The Winter Guest Who Came Home in Tears
Winter had come.
The island’s winter wind cut colder than the mainland’s, and yet this winter did not feel cold at all. First, there was the house. Thanks to Seong-gyu’s careful remodeling, the drafts were gone.
The second reason was the lighthouse shaman shrine.
No matter how well a shrine was built, it was useless if no one came. That was not the case with Kang-to’s lighthouse shrine.
Even on a brisk morning like this, people were gathering. Not all of them were there as clients. Along with the shrine’s growing reputation, posts introducing Chiluijae’s hidden beauty had begun to spread, and tourists looking for a modest kind of healing were slowly increasing as well.
“Will this be all right?”
Early that morning, as Kang-to came down after meditation, Assistant Manager Seo asked him about today’s bookings.
There were twenty-two in all. Assistant Manager Seo was seasoned enough to be pleased, yet still never forgot to look after Kang-to.
“I’m sure the body spirit will like it too.”
That was Kang-to’s answer.
Every shaman’s body spirit was different. Some body spirits would sulk or take offense and refuse to deliver a gongsu on certain days. Kang-to’s was not like that. Perhaps because it was high-level, there were no such variables.
“And it’s not just today...”
When she showed him the weekly reservation sheet, the whole week was booked solid.
“Then please work hard for me, Manager.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. This body of mine may not look it, but it’s a cast-iron barrel.”
“Thank you.”
“But the branch school principal is here...”
“The branch school principal?”
“Thanks to your gongsu, he got promoted to vice principal, right? He said he wanted to stop by and say hello before being appointed to a mainland school tomorrow.”
“I understand.”
“Dad.”
When he opened the living room door, Sol-bi came running out after entertaining the old aunt.
“Beopsa Kang-to.”
Kim Hak-jun rose to his feet with obvious delight from the sofa.
“You’re being promoted and appointed, I hear?”
“Yes, it seems that way. Life really does bring strange days.”
“You’ll make a splendid vice principal.”
“I wonder. These days, I’m not sure how parents will look at my philosophy of education... Still, I’ll do my best.”
“Is your mother going with you?”
“She says she’ll stay here. Since her friends are all here...”
“What about the school?”
“Fortunately, it’s not far. It’s twenty minutes from the mainland ferry terminal.”
“Then you can come every weekend.”
“That’s the plan. After all, when I retire, I’ll be coming back here anyway...”
“Your mother must be delighted.”
“Of course. I had to stop her from hanging a banner at the pier.”
“She had reason to. How many people become such a splendid vice principal?”
“Lately, Chiluijae’s foot traffic has really gone up. This is just my wish, but I’d love for the number of children moving in to increase too, so the island can become a proper elementary school again like it used to be. Then I might even be able to come back here.”
“For Sol-bi’s sake, too, I hope that happens.”
“For now, I’ve at least stopped the school from being shut down. I leaned on my friend in the district office and told him that there’s a skilled shaman here, so if they recklessly close the school, bad luck will follow.”
“That’s not quite the kind of shaman I am.”
Kang-to laughed.
“Still...”
The branch school principal stood. Kang-to walked him out.
“Teacher, come again.”
Sol-bi didn’t forget to say goodbye either. The branch school principal, a byword for strict education, had voiced his wish that the island’s school-age population would increase and that he might return in glory as a principal.
Breakfast was a kingdom of kimchi. That was thanks to the gimjang kimchi the old aunt had brought.
“Wow, as expected, your kimchi is the best, Auntie.”
Kang-to’s chopsticks never stopped moving.
Kimchi made with well-aged salted seafood whets the appetite to the point of frenzy. There was even a special dish: kimchi jjigae made with canned saury. The saury’s oil softened the kimchi’s sourness and brought out a clean, savory flavor. Anyone who hasn’t tried it simply wouldn’t know.
The kimchi in the stew had been torn by hand instead of cut with a knife. The long strands of kimchi that came away with each bite only sharpened the pleasure of it.
“Has our Sol-bi grown a lot?”
The old uncle offered his blessing.
“Don’t even ask. She bosses around the whole island.”
When Kang-to laughed,
“That’s because she likes being with Dad.”
Sol-bi shot back with confidence.
“Please give me another bowl of rice.”
When Kang-to held out his bowl,
“Me too.”
Sol-bi, the little copier, wasn’t about to let that pass.
“All right. You’ve got to eat well to grow up strong. Once sideways, once upward.”
Happy hormones surged through the old aunt’s brain. Eating well and running around happily was her idea of child-rearing.
“Sol-bi, you’ll help with the dishes, right?”
“Mhm.”
As Kang-to tied on an apron, Sol-bi rolled up her sleeves.
“Dishwashing, start.”
Standing on the base board, Sol-bi punched one small fist toward the sky.
“Give me a kiss.”
When Kang-to offered his cheek,
Smack.
With Sol-bi’s kiss, the dishes began. As fresh as the bowls themselves, Kang-to and Sol-bi showed off chemistry at max level. And so the door to the day opened.
“Take your guests.”
Kang-to, seated in the shrine, said to Assistant Manager Seo.
Tap, tap.
With the sound of footsteps, the first guest of the day entered.
She was the kind of woman whose soft, delicate manner triggered protective instincts at once. She was in her late fifties, but the jewelry draped over her body marked her as top-tier elite.
But.
She was not alone.
[Health Luck ▮▮▮▯▯]
[Wealth Luck ▮▮▮▮▮]
[Family Luck ▮▮▮▯▯]
[Career Luck ▮▮▮▮▮]
[Social Luck ▮▮▮▯▯]
Kang-to also read her fortune battery. Her wealth luck and career luck were outstanding. She had a heavenly noble star in her chart, but it was a heavenly noble for wealth. Someone like her would do well in the food industry or anything related to cooking.
When he looked deeper, the problems emerged.
[Health Luck ▮▮▮⌻▯]
[Family Luck ⌻⌻⌻▯▯]
Her health had worsened recently. Her family luck was even more serious, because the yin and yang formation had broken off halfway. That had become an ill fate, and its source was her dead husband.
“You came here carrying a ghost.”
After reading the destiny written in her forehead, Kang-to struck first.
“Oh, my goodness.”
The madam bowed her head at once.
“Because of that, your body aches all over, but no diagnosis comes back?”
“......”
At the second gongsu, the madam went blank. He had already found her troubles before she had even spoken, so she was left speechless.
“Well now, it was worth coming all the way out here. Your spiritual power is indeed remarkable.”
“You need to get rid of that ghost. Otherwise, you’ll only keep getting sicker.”
After finishing the gongsu, Kang-to changed his tone.
“It’s my mother-in-law, isn’t it?”
The madam’s face clouded over.
“She had a stroke, so we placed her in a care home, but it turns out she died harboring resentment toward me. Since last year she’s been appearing in my dreams and cursing me, and I’m just about at my breaking point.”
“Your mother-in-law?”
“It seems she’s become a vengeful spirit... Should I have a shamanic rite done?”
“The ghost I saw is a man.”
“What?”
The madam’s eyes jolted at Kang-to’s gongsu.
“Your husband passed away too, didn’t he? This summer?”
“Yes...”
“The nightmares started then, didn’t they?”
“Now that you mention it... But why my husband?”
“Did you and your husband get along well?”
“Of course. My husband was such a kind man. He was so devoted to me that he never once went to a hostess bar in his entire life.”
At the mention of her husband, the madam’s eyes were already welling with tears.
“Then why would he become a vengeful spirit?”
Kang-to pressed the issue, pretending not to know.
“I wonder. If this man became a ghost... he shouldn’t be a vengeful spirit, he should be my guardian angel. He loved me so much.”
Now she was even dabbing at her tears. Anyone watching would think she was the picture of devoted marital loyalty.
But.
It was a lie.
Maybe no one else could tell, but it did not work on Kang-to.
“Did you truly cherish and love your husband?”
He asked again.
“Of course. We were a famous love-match couple.”
The madam opened her husband’s photo.
It was a picture from a couple’s gathering, where she was clinging to her husband and planting kiss after kiss on his cheek to show off their affection. At that moment, the husband in the photo, who had been smiling awkwardly, seemed to have his brow crumple hard before a thunderous voice burst out.
“You say you loved me?”
“Mother of mercy.”
Shocked by the sudden turn, the madam nearly jumped out of her skin.
“That disgusting hypocrisy, that vain pretense of righteousness, hasn’t changed one bit, even in death.”
The husband in the photo walked out as a spirit. He was right in front of the madam’s nose.
“Uh, uh, uh...”
Her teeth chattered up and down.
“I ground my bones to dust for you my whole life. I told myself it was my fate, since it had been my choice, and endured it, but in the end you even kept me from seeing my own mother’s final moments.”
The husband’s spirit shuddered with rage.
At this rate, he might well choke his wife with terror. Kang-to took over the restraint. The guest was all lies, but he could not let her leave the shrine as a corpse.
“While you were dragging me along on business trips to Paris for the sake of your vanity, hypocrisy, and displays, my mother died with my photo in her arms. And even then, you made me delay the funeral because you said I had to finish the contract schedule for the new product.”
“Honey...”
“Shut up. My one wish in life was divorce, and I only got to grant it after I died. So now I am no longer your husband.”
“......”
“I wound up born into the fate of a man who startles at every little thing his wife does, and I endured the torment of a cruel woman like you, but now I’m free. Just like you did, I’ll return suffering to you, piece by piece.”
The moment the raging spirit grabbed the madam by the throat, Kang-to’s spell sent him back into the photograph.
“Ueuhhh.”
In the end, the madam rolled her eyes back and collapsed.
“Assistant Manager, please bring the madam a glass of water.”
At Kang-to’s words, Assistant Manager Seo fetched the water.
“Shall we hear your concern again?”
Kang-to’s voice was quiet and steady. Yet by then, his authority had already taken hold of the trembling madam’s will.
“......”
“If you don’t want to speak, you may leave. But if you lie, your husband’s spirit will come out again.”
“......”
The madam had been hit hard. That was why she could not continue.
Kang-to knew everything.
He had already heard the husband spirit’s complaint in advance. But he had been waiting to draw out the madam’s own reconciliation with the dead.
The husband spirit was a good man.
He was tall and had a gentle, reassuring face. A kind-hearted bachelor had met a wealthy, delicate woman, and his sense of loyalty had awakened along with his instinct to protect her.
In the end, he had gone from devoted husband to a man frightened of his wife. A man who startles when his wife coughs has already crossed that line. Part of it was that he had been born with a somewhat weak heart and lungs.
The wife, by nature, was sharp and cruel.
During courtship, she concealed it with her frail appearance and coy charm. After marriage, her true nature emerged. She used her fragile looks as a weapon and toyed with her husband like a plaything. He had to move only for her, and only according to her appetite and mood, so the husband, who had come in almost like a live-in son-in-law, found his place narrowing day by day. In the end, he became nothing more than a decorative object for his wife.
- Because I loved her.
- Because my wife was so delicate.
The husband had liked his wife, and so he endured it, thinking that way. But her tyranny grew worse with age. After her father died and her husband inherited the company, jealousy over his attention only added to the burden, and her tantrums reached their peak.
One day, his mother came up to visit. Even with his mother in the next room, the wife raged hysterically until the poor woman left in tears.
- This is wrong.
- Let’s get divorced.
Those bombshell words came from the mouth of the once-kind husband. The result was a police investigation into the husband. She had injured herself, then filed a false report claiming he had abused her and turned the situation upside down.
- Divorce is over my dead body.
The wife’s fixation only grew by a handspan more.
The husband’s mother was admitted to a care home. A stroke had struck her.
Even visiting her required the wife’s permission. At times she would say she was going instead, then block him and go off to have fun with her old classmates.
The trip to Paris was the same. It was necessary for work, but it was not so urgent that it could not wait. More to the point, he could not leave his critically ill mother behind.
- What matters more, your mother or me?
The wife scolded him with nonsense. And when her husband still hesitated, she laid out a sweetener.
- If you go to Paris this time, you can visit your mother whenever you want after you come back.
So the husband went to Paris. And while his mother held his photo to her chest, she slipped away toward death.
They buried that mother in blood tears.
What was even more vile was the wife’s behavior. When relatives or acquaintances came by, she would wail at the top of her lungs. She even collapsed from grief once, as though overwhelmed by sorrow.
It was all a show. The wife cared deeply about how others saw her. She wanted to remain in their eyes a devoted daughter-in-law and a good wife.
In the end, the husband developed a fury disease.
At the hospital, he was diagnosed with cancer. The long years of swallowed rage had become illness. One day, while he was waiting for the date of surgery, he died of sudden cardiac arrest in the company president’s office. On the desk lay a handwritten memo from his wife.
[For this year’s birthday party, reserve the S Hotel banquet hall and prepare the gift as the 3-carat yellow diamond necklace I saw in Paris last time.]
The madam had lived for the simple pleasure of controlling her husband while he was alive.
What decision would she make now?
Her decision was money.
“How much would it take?”
“Pardon?”
“Ten million won? My friends said that’s about the usual amount.”
“Madam.”
“How about thirty million? Would that do it?”
The moment she crossed the line,
“Hey now, how dare you try to buy this with money?”
Kang-to’s thunderous rebuke came crashing down.
“How dare I? Then what, are you asking for a hundred million?”
“Madam!”
“Fine. If a client says she’s willing to pay a large sum, you ought to be a little more obedient about it, shaman or not.”
With a snort, the madam got to her feet.
“Listen. Your husband’s spirit is bound up in resentment right now, so if you just walk out...”
“Resentment? Watch your mouth. Do you even know my husband?”
The madam shouted back from the doorway, then walked out of the lighthouse shrine as if to make a point.
“Beopsa Kang-to, the guest is asking for a refund of the reservation fee.”
Assistant Manager Seo came in.
“Give it back.”
Kang-to cut her off.
A person so arrogant that even reconciliation must be bought with pretense and money. For someone like that, there was no way to save her, even with Kang-to’s body spirit.
By the time the first ferry docked, he had finished six readings.
They left on that first ferry. Since the ferry ran twice a day, he had timed the divination to that schedule. Then he waited for the next guest.
“Beopsa Kang-to.”
Assistant Manager Seo came into the shrine.
“Not taking any guests?”
“The thing is... there’s been an accident.”
“An accident?”
“It’s the woman who came for the third reading, the one who caused a scene and left a while ago. When the mainland started to come into view, she slipped on the deck and fell into the sea. Nearby fishing boats helped pull her out, but she lost consciousness and was taken away by 119, apparently?”
“......”
“She wouldn’t listen when Beopsa Kang-to was telling her to take the good advice, tsk tsk.”
Assistant Manager Seo’s clicking tongue was swallowed by the sound of the distant waves.
She had thought herself clever, but she was foolish. Only after her behind caught on the wrong door and she fell did she realize it had been the door of opportunity.
The power of money.
She had believed in it, but there were countless things in this world that money could never accomplish.