The Hospital Where People Vanish
Princess Bari.
A goddess of Korean mythology, revered as the Ancestral Shaman God (mujo-shin), the progenitor of every mudang who ever lived.
And a being like that had just reached out to call me… though, honestly, it didn't surprise me all that much.
'It's hardly the first time.'
I'd already received calls, messages, and connections from plenty of figures out of myth and legend. Lü Dongbin, Solomon, Nikola Tesla, Paracelsus—and if you counted the ones I'd met face to face, the Count of St. Germain and Nicolas Flamel made it six.
By now, I'd been through far too much to be startled by one more.
Still, Princess Bari differed from those six in one unmistakable way. The six of them had been transcendent humans. Princess Bari was a god—a top-tier deity in the Korean pantheon, a name-brand god worshipped as the ancestor of all shamans.
'What should I do?'
After a moment's deliberation, I sent my reply.
Vrrrm.
The instant my reply went out, my phone rang. The caller ID read Unknown.
With a faint edge of tension, I picked up.
"Hello?"
—······.
"Hello? If you're going to call someone, then say something."
—······.
What was this? Why call and then not say a word…
"Insolent wretch!"
The shout rang out, and ripples spread across Nojeokdong Valley. It wasn't merely a yell—it was a roar packed with overpowering spiritual force, a genuine lion's cry.
"Ghk!"
"Ugh…!"
"Bwuh!"
As the roar's force rippled outward, Momo and Min-seo staggered, and Kim Han-soo—whose career in spirit work was by far the shortest—dry-heaved outright.
"Hey, Kim Han-soo! You okay!?"
"F-fine, ghk!"
"Min-seo? Momo?"
"I'm just a little dizzy, that's all…"
"I'm fine too—but who on earth was that shout just now?"
At Momo's question, I looked down at my phone and answered.
"No idea. Some character claiming to be Princess Bari… though judging by the way she's acting, I'm not exactly inclined to believe her…"
"P-Princess Bari!?"
True to his upbringing in a shaman household, Kim Han-soo reacted the hardest. Min-seo and Momo were still students, and being half-foreign besides, neither could immediately grasp the weight of that name.
I hastily formed a mudra and recited the Ksitigarbha Ten Wheels Mudra, then laid a barrier around us so nothing like that could happen again.
"Who are you, exactly?"
—Insolent wretch! You still haven't learned a shred of manners!
Another roar laced with potent spiritual force thundered through the air. But—
"Calling someone out of nowhere, refusing to introduce yourself, then barking at them—exactly how polite is that supposed to be? Do it one more time and I'm hanging up. Last chance: who are you?"
It had worked on the three still-green kids, but that sort of parlor trick didn't faze me.
—······.
"Nothing to say? Then I'll just hang—"
—Wait.
Only then did the caller's bearing falter.
—You are, after all, a child of the Korean peninsula. You have surely heard the name Princess Bari.
"Oh, I've heard it. So what?"
—······As a spirit practitioner of the Korean peninsula, it is only proper that you show her due reverence.
"Say what? I'm not a mudang, so why would I owe you reverence? Look, I had no intention of being rude to begin with, but when you come at me like this, you forfeit any claim to courtesy."
—Y-you insolent wretch! How dare you be so disrespectful before a god…!
The reason I could push back this hard was simple. The threads the heavens had tethered to the earth had all but snapped. In other words—setting aside gods closest to actual nature spirits, like the Mountain Lord or the Crimson Dragon of the Gang River—a heaven-aligned deity like Princess Bari could exert almost no direct influence on the surface world anymore.
More than anything, I despise people who lead with authority the moment they meet you. Prosecutor, politician, celebrity, god—doesn't matter. I have zero intention of groveling to anyone who pulls rank from the very first encounter.
That said, honestly, I hadn't expected things to escalate this far either. Which was exactly how overbearing and insufferably arrogant Princess Bari's conduct had been.
'Is that just how the gods of heaven all are?'
If so, I was starting to understand why Cosmos and Yoon Chang-sik so thoroughly loathed the heavenly gods.
—Th-this…!
"So what do you want? Say it within three seconds or I hang up. Three—"
—You little…!
"Two. One. Hanging up."
—Enough.
Just before the call died, a different voice drifted through the receiver—one refined and clear as struck jade.
'Two voices?'
What was going on? Was I not speaking with Princess Bari alone?
—But you, lowly creature…!
—Princess Bari is our name to begin with. Attempting to win reverence through it—is that not beneath you, Izanami?
'Izanami?'
What? Why was that name coming up here?
Izanami was the goddess of Japanese myth—the death goddess said to have created the Japanese archipelago itself. So why on earth was Izanami together with Princess Bari?
—That will be quite enough. We don't have time to spare.
Then a third voice entered the conversation.
'Who is it now?'
—Lady Houtu speaks with reason. Let it rest here.
…Princess Bari, Izanami, and now Houtu? Houtu was the god who governed earth and the underworld in Chinese mythology. Three heavyweights from the underworlds of East Asia's three nations, all appearing within a five-minute phone call.
The problem was—why were those three gods together?
'Is there a common thread between the three? …There is.'
Come to think of it, Princess Bari was not only the god of shamans but a god who governed death as well. Which meant the three goddesses calling me now all shared a single attribute: the underworld, or death itself.
The question was why three death-goddesses would be gathered in one place.
—Since she is a child of the Korean peninsula, we believe it is fitting that Princess Bari speak for us.
—Hold on! I expended the most strength opening the way, so I should—
"If the alternative is Izanami, I won't say a word to her."
—Why you…!
—There, you see? Let vanity alone ruin the work—what sense would that make?
"Ugh… damn it all!"
Having shriected her piece, Izanami fell silent. And into that silence, as if to fill the vacancy, Princess Bari spoke.
—Allow me to introduce myself. I am called Princess Bari.
"Ah, yes… I'm Kim Dosa—no, Kim Yi-yeon."
—There is no time for a long conversation, so I will state our business, brief and to the point.
Judging from Izanami's and Lady Houtu's remarks earlier, contacting me was evidently costing them a considerable amount of strength.
—Kim Dosa—or rather, the last seeker to rise from the earth—we have a request for you.
The one who rises from the earth. That was how Yoon Chang-sik had once phrased it.
"I'm listening."
—Do you know of one called Baek Gong-ju, a spirit practitioner of Korea?
"Yes, I know her."
—That woman is now in dire peril. Would you save her?
Baek Gong-ju, in peril? That punk old hag? Having witnessed her fight from a distance, the very idea refused to compute. Above all—
"…That's the favor?"
I simply could not understand how the goddesses of three East Asian underworlds would gather only to request this.
—Yes. For now, at least.
For now—meaning that later, there might be another favor. Which implied…
'Helping Baek Gong-ju is some kind of test?'
Depending on how I handled this test, they would decide whether to reveal their true purpose.
The problem was—
"Exactly what kind of peril is that monstrous woman supposedly in?"
—That part, you must confirm with your own eyes, seeker.
…Of all the places to be tight-lipped. No—maybe it wasn't stinginess. Maybe they didn't know, or weren't permitted to say.
Well, fine either way. Which brings us to the most important part of the negotiation.
"So. What's the compensation?"
My days were already packed, buried under the accumulation of merit and the gathering of cognitive energy. Tacking a job from the gods onto that schedule would make things seriously brutal. Naturally, I'd need payment to match.
—Th-this! You human! Even hearing you out, your insolence has no end! You have neither reverence nor courtesy toward gods…!
"Ugh, damn it! Somebody shut that brat god's mouth already! I'm not a charity volunteer—am I supposed to do whatever you lot command just because you say so? And hey, if you gods are so damned great, how about fixing the world falling apart around us first? If you're really that powerful, solve it yourselves instead of outsourcing to humans!"
Because at the end of the day, I am a dosa. A dosa is not one who serves gods; a dosa is a human who, in a human body, strives to become an immortal—a godlike being. Why on earth would such a person grovel before a god?
And as I said before—I despise people who crush others under the heel of authority, Izanami-style, more than anything.
—Izanagi, withdraw, please. For you to step forward now will only worsen matters. And you, seeker—of course, we have prepared a reward for the favor.
"That's our Princess Bari. Precise to the won, just like a goddess of the peninsula."
—Heh heh. Praise me all you like; reduced to this sorry state, there isn't much we can offer.
'This sorry state?'
A curious choice of words.
—And so I shall give you the most precious thing I possess.
"…Your most precious thing?"
—Half of all the faith that has accumulated under my name. Seeker, I know that you hold the sacred vows (seo-won) sent by the Transcendents of old.
In Buddhism, a seo-won is the vow or oath an enlightened being makes at the moment of awakening. And the "Transcendents of old" could only mean the four who had sent me the site and the app: Lü Dongbin, Solomon, Nikola Tesla, Paracelsus. Which meant these vows were—
'The golden narratives those four sent me through the Reverse Heaven Rite.'
—I know you are striving already, but you lack the strength to establish those vows as yet. Receive my faith, however, and you could establish one of them.
Princess Bari's words amounted to this: faith and cognitive energy were the same underlying energy source. It made sense—the term cognitive energy itself meant the power of being perceived by me. Faith meant knowing a god and exalting them, so faith was effectively a concentrated, higher-tier equivalent of cognitive energy.
The faith Princess Bari had received over thousands of years as the Ancestral Shaman God would translate into an staggering torrent of cognitive energy.
—You would truly hand faith to a human!? Are you confident you won't regret it!?
Izanami shouted from the side.
—It is Princess Bari's will. It is not a matter for you to meddle in.
—Not a matter for me to—! We are a community of fate now! If Princess Bari loses her faith, then—!
—Silence.
Princess Bari cut Izanami off.
—Seeker, what say you? Will it suffice as payment for borrowing the strength of one so busy?
I considered it briefly, then spoke.
"Very well."
—You have our gratitude for granting our request.
"…Well, no need for thanks—we're trading what each of us has. Although, in exchange, I'd like to renegotiate the reward a little."
—Renegotiate… how?
"Reduce the amount of faith you'll give me. Instead—give me flowers from the flower field of Seocheon."
—······!
The Flower Field of Seocheon—a field that, in Korean mythology, existed somewhere between the land of the dead and the land of the living. Instead of the azaleas and forsythia of the real world, it bloomed with flowers unique to that place, and every last one of them was a spiritual herb of extraordinary effect.
I could see the shock in Princess Bari's bearing—asking for those flowers over her own faith was apparently a startling demand.
—······What a greedy one you are.
"Think of it as an advance payment."
In other words: since they surely had a real agenda waiting, if I spent big now, they'd give me a discount on the follow-up request. If they were going to sound me out—make an investment—then invest boldly, trusting I'd pay off!
—The soul-reviving flower and the flower of destruction have gone extinct.
"Don't care. What I want is the fighting flower."
The soul-reviving flower resurrected the dead; the flower of destruction was a blossom of death that slaughtered people across a whole region. And the fighting flower I demanded did exactly what its name promised—it ignited maddening fury and drove people to fight one another.
—…Very well.
In the end, Princess Bari accepted my terms.
—This has been a long conversation.
"Funny—you never actually said a word about the part that matters."
—······.
"When this is done, I'll trust you'll tell me your real purpose."
—…May fortune go with you.
"Right. Off you go, then."
Click.
And so the call with the three goddesses ended.
I turned the bizarre, sudden exchange with the gods over in my mind. Death goddesses from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean mythology, inexplicably gathered in one place. A demeanor that seemed designed to hide their true purpose and test me instead. Baek Gong-ju, in dire peril. And—
'What did Izanami mean by "community of fate"? Does it have something to do with the heavenly gods being unable to interfere on earth?'
Either way, one thing was certain: the state of the gods up in heaven was, to put it mildly, not great.
Afterward, I led the group back down the mountain, and we threw a welcome-back party for Kim Han-soo at our warehouse hideout.
"Alright~ to celebrate fake-shaman Kim Han-soo's return as a real shaman—and his return to our Anomaly Suppression Squad—cheers!"
"Cheers!"
"Woo! Cheers!"
"So you little punk didn't run off after all!"
Well, the gods' business was the gods' business—a welcome party was a welcome party.
"Hmm. By my sense of time, only a single day passed… and I get a welcome party…"
Kim Han-soo scratched his forehead, embarrassed.
"You son of a gun, turns out you've got loyalty after all! I was dead certain you'd bolted…!"
Unexpectedly, the one who welcomed Kim Han-soo's return the most was Lee Ha-ram.
"Wh-what do you take people for…!"
Watching the two of them roughhouse, I nodded to myself. With this, the group's gender balance was finally even. Frankly, with the ratio sitting at two to three in favor of the women, the staff-dinner rotation had always been mara-tang and tteokbokki, which got exhausting—now the scales would finally tip back.
"By the way, how's your mother doing?"
"…Thankfully, no serious harm, by all accounts. Though I suppose she was haunted by that chang-gwi for so long that her condition still isn't what it should be."
"I'll pay her a visit sometime."
"…Thank you."
"Y-you! How dare you speak down to your master!?"
"Oh, shut it. I'm older than you and Kim Dosa anyway! What's wrong with dropping honorifics!?"
"No! Unforgivable!"
"Hey! Let go! Let go, I said!?"
"You let go! You first!"
"Grrr! Grrrrrr!"
"AHAHAHAHAHA!"
As Ha-ram and Kim Han-soo—both grown adults, mind you—grappled each other by the hair, the Mountain Lord wedged himself between them trying to break it up. Two grown men fighting over fistfuls of each other's hair with zero dignity—and I burst out laughing before I could help it.
"Hey, don't just stand there laughing—pull them apart!"
"What's the hurry? It's entertaining."
I gave Choi Eun-ha's shoulder a light tap.
"Be honest. You think it's funny too, don't you?"
"Wh—that's… ahem, funny, what could possibly be… ahem."
See? Laughing.
Looking around, I noticed Min-seo and Momo had given up any pretense of breaking up the fight too, and were simply spectating the grown men's hair-pulling match. As the old saying goes, nothing beats people-watching and a good brawl for entertainment.
And so, the day after the party celebrating Kim Han-soo's safe return,
I called Yoon Soo-ah directly. I needed to find out what peril Baek Gong-ju—who was under house discipline over the Cosmos headquarters raid—had fallen into.
But—
—Your grandmother?
"Yes. Your grandmother—Baek Gong-ju."
—…I had a grandmother?
No. What, exactly, was going on here?