The Object of Faith
Clack. Shin Yo-sep set his coffee cup down on the table of his private villa.
Three cups in all. One was his own. The other two were for the people seated across from him on the sofa.
Sinking deep into the cushions, Shin Yo-sep raised his coffee to his lips and let his gaze drift to the woman trembling where she sat, then move on to the man beside her.
"Go on. Tell me."
"Yes, sir. It's just..."
One of his attendants. Early thirties, male, moderately built, with a rough-hewn face that belied a fairly respectable academic pedigree.
"I brought her out in a hurry. If you could take into account that the situation left me no choice..."
Shin Yo-sep gave a nod of understanding, and the man's mouth snapped shut. Then he clenched the fist resting on his knee and shot a pitying glance at the woman beside him.
"You can rest easy now."
The woman flinched, then managed a laborious nod, her face still shaking.
Shin Yo-sep let out a deep sigh, his face practically begging for a cigarette.
He had a rough idea of what had happened. A young woman, and not bad-looking, either. Someone his attendant had pulled out of a cult, scared out of her wits. Only one word rose to fill his head.
A tribute, then.
What made cults so vicious wasn't merely that they beguiled people and stripped them of their wealth. Sometimes they took bodies. Families. And from young women especially, there was so much they took.
"You're safe here."
Shin Yo-sep spoke in as gentle a voice as he could muster. He had completed the full course of priestly formation, and had even served as a priest. A deep resonance lay beneath his low voice, and the woman, who had been trembling, dropped her head as shame and fury came surging up through her.
"Hhk! Sob! Hnnngh—!"
Shin Yo-sep told the attendant to stay where he was, then fetched a reasonably thick blanket and draped it over the woman's shoulders. He brought tissues as well and set them before her, but she looked as though she lacked even the presence of mind to wipe her tears.
"What happened?"
The attendant answered with a troubled face. "It'll be exactly what you're thinking, sir. She was confined in a car. They were on their way back from somewhere."
Meaning she had already been made to endure something vile.
There was plenty Shin Yo-sep wanted to ask, but with the woman sitting right there he couldn't bring himself to voice any of it, and he swallowed the questions whole. Instead, he carefully turned over the least sensitive thing he could think of before finally speaking.
"Were there no others with her?"
The question was aimed at the attendant. But contrary to expectation, it was the woman who answered.
"...Th-there are."
Only then did Shin Yo-sep's and the attendant's gazes converge on her. She pulled a tissue, scrubbed fiercely at her face, and lifted her head.
Eyes like those were truly rare. Eyes steeped in venom, cursing every last thing in the world. The burst blood vessels from all her crying made them all the more chilling.
"There are... so many."
"Did they go to the Leader?"
The woman swallowed hard enough to be heard, then shook her head.
"Then... do you happen to know who it was?"
"The vice-leaders."
Shin Yo-sep ground his lips together and shifted his eyes to the attendant. The man seemed to share his thought; he was looking back at him with eyes gone cold and hard.
Vice-leaders. Those who stood beneath the Leader. It meant the hierarchy was firmly in place.
"N-no! Don't!"
The woman seized the attendant's wrist with a speed that chilled the blood. Then, staring up at him through bloodshot eyes, she twisted her lips into something between a snarl and a plea.
"Don't— don't do it. Don't. Don't."
"...I'm sorry—what?"
"Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't."
The attendant's bewildered eyes turned to Shin Yo-sep. But all Shin Yo-sep did was wait for the woman to calm.
"May I ask why?"
She exhaled as though her breath had been cut off, then gave a small shake of her head. "Th-they know my home address. My whole family's, every one of them. Even our phone numbers."
Shin Yo-sep barely managed to swallow a silent groan. It was hell — this moment, this room. And yet this kind of thing was common. Join a cult, and at some point every last detail of your personal information passes into their hands. Just as it had for this woman.
Despair spread through the attendant's eyes; the woman, by contrast, looked almost relieved.
Shin Yo-sep, who had clenched his fist hard enough for his nails to bite into his palm, forced a gentle smile onto his face.
"In return, stay somewhere safe. You're welcome to stay until your heart settles. It's a place you can trust."
"It's— it's not the police, is it?"
"No. It's an orphanage."
The woman bit down on her lower lip with a strangled "hhk," released the attendant's wrist, and covered her eyes once more.
Shin Yo-sep threw the attendant a look that said follow me and rose from his seat.
Click.
Door shut behind him, he faced the attendant and took out a cigarette, setting it between his lips. "Get the orphanage's address from Secretary Cho and escort her there."
"Yes, sir."
The attendant's lips moved soundlessly; then he sighed and bowed his head low. "I'm sorry, Executive Director."
Shin Yo-sep looked down at the crown of his head, clicked his tongue, and turned his gaze to the window. Then he lit the cigarette, cracked the window open, and exhaled the smoke outside.
"What is there to be sorry for?"
"But..."
Getting the woman out had been, without question, the right thing to do. And at the same time, it had created a problem. The operative they had covertly planted inside the order had bolted with a believer in tow — which meant no more intelligence could be mined from within. The cult's guard would be up now, too.
"It's fine. This isn't something that calls for an apology."
"Yes, sir..."
"Take her over as soon as she's settled. If she needs anything, just tell the nun there."
The attendant lifted a shamefaced face, the corners of his eyes sagging. "Then what should I do in the meantime?"
"For now, go keep the children at the orphanage company. Just don't get too attached. It hurts when you have to leave."
"...Yes, sir."
Cigarette clamped in his teeth, Shin Yo-sep shook his head as he walked down the corridor.
Beyond that door was a woman who had been through something unspeakable. And he knew her future. Knew exactly what she would go through. He didn't mean retaliation from the cult or anything of that sort — he meant something more fundamental, a wound almost impossible to outrun.
With a leaden expression, Shin Yo-sep drew hard on his cigarette, each footfall heavy on the corridor floor.
She'll wake to her own screaming every single day.
Memories she would give anything to escape would shadow her every step, and the knife called "wound" would flail wildly at everything around her. It would not be a short ordeal — the time it took to grow numb even to that knife's blade.
Thud! Before he knew what he was doing, Shin Yo-sep had driven his fist into the corridor wall. He exhaled through trembling lips, then bit down on the back of his hand to quell the trauma rising in him — but it wouldn't come easily. Just like the woman, Shin Yo-sep, too, carried memories he longed to run from.
This time, I cannot fail.
This was a possibility he had scraped together by the skin of his teeth. There was a demon he had to find, and only by taking that bastard down could he be freed from this nightmare — could he greet a morning that didn't open with screaming.
With a wet crunch, fresh blood welled from the back of his hand where his teeth had sunk deep. Only then, his mind settled if only a little, did Shin Yo-sep lower his hollow gaze from his hand.
This time is different from the past. Unlike before, I will not fail.
The senior priest his mistake had killed. And the shaman he had found to fill that empty place.
Walking the corridor on leaden steps, Shin Yo-sep took out his phone. He dialed Kang Hyeong-seok — the one man he could call his only hope — and clamped the cigarette between his bloodstained teeth.
Riiiing.
Kang Hyeong-seok answered the call from inside his car. He was still at the university, having just finished his meeting with Kim Jae-sik and gotten in the car to head back.
"Hello?"
(It's me. Where are you?)
"In the car."
(Quiet in there.)
The engine was off because his head wasn't clear enough to drive.
Kang Hyeong-seok took a sip of coffee and cast his gaze toward the building where Kim Jae-sik was.
It might not be a sokushinbutsu after all...
This was knowledge Kim Jae-sik had passed along. Sokushinbutsu, he'd said, was a method practiced in premodern Japan by the ascetics of Shugendō. Baekbaekgyo — a faith with its origins in Korea's Donghak movement — would have no reason to go out of its way to import a Japanese rite like that.
Then did they take it out of a whole-body Buddha?
There were records that in China, Buddha statues had been made with mummies enshrined inside. That was what a whole-body Buddha was. In 2015, a statue dating to the twelfth century was revealed to contain a mummy and confirmed as one. A real case of a Korean becoming a whole-body Buddha existed as well — Kim Gyo-gak, the firstborn son of King Seongdeok of Silla. But he, too, had achieved it in China, so calling it a Korean case felt like a stretch.
A sigh escaped him before he could stop it. His head was a tangled mess. Both sokushinbutsu and whole-body Buddha were unlikely possibilities — but if the conclusion landed on either one, it meant China or Japan was entangled as well. The scale of this was growing larger than he'd bargained for.
(Why the sigh?)
"It's nothing. Nothing at all."
Kang Hyeong-seok answered, smacking his lips bitterly, and a weary laugh came through the line.
(If this is a bad time, we can talk later.)
"No, go ahead. Tell me."
(I'd planted an operative, and he brought back one of the female believers. She went through something terrible — her mind's in a bad state.)
Kang Hyeong-seok let a sigh escape through clenched teeth.
(I can't see ghosts, but nothing strange has latched onto her, if that's what you're wondering. Still, I think we need to do something, and fast.)
Someone was suffering.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked down at the three dots stamped into his palm. The Sugye — the ordination marks his Momjusin had left on him, a command to walk the righteous path.
He clenched his fist and spoke in a low voice. "Just find us a way in."
(How far are you planning to take this?)
It was nothing like the cases he had resolved before. Living people were entangled. People were inflicting harm on people, and those who believed in something false were sowing calamity.
"We sever it completely. Make sure they can never operate again."
(Leave the legal side to me. Do you have a method in mind?)
It had to be cut off at the root — rendered incapable of functioning as a religion.
"What are the elements of a religion?"
(Faith, ritual, community, scripture, the believers...)
Mid-list, Shin Yo-sep suddenly fell silent — as if he had grasped what Kang Hyeong-seok was thinking, and how enormous it was.
(...The object of faith.)
Kang Hyeong-seok answered with a quiet "Yes," and a groan came through the line.
"It's definitely there. Destroy that, and it all ends."
If it was a simple cult, it would be the Leader. If not, then something a rung above that — a god, or a demon. Connected to what Shin Yo-sep had been searching for, and the very thing Kang Hyeong-seok had glimpsed in revelation.
A sokushinbutsu, or a whole-body Buddha.
Destroy it, and everything would be resolved.