The Island Village Shaman Dad Is a Chaebol's Illegitimate Child... 26
“......”
They were utterly dumbfounded.
The expressions on the faces of the island’s key figures all froze that way, as if their souls had simply gone on strike.
“Manager Kim...”
That was what Choi Ijang said.
“Manager Kim?”
And so did Lee Eunnyeo, the women’s association president.
It was no different for Yunji’s mother and the owner of the guesthouse, who had come running out after hearing the thump of the helicopter. Whenever outsiders came to the island, the first people they looked for were the village chief or the head of the fishing cooperative. Choi Ijang, in particular, also served as the seniors’ association president, making him the island’s unofficial representative. And yet Chairman Cho had brushed right past him and gone straight to Kang-to.
And it wasn’t just a perfunctory greeting, either. He had been so deferential, so respectfully polite that anyone watching might have assumed Kang-to was the chairman and Cho the one working under him.
“What on earth did Kang-to do?”
As the women’s association president muttered to herself, a booming voice rose from behind the crowd.
“What do you mean, what did he do? He’s a man doing great things, so he recognized the spiritual power of our beopsa. You folks must be deaf in the eyes and blind in the ears if you’re still talking behind Beopsa Kang-to’s back!”
It was Grandma Hongseo. She seemed to have been on her way back from foraging on the tidal flats, because her rubber basin was piled high with clams and hard-shelled clams.
“Oh my, Beopsa Kang-to.”
She greeted them politely as she walked past, and though it was a familiar sight, it still drained the color from the village chief’s group.
“What the—he’s heading for the lighthouse?”
“Wow. Is that man here for a reading too?”
“No way. Why would a chaebol chairman everyone in Seoul knows need anything?”
“Then maybe those women following behind him... they all look like shamans.”
While the village chief’s crowd argued back and forth, Kang-to and Chairman Cho had already moved farther away.
“Wait a moment.”
The fishing cooperative head started toward the helicopter.
“Excuse me, captain.”
“......?”
“About Chairman Cho. What exactly is the purpose of his visit today?”
“I think he said he was bringing a gift to the lighthouse shrine.”
“What? A gift? He’s not here for the island development?”
“I was newly brought in through the public recruitment process this time, so I don’t really know the details.”
“......”
The fishing cooperative head’s thoughts only grew more tangled.
As far as he knew, Kang-to’s oracle had been a curse. Hadn’t he said the helicopter would fall? And in fact, it had crashed. And yet now they were saying the chairman had come to bring a gift.
Then that means this man believes Kang-to’s reading, too...
The cooperative head kept staring toward the lighthouse.
“Ah.”
Chairman Cho, who had climbed up to the lighthouse, kept exclaiming in admiration. It was the sweeping view from the top that delighted him, but that wasn’t all. Inside the lighthouse shrine, there was a sacred mystery that led souls toward comfort and solace.
“The atmosphere here is exactly like what a true shaman’s reading would feel like, isn’t it?”
“You flatter us. Please, sit.”
Kang-to invited him to take a seat. Gyeongsin Buin and Aegi Bosal were there as well.
“Weren’t you afraid of the helicopter?”
Kang-to asked. Chairman Cho had once been involved in a catastrophic helicopter crash. It was only natural that some trauma might remain.
“This time, Beopsa Kang-to didn’t give any oracle about a crash, did he? Besides, after the oracle came true and the mill land belonging to Baek Jung-geun’s father was returned, and the memorial rite was conducted properly, I wanted to come and confirm things for myself. And given our business, we do use helicopters fairly often...”
“I see. But how did the three of you end up coming together?”
“Aegi Bosal, you’re practically his spiritual daughter, so why don’t you tell him?”
“Oh my, is that how it is?”
Aegi Bosal Chaerin said, covering her mouth. Kang-to had peeled away the Heoju through a cleansing ritual. In practical terms, that did make him her spiritual father.
“Then our Kang-to has somehow ended up with two daughters, hasn’t he? Hmm-hmm...”
Gyeongsin Buin laughed.
“Then I’ll speak for us and tell you about the memorial rite we held at the Ube coal mine.”
With her lips badly blistered, Chaerin began her account.
“At first, I honestly couldn’t even imagine it. It was a graveyard of vengeful spirits far beyond anything I could handle. There were more than a hundred visible souls alone.”
Her voice still carried the aftertaste of fear.
Her body deity was none other than Dragon King Great Lord, a supreme being at level 7,000. Once you passed 5,000, divine power became inexhaustible, and no earthbound ghost could hope to challenge that authority.
But the vengeful spirits from the flooded mine were different. Nearly two hundred of them bore grudges that had been simmering for a lifetime and more. They had been dragged there against their will in the first place, then forced to endure brutal labor and constant danger deep in the mountain shafts.
They had never even received the wages they were promised. After every deduction for one excuse or another, a month’s pay barely amounted to a couple of packs of cigarettes and a few bowls of udon.
Their dream had been to return to Joseon.
They wanted only one thing: to cut down the collaborators who had forced them into the recruitment office with every kind of lie and oppression—the military police assistants, the constables, the village functionaries, all those stooges. That had been the dream of most of them: to sharpen a sickle all night, take off their heads, chew on raw liver, and die that way.
But even that dream was swallowed by the flood.
The mine was already a dangerous pit beneath the sea. Cave-ins happened all the time, but the mine owners never considered the lives of Joseon miners to be worth anything at all. The dangerous front-line work was always assigned to the Joseon laborers, and if they failed to meet quota, they weren’t even allowed to leave the pit.
Then an even greater nightmare crashed down on them. The mine’s largest tunnel collapse struck, and seawater came surging in.
-I’m going to kill them.
-I’ll kill them for sure.
-If I ever get out of here...
-I’ll cut down the bastard who sent me here by force.
Inch by inch, the seawater rose. In the terror of feeling their lifelines melt away one strand at a time, they all cried out.
Those grudges piled layer upon layer until they became vengeful spirits. Each one had been an individual once, but the resentment of so many ghosts gathered in one place was not something even Gyeongsin Buin’s seasoned experience or Aegi Bosal’s body deity could easily contain.
Human-wave tactics.
They worked in the world of the gods, too.
-Your enemies are already dead. This is a world more than a hundred years later.
At first, they tried to soothe the spirits. The ghosts would not listen.
-We waited so long, and now you want us to give up?
-If there are no enemies left, then we’ll wipe out their descendants instead.
Their hatred was so intense it seemed to pierce the sky; there was no room left for persuasion.
The memorial rite dream team had eight people in all.
Gyeongsin Buin and Aegi Bosal, plus two shamans and two musicians chosen by Gyeongsin Buin, and two assisting bosal who helped with the food offerings and everything that came after.
That was an extraordinary lineup in any era. With Aegi Bosal, who had received Dragon King Great Lord, among them, they went ahead with the rite.
The janggu and jing were played by the shamans, while the flute and haegeum were handled by the musicians. The vengeful spirits’ resistance reached its peak during the Doryeong-dolgi dance. Gyeongsin Buin’s feet wouldn’t move, and her sacred bell gave no sound at all.
That was when Aegi Bosal’s Dragon King Great Lord intervened. She summoned the dragon palace general spirits and began forcing back the murderous energies of the ghosts.
It seemed as if things might finally be moving forward, but that wasn’t the end of it. Once the Doryeong-dolgi dance was over, they had to tear the shiwangpo open. It was a process of splitting the cloth, smoothing the path to the afterlife so the wandering dead could be sent on their way.
“......?”
Gyeongsin Buin’s face turned deathly pale as she tore at the cloth. At the same moment, enormous ji-hwa paper decorations were ripped apart on their own. The vengeful spirits were rising in rebellion.
And then...
The air grew foul and heavy with death, and just when it seemed ready to surge...
Up came a mouthful of black blood. Gyeongsin Buin nearly collapsed, but thanks to the divine generals of Aegi Bosal, she forced herself back to her feet.
Only after two divine generals stood guard on Gyeongsin Buin’s left and right was the shiwangpo finally split. After surviving several more crises, she reached the thorn gate. There, Gyeongsin Buin folded white paper offerings and recited the prayer-song of blessing. But it still wasn’t over.
One of the dead the memorial rite was meant to honor was Baek Jung-geun, the spirit attached to Chairman Cho. His soul flew in and blocked Gyeongsin Buin’s hands, preventing her from folding the white paper for the deceased. With that, she became like a dolmen stone standing in place.
Again, Aegi Bosal’s dragon-palace divine generals were sent out. She poured all of her spiritual power into the struggle, so it became a battle of willpower to the very end.
In the end, the dragon-palace generals won. Once the head spirit, which had resisted so fiercely, was subdued, the paralysis in Gyeongsin Buin’s hands finally lifted.
-Hang in there.
Aegi Bosal’s earnest support flew toward her. The memorial rite had already begun; the ritual ground had become a world belonging only to shamans and the dead, where even the language of the living was no longer allowed.
-Don’t worry. I may look like this, but I’ve already stood before the Nine Heavens Maiden and the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord. Do you really think I’d lose to a bunch of water ghosts?
Gyeongsin Buin’s struggle was dazzling. It was the strength of experience, the force of long years. If she failed to get through this hurdle, not only the dream team but Chairman Cho himself could be struck dead on the spot.
Even as blood poured from her eyes, nose, and ears, she folded the souls of the drowned dead into white paper one by one. And at the very end, when her chest suddenly heaved, it was because she had been hit by the ghosts’ curse blast.
But.
Gyeongsin Buin smiled. The victory was already theirs.
And so the sending-off of the souls was finished. Gyeongsin Buin reached the final stage of the rite, completed the last prayer-song, and then collapsed in place. At the same moment, Aegi Bosal went down too. The tops of their garments were soaked through with the blood they had shed fighting the spirits, and red droplets ran down from them.
***
“My, oh my.”
Kang-to’s senses tightened all at once. He could picture it without even seeing it. The resentment of more than two hundred spirits drowned for over a hundred years. Without the oracle delivered through Dragon King Great Lord, stronger than the water ghosts themselves, this would have become a disaster even greater than the one they had managed to avert.
“You truly did something tremendous.”
“It was all thanks to you, Beopsa. Without you, it would have been something my Heoju could never have dared to touch. Gyeongsin Buin and I might have become the dead instead.”
“I felt the same,” the old lady said. “Even before the memorial rite had properly begun, the killing intent of those spirits was pouring toward us. But by my Aegi Bosal’s side, they couldn’t get near her at all. That’s when I thought, yes, this is it—she really is under Dragon King Great Lord’s protection—and pushed straight through.”
That was Gyeongsin Buin’s thought after Aegi Bosal had spoken.
“Still, when Gyeongsin Buin started spitting blood, I was scared too. I thought maybe this wasn’t going to work after all.”
“So did I, but how many ghosts were there? If you provoke them and then retreat... good heavens, just thinking about it...”
“I was watching from behind as well, and it was chilling. Even more terrifying than when the helicopter crashed, I’d say. Several of the attendants fainted.”
Chairman Cho joined the conversation.
“You made a tremendous decision, Chairman.”
“Our chairman... right after the memorial rite ended, he met with the head of the excavation group for the flooded mine and immediately promised 3 billion won to cover the digging costs.”
Aegi Bosal offered further explanation.
“You really did a huge thing.”
“Actually, in the meantime, I also filed to cancel my grandfather’s posthumous designation as an independence activist.”
“Ah...”
Kang-to let out a sigh. That was the turning point where Aegi Bosal had won. Because he had sincerely reflected on the sins of his ancestors, the ghosts’ resentment had begun to soften.
“After doing exactly what you said, Beopsa, I can’t believe how easy this feels. Things like ghosts and fate... I can’t really buy into that old line anymore.”
“If you hadn’t held that memorial rite, the other spirits would have gone on carrying their grudges for life and beyond. But now that they’ve been sent on, the foul air in society should clear too, and you may even be able to have a child. Between the memorial rite, the generous donation, and the request to withdraw the honoree designation, your merit has been building up.”
It wasn’t empty praise. Chairman Cho’s life battery really had changed that much.
— Merit Pool ▯▯/▯▯/▯⌻
The merit pool had changed. From fully drained, it now showed signs of recharging.
“In fact, my younger brother tried artificial insemination again this afternoon, and my sister-in-law was in surprisingly good condition. The doctors at the fertility clinic said it somehow felt promising this time, too.”
“You may suffer losses because of this incident, but you’ll need to keep building merit from here on. I’m sorry to say it, but you still haven’t come close to matching the sins of your ancestors.”
“That’s why I ordered an increase in our year-end donations for families in need. Life and death are separated by a sheet of paper. What good is having trillions of won after you’re dead?”
“It seems that as the spirits were sent on, the grime in Chairman Cho’s heart was washed away with them.”
“I also told Deputy Commissioner Woo at National Police Agency that there won’t be any more brutal murders, so he can relax. He didn’t believe me, of course, but he’ll understand in time.”
“You handled that well.”
“And this...”
Chairman Cho slid a bag forward. It was stuffed full of cash.
“This is the postpaid fee you mentioned back then.”
“You didn’t have to give this...”
“There’s a saying that if you don’t pay a fortune fee, the reading doesn’t work. So you have to accept it. That way I can keep asking you for help.”
“Ask for help?”
“Since it’s come to this, you’ll have to keep consulting me about my life.”
“......”
“You will, won’t you?”
“This is a fate I can’t exactly refuse. Go on then.”
“This time, it’s about Kwak Jae-seok, the head of the logistics complex we’re restructuring in Chilgok. He’s been on standby for reassignment because he keeps getting divorced and isn’t exactly having a smooth family life, but he does have a certain decisiveness, so it seems wasteful to throw him away... What do you think I should do?”
Chairman Cho took out a photo of an executive and laid it down.
“He’s been divorced a lot?”
Kang-to asked.
“Three times... He says he’ll never look at another woman again.”
“This man probably did pretty well in business after each divorce, though.”
“Wait a second. Divorces mean... ah, I see. That logistics complex was supposed to be the candidate site for our headquarters building, and I argued strongly that the headquarters should be moved to Seoul. Thanks to that, both the headquarters and the logistics complex ended up as optimal choices. The second time around, he came up with the integrated leisure card idea and made quite a splash, too.”
“Chairman. You were trying to turn our island into a new mixed-use leisure complex, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Will you keep pursuing that business?”
“I’ll have to start again on another island or somewhere along the coast.”
“Then put this man to good use.”
“Pardon?”
Chairman Cho’s eyes flew to Kang-to at the oracle.
“He has a poisonous fate called Gwakuksal, a bad star that makes married life go poorly. A man like that only comes into his own when he lives alone. He also has Goegangsal, so he’s excellent when it comes to decisiveness and judgment. Give him a goal, and he’ll bulldoze his way straight to success.”
“Ah...”
Chairman Cho slapped his knee. He was convinced by Kang-to’s oracle.
“We nearly lost a talented man there. Thank you.”
“Not at all.”
“One last thing, if you wouldn’t mind helping me with.”
“Go ahead.”
“The person who came down with us just now. The landscape architect.”
“The landscape architect?”
“On this island, I was blessed to meet a benefactor who showed me the path to a new life. I hear more and more people are coming to receive life consultations from him these days. So I’d like to improve the road leading to him, put up signboards and rest stops, and make the whole route more pleasant. Our landscape architect estimated it would cost about 1.2 billion won.”
“Could that perhaps be...”
“That’s right. You, Beopsa Kang-to.”
“No, my lighthouse shrine is perfectly fine as it is.”
“I’m not talking about renovating the shrine itself. I mean improving the path all the way from the dock to the lighthouse, including the pier, and making it beautiful like a garden.”
“Chairman.”
“Isn’t this also a good deed? So please, accept it...”
“Then please take this fortune fee back.”
“That’s one matter and this is another. Besides, you just gave me a new oracle, didn’t you?”
Chairman Cho was unwavering.
“If you insist...”
“It’s also an apology. For distrusting and belittling shamans out of nothing but prejudice, even though I knew nothing about them.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll gladly accept it. If you’re paving the pier and the approach road, that’ll be good for everyone who comes to the island as well.”
“Thank you.”
“Then may I treat everyone to lunch? As a way to comfort my aunt and Chaerin, too...”
“That should be my treat, but since you want it, Beopsa, I’ll follow your lead.”
Chairman Cho, who had only ever chased wealth, actually had a surprisingly affable side to him when seen this way.
“......?”
The fishing cooperative head, who had been lingering in front of the seafood restaurant, came hustling over as Kang-to, Chairman Cho, and the others came down.
“You’re having lunch?”
His bright expectation turned to ashes with Sol-bi’s single line.
“We made a reservation at Grandpa Song Seonjang’s place.”
“Come on in.”
Song Seonjang, who had been waiting, opened the seafood restaurant door for them. It didn’t take much imagination to know the fishing cooperative head’s brow had just crumpled hard. The place right next door was his own restaurant, after all.
“By the way, Sol-bi, could you call me ‘uncle’ instead of ‘grandpa’?”
Song Seonjang tried to sound cute at Sol-bi.
“But you are Grandpa, aren’t you? I saw you dyeing your hair white the other day.”
“Th-that’s...”
Hit by a perfect factual shot to the heart, Song Seonjang recoiled with a shudder. At least on this island, there was no one who could outtalk Sol-bi.
It was past one in the afternoon.
“Should I turn the TV off?”
After setting out the side dishes, Song Seonjang picked up the remote.
“Wait a second.”
Kang-to stopped him. A breaking news bulletin was on.