Blessing Money
Kwaak!
With the paksu's whole body quaking before him, Kang Hyeong-seok locked his arms around Shin Jeong-ah all the more tightly.
"I-I'm sorry! Truly, I am so sorry!"
They say a person only comes to their senses after a beating. It was a saying Kang Hyeong-seok had never liked, but this godforsaken paksu was proving it true with every fiber of his body.
Hah! Hah!
Thanks to that, Shin Jeong-ah's anger had cooled a few degrees; she contented herself with ragged breathing and made no move to lunge at him again.
"Let it go. You've hit him plenty already. Let it go."
At his coaxing, Shin Jeong-ah let more of the strength drain out of her and ground her teeth. That didn't mean he could relax. There was a murderous glint banked in her eyes, one that could detonate at any moment.
"You. Is that it? Nothing else you want to say?"
Hoping to mediate, Kang Hyeong-seok threw the words at the paksu, who shot him a look of gratitude worthy of a man discovering Buddha in hell and pressed his forehead flush against the floor.
"I-I made a truly grave mistake. No — I committed a sin. You're never, ever supposed to do that to a client..."
Kang Hyeong-seok turned his gaze to Shin Jeong-ah.
"...Fine. I said fine."
Her eyes met his; Shin Jeong-ah answered in a sunken voice and swept a hand through her disheveled hair. Only then did Kang Hyeong-seok release her.
"You. How many talismans have you written so far?"
The paksu's head snapped up at the question. "T-Two!" Whatever Shin Jeong-ah's fists had done to him, the answer came out meek as a lamb.
"Two?"
The paksu lifted his head a cautious inch — then, catching sight of Kang Hyeong-seok's face, hurried on. "The first one wouldn't have even worked! The person who took it never came back or anything. Naturally, I never got to perform a single proper ritual!"
"What did you write them with?"
"Cinnabar powder! I didn't mix in a thing!"
"What's that supposed to be?"
Kang Hyeong-seok answered the interjection. "A stone powder used for writing talismans."
"Stone? It's not something sketchy, is it?"
"It's good stuff. Which is exactly the problem."
Kang Hyeong-seok clicked his tongue at the tangle of it. Cinnabar was expensive enough to make you curse. Talismans written with it were bound to work — the one small mercy was that nothing else had gone into them.
If this bastard had added beast's blood or the ash of burnt hair, the whole affair would have blown up far worse.
If he had... it would have played out exactly like the dream.
The event the Body-Governing Patron Deity had shown him in a dream — Shin Jeong-ah hurling herself over the railing — might have become reality.
"What?"
Catching his eye, Shin Jeong-ah arched one eyebrow; Kang Hyeong-seok only shook his head. He'd sensed it for a while now — her constitution picked up spiritual influence far too easily. Enough that he counted it lucky the affair looked to be ending here.
"Um, s-so... did the talismans actually work?"
The paksu shrank into himself at the look on Kang Hyeong-seok's face. The sheer gall of it — head beaten in, and still curious whether his handiwork had done the job. What on earth was he supposed to do with this guy?
"So what are you going to do?"
Shin Jeong-ah had evidently been mulling over the same question. With both their eyes on him, Kang Hyeong-seok tilted his head slightly.
"We deal with it. He did something no practitioner is ever allowed to do."
"Can you even do anything about it legally...?"
Kang Hyeong-seok gave it some thought and clicked his tongue under his breath.
"Not easily."
"So we just let it slide?"
Shin Jeong-ah's brows pinched with frustration.
"Hard to prove. This isn't the kind of thing the law can handle."
Looking down at the paksu, who was glancing about warily, Kang Hyeong-seok went on. "I'll speak to a shaman I know."
"W-wait, that's too—"
"She'll handle it better than you're imagining."
With the paksu watching, he didn't name Lee Geum-kyeong outright. Her authority, though, he could speak of.
"She's a woman they call Teacher in this world. More than capable of making this matter public — and of holding even this paksu's spirit mother accountable."
Even a fake shaman still belongs to the shamanic world. And frauds fear the genuine article. If word of this reached Lee Geum-kyeong — renowned even among the real — this paksu and his spirit mother would need to start preparing to leave the trade for good.
That was when it happened. The paksu's face drained to a deathly blue, and he began to tremble where anyone could see it.
"P-please, just forgive me this once."
The paksu looked up at Kang Hyeong-seok as though the man held his lifeline in one fist.
"I-I'm academy-trained — I don't even have a spirit mother. So please, please, just this once. I'll never pull anything like that again."
"What? Academy-trained?"
"Yes!"
Shin Jeong-ah wore the expression of a woman wondering whether shaman academies actually existed. Into the gap between them, Kang Hyeong-seok forced out a hot breath.
So that was it.
At last, everything clicked into place. The man clearly had talent — so why was he serving something like a hollow lord? Why would someone who could have gone far behave so rashly, like a man with no spirit mother over his head?
"If you're academy-trained, you should've been twice as careful! Worked twice as hard to be good at it! You little bastard!"
"I'm sorry. I am truly sorry!"
Kang Hyeong-seok pressed a palm to his throbbing forehead. There were so many shamans these days. Even people who didn't need to receive the divine calling were becoming practitioners.
He'd heard the whole system was formalized now — that academies had even sprung up — and he had no intention of condemning that in itself.
A shaman who receives a deity into their body is called a possession shaman. One who inherits the shamanic trade is a hereditary shaman. One who learns the craft is a trained shaman — and among those three, you could reasonably read the academy as nothing more than the trained shaman brought into the modern age.
Still, come on. If they're charging money for it, the least they can do is make sure their students don't pull crap like this.
"Haah... for fuck's sake."
Letting out the sigh and the curse together, Kang Hyeong-seok glared at the paksu from beneath knit brows. The man shook all over, as if he'd been singled out by the gaze of a death god, while Shin Jeong-ah clicked her tongue, her expression complicated. However little she understood of the situation, watching the bastard tremble like that seemed to stir a flicker of pity in her.
"If the academy finds out, I'm finished. Buried. And I'd be slammed with an enormous penalty on top of it."
Forehead still pressed to the floor, the paksu spoke in something close to a sob, hands clasped together in supplication.
"I swear I will never do this again. So please, just this once, find it in you to be merciful. Sir — look, I'm begging you like this."
It isn't often you see a person driven to such desperation. Kang Hyeong-seok bit the inside of his lip; then, sensing eyes on him, he glanced at Shin Jeong-ah. Was letting him off the right call here?
She was looking at him with exactly that question in her eyes when—
"I'll compensate you as well. I'll apologize in full and make amends."
"Compensate?"
As Shin Jeong-ah echoed him, puzzled, the paksu hurried to explain.
"The blessing money. Everything I've received so far — all of it, plus extra on top as an apology."
The paksu answered while looking at Kang Hyeong-seok. His desperation to be spared was almost too palpable.
"What do you want to do?"
Kang Hyeong-seok asked in the voice of a man who'd already reached his own decision; Shin Jeong-ah fidgeted, then asked back in a low voice.
"I mean, if he's paying us back... but are we allowed to take it?"
"Is this about the thing where you're never supposed to take money from a shaman?"
Shin Jeong-ah nodded, looking helpless. She'd heard somewhere that anyone who took a shaman's money would die — or have the good fortune in their saju stolen right out from under them.
"N-no! What, no! Absolutely not!"
Watching the paksu flap his hands in horror, Kang Hyeong-seok shifted his gaze to the bag tucked under the man's arm. The sacred shaman's bells that rang out at danger were silent.
"If you'd rather end it with compensation, that's fine with me."
If the paksu attempted anything foul, the bells would cry out. But the man looked neither capable of trying, nor the type who would.
"Haah! Fine. Let's do it that way."
"You're sure?"
"Me? I'm f—"
"Thank you!"
Cutting Shin Jeong-ah off mid-word, the paksu scrambled to his feet. He wobbled, stiff from groveling so long, but he was already darting into the inner room.
Crash! Clatter-clatter!
The racket pouring out of the inner room filled the entire officetel. With noise like that, nothing he and Shin Jeong-ah said would reach the paksu at all.
"I wonder if it's really okay to end it like this."
"Worried he'll go pull this on someone else?"
"Me, well — things got sorted because you were here. But other people don't have that."
Kang Hyeong-seok let the corner of his mouth curl at the grudging compliment. Then he looked toward the spot where the hollow lord had fled and shook his head. "You don't need to worry about that. He won't be playing paksu again for a good long while."
If ever, in fact.
"Huh? Why? Don't tell me you did something?"
"No. The hollow lord ran off on its own. If he wants to work as a paksu again, he'll have to discipline body and mind and receive a proper deity."
Crash!
Inside the inner room, the paksu went on eagerly digging things out, oblivious to their conversation.
"You're certain? It could always come back."
"There's a reason it's called a hollow lord. A child spirit might bolt the moment it sees a man with strong qi or a powerful deity, but it comes scurrying right back. A hollow lord is different."
"Is... is that so?"
"Yes."
That paksu could no longer harm a soul even if he wanted to. No more foul talismans; no more beguiling people with a silver tongue; no more rituals. Spirit divination was something he couldn't even dream of. To become a paksu again, he would have to suffer bitterly — and if he clawed his way back, every ounce of that suffering would be repaid to him in full.
"The man has talent. He'll pave his own road well enough."
That was when the paksu came back, clutching a thick white envelope.
"I've put everything in here."
Good grief — the paksu had spent the entire day reading Kang Hyeong-seok's moods. The envelope was meant for Shin Jeong-ah, the words addressed to her too, and yet his eyes were fixed on Kang Hyeong-seok. There was no venom in them, though. The instant their gazes met, they dropped — the eyes of a man who was afraid, and sorry.
"Is the amount right?"
"Looks about right."
"I put in extra!"
Kang Hyeong-seok addressed the paksu. "Be careful from now on. And put some effort into becoming a good paksu."
"Yes? Y-yes, sir."
The paksu would never know how much good those parting words might do him. If he remembered them in the hours when living grew hard, he would become a great man. If not, he would end his days in squalor.
"Let's go."
Kang Hyeong-seok turned away, Shin Jeong-ah at his side. The moment they stepped out of the shrine house and into the elevator, the two of them let out a long breath in perfect unison, as if they'd planned it. There was the exhaustion, of course — and with it, the feeling that this whole affair was finally, completely over.
Vrrrrm.
The elevator headed down felt different from the ride up from the very first second.
"Satisfied?"
"Huh?"
Shin Jeong-ah, clutching the money envelope the way a sea otter grips a clam, met his eyes. "It's over. I'm asking if you're satisfied."
"Ah — yeah. I suppose I am."
The answer was noncommittal. Her head was probably still a mess.
She'd been hounded by ghosts twice in a row, after all. And on top of that, a place she'd visited so faithfully had turned around and betrayed her — no wonder she could barely keep her mind on anything.
When the elevator reached the underground parking garage, Kang Hyeong-seok stepped out and tossed a bit of small talk her way.
"Looks like you've had combat training. Your form was textbook."
"That — ah, my parents made me. I learned it ages ago, for self-defense."
"Muay Thai?"
"No — MMA."
So they'd fitted steel fangs onto a ferocious tiger. Wondering what her parents could possibly have been thinking, Kang Hyeong-seok got into the car.
"Get in. I'll drive you home."
Shin Jeong-ah hesitated a moment before climbing into the passenger seat. Kang Hyeong-seok started the engine — and Shin Jeong-ah, who had been staring blankly at the envelope cradled in her arms, suddenly yanked the contents out into the open.
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Just a second."
Shin Jeong-ah ran her eyes over the stack of bills, split it cleanly in half, and held one half out to him.
"What's this?"
"Your share, Assistant Manager Kang."
"...Sorry?"
"Take it. You're the one who always ends up suffering on my account."
"You're serious?"
At the sight of Kang Hyeong-seok flustered, Shin Jeong-ah tugged the corners of her mouth up. "Put it away. It's because I'm grateful."
She said it with a smile that didn't leave much room for refusal — and when he still hesitated to reach out, she flipped open the glove box on the passenger side herself.
"There — it's in. Make sure you take it later."
"Section Chief—"
"Don't care. I gave it!"
Stuffing the envelope — considerably thinner now — into her pocket, Shin Jeong-ah crossed her arms and shut her eyes, her whole posture declaring the discussion closed. At the sight of it, a smile tugged at Kang Hyeong-seok's mouth.
"Then I'll accept it gratefully."
And with Shin Jeong-ah beside him doing her level best to fake sleep, he steered the car toward her apartment.