A Cold Reading
Working as a shaman, every so often a thought like this crosses your mind: that even Satan from The Exorcist would be a pretty decent god to keep around.
I mean, why not? He's famous, he's powerful, and he actually answers when you talk to him. The more I turned it over, the more obvious it became — that scene should have been a spirit descent, not an exorcism.
So — Satan or anyone else, honestly, whoever's available — please, somebody, help me out right now. Because this was the opportunity of a lifetime.
"Please, Young Lord."
I was sitting across from a woman upholstered head to toe in designer goods that screamed money at a glance. The matter at hand: the fortunes of a business venture her husband was about to launch.
What had she been called — the wife of a construction company CEO? A request like this rarely trickled down to a sham shaman like me. I had to play this perfectly, as if a real god had actually descended into me.
"Well, well. It's opened — it's opened."
I delivered it in the most insolent, frosty voice I could manage. And still the woman's face lit up at once.
"My luck has opened?"
"...This year, nothing you try will come to anything. You could fall flat on your back and still break your nose."
Tap, tap.
When I rapped the table with my folding fan, the blood drained clean out of the woman's face.
"Th-then, what am I supposed to do..."
"What can you do? Easy — you don't do the business. That's the long and short of it. You haven't already started, have you? If you have, cutting your losses now might be the better call."
I asked with my eyes narrowed into slits, and the woman just bowed her head and kept quiet. I let out a short scoffing laugh and rapped the table again. Tap, tap.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Digging your own grave here. Well, that settles that."
Whether it was the word grave that snagged her, the woman went ashen and clutched the table.
"Wh-what do I do, Young Lord? Could we hold a ritual on the land my husband bought, perhaps? I'm sure I could pay you more..."
"Honestly. I keep telling you, it isn't the site. When people buy land, they check the ground, the geomancy, all of it before they sign — isn't that common sense? It's just a no."
I swept my fan through the empty air. Admitting I couldn't actually perform a proper ritual was something I would rather have died than done.
And how did I know the venture would fail? The property market was in the worst slump in living memory, announced in broad daylight — the state of the construction industry followed from that. You didn't need to be an insider to see it. What mattered was how convincingly you could stage it.
"Judging by the looks of it, your husband's a bit of a pushover, isn't he? He must bluster plenty, too. Loud voice and all."
"Th-that's right! So it's my husband's personality that's the problem after all?"
Nudge a flaw that anyone might have, and extra information comes pouring out just like that. I arched an eyebrow.
"Hard to say. Might be that, might not. But if you want things to go well from here, you'll need to rein in that temper of his."
A few words, and the look in the woman's eyes changed. It was now the gaze of someone who would believe me if I told her I made soybean paste out of red beans.
"So this business could actually turn out well, then?"
"I keep telling you it won't. It'll fail. Straight into the ground. Why do you keep asking me that?"
"Because I have a feeling the Young Lord knows a way."
At that, the corner of my mouth curled up, just slightly.
"I can't overturn, all by myself, an energy this set on total ruin. If I could, I'd be trading stocks instead. Wouldn't I?"
"Then... it really is hopeless?"
"But — I can blow away some of the negative energy hanging over your husband. That should improve things a fair bit."
"Ah!!"
Color bloomed across the woman's face. There it was.
"Bring your husband back in a week. Once I've had a look at his face, I'll write him a talisman."
"Thank you!! Thank you so much, Young Lord!!"
When you got right down to it, shamans were in the service industry too. Keeping a steady stream of customers coming was pure technique, in the end. This must be how con-artist shamans like me all put food on the table.
"There's one more thing I'm wondering about — might I ask?"
"Sure. Just give me a moment."
"Yes, yes, of course."
With the tension drained away, the nicotine craving hit me hard. I left the shrine door shut for a while, stepped out into the front yard, and pulled a pack of cigarettes from my pocket.
"Whew... A man's gotta eat."
I gave a hollow laugh as I watched the smoke drift away.
The truth is, I hadn't been a fraud from the beginning.
Believe it or not, there was a time I fell ill with the spirit sickness, received the descent, and had my spirit eyes opened. Ghosts? Back then, the whole earth was strewn with them. I saw too well, too much — that was the trouble. It earned me no small amount of suffering under my spirit mother, mind you.
And then, wouldn't you know it.
The moment I struck out on my own from that house and opened a little fortune-telling shop, the divine power I'd had began to seep away — until, before I knew it, I was no different from any ordinary person who couldn't see a thing.
To be honest, I was rather pleased at the time. I'd never wanted the descent in the first place.
Once the power was gone, I went from construction site to construction site to cover my living expenses. With not so much as a stray ghost in sight, my body ached, but my heart was at ease.
Thud.
"Youngest! Can't you keep your head on straight!"
At first I paid it no mind. A scaffold keeling over out of nowhere, a loose rock lying in the strangest spot — I figured those were accidents anybody could have.
"Hey!! Watch out!!"
CRASH—!!!
And then one day, several hundred kilos of rebar plunged down and buried itself in the ground right beside me — and only then did I finally understand what my spirit mother's words had meant.
However far my gift had fallen, I couldn't ignore a warning that blatant. I had no choice but to return to my spirit mother.
"Hmm... Well, I've seen everything now. There isn't so much as a trace left of the one who used to dwell in your body."
But even she couldn't fully explain my situation.
"It isn't possession by a ghost. It isn't a punishing spirit, either. Your soul hasn't gone murky. I suspect something more is coming."
My spirit mother laid her hand on the back of mine and sighed.
"Be careful. It may be that some exalted one is watching you."
"What... kind of being do you mean?"
"I mean that someone very high above us may have taken a keen interest in you."
"Will it enter my body someday, all of a sudden? Like the one who used to dwell within me?"
At my question, my spirit mother gazed off through the far window. There was a gloom in her eyes I couldn't put a name to.
"That is not for mortals to know. Such beings are dreadfully fickle — existences we could never presume to understand."
She took hold of my hand. Her wrinkled fingers clamped down, hard.
"Never dare to stand against it. Never try to defy it. But don't go calling for it in haste, either."
"Then... what on earth am I supposed to do?"
"If it comes, the only way we go on living in this world... is to soothe it, bit by bit, until it works in our favor."
And so, in the end, I had no choice but to return to the shrine.
Even if I kept doing shaman work, I could see nothing — which left learning the tricks the frauds used, and nothing else. If it hadn't been for what I'd learned under my spirit mother, I'd have wound up a charlatan spouting pure nonsense.
Damn it all. What the hell do you want from me?
Grumbling under my breath, I rose from my seat and stepped outside the shrine. The days were growing shorter. Today of all days, the cigarette tasted bitter as gall.
Vrrr.
I fished my buzzing phone out of my pocket.