencing it. Particularly not a complex spell-art such as this.
— Is that so?
— Of course. You, young master, have the Gatekeeper’s Brand as well, so your understanding of the Specter Realm is high; perhaps it’ll be a touch easier for you to grasp… that said, it really is rather interesting. To calculate the real-time-shifting coordinates of the Specter Realm by way of ambient spiritual-power flows and the spiritual-power repulsion between the sorcerer and the Specter Realm’s gates, really. That sort of perverted obsession and uselessly intricate calculation built into a spell-formula, that is indeed one of Hwa-guk’s specialties.
— You — do not go grasping at once what I worked so hard to figure out.
— There’ll be a certain margin of error, but the precision required to designate a specific country and travel between is certainly within reach. Better still if one could pin down the coordinates of every Specter Realm Gate in the world.

Just as their conversation was wrapping up, the long needle floating above the guji’s palm began to spin wildly, like a compass with a magnet brought near.

“Got it, found it! Everyone, this way!”
“Right.”

Only when, at the same moment, he felt the surrounding spiritual-power flow grow violent did Shin Hweein finally grasp the core of this spell-art.
The countless powerful beings within the Specter Realm, the points where the territories they occupied collided.

In places where the spiritual-power flow grew violent like this, one false step might sweep a person along into a distance unimaginably far, or into one of the Specter Realm’s secret regions, hidden away even within the realm itself and normally impossible to reach.
Even Shin Hweein himself had encountered such things from his very first entry into the Specter Realm, had he not.

The spell-art developed by the Onmyo Bureau searches out that vast spiritual-power collision and artificially harnesses its explosive force to traverse a great distance, and in the process… as I thought.

The long needle that had been whirling round burst, in an instant, into a sudden swelling that became a passageway enveloping the whole party.
If Shin Hweein’s reading was correct, this passageway, astonishingly, was performing the role of fixing the direction of the spiritual-power-driven long-range movement to the one its caster desired!

“This way! Hurry!”

He extended his staff and ran after Mochizuki.
The staff’s functions had already been strengthened in many ways since the Pagoda-Tree God came to dwell in it, so branches sprang out on every side and lifted his body, carrying him along so that he did not fall behind Mochizuki.

Whether one’s feet are planted on the ground does not matter. What matters is whether, at this moment, one is inside this space, the temporarily formed conduit.

With that, his analysis was complete.
When Shin Hweein’s feet touched the ground again, the passageway had ended, and they had arrived in an entirely different region.

“Phew, success. Now we just need to find an exit nearby.”
“There were times when you failed, too?”
“Honestly, when I was coming to Korea, I failed once to catch the flow and wandered around the Specter Realm for a full day. If it weren’t for Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami’s blessing, I’d definitely have died.”

…At those words, Shin Hweein found himself recalling the face of a certain man he knew well and comparing the two, but it seemed disrespectful to Father Lucas, so he stopped.
Instead, he made a proposal to Mochizuki.

“Before we go out, let’s renew our contract once more.”
“Hm? What for?”
“Don’t be silly, the first agreement was term-limited, wasn’t it. For both our safety, isn’t it better to bind ourselves once more by a confidentiality contract?”
“Aw, Master, what do you take me for? With Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami watching, how could I dare commit an unjust act? On top of that, Master, you’re a man with a bond to a god as well.”
“I trust the guji, but I do not trust the Onmyo Bureau. For all our safety, I think it best to renew the contract. We must prepare for any eventuality.”

Wearing a discomfited expression, Mochizuki nevertheless came around to acknowledging his point and renewed the contract.
A contract whose terms, that neither would utter a word about the other, were exceedingly simple yet strongly binding.
When the contract was settled, Shin Hweein let out a sigh and said:

“Have you found the gate?”
“No, the trouble is that the precision of this spell-art is a touch low. The gate I want is the one right in front of our shrine—”
“They say that Hwa-guk’s shinto shrines are mostly built in the form of a divine body, a vessel containing a divine presence, pinning down a Specter Realm Gate, and that does seem to be the truth.”
“Yes, yes, exactly that!”
“I should be able to find it by searching for the spiritual power closest in kind to the one I sense from you, then.”
“Yes, that’s right, the divine body enshrined at our shrine and my little sister too… eh?”

Mochizuki, not quite catching what Shin Hweein had said, tilted his head in puzzlement.
But Shin Hweein, with the Gatekeeper’s Brand surfaced on the back of one hand, had kept his eyes closed for a brief while; soon he opened them and beckoned to him.

“I’ve found it. Let us go straight there. It is not far.”
“Hm? …Eh?! Master, surely—!”
“Surely the guji has already realized.”

To Mochizuki, who only now grasped the meaning of what Shin Hweein had shown him and was opening his eyes wide, Shin Hweein said with a slight grin:

“You will need to keep my secret.”

Shin Hweein, for his part, also intended to keep every secret he came to know regarding him.
…Though, as for the spell-art he had learned today, he supposed he would be making rather considerable use of it from here on out.