The Fake Fears the Real
It had been about two weeks since his run-in with Noh Soo-chul.
"I'm moving out."
With roughly five minutes of lunch break left, Shin Jeong-ah — who had run into him on the rooftop — blew the conversation wide open.
"Is that right? When?"
"Tomorrow."
It was abrupt in every possible sense. Kang Hyeong-seok's hand stopped with the coffee halfway to his mouth, and he gave her a look of pure disbelief.
"Your landlord's okay with that?"
Shin Jeong-ah took a long drag on her cigarette before answering.
"Whew! He said go ahead. Works out for the best, honestly. Living there had stopped feeling creepy and started feeling insulting — I couldn't have stayed another day."
She knitted her brows and exhaled the smoke in an irritated stream.
Two weeks. Two whole weeks. Long enough to find her feet at the job and settle into the company. And long enough, too, that the face hidden behind her mask could begin to show through without it striking anyone as strange. Sure enough, Jeong-ah was wearing her emotions more openly than before — yet she was prickly and sharp-edged in exactly the measure he had expected, and not a degree more.
"Moving is a chore like anything else, so I figured I'd just grit my teeth and stay put. But I can't. The second I step into that little room, everything comes back to me. How is anyone supposed to live like that?"
"It's a lot of hassle, though, moving."
"Oh! Don't you go worrying about me, Assistant Manager Kang. I've decided to use a moving company this time."
Shin Jeong-ah hastily tacked that on, a wary look on her face. She had snapped at Namgoong Min-ah and Lee Jin-pyeong at least once apiece — but with Kang Hyeong-seok, far from losing her temper, she seemed almost to walk on eggshells.
"Please, think nothing of it. If you tiptoe around me too carefully, it just makes things uncomfortable."
"Whew! Should I make things uncomfortable for you, then?"
The joking expression on her face pulled a short laugh out of him before he could stop it.
"One impossible boss is more than enough for a lifetime."
He meant Noh Soo-chul. Merely picturing that man's face was enough to make his skin crawl.
"I heard the gist of it. Look, I'm no doting guardian angel, but I can't be that bad, am I?"
Kang Hyeong-seok took a sip of the coffee he'd brought up in his tumbler and nodded. Someone like Shin Jeong-ah wasn't fit to be mentioned in the same breath as Noh Soo-chul. And though the thought had only just crossed his mind, he suspected that had he not helped her move at Executive Director Shin Chang-yong's behest, the two of them would not be where they were today.
"More importantly — did you find a place?"
"Yeah, my family's chipping in. I'm moving to Dongwoo Apartment."
"Dongwoo? Isn't that complex brand new?"
"I said my family's helping me out."
It had been a question about the cost, but the reply that came back might as well have been And what's it to you? Apparently Shin Jeong-ah came from money. Well, her uncle was Executive Director Shin Chang-yong, one of the company's founding members — and looks alone, she had always carried the air of a well-off family.
"Still, the moving costs come out of your own pocket, don't they? You've only lived there a few months — what a waste."
"Oh, that? The current landlord offered to cover it. I was just sounding him out, and he agreed without a fuss."
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded, the answer making perfect sense to him. This was a landlord who had concealed the fact that a man had been murdered in that apartment — who had even sealed away the victim's lingering spirit. And he knew full well that she was close with the very man who had guided that spirit to its rest, so of course he would grant whatever she asked.
"Well then — congratulations on the brand-new building."
"The more I think about it, the more that landlord gets on my nerves. I mean, what on earth is he thinking, pulling all that?"
"It'll all come back to him one way or another."
"You really think so?"
Jeong-ah shot him a look of bottled-up frustration, and the corner of Kang Hyeong-seok's mouth curled upward.
"At the very least, his health is going to pay for it."
"That's terrifying..."
"It is."
Neither the landlord nor the real estate agent was young. Health problems at that age are brutally unforgiving. They would not die of it — but they would carry the weight of it, a hard road all the way to the end of their days.
"And — I'm sorry, Assistant Manager Kang. You went to all that trouble helping me move, and I won't even get to live there long."
"It worked out in the end, didn't it? That's all that matters."
With apology and gratitude sharing her face, Shin Jeong-ah smiled awkwardly and took another drag on her cigarette.
"Whew! I hope everything keeps working out. Really, I do."
Then she dropped the butt into the ashtray and tossed out one last remark, casual as a passing breeze.
"This time, I won't be owing you anything, Assistant Manager Kang."
Vrrroooom.
The moment work ended, Kang Hyeong-seok punched a destination into his navigation — and it was not home. Lee Geum-kyeong's shrine.
Brrr-ring. Brrr-ring.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Cheong-geum. It's Kang Hyeong-seok."
"Ah! Young Master!"
She greeted him with naked surprise in her voice, and Kang Hyeong-seok, lips twitching upward, eased out of the company parking lot. It was quitting time. The road was packed bumper to bumper, and the traffic lights, as if they had been lying in wait, pinned the cars under red.
He flicked on his blinker to signal he was merging, then spoke with his eyes on his phone.
"Is the teacher home today?"
"No. She's gone away on business."
Business meaning a gut, most likely. But then why hadn't Cheong-geum gone with her? Hardly had the question bent his brow than her explanation followed.
"She's gone to see Professor Park Gi-yeol. She said she has a gut to prepare for."
"Ah, right — I suppose it is about that time."
There was such a thing as the Dragon King Gut. A ritual begging the Dragon King of the Four Seas to hold back the winds and grant safe passage to every boat and nets brimming with fish. It was a rite of life-and-death importance to fishing communities, kept alive today under the name of traditional culture — and Lee Geum-kyeong had taken part in it for decades.
"She'll be busy for a while, then."
"There'll be no busyness for me. It isn't a place where my presence would be suffered."
However much the gut now wore the costume of traditional culture, it was no ceremony performed for form's sake. The lives of boat crews hung upon it, and the deity receiving it was the Dragon King himself — a rite of tremendous scale. It was indeed too grand a stage for an apprentice like Cheong-geum to step onto.
"I see."
"So — what brings this call...?"
"Ah, it's nothing much."
The light changed just then, opening a gap in traffic, and Kang Hyeong-seok pulled out onto the main road and drove on at an easy pace.
"I was thinking I might ask for some counsel, actually."
"Counsel, you say?"
Kang Hyeong-seok let out a heavy sigh, then opened his mouth.
"I saw someone being dragged around by the nose by a fake shaman."
No answer came.
"Hello?"
The silence had him half-convinced the call had dropped. But then her voice returned, bitter enough that he could see her expression without even trying.
"The teacher left some words just before she stepped out."
"What did she say?"
"She said it was nearly time for you to start crossing paths with them, Young Master."
Kang Hyeong-seok's mouth closed on nothing to say.
As expected of my teacher. To leave behind words like that at precisely the right moment. Lee Geum-kyeong was, beyond any doubt, one of the few people alive who could truly be called a real mudang.
"Did she leave anything else?"
"She said that becoming entangled with fakes is simply something that happens."
"I see..."
"She also said not to hate them."
It was hard to believe such words had come from Lee Geum-kyeong. The moment Kang Hyeong-seok's brow pinched and his eyes darted, almost reflexively, to his phone, a level voice drifted out of the call screen reading Cheong-geum.
"The truly vicious fake shamans are fewer than you'd imagine, she says. And every one of them will pay in the end — so there is no need for you to pile up karma on their account, Young Master."
"...So that's what she meant."
"Yes. And the fake fears the real."
As darkness fears the light that will drive it out. As a single drop of water fears the wave that will swallow it whole. The fake shaman stands in dread of the true one.
"You are a real mudang, Young Master. It is they who will fear you — so why waste your heart on them?"
Do not waver. Trust yourself, and walk your road straight. That was the message running beneath Cheong-geum's words.
"Thank you. You know, I never imagined I'd end up getting help like this."
"Were you perhaps on your way here?"
"Honestly, that was the plan. But now that I've already taken all the help I needed, I wasn't sure dropping by would be welcome."
He might only be imposing on her for nothing — that was how it felt.
"It's Friday, isn't it? Come by."
"May I, really?"
"Yes. Your voice is heavy with worry. Come have a cup of tea before you go home."
"I'd hate to be a bother."
"A cup of tea is all I can offer you just now, Young Master — that is why."
He could guess what Cheong-geum was getting at. Which made it harder to keep refusing.
"Besides — the teacher keeps a separate list of her own making at the shrine. I'll have it ready, just in case."
The unspoken line being: come by, shake off that worry, and travel home light. Feeling all of it, Kang Hyeong-seok nodded as he answered.
"All right. It's rush hour, so I'll be a little late — I'll bring something that goes well with tea."
"Oh — no, no, you really don't have to."
"It would be awkward, being the only one receiving. If there's anything you'd like to eat, text it to me."
"No, that is—"
"It's not as if the teacher will be home anyway."
"Uh, um..."
He had said it half in jest, but it sent Cheong-geum into complete disarray.
"Is there any food in particular you'd like?"
"Um... yes."
"Name it. I'll pick it up."
"Well, then... chicken."
Kang Hyeong-seok barely strangled the laugh that had nearly burst out of him. At times she seemed every inch the proper disciple — and then he saw this side of her and thought, unmistakably, just a young woman after all.
"Any brand you prefer?"
"Oh — anything is fine."
"Understood. I'll be quick. See you shortly."
Hanging up, Kang Hyeong-seok settled deep against the seatback, the corner of his mouth still curled. As he let the car drift along with the flow of traffic, he glanced toward the sidewalk, where signboards of every color burned against the dark, lighting the street more lavishly than the stars overhead.
The same hour.
Arriving at the shrine tucked into the neon heart of the busy district, Shin Jeong-ah set down her bag and lowered herself onto the cushion.
"It's been a while, Master. I hope you've been well."
Fwap!
Thin eyes rose to meet her — the man sat wrapped in a shaman's robe of riotous color, its skirts fanned out around him like a spread deck.
"Aigoo. That is a heart full of worry."
"Something did happen."
"Let's have a look, then. Honored Child Spirit — show me true."
The young shaman took up his bell cluster and rattled it out with a bright, clashing ring. A strange feeling stirred in Shin Jeong-ah. This was a shrine she visited often, and she had watched this young male shaman shake his shaman's bells any number of times. At first it had genuinely frightened her. But having since watched Kang Hyeong-seok ring his own, the old dread simply refused to come.
"There's a Lee Dong-su clinging to you. Moving house, are you?"
Shin Jeong-ah marveled in silence and nodded.
"Yes. Something bad happened."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. Then you ought to have called me."
"Ah, well, that is..."
She began to explain what had happened at that apartment, then simply shook her head. Even to her own ears the story ran too long, and it had nothing to do with what she had come to ask today.
"I handled it through someone I know."
"Hah! And just who is this someone — a mudang or something?"
"Proba...bly?"
It was an answer meant to slide past the question. Instead the shaman's eyes snapped up sharp as blades, and a voice like cracked glass came spitting out.
"If they're a mudang, say mudang! What is this 'probably'! Do you even know what a mudang is?"
"I— I'm sorry?"
As Shin Jeong-ah blinked her big eyes in bewilderment, one corner of the man's mouth hooked upward.
"A mudang is one who overwhelms ghosts. A mudang is appointed by the gods themselves — where do you get off saying 'probably'? The nerve of it."
For an instant her temper surged, but she welded her mouth shut. She had heard it said often enough that showing your teeth at a shrine buys you nothing. Knowing full well there was no cure for the grudge of a spiteful shaman, she swallowed her anger as far down as it would go and spoke.
"I'd like a talisman, please. If you'd write me one."
It was right after that. The shaman's mouth clamped shut all at once, and for a long moment his thinned eyes simply studied her. Then one corner of his mouth curled up.
"You must have been through quite the wringer."
"Well... yes."
"I've told you time and again, haven't I? There is far too much flesh on your saju. A perfect fit for a ghost to nestle into."
Having heard it a dozen times before, Shin Jeong-ah only pressed her lips together and nodded.
"I'll write your talisman, all right. But if something happens again after this, steel yourself and hold a gut — a proper one. That's the only way you'll live."
"...Yes."
At her answer, heavy with a sigh, the shaman raised his brush, one corner of his mouth still crooked upward.
Shfft... shfft...
Then he dipped the brush in red ink and began to write the talisman.