The Calling of the God
"H-how did you know that..."
CEO Kim's entire attitude, upon hearing my words, was markedly different from before. And the moment Mrs. Kim saw the terror on her husband's face, she went so deathly pale she looked ready to faint on the spot.
"That was a precognitive dream. No—maybe closer to a warning than a prophecy. How many times have you died in it so far?"
I drained my teacup and looked at CEO Kim. That insufferable bastard was finally starting to listen to me.
"There must have been accidents already. People getting hurt out of nowhere, when there's no reason on earth for them to be hurt."
Kim Yeongsik's shoulders flinched.
"You haven't even broken ground yet. Am I right?"
"..."
CEO Kim lowered his head and clamped his mouth shut.
A stray spirit had latched onto the construction site. Once one of those things started devouring a few people there, its appetite would only swell. Sooner or later, it could bring about a catastrophe.
"Is it... the souls of the ones who died unjustly at the site?"
CEO Kim asked with great care, and I shook my head.
"No. Souls that lived good, honest lives and died wronged go on to heaven—they don't linger in this world. Would a spirit bound for heaven keep piling up sins among the living? What's attached itself to you is something else entirely."
Stray spirits have no stories. No names, either.
People believed they tormented the living out of grudges or unfinished resentment, but the truth was simpler: they were creatures that needed human vital energy and human blood, nothing more.
If this were the lingering resentment of someone wrongfully killed, it would have taken its revenge and ended there. It wouldn't be craving still more blood.
Filth that hides behind the grudges of the dead while it uses and devours the living.
Those were the things called stray spirits and lesser gods. And one of them, through sheer bad luck, had fastened itself onto Kim Yeongsik.
"Then... what should I do? The talisman you said you'd write for me last time..."
"One or two talismans won't be enough for this. I'll have to go take a look myself."
Anything that could exert this much influence was a fairly powerful stray spirit. It didn't strike me as the sort of thing that could be chased off with a few shakes of a bell and a talisman slapped on a wall.
A ground-ritual for a construction firm, then. And against a decently strong stray spirit, no less. This might actually pull in some real money.
"...And what exactly will you do there?"
"If I can manage a proper gut out there, that'll be a miracle in itself. For now, let's head over and size up the job."
I sprang to my feet and nodded at the construction CEO and his wife, who were still staring at me with blank, uncomprehending eyes.
"What are you waiting for? We leave now."
"Ah... we're going right now?"
"Isn't every minute critical? Keep going like this and people are going to die."
As if under a spell, CEO Kim nodded and rose from his seat to follow me.
We climbed into his sedan and set off at once for the construction site in Gangwon-do. Mrs. Kim was still white with fear, and CEO Kim wore the dazed expression of a man whose world had shifted beneath him.
I should be able to pocket at least a few grand for this.
A gut doesn't normally run a bill anywhere near that size. But this was a different animal entirely—a ritual that could keep a business alive or bury it.
I'd never performed a proper gut in my life, yet a strange certainty was welling up in my chest. If I simply followed the way Mother did things, the fee would more than be earned.
And whatever's been tormenting CEO Kim... I doubt it's just some stray spirit that happened to latch onto him.
I stroked my chin. Mrs. Kim looked perfectly fine, yet the influence touched only her husband. A few possibilities surfaced in my mind.
It wasn't the ground itself.
No—this was almost certainly something occurring in the course of CEO Kim's work.
I'd have to confirm it with my own eyes, of course...
"Young master, we're nearly there."
Already?
At Mrs. Kim's voice, I turned to the window. Perhaps because the two of them had come calling so early that morning, it was still only early afternoon, even with the site drawing close.
"Just up ahead now."
We arrived at the plot where the resort was to be built. A tall barrier fence hid the site from view, and heavy equipment that hadn't yet been withdrawn sat scattered carelessly nearby.
"The Cultural Heritage Administration people come by to inspect every day, but it's the weekend, so they won't be by today. I've called in the staff, so if there's anything you need..."
"Dragging people in on the one weekend they get to rest. What a nuisance you are."
I muttered as much and stepped through the fence. The ground hadn't even been fully compacted yet. Site staff, hastily summoned to work, trailed along at the CEO's side.
"Sir, who exactly is..."
"A young master I've brought in to look over the site. Don't give him any trouble."
I made the rounds of the plot with the staff in tow until we reached a deep, gaping excavation.
Down in the pit were traces that looked as though someone had lived there long ago. Any artifacts of importance had probably been carted off by the Cultural Heritage Administration people the moment they were found.
"So this is the famous ruins site?"
The staff seemed thrown by my manner of speech, but under CEO Kim's gaze they hurried to fall in behind me.
"Yes. From what their people said, it appears to be a settlement from roughly the Bronze Age..."
Bronze Age?
I frowned. The mark on my left hand was prickling, stinging in slow pulses.
"Yes... that's what I was told, at any rate..."
"Is that so."
The closer I drew, the more an eerie chill seeped into the air. It seemed Mother hadn't taken an interest in this place for nothing.
I swept my gaze across the ground, then turned back to CEO Kim Yeongsik.
"Did the Cultural Heritage Administration people say anything else? Anything at all?"
"No. Nothing."
I tilted my head—then strode straight down into the pit. Behind me, the staff shrieked in alarm at the sight.
"Wh— Sir!! You can't go in there!!"
Ignoring the cries, I planted my foot in the very center of the 'ruins.'
The moment I focused power into the mark on my left hand, shadow seeped out of it, combing the place from corner to corner and injecting 'knowledge' into my head.
Not much to go on. Fairly fragmentary, but...
I stared at a wall stained pitch-black, utterly unlike the soil around it.
"That wall—it didn't look like that when it was first uncovered, did it?"
At my question the staff crowded in, peering at the wall I pointed to. They shook their heads, bewildered.
"No... we couldn't say."
"Interesting."
Shadows hovered near the wall, yet nothing showed itself. There was no stray spirit there, nor any other presence.
But I could feel it—the faint chill I'd known at the bus stop. This was the residue of a ritual performed to call something here. And quite recently, at that.
"This place was never any archaeological site."
I murmured it as I pressed hard against the wall, here and there.
I turned and asked the question behind me; the staff traded glances and offered nothing. I climbed out of the pit with a sigh.
So that thing is in league with whoever performed this rite. It might even be the one behind it.
"Well, that's not what matters right now. What matters is that we start by doubting whether those so-called Cultural Heritage Administration people are real officials at all."
Those people had made off with every last thing that must have been placed here, leaving me no way to trace it properly. I crossed my arms and glared down into the pit.
"What's going to happen here, young master?"
"It's already happened. Tell me—have you ever earned yourself a grudge among the staff here?"
I asked CEO Kim evenly, and he stammered, flustered.
"I-I'll admit I can be hard on my employees, but I've never pushed anyone far enough to hold a grudge against me... I don't think."
"Right. Because asking the man himself would tell us everything."
The thing I was hunting had left only traces behind; it had slunk off somewhere, invisible to my eye.
Which meant I'd have to drag it out by force... and for luring out creatures like that, there was a method all its own.
"I'll need to hold a gut at dawn tomorrow. Call the people I write down for you starting now, and get the supplies ready. And everyone who gathered here today—every last one of them attends. No exceptions."
The mark tingled. I swept my gaze over the people assembled at the site, then set off to begin the preparations.
The next day.
The musicians and helpers arrived in the small hours and lent their hands. We laid the ritual table and lit the incense and candles.
I readied the talismans I'd scrawled out in haste and stole a glance at the sky.
Dark. The forecast promised rain by afternoon. It seemed a fitting day for Mother to come.
Dressed in my usual black shaman's robes—a bell in my right hand, a blade in my left, and a single bundled cloth.
Behind me, the incense I'd lit earlier smoldered on. The staff still didn't know what to make of me, watching with eyes caught halfway between belief and doubt.
Well, I had trained long enough under my shaman mother that I was hardly incapable of performing a gut. The only reason I'd never managed a proper one before was that my god had abandoned me—and circumstances were different now.
Someday, you too will stand here like this and perform a gut, just as I do.
I remembered my shaman mother's words. Whenever she performed a ritual, I'd been at her side, saddled with every errand imaginable.
Thanks to that, I knew exactly what a ground-ritual required and what the shaman had to do.
What matters is not your own voice, but lending your ears to the god's.
Now and then, before a ritual, my shaman mother would say that to me like a lesson handed down. Thinking back on it now, it was almost as if she'd been preparing me for a moment exactly like this one.
And after that, the one who descends into your body will lead you.
I turned to the assembled crowd and undid the bundle. Inside lay a length of silk about the size of a handkerchief.
Written across it were incantations to aid in driving out ghosts.
"From this moment on, you will cover your eyes with this silk, all of you, and turn your backs."
"What?"
"You can watch if you'd rather. But I won't be cleaning up after you. If you suddenly spew blood and drop where you stand, that's not on me."
At that, the staff squeezed their eyes shut, fashioned blindfolds from the cloth, and scrambled to turn around.
"Musicians too. All of you, cover your eyes."
The gray-haired musicians bound their eyes without a word of protest.
"While you stand turned away, make no sound and do not move. Whatever you hear, whoever calls out to you—ignore it, and stay exactly where you are. You must never answer, and never react."
Gulp.
The sound of a dry swallow seemed to carry all the way to me. Having drilled the warning home, I closed my eyes and felt for the wind.
I carried the talisman to the wavering candle flame. Fire caught its lower edge, and in an instant it crumbled to ash and scattered on the wind.
Tling.
The bell in my right hand rang, faint.
Tling.
Another shake. A bleak wind brushed past my head and moved on.
Tling, tling, tling.
Shaaaaa.
The temperature around us was falling. Breath misted from my lips, and the wind blew harder.
Tling, tling, tling, tling.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Kung. Kung. Kung. Kung. Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The musicians struck the barrel drum, the janggu, the gong.
The cheongsin—the calling of the god—had begun.
The dissonance of the percussion resonated like a pulse. Little by little, my heartbeat began to race in time with the musicians' rhythm.
My feet flew through empty air, struck the earth again, and flung me up into it once more.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Ha!
Woit!
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The drums and the gong were, in themselves, nothing but noise. What mattered was how strongly I could feel my connection to Mother.
In the void behind my closed eyes, a black goat appeared.
The goat's hand covered my eyes. My mouth.
And then Mother began to speak through my borrowed lips, in 'unison' with me.
Not in Korean, nor in any language at all, but in a 'noise' that has never existed in this world.
The noise layered itself over my voice.
"Urp— HUUUERGH!! GWEEEERGH!!!"
One of the blindfolded had begun to vomit. Either they couldn't withstand the mounting pressure—or, far more likely, they were tied to this sorcery.
And by every sign, it was the latter.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Creak, creak, creak, creak.
Squelch, squelch.
So that's where you were hiding.
Something began to wriggle inside the vomit.