The Tide Turned at the Lighthouse
“......”
Lee Kang-to stood at the lighthouse, his gaze turned out over the sea like the beam in the lantern room, cutting through the night.
Lee Hyeong-uk’s yacht, having departed from the pier, finally slipped beyond Kang-to’s sight.
His biological father, Lee Tae-seop.
The family registry entry had been promised. They had been told about Kang-to’s existence. The promise to buy Chiluijae had also been kept. In the meantime, Kang-to’s shamanic illness had vanished, and with it the seizures and feverish spells that had plagued him. All that remained was the formal registration in the family registry.
To be honest, it wasn’t something Kang-to had dreamed of. The very fact that his biological father and that household had treated him with caution made the whole prospect unappealing. He, too, had never once imagined himself in that place.
[A chaebol family]
- Jackpot.
- He’s set for life.
Other people would probably have said as much. But Kang-to’s own sense of justice, the profound feeling of estrangement, and the position of his mother all tangled together so tightly that he had no desire to rip out his own liver and gallbladder and go running up to them, calling them Father and Brother.
Would they really take him into their arms and say, “Son”?
Of course not.
When he received the guest’s yeji, Kang-to had thought perhaps his biological father was coming. It wasn’t hope. What he had wanted was only the barest courtesy toward his mother, nothing more.
Looking back, to that man, it had probably been no more than a one-night pleasure, nothing above or below it. And yet his mother had believed with all her pure heart and conceived Kang-to.
When she grew heavy with child at a young age, she had no choice but to go to the father’s company. There she witnessed the man’s lies with her own eyes. Shaken by the shock, and with the decent wish not to shatter that family, she had withdrawn.
That was why, at the very least, his biological father should have come to the island once and met his mother’s remains. Kang-to didn’t know what their relationship had been, but he knew that was what human decency demanded.
But then it wasn’t the biological father who appeared, but his son. He hadn’t even bothered with a hollow inquiry after the man’s health. It had been nothing more than surveillance, a petty snooping around the movements of an inconvenient nuisance.
Kang-to understood civil law, too. That son felt threatened by the matter of inheritance. The moment Kang-to was entered in Lee Tae-seop’s family registry as the youngest son, they would be confronted by one more unwanted rival for the fortune. It had come out of nowhere. From their perspective, there was no way they could welcome it.
So perhaps they had felt relief seeing Kang-to, who had set up his shrine in this backwater island village. At the very least, they might have taken comfort in the distance from Seoul, or in the strangeness of his belonging to an entirely different spiritual world.
But neither Lee Tae-seop nor his son Lee Hyeong-uk could have known this: even here, sitting at the lighthouse, Kang-to could see the shape of their fate.
That was why the saying that even a chaebol’s fortune was just dust from the perspective of the gods wasn’t mere posturing.
Which was stronger, wealth or shamanic power?
If anyone tried to put that to the test, no one would escape disaster.
“Daddy.”
While his thoughts were deepening, Sol-bi’s voice floated up from below the lighthouse.
“Good grief.”
He wondered if he was seeing things. From her face to her clothes, it was beyond a sight to behold.
- Sol-bi’s pile of laundry she leaves off on her own is three or four times what we old folks make, I tell you.
The complaint he had once heard from his grandaunt had not been an exaggeration at all.
“What happened to your clothes?”
Kang-to came down and took Sol-bi by the hand.
“I was catching crabs.”
Sol-bi looked up at him. Even with her sly, beaming little face, the natural pigments of the mudflat were generously painted all over her.
“Did you catch any?”
“Yep. It was this big. Sol-bi got pinched twice.”
Her hand drew a huge circle in the air.
“It was really that big?”
“Hmm... maybe this big?”
The circle had already halved.
“I’ve never seen a crab that size.”
“Then... this big?”
The adorable confession kept shrinking. By then the crab was the size of a finger, so unless she’d caught a tiny mud crab, it must have been a baby fiddler crab.
“So what did you do?”
“I let it go. You shouldn’t just kill things that are alive.”
“......”
Her words were as smooth as a clear stream, and Kang-to found himself speechless.
“Let’s shower first.”
“Okay.”
She had already forgotten all about ruining her clothes and went ahead with little skipping steps.
“Ow, ow.”
The moment he took off her clothes, Sol-bi yelped.
“Daddy, that hurts. Grandma takes them off without hurting me...”
“......”
“You’re not supposed to turn your clothes inside out. Grandma told me that.”
“......”
While washing her, he found himself speechless more than once. It wasn’t easy to wash her hair, and face washing wasn’t any better. He scrubbed her with all his might, only for the final inspection to fail: mud still clung between her heels.
Childcare was hard. Maybe harder than becoming a divine disciple. Until now, thanks to her mother and grandaunt, all he’d had to do was help out. Now that reality belonged to Kang-to.
“That headband is for kindergarten. At home, you wear this one.”
He found himself being coached step by step by Sol-bi.
“It’s the child raising the child.”
One vacation long ago, his grandaunt had said that. At the time, he hadn’t really understood what she meant. Now he thought he did. And yet he wasn’t tired, because the fact that Sol-bi was his daughter made all the difference. Whenever the inexperienced dad got scolded for being clumsy, he always found a way through the crisis with a little physical affection.
“But Daddy.”
During dinner, Sol-bi fixed her bright eyes on Kang-to, her legs swinging restlessly beneath the chair.
“Yeah?”
He had made omurice for once. He admitted it: he’d cooked the egg wrong and torn it along the side. He tensed, wondering if she was about to point that out. Still, the saving grace was that his body deity didn’t care what he ate. There were plenty of body deities like that, though in those cases they couldn’t handle fishy foods, raw ingredients, or meat, and so on.
“Older Brother Hong-seo said Daddy’s a really famous shaman.”
“Oh?”
“What’s a shaman?”
The question came out bold and proud.
Sol-bi was like that. She was curious for her age, and because of that she had no fear either; at her grandaunt’s house, she’d once tried to catch a mantis living in the flowerbed and cut her hand open.
That was perhaps the very question Kang-to had been wrestling with himself. Sol-bi’s question came out sooner than he expected.
[Shaman]
- Noun: A person who serves spirits, divines good and bad fortune, and performs gut rituals as a profession.
That was the dictionary definition.
It was too difficult to explain as-is. Besides, because Kang-to had received the spirit power of the Nine Heavens Maiden, he had almost no need to perform full gut rituals.
“Does Hong-seo say anything else?”
“He said Daddy found Hong-seo’s dad when he fell into the water.”
“That’s right. Hong-seo, his mom, and his grandma must have all been really hurt by it.”
“Yeah, Hong-seo cried a lot. Because his dad was inside the seawater for too long. If you stay underwater too long, you can’t breathe, right?”
Sol-bi was quick-witted. So quick-witted that he often wanted to take a bite out of her.
“A shaman is someone who does things like that. Someone who helps people whose hearts are hurting...”
“Then Daddy’s a heart-doctor?”
“I guess so?”
“Ehehe. I get it now. A shaman is a doctor who heals hearts.”
A new piece of knowledge was being installed in Sol-bi’s head.
It was a positive way to explain shamans, though it wasn’t entirely wrong. Even now, shamans sometimes did the work of doctors. Such was the case with healing shamanic illness through naerim gut, and with warding off misfortune caused by karmic debt or wandering spirits.
Other forms of counseling and divination, when you thought about them, weren’t so different from psychiatry. The experts in that field just didn’t recognize the shaman’s expertise.
“Anyway, how does Daddy’s omurice taste?”
“The best.”
Sol-bi shot both thumbs up so hard it looked like they might snap.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“It’s a coincidence.”
“I’m telling you it isn’t.”
“If it isn’t a coincidence, then what? Not even AI or big data could predict something like that.”
“The famous shaman said he was better than big data or AI.”
“Who did?”
“Aren’t the results speaking for themselves? The two dramas I was weighing... one was all but certain, but I didn’t particularly like the writer, and the other was also a sure thing, to the point where if I’d signed right away the agency would’ve come running. But then...”
Both had slipped right through his fingers.
Lee Hyeong-uk was aboard the yacht. From that vantage, the lighthouse on Chilui Island receded into the distance.
The first was a producer who had gone through the full three visits to persuade Yoo Jae-hee. But at the last moment he switched to another leading actress. Someone must have intervened, and it was like getting struck squarely in the back of the head.
The second was even more absurd. He was a rookie producer who had shot to fame like a comet after his last drama became a huge hit. This was only his second directing project, but both the agency and the broadcast station were ready to go all in on his singular sense of direction.
And yet...
[Aggravated assault and drug use]
Two landmines that had recently been tripping up success detonated at the same time. As records of drunken violence in Gangnam emerged, a drug tip-off was also filed. The tip included a video, allegedly submitted by the victim’s close friend. It showed him assaulting a customer sitting next to him for no reason at all.
The drug matter was even worse, because he had once thrown a hallucination party with the cast as guests. If Yoo Jae-hee had gotten involved at the wrong moment, she could easily have been dragged into the suspicion herself.
The agency moved quickly. They cut the producer off immediately.
[This drama has gone overboard.]
Kang-to’s gongsu echoed in his head. If he had meant the prophecy as a two-body arrangement, both contracts would have been possible. So Kang-to’s message had missed the mark by a very wide margin.
Crazy bastard.
That was Yoo Jae-hee’s private thought. She had mocked him in her head like that, and yet...
It really had gone overboard.
Both of them.
“How could that possibly be a coincidence?”
After draining her wineglass, Yoo Jae-hee shook her head.
“It is a coincidence. The odds are even lower than winning the lottery.”
“Hyeong-uk.”
“Listen to me. What’s a shaman in this day and age? Don’t you know you’ll end up ruined if you let yourself be swayed by people like that?”
“Then why didn’t you sort it out yourself? You said both dramas were dead in the water.”
“......”
“I’m Yoo Jae-hee. You know who Yoo Jae-hee is, right? I’d never believe in anything like a shaman. But that man is different, isn’t he? It’s not like he forced me to pay a fee, either.”
“He gave you a reading for free?”
“He said I could pay afterward if it turned out right.”
“......”
Lee Hyeong-uk was taken aback. Of course shamanism was a scam, no question about it. But it wasn’t easy to pick it apart in detail. Coincidence had piled on top of coincidence until it turned into credibility.
“Come to think of it...”
“What now?”
“That helicopter that crashed over there... wasn’t it part of Chairman Jo from Taebaek General Construction’s golf group?”
“So?”
“Look into it. I heard it in the bathroom a little while ago, but apparently that chairman's helicopter crash was also something the lighthouse shaman predicted.”
“Yoo Jae-hee, have you lost your mind?”
“I’m not crazy, but I feel like I might be. The great Yoo Jae-hee got blindsided, and she got blindsided hard, okay? And the person who knew it was going to happen was that shaman.”
Yoo Jae-hee’s voice rose.
Actors lived on two things. One was popularity; the other was pride. And the second had just been trampled flat.
“That’s nonsense.”
“Another coincidence?”
“Yes.”
“Or? I’ll ask Chairman Jo. Thanks to you, I’ve got an introduction, so I may as well visit him in the hospital.”
“Forget it. I’ll go once visitation is allowed.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I was planning to visit him anyway.”
“Oh, I’m going crazy. I’m having another glass of wine.”
Yoo Jae-hee disappeared into the cabin bar.
“Oppa.”
This time it was his younger sister Eun-seo on the phone.
“You said it’s an island, right?”
She cut straight to the heart of it, so she must have already finished talking with their mother.
“Yeah.”
“That guy set up a fortune-telling shop on the island?”
“Yeah. That family’s been shamans there for generations.”
“Seriously? Dad too, really... of all the women he could get tangled up with...”
“Exactly...”
“Anyway, sounds like he’s going to stay there for good?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s at least a relief.”
“That’s how I see it too. Let’s talk in detail later.”
The yacht was now rounding Gyecheong Island.
Lee Kang-to.
Even thinking the name made him irritated. Lee Tae-seop’s world-class company, Cheonjo Group. And then, out of nowhere, an official younger brother appeared on paper. He couldn’t accept either his father’s conduct or Lee Kang-to as a person, but reality was reality.
Hmm...
Kang-to had left Seoul on his own after staying in the hospital. Hyeong-uk had wondered whether he was up to some trick, but that didn’t seem to be the case. He’d already gotten a rough sense of the island and learned enough about Kang-to’s movements, so there was no reason to linger.
Chilui Island.
It had long been under consideration as a possible site for a comprehensive marine leisure project. The waters near the pier were deep, the beaches were quaint and lovely, and the water itself was clear—all strong advantages. But there were fatal drawbacks: the island was too small, and there was nothing much to see.
Still, if Chiluijae were completely leveled, something might yet be possible. And if they built a golf course there, it would connect water sports with resort leisure.
At first, he’d suspected Kang-to had known all this in advance and was trying to get a piece of the development company’s profits. But if he had refused Chairman Jo’s direct contract, then that couldn’t have been his purpose.
In any case, development that completely bulldozed Chiluijae would not be easy. Even if it was a small island in the West Sea, environmental activists would never let it go. Once people like that got involved, the incidental costs could balloon higher than the actual project itself.
While he was thinking, the yacht passed through the area where the helicopter had crashed.
That was the difference between land and sea. The sea left no trace. The helicopter crash had been a major accident, but there was no way to judge it with the naked eye.
[Apparently the lighthouse shaman predicted that helicopter crash, too.]
Yoo Jae-hee’s words kept circling through his brain. He predicted the helicopter crash, and he predicted that Yoo Jae-hee would get dropped from the drama contract too...
Honestly.
The more he thought about it, the more he could only laugh bitterly, until his throat grew dry.
“Yoo Jae-hee, pour me one too. Pack in plenty of ice with the Château Margaux.”
Putting ice in wine was almost sacrilege. Lost in thought, Lee Hyeong-uk had forgotten even his own routine.