Arita and Fukuoka – 4
"Master, let's write talismans. We can eliminate the evil spirits far more efficiently that way."
Abe offered the suggestion, and he seemed to hope that this time I would finally perfect every talisman-writing technique he'd taught me so far.
'Understood.'
I turned to Chika. "Could I borrow some paper, ink, and cinnabar—the red pigment?"
"You mean to write talismans?"
"Yes."
Until now, I had gathered my qi and traced characters in the empty air, flinging out invisible talismans. But that was only because there had been no paper at hand. This time, thorough preparation was called for.
"I intend to give these evil spirits a sharp lesson for the wicked things they've done, then destroy them. And there's more than one of them, so I imagine I'll need quite a few talismans."
"Of course. There is a room set aside specifically for writing talismans—I'll show you the way."
Chika explained that she would first cleanse her body and perform a kamioroshi—a ritual of calling down the god—before writing any talismans. Because of that, she always used a particular spot where the deity descended most readily.
"It would be faster to go there than to gather the materials here," she said as she stepped into the corridor and walked toward the back of the shrine. "Besides, I've laid a barrier there so that nothing but the god I serve may enter—no stray spirits can slip in and muddy the talismans."
Then she added, "And I doubt the god I serve will dislike you, Mr. Kim. She's rather fond of handsome men."
My ankle turned on the spot with an audible crack.
'She likes handsome men?'
According to Tanaka, Chika served the Inari deity, reading fortunes through foxes. From what I could feel, it seemed like nothing more than a fox god to me.
'A fox god with a taste for handsome men? Isn't it livers she's supposed to like?'
The whole fox-liver association was just conditioned learning from old tales about nine-tailed foxes—and yet the urge to protect my own liver came surging up all the same.
The closer we drew to the back room, the more a chill crept over my body. It felt as though air that had settled there for ages was being kicked into ripples by my hurrying footsteps, shivering with each step. And every time it did, the image of a fox flickered through my mind—a sharp-muzzled creature with black eyes and a luxuriant tail, lifting its head toward the night sky to howl.
'So it really is a fox, huh.'
Come to think of it, I could no longer hear Chika's footsteps. The farther toward the back she walked, the more fluid her movements seemed to become.
"Not to question you, but this sounds like a place you don't reveal to just anyone. Why bring me along? Is this special treatment?"
A thought flickered uneasily. Or are you really planning to show me to the fox god?
Chika answered my question in a low voice. "I want to do something myself. And I believe it's something I must do. Punishing spirits who commit unforgivable acts—that is a miko's duty."
Ziiing. Ziiing.
'Huk! That scared me.'
I must have been more on edge than I realized—the vibration of my phone made me jolt violently. The name on the screen was Lee Ho-young. Never once in my life had his calls been so welcome.
"Ah, yes! Director Lee!"
"Have you examined the Imari porcelain? The baby spirit's attached to it, right?"
"They're evil spirits, middle-aged men at that."
"What? Ah—men, you say?"
Ho-young apparently hadn't expected that at all, and went quiet for a moment. I gave him a brief explanation, then said, "Destroying the evil spirits won't be difficult. I have a capable ally now. The problem is the Joseon spirits."
"What? There's something besides the evil spirits?"
"Yes. I believe there are over a thousand Joseon spirits living here."
"Whaaat? Hic—!"
Ho-young gasped so hard his diaphragm seized up—he actually got the hiccups.
"Only a portion of those Joseon spirits seem to be potters," I said.
Chika had been the same. When she first saw the Imari porcelain, she told me some of the spirits had wailed aloud. Those were the ones who had been Joseon potters.
"Most of the spirits here seem to be Joseon people dragged over as forced laborers during the Japanese occupation."
"Good heavens! Hic! Now that you mention it, Battleship Island isn't far from here at all, is it."
"Battleship Island"—Hashima—an island shaped like a warship. It was an undersea coal mine owned and operated by Mitsubishi, and I'd heard its shafts bored straight down to depths of a thousand meters below the seabed. Deeper still, of course, from sea level.
They dug down into those depths and carved out the seafloor horizontally to haul up coal. Tunnel collapses that killed hundreds in a single moment were routine. And since it was an island, once you went in, there was no coming out.
From here in Arita, Nagasaki was an hour away. From there, a boat could reach Battleship Island in thirty minutes.
"Not just Battleship Island, but the Mitsubishi Nagasaki shipyard, the Yahata steel works, the Aso mines—a miko has been tending the souls of those dragged from Joseon as forced labor and worked to death."
"Ah…."
Ho-young's long sigh came through the phone.
Joseon people hauled over against their will, mining coal until they died, working in the shipyards until molten metal ate away their hands and feet. Even in death they could never return home—they wandered and drifted until they flowed into this place.
Chika had told me she held memorial rites for them and had cared for them ever since. With that many spirits gathered, the air would naturally have grown thick with ghostly energy—and that energy would have drawn even more spirits to congregate.
The reason Ho-young had felt so heavy and ill at ease was simply that Chika had written talismans to keep spirits out of that one room. Outside the door, the air was so saturated with resentment, grief, and injustice that it made your ears ring.
"I'll have to destroy the evil spirits and perform a mass rite to send every one of the Joseon spirits on to the afterlife. Even if we brought them back to Korea now, it's changed so much they wouldn't recognize their homeland."
"My heart aches. Is there anything I can do?"
"Stay out of your room?"
Watching the spirits scatter and flee at my approach made it obvious—they didn't want to go to the afterlife. But if they couldn't bear the injustice and became vengeful ghosts who harmed people, they would only pile sin upon sin. They had suffered and bled through their lives already. I refused to see them punished after death.
"I'll call you when everything's finished. Professor Sato and you, Ho-young—no matter what you hear, do not step out of that room."
"O-okay."
'So that's what the fox god looks like.'
In the room Chika had led me to, a fox the size of a full-grown person sat bolt upright. It was the very image of a Japanese fox from the zoo—nothing more, nothing less.
'Seeing it up close, though, it also looks like a fox yokai.'
"A yokai? I am a god!" the fox god snapped, slapping its tail against the floor.
'Then as a god, why do you leave the evil spirits alone? Is it because you were both born in Japan?'
I glared at the fox god, pausing mid-stroke on a talisman.
"I hold the power of prophecy about the future. I am no god of battle."
'That's like a fox insisting it's a herbivore.'
"Hmph. For all your looks, you've got a wicked tongue. If you become a god in that state, you'll only grow more arrogant—and one day you'll invite a catastrophe as great as the one from your past life."
I had been determined to ignore whatever nonsense it spouted. Then—
'Wait! You know about my past life?'
"I should be going. Chika begged me to come down because you were handsome, but wicked men aren't my type."
With that, the fox god blazed with light and vanished. Chika, who had been writing talismans all the while, looked up and glanced around in confusion.
"Why did she leave? She was right beside me just now."
I couldn't very well admit it was because of me, so I played dumb and kept writing talismans. All the while, the fox god's words turned over and over in my mind.
'Could I become a god too?'
If a fox could ascend to godhood, why not a man? Spirits dwelled in trees, in stones, in the very earth, and the energy they carried could influence the people around them. That was why you were supposed to keep things of good energy close by.
Perhaps that was what the fox god had meant just now—that if a man like me awakened his spiritual power and grew stronger, he would come to wield an immense influence.
Divine power—the word the White Porcelain Grandmother had used. The power within me that had not yet bloomed. If I could master that divine power completely and wield it as I willed….
'I'd become a being of tremendous influence, wouldn't I.'
What I would do after that was a question for another day. And somehow, the talisman I was writing in that moment felt heavier in my hand—imbued with a strength it hadn't carried before.
"You really don't need to put yourself in danger."
Even after I insisted I would take on the evil spirits alone, Chika had pressed to lend her strength. I'd tried to talk her out of it—she could be hurt, or possessed.
"I will help, even if only a little. And if the evil spirit ever overcomes me, tear this talisman."
It was, she explained, a talisman that would knock her unconscious for a short while.
"You said the evil spirit can't find a target to attack, didn't you? Then use me as bait."
Chika stepped close and wrote characters across my palm, taking meticulous care with each stroke so that neither spirits nor evil spirits could see me. I read every character, then looked up at her.
"Are you sure about this? Truly—are you certain you're all right with it?"
"Yes. I've made up my mind. That's why I prepared the talismans too."
Chika drew a new talisman from her sleeve—a large one, big enough to cover her entire face. She had made it just a little while ago in the fox god's room, gluing together six talismans of red washi paper.
'When did she even have time to put that together?'
I could simply order No. 1 to devour every evil spirit in the vicinity, or Abe could herd them my way while I tore them apart or burned them one by one. But Chika said,
"There must be no evil spirits that escape. All of them. Without a single one left behind—destroy them all."
Her expression was desperate beyond words. I could do nothing but nod.
"I'll wipe out every last one of them. Not a single one will slip away."
"Thank you."
Clang-clang-clang!
Chika pressed the talisman over her face and began chanting, shaking a small bell. Then, with a creak, she flung open the wooden door with all her might.
For an instant, it seemed as though Chika had transformed into a little child. That was the deception—the talisman hiding her face, the disguise she wore to play the evil spirit's bait. It was a transformation so perfect it beguiled even my eyes for a moment.
'And now I have to play my part.'
I had to act as though Chika were the most precious thing in the world to me—only then would the evil spirits show themselves. And then they would try to kill her right before my eyes.
If I screamed in agony and terror, the evil spirits would feed on it and grow stronger. They believed that power would let them defeat me.
"Uncle, Uncle! Play with me! Take me out to play, come on!"
Chika bounded around in circles like a small child. I put on the doting expression of a man faced with his beloved little niece.
"Oh, of course. My Chika! You know Uncle loves you more than anything in the whole world, right?"
Swish-swish-swish.
The forest moved. The ground heaved. The evil spirits that had been hiding, cowed by the immense power radiating from me, Abe, and No. 1, finally began to stir. But the black smoke didn't stretch toward me—it reached for Chika.
Swish-swish.
"Uncle, watch me dance! I'm good, aren't I? What do you think?"
"Yes, you're doing great. So, so good."
Black shadows closed in around Chika, gathering form and substance as they came.
'You bastards! You're all dead!'