The Goddess Falls Silent
Park Su-hwan’s body fully recovered two days after that. Call it three full days of illness, if you want to be precise.
“Alright…!”
He pushed himself up through the lingering stiffness and stretched long and hard. Unlike the day before, his body felt impossibly light — almost as if the whole ordeal had been a lie.
Nothing beat being healthy. No wonder the old folks had counted health among the five blessings of life. There was a reason for everything. Even the haggard face worn down by nights of nightmares had come back with a decent flush of color.
God… it had been awful.
For three straight nights he had dreamed the same death over and over — leaping into a blaze, crushed beneath collapsing concrete. Because of that, he had even been forced to postpone a scheduled rehab appointment.
Before he washed up to head to the hospital, there was something he had to do first. He reached under the divination table, fishing out the ledger he kept buried deep in its hiding place.
Good. Still there.
Checking the ledger morning and night had, without him quite noticing, become one of the most important routines of his day. He had to protect this thing no matter what it took. It was the precious object that had completely rewritten his life.
Only a few days ago he had been beating the ground in regret, cursing himself for ever picking it up. Now that whole assessment had flipped. He had even started spinning the most ridiculous rationalizations — that snatching the ledger right there, of all places, had been destiny itself.
Su-hwan congratulated himself on a job well done, then cracked the ledger open a little.
The first entry was the personal record of Kang Dong-hyun, whose future he had already changed. The ink of the character meaning “blank” — the one written under cause of death and time of death — had long since dried hard.
Su-hwan took that to mean the new fate had been sealed.
I really ought to check exactly when that ink dries…
But one crisis after another had been slamming into him; he had never gotten a quiet stretch long enough to watch it happen. He turned the page. There was Professor Kim Jun-young’s name, and after that the records of Choi Young-gam and Jung Jin-hyuk.
Nowhere, though, was there any entry for Kwon Ha-seong. Even though Su-hwan had clearly peeked at the man’s future with this very ledger.
Right. Anyone whose fate he had not rewritten simply did not appear. That was a new rule Su-hwan had pieced together about the ledger.
Probably because I’m not its true master.
The way the thing appeared and vanished on its own whims was proof enough of that.
Su-hwan was already certain the ledger held far more powers he still knew nothing about. And that, in its own way, made him curious.
What other hidden strength did the ledger possess?
And what would happen the day he finally brought it fully under his control?
“Good. Shall we take one more step forward?”
A sharp jolt of electrical signal forced Su-hwan’s leg to lift. Electrode pads and a snarl of wires for electrical stimulation were stuck all over his left leg.
“You’ll want to remember this sensation carefully.”
“Hah… hah. Yes.”
Clutching the parallel bars, Su-hwan nodded. The brutal rehab session had left him soaked in sweat from head to toe.
“You need to practice walking with your weight distributed evenly on both feet. You’ve been relying on one leg for so long that the muscle imbalance is pretty severe.”
Just as the therapist said, the left leg he had been unable to use after the injury was visibly thinner.
“Shall we try again?”
“Huu…”
Su-hwan forced strength into his left leg and stepped forward.
This is seriously hard.
The therapist was right — rehab really did seem to demand a long season of endurance.
“Oh. Your gait is starting to look quite natural.”
A familiar voice drifted in from the doorway of the treatment room. Professor Kim Jun-young stood there with a kindly smile.
“Professor!”
Su-hwan greeted him warmly.
“It’s been a while. I’ve been so buried in work I haven’t been able to come see you.”
He had heard Su-hwan was in for rehab and had carved out a few minutes in the middle of a packed day just to stop by.
“Let’s leave it there for today.”
“Haa… thank you. Just a moment, Professor.”
Su-hwan dragged his feet over to the chair where he had left his things and dropped into it heavily.
“Sorry. My leg’s killing me…”
“It’s fine. More importantly, it looks like you’ve been practicing a great deal at home.”
Wiping sweat, Su-hwan answered.
“Yes. Just like you said, I’ve made sure to walk at least thirty minutes a day. Though I haven’t managed it as well recently.”
Desperate to walk properly as soon as possible, Su-hwan had never once slackened on his rehab. Thanks to that, he had already been told he was recovering far faster than expected.
“Your complexion looks a little dark, though… Has something happened?”
“I haven’t been sleeping at all lately. But I’m doing better now.”
“Rest is part of the treatment, too. Muscle and nerves recover when you sleep well.”
“…I couldn’t agree more.”
He never wanted to live through those three nights of nightmares again. Kim Jun-young checked his watch and spoke.
“I should be going. I’ll put in a word so you can get an IV drip before you leave. It’ll help with the fatigue.”
Su-hwan was genuinely moved by the careful consideration. One good deed was still coming back to him, over and over, in kindness after kindness.
Even if I did save his life, this isn’t something most people would keep doing.
“Professor. Let me read your fortune for you sometime.”
Whether the reading would even be accurate was another matter — but sincerity was what counted, wasn’t it?
Damn right it is!
Su-hwan was on his way to Mansindang with a light step. Choi Young-gam had told him to come help out because he would set aside some ritual tools for him.
That old man really does know me too well.
If Young-gam had simply said “come help,” Su-hwan would never have set foot in Mansindang. He had no desire to fold another thousand talismans for free.
Then again, even if the old man had asked him straight, Su-hwan probably would have gone anyway. It had been barely a month since Choi Young-gam’s brain hemorrhage surgery. What if he collapsed trying to lift something heavy?
“Old man. I’m here.”
“Oppa!”
Choi Hana, who had been moving boxes, lit up at the sight of him.
“Hey.”
Su-hwan had grown a lot closer to her lately. Before, she had been the kind of kid who barely showed her face.
“Here. Give me that.”
He took the box out of her arms almost by force. The weight he had not expected at all nearly threw him off balance; he staggered.
“Ugh!”
“Ah! I’ll carry it. I’m fine.”
How humiliating… How was she even holding this?
She had looked like she was carrying it lightly. In the end the box went right back to Choi Hana.
Watching the whole sorry scene, Choi Young-gam clicked his tongue with a look of pure contempt.
“Nice work.”
“What. Expecting a whole lot from a cripple with a bad leg, aren’t you?”
“You only call yourself a cripple when it’s convenient. Tch.”
“Here. Take this. You too, Hana.”
Su-hwan brushed off the mockery with perfect calm and held out a heavy black plastic bag.
“What is it.”
“Fruit. Looked nice and ripe, so I bought some.”
Inside the bag were plump, perfectly ripe plums and Korean melons.
“You bought this much?”
“So you can eat and recover, old man. Whatever’s left, put it on the shrine.”
Mansindang was a shaman-tool shop, but it was also the home of Choi Hana’s personal shrine. That was why plenty of clients came here for her readings as well.
At those words, Hana’s eyes went round.
“The melons I understand, but… the plums?”
“Why?”
Su-hwan’s face said, What could possibly be wrong with that?
Smack!
Choi Young-gam’s hand, sharp as a whip, cracked across his head before anyone could stop him.
“Ow! Why’d you hit me!”
“You little idiot! You trying to drive the spirits clean out of here with a full ancestral rite? The girl’s already got enough on her mind because of that!”
Su-hwan, who had never once heard that plums were forbidden on a shrine, stared back at him like a complete fool.
“Plums too?”
“Yes! Plums and peaches! Why would you put fruit that drives ghosts away on a shrine!”
“Ah…”
He had genuinely not known. At most he had known not to offer peaches, certain spices, and fish with a strong smell at a shrine.
“Good grief. After all the years you’ve been eating shrine rice, you still don’t know that.”
Su-hwan absolutely could not admit that he had once stacked his own shrine not only with plums but with a mountain of peaches as well. If he had, Choi Young-gam would have keeled over from the shock — and whatever else came out of his mouth after that would have been pure, inventive cursing.
I have to make sure the old man never sets foot in my shrine, he thought, and hastily changed the subject.
“More importantly — you just said Hana has something on her mind?”
“You heard that too. Tch.”
“You’re the one who said it, old man.”
Looking at Hana’s darkened face, Su-hwan asked carefully.
“Hana. What’s going on?”
“It’s…”
“What. Is the old man giving you a hard time?”
“Hey!”
“N-no. It’s not that… The Lady isn’t answering.”
Not answering? What did that mean?
“She isn’t answering?”
“Yes.”
She bit down hard on her lip and went on.
“She no longer grants any gongsu. She doesn’t even respond to my prayers…”
She was terrified that Bari Gongju, the deity she served, might leave her side. To be abandoned by one’s god — for a shaman, that was a horror worse than death.
“All of a sudden?”
Choi Hana came from a long, established bloodline of shamans who had served Bari Gongju for generations. For the goddess to leave a girl like her was something that simply could not happen. It made no sense.
“Thankfully it doesn’t seem like She’s left me yet… but the Lady’s presence is growing fainter and fainter.”
Her voice trembled. At the most beautiful age of her life she had already been pointed at and whispered about simply for being a shaman. To be told now to live as an ordinary person would be nothing short of a punishment.
That can’t be right. There has to be a reason.
“Since when? When did the spirit’s voice stop?”
“Since Oppa…”
“…?”
“Since the day you collapsed here, Oppa.”
At the answer he had never expected, Park Su-hwan’s eyes went wide.