The Baby Medium Sent by Lady Gyeongsin
“Auntie?”
Kang-to was in the middle of writing a talisman with his own cultivated power when Lady Gyeongsin’s call came through.
“You remember the promise you made to me, don’t you?”
“You mean the one about screening out Heoju?”
“Exactly. I just got a call from Baby Medium saying the boat is waiting for her now.”
“She’s really coming?”
“And if she weren’t? You know how important this is, Kang-to.”
“I do, but I’m not exactly in a position to perform a full Heoju ritual...”
“The rite is just formality. If you can screen one out without it, wouldn’t that make you the real deal?”
“I’m barely an aedong as it is.”
“Didn’t I tell you that this particular aedong wasn’t ordinary? And by the way, is your new title going to be Kang-to Beopsa?”
“Yes.”
“Looking back, everything about our younger spiritual sister, Heavenly Maiden, was full of omens. The name Kang-to itself originally means water and earth — in other words, everything under heaven. It’s perfect as a dharma name. You’re going to be a big success.”
“Thank you.”
“If I run into anything I can’t solve, I’ll come looking for you too, so keep that in mind.”
Lady Gyeongsin hung up.
[Heoju-Screening Ritual]
This wasn’t something just anyone could do. At the very least, you had to be able to receive a deity higher than Heoju. You needed the power to distinguish low-ranking stray spirits from the real thing.
This is something else...
Kang-to still hadn’t even properly received a single official guest, and now it felt as if he were being pushed ahead through school grades by force. But there was nothing for it.
For the boat to come in...
He was looking over the ferry schedule when he heard movement outside.
“Sol-bi’s dad, it’s me. Hong-seo.”
When he opened the door and stepped outside, Hong-seo wasn’t alone.
“Principal.”
Standing beside Hong-seo was Kim Hak-jun, the head of Chilui Branch School and its sole teacher.
“I was wondering if I could have a word with you.”
“With me?”
“It’s about Sol-bi.”
“Ah. Yes, of course.”
The branch school principal was invited in. Kang-to’s mother’s shrine room had already been converted back into a normal household space, and it was more comfortable to receive a guest there.
“I saw Sol-bi out playing on the mudflats. She spotted me and actually greeted me first.”
“Yes... our Sol-bi isn’t shy around strangers.”
“Hong-seo says she’ll be coming to our branch school next year, so I came to confirm.”
“Is the branch school closing?”
Kang-to asked it directly. The elementary school had survived by the skin of its teeth after the middle school was shut down, and even after being reduced to a branch school, its student numbers had continued to fall year after year.
“To be honest... yes, it’s almost at that point.”
“......?”
“When I was at the main school last month, that sort of talk came up. If there are no new first-year students, shouldn’t we merge with Gyecheong Island? The Office of Education seems to be thinking along the same lines. So the parents on the island are worried as well. Since I’m from this island myself, I couldn’t put my mind at ease.”
“So?”
“Which means there’s a way forward now. If Sol-bi enrolls, the branch school may avoid closure altogether.”
“Really?”
Kang-to brightened immediately. Sol-bi was still little; Gyecheong Island might be close, but commuting across the sea was no easy matter for a child.
“That’s why I came to confirm. Sol-bi... you really do intend to enroll her, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Then you mustn’t change your mind.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“That’s a relief. My elderly mother doesn’t want to leave here, so I had planned to retire here too.”
“In that case, since you’re here, may I drive out the bad luck spirit that’s been clinging to you?”
“A bad luck spirit?”
“One’s attached itself to your head. It looks like it’s been there for about ten years — a young female student, I think. You don’t suffer from frequent headaches, do you?”
“I do have chronic migraines, so I’m constantly on medication.”
“I wouldn’t know if I couldn’t see it, but now that I have, please wait a moment.”
“Excuse me, Sol-bi’s dad—”
“I’m not going to ask for a fee, so just stay put for a second.”
What Kang-to had drawn on the red-and-blue paper was one of the bujak used by the divine general of the Nine Heavens Maiden. A bujak was different from an ordinary talisman. Talismans drew on cinnabar ink, but a bujak was made by imbuing an object with symbolic spiritual meaning. Historically, it was an older method than the talisman itself.
There were twelve divine generals specialized in driving out bad luck spirits, but two stood above the rest: the divine generals of the Jeongsa and the generals commanded by the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord. The former slew the spirit outright; the latter beat it into submission.
He had never actually used an oracle to banish a bad luck spirit before. Since this was his first step, he chose a relatively powerful general.
“Six Ding divine soldiers, Eight Trigram spirit lords... please bring peace to this believer’s body and mind and grant him the miraculous power he seeks. Obeisance to the Nine Heavens Maiden — swiftly, swiftly, may it be so.”
With the spell, he burned the bujak, mixed its ashes into water, drank it, and then spat the water toward the bad luck spirit.
Kiiieee!
The spirit, which had been curled up tight, scattered in an instant.
Oh.
It worked.
He had been tense just in case, but the authority of the summoned general had clearly taken hold.
So this is what she meant...
It really was the Nine Heavens Maiden. And indeed, it was the power of a divine general.
“How is it? The headache’s gone, isn’t it?”
“Yes... come to think of it...”
“You said just now that you were planning to retire here...”
“That’s right. Promotion was never in the cards for me anyway...”
“Looking at you now, though, it seems you may be transferred. With the work luck and human-relations luck that had been suppressed by the bad luck spirit now opened again, I think someone important will help you get promoted.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m someone who’s never had any luck with promotion. Don’t you think I’d know that by now, having been exiled to a branch school at my age?”
“I don’t know about all that, but since you care so much about the school, I’m just telling you what I see. So go downstairs and pack your things.”
Kang-to did not retract the oracle.
Huh.
Once he stepped outside, the principal tilted his head in confusion. Kang-to was a fine, able-bodied young man. From what he’d heard, he had even completed university on the mainland. And yet, unable to build a career in anything else, he had taken over his shamans’ family trade.
That was why he didn’t bother storing Kang-to’s oracle in his heart.
“I found some octopus. Want a bite?”
On the way to the school, his elderly mother, who had been out on the mudflats, held up an octopus. Catching octopus in the mudflats was backbreaking work. It wasn’t the kind of thing someone her age could do. But every now and then, luck gave her a hand — she had simply stumbled upon one as the tide went out and it crawled out from beneath a rock.
“Stir-fry it nice and spicy later, okay?”
He still had business to attend to. As the principal headed into the branch school, his phone in his pocket started ringing.
“Kim Hak-jun.”
Coming through the speaker was the voice of an old classmate from his teacher-training cohort, now a supervisory official.
“Well, well, if it isn’t someone important. What’s the occasion?”
“I called because I had good news for you.”
“Good news for me? Did a stray commendation finally fall my way?”
“Not a stray commendation — a proper one. Congratulations on your promotion to vice principal.”
“Me? You kidding?”
“I’m not kidding. So start packing and get ready to move out. The soju and pork belly are on me, unlimited.”
The call ended.
“......?”
It was a bolt from the blue.
Kim Hak-jun had accumulated plenty of disciplinary records over the years. Parents who wanted to raise their children as princes and princesses at every school he went to — he had stood up to them all, determined to protect his own philosophy of education. Once, a seventh-grader had blasted music from his phone during class. When the phone was confiscated, the boy had rushed at him, spewing vile abuse. Hak-jun made him stand in the hallway, and the parents came charging in. He was hit with a major disciplinary action for violating human rights and abusing a child.
Even so, he never bent his convictions. The classroom was for learning more than just knowledge. But that only made the heads of schools and vice principals resent him all the more.
“Let’s try to keep up with the times.”
They wanted a world without problems. But that wasn’t education. And so he was shoved aside by juniors who were decades younger, and the road to vice principal — a position that some people reached after a year of training, or at most three — had become something he had long since stopped expecting.
And yet he’d been promoted to vice principal?
His phone rang again. This time it was a younger teacher.
“Sir, congratulations. You’ve been promoted to vice principal.”
It wasn’t just one phone call. That meant it couldn’t be a joke.
“......?”
The principal’s gaze drifted toward the lighthouse.
Pack your things.
He didn’t believe in shamans or any of that. In all his life, he had never once consulted a fortune-teller or had a compatibility reading done. It was all superstition — a way to trick weak-minded people out of their money.
But...
In this case, it was different.
Come to think of it...
The words Kang-to had spoken in passing came back to him in a string.
“It looks like a bad luck spirit that’s been there for about ten years...”
Ten years.
Now that he thought about it, that was exactly right.
There was an incident that fit. It had happened when he was homeroom teacher for a sixth-grade class. A girl who wore far too much makeup was caught running an online sex business. She came from a poor family. She wanted an iPhone, wanted nice clothes. So she’d gone down a bad road. Once he learned the truth, he couldn’t simply let it slide.
“Please don’t tell my parents. If you do, I’ll kill myself.”
The girl’s threat had been unnervingly clear. But as a teacher, he couldn’t just keep it under wraps. In the end, the parents found out, and so did her friends. Her threat became reality. She swallowed a bottle’s worth of pesticide at home and died on the way to the emergency room.
Hooom.
While the principal stood there, stunned into silence, the last ferry of the day was coming in.
“Dad, who’s coming?”
Sol-bi asked Kang-to, who was looking toward the dock.
“A guest.”
“Grandma and Grandpa?”
“Do you miss Grandma?”
“I do, but I have Dad, so it’s okay.”
“......”
Kang-to was left speechless on the spot. Who in the world wouldn’t love this dignified little lady?
“Grandma and Grandpa will be coming soon too.”
“Really?”
“Mm. They said they missed our Sol-bi too.”
That wasn’t a lie. His little uncle and aunt had taken care of Sol-bi too, just as they had once taken care of him. Sol-bi in particular had been under their care since she was very young, so the affection they felt for her was the kind that comes from raising a child yourself. Sometimes it had been a burden, yes, but Sol-bi had brought life back into the house. And when that little angel disappeared for a time, the silence was felt keenly.
When they’d called to ask after her, he’d invited them over.
“I redid the house and the shrine room.”
That was the excuse.
His little uncle and aunt didn’t particularly like shamanism. But they didn’t openly reject it either. They simply wanted Kang-to to have a more respectable profession.
So Kang-to wanted to show them the shrine room. That being a shaman wasn’t just about wearing colorful robes and shaking bells in a yard with a pig’s head laid out on a table.
“Then we should go.”
Still, the two of them were on Kang-to’s side. And with Sol-bi there too, they were willing to go on one more journey in their later years.
“The boat’s coming in.”
Sol-bi ran toward the ferry. Hong-seo and Tae-hee followed close behind. Scrambling after them was Dong-cheol, the six-year-old disabled boy.
Children are curious about everything. At the same time, they absorb everything. Kang-to wished he could have that pure, ravenous capacity for taking the world in. If it could help people find a path in the face of fate’s trials, then anything was good enough.
The first to disembark was a white foreign car, followed by a general-store truck. It belonged to a married couple who ran a traveling shop around the island communities without bridges to the mainland. From watermelons to electric kettles, they had everything. They even took orders and delivered them. It was the kind of pre-ordered parcel service where you could say, “Please bring me whatever,” and they’d have it next time they came around.
After that came the islanders’ own cars.
Foreign vehicles were extremely rare here. Once summer passed, the tourists dropped off sharply. So there weren’t many people getting off the boat at all.
A few family travelers and several members of a natural plant research club did disembark, and thanks to them the guesthouses managed to fill up fairly decently.
“......”
The baby medium Lady Gyeongsin had mentioned was nowhere to be seen.
What had gone wrong?
Maybe the baby medium had changed her mind. Kang-to had only been recommended by Lady Gyeongsin, and he was still a step behind in his spiritual apprenticeship compared to that other shaman.
Nothing to be done.
That was for the baby medium to decide.
“Dad.”
Sol-bi ran up with a huge lollipop in her mouth.
“Hong-seo’s grandma gave it t’me.”
The words came out a little slurred and sticky around the candy.
“Be careful. If you just gulp it down, your throat will hurt.”
“Dad, try some too.”
Sol-bi pulled the candy out with her fingers and held it out to Kang-to. It was the sort of gesture he absolutely could not refuse.
“Is it good?”
“Mm?”
“Don’t eat it all. It’s Sol-bi’s now.”
Again, Sol-bi held her finger-pinch up to his mouth. At times like this, it was a blessing that her mother wasn’t around; if she had been the sort to fuss, she’d have come down hard at once, denouncing it as unhygienic.
“Is that your daughter? She looks more like a little sister...”
A strange voice came from behind Kang-to’s shoulder.
“Who are you?”
Sol-bi’s instincts fired first.
When Kang-to turned around, he saw a woman unlike any he had expected.
“Hello. I’m the baby medium Lady Gyeongsin sent.”
Where had she come from?
A woman in a pure white dress code, so stylish and polished she could have put celebrities to shame, held out her white hand to Kang-to. There was even a faint peach-blossom blush along the side of her pale neck.