The Island Village Shaman Dad Is a Chaebol's Illegitimate Child... 15
“What brings you here for a reading?”
Section Manager Seo asked Granny Jinggu’s grandmother. Instead of answering, the old woman took out a wad of cash. In truth, it was Jinggu’s mother. But as the years passed, the title of “Mom” had changed into “Grandma.”
Rattle-rattle.
It was a whole bundle of coins. She must have smashed open a piggy bank.
“It should still be about fifty thousand won. Would that be enough?”
“......”
Section Manager Seo tried not to smile. Most of the coins were ten-won pieces. There were a few five-hundred-won coins mixed in, but no matter how remote this island village was, no one came to have their fortune told with loose change like this.
“Ma’am...”
“Let her in.”
From his seat, Kang-to gave the order. In old age, every last penny mattered. If she’d broken open the piggy bank she’d been saving all that time, then it had to be something important.
“The atmosphere is different from Mom’s shrine, isn’t it?”
Jinggu’s grandmother, limping as she came in, spent her time looking around the walls.
“The god I serve is different from your mother’s,” Kang-to replied.
“I see.”
The grandmother pulled the cushion closer and sat down. But she couldn’t lower herself onto it in one clean motion. Kang-to knew why. A lingering dead spirit had settled into her leg.
“I live alone, you know? I have to keep moving somehow just to make a living, but my leg...” She gave a weary sigh. “I’ve been to an orthopedic clinic on the mainland, got acupuncture, and even took all the painkillers the local clinic would give me... but it just won’t get better.”
Her complaint was painfully sad. Kang-to listened in silence.
“The hospital says it’s just old age and nothing serious, but I’m hurting like I’m dying... I was wondering if a shamanic rite might help...”
“Look at me,” Kang-to said.
The grandmother met his eyes, and along the center of her forehead, he began to see the battery of her fate.
Household fortune ▯▯▯▯▯
There was nothing else worth looking at.
Because her circumstances were poor, her fortune in wealth was drained, and her career luck was completely empty. Since the reading began with household fortune, it was clear she’d had awful luck with men. And when a woman had no luck with her husband, people said she’d have no luck with children either. That wasn’t always true, but it was true for this grandmother. She had one child, and the child was disabled.
“Ma’am.”
“Yes?”
“Please give me your hand.”
When Kang-to asked, Jinggu’s grandmother held out a hand that looked like tree bark. It was so rough it hardly seemed like a human hand at all.
Jing-jing-jing.
As the sound of the Chilseokgu rang out, the divine presence of his body deity began to fill the shrine.
Jing-jing-jing-jing-jing.
The ripple of the bells rose in an instant to a fierce vibration and took control of the space. Following that sound, Kang-to’s spiritual aura gathered densely, like sunlight glittering on water. When the aura rising from the five paths of his hands, feet, and head collected in his eyes, his spiritual sight and spiritual hearing finally opened, and Kang-to became attuned to his body deity.
Jingle.
Now the spirit bells rang all on their own. Even the air in the room held its breath.
[Show yourself.]
Kang-to’s voice had already become the authority standing in for the body deity. Even without sound, it was thunder; it carried the dignity of the world of wandering spirits, and so a gaunt, pale shape revealed itself. It was a Taejagwi—a child ghost who had died young.
[You little thing. Did you think I wouldn’t notice you hiding behind your son?]
When the reprimand struck again, another spirit took form. It stood behind the child Taejagwi, and it was the child’s father—more precisely, this grandmother’s husband.
There were two vengeful spirits.
But fortunately, their resentment wasn’t especially strong, and they were no more than common stray ghosts. In the face of Kang-to’s spiritual sight and hearing, they held their breath.
[I’ll listen to the grievances in your hearts.]
Jing-jing.
When the bells rang again, the stories of the spirits began to pass by in a line.
Thud-thud.
Aigoo, I’m dying.
After the sounds of blows came the cries of a bride on her wedding day. The husband’s spirit had once been a fisherman, and also a gambler. At the beginning of their marriage he had been a naive man, but he had fallen in love with gambling.
Whenever he got paid for work at sea, he would race straight to the gambling tables. In the old days, the port of Chilui Island had once been fairly bustling. Naturally, he’d been hooked by professional gamblers who had come on business trips to prey on the fishermen’s money.
They tested the waters a few times, then slowly let the game grow bigger. And once they’d cleaned up in one round, they stirred up his pride and provoked his stubbornness.
Fuming, the husband brought out the flimsy papers to a patch of land he owned and threw himself into battle. The result was disastrous. Every time, he made reckless choices. He borrowed money from everyone he knew, and then from anyone else he could find.
In the end, he even brought out his wife’s wedding jewelry. When she tried to stop him, he beat her like a dog. Once the first blow landed, the violence became part of everyday life.
There was the alluring gambling table before his eyes. Today, for some reason, it felt as though luck might finally be on his side...
Reality was zero in the pot.
So he vented his rage on his wife instead.
-Go to your parents’ house and borrow some money.
-I’m feeling lucky this time, so I can win it back.
-If I win, I’ll return it with interest. What’s the problem, you bitch?
-Can’t you do even that for your husband, who’s higher than the heavens?
Thud-thud.
With every sentence came another punch, and, of all things, she was pregnant. She received not love from her husband but beatings, and she could barely keep herself fed before giving birth to the child. That child was Jinggu.
They didn’t know anything was wrong until just before his first birthday. All they noticed was that the back of his head was a little protruding and that his speech came late.
The gambling husband died that winter. It started with the ornaments he’d secretly stolen from an uncle’s house. This time, he thought he might actually win. If he could just recover the principal, he swore he’d never go near the tables again. But those seasoned gamblers weren’t the sort to let him off easily. Before two hours had passed, he’d gone completely bust.
-Damn it, what the hell is wrong with everything today?
Having knocked back three bottles of soju as consolation from the gambling winnings, the husband eventually climbed the cliff and threw himself into the sea.
Even in death, his debts remained. The grandmother had carried infant Jinggu on her back while doing menial work at the harbor to pay them off. The island was small. Since the debt had been incurred there, she couldn’t simply run away. She’d grown up on this island and married onto it, so she couldn’t even think of fleeing to the mainland.
And then she learned something else. Jinggu was deeply strange.
The main symptom was an insatiable hunger.
All day long, he wanted food. Not only did he pick up and eat snacks, but if mainlanders tossed out food for the seagulls, he’d wade into the sea just to grab the crackers himself.
The grandmother, seeing this while doing rough labor at the dock, dragged Jinggu away and smacked his backside. Her heart ached so badly she thought she might go mad.
What her husband left behind was a mountain of debt and a disabled son. The grueling work at the dock was barely enough to cover the repayments, so she couldn’t even dream of taking Jinggu to a hospital on the mainland.
Then one day, Jinggu died.
It was two days after he came down with a high fever, vomited yellow fluid, and passed bloody stool. Since he was just a child’s body, they buried him in the hill behind the village. In those days, many people did it that way.
When she came down after building the stone grave, a sharp sting shot through her right knee. Her leg had hurt ever since then, and not a single day had been comfortable.
“Ma’am.”
After finishing the reading, Kang-to spoke.
“Yes?”
“Your son is still in your heart, isn’t he?”
“Of course. How could I ever forget that boy? I didn’t even have the money to take him to a doctor once...”
“That son is clinging to your right knee.”
“What?”
“I’ll call him out again, so speak with him. Then you should be able to get better.”
“All right.”
Jinggu’s grandmother steadied her breathing. In the meantime, Kang-to’s invocation came to an end.
Hwoooey.
Jing-jing-jing-jing-jing.
After a whistle-like sound from his lips, the ringing of the spirit bells echoed through heaven and earth. Then the whistle stopped, and a child’s voice came surging forward.
“I hate you, Mom.”
“.......?”
Jinggu’s grandmother couldn’t believe her eyes or ears.
The person in front of her was clearly Kang-to. But that side-eye... those trembling, pouty lips and the awkward little voice... they belonged to the young Jinggu she’d buried in her heart decades ago.
“Jinggu... is that you?”
“Who else would it be?”
“I’m sorry... I’m sorry...”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. You never liked me at all, did you? That cripple, I wish he’d just go die somewhere...” You sang that song every day.
“That was because... you were sick and there was nothing I could do for you...”
“You could’ve bought me crackers. Candy. Something.”
“You needed money for that too...”
“Why didn’t you have any money? You thought I didn’t know you’d been hiding money in your underskirt?”
“That was... money to pay off the debt your father left behind.”
“Liar. You wanted me to die sooner. That’s why you never bought me even one bag of snacks.”
“Jinggu.”
“That’s why I’m eating your knee. I’m going to eat it all up.”
The Taejagwi opened its mouth. It was Kang-to’s mouth.
That was enough.
“Hoo.”
He drew a breath and cleared the vibrations of the spirit realm. Kang-to returned to his original self.
“My goodness, Manshin.”
The grandmother bowed her head at once. She was overwhelmed by Kang-to’s miraculous power.
“No, please get up.”
“Oh, don’t say that. You’re so gifted... and I was so rude, calling you just Kang-to this and Kang-to that without knowing...”
“It’s fine, I’m telling you.”
Kang-to helped the grandmother sit properly.
“Was my oracle accurate?”
He was checking the facts. It wasn’t that he doubted the power of the Nine Heavens Maiden. Doubt springs from the human heart, not from the gods.
“Yes, yes. Even the voice whining for me to buy snacks... the pouty lips... all of it...”
“It seems your young son’s resentment remained lodged in his heart. That’s why he became a Taejagwi.”
“Oh dear. Then it wasn’t a dream?”
The grandmother pressed a hand to her chest.
“Did you see your son from time to time?”
“Whenever I woke from a dream in the middle of the night, he’d be pressing down on my knee.”
“He’d been sending signals for a long time, but since you couldn’t understand them, they grew more frequent and more intense.”
“Do I need a shamanic rite?”
“Calming a Taejagwi isn’t difficult, but there’s one more thing.”
“Another one?”
“Your late husband. Your son became a Taejagwi because of that man’s vengeful spirit.”
“That man?”
“Your husband also holds resentment toward you. Oddly enough, it seems to be because you wouldn’t help him with his gambling debt.”
“Well, that man... he told me to go borrow money from my sister’s family. If not that, then to go to my parents’ home on the mainland and bring back the house papers... When I wouldn’t do it, he ended up stealing ornaments from Uncle Chilri’s family...”
“You’ll need to resolve that spirit as well.”
“Then the rite will get bigger, won’t it?”
The grandmother seemed to lose heart. She’d seen many shamanic rites on the island. Some cost a few hundred thousand won, and others came close to ten million. With no money in hand, worry came first.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t perform rites myself.”
“Then...?”
“I’ll tell you what to do. Just follow it exactly. But until it’s all over, don’t tell anyone else.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’d be too embarrassed to say anything anyway.”
“Then listen. When the crescent moon rises later tonight...”
“I don’t need to follow you?”
As the island darkened like deep blue seawater, Section Manager Seo followed Kang-to out.
“You don’t need to worry.”
“Because you’re a body that serves the Nine Heavens Maiden, yes, but...”
“Please just keep an eye on Sol-bi for me.”
That was Kang-to’s request. Sometimes, when she woke from sleep, she would call for him. Beyond that, there was nothing to worry about.
Kiiiee.
From the nearby sea came the wailing of stray spirits. Thanks to Kang-to’s efforts, their numbers had dropped a great deal. Stray spirits are usually controlled in one of two ways: by the power of a god, or by force. So far, Kang-to had used the former. If a spirit that refused to obey the natural order harmed human beings, then only enforcement remained.
“Beopsa-nim.”
Jinggu’s grandmother was standing in front of the gate. She had a bundle in her hands, so it seemed she’d carried out what Kang-to had asked for. Together, the two of them climbed the low hill.
“Jinggu is buried here.”
Her speech was careful and respectful now. It was only natural after what she had experienced of Kang-to’s power.
“Take me to your husband’s grave, not your son’s.”
“What?”
“Your husband’s spirit is the first matter.”
Kang-to cut her off.
The grandmother’s steps stopped in front of a small grave. She laid out a sheet of white hanji paper, then took out a keepsake from the dead man’s life and set it down. Looking at Kang-to, she pulled out the bundle of coins and buried it in front of the grave. Then, when Kang-to rang the Chilseokgu, the shape of her husband gradually appeared.
Jing-jing-jing.
The vibration of the Chilseokgu silenced even the sound of insects in the grass. Like thunder, it cut everything cleanly away, and Kang-to stepped back. Then the husband’s spirit stood before the grandmother.
Was this reconciliation, or annihilation?
Ghosts do not die. They only follow the wheel of rebirth. But there were exceptions; if one was the supreme deity at level nine thousand, then annihilation was possible. That was Kang-to’s body deity. He would give them the chance for reconciliation, but if they resisted, he intended to have the Jeongsa Shinjang carry out their destruction.
“Dear.”
The grandmother’s eyes filled. In life, he had been a husband she had resented so deeply. While alive, he beat her; after death, he left behind a mountain of gambling debts. And yet, over the years, resentment had worn away. Now all that love and hate felt like a dream from a spring day that had lasted only an instant.
“So you’re giving me the money now?”
In the husband’s hand was a coin. It was what she had buried.
“Did you love money that much?”
“The day I shouted for you to borrow money, I dreamed of a pig. If I’d gone up against those guys that day, I would’ve won back everything I lost and quit for good.”
“Why did you get involved with Jinggu?”
“I needed money, and you had no affection for me, so what was I supposed to do? Jinggu had plenty of resentment toward you too, so I lured him in.”
“I spent all my time paying your debts, and I never once could buy Jinggu a proper meal. Only later did I learn he was mentally impaired, obsessed with food, eating whatever he picked up until he died of food poisoning. When Jinggu was passing bloody stool, I was crying tears of blood myself.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself either. With so little and so much money lost, I’d gone out of my mind. There was no way to turn back.”
“Enough. You’ve got your money now, so let Jinggu go and head somewhere peaceful.”
“All right. And let me say this now, while I can: I was sorry. For beating such a gentle woman so brutally... In your next life, don’t meet a man like me. Find someone good and stay together to the end.”
That was reconciliation.
From the husband’s spirit, the malicious feeling began to fade away. As the spirit retreated, it became a stream of pale blue smoke, unraveling its tail and rising up toward the sky.
“My goodness, for that man to actually say he was sorry... oh dear...”
Blood tears streamed from the grandmother’s eyes.
Jing-jing-jing.
The sound of the spirit bells brought her attention back. There was still one task left.
They returned to the son’s grave and showered it with rainbow-colored candy and snacks. Then the spirit clinging to the grandmother’s knee fell away. That was something only Kang-to’s spiritual sight could see. For the sake of reconciliation with her son, he deliberately stepped back and pretended not to notice.
“Eat your fill and go somewhere good. And next time, don’t be born into a family this wretchedly poor, just like your mother.”
Did Jinggu understand his grandmother’s blessing? Or was it because his father’s spirit had fallen away? Jinggu took the candy into his mouth and gradually faded, like mist dissolving over water.
“That should do it. Your husband and son have gone to good places, so let’s head down.”
Kang-to supported the grandmother as they descended.
“Hm?”
After walking partway down, the grandmother suddenly stopped and looked at him.
“Beopsa-nim.”
“Yes?”
“My leg... it doesn’t hurt. Not even a little.”
“Really?”
“Look. I can walk properly... even without a cane.”
“So you can.”
“Oh my, can someone really be this gifted?”
“Just live out the rest of your days in peace.”
Kang-to said this in front of her house. Since the Taejagwi had been removed, it was only natural that her knee had healed.
“Beopsa-nim, Beopsa-nim.”
The next dawn, Kang-to woke to the sound of knocking.
“Grandmother?”
When Kang-to opened the door, he nearly jumped out of his skin. It was the grandmother. Her legs were soaked with morning dew, and dirt covered her hands, clothes, and face.
What the hell? Wasn’t that reconciliation?
As Kang-to tensed, a devastatingly unexpected line burst out.