The Shaman
“Donghyun...!!!”
A few days later, the moment I stepped into the club room, Senior Yongjin came rushing at me and hauled me straight outside. As we left, I caught a quick glimpse of the room — roughly a dozen people who looked like freshmen were sitting inside. Once we were out, the senior pulled a cigarette, held one out to me, and lit one for himself.
“We’ve got the most applicants in club history. In the whole club federation, we took first place for recruitment numbers.”
He grinned as he said it. I took a drag without changing expression. I wasn’t surprised. By the time my speech in the auditorium had been winding down, everyone in that hall had become Yi Sun-sin. They had become Ahn Jung-geun. They all believed our country was about to conquer the world, and they had arrived at the strange conclusion that, to make it so, they needed to study history even more deeply. Of course, the one who had led them to that absurd conclusion was me.
Even I found it uncanny — watching the psychology of a crowd move exactly as I intended. Yes, I had meant for it to happen, and yes, I had countless skills I had built up over time, but seeing an intention that outrageous actually come true was still astonishing. Or rather — little by little, those things were starting to feel natural.
So a flood of applicants poured into our club — but only for a moment. A month after they joined, more than half of the new members either filed to quit or simply stopped showing up. That first week, students had packed in until there was nowhere left to sit; now the room had gone back to its old, empty chill.
But Yongjin and I had fully expected this, so neither of us was thrown. When the new semester started, the Club Federation had put up prize money for the club that recruited the most new students. As club president, Yongjin had used me to pull people in so he could claim that prize. With the money, he filled the room with every convenience he could buy. He set up a canteen in one corner and brought in a small drinks fridge. He carpeted the entire floor and made the place feel almost luxurious. He even replaced the sofas with ones of far more elegant design.
“You’re graduating soon — why go this far to make the club room luxurious?”
I asked. Lounging back against the sofa with an easy smile, he answered,
“As long as I’m here, I want to live in style. That’s how I’m always going to live.”
Watching him speak while gazing off at the distant hills, I dismissed it as nothing much. But it was only the beginning of Yongjin’s ambition.
There was only one reason I had joined this club and gone along with his petty schemes. In the same year as him was a woman — a senior. She was the first person I saw when I first walked into the club room. One look at that art-student senior and I was gone; I stayed in the club for her. That image of her sitting by the window, turning to look at me with a quiet smile — I thought I would remember it until the day I died.
I grabbed Yongjin and asked about her. As if he had known I would, he gave me a sly smile.
“Oh Yunchae. Same year as me. She’s a junior now.”
I nodded and said,
“She’s got a boyfriend, right? Looking like that?”
He shook his head.
“She barely talks about herself. Hell, she barely talks at all. I followed her around for three days trying to make her the face of the club. I finally got her to show up — and that’s it. Sometimes she comes by, kills time with a book, and leaves. She’s never once joined an MT or any other event.”
Even after that, on the rare occasions I stopped by the club room, she was almost never there. Still, something kept pulling me back — I dropped in just for the chance of seeing her. In the entire year of my freshman life, I saw her only once.
When it became that hard to meet her, I barely visited the club room once I became a sophomore. Today, too, after class, I was sitting on a bench waiting for the next lecture. In free periods like this, everyone else went to the club room — but I had no desire to.
I was looking at my phone when someone sat down beside me. I turned without thinking. The light was so bright I thought I might go blind. Haloed in that radiance, she was sitting right there. I wondered if I was dreaming. She looked at me and spoke in a small voice.
“Hi…?”
Could a voice even be that pretty? Come to think of it, this was the first time I had ever heard hers. Beads of sweat clung to her forehead as she greeted me.
“Ah — hello.”
Both of Oh Yunchae’s hands were full of bags. When she saw me notice them, she said,
“They’re a little heavy…”
I stood up without a second’s hesitation and took the bags in both hands.
“I’ll carry them for you.”
The art building was at the far end of campus. She rose from the bench with a smile that was barely there — almost not a smile at all.
Just walking across campus beside this woman was enough to make my heart feel ready to burst. I kept a careful distance — not too far, not too close. Whatever was in her bags, they were heavy. Watching her struggle under that weight would have been impossible.
The art building sat a little way up a hill past a wooded path. It was remote enough that only art students had any reason to come this deep; even for me, the place felt foreign. Yunchae walked in silence until we entered the trees, then turned to me.
“Let’s sit over there for a bit first.”
She pointed to a bench beside the trail. My chest felt ready to explode. Simply sitting alone with her on this secluded path felt like every wish I had ever made coming true at once. Yunchae sat and crossed her legs. In skinny jeans, her legs were long and beautiful — neither too thin nor too thick, perfectly proportioned. Near the thigh, the denim was lightly torn. As discreetly as I could, I stole a glance at the pale skin showing through the rip.
Yunchae rummaged in her bag, pulled out a cigarette, and put it to her lips. I flinched. Not because she shouldn’t smoke — only because it was so unexpected. And I told myself, over and over, not to be shaken by the sight of her like this.
“Do you know…”
She exhaled a stream of smoke as she spoke.
“…why I don’t go to the club room?”
My eyes went wide. The story was flowing somewhere completely different from anything I had imagined. Yunchae took another long, deep drag and let it out.
“Because of you.”
The sky was falling. On this bright spring campus, darkness seemed to be rolling in and thunder cracking. The devil himself seemed to be riding the clouds down, laughing at me. What the hell was she talking about…
Yunchae looked at me. I couldn’t see my own face, but I must have looked ridiculous and dazed. Her expression didn’t change at all. She was a woman who rarely showed emotion to begin with — and that only made her more mysterious.
“I can’t be near you. If we get close, our fates lock into place right there.”
What was this supposed to mean… Yunchae dropped the half-smoked cigarette and crushed it under her foot.
“But you know… fate isn’t something you can dodge just by trying to dodge it. Same as how I couldn’t escape the spirit’s descent.”
The strength went out of my arms.
“What? The spirit’s descent?”
A cold little smile touched the corner of Yunchae’s mouth.
“That’s right. Spirit possession.”
My head was spinning.
“S-so… that is… Senior, you mean… so…”
The words wouldn’t assemble. Nothing normal would come out of my mouth. Yunchae watched me with a look of genuine interest.
“Yes. That’s right. I’m a shaman.”
Time seemed to stop. I could only stare blankly at her face — and even then, some part of me was still thinking how beautiful she was. Those beautiful lips moved again.
“I have class now. So let’s meet later. I’ve given up on avoiding you.”
Yunchae stood from the bench. She walked a few steps ahead, then looked back.
“What are you doing? Hurry up. I’m late.”
I quickly lifted her bags and followed. On the climb up the hill to the art building, she said nothing at all, and I watched nothing but the seat of her jeans. A shaman? Spirit possession? Fate? She had been avoiding me? My mind was a mess. But I didn’t dare ask her a single question.