Ryu Minhwa
The woman stood with her head half-bowed, still unable to meet my eyes, her hands covering her breasts and her sex. I pointed to the backless chair I had set in the middle of the room. She gave me a quick bow and shuffled over on unsteady feet, then sat. As she settled into the seat, I caught a fleeting glimpse of her pubic hair and swallowed hard without meaning to.
Seated with her legs pressed tightly together and both hands still shielding her chest, she slowly lifted her face to look at me. In a faintly trembling voice, she began.
"I am thirty-five years old, and I am a parent with an elementary-school daughter."
She finished the sentence, her chest rising and falling as she drew a deep breath, then continued.
"I began attending the gatherings of Cheonsiman-gyo not long ago. Seonja Go Myeongsuk suggested I try coming once, so I did. That day I heard Jisin's words, and his voice stayed with me until I fell asleep. So I came again, and once more I was deeply moved. Ever since, I have not missed a single meeting."
As she spoke, some of the tension seemed to ease from her; her words began to flow more freely.
"And because I wanted more people to hear these wonderful teachings, I applied to the Seongyodan that Seonja Go Myeongsuk spoke of."
Seonja? What was that supposed to be? While I wasn't looking, it seemed our people had started inventing titles and handing them out to one another. I almost laughed. It really was starting to look like an actual religious organization. At the same time, the thought I had earlier—whether it would be all right to go ahead with this—rose again in my mind.
Her story continued.
"I serve as the head of the parents' association. That means I interact with a great many other parents. My child's school belongs to a very large foundation with several schools under it, so the association officers from each school meet and network quite often. In other words, I am someone who has frequent contact with a wide circle of parents."
She was clearly trying to impress upon me how extensive her connections were. I had expected something of the sort. Her words barely registered; the longer I looked at her, the more I realized she was not merely pretty but strikingly beautiful, and I found myself staring. It was not only the confident expression on her face—my eyes kept drifting to her body. Sitting demurely on the chair, her skin was pale and flawless, the kind that spoke of regular care, and she looked firm and toned. I would have bet she belonged to a gym as well.
In short, she was the classic "missy"—a stylish young married woman—and an outgoing, socially gifted one at that, the type people called an "influencer" in the group. Having shed her earlier shyness and found her footing, she grew more animated, practically spitting with enthusiasm as she catalogued her own capabilities. Her husband, I guessed, must earn well enough that she had no need to work and could spend her abundant free time enjoying life on her own terms.
Perhaps more people like her would start coming to our gatherings. People with money and empty space in their lives were the ones who sought out religions like this. Of course there would always be those who came because their own reality was too harsh and they needed somewhere to rest their hearts—but the ones who wanted leadership roles were often looking to fill a void, using something like this as a means. To them, even a religion might be just another form of consumption. At the same time, I found myself thinking that we would need marketing aimed at catching people like that.
"…So I would like to throw myself into this with everything I have."
Huh? She had finished speaking, and I had been so lost in thought that I had not heard a word of what came before. It probably did not matter. Myeongsuk had sent her here because she liked her; Myeongsuk would handle whatever came next. I nodded without thinking. The woman beamed, clearly taking my nod as proof that her pitch had landed.
My heart lurched. That smile of hers seemed to have the power to strip a man of every defense. She was simply too lovely, too beautiful. The same smile that had just disarmed me vanished, replaced by a touch of renewed tension. In that moment I remembered what Myeongsuk had told me: the people I interviewed from now on would carry a sense of mission from having received their charge directly from me, and for that to work, they needed to see that I believed in them.
I spoke in a low voice.
"I trust you. I hope many more people will come to understand our teachings, and I want you to take the lead in that work."
At my brief, quiet words, the disarming smile bloomed on her face once more. My chest tightened again. Throwing caution aside, I added one more line.
"I will take personal charge of the Seongyodan and see to it that I meet with its members more often myself."
The moment I finished, tension returned to her features. Ugh—had I said something wrong? Made a mistake? Was that not how it was supposed to go? Trying not to let my unease show, I shifted my casual slouch to the other side.
She hesitated, her expression serious, then looked straight at me and spoke.
"Before I entered this room, I heard something from Oh Jiseonnyeo."
Oh Jiseonnyeo? She meant Yun Chae. So Yun Chae had picked up a title of her own. But what exactly had she been told? The woman hesitated again, then seemed to steel herself and opened her mouth.
"I have nothing to hide. My feelings for Cheonsiman-gyo are sincere."
With that, she rose from the chair and lowered the arms that had been covering her. Her breasts came into view. I had no idea what the Korean average was, but hers were well above it—and more than size, their shape was exquisite. They looked ever so slightly soft with age, yet for natural breasts of that size to sag so little was almost unnatural. They seemed a touch larger than Yun Chae's. The only breasts I had actually seen belonged to Yun Chae, Miryeong, and Myeongsuk, so they were my only points of comparison. Nothing about her suggested a mother of a school-age child.
Her face was flushed with embarrassment, her expression helpless, yet she seemed to be summoning every scrap of courage she possessed. What was so momentous that it demanded this all-out effort? Even as the thought crossed my mind, my eyes were traveling over her entire body.
Standing at attention, trembling faintly, her lower belly showed almost no excess flesh. Just as I had guessed, this was a woman who clearly kept up with a gym, yoga, or Pilates. Below the clean line of her abs, her lower abdomen was taut and springy. And beneath that lower belly, a modest thatch of pubic hair. It might simply have been sparse by nature, but it looked carefully groomed—neat, orderly, pretty little hairs.
She turned her head slightly to the side, fists clenched. In a voice that quivered almost imperceptibly, she spoke.
"From this day forward, in the pure form in which I was born, I will give my utmost for Cheonsiman-gyo and for Jisin."
She delivered the line the way an unskilled actress might stumble through clumsy dialogue. I sensed something off but gave no sign of it. Nodding, I answered.
"I will take your heart and plant it deep within me."
Relief flickered at the corners of her mouth; she bowed her head to me. Then she covered her breasts and sex with her hands again and backed toward the door, bowing repeatedly in farewell before she slipped outside.
A short while after she left, Yun Chae knocked and entered. She approached with a blank face. Looking at her, I said,
"You put her up to this, didn't you?"
Yun Chae met my eyes, her expression empty of emotion.
"Yes. I told her to. People can think one thing and say another. Even if they claim sincerity with their mouths, their minds are often elsewhere. So I decided that even if it was only a formality, they needed to bare themselves and swear they had nothing to hide."
I gave a short laugh. She went on.
"We do the same thing, don't we? Miryeong, Myeongsuk… and me."
"That line—'From this day forward, in the pure form in which I was born…' You wrote that and made her say it, right?"
Yun Chae nodded and recited,
"From this day forward, in the pure form in which I was born, I will give my utmost for Cheonsiman-gyo and for Jisin."