The Serpent Behind the Mirror
The moment Kang Hyeong-seok got home and fell asleep, he felt himself being pulled down into something deep, body and all.
A familiar sensation. His head swam, and it felt as though he were being carried somewhere that was not reality.
'A divine summons...?'
Opening his eyes in a place that could have been dream or waking, Kang Hyeong-seok discovered that at some point he had come to be standing on his own two feet. A moment ago, he had been lying in bed. But now darkness pressed in from every side.
He rubbed his face, smoothed down his clothes, and drew a long, slow breath.
'So my Momjusin has called for me.'
It was something he had never known before, but the air of this place carried a faint ritual fragrance.
Boooom. A distant drumbeat rolled out, as if to guide him on — and so Kang Hyeong-seok set his feet toward it.
That was the nature of experience. At first, everything is strange and frightening enough to make you falter; once it grows familiar, it dulls into calm, into peace. Just as it was for Kang Hyeong-seok now, walking toward his Momjusin.
One footstep, then another, through a darkness where not even an inch ahead could be seen — and then he stopped short.
He still could not see a thing. And yet he pressed his palms together toward the dark, bowed his head, and spoke.
"Your disciple has come."
There was a presence here that even the deepest dark could not conceal. It was the energy of his Momjusin — the bond between them, something no darkness, however black as ink, could ever hope to hide.
"My disciple."
A low and dignified voice. It resonated through his entire body, and with his eyes closed, Kang Hyeong-seok opened his mouth.
"Speak Your will."
"There is a place you must go."
Kang Hyeong-seok felt his eyelids grow heavy. His Momjusin was granting him a revelation — one that, like the Sugye seared into his palm, told him to walk the path of what was right.
"Tell me. What must I do?"
"There is one who has mastered the sorcery of Wa."
At the unexpected words, Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes opened of their own accord.
"What do you—"
"He is one who would defy the Way of Heaven and warp the law of the skies. He means to scatter the order of nature itself — so you must stand in his way."
This was no ordinary revelation. It bore a different character from any that had ever come down to him before.
"...Whom do You speak of?"
"The one who hides behind the mirror."
The mirror? The word sent a great ripple through his chest.
Kang Hyeong-seok caught himself picturing a mirror, and himself gazing into it, and he spoke with heaviness.
"You speak of a mudang."
If he looked into a mirror, what would gaze back was Kang Hyeong-seok, vessel of the Momjusin. And one who hid behind that mirror would be a being who lived in the world wearing his same face, never once revealed to it. Which meant the person the Momjusin spoke of was a mudang.
"..."
Silence — which meant as good as a yes.
"Then tell me who he is."
"The serpent's fangs hold their venom. Bide your time."
It was the moment Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed his disappointment by sealing his lips into a hard line.
"Strike at the serpent's tail. When he comes for you with his crooked sorcery, sever that tail — cut it away and make it so the serpent draws its final breath."
Kang Hyeong-seok pressed his lips tighter still, then raised his head. And he gazed upon the Momjusin standing before him.
A black general wreathed in black mist, a great blade riding at his waist — through the seams of his scale armor, a blue light flickered faintly. This was his Momjusin, standing there before him.
"I understand."
Kang Hyeong-seok answered, his voice without a tremor as he met the deity's gaze.
"I know the grace You have shown me — that You watch over me, and that You protect me."
Raising his joined hands to the Momjusin with all his heart, he went on.
Perhaps the words his Momjusin had most longed to hear. The meaning behind the Sugye the deity had burned into his palm the day Kang Hyeong-seok first took up the sacred shaman bells — the one and only wish the Momjusin held. And at that declaration, at his promise to keep it, the deity moved.
The Momjusin's hand came to rest upon his shoulder. The Momjusin was a god, and a god had no body of flesh. And yet — perhaps because this space was not of reality — the warmth of the palm, its weight, its very shape, all of it reached his shoulder.
And so did the heart behind it.
"I will protect you. Always."
The meaning came not in words but straight into his chest, and Kang Hyeong-seok bowed his head deeper still.
That was when it happened.
Beep-beep-beeeep! The alarm he had set on his phone dragged his consciousness back to reality.
"Uuuuugh..."
He lay staring blankly at the ceiling for a good while before reaching out a hand to switch the alarm off.
'I don't want to go to work.'
The moment he registered that this was reality, the eternal lament of the office worker came flooding in. There was nothing to be done about it.
Still, with a little time left before he had to leave, he stayed lying in bed and fiddled with his phone. He was idly scrolling when he saw it.
"What's this...?"
A text message was waiting.
It was from Shin Yo-sep.
"No problem at all! Of course!"
The engine hummed beneath them. Inside the moving car, Kang Hyeong-seok smiled awkwardly at the speakers running through Bluetooth.
"Thank you for understanding, Department Head."
"Understanding? Please. I was half expecting Shinjin Construction to reach out one of these days anyway. This works out great!"
Just the fact that Shin Yo-sep had called them seemed to delight Kwak Young-ho.
"He didn't say what it was about. I'll report back as soon as the meeting's done."
"Manager Kang, it doesn't matter whether it's important or not. Really."
Kang Hyeong-seok raised an eyebrow, gazing at the name Kwak Young-ho, Department Head, lit up on his phone screen as the voice poured from the speaker.
"Sales is like that by nature. Big clients will call you out for personal favors sometimes — and somehow it all ends up leading to a contract in the end, you know?"
He wasn't wrong. Then again, it didn't always work out that way.
"It didn't with the pharmaceutical company, though, did it."
"Hey! That was—"
Kwak Young-ho's voice trailed off, apparently at a loss for words.
"Ah, come on. Executive Director Shin isn't that kind of man, though?"
"No, he isn't. That much is true."
Pressed strictly, theirs was not a relationship that could be explained in those terms. If Daejeong Mulsan's employee Kang Hyeong-seok needed Shinjin Construction's Shin Yo-sep, then exorcist priest Shin Yo-sep needed the mudang Kang Hyeong-seok in turn. Their connection was something close to symbiosis.
"Anyway, there's nothing urgent today, so take your time and have a nice long talk. And if you end up going anywhere afterward, let me know."
"Yes, I will."
"So, are you meeting at Shinjin Construction?"
That was not the plan. There had been the text exchange with Shin Yo-sep that morning — he'd replied asking what this was about so suddenly, and gotten back a message saying there was something important to discuss. But the meeting place was a cafe, not Shinjin Construction.
"No. A cafe, roughly the midpoint between us."
"Ah. So Executive Director Shin does think of such things."
Kang Hyeong-seok laughed and nodded.
"I'm nearly at the meeting spot. I'll call again once it's over."
"That's it, that's it — go get 'em! I'll handle your clock-in, so don't you worry about it!"
"Thank you, Department Head."
Call ended, Kang Hyeong-seok followed the navigation's directions and turned the wheel toward a nearby parking lot.
It was a well-known franchise cafe. A wide parking lot spread out front, along with a flower bed built from cement — missing, oddly enough, the one thing a flower bed actually required: plants. Stolen, or fried by cigarette ash. The reason was plain enough without asking, and Kang Hyeong-seok pulled a wry, complicated face.
The engine coughed and went quiet. He picked up his phone, looking at Shin Yo-sep's car parked at one edge of the lot. He was just about to call and say he'd arrived when—
"No need to call."
Kang Hyeong-seok turned his head to find Shin Yo-sep burning through a cigarette.
"When did you get here?"
"Just now."
Shin Yo-sep exhaled smoke like a sigh and tipped his chin toward his own car.
"You want to talk at the cafe, or inside?"
"What's this about?"
"I'd rather be in the car."
Which meant this wasn't a conversation meant for outside ears.
"Wait in the car, then. I'll grab us a coffee."
"Already bought. Just get in."
The two of them climbed into the car Shin Yo-sep had indicated, and he handed over a coffee from the drink holder before pulling a file from the driver's side door.
"There's something I need you to take care of."
Kang Hyeong-seok peeled the plastic sleeve off his straw and turned his eyes to him.
"What is it?"
"A trade proposal landed on us recently. Out of nowhere. One of our executives is pushing it — a man who's on bad terms with me."
Office politics, then?
Kang Hyeong-seok took a sip of his iced coffee and opened the folder, drawing out the papers inside. Even as he did, Shin Yo-sep kept the explanation coming, eyes fixed out the window.
"Something about it itches. It's clean on the surface — and that's exactly what makes it suspicious. I need to know what's actually inside before I can move."
"Like the queen handing Snow White a poisoned apple?"
It was a question tossed out on impulse, but it seemed to land true. Shin Yo-sep's head dipped in a slow, heavy nod.
"You've got your own burdens."
"Well. That's the lot of every Snow White."
Whatever was weighing on him, it sat heavy enough that his gaze never once dropped from the window. Even the wealthy, it seemed, had their own troubles to bear. Thinking as much, Kang Hyeong-seok flipped through the pages, reading them through.
"A factory?"
"To be precise, one under construction right now. The man running it has been in and out of this business or that for years, and his background is clean."
"Hmm."
He could follow that much. What he couldn't see was why this, of all things, required Kang Hyeong-seok specifically. The documents offered no answer. What sort of factory it was, where it stood, what materials would go into it, the projected annual output — nothing in the pages but facts like those.
"So why do you need me?"
"There's a rumor."
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at him, brow furrowed, and Shin Yo-sep finally drew his eyes back from the window and lifted his own coffee from the holder.
"I need you to find out if it's true."
"What rumor?"
"That he's mixed up with a Japanese sorcerer."
Kang Hyeong-seok ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek. The revelation he'd received from his Momjusin just that morning had surfaced without warning.
'There is one who has mastered the sorcery of Wa. Of Japan — that is what You said.'
A serpent. The one hidden behind the mirror. Perhaps the one the deity spoke of and the one Shin Yo-sep was talking about were one and the same.
"Give me the details. It's definitely a Japanese sorcerer?"
"I'm sure of it. That's what makes it strange. Holding a ritual before you break ground on a factory — that's common enough. But Japanese sorcery is another animal entirely."
"That it is."
Even Kang Hyeong-seok, who had lived a far more spirit-steeped life than the average person, had never once heard of such a thing. A Korean factory, and Japanese sorcery.
"Just confirm whether the place is suspicious, like the rumor says, or whether it's nothing at all. I'll handle everything after that."
This business was tangled up with Shin Yo-sep. A piece of corporate infighting — and if someone truly meant to fasten a suspicious character onto him, the fallout could very well splash onto Kang Hyeong-seok as well. He understood. That much, he understood.
"But why me?"
Shin Yo-sep watched him over the rim of his coffee, one eyebrow cocked, as Kang Hyeong-seok went on.
"Couldn't you just hire someone for this? Or look into it yourself."
"Unfortunately, I can count the people I trust on one hand. And if this goes wrong, it's my throat that gets torn out."
Shin Yo-sep was the son of Shinjin Construction's chairman. At a small or mid-sized firm, that would mean little. But Shinjin was a proper conglomerate, and in places like that, power struggles were a matter of course — and they spared no one.
"Apparently some people took offense at the recent deal with Daejeong Mulsan. These bastards might be trying to tie me to something dirty and manufacture a weakness while they're at it."
Shin Yo-sep set his coffee back in the holder and took out a cigarette, setting it between his lips.
"Besides, this kind of thing is your specialty."
A mudang. Someone capable of driving out ghosts. And on top of that, someone who had earned Shin Yo-sep's trust. The only man alive who satisfied every one of those impossible conditions was Kang Hyeong-seok.
"Phew—"
"I know. I know I've got no shame asking this of you. In return, I'll make sure the compensation leaves nothing to complain about."
"If you've dug anything up separately, tell me now."
As Kang Hyeong-seok slid the papers back into the folder, Shin Yo-sep — lighter hovering at the tip of his cigarette — paused for a beat. Then he lit it and spoke.
"Quite a few of the employees who worked with him claim they've seen a Japanese yokai."
Shin Yo-sep searched for something on his phone and held it out to show him.
"This."
Kang Hyeong-seok sucked in his lips as he studied the photo. It definitely didn't look like any Korean yokai or ghost he knew of — the art style, like something lifted straight from an old Japanese folktale painting, only made that feeling stronger.
"The name's Rokurokubi, apparently."
At the name Shin Yo-sep gave him, Kang Hyeong-seok nodded, heavy and slow.