A Fortune Worth Stealing
Cling.
Jo Myeong-suk picked up her shaman bells, and Lee Ha-yoon and Shin Jeong-ah seated themselves before her.
"Hello there. We'd like to have our saju read."
Jeong-ah spoke with an easy, breezy charm, all the while sizing the shaman up.
She had been to her share of shrine houses. Years in sales had taught her to read people, and she had read plenty. And having once been burned by a shrine she had trusted, she was long past the blind, unquestioning faith of her younger days.
Cling-clang-cling-clang!
Jeong-ah had been watching Jo Myeong-suk shake the sacred shaman bells in quick, flicking strokes when she felt a hand creeping over the back of hers.
It was Lee Ha-yoon's.
I'm scared. The ordinarily irrepressible Ha-yoon was being pressed flat by the atmosphere of her first-ever visit to a shrine.
Jeong-ah shot her a look that said enough with the theatrics — and at that very moment—
Clack.
Jo Myeong-suk set the shaman bells down.
"What do you two think you're doing?"
"I'm sorry?"
"You're no clients who came here just to have your fortunes read — so where'd you learn to play innocent like that!"
Ha-yoon flinched in fright, and Jeong-ah, too, was thrown off balance inside. But if she let the shaman's accusations sweep her along, they would walk out with nothing at all.
"Out!"
"N-no — why, all of a sudden—"
"I said out!"
Jeong-ah clamped her parched lips firmly shut — then, as though something had just struck her, slipped a hand into her pocket. Jo Myeong-suk's eyes narrowed to slits, and Ha-yoon, too, sent her a look that asked what's gotten into her? And in that instant—
"Could this be why?"
Jeong-ah drew out the talisman she carried with her at all times. The Seonsinsuhobu.
While Jo Myeong-suk's gaze stayed riveted to the talisman as though rooted in place, Jeong-ah pressed on.
"A very great shaman wrote this for me. Is this what's been bothering you?"
"...Who gave you that?"
"I'm afraid I never learned her name."
It was common enough to frequent a shrine without ever learning the shaman's name. Jo Myeong-suk nodded, her face conceding the point, and Jeong-ah tucked the talisman back into her pocket.
"How did you get here?"
"We took a taxi."
Jo Myeong-suk's eyebrows twitched savagely. But Jeong-ah stayed perfectly composed, carrying on her performance of a woman put out by a groundless misunderstanding.
"I've been telling you the whole time — we came to have our fortunes read."
"Hmmm."
Jo Myeong-suk stared hard at Jeong-ah for a long moment, then closed her eyes and nodded. Had the god dwelling within her offered even the smallest hint, how would she have taken Jeong-ah's words then?
"Date of birth?"
Jeong-ah recited the fake saju she had memorized.
"Strange. Are you sure this is your own chart?"
"Doubting me again?"
Jo Myeong-suk glared at her and wrinkled the bridge of her nose.
"Seems there's a shaman at your side."
"I showed you just now, didn't I? I've received talismans from other shrines as well."
"Tsk."
Jo Myeong-suk slowly turned the saju she had heard over in her mind once more, then carried on with the reading.
"You're comfortable enough. Your ancestors' merit will show itself now and then, and above all you'll draw great blessings from your parents."
"Oh yes?"
"What do your parents do?"
"They're both office workers."
"And well prepared for their old age, I take it?"
"Yes."
Jo Myeong-suk put a surprising degree of care into unraveling Jeong-ah's fake chart — her luck in bonds, her fortune in wealth, the seasons when her great luck cycles would turn, all the way through to the fortune of her old age.
"Phew."
Having finally wound the long, long reading to its close, Jo Myeong-suk gazed at Jeong-ah with a look of open regret. If only her saju had been just a little better... She could have married the girl off to a departed groom somehow, difficulties notwithstanding. But the chart was too ordinary; even given away as a ghost bride it would yield little profit, so she could never have commanded a steep price for it either. In vulgar terms, a chart that wouldn't even cover the labor costs — and so Jo Myeong-suk's interest drifted, quite naturally, to Lee Ha-yoon.
"And you?"
"Oh — yes."
"The year you were born, and the day and hour."
Playing the shrine-going novice to the hilt, Ha-yoon stammered out her fake saju.
In the meantime, Jeong-ah took her time surveying Jo Myeong-suk and the shrine's interior.
It did feel as though something might be here. But the shaman had shown no strong reaction to the fake saju. A perfectly ordinary response, nothing more. That was no guarantee she wasn't a shaman who sold other people's saju off to the dead, though.
Ordinary, then?
Just as Jeong-ah was on the point of laying her suspicion aside — nothing in particular had caught her eye — something unfamiliar snagged her gaze: in one corner of the room, along the right-hand wall from where Jo Myeong-suk sat, where ritual implements were kept in neat order.
A pair of mandarin ducks, carved from wood. The birds were famed for their lifelong devotion to their mates, and for that very reason they had long figured among the ornaments of traditional weddings as well.
Wedding goods, aren't they? Jeong-ah didn't know much about such things — but the red thread and the blue thread wound around each carving's beak marked them as articles used in a ghost marriage.
Gulp.
Jeong-ah swallowed drily and looked up at the ceiling without meaning to. A CCTV camera was mounted there — set at precisely the angle to capture the face of any client seated before the reading mat.
...We may have come to exactly the right place.
It was just as Jeong-ah cautiously turned her gaze back to Jo Myeong-suk—
"Oho!"
The corners of Jo Myeong-suk's mouth were climbing. A smile steeped in outright greed — far too much to wave off as imagination.
"A fine saju. Fine enough that you need never set foot in a shrine again."
"Oh — really?"
"The sort of chart some wretched shaman might snatch clean away if you're careless — so from today on, you don't go anywhere else. Not once."
"Wow... it's that good?"
Watching Jo Myeong-suk nod vigorously, Jeong-ah swallowed hard.
"What's more, your parents' luck is good, and your money luck with it. You must have had your share of grief over men — but you're married, yes?"
"No! I'm not even seeing anyone."
"Is that so?"
Jeong-ah was certain now — because she had seen the gleam that slithered through Jo Myeong-suk's eyes at the news that she was unmarried.
She withdrew her gaze from Jo Myeong-suk, who had no idea she was being watched, and took out her phone.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Then, making a show of jotting down notes on her reading, she began composing a message to Kang Hyeong-seok.
"Ah! Hyung-nim, slow down, would you?"
Yoon-sang braced his hands on both knees, heaving for air. This was the seam where the busy district gave way to the residential blocks — not all that far from Jo Myeong-suk's shrine.
"Hah — hahk! Hyung-nim, what on earth have you been doing all this time? Where does anyone get stamina like—"
"Hold on."
Kang Hyeong-seok pulled his phone from his pocket to check his messages. He read the one from Shin Jeong-ah, and a long breath left him, his chest swelling.
She found it. The location was in the message, too. At a full sprint — roughly five minutes.
They did say the Section Chief's own destiny ran along this road. Apparently there really was something to it. Remarkable. Truly.
He was thinking he ought to at least buy her a meal once this was over when Yoon-sang's ragged breathing broke in.
"Yoon-sang, just two favors."
"Hahk — hah — yes?"
"You've got a camera on you, don't you?"
This was not a matter to be settled with a ghost. It was a matter between human beings. Evidence might well need collecting — and in that department, nobody was more of a specialist than Yoon-sang.
With a swish of fabric, wheezing all the while, Yoon-sang drew the latest-model phone from inside his jacket, and from another pocket produced a professional-grade lens that attached to a phone's rear camera.
"Hahh — what for?"
"Get video recording going. And none of it goes on the stream."
"Yes. Hoo! Hooooooh."
Having been made to chase along at a punishing pace this entire way, Yoon-sang seemed barely able to gather his wits — which was why he couldn't even think to ask why.
So in the end, it comes down to human beings. These were the affairs that gave him the worst headaches. But precisely because such matters could be nailed down and severed at the root, evidence had to be left behind — no question.
They'd answer for it all — the karma, and every last shred of responsibility besides. So they could never dare such a thing again. So the harm they had done to their fellow human beings would be punished — certainly, and in full.
Kang Hyeong-seok looked over at Yoon-sang fiddling with his phone, and their eyes met square.
"What is it, Hyung-nim? What's the other favor?"
"We run."
"Huh?"
Kang Hyeong-seok waved him along and broke into a run for the address Jeong-ah had sent. Yoon-sang tore off after him, making sounds that might have been screams or simply the air leaving his lungs, and labored with all his might to keep up.
Cling, cling, cling. The shaman bells in his bag swung with every stride. Clink, clink — the Sinjangkal, too, repeated its thin metallic note each time his foot struck the ground, and it was as if those sounds themselves were speaking to him.
Hurry. Go and cut the spirit-thread — the very lifeline of the wicked.
Shin Jeong-ah let her gaze slide quietly around the room.
Beside her, Ha-yoon was still diligently trading words with Jo Myeong-suk over the fake saju. Which meant nothing she did drew notice — not a single one of her movements.
I need to find something else — anything else. The hunch was there, but the only hard evidence was the mandarin duck carving. She had told Kang Hyeong-seok to come, but until he arrived, her head was full of one resolve: dig up at least one more thing, something unmistakable.
"It would be ever so nice if you could write me one more talisman."
"Hm? A talisman? Aren't those expensive?"
"It's health-related — if you decide you don't need it, there's no call to have one."
"Um, then, about how much would—"
"Just show your sincerity. Just your sincerity."
Mid-conversation with Ha-yoon, Jo Myeong-suk lifted one knee and drew a notebook out from beneath her. Old and battered at a glance, its pages crammed with dense, cramped handwriting — suspicious, if anything.
Flip.
As Jo Myeong-suk turned the pages, Jeong-ah saw the saju entries packed tight across them.
...
Goosebumps rippled up her arms. So this really was the place.
Her mouth gone bone-dry, she turned her head without thinking, following a gaze she suddenly felt upon her — and her eyes met Lee Ju-hyeon's through the crack of the door. They were not an ordinary person's eyes. Pupils glistened with a greed so raw it seemed almost pure.
Clack! The door shut in a hurry. Jo Myeong-suk's mouth snapped closed mid-word — and the sound was more than enough to pull Ha-yoon's gaze away.
In the awkward silence that followed, Jeong-ah passed her gaze over to Jo Myeong-suk.
"Excuse me — just one question."
"Ask."
"Do you also do... things like ghost marriages?"
Jo Myeong-suk's eyebrows gave a twitch.
"What did you say?"
"You heard me. I asked whether you do ghost marriages too."
Where Jeong-ah's face stayed utterly blank, Jo Myeong-suk's contorted with displeasure. Even that look of hers was repulsive. All of it was false — behind the kindly front, a treacherous creature who trafficked in other people's saju; that was all Jeong-ah could see.
Her eyes hardened, and she went on in a low voice.
"Ajumma. You think it's fine, playing games with other people's saju?"
"Why, you—! Where did you—"
"Let's not do anything we'll regret — either of us."
Jeong-ah said it low enough that even Ha-yoon flinched, then checked her phone. On the screen, a message from Kang Hyeong-seok glowed: he would arrive any minute.
"Someone who can verify all of this will be here shortly. And if it turns out you really have been toying with the saju of other people's precious children—"
That debt will terrify you.
Jeong-ah never even got the rest of it out.
Bang! The door burst open, and Kang Hyeong-seok strode into the shrine — Yoon-sang trailing behind him, wearing the face of a man about to breathe his last.
"...What now."
Jo Myeong-suk's face clouded — then quickly slackened into something loose and easy.
"Ah — ahh."
The instant she laid eyes on Kang Hyeong-seok, she knew. A shaman. And one who carried a far greater god than all the countless shamans she had ever seen.
Jo Myeong-suk felt no pangs of conscience — but she knew, all the same, that she was committing a crime. And so, seeing Kang Hyeong-seok, her face drained bone-white, as though she had looked upon the Grim Reaper himself.