Chapter 17 — The Sorcerer And The Rank-Two Ability Exam (3)

Shin Jain was twenty this year by the full count, two years older than Shin Hweein.

He had been born with a gift for sorcery.
But fearing a succession dispute with his eldest brother Shin Uin over the headship of the house, he had gone abroad to study while still young.
He had gone, so it was said, to apprentice himself to a famous mage of the Western Land of Black-Arts (England), the nation called the very headwaters of Western magic…

‘No word of his return reached me before I was cast out of the house, so it must be quite recent. Was it Father who summoned him back?’

True enough, the manner of the Western Land of Black-Arts must have become second nature to him, because he wore the suit with an elegant ease, nothing like Shin Hweein, who simply put on whatever Western shirt and jacket Geum Moa dressed him in.
Set beside himself, who was making only a clumsy show of being a sorcerer, mask and all, Jain had that refined air on top of everything else.
He had become, in truth, every inch the plausible mage.

“Um… I had heard you’d gone abroad to study.”
“I arrived back in the country yesterday. Returning home after so long, everything feels unfamiliar — and meeting someone I know puts my mind a little at ease.”

Faced with Shin Jain’s affable manner, Ham Seoyeon answered with a slight awkwardness.

Hidden behind his stealth-art, Shin Hweein watched Shin Jain meet Ham Seoyeon’s eyes, and felt a vague unease.
It took him a moment to realize the feeling had to do with what he’d recently heard from Yun Juna, and he laughed quietly to himself.

‘Am I worried my elder brother will steal Ham Seoyeon from me? She isn’t mine to begin with. That’s too much, even for the possessiveness one feels over a friend.’

If Ham Seoyeon ever learned of such feelings, the teasing would be merciless.
He shook his head to scatter the thought and lifted it again.

“By the way, Master Jain, what brings you all the way to Myeongdong Cathedral so late at night?”
“Ah, the truth is, Elder Brother asked a favor of me. I’m looking for a sorcerer named Shin Hae. I asked around, and the place most closely tied to him turned out to be here.”
“This person — what business…?”

That the name Shin Hae would come up was surely something Shin Jain had foreseen the moment he arrived at Myeongdong Cathedral.
Ham Seoyeon asked the question while taking pains not to show her dismay.

The one taken aback, in the end, was Shin Jain.

“Do you know this sorcerer? Elder Brother only said there was something he wished to entrust to him, and gave me no details.”

A tiresome business.
He had gone to such lengths to leave Shin Uin no clue, and yet for what reason was the man still hunting Shin Hae?
Surely he hadn’t already realized that Shin Hae was Shin Hweein.

“Yes, we have a personal connection. He’s skilled, but a very busy man, so you’ll find him hard to meet. In fact, we came to commission him on a job ourselves, and we’re heading back empty-handed.”
“We? You and… the Yun House as well?”
“Yes.”

Yun Juna picked up the thread without missing a beat and nodded.

“There’s a matter the two of us have to work on together, so we’d been looking for an assistant. But we’ve come away with nothing, and now we mean to find someone else, and quickly. The hour is late, after all.”

We’re pressed for time and have no leisure to humor you, so quit making advances and get lost.

That, roughly, was the meaning she had packed into the words.
But at them, Shin Jain’s expression changed.

“The two of you? Yes — I remember it now. Even back then I read an article that interviewed you both together, Aeshin’s next-generation prodigies. To see you side by side now, both Rank-Two, makes my own shoulders rise with pride.”
“Ugh.”
“Khh.”

The two of them voiced their revulsion in unison.
Shin Hweein, inwardly, let out a sound of admiration instead.
He had thought theirs no ordinary connection, but he hadn’t known the two had been bracketed together since so long ago.

To be treated as comparable was itself already a kind of curse, a ju.
Knowing it, the pair must have spurred each other on by denying each other all the more, and the very acceleration that came of it set them, once again, on similar footing.
A truly absurd thing.

Shin Hweein was smiling to himself, picturing how he’d tease Ham Seoyeon about it later, when Shin Jain said something rather surprising.

“This assistant — what if it were me? Call it making up for getting in your way like this.”
“That won’t be necessary.”

Yun Juna answered at once, but Shin Jain did not retreat so easily.

“Of course I’m not asking any payment. If discretion is required, I’ll keep it. I’d only like to help — it’s been so long since I’ve seen the two of you, and I’m glad of it.”
“I’m sorry.”

This time it was Ham Seoyeon who stepped in to turn him down.

“It’s awkward to put it this way, but this isn’t the sort of work we can hand off to an outsider. Nor can we drag in someone who’s only just returned to the country. I’ll take the thought for what it is.”
“… Mm. If that’s how you put it, there’s nothing to be done. Some other time, then.”

In the end it was Shin Jain who conceded.
Disappointment crossed his face, yet he stepped back readily.
And then, as if a thought had only just struck him, he murmured to himself.

“Wait — then this Master Shin Hae is, exactly…?”
“Forgive us. We’ll be on our way.”

Having refused his company, they’d only managed to heap fresh questions onto the matter of Shin Hae.
Ham Seoyeon and Yun Juna glared at each other as if to split the blame, and hurried toward the vehicle.

Neither of them knew where the hidden Shin Hweein actually was, so they pulled open the car door and bickered over who should climb in first, buying him the time to get inside.

Their consideration granted, Shin Hweein settled into the innermost seat and signaled by mind-speech.
Ham Seoyeon was about to slip in nimbly after him when, from behind, Shin Jain spoke up again.

“Seoyeon — could we have a meal sometime? I’ll be staying in Aeshin from now on, and I’d rather not stay an ‘outsider’ any longer than I have to.”
“I’m terribly busy these days. The next time things settle down, I’ll be the one to reach out… ah.”

While Ham Seoyeon was giving her polite reply, Yun Juna slipped into the vehicle ahead of her.

For an instant anger flashed across her face, but she mastered it, bowed her head to Shin Jain in farewell, and boarded.

Once the vehicle had set off, Yun Juna spoke to her in a teasing lilt.

“That’s a green light, isn’t it? Why not go for it?”
“I don’t have his number. And I’ve no intention of giving him mine.”
“You did just say you’d be the one to reach out.”
“What are you on about — I’ve never even met that man one-on-one. Why’s he calling me by my given name like we’re close? If he weren’t older than me, I’d have given him a piece of my mind.”

Turning her gaze to the window, Ham Seoyeon spat the words a touch too fast.

Until then Shin Hweein had been listening to the two of them in silence, but now he spoke.

“My middle elder brother has a better head on his shoulders than Shin Uin. From the conversation just now, it’s possible he’s already realized the ‘Shin Hae’ name is a cover for someone.”
“It’s fine. However hard he comes at me, I’ll lie through my teeth like iron.”

Ham Seoyeon answered as though she’d expected the words, then turned her eyes toward the seat where Shin Hweein sat, his stealth-art still unbroken, and smiled softly with her eyes.

“You just worry about getting stronger, and fast. So that whether it’s Shin Jain or Shin Uin, you won’t have to skulk about anymore.”
“I shall do my best. Will you lend your help?”
“That’s what the contract’s for, isn’t it? Don’t ask the obvious.”

The two of them finished and broke into small, simultaneous laughter.
Caught between them, Yun Juna pulled a sour face and said,

“Just don’t go forgetting that we of the Yun House are also helping Master Shin Hae with all sincerity.”
“Of course.”

So long as the demand stayed within reason, he meant to repay the Yun House’s grace in due time and in full measure.
The trouble was that what Yun Jinseong wanted was excessively clear, and from a dozen angles troublesome for Shin Hweein to grant…

‘Hm?’

Just then the view beyond the window caught his eye.

A strange wrongness in the night sky made him look closer, and there in the dark several crows were flying.
That alone startled him.
Then, at last, one of them dropped a little lower and began to draw near the car.

— Gulp.

But before Shin Hweein could so much as warn the others, a great mouth appeared in midair and swallowed the crow whole.
Nor was that all.
The rest of the murder, flying nearby, was sucked up into several mouths that opened in the air before any could flee, and was gone.

“Eulha — entering the stage!”

In the instant everyone was startled by what had happened outside, a rosy-cheeked, pretty youth in jeans and a denim jacket appeared atop Shin Hweein’s knees.

“I took care of every last crow that was up to no good, so you can drop your stealth-art now, Master.”

Eulha said it with a smug, triumphant grin.

Beyond the soundproof barrier the driver gave a start, and so did the two women.
Only then did Shin Hweein finally release his stealth-art, and stroking the head of the Eulha perched on his knee, he said in a low voice,

“Was that Shin Jain’s?”
“Mm-hm, that man’s. Their response was a bit fainter than a shikigami’s — could it be the sort of familiar Western mages handle?”
“Indeed — small wonder the presence felt unfamiliar. It was as well that I kept my guard up.”

Hearing the exchange, Yun Juna and Ham Seoyeon, only now grasping that Shin Jain had been trying to spy inside the car, felt their faces stiffen.

Neither had ever once been outside Aeshin, and they had very nearly been deceived without a seam by Shin Jain, who commanded the methods of Western mages.

“What a creep.”
“He’s had something gloomy about him since back when. There’s a limit to underestimating us — to send a familiar at us this openly?”

Both were swept up in plain indignation, but Shin Hweein’s thoughts ran along a different line.

Granting that the two of them didn’t properly know a shikigami from a familiar, they were, plainly, Rank-Two ability-users.
Was it really a natural thing for them to let a familiar come this close?

— He’s blended the Shin House’s shikigami arts into the Western technique of handling familiars. By taking the strengths of each, the working has gone a step subtler, a step stealthier. That, I should think, is why the young master alone noticed at all.

The one who supplied the answer was, as ever, Geum Moa.

Shin Hweein knit his brow and answered her.

— Neither an ordinary shikigami nor an ordinary familiar. So he went abroad and learned magic, but he hasn’t cast off the Shin House after all. And what’s more, my middle elder brother’s spiritual power…
— Just so. He’s already reached Rank-One level. By talent alone he’s far above his eldest brother. Though, set against the young master, he’s down at the level of an insect!
— There’s no meaning in comparing potential. What matters is that, as of now, he is stronger than I am.

Shin Hweein closed his eyes once, then opened them.

What Shin Jain was thinking, he had no way of knowing.
But Jain was not the sort of man to take his side of his own accord.
Shin Uin had nit-picked and tormented him over every trifle since they were children; Jain was different in that much, and yet he too had treated Shin Hweein as a non-person, no different from the rest of the household.

“It would have been better had he simply stayed abroad. Things have grown troublesome in any number of ways…”
“Master, shall I analyze what I just gulped down? For you it’d be no trouble at all to put together a sorcery that works against it.”

It was a thing he had wished for but hadn’t dared to ask, and who, after all, was the Blue-Robed Boy if not the one who scratched the itch you’d never voiced?
Shin Hweein nodded at Eulha’s words at once.

“Then let me ask it of you. I cannot leave these two to have their private lives spied upon like this.”
“Okay — request received. The moment the analysis is done, I’ll come back.”

Eulha grinned and vanished.

Just then Flame-tail appeared to take his place, and without a word tapped Shin Hweein’s arm with his tail.
Stroking the creature settled him at last.

When the two women stared at him, Shin Hweein huffed through his nose and said,

“What is it you’re looking at so intently? Sorcerers who handle shikigami are all like this.”
“They are absolutely not.”
“No matter how you cut it, this one’s shikigami are too fond of their master.”

The three of them passed the time working out how to answer Shin Jain, and whatever else the Shin House might be plotting.

The car ran down the night road and drew slowly toward the outer rim of the Capital.

Out past Zone 1, out past Zone 2, into the outermost belt of Zone 3, into the wilds where no people lived.

“Mm.”
“Ah…”

Shin Hweein was the first to go still.

When Ham Seoyeon reacted just as keenly, following him, Yun Juna nodded as though the sight of the two of them alone told her everything.

“A Specter Realm Gate.”
“Indeed. Enough to make one wonder how it’s stayed hidden all this while.”
“Uncle Jinseong… he really is too much.”

Ham Seoyeon’s voice carried a fair weight of anger.

“For all that Shin Hae’s skill is exceptional, what does he mean by trying to plant him in a place like this for a Rank-Two qualification exam?”
“My uncle’s creed is that to grow strong, a person must be set against ordeals hard to overcome. … Still, if it turns truly dangerous, he steps in to save you. Provided you’re someone he cherishes.”
“It’s putting me in mind of the Rank-Three exam.”

Before long the car stopped at the entrance to a thinly peopled wood.

When they opened the warded door of the car and stepped out, Yun Juna too seemed at last to catch the air of the place, and her face hardened.

“This yokai aura…”
“Capital or no Capital — how could a Gate this far gone be left untended? Does that even make sense?”
“Of course it doesn’t.”

The one who had come out to meet them gave the greeting with a sigh.

It was Lt. Colonel Yun Jubaek, Yun Jinseong’s nephew, and a direct-line member of the Yun House.

“Lt. Colonel Yun.”
“Glad to see you, Master Shin Hae. Looks like we’re working together again.”
“Oraboni…!”
“Stop. Between cousins, there’s no need for that.”

When Yun Juna ducked her head in a hurry, he pulled a face of distaste, waved his hand back and forth, then gave a wry smile and said,

“A Specter Realm Gate, throwing off this kind of foul air in every direction — would you believe me if I said it sprang up only three days ago?”
“An absurd upheaval — a ran indeed…”
“A man-made disaster would, frankly, be the more comforting answer.”

Yun Jubaek met Shin Hweein’s words with a bitter smile, gestured this way, and led them on.

But Shin Hweein, his gaze moving back and forth across the backs of his own two hands, sank into deep thought.

Could it be that this was, in fact, the matter tied to what Ham Seoyeon’s grandfather was said to have spoken of?
He hoped he was overthinking it, but…

“By the way, that…”

Just then Yun Jubaek, who’d been guiding the party from the front, sidled over and broached a topic.

Come to think of it, until they’d arrived here today, he hadn’t so much as imagined Yun Jubaek would be present as well.
Perhaps he too had come to know Shin Hweein’s true identity.
Or perhaps he meant to share what he knew of the current situation.

When Shin Hweein lifted his head to meet him, Yun Jubaek asked, in an earnest tone,

“That — has something happened between you and Myeongin?”
“…”

Shin Hweein mastered a powerful urge to crack the back of Yun Jubaek’s skull, and shook his head.

“We had occasion to work together on a matter of business, and along the way there were small frictions and crossed wires. So I’ve kept my distance, that’s all. It seems, after all, that we are not fated.”
“I see. When you actually know her, her roots run quite straight, you know — it’s a pity.”

Yun Jubaek nodded with a face that held not the least bit of pity, and his expression turned plainly brighter than a moment before as he led them onward, toward the Specter Realm Gate.