Returned as a Shaman
I was an ordinary young man living in twenty-first-century Korea.
My life had been no different from anyone else's — until the day a fever hit me so viciously it felt as if my body were melting from the inside out.
I checked into a hospital, took every medicine they gave me, and still the fever showed no sign of breaking. My side, in particular, burned with a raw, stinging pain. Looking back on it now, those symptoms matched a Spirit Descent with perfect precision.
After several days of that misery, a strange old shaman woman showed up at my apartment — I lived alone — cast a fortune of her own accord, and demanded payment.
I was so delirious with fever I never even thought to throw her out.
I still remember every word she said.
"You are destined to become a shaman, young man."
"You'll meet a fine master, too. Hohoho."
The moment her words ended, the fever that had tormented me for days vanished as if it had melted into thin air.
I was moved — genuinely awed — by the mysterious phenomenon unfolding right before my eyes.
"Hohoho. Just five million won, if you please."
"Look, I'm grateful and all, but that's way too expensive."
That old woman wasn't a shaman. She was a straight-up hustler.
Five million won wasn't some dog's name — and I refused to pay it to the bitter end.
"I'll give you five hundred thousand, Grandma."
"Tch. That won't nearly cover it."
"If the offering falls short, you'll be punished for it."
"Yes, yes, I'll take the punishment. Now please leave."
"Honestly, five hundred thousand is already generous."
"…By the way. You said I'm destined to become a shaman?"
"Only women become mudang, you know."
"Wouldn't that make me a baksu mudang?"
"Not a baksu mudang."
"A mudang, I said."
"Hohoho."
And with that, the old woman was driven from my home.
I went to bed in high spirits. The next morning —
I opened my eyes in the middle of Hanyang, capital of the Joseon Dynasty.
Just as the old woman had warned, I had been punished.
From that point on, everything unfolded exactly as the Shaman Grandmother's fortune had foretold.
I scraped by like a beggar until, by pure chance, I met a fine master. Before I knew it, I had become the greatest shaman in Joseon — a figure who moved in the shadows behind men of power.
Ah. I misspoke.
Not a mudang. A baksu mudang.
The grandmother's predictions had mostly come true — but she had gotten my gender wrong.
Korean shamanism — musok — is the indigenous folk religion of the Korean people, stretching back to ancient times. Those who preside over its rites are the female practitioners known as mudang and the male practitioners known as baksu mudang.
In the modern age, with religions from every corner of the world flowing in, shamanism has become a faith kept alive only by those who still believe. But in the early Joseon period, when I was active, its influence was formidable.
High lords who steered the fate of the nation came to me every night for readings. I even played a role at the very heart of their power struggles.
The idea that every Joseon shaman was a lowborn outcast is nothing but a stereotype. When I first began casting fortunes as a baksu mudang, I had wryly resigned myself — Well, I suppose I'm stuck as a commoner for the rest of my life. But once I attached myself to men of power, my own station rose of its own accord. In the end, I climbed all the way to the rank of Sawu — a Master Shaman who served as personal advisor to the king himself.
Granted, early Joseon was an era when Buddhism and Taoism, imported from Ming China, soared far above the native shamanic faith. But I was skilled enough that the king trusted me regardless — and it helped that His Majesty personally adored a good mudang gut.
…Deciding to become a man of power, however, was the greatest mistake of my life.
My king was the worst tyrant in Joseon history. No — the worst tyrant the Korean peninsula had ever produced.
I knew the history, of course. Unwilling to lose the power I had clawed my way to, I worked tirelessly to change it. But the king was the kind of man for whom no answer existed.
"The heavens have split into three. This is no auspicious sign. And the intervals of the rifts are uniform — all the more unnatural."
"If Your Majesty would only lend an ear to the voices of the people, those three torn heavens might be joined once more —"
"— and fortune would spread across the entire realm…"
I couched my counsel as carefully as I could. The king did not listen. Instead, he ordered me fifty strokes of the paddle.
"B-but Your Majesty!"
"Ah, fuck-kyu!"
Mercifully, in early Joseon, "fuck-kyu" was not recognized as a curse. I had the phrase hanging off my tongue like a verbal tic, but everyone assumed it was some kind of shamanic formula. The "fuck-kyu" I muttered out of habit is probably sitting in the royal annals right now, logged as a mystical incantation. I wonder what future generations will make of it when they read the records.
Even after taking fifty strokes that split the flesh of my backside, even after offering counsel through the pain, the king's tyranny only grew worse by the day. Loyal ministers who dared remonstrate lost their heads. All that remained at his side were sycophants armed with nothing but flattery.
In the end, history played out exactly as I remembered it. The king neglected the affairs of state and became a legendary tyrant and incompetent ruler, devoted only to luxury, hunting, and debauched pleasure.
Had I not been a baksu mudang, my own head would have rolled as well.
Eventually, a court faction that could no longer stomach the tyranny staged a coup, and the tyrant was deposed. It goes without saying that I — the man who had whispered counsel at the tyrant's elbow — looked to the coup leaders like just another sycophant dripping with flattery. Before long, I was sentenced to exile, the second-heaviest of the Five Punishments.
The only reason my head wasn't taken on the spot was that the coup faction had witnessed me being beaten for daring to remonstrate with the tyrant. Still, exile was a death sentence in all but name. For someone like me, who had no political backing whatsoever once the tyrant was gone, it amounted to little more than an order to go starve in the wilderness.
And so I set out on a two-thousand-ri journey into exile. Somewhere in a harsh mountain range, the strength left my legs, and I lost consciousness.
…That is as far as my memories of the past go.
"Huh."
What on earth were those enormous spires glittering with light, rising before my eyes?
I had no idea how it had happened — but it seemed I had returned to the twenty-first century.
And in a woman's body, no less.
Once I had taken stock of my surroundings, the first thing I did was feel over my changed body.
…Damn it. My hips and backside had swollen to a size that made me suck in a sharp breath. The fatty mounds on my chest needed no comment. The rough skin of my face had turned bizarrely soft and yielding.
But don't get the wrong idea. I wasn't groping myself to adjust to the new physique. I was checking whether this body had received a Spirit Descent.
Amazingly, the mark of the Spirit Illness on my side was still there. I was still a gangsinmu — a shaman chosen through spirit possession.
Truly, humans are creatures of adaptation. I accepted the situation at once. For reasons I couldn't begin to guess, I had returned to the twenty-first century not as a baksu, but as a mudang.
…So it had all gone exactly as that old woman predicted.
In all my life I had never met a shaman as gifted as her. Who had she been, really?
Had I been an ordinary Joseon commoner, this overwhelming twenty-first-century landscape would have filled me with vague terror and awe. Fortunately, I was no ordinary Joseon commoner. I was a Joseon commoner who had once been a citizen of twenty-first-century Korea.
Moved nearly to tears, I first offered a prayer to the spirits. Then I began to think through this sudden turn of events.
"…Ugh."
The ink-dark hair swaying below my shoulders and the unfamiliar weight of fat on my chest kept interrupting my thoughts. Adapting to this body could wait.
A moment later, I realized what I needed to do first.
Right. I should go home.
After more than thirty years in Joseon, my memories of the twenty-first century ought to have grown hazy. Strangely enough, though, I still remembered the address of the house I'd lived in with perfect clarity — right down to the number on the front gate.
And that tower rising high atop the mountain…
…Was it called Namsan Tau?
Yes. Namsan Tau. Something like that.
The sight of Namsan Tower set the old records sliding back into place, as if the missing pieces of a puzzle were clicking home. This was the entrance to Namsan. My house wasn't far from here.
As I walked and took in the scenery, I realized something odd: not much time seemed to have passed since I left. Thirty years is enough to change mountains and rivers — yet everything here looked as if not a single day had gone by.
Murmurs. Whispers.
People around me were pointing. Some wore expressions of outright fear. A few even turned and fled at a run.
…Strange.
Mudang still existed in the twenty-first century. They were few, but they existed — so this reaction was decidedly abnormal.
There was another strange thing: the lights in the shops were going out one by one. The crowds on the street thinned noticeably as time passed.
Empty streets at night were nothing unusual from the perspective of a man who had spent thirty years in Joseon. In the twenty-first century, though, it was definitely strange.
Had some dictator staged a coup while I was gone? That almost made sense. If a dictator were in power, controlling the streets at night would be understandable — and if religion were being suppressed, people staring at a "person of faith" like me would make sense too.
An ordinary person might have fallen into panic. I, however, was the king's Master Shaman — a man who had walked a path of thorns under a tyrant for more than a decade. I had learned patience. I had learned how to read a situation. A trial of this scale was no great problem for me.
The memories were old, so finding my house was no easy task. But I found it.
"Kh-heup…!"
A thin, feminine sound that was not my own slipped from my lips. I punched in the passcode, stepped inside — and tears spilled down my face before I could stop them.
Everything else might have changed. But my beloved home was exactly as I had left it…!
…
…
…
"Uuungh…!"
No. My house had changed too, damn it.
I turned the place upside down, and it didn't take long to figure out what was different. Every piece of clothing in the house was women's wear. Even the underwear.
It felt as if my entire life as a man had been denied wholesale.
I couldn't remember what the thing was called — that rectangular card with printed characters that proved your identity — ah, right. An ID card. There was no ID card either.
I had no idea what was going on.
Then a certain device caught my eye. I might have forgotten everything else, but I remembered the name of this one perfectly.
A computer.
Good. I'd fire it up and gather information on how the world was turning.
I switched it on with great confidence.
"…"
Thirty years is a long time. The interface was impossibly difficult.
Ugh… No helping it.
When a shaman doesn't know what to do, the proper first step is to cast one's own fortune. I headed straight outside to perform a divination gut.
And that was the second great mistake of my life.