Human Affairs Are Settled by Humans
Thud!
Still seated, Jo Myeong-suk scooted backward across the floor, her whole body trembling.
Jangle.
On the divination mat, her sacred shaman bells swayed all on their own, and the air itself seemed to be turning inside out.
All it had taken was one young male shaman—a mugyeok—walking through the door.
But the god he carried was simply too immense.
A war god, at that—a General Deity girded with a great blade.
It felt as though that blade would come down on her neck at any moment, and Jo Myeong-suk could not even manage a proper breath.
And then—
Swish.
The blue and red silk threads binding the mandarin duck tiles parted cleanly, as if to announce that no ghost wedding would ever be held here again.
"U-uh, uhhh..."
Crushed beneath the weight of the god, Jo Myeong-suk curled in on herself as though collapsing, and Shin Jeong-ah gestured to the frozen Ha-yoon to get up.
"Wh-what's wrong with her?"
"No idea."
Jeong-ah signaled that someone was inside the inner room as well, and Yoon-sang—gasping like a man about to suffocate—kept filming the shrine house's interior on his phone, having sworn up and down that none of it would ever be used for broadcast.
Step.
The moment Hyeong-seok set foot inside, Jo Myeong-suk flinched back, then flung herself desperately toward her notebook.
Zoom.
Yoon-sang's phone whirred as it zoomed in on its subject, capturing every last detail, and Hyeong-seok spoke.
"Is that the list of people used in the ghost weddings?"
"N-no, sir. It's not."
The honorifics spilled out on pure reflex; Jo Myeong-suk hugged the notebook to her chest and shook her head hard.
"No! No, it isn't!"
"I came here already knowing everything."
Hyeong-seok advanced on her, step by step. Jeong-ah pulled Ha-yoon's arm and drew her aside, and now nothing stood between Hyeong-seok and Jo Myeong-suk but the low divination mat.
"The bob-haired woman who took birth charts from the young women living around here. That is your daughter, is it not?"
He really did come knowing everything.
At the thought, Jo Myeong-suk looked up at the Momjusin standing behind Hyeong-seok and burst into tears.
"I'm sorry. I'm truly, truly sorry."
She threw herself flat against the floor, trembling so deeply it amounted to full prostration.
Hyeong-seok could feel his Momjusin's fury.
The wrath of a god is a fearsome thing—unlike humans, gods do not hold back.
"Aaah, ah!"
Her momju had fled its post. She was utterly alone now.
Ha-yoon, who understood none of what was happening, watched the woman with eyes that asked what on earth is wrong with her?, while Jeong-ah pointed at the inner room with tireless insistence.
The bob-haired woman is in there.
Reading her intent, Hyeong-seok glanced at the firmly sealed door, then shifted his gaze back to Jo Myeong-suk.
"You have committed a great sin, you and your daughter."
"I-I'm sorry."
"That notebook. Hand it over."
Hyeong-seok stretched out his hand, but Jo Myeong-suk only buried the notebook deeper against her chest.
"N-no, I can't. I won't. These are bonds whose marriage pacts have already been sealed. However great the god you serve, even such a one may not take this from me."
She was jabbering like a cornered beast.
Then it came.
"You are only making your sin larger."
It was a warning.
Mother and daughter had beyond question committed a great evil. Even Jo Myeong-suk's own momju had abandoned her long ago—as if it had been waiting for precisely this moment to arrive.
If that was how her own god behaved, what of the karmic debt left for Jo Myeong-suk to bear?
"No! You can't do this!"
The moment her cry tore out, half sob and half shriek—
BANG!
The door burst open and Lee Ju-hyeon came flying out.
"You crazy bastard! What the hell is this rampage?!"
Lee Ju-hyeon was nothing but a shaman's daughter, lacking even the spiritual eye—yet facing Hyeong-seok directly, the curses poured out of her without pause.
The sight drained Jo Myeong-suk's face white, and she screamed in desperation.
"Shut your mouth, you idiot!"
"Mom!"
Ju-hyeon's eyeballs rolled toward Hyeong-seok, gleaming.
"Who do you think you are, pulling this shit?! Did she send you? Huh? Did that brain-dead fucking retard send you?!"
As she heaped abuse upon Buyong without pause, Ha-yoon's gaze slid over to Jeong-ah.
We're dead.
Then she squeezed her eyes shut, as if to say it was already over.
Since their university days, Shin Jeong-ah had been infamous for her filthy temper.
And now that Jeong-ah's expression was beginning to change—the way it had back when she'd knocked a stalking senior's jaw out of alignment.
"You fucking—! Put the phone down!"
Having shrieked at Yoon-sang as well, Ju-hyeon jabbed a finger at him—and then it happened.
"She was crying."
Hyeong-seok said it quietly, and Ju-hyeon's venom-laced stare swung to him.
"So what? What the hell do I care if that bitch bawled her eyes out!"
Hyeong-seok's brow twitched. Ju-hyeon's lips twisted, and a monstrous smile spread across them.
"At the very worst, that girl had the Gosinsal stuck to her chart—the Solitary Spirit Star, a death star over marriage fate! Without me, she'd never have gotten married at all! And who's to say that boyfriend of hers who dropped dead didn't die because of her chart, too!"
Watching Ju-hyeon diligently pile sin upon sin with that viper's tongue, Hyeong-seok's eyes flared wide and fierce.
"What are you glaring at, huh?! Fuck off, you son of a bitch!"
Glaring dead into Hyeong-seok's eyes, Ju-hyeon fished her phone out of her pocket—and just as she cocked her arm to hurl it at him—
"Hey."
Jeong-ah said it, low. And the instant Ju-hyeon's gaze swung toward her—
WHAM!
Jeong-ah's front kick buried itself in Ju-hyeon's abdomen.
It happened with no gap at all for anyone to step in.
"Haah..."
Ha-yoon wore the face of well, the powder keg finally blew, while Yoon-sang whipped his camera away and clamped his thumb down hard over the microphone.
THUD!
Ju-hyeon flew the length of the room, slammed her back hard against the wall, and sat crumpled on the floor, staring up at Jeong-ah.
"Ughh... agh!"
It felt as if her organs had been torn loose, and she couldn't draw a single breath—yet her face registered more shock than pain.
Even so, she soon began hauling herself, hunched and tottering, toward the spot where the mandarin duck tiles and ritual implements were laid out.
"You... you f—ing...!"
Ju-hyeon's hand closed around the ritual sword among the implements, and Jo Myeong-suk screamed until her voice tore.
"JU-HYEONNN!"
At that, Jeong-ah hurled herself at the girl, her face transfigured by pure fury.
Smack! Clatter!
A sweeping blow to the arm sent the clumsily gripped sword spinning loose.
Crack!
Her knee drove into Ju-hyeon's belly. Whoosh—WHAM! She seized the doubled-over head and hip and hurled her sideways to the floor.
Then, like a snake constricting its prey, she wound her entire body around Ju-hyeon's arm and locked it down in an instant.
Crunch!
Ligaments stretched taut around the bent elbow with a wet, grating sound.
"AAAAAAAAGH!"
"Ju—Ju-hyeon! Ju-hyeon!"
Jo Myeong-suk snatched up the divination mat and was about to fling it at Jeong-ah when—
Grip!
Hyeong-seok caught her wrist and stopped her cold.
Even through all of it, the screams kept pouring out of Ju-hyeon.
"AAAAGH! Mom! Mommyyyy!"
"Manager!"
"Hey!"
The moment Hyeong-seok's roar split the room, Ha-yoon darted in and began wrenching at Jeong-ah.
"Let go—let go! That's enough!"
"AAAAAGH! AGH!"
"Hey! If you go one step further than this, even I can't do anything for you!"
Ha-yoon hammered on her arms until, at last, Jeong-ah released Ju-hyeon.
"Hhk! Hic... hhkk..."
Rising to her feet, Jeong-ah looked down at the girl sobbing and clutching her elbow, wearing the expression of someone who had just scraped something filthy off her shoe.
"Hhkk... hhhkkkk..."
"A-aaah..."
With Ju-hyeon spilling tears and moans and Jo Myeong-suk hollowed out in blank despair, the shrine house had become a scene of desolation past all bearing.
The air was suffocating, the feelings tangled—and yet there was not a thread of sympathy anywhere in it.
Because everyone present knew exactly what this mother and daughter had done.
Click.
Yoon-sang switched briefly from video to stills and snapped a shot of the divination mat lying upturned on the floor.
"E-even granting everything we've done—everything we've done—"
Clutching Ju-hyeon to her, Jo Myeong-suk flung venomous glares in every direction.
"This—this is too far! This is too faaar!"
"What was that?"
At that single word, delivered with a face as terrifying as the wrathful Vidyaraja of Buddhist scripture, mother and daughter flinched hard.
Then Ha-yoon's eyes met Hyeong-seok's.
Thanks to Ju-hyeon's utterly poisonous tongue, she now understood the full gravity of the situation.
"What do we do about this?"
"It's shaman business, so I doubt legal punishment will come easily."
At that, Ju-hyeon's eyes glinted.
"Oh? And might they be punished for something like a privacy violation or whatever it's called, Counselor?"
"I mean—you made the people who came in for their readings marry ghosts, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Outright marriage fraud won't hold up in court, of course, but a complaint can be drafted one way or another."
"...You truly think that's possible?"
Ha-yoon gave a grave nod.
"Shamans are people too."
Society is made of people. Shamans are people as well, and so they cannot slip free of society's rules and its laws.
Only the proving of it is difficult—but once it is proven, no one escapes the judgment of the law.
"This is a first for me too, so I'll have to dig for precedent—but I believe we can tie it together under fraud charges and the personal information protection statutes, among others. I'll help you every way I possibly can."
Ha-yoon's eyes were steady and upright.
She seemed sure of herself—so sure that the how of it already looked calculated down to the last step.
"I'll be counting on you."
"Hey, you! Did the footage come out all right?"
Yoon-sang, phone still in hand, jolted and nodded hard; Ha-yoon walked over and held out her palm.
"Let's have a look."
Then she skimmed quickly through everything Yoon-sang had captured.
The shaman's notebook, and the personal information written inside it. The filth Ju-hyeon had screamed. The ritual sword she had tried to swing at Jeong-ah.
All of it, material that could be put to use somehow.
"This is my card—could you send the files to the mail address here?"
"Uh—uh. Yes, ma'am."
Yoon-sang took the card, and his eyes went perfectly round.
When Hyeong-seok had addressed her as "Attorney," he had been only half convinced—but there it was, printed in black and white: Attorney at Law.
Divorce specialist?
The wording on Ha-yoon's business card struck him as profound indeed.
"Hoo."
Hyeong-seok exhaled a long breath and looked at the two figures lying still as corpses.
"Human affairs are brought to their end by human hands. Let us go bring ours to an end."
Jo Myeong-suk's head trembled, then sagged.
"M-Mom."
Ju-hyeon called to her in desperation, but Jo Myeong-suk only gulped at the air. She looked exactly like a condemned prisoner on the eve of execution.
"No, no. No..."
To the woman muttering into the floor, Hyeong-seok extended his hand and spoke in a low voice.
"It is already over."
"Hkk, hhhkkkk! Hhhkkkk!"
Beside the mother, roaring like a beast, Ju-hyeon glared up at Hyeong-seok with eyes steeped in dread and fury alike.
Hyeong-seok spoke to her as well.
"The karma will return to you exactly as it went out."
"HAAAAAAGH!"
Soused in terror, Jo Myeong-suk wrapped her arms around her head and collapsed; Hyeong-seok went on, watching Ju-hyeon.
"And yours is no light karma either."
Now Hyeong-seok would go and do what was his to do.
He would go to Cheong-geum, and all through the weekend he would repeat the gut rites.
The victims written in Jo Myeong-suk's notebook—he would untie, one by one, the souls bound to them by phantom wedding pacts.
"Suffer for the rest of your days."
Where would those souls go?
Where would the hatred of the woman's spirit, robbed of her husband, reach out to?
Upon whom would the man's spirit, bereft of his wife, lay the blame?
The hatred, both mother and daughter would receive together. But the weight of it—the young Ju-hyeon would be the one to carry.
The terror and the calamity that Buyong had endured—dozens, perhaps hundreds of karmic debts, and she would receive every one of them in full.
A ghost wedding, in its true form, is a rite that joins spirit to spirit.
Ju-hyeon's life, and her life after death, would be agony.
"No—no. Not my daughter. Please, not my daughter!"
Jo Myeong-suk flung herself at Hyeong-seok's ankle and clung.
He silently drew his foot free and spoke as though exhaling a sigh.
"You already know."
"A-aaah..."
"The people you preyed upon were someone's children, too."
As if an axe had come down across her neck, Jo Myeong-suk's mouth snapped shut.
Her eyes, on the other hand, flew wide open—and the look in them resembled a vengeful ghost that had lost all hope.
Perhaps that was why.
With a soft, sliding motion, Hyeong-seok picked up the notebook—and Jo Myeong-suk offered no obstruction at all.
Neither did Ju-hyeon.