The Divine Message Behind the Axle-Worn Road
“What is it?”
“Well... please, take a look at this.”
The old woman took out a bundle she had wrapped in the skirt of her hanbok and laid it out before him. They were ornaments caked in dirt and green corrosion.
“It looks like nothing but mud and rust now, but these are gold rings, gold hairpins, and a gold head ornament.”
The old woman rubbed one of the rings against the front of her blouse. A faint gleam of gold emerged.
“I’m telling you, it’s real gold.”
As if to prove it, she even bit down on it for him to see.
“Ma’am.”
“Ever since you left, Beopsa, I finally managed to sleep in peace for once. My knees have been killing me—whether I slapped on a patch or took painkillers, nothing helped. It felt like someone was stabbing me with a knife and gouging me open from the inside, so I’d wake up dozens of times in a single night...”
“......”
“Then, whether it was a dream or reality, my husband and Jjanggu came to me, hand in hand.”
“......”
“My husband put a ring on my finger in the dream. The very ring he gave me when we got married.”
“......”
“It felt so real that I kept staring at my finger for ages... even after I woke up, I still felt like the ring was there. So I went to the place he showed me in the dream...”
“......”
“There’s a jujube tree in the backyard of that old inn over there. No one takes care of it anymore, so it’s been drying up and dying, but they told me to dig beneath it. Back then, when those swindling gamblers were cheating my husband and the islanders out of their money, they heard the police were coming and buried the jewelry there. After that, the gambling gang turned on one another, fighting among themselves until two of them died and the last one rotted in prison for the rest of his life.”
“......”
“At first I didn’t believe it, so I just went to sleep. But then my husband showed up again and said he wanted to leave me even one ring, so I should hurry over. That’s why I took a little clam-digging hoe and went out. I was afraid if I didn’t listen, he might come back and do something terrible to me again.”
“......”
“I dug where I was told, and then this...”
Tears spilled from the old woman’s eyes. What she held in her hands were her own wedding jewels. There were also pieces stolen from the house of a relative, and ornaments that had belonged to other islanders. It looked as though they had hidden the evidence the moment they heard the police were on their way.
“It seems your husband truly came to settle his resentment before passing on.”
That was what Kang-to said.
The old inn was scheduled to be demolished that very morning. He had heard they were going to tear down the surrounding area as well and build a warehouse there, which was why he had urged the old woman to hurry. If the excavator flattened the jujube tree, the jewels would be lost forever—or found by someone else.
“I thought I should tell you, Beopsa.”
“Give them here.”
Kang-to took the ornaments and washed them clean in water. Sure enough, they were gold rings, gold bracelets, and a gold hair ornament. He wiped the moisture away and handed them back to the old woman.
“These are yours, ma’am. Your son and your husband’s final gift to you.”
“Beopsa...”
“You said you’d paid off every debt after your husband died, didn’t you?”
“That’s true, but...”
“Then you don’t need to return them to their owner. Keep what’s yours, and sell the rest to use however you need.”
“Then I’ll give them all to you, Beopsa.”
“Pardon?”
“How could this be mine? It’s enough that my husband asked my forgiveness. And my leg’s healed too, so I can make a living catching clams in the tidal flats.”
“Then your husband will be upset.”
Kang-to brought the husband out as a shield.
“What?”
“Think about it. He left these behind for the woman he loved when he was settling his debt, so if someone else takes them, wouldn’t his vengeful spirit follow them instead?”
“Oh no, we can’t have that.”
“Exactly. So these are your share, ma’am. I’m already satisfied with the piggy bank.”
“Beopsa.”
“Your house is old too, isn’t it? Sell the gold and redecorate the walls, put in new flooring, replace the windows... You’ve suffered for so long because of your husband and son’s spirits, so now you ought to enjoy yourself a little.”
“Beopsa...”
“That inn is coming down today, and they’re going to build a warehouse. It seems your husband knew that and sent you there.”
Kang-to’s words were proven true almost immediately. As soon as the sun rose, the excavator rolled in to start work.
Crash.
It was an old inn, so the moment the bucket touched it, the building began to collapse. The jujube tree was old and worn out too. After the bucket scraped around its roots a few times, even the dry roots came up from the ground.
“Oh, this man really...”
Tears welled in the old woman’s eyes again.
To keep from seeing it, Kang-to gently pushed her back. She walked down the path lined with dangkeum trees, and her tired shoulders seemed to straighten for the first time in years.
Watching the excavator move with unstoppable force, Kang-to searched through the records. It was all something from long ago, but because it had been a murder case, newspapers had preserved it. Two gamblers had turned the place into a bloodbath, two men had died, and the surviving one had been sentenced to death. The year matched the old woman’s story exactly.
Human greed.
That was the tragedy it had wrought. The jewels had come back, but her husband never could.
“Dad’s going to the mainland.”
At breakfast, as he set the table, Kang-to spoke. Today the dish Sol-bi loved was butter-grilled surf clams. To her credit, Sol-bi had no seafood she disliked—starting with rockfish, and going all the way to live octopus and surf clams. She even slurped down seaweed like gim and maesaengi without a fuss. So he had also prepared a maesaengi tofu soup.
“Why?”
Sol-bi, who was busy eating a surf clam, sat bolt upright.
“You know the car that came from Seoul yesterday? The man who owns it said his father isn’t well, and he wants me to look into his fortune.”
It was work that took him away, but Kang-to still felt tense.
I’m going too.
If she burst into tears like that, there’d be nothing he could do. And yet he couldn’t exactly take her by the hand and drag her along either.
But then—
“Oh? Okay, then?”
Unlike what he had feared, Sol-bi’s answer was remarkably mature.
“When are you coming back?”
“Hmm... if I’m quick, tomorrow? At the latest, the day after.”
“Have a good trip.”
“......”
She said it so calmly that Kang-to was the one caught off guard.
“You’ll be okay without Dad?”
All at once, his heart shifted and he even felt a little hurt.
“My little great-aunt told me that if I came to the island to live with Dad, I shouldn’t get in the way of your work.”
“......?”
“So don’t worry about Sol-bi and just come back soon. Okay?”
“R-right.”
Well, I’ll be damned.
Now that he thought about it, Sol-bi was perfectly fine. The problem was entirely with him.
“Dad, I want one extra grilled rockfish.”
She held out her plate with a cheery little grin. There was plenty of rockfish to go around—Mr. Seo had brought up a whole bucketful from the pier.
“But, Dad.”
“Yeah?”
“If you happen to see Chae-rin unnie, tell her I miss her.”
“I’m not meeting Ms. Chae-rin.”
“If you happen to see her.”
Sol-bi seemed to like Chae-rin. Or maybe she just liked that Chae-rin was a woman around the same age as her mother?
Swoooosh.
The waves were as certain as ever.
Today, too, they recognized Kang-to. He had boarded only after everyone else was on, and yet the sea still struck the bow of the ferry as if to greet him.
“Dad, have a good trip.”
Sol-bi waved with both hands from beside Mr. Seo. He waved back and quickly stepped into the cabin, if only because of the waves.
“The Dragon King is acknowledging you.”
From the corner of the cabin, he remembered his mother’s words. It had been the first day he went to the mainland. The ordinarily docile waves had surged over the breakwater. Everyone else had startled and backed away, but his mother had not moved a single step.
“It’s the Dragon King’s hand. You can’t dodge that.”
It wasn’t only the sea. The meadow where Kang-to played always seemed greener than anywhere else, and the stars he looked up at always glittered more brightly than the others. This strange phenomenon had never frightened him once. Water, earth, and wind—all of it purified his spirit like a cleansing wash. The reason he had stayed in the corner of the cabin was out of consideration for the others; if Kang-to stood on deck, the waves only rose higher.
His first on-site divination.
For Kang-to himself, it was a historic day.
The younger brother of Chairman Cho did not get out of the sedan. He had been on the phone ever since they set off. The chairman’s elder brother, Cho Chul-woong. The fatal inauspicious sign still left him shivering. It was the first profound sorrow he had seen since awakening his spiritual sight.
- Chilgok Rice Mill.
- Chairman Cho’s grandfather’s house of merit, painted over by evil deeds.
- The spirit-message from the body guardian that traveled across generations.
Was that really the truth?
The helicopter.
Kang-to had been shocked that day too. But the oracle had been proven right almost at once. The massive helicopter had come crashing down. It was no accident. Until the sudden gust hit, the sea had been calm, and there had been no wave warning or storm advisory in sight.
That oracle was also confirmed by Grandma at Jjanggu’s house. The spirits of her husband and Jjanggu that Kang-to had sensed. They were not hallucinations, not fantasies spun from imagination.
As land came into view, a chill began to creep over Kang-to’s body. It was because he felt Chairman Cho drawing near.
The power of the body guardian.
Each time, it startled him, and each time, it made him even more curious.
The deep, unresolved resentment clinging to Chairman Cho—yet a life that seemed to bask in nothing but the most fortunate destiny imaginable. This was the place where those two extremes met.
What would happen to him?
Would he overcome this crisis and continue living a life of gold? Or would he meet ruin before the weight of that ancient resentment? His heart began to pound in anticipation of the oracle.
“Beopsa Kang-to.”
As the sedan headed for Seoul passed the massive Taebaek Construction billboard, Cho Su-hyuk finally spoke.
“I heard from the island that there have been shaman priests in your family for three generations?”
“That’s right.”
“You may have seen from my card, but I’m a doctor.”
“Yes.”
“Even as we came down here, and even now... I can’t help feeling something strange. Medicine and superstition simply can’t coexist.”
“It isn’t superstition. It’s shamanism. It’s on a different level from the folk superstitions people lump together under that word.”
“......”
“......”
For a moment, the air turned cold.
From the standpoint of a shaman’s pride, medicine was only one branch of the shaman’s world. But the world had changed. Kang-to had no intention of denying that.
“In any case... speaking as a doctor, I’d like to ask that you keep your meeting with my brother as brief as possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure you understand the reasons better than I do.”
“So it really is because of superstition?”
“We brought you because my brother wanted you here, but according to our diagnosis, this is more in the realm of post-traumatic stress or trauma. It’s not something that will be cured by a gut ritual or a talisman. I’m telling you this as a point of reference because there’s been a shaman hanging around ever since the accident.”
“I never said I was going to cure him with a gut ritual or talisman.”
“I understand. Still, please keep my request in mind.”
“To be frank, this isn’t only your brother’s issue.”
“What?”
“You, too, Doctor Cho, have probably suffered from nightmares many times.”
“Everyone has dreams, don’t they?”
“This is different. Those nightmares—you probably dreamed them around the same time as Chairman Cho.”
“What are you talki—”
Cho Su-hyuk, who had been bristling, froze mid-reaction. Now that he thought about it, it made sense. Their family had only two sons, so he and his elder brother had shared a room.
It had been right after their father died. Strangely enough, there were many days when he had the same dream as his brother.
Like brothers, after all.
That had been the interpretation of their deceased mother. Since dreams are the opposite of reality, she had taken it as a good omen. But his body had reacted differently, and after those nightmares, he would often feel drained for a while.
“Believe it or not, it doesn’t matter, but it seems Chairman Cho is currently being targeted by a vengeful spirit carrying deep resentment. The reason you’ve escaped it is probably because your mind is stronger. Vengeful spirits often can’t do much against humans with strong mental fortitude.”
“......?”
“But you aren’t completely free of it either, so I don’t think either of the brothers will have descendants. Chairman Cho has already suffered two miscarriages or stillbirths, and you’ve probably had one as well.”
Ghk.
At Kang-to’s words, Cho Su-hyuk’s brow twitched.
It was a direct hit.
The brothers had no descendants. Recently, both of them had even tried IVF side by side, but that too had produced no result.
What was even more shocking was Cho Su-hyuk’s own case. He, too, had once had a child. It had been with a woman he had dated during medical school. She had gotten pregnant after their first time together. They had fought bitterly over it, and in the end, their love had cracked under the strain, so they had secretly arranged for an abortion and broken up without their parents ever finding out.
After that, the woman had gone to Paris to study abroad and stayed there. It had become a secret, and now it was all being dragged into the light by Kang-to’s mouth. He was left speechless.
“If I’m wrong, you may stop the car here and let me out. I’m not going to Seoul to perform meaningless labor. I’m not some ornament meant to satisfy Doctor Cho’s preferences.”
Kang-to’s tone was firm. Gentle, yes, but with the force of a divine verdict behind it; it was enough to make the back of Cho Su-hyuk’s head tingle from the seat beside him.
The car did not stop. That, in itself, was proof that Kang-to’s oracle had not been wrong.
The sedan came to a halt in front of a massive hospital in Gangnam, Seoul. The moment they got out of the car, a fox rain began to drift down. It was not a good omen.
Clack.
As soon as they held the medical staff card to the reader, the door to the special room opened on its own.
“Nurse Kim, could you step out for a moment?”
With Cho Su-hyuk’s words, the attending nurse left the room.
“That’s my brother.”
Cho Su-hyuk pointed to the patient. By the window of the special room, which was flooded with sunlight, lay Cho Chul-woong. The place was so plush it was hard to tell whether it was a hotel suite or a hospital room.
“He’s in the middle of a nightmare. Wake him up.”
Kang-to spoke in that same authoritative voice from earlier, and Cho Su-hyuk found himself obeying without realizing it.
“Brother. It’s Su-hyuk.”
“Huhgh—”
As Cho Su-hyuk shook him, Chairman Cho jerked awake in horror. His face was pure terror, and the cold sweat streaming down his forehead looked pitiful.
“Were you dreaming?”
Cho Su-hyuk asked, wanting to confirm Kang-to’s words.
“Yes... that dream we kept having... the one that felt like I was suffocating to death in sheer terror...”
“......”
At his brother’s words, the hair on Cho Su-hyuk’s arms stood on end.
This shaman...
His gaze turned to Kang-to. Lee Kang-to, the young shaman who seemed both empty and yet full to the brim with something uncanny. Kang-to stepped forward toward Chairman Cho.
“As your brother said, I brought the island’s shaman...”
Cho Su-hyuk’s speech shifted from informal to respectful.
“Please wait outside, sir. Even if you hear a little noise, do not come in.”
Kang-to’s voice was so gentle it almost made one dizzy, yet within it lay an unshakable majesty. Cho Su-hyuk could not even breathe properly as he stepped out of the room.