Chapter 13 — The Price That Must Not Be Forgotten (1)

Sik.

That single character dominated Shin Hweein’s mind, as though an absolute will were branding itself into him.

Eat. Me — the little finger?

If merely sharing a portion of the power within it with the shrine’s priest had produced such might, then surely, when its rightful owner reclaimed it, Shin Hweein would come into power on a tremendous scale.
A power that could sweep aside, with ease, every obstacle now standing in his path.
Shin Uin, little mother, anything at all that displeased him, he could wipe it all away without so much as a…

“K-hak!”
“Young master!”

It came in that one instant.
The character wavered for a heartbeat, and Shin Hweein’s eyes flew open as a violent cough tore out of him, streaked with red blood, as if his inner demons had left their mark.

— Wh-what is this!

“My lord?!”
“Haaah, haaaaah…!”
“M-Master? What in the world is that, for it to—”
“Stop. Don’t come closer.”

Geum Moa thrust out a hand and halted the Guji Mochizuki, who had stepped forward with worry written across his face.
She shot the Guji another glare, freezing him in place as if he’d turned to stone, then gently laid her hand on Shin Hweein’s shoulder.

“Calm yourself, young master. I’m here. There’s nothing to be afraid of…”
“It’s, it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine, so…!”

Hurriedly, Shin Hweein crumpled the slip in his fist.
Even so, the character Sik seemed seared onto his retinas, refusing to be erased.
Breathing roughly, he shut his eyes and bent his concentration on bringing the spiritual power churning inside him to heel.

Is this a sorcery laid on the slip itself? Or has a mere character awakened some instinct in me? An unbearable urge keeps surging up. That a part of the flesh my past life left behind, that it is only right for me to take it back. Is that what my soul is asserting?

There would be no harm to himself from that alone. Strange as it was, Shin Hweein could sense it by instinct.
His body would not burst from an enormous influx of divine power, nor would a god descend into his frame.
Because, in essence, it was the same as him.

What worried him, rather, was the change that would follow.
He, Shin Hweein, had so adamantly denied his past-life self. If now he simply conceded, just because power came easy, and gulped down that little finger, could the man left behind afterward still be called the same person as before?

An urge vast enough to shake my very self. What if, even after I take the little finger, this urge does not subside? …What if I should come to wish to cast off this present self, lacking in so many ways, and become whole?

The mind follows the body, so the saying goes.
In sorcery too, the body, the form that all things take, carried enormous weight.
What if it were so for Shin Hweein as well?

Through the curses of Attila and Lyl, he had already felt for himself that the memories of his past life lay fragmented in the deepest recesses of his soul.
But if he reclaimed even a portion of his past-life body.
If that worked a change in his flesh, and that change in turn became the medium by which the memories of his past life were summoned forth.
Then would his present self not vanish entirely, and in its place his past-life self, someone who could no longer be called Shin Hweein, be revived?

Lyl would naturally desire that. And Attila, his connection to who I am now is so faint it might as well not exist. Then what of Moa? Is Moa thinking the same way she once did, when she confronted my former self?

She had, after all, once made an attempt on his life. And yet, in spite of that.
No, because the two of them had since spoken honestly and forged the Three-Year Pact, all the more for that, Shin Hweein wanted to believe in Geum Moa.
But if it were not so.
If all of Geum Moa’s behavior up to now had been mere performance, born of her longing for his past-life self, if she, like Lyl, pined for the man he had been.

“I have no way of knowing what thoughts are tormenting you so, young master.”

It was then that Geum Moa, feeling his fit was not subsiding, took a bolder step.
She simply threw her arms wide and embraced him from behind.

“If something’s troubling you, share it with me. All right?”
“Ah…”
“Kyaaa—! With Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami looking on, too!”
“A-an adult. An adult relationship, that’s what this is…!”
“So you’re saying we’re just kids, then!”
“You practically are kids!”

The Mochizuki siblings reacted furiously, but Shin Hweein had no leisure to spare for them.

“Don’t forget that I am here at your side, young master. I will always be there, whenever, wherever, at your side.”
“That is…”

Strangely, the trembling subsided a little.
He had not wanted to disappoint her again by letting some feeble word slip out, yet he could not quite hide his heart from Geum Moa.

“Even if… that man is not the one you remember…?”
“Hoh hoh, and here I wondered what you were suddenly worrying about.”

Geum Moa tightened the arms she had wrapped around him and went on.

“Cast your mind back to the Three-Year Pact. I said you would not change, and you, young master, said you would show me a better version of yourself. Did you not?”
“Yes… I did indeed say that.”
“Happily, you remember. Strange, isn’t it? Our positions are quite reversed. Back then it was you promising to show me a different self, and now, somehow, it’s you fretting that I might look upon you differently?”

He felt as though she had struck him at the very heart of the matter.
Perhaps that was only possible because he held a basic faith in her, founded on everything Geum Moa had shown him until then.
Only, faith twisted just slightly turns all too easily into spoiled wheedling.
And it scarcely needed asking which of the two this present act was: voicing every doubt aloud, seeking out her confirmation of her feelings to soothe his own nerves.

“Moa, I—”
“Hush…”

She brought a finger to Shin Hweein’s lips, stopping him as he tried to speak.

“Someone, no doubt, has worked an empty bit of sorcery and turned your head about, young master? You, young master, are always so very self-assured.”
“…”
“You said I cling to the past, young master, but I am only ever looking at the present you. There is no opening through which anything else might intrude. Always, at this very moment, always fresh and splendid, that is my young master. …But you, young master, said yourself that you would become even more splendid than you are now. Did you not?”

That after declaring it all so boldly, he could no longer even recall the vow he had made for himself.
That he ought to know when it was right to play the spoiled child. A reproof in the gentlest of forms.
He drew a long, deep breath, driving out the force that had been clouding his head.
Then Shin Hweein squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them.

“You are right. It shall be so.”

The bewitchment had fallen away utterly.

“Just as you say, I was for a moment shaken by some empty trickery. I exist for no one’s sake, and there is no one for whose sake I am bound to change.”

Had he not already reached that very conclusion on his own and conveyed it to Lyl?
He had no thought of denying his past self, but neither would he fit his present self to that template.
If gaining the little finger of his past life could make him stronger, then so be it, he ought to do so.
But if it meant imposing any change on him, he had not the slightest intention of submitting.
He could be changed by his own will and nothing else.
What did it matter who might dislike that?
He had long since made up his mind to value himself above all others.
It was far too soon yet to lose his self-assurance and flee back into his past-life self.

“My thanks, Moa. Thanks to you, I have come through that sorcery.”

His mind set in order and noticeably lighter, Shin Hweein gently patted Geum Moa’s hand where it still lay across his collarbone, and offered his gratitude.
At that, she pulled a mischievous face and stuck out her lips.

“If you’re grateful, then a kiss—”
“Later.”
“—W-wait, young master. I’ll record it, so say that one more time for me. Yes?”
“Enough.”

Shin Hweein coldly peeled off Geum Moa, who was now clinging to him as if it were her turn to play the spoiled one, and unfolded the crumpled slip.
The character Sik was written there as before, yet somehow it looked a touch fainter than at first. And now that he looked again, the brushwork seemed different from that of the preceding word, Sojy.

“Hah.”

Eyes narrowed sharp at the thing that could no longer bewitch him, Shin Hweein folded it in half, tucked it into his inner pocket, and lifted his face.

“Guji, there is something I wish to ask of you… Why do you look like that?”
“No, ah, well.”

The siblings stood side by side with their faces flushed bright red and their heads bowed deep, and the Guji Mochizuki edged backward as he asked.

“Should we, ah, maybe, you know, leave you alone for a bit, do you think?”
“Cretin, idiot, fool! What kind of thing is that to ask, just shut up and walk out—!”
“They really are alike, these two.”
“Aren’t they.”

Once Shin Hweein had persuaded the siblings that he had no intention of doing anything untoward with Geum Moa, he resumed in a serious voice.

“During our conversation just now, I felt a spiritual power distinct from Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami’s. Did you not feel it as well, Guji?”
“Uh, yeah. If you felt it too, Master, then it’s certain. I was wondering whether it might be your own aura, Master…?”
“I have no such restless force about me.”

…Well, perhaps dream sorcery might be a little similar. But no.
A baleful presence beyond even that had been bearing down on them, of that Shin Hweein was sure.

“And it must have influenced this slip as well.”
“Hm?”
“No, it has been driven off. Let it be.”

Most likely the culprit was that great yokai, the one who had betrayed Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami and yet had not perished.
That it could taint a slip already half a cursed object and lay a curse on Shin Hweein proved it commanded a fearsome rank. There was no doubt.
Had the spiritual power lingering in the slip not resisted, had Geum Moa not been at his side, only imagining the horrors that might have unfolded was enough to make him shudder, and he rose to his feet.
The trouble was that the crisis was not over yet.

“Guji, knowing it is presumptuous, I shall speak it nonetheless. Show me the shintai.”

If his guess was correct, the shintai enshrined here did not exist solely to guard this place.
There had to be a reason the great yokai had reacted so swiftly.
In all likelihood, Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami’s shintai.
His little finger.

“You can’t.”

It was Mochizuki Mari who rose to her feet to meet him, her voice resolute.

“That is something we can absolutely never reveal to outsiders. Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami’s shintai is the crystallization of the power that guards our shrine, and the whole region beyond it. Even speaking the truth of him is, by rights, unthinkable. You have been treated with more than enough courtesy as guests, so this is where—”
“Mari, be quiet.”
“Big Bro!”
“I’m the guji. Mari, don’t cut in.”
“Urgh…!”

It was likely a rare thing indeed for him to use so commanding a tone with his little sister.
The younger girl looked up at her brother with an expression of disbelief, tears welling up in her eyes at once.
Knowing full well it would come to this, the Guji Mochizuki kept his gaze fixed on Shin Hweein alone.

“Master, in that case, we’ll need to renew our contract.”
“Wh-what contract! You blockhead, don’t tell me he’s got a leash on you, too?!”
“An interesting proposal. Of what sort?”
“A contract binding everyone present here. Each of us pledges, upon our true names, a contract weightier than our own lives. With Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami serving as witness.”

He too, at last, rose to his feet to face Shin Hweein.

“Showing you the shintai means you can no longer remain an outsider. Not an alliance. A blood-bond at the very least. Furthermore, should the shintai be willfully damaged or any nonsense pulled, you’ll have to take responsibility for our future, the two of us at the very minimum. Ah, and naturally, you’ll have to accept our Mari as your wife.”
“Wh-what?! But I prefer pretty boys…!”
“There will be no nonsense, so set your mind at ease. If anything, in my view, it is rather I who am likely to bring honor upon this shrine.”
“Excellent! In that case, by way of return, Mari is yours to take!”

At that, Mari, every sign of her earlier tears gone, set briskly to smacking her brother’s head and shouting.

“Knock it off, you blockhead! Why do you keep trying to marry me off, I’m still in middle school, you know!”
“Well, no matter how I look at it Master is no ordinary man…! Where else am I going to find such a son-in-law!”

Honestly, were these two incapable of holding even a moment’s seriousness?
After heaving a sigh, Shin Hweein intoned in a low voice.

“My name is Shin Hweein, third son of Shin Yuhyeon, head of the Shin House, though at present a disowned man. …There may be no weight to this name, yet even so, upon it I swear to guard the safety of this shrine and of you two siblings.”
“So you really were of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses, and the true-born son of Aeshin’s greatest one at that…”
“Uh, uh-uhhh.”

The Guji Mochizuki sighed quietly, remembering the abilities Shin Hweein had displayed, while Mari, only now learning the truth, was struck speechless.
To Shin Hweein, who was being drawn into so vast a tangle of past-life karmic ties, the standing he had already been disowned out of in the Shin House felt now like little more than a shackle, so he could only offer the pair’s reactions a wry smile.

“The secret must be kept.”
“How could anyone ever speak of this! …I am Mochizuki Mari. It is a name of no consequence, but upon the whole of m-me, my everything, I swear to keep this secret.”
“Mochizuki Makoto, as the guji of Hotenshi-no-Kami Shrine, with Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami serving as my witness, I swear to absolute secrecy… and I wish to reveal his shintai to the Korean sorcerer Shin Hweein.”

A subtle light enveloped them, flaring and dimming in dazzling pulses, until at last it bound them with a single thread and faded away.

“…He really did permit it. Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami did.”
“You’re the one who declared so confidently you’d do it, Big Bro!”

After the contract concluded, the Guji Mochizuki, Makoto, murmured in a dazed voice while Mari smacked him in the head.
Shin Hweein shook his head and urged the two of them on.

“The contract is done. Let us go see the shintai.”
“R-right, we should.”
“Ugh, it really is scary…”

Wrapped in an oddly floating mood, they stepped out of the shamusho, only to find that mist had settled outside.

“This… can’t be.”
“I did sense lately that Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami’s divine power had grown somewhat weaker.”

Aware that this was unmistakably a crisis bearing down on the shrine, tension settled over the siblings’ faces.
Shin Hweein, on the other hand, spoke to his shikigami in a notably relaxed tone.

“Leon. Flame-tail. You know what to do, I trust?”
“But of course, my lord. You wish for us to keep watch and ensure no foul thing slips in.”

— Just leave it to me. Flames of my sort exist precisely for moments such as this.

Hearing that, it seemed Flame-tail would indeed prove considerably useful, so Hweein set Leon to guard the outside and Flame-tail the inside.
After deploying his shikigami at the key points, Shin Hweein turned his not-long-acquired knowledge to use and laid an array around the honden as well.
It was a simple array, one that kept the energy within from leaking out and the foul aura without from flowing easily in, yet when it was Shin Hweein’s own blood that drew the array, the result was by no means simple.

“Young master, why must you push yourself so…!”

Geum Moa caught him as he reeled, dizzy from drawing too much of his own blood, and scolded him sharply.

“It is only the equivalent of a single blood donation.”
“With your level of health, young master, you’d be turned away even if you tried to volunteer for blood donation!”
“It is… done. Guji, open it.”

Swallowing hard, Makoto nodded and opened the doors of the honden.
From the black box enshrined deep within, an unsettling aura wafted out.

“Uh…?”
“Uh, oh.”

Makoto and Mari let out odd sounds at the same time.

“It is more… than when I last saw it…”
“Cloudier. Right?”
“So it really has.”

He could feel the bewitchment Geum Moa had only just driven off straining once more to brainwash him.
An urge fiercer than anything before set his brain alight and his heart pounding wildly.
For Shin Hweein, though, who had foreseen as much and was already working on his own mind through dream sorcery, it had little effect.

— SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK SIK

When he unfolded the slip, it was as if some typewriter had glitched mid-line. The whole of it was crammed with the character Sik, plain and clearly bent on overwhelming his brain.
As if, the moment he devoured the little finger, its purpose would be achieved.

Shin Hweein gave a single contemptuous laugh.

“Lord Hotenshi-no-Kami’s shintai is a sealing vessel. For several hundred years and more, it has kept a great yokai sealed away.”

So saying, he drew forth from inside his robes the Indulgence, radiating a dazzling light.