At Least Double, No Matter What - 6

"You've been through a lot, Abe."

I said it as I walked toward the parked car, Abe trailing along behind me.

"Tailing Son Guchul for days on end must have worn you out."

Honestly, I suspected the real reason Abe looked so drained was Cho Eunsun.

That woman called Abe her master.

Thirty years ago, Cho Eunsun had been barely out of her twenties. Whether she'd been chosen by a stray god or simply born with a body meant to receive one, a twenty-something Cho Eunsun wouldn't have known the first thing about Myeongrihak or the yin-yang and five elements.

She would have been nothing more than a green, cocksure chick.

Abe, on the other hand, had already earned recognition for his skill by then. He was capable of weaving a barrier powerful enough to erase an entire village from the map.

Cho Eunsun must have fawned over Abe, buttering him up, desperate to wring every last lesson out of him.

And once she'd squeezed him dry, she'd tossed him away. That was the only way she could become the greatest shaman of them all.

[You saw her too, didn't you, Master?]

Abe spoke up, an icy chill rolling off him.

[Cho ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Eunsun, I mean.]

Since I hadn't said a word, Abe had brought her up first.

"Er, ah. Yeah. I did."

I didn't mention that I'd put her through the wringer.

Abe had been thoroughly outmatched by her. She seemed even stronger than before, and he'd been swatted aside helplessly.

If he'd stayed by Cho Eunsun's side all this time, he might have suffered something terrible.

But then—

[The truth is, I disobeyed your orders. I cast a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠barrier over my own body before following Son Guchul.]

"What?"

[With a barrier up, she can't detect me. You see, when I taught her everything I knew, there was exactly one thing I held back—the barrier arts.]

Abe had been abandoned in a baby box and clawed his way through untold hardship, growing up under a shaman's wing. Which meant that the moment anyone showed him the smallest bit of acknowledgment or kindness, he'd have wanted to give them everything, down to his very guts.

Yet for some reason, there was one thing he'd never taught Cho Eunsun. Raising a barrier and sealing something away—and reversing it, breaking the seal and unsealing it—he had kept that knowledge to himself alone.

Maybe... maybe Abe had known he would be betrayed all along, and had left himself one weapon to survive with.

I swallowed dryly and asked, "What about your memories? Anything more come back to you?"

[A great deal has surfaced. But I have no idea which events came ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠first and which came later, so I'll need more time to sort it all out.]

As he said it, Abe's expression grew even darker.

[I scolded Cho Eunsun. Scolded her very harshly, in fact.]

"When you catch a fleeting glimpse of a vicious nature in the behavior of your own student, you're bound to give them a stern dressing-down, aren't you?"

[Is that what it was?]

"That's my read on it. And if it involved steering someone's fate or harming a life, you'd have had no choice but to be even stricter."

[I believe that's right. Yes! Now I remember!]

Cho Eunsun had once tried to flay a woman alive on the pretext that the woman had slighted her at some gathering. Abe remembered witnessing it and chewing her out for it.

"That may well have been the moment she resolved to kill you."

[Yes. Cho Eunsun is a wicked person. She was consumed by greed, with no sense of right or wrong. I believed I could straighten out a nature like that. I was wrong, wasn't I.]

"And that's why you never taught her about barriers?"

[I suppose so.]

Abe gave a bitter smile, fell silent for a while, then spoke again.

[The Cho Eunsun of today is said to be the owner and CEO of Boram Loan in Myeongdong.]

"Cho Eunsun became a loan shark?"

[She has a company called SD Financial eating out of her hand. Even in the middle of her conversation with Son Guchul, I watched her trading texts with members of the National Assembly.]

Cho Eunsun had grown into a far bigger fish than I'd imagined.

"So what did you tell Son Guchul? There has to be a reason she'd stoop to meeting a country thug like him."

[She ordered him to win the auction for Ugok 5-ri, tear down every building, and erect a large factory. She wants the name Ugok to make people think of marsh snail hangover soup.]

So my hunch had been right all along.

She meant to bury the massacre that wiped out the villagers of Ugok 5-ri, to overwrite it in people's minds with the image of hangover soup.

[Cho Eunsun was carrying a great many malicious spirits. She was using their power to do her evil work. I should never have taken her on as a student. All of it is my fault.]

"If not you, she'd have found someone else ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to teach her wickedness."

Above all, Abe had already paid the price with his life. He'd lost the most precious thing a person could lose.

"Not everyone looks back on their past and thinks they did everything perfectly well. People wonder—why on earth did I do that back then? I've made plenty of my own mistakes too. I've had my share of regrets just like that."

[I squandered my abilities. I could have used them for good, and instead I spent them on the wicked work of creating a monster like Cho Eunsun.]

"It isn't over yet."

[Pardon? I'm already dead, though.]

"I think you're asking the wrong question. All it means is that you haven't found a way to kill Cho Eunsun yet."

At my words, Abe's head drooped.

[You're right. Cho Eunsun is too strong. There's no way I could kill her with my power alone.]

"Aw, come on."

I let out a snort of laughter.

"Spirit No. 1 loves vacuuming up stray spirits like a dust cleaner. Then he absorbs all that power, grows stronger, and shares some of it with me."

[But would No. 1 lift a finger for my sake?]

"If I tell him to, he will. Why wouldn't he?"

[Th-then you'd help me kill—]

"We'll send her straight to the afterlife."

[Why would you take on such a risk? Cho Eunsun is a wicked woman, yes, but she's never done anything to hurt you, Master.]

"What are you talking about? She drew my blood."

I lifted my chin to show him how Cho Eunsun had choked me and left me bleeding. Even now, the faint traces of her handprint and the wound remained, and Abe looked so guilt-stricken he hardly knew what to do with himself.

[It's all because of me...]

"No! This was Cho Eunsun's doing."

I narrowed my eyes and went on.

"Here's the thing—I hate loan sharks more than I hate vermin in this world. Boram Loan? Ha. Ha-ha-ha."

Having been a banker, I knew all too well how money earned in the shadows funneled its way into the lending industry.

Far too many people trusted an ad like that, made a single phone call, and found their lives shoved to the edge of a cliff.

But wait—isn't there a legal interest rate cap? Don't make me laugh.

By any means necessary, they get you to borrow even more, or nudge you into falling behind on your interest payments. Then, with you good and trapped, they sell off your debt.

To whom? To the loan sharks who operate entirely outside the reach of the law.

It's safe to assume they're all in bed together, every last one of them.

Then a Bible verse my old manager used to mutter back in my banking days drifted into my mind.

"Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves..."

Apparently even the Son of God couldn't stomach the money games of currency exchangers.

"...and he said, 'It is written: My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves.' That's how the passage goes."

Banks play the same money games, my manager used to say—we're all bound for hell. Lend with a smile, encourage people to borrow even more, then after three missed payments, three warning notices, off it all goes to auction.

"The very people even the Son of God couldn't forgive are the ones who play games with money. The longer Cho Eunsun stays alive, the more sins she'll commit. So..."

I gave Abe an encouraging nod.

"Get your revenge. I'll help you."

[M-Master...]

Apparently, in all his existence, not a single soul had ever helped Abe or shown him an ounce of kindness.

Abe wept with gratitude.

[Sob! Thank you. Thank you so much.]

"You found the golden treasure for me, and you're going to help me recover it—so don't thank me too much."

Saying it that way would take some of the weight off Abe's shoulders, wouldn't it?

But instead, he gazed at me with even deeper reverence.

[You offer to help me, yet you claim none of the glory for yourself. I have never met anyone like you, Master. I should have served someone like you from the very beginning.]

Abe laughed through his tears, saying that meeting me now—even this late—was a stroke of fortune.

That's way too far to drive.

On the way home from the courthouse, I made a detour into the township center. If I was going to grill skewers for Abe, I needed bamboo skewers, and I figured I ought to pick up a bottle of sake too.

Since I was at the mart anyway, I loaded up on beef, scallions, chicken thighs, ginkgo nuts, even chicken gizzards, and headed back home—only to hear—

"I can't live like this! Chai really, truly cannot live like this!"

Chai's shriek came ringing from the backyard.

Oh no. Did Chai and Bang Jeongsoo have a fight?

Both of them were gentle souls—hardly the type to raise their voices at each other.

But then, you can know the depths of ten miles of water and still not know the heart of a man even one mile deep.

Without even thinking to unload the groceries from the car, I went sprinting over, gasping for breath.

"Chai, what's wro— agh, dammit!"

The kitten familiars had stolen the hwangtae—my sun-dried pollack—and dragged it all over the yard, eating it as they went, from the looks of it.

Over the past winter, I'd thawed the frozen pollock, cleaned them thoroughly, gutted them, and hung them under the eaves. This was Gangwon Province, after all—after repeated rounds of freezing and thawing, they'd turn into hwangtae on their own.

They'd cured into perfectly fluffy, delicious hwangtae, too.

The moment the weather warmed up, I'd given them a good brushing, vacuum-packed them, and stored them away with the rest of my ingredients. So how, on earth, had those little monsters known exactly where they were and shredded every last one of them?

Wait—!

"Spirit No. 1! Where are you?!"

"No. 1 ran off to the mountain with the biggest one in his mouth. The kittens grabbed the rest and bolted, and this is what's left. No braised hwangtae, no hwangtae hangover soup, no shredded hwangtae salad. It's all ruined now."

Chai clutched his head in anguish.

Over the winter, I'd soaked the well-dried hwangtae until tender, washed it clean, coated it in gochujang seasoning, and grilled it—throwing in deodeok root and drizzling the whole thing generously with sesame oil. Chai had declared it so delicious he'd begged me to make it again, and I hadn't gotten around to it with everything that had been going on. Now I could have kicked myself.

"That hwangtae was on a completely different level from anything you'd find at the market."

I was disappointed, heartbroken, and furious all at once, anger bubbling up inside me.

"Boss, these guys need to move out on their own now. They dig up the bean field and poop everywhere. They even chewed up Chai's Ong-Bak slippers!"

"Ah... yeah, that one I'm genuinely sorry about."

Chai had spotted a pair that looked just like the ones from the movie Ong-Bak and bought them at the rotating market—he'd been lucky enough to snag the very last pair in stock.

And then Chai's little monsters had teething-chewed right through them, gnaw, gnaw, gnaw, leaving their tooth marks all over.

If there'd been more just like them, I'd have bought him ten. But there weren't. What can you do?

Ever since that incident, Chai seemed to be holding a serious grudge against No. 1's kittens.

"Chai thinks it's time for the kittens to leave the nest now."

"Fine. Once they've had their final round of shots and gotten neutered, I'll set them up on their own."

"Ahhhh, and WHEN will that be?"

Chai pulled a face on the verge of tears, as if he couldn't bear another minute.

"I bought beef."

"Tenderloin? Or sirloin?"

I dangled the bait, and thankfully, Chai snapped it right up.

"Sirloin! I'm making skewer grill. Picked up sake too."

"Chai likes soju better."

The very same Chai who'd been ranting moments ago that he couldn't live with those kittens a second longer was now humming a little tune as he started gathering up the shredded hwangtae.

"Chai, don't eat that. Even washed, it'll be gritty with dirt and all mushy."

"Chai isn't going to eat it. If the kittens eat this, their tummies will hurt. Have to throw it away quick."

"Right. Good call."

Being annoyed at them was one thing, but the kittens couldn't be allowed to get sick.

Chai scooped up all the ruined hwangtae and headed for the EM food-waste drum buried in the ground—a rubber drum sunk into a hole in the earth where we tossed food scraps, sprinkling them now and then with fallen leaves and EM solution so everything would ferment into fertilizer.

"Miyaaon."

"Aaaang!"

"Miyang."

The kittens trooped after Chai in a single-file line as he carried the hwangtae off.

"Haha, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. That's adorable."

"Youngho!"

A voice called me from the front yard.

Wait—that was Grandpa Hosik's voice?

Ever since selling his land, Grandpa Hosik had transformed into a completely free spirit. He'd take trips to visit his kids up in the capital region, or vanish into the mountains for days at a stretch without coming home.

More than ten days without a glimpse of the old man was enough to make my heart sink with worry.

He'd asked me last fall to peek in on his place now and then if it ever seemed empty of any sign of life—so whenever he disappeared for a while, I couldn't help wondering whether something had gone wrong.

"Coming!"

Happy just to hear him, I hurried around to the front yard.

"Grandpa, how come you're so hard to catch sight of these days? You've got me looking after your chickens too, I hear."

"Never had a free day in my life while I was farming. So now I'm off doing everything I ever wanted to do. Hardly ever home."

"What was it you wanted to do so badly?"

"This."

Grandpa Hosik held out the entire mesh sack he'd been carrying on his back, offering it over to me whole.