The Tree Spirit’s Grudge
“You’re Beopsa Kang-to, right?”
As he entered the ferry terminal, a middle-aged woman came up to him.
“That’s right, though—”
“Hello! I’m on my way to see you for a reading.”
The woman’s face lit up.
“Ah, yes.”
“You’re even more handsome in person, aren’t you?”
“Thank you.”
“Over here, everyone—this is Beopsa Kang-to.”
She waved to a group of women drinking coffee nearby. That was all the encouragement they needed; people began swarming in from every direction.
“Beopsa Kang-to.”
They were all there to have their fortunes told.
“Could I ask for a photo?”
The women held up their phones.
“Of course.”
As soon as Kang-to agreed, the selfie frenzy began.
“Beopsa.”
Grandma Hongseo and Grandma Dongcheol pushed their way out of the crowd.
“Oh? You came back to the mainland?”
“Yep. Back from Seoul, are you?”
“Yes.”
“To get a reading?”
“Pardon? Yes.”
“See? I told you. Our Beopsa Kang-to...”
Grandma Hongseo took Kang-to’s hand. Ever since Hongseo’s father had emerged from the water, she had become wonderfully respectful toward him.
“Drink this.”
Grandma Dongcheol offered him coffee. That made four cups now, including the ones from the women. He accepted them, grateful for the old ladies’ thoughtfulness.
“What brings you out here to shop?”
“Grandma Dongcheol makes such fine samhaeju, you know? We used to brew it occasionally back in the day, but after she had that stroke, I forgot all about it. Now that the island’s full of tourists, I thought maybe we should make some and try selling it, so I came out to pick rice.”
“Samhaeju?”
“The drink that turns a person into a ghost, and a ghost into a person. With Beopsa Kang-to holding down the island, I figured it would suit the mood too.”
“Can tourists drink it too?”
“Of course. I’ve already been advertising it to these ladies here.”
Grandma Hongseo smiled brightly.
A drink that turned a person into a ghost, and a ghost into a person?
Maybe such a thing really did exist, though it sounded like a fanciful saying. Still, it didn’t seem to be said in vain. Either way, he hoped it would become one of the island’s signatures, along with the fish-shaped pastries.
“You all go on ahead first.”
He let the passengers board first. It was because of the waves. The moment Kang-to set off, the distant swells began to rush toward them. Sure enough—
“Oh dear.”
The woman he had spoken to first shrank back. Everyone else had already boarded, but she had ended up following close behind Kang-to.
“Hurry.”
There was no time to explain, so he ran with the woman. The far-off waves crashed against the ferry’s bow and died away.
“Thank you.”
When Kang-to brought her a towel, the woman thanked him warmly.
[Family Luck ▮▮▮▮▯]
Looking at the Fate Battery, he saw trouble brewing in her family. It had to do with her husband.
“Daddy.”
As the island came into view, Sol-bi’s voice rose to meet him. Dongcheol, Hongseo, Tae-hee, and Yun-ji were lined up in a neat little row.
“Daddy, this one’s for you.”
As soon as Kang-to stepped off, Sol-bi held out a fish-shaped pastry.
“Sol-bi kept it warm for you.”
Her cheerful chattering was fresher than a sparrow’s song. To Kang-to, she was the greatest vitamin on earth.
He took a bite of the pastry. Sol-bi had warmed it up, so there was no need to say it was better than any Michelin restaurant.
“Sol-bi’s gift—share it with your friends.”
“Waaah!”
When he handed over the gift box, Sol-bi’s dopamine practically underwent nuclear fission. Which, of course, meant betrayal on the spot. Sol-bi immediately fell in love with the gift box and forgot all about him.
“Hello!”
On the road up to the lighthouse, the booked clients out for a walk greeted him despite the chilly weather.
After stopping by Chiluijae, Kang-to began the readings right away and got through the appointments one by one. He knew too well how unbearable it was to wait.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“......?”
The second reading the next morning brought in the middle-aged woman from the ferry terminal the day before.
She gave a proper bow and sat down in front of Kang-to.
“You’re here because your husband’s sick, aren’t you?”
Kang-to spared her the trouble of explaining.
“Oh my.”
“I don’t think there’s anything else wrong. You’re healthy, and you don’t seem to have money troubles either.”
“That’s right.”
The woman smiled, her face pale and bright at once.
“Your husband used to be healthy too, I assume?”
“Yes. Since my daughter got married last year, he’s been growing weaker and weaker, and now he can hardly walk. The hospital can’t find anything wrong with him.”
Her story began to unfold. She was the sort of woman who had aged beautifully, with the elegant air of a magnolia in bloom.
“Do you happen to have a photo of your husband?”
“Here...”
She opened her phone and showed him.
“Take a handful of rice and hold it like this.”
“Like this?”
“Put it on the tray.”
Rustle.
As the woman set down the rice,
[Tree]
the grains formed a single word.
“Tree?”
The woman frowned.
“Was there a tree at home?”
“A tree...”
Her expression darkened.
“There was one, then?”
“Yes. This...”
She slid the screen over, and a juniper tree appeared. It had a refined, graceful beauty, much like its owner.
“You cut it down, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
As she answered, Kang-to let out a sigh.
“A tree spirit has attached itself to your husband.”
“A tree spirit?”
“Close your eyes for me.”
Ting-a-ring.
With the sound of the shaman’s bells, the resonance began.
Ting.
As the final chime faded, a silver-leaved magnolia came into view. In his childhood, the husband was planting the tree with his father. It had been to celebrate his son’s first day of elementary school.
“This is your tree. Take good care of it.”
The father laughed, ruffling his son’s hair.
The silver-leaved magnolia had some of its leaves shaded a silvery white. When the wind blew, they glittered like fish scales.
The son had always been close to trees. He excelled in biology and even chose arboriculture as his college major, becoming a tree doctor.
As he grew alongside the tree, it became a guardian tree. When he entered college, he prayed before it; when he went to the army, he prayed for a safe return.
It was the same when he fell in love with the woman before Kang-to.
—Help me win her heart.
The husband’s wish was earnest, and the tree answered it. It soaked his body in the rich scent of juniper, and the woman found that scent irresistible.
The two of them married. They got along so well that no child came. That wish, too, he made before the juniper tree.
—Let us have one beautiful daughter.
The husband’s prayers were sincere, so the juniper helped her become pregnant, easing the woman’s stress with its faint, soothing fragrance until conception was successful.
The tree spent its life as the husband’s guardian tree.
Whenever he had worries, he prayed before it, and whenever he was tired or worn down, he eased his stress in the scent of juniper. Rain or snow, whenever the owner wanted, the juniper tree gave itself freely, offering green comfort and all the fragrance it could spare.
The husband’s final prayer was for his daughter’s marriage. She had reached the proper age to wed.
—Help our daughter meet a good husband.
That wish, too, was granted. The daughter met a diligent, passionate accountant, and the wedding date was set without issue.
It was a Saturday morning under a crescent moon shaped like blue fingernails. The husband approached the juniper tree. Like a dog greeting its owner, the tree welcomed him with a wistful burst of fragrance.
Hmm.
The husband took a deep breath, savoring it. And then...
“Smells good. Still, it’d be a shame to cut it down...”
Grrr.
The electric saw in his hands began to spin.
Today, it wasn’t a prayer. Before the juniper tree had time to think of anything, it toppled. As the saw blade whirred, countless wishes scattered into the air. Knots burst apart in the saw’s wake—those were the husband’s prayers, carved into the wood by the tree itself.
Laid out in the yard, the juniper tree looked up at its owner. Not a trace of warmth remained in that face. If anything, it looked more indifferent than the blade itself.
The final prayer.
It had never asked for much.
If only he had prayed, I’m sorry, but I have to cut you down.
That one sentence would have been enough.
The branch of the fallen juniper tree trembled toward him. It was the tree’s last farewell after a lifetime spent as a guardian tree.
Clack, clack, clack.
The husband’s answer was nothing but the indifferent grind of the saw. In the end, the branches never reached him; they were cut apart and discarded.
The tree’s fragrance changed.
So that was it.
He had spent a lifetime blooming and scattering fragrance for you...
And what came back was...
The husband did not understand the tree’s heart.
Grrrr.
That was why the saw never stopped. It sheared off the smaller branches and cut through the trunk.
There was even a whistle to it. The husband had been planning a wedding gift for his daughter. She loved perfume, so he intended to make a perfume box and a cutting board from the juniper wood.
He had forgotten.
He had forgotten the juniper’s fragrance, purer and more chaste than any perfume in the world.
He had forgotten that it was thanks to the tree’s fulfilled prayers that their lives had reached this day.
“Ah!”
Just as the trunk was being cut, the saw bit into a knot and stopped spinning. The moment the switch was turned again, the knot flew out and struck the husband in the chest.
“......?”
The husband looked down at his chest. It didn’t hurt. Only the sticky sap clung there, thick and dark.
But it wasn’t ordinary sap. The eyes of the juniper tree had lodged inside it, and those eyes had turned into a look of long, bitter anguish.
That gaze.
The gaze that blamed him.
It remained on the husband’s chest like a bruise. No matter how hard he scrubbed, it would not come off.
The bruise turned into a faint stench. Day and night, it tormented his nose. The problem was that the stench afflicted only him.
“Ah.”
When the resonance ended, the woman staggered. It was because of the tree’s gaze. Even though she had seen it through the trance, it felt as if ice had formed between her ribs.
“That’s the source of your husband’s illness.”
“Good heavens...”
The woman shivered. The shivers deepened into fear that sank into her bones.
Above all, that gaze—the gaze of resentment transformed from something once so tender and familiar—would not leave her head.
“So it’s a tree ghost?”
“You could call it that.”
“What should we do?”
“Do you happen to have the tree’s seeds?”
“Seeds?”
“If you do, plant them beside the old spot and take back the perfume box and cutting board you made for your daughter, then burn them. If you plant the seeds with a heart of repentance, the juniper’s grudge should be eased. It grew into a guardian tree, after all, so it must still have affection left for its owner.”
“How do we make the repentance?”
“Plant the seed, then let three drops of blood fall onto the soil above it. It’s an act of sharing in the pain.”
“What about a talisman?”
“This isn’t something to handle with a talisman, so there’s no need to spend extra money on one.”
“Thank you.”
The woman bowed deeply and left the shrine room.
“Yun-ji?”
No sooner had she stepped out than Kang-to heard her calling her daughter on the phone.
The next client brought him a husband problem. It was a woman afflicted by Cheonggongsal.
“Honestly, nothing ever goes right for me. I open a shop and it goes under, my daughter graduates high school and runs away, and the man I just met this time seemed so sincere that I liked him, but then we ended up breaking up...”
Her complaints and sighs stirred Kang-to’s heart.
Cheonggongsal makes a person distrust everything. And the foundation of human relationships is trust. Without that, nothing in life could possibly go well.
“Why did you break up with your husband?”
“Well... he was just too good to me, and I kept thinking there had to be something wrong with him...”
“......”
It was because of Cheonggongsal. Even when she met someone she loved, she doubted the man’s motives and marched straight toward divorce. It was the same with everyone around her.
“Everything I say to you—am I telling the truth?”
“Of course, of course. From what I’ve heard, the woman who lied to you and slipped away got struck down by heaven and ended up in cardiac arrest...”
“You have Cheonggongsal. It’s the fate of distrusting others, so I’ll write you a dispelling talisman. Carry it with you, and after a year, replace it. If you approach everything with sincerity, this bad fate should fall away.”
“Sincerity?”
“It means not making up your mind on your own, but acknowledging that other people may be different from you, ma’am. If you keep opening your heart like that, the misfortune that’s been hanging over you will begin to clear.”
He finished the reading and wrote her a talisman to dispel the Cheonggongsal.
He had written it with great care, but a talisman was only a comfort. Nothing came before sincerity.
“Beopsa Kang-to, the client who just left wanted to see you for a moment.”
Manager Seo stepped in.
“Bring her in.”
When Kang-to agreed, the woman who had come about the juniper tree entered again.
“Beopsa.”
Her face was flushed with excitement, and that was a good sign.
“My daughter lives in an apartment pretty close to our house, so I asked her for help. She took the perfume box and cutting board my husband made, buried them in the yard, and told my father about the juniper seeds and...”
Her words came out in a rush.
In short, she had carried out the treatment Kang-to prescribed. The husband would have brushed it off if the woman had said it herself, but once the daughter came and begged him, he followed through.
“My husband’s a tree doctor, you see? He planted the seeds he’d been keeping, then pricked his finger with the lancet he uses for diabetes tests and let three drops of blood fall. And then...”
At last catching her breath, the woman poured out the rest in one go.
“The bruise on his chest disappeared, the stench went away, and the pain in his body got a lot better too.”
She bent so low in gratitude that her head seemed about to touch the floor.
“I think my husband’s done a lot of reflecting. He said he was a tree doctor in name only, but treated the guardian tree like a mere tool... He said all those years of studying were for nothing, and starting today, he’s going back to studying trees.”
The true source of the resentment had come to light. The husband’s sincerity had reached the spirit in the tree.
Even trees have souls.
If a person plants one in the yard, it becomes a companion tree. In that case, they must take responsibility for it to the very end.
And that juniper tree had given its heart completely to the owner who cherished it as a guardian tree. When that devotion was repaid with betrayal, the grudge took root.
“Next, please.”
With a lighter heart, Kang-to welcomed the next client.
But...
This one looked familiar. A top star who had come by yacht with his biological brother, Lee Hyung-wook. It was Yoo Jae-hee.