Ryu Minhwa
"I've roughly gotten everything in order. All that remains is Jisin's final decision."
I wiped my mouth with a tissue as I spoke.
"What do you need my decision for? You handle it, Myeongsuk..."
Myeongsuk lifted her head, her expression serious.
"No. As I told you before, the Seongyodan answers directly to the cult leader. We need the symbolic act of Jisin personally reviewing them and issuing the orders yourself. Of course, I'll take care of all the practical work after that."
I didn't particularly care either way. I truly had no thoughts on the matter.
"Fine... do it that way."
Perhaps because I was still eating, Myeongsuk rose from her seat, gathered the clothes she had discarded, and went outside.
That afternoon, Yongjin and a crew of workers came into my room and set about some kind of work. They seemed to be replacing and adding lighting fixtures. Yunchae came along as well and conferred with Yongjin about something. In the meantime, I went to Yunchae's room. It was so bare it hardly seemed like a woman's space at all—as if she only ever slept there.
The lighting work was finished quickly. When I returned to my own room, Yongjin and Yunchae sat in front of me and began to explain.
"We changed the lighting in here a bit. We also converted the room just ahead into a preparation chamber for people to ready themselves before coming in here, and we're going to put up a partition in the corridor. From that partition on, it becomes the cult leader's chambers."
I had little interest, so I simply nodded. Then, watching Yunchae for her reaction, I added,
"And from now on, when other people are around, I'll use formal speech with you as well. Bear with it even if it feels awkward."
Yongjin smiled at me and went out. Yunchae remained where she was; once Yongjin had left, she spoke.
"This is one of the deification measures we planned. We've decided that everyone who enters this place will undress completely before coming in. The idea is to have them leave behind fine clothes, fine jewelry—all those worldly things—and meet the cult leader in the natural state heaven gave them."
I offered an awkward smile.
"I understand the meaning, but if word of this ever got out, wouldn't it cause a social scandal?"
Yunchae was not a woman who smiled often to begin with, yet just then I felt as though she were putting on a deliberately stern face.
"We will make certain that only people for whom that is impossible ever set foot in here."
She said it with such a straight face that I found myself unable to raise any further objection. Yunchae continued.
"I've taken on the role of screening people. I will do everything in my power to keep anything from defiling Jisin."
With that, she went out. Myeongsuk, Yongjin, and Miryeong seemed to treat all of this as business, but I had the sense that Yunchae, at least, did not. She was sincere. She was deadly serious. She seemed like a woman truly possessed by something.
A few days later, Myeongsuk and Yunchae came to find me. Both of them were, of course, naked. In Yunchae's hands was a garment—something like a white robe. She stripped the clothes I was wearing from me and dressed me in it. It felt rather like the gown one puts on after a bath. Once Yunchae had tied the sash at my waist and stepped back, Myeongsuk spoke.
"Please wear that from now on. Think of it as a kind of symbol of the cult leader."
"Nothing underneath? Not even underwear?"
"That's up to you, but if possible, please do it that way."
I offered no further protest. Myeongsuk stepped closer and said,
"Starting today, you will interview the five members of the Seongyodan one by one. Two today, and three the following day."
She set a file on the table.
"They're in order. Look them over. If someone doesn't suit you, send them away as they are. If they do, simply tell them you want them to stand at the vanguard of our missionary work and become a source of strength going forward."
I nodded. Once the two of them had left, I sat at the table and looked through the documents.
Today, the top two. The first candidate's profile was written out, along with the sphere she would be responsible for. The first was labeled "Parents." Parents? Beneath that was a brief explanation: "Promotion and propaganda for the order within parents' communities." I more or less understood what they were after, though I wondered how much conversion one could really expect among people like that.
I looked at the candidate's profile. Thirty-five years old. Ryu Minhwa. She had a daughter in elementary school and was active as a member of the school parents' association. I found myself wondering just how broad a network an elementary-school parent could really have, but I figured Myeongsuk must have had her reasons for selecting her.
I was sipping tea as I went over the materials when the internal phone rang. Yongjin had installed intercoms throughout the entire building—a little prop that made it feel as though we were gradually becoming a real organization with systems in place. It was Myeongsuk.
"The first candidate has arrived. I'll send her up."
I gave no particular reply, and the line went dead. The truth was, I was just as tense as anyone. I had never been in a situation like this in my life. I had gone to interviews before, but I had never been the one conducting them. And a certain self-reproach followed—did I even have the right? Once my thoughts turned that way, a quiet wave of existential dread washed over me. What was I doing right now? Was any of this fraud, or some kind of crime? Wasn't everything I was doing simply a way of opening people's wallets with my lies? At the same time, I made a firm resolution never to cross the line into anything illegal or fraudulent. Thinking about it, that line seemed remarkably low. From my position, the least I could do was never tell a falsehood, never invent something that wasn't there.
Even after I was told the candidate was on her way up, a considerable amount of time passed. My thoughts kept multiplying. Following Myeongsuk's advice, the room had been sealed against any outside light, and the lighting itself had been lowered, so I had no sense of what time it was or how much of it had gone by. The dark room was filled with the scent of the incense Yunchae had lit and left burning. It was a little different from the incense used at ordinary ancestral rites—closer to a room fragrance, really—but incense was still incense, and a woodsmoke-like perfume filled the chamber.
Then came a knock, and the door opened at once. My tension peaked. The person who appeared in the doorway was Yunchae. She was wearing the sheer hanbok she had had on the very first time I visited her house—a garment that left her all but naked, the fabric sheer enough to show everything, including the underside of her breasts. Her outfit, which I hadn't seen in a long while, and the fact that she who usually walked in naked had dressed herself this way—all of it only heightened my nerves.
Yunchae bowed politely toward me and said,
"She has arrived."
Straightening, she opened the door wider still. And there a woman came shuffling in. I nearly cried out. The woman entering the room was naked. Head half-bowed, hands covering her breasts and her sex, she stepped into the chamber as if she had no idea what to do with herself, then dipped her head in greeting. Behind her, Yunchae stepped out and shut the door.
For various reasons, Yunchae, Myeongsuk, and Miryeong all entered my room naked. And more often than not, I ended up having sex with them. Because of the nature of our relationships, their walking in naked—or stripping the moment they arrived—had come to feel, if only a little, almost natural. But finding myself alone in a room with a woman I had never met, her body bare, was a thoroughly bewildering situation even for me.
"Ah—hello. My name is Ryu Minhwa."
The woman, too, looked thoroughly unsettled. Then again, who wouldn't be unsettled in a situation like this? Afraid that if I answered too readily my voice would betray my own tension, I merely nodded.
I steeled myself. This wasn't a contest of wills or a standoff, but objectively speaking, I held the advantage. This woman had come for an interview. I had no idea what Myeongsuk had said to bring her here, but at the very least she had not come against her own will. And the heavy atmosphere of the room—the incense, the darkness—would be pressing down on her even harder. Once I thought of it that way, a little composure began to return.
With that composure came a clearer view of her. She did not look like a woman in her mid-thirties, and her face was genuinely beautiful. Her hair seemed long, though for now it was tied up and pulled back. Neither plump nor thin, she was a woman of respectable height. She must have been quite popular when she was younger. No—even now, if she dressed up and went out, she would rank among the top tier.