Chapter 18 — The Sorcerer And The Ill-Omened Prophecy (4)

Shin Hweein drew an empty bottle from the odds and ends in his subspace storage and tipped the kudan’s ashes into it.
Yun Jinseong watched in silence, and a quiet sound of admiration slipped out of him.

“You… of the three sons, you take after your elder brother the most.”
“I would rather take after my mother.”

At the prompt reply, Yun Jinseong gave a short laugh and shook his head.

“I mean your temperament and your talents are cut from the same cloth.”
“…I shall reflect upon it and mend my ways.”
“Pwahahaha!”

Yun Jinseong couldn’t hold it in at the last and burst out laughing.
Shin Hweein shot him a sidelong look of displeasure, then remembered he wasn’t wearing his mask just now and made himself smooth his expression.
The mask had been dropped somewhere down below, it seemed, so until he made it back to the surface he had no choice but to keep his face in order.

“Rest easy. Your face is the very image of your mother’s.”
“…Is that so. Then I am relieved.”

He had barely resolved to manage his expression, and already a wry smile was tugging at his lips.
However he turned it over, the remark was nothing more than a courtesy, and yet it summoned up old memories all the same.

The mother in his recollection had been a beauty without rival in all the land, fit to be set beside Geum Moa, and she too had told him, now and then, that he took after her.
Even as a small child Shin Hweein had known the words for a kindly lie, but he had taken them for some private rite of hers, and so he had always played along, listening and being pleased.
He had wanted to take after his mother. He still did.

“Don’t you know your own face?”
“The truth is… past the fact that the eyes, the nose, and the mouth are in their proper places, I cannot tell. I have spent my brief life with a face all twisted out of shape, and even now, freed from the inflammation, my own face is the one thing I find it hard to look upon with any objectivity.”
“Ah. So it’s a matter of the mind.”

You’d do well to fix it sooner rather than later, Yun Jinseong added.

“A sorcerer who cannot set himself straight will, in the end, be devoured by his own sorcery. And to set yourself straight, you have to know yourself first. You can’t seriously be telling me you know yourself, when you can’t even properly recognize your own face — can you?”
“You are speaking of sushin (self-cultivation), then? But that is a Confucian teaching.”
“That much, at least, is worth learning from the Confucians. Come, we’ve a great deal to do from here on.”

The two of them descended together toward the surface.
Along the way Yun Jinseong tossed something to him, and when he caught it he found it to be a horn so thick he could scarcely close one hand around it.
Sensing the vast yokai force seething within it, Shin Hweein instinctively schooled his features into hardness.

“Lieutenant General — surely you don’t…”
“Lieutenant General, my foot — you’re not a soldier. Call me Uncle when it’s just us.”
“…Uncle, then — surely this isn’t the Gyuki’s horn?”
“It is. The rest of it scattered to nothing; only this remained. Take it.”

The battered iron spear a Rank-Four yokai had wielded was already a thing whose worth could not be reckoned.
And now this: a portion of the corpse of a Rank-Three yokai, with all of its essence steeped into it.

The horn was black clean through, gleaming with that strange metallic luster, and as he looked at it he couldn’t help but think of Lyl’s request, the dream-demon queen.
Dyed in so consummate a darkness, was it not the very material to give her dignity its proper form?
But it was not the sort of thing one could simply accept without thought.

“What is it you want of me?”
“If I called it a gift, you wouldn’t believe me, would you? And not if I called it a reward for what you did today, either.”
“No. The piece is far too valuable.”
“You truly are your elder brother’s son. You never let anything pass quietly.”

Grumbling under his breath, Yun Jinseong was the first to set foot on the ground.
Horsehead, in the meantime, had been finished off without trouble: Ham Seoyeon came running over, the creature’s iron spear clutched crosswise in her grip.
Behind her came Yun Juna, the horsehead dangling from one hand, wrestling with Arong to keep him from snatching it away.

“Shin Hae!”
“Ah, Shin Hae. Are you all right?”
“These two — and not the slightest thought for me…”

Landing after Yun Jinseong, Shin Hweein gave the two women coming toward him a small nod by way of greeting, then turned to Yun Juna, who was still cradling the horsehead against her chest, and asked,

“And what is it you mean to do with that?”
“It’s the byproduct left over once a Horsehead’s essence is concentrated. If we hollowed it out and worked it into a helm or the like, would that not be splendid? Which is why I was hoping I might prevail on Shin Hae to negotiate—”
“Are there not, at times, things to be seen to before the crafting of one’s sorcerous implements?”
“Even so… ah!”

— Kuoong!

The instant Yun Juna’s resolve wavered at Shin Hweein’s words, Arong moved fast and gobbled the thing down.
By which means Yun Juna’s dignity was preserved.

To put it more seriously: it had not been an implement the Horsehead was using, but a piece of his own body. To drape any part of such a creature over oneself would, by that act alone, draw a person nearer to hell, and unless one were a sorcerer of considerable skill, it was best not attempted.

“What a pity…”
“In any case, the bargain was that I receive the corpse, so don’t lay it too heavily to heart. Instead—”

He turned his gaze to Ham Seoyeon, the one holding the iron spear, and she made a thoughtful little hmm.

“I was going to give this to you anyway, though…”
“You always end up handing everything to a man — mm—!”

The two of them nearly came to blows on the spot, and the matter was mediated thus: rather than reforging the iron spear into a new weapon for Yun Juna, Yun Juna would render Ham Seoyeon some suitable compensation for it.

Watching the pair mutter at each other, Shin Hweein had let a small laugh slip when a slender hand reached out at his side.

“Young master, your mask. You’ve worked so hard.”
“Thank you. Though in the end I failed.”
“Hehe. By my count, you succeeded by half.”
“You are always so soft on me… Haaa.”

His exchange with Geum Moa thus concluded, Shin Hweein took the mask she held out, put it on, and only then did the unease in his chest settle and a sigh of relief escape him.
Then, all at once, he remembered the conversation he’d had with Yun Jinseong a little earlier, and his expression hardened a touch.
Perhaps it was that, wishing to disown his own face, he had grown the more attached to the mask.
If he went on disguising himself like this, might it not, in truth, set the very center of himself to wavering?

‘If it really is a problem, I must deal with it. And as it happens, my mind has just been fortified by Lyl’s aid. I must learn to recognize my own face properly.’

Letting out a sigh and steeling himself for the challenge, Shin Hweein felt a weight settle over his heart in spite of himself, and turned his head toward Yun Jinseong.

“Uncle. You have not yet given me your answer.”
“That’s right. It’s something these others must hear as well — let’s begin with that.”

Yun Jinseong told the party of the kudan’s birth, of the two prophecies the creature had spoken, and of how they must now seek out a kudan of the opposite sex and hear the prophecy that ran counter to the first.

Ham Seoyeon did not let the matter pass without comment.

“The opposite sex… then the one born today was—?”
“Male. I’m certain of it.”

Shin Hweein answered at once.
He had confirmed it once by its outward form, and confirmed it again from the ash.
To be exact, he had read the information left in the ash with his spirit-eye, a thing he had not been capable of before.
It must have been thanks to his deepening mastery of dream sorcery, by which his mental strength had been tempered, and to the further growth that had come of undoing the curse of perception, that the feat was now within him.

“Is there no chance of using the kudan’s ashes to divine the whereabouts of another kudan?”
“For Shin Yuhyeon, head of the Shin House, it would be possible. I mean to call on him directly. Only, before that…”

At Yun Juna’s question Yun Jinseong trailed off and stole a glance at Shin Hweein.
A direct-line scion of the Yun House and the Spell Army’s Lieutenant General, one of only a handful of Special-Grade sorcerers in the country.
A man like that would have no cause to look apologetic at all, unless what came next were genuinely a thing to be sorry for.

“The matter is… that we must have an audience with His Majesty the King and submit our report. The moment the kudan set the Royal House upon its tongue, there was no avoiding it. And it is better to move with the Royal House’s wholehearted support behind us, besides.”
“Then submit the report. So far as I am concerned, if it lets us find the kudan sooner, there is nothing I would balk at… unless?”

In an instant Shin Hweein caught the ill-omened note of it, and his eyes flew wide.
Yun Jinseong wore the look of a man with absolutely nothing to say for himself, yet he nodded all the same, as if to confirm that Hweein’s suspicion was right.

“It’s the Royal House we’re dealing with, Hweein. We can’t very well hide the existence of anyone else who was present on the scene.”
“And under a false name… that would not pass, I take it.”
“I am truly sorry. When I summoned you, it never so much as entered my dreams that things might turn out this way.”

Shin Hweein closed his eyes tightly, then opened them again.
Through his mind passed countless thoughts.

Would it have been better if I had not been tempted by talk of secretly acquiring my Rank-Two sorcerer’s qualification?

No. Had he done so, the kudan would have spat out every one of its prophecies in full, and Yun Jinseong, who had meant to face this horde of monsters alone, would surely have come to no good end.

“So the reason you gave me the horn, Uncle—”
“Come into the palace with me. If your name must be spoken aloud sooner or later, then this is the best way for it to happen.”
“…Very well.”

In the end, it had been fated to come to this.
However wildly he thrashed and struggled to hide, fate was tightening its grip on his throat by slow degrees.
What is unnatural cannot long be sustained in that state; it is in the nature of things to return to what is natural.
That Shin Hweein had sought to live as a sorcerer while at the same time concealing his identity was just such an unnatural thing.

‘No — and yet I must hold it off as long as I can.’

That he would one day return to his proper station was a thing he himself wished for.
It was only that the time was a little, just a little, too soon.
He had fled at the very moment he’d nearly come face to face with Shin Uin, buying himself less than a fortnight by it, and had he not grown by this much already? He wanted to stretch the postponement out just a while longer.

“I know well enough why you’ve been hiding, but with you bearing the Royal House’s commission on top of everything else, that fellow Uin won’t be able to lay a hand on you so easily.”
“In exchange, I should like to attach a condition…”

At Shin Hweein’s words Yun Jinseong shook his head from side to side, as if to say he didn’t need to hear it to know.

“You’re going to ask me to do it as discreetly as possible — am I right? Yes. I’ll see to it that no one but the Royal House comes to know.”
“My thanks.”
“In return, the names that go up in front will be yours — the three of you. Will that do?”

He glanced back at Yun Juna and Ham Seoyeon as he said it.
For two people who, in their several ways, harbored ambitions, no better offer was conceivable.
When they met each other’s eyes and nodded together, Yun Jinseong clapped his hands, as if to say the matter was now settled.

“Right then. I’ll call those layabouts in from outside and put them to cleaning up. We’ve earned a rest — let’s watch them work and recover.”

A short while later, with Yun Jubaek leading them, his face set hard with tension, the unit’s members filed in one after another from outside.
They had been straining mightily, holding down the door of the Specter Realm with their sorcerous array as it bulged and rippled as though it might burst at any moment, and they came in with their faces tight, not knowing what manner of monsters they would have to face.
But on hearing that the Rank-Three and Rank-Four yokai had already been dealt with and that only Rank-Five remained, their expressions slid into a look of not knowing whether to weep or to laugh.

“A pack of Rank-Five yokai is no small matter either…. Still, we may count it a mercy that we’ve no genuine monsters to face.”
“Hah! Have this done in a flash, the lot of you! At the very least, every man brings down at least one Rank-Five — understood?”
“Aigh… You heard the Lieutenant General! Anyone who’d rather not see his promotion delayed, get a move on. Every wound taken will be noted in your evaluations — bear that in mind!”

True enough, the special-ops unit had been assembled by picking only the elite of the Spell Army, and there was much to be learned from their movements and from how they fought as a group.
Back during the vampire affair, watching the Spell Army soldiers lead the Rank-Three exam candidates about, Shin Hweein had wondered whether his own ability was not particularly remarkable. But that had been a judgment formed from watching individuals only.
Now, moving always in a basic formation, fighting in coordination, they amplified each other’s primary spells and unleashed combined sorceries, sweeping the yokai swarms that came rushing in from every direction as though they were eraser-strokes upon a page.

“I see… could that, too, be one of the paths a sorcerer might grow along?”
“For prickly oddities like you and me, that path’s out of reach. The standouts even among that lot end up moving alone in the end.”

Beside Shin Hweein, who was nodding in admiration at the fierce performance of these sorcerers fighting as an army, Yun Jinseong dropped in a remark to spoil the mood.

“Is that a thing for a man who reached the summit as a soldier himself to say?”
“It’s because I stuck out that I got even close to the summit. The fellows who keep their heads down and do good work — they stay buried with their heads down to the end. You watch and study, but don’t try to imitate.”

Smiling wryly at Yun Jinseong’s coolly clinical assessment of his own men, Shin Hweein took a seat nearby and began to steady his breathing.
The changes that had befallen him this day were so great that he needed to settle his spiritual power as a whole.
After that he would have to look in on Arong, who had eaten up two Rank-Four yokai by himself; and check on the new thrall Leon had reportedly made; and talk Geum Moa around on the matter of using the Gyuki’s horn to make a figure of Lyl; and if he left Flame-tail be, the creature would only sulk again, so he’d have to praise him as well…

“Thank you.”

When Shin Hweein, having calmed and bound to himself the spiritual power that had swollen by nearly three-tenths, opened his eyes, this time it was Ham Seoyeon who had come to sit beside him.

“For what?”
“For giving me another fine opportunity, on your account. I only barged in because I didn’t want to leave you alone with her, and now look — an audience with His Majesty the King.”
“What is there so great about the Royal House? The size of the door they guard is no different, set beside the Taebaek Heaven-Gate the Ham House guards. It is only that the authority they wield is a touch peculiar, and so they have pressed the other houses down and given themselves the title of king.”

Ham Seoyeon shook her head from side to side at the sight of Shin Hweein appraising the Royal House so unconcernedly.

“That part of you — that really is pure Shin.”
“Is that an insult?”
“No — a compliment.”

Ham Seoyeon dropped herself down beside him with a thump.

“It was a contract to help each other, but why is it I’m the only one who keeps benefiting? It makes me uncomfortable.”
“Pay me back later. You’ll be more than capable of it.”
“That goes without saying — but, separately, is there nothing you actually want?”
“Separately…”
“I don’t say this to just anyone, but you’re special. Out with it — anything at all. Hm?”

Shin Hweein considered for a moment.
What he wanted from Ham Seoyeon, she would soon enough do for him anyway, without being asked.
He had never had a friend, and so he didn’t know what one was meant to ask for in a moment like this.
For some reason Geum Moa was firing volley after volley of disapproving mind-speech into his ear, but it was a distraction, and he ignored every one of them.

“Then… how would it be if, once this matter is concluded, the two of us were to go out somewhere together?”
“Eh? Just the two of us?”

At the proposal he had wrung out of his deliberations, Ham Seoyeon made a startled little sound.
She stared at him with her eyes round, then looked away after a moment.
He could see nothing but her ear, flushed crimson as though she might have a fever.

“I mean… of course I’d love to? But that’s such a plain sort of request. What’s the matter with two friends going out somewhere together?”
“You are the first I have had. I have no way of knowing whether the request is plain.”
“You’re really not doing this on purpose, are you?”
“Doing what?”

At the sound of Shin Hweein’s voice once again turning anxious for not knowing what he’d done wrong, Ham Seoyeon let out a heavy sigh and at last nodded.

“I’ll teach you, slowly. — Ah, but on one condition.”
“A condition, for going out together?”
“You hold my hand the whole time that day.”
“Oh…”

By now Geum Moa’s mind-speech had risen to the pitch of an outright shout.
But Shin Hweein nodded easily.

“If that is what it means for two friends to go out somewhere together, then so be it.”
“Yes — that’s what it is.”

Ham Seoyeon had been quick enough to throw up a soundproof barrier, so apart from Geum Moa there was no one to tell him he was being taken in.
But Geum Moa, unfortunately, had long since become the boy who cried wolf, and Shin Hweein no longer believed a word she said.