Fallen Shoes

"Ughk! Uuuurghk!"

The man was, quite plainly, terrified of Kang Hyeong-seok. A shaman whose god had left him — his "shoes" fallen, as those in the trade would say. That was the truth of the man Kang Hyeong-seok had seen through.

"You can see him, can't you?"

At the quiet question, the man forced a strained nod, his face drained white. His gaze never left the space behind Kang Hyeong-seok's back. He was looking at the Momjusin — the body-governing patron deity within him.

A General Deity clad in black armor from head to toe, bearing vast power. Even with his own shoes fallen, the man had recognized that this was no ordinary god — and the look in his eyes was that of someone about to be driven out of his mind by fear.

Wara-rang!

Shaking the sacred shaman bells to cleanse the air around him and settle his own mind, Kang Hyeong-seok closed his eyes, then opened them. As the Momjusin withdrew, the aura he had been radiating guttered out — yet the man remained drenched in terror.

"Why did you do it? Why did you bring in a man like that?"

Even asked in that level voice, the man could not manage so much as an answer.

"You of all people should have known better. Why did you do it? There's no telling how many people have been gravely hurt because you brought that man in."

"I-I didn't know. I really didn't know."

The man bowed his head and let out a loud, strangled "Huk!"

"Him — that man — I swear I never even dreamed he was that kind of person. Truly. I swear it."

"Hooo."

Kang Hyeong-seok pushed a slow breath out through his thinly parted lips. From the sound of him, this man seemed to know the whole of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it.

"How could you not know what that liquor was? You had the Yeongan, the spiritual eye. You of all people could have seen it."

"Th-the liquor — I only ever passed that out when I'd truly run dry myself! The man himself was nothing to me!"

The man pressed his two palms together, fingertips aimed at Kang Hyeong-seok, and then began scrubbing his palms against each other in a frenzy.

"I truly didn't know. If I had, how— how could I have? How was I supposed to know he would do such a thing?"

"You will tell it exactly as it was."

At Kang Hyeong-seok's low words, the man's shoulders flinched.

"You and that man. Was it truly nothing more than that, between you?"

The man's face, still fixed on the ground, went white to the lips. Beads of cold sweat gathered on his forehead and dropped, and the hand he had braced against the ground trembled visibly.

"You are truly claiming you had no dealings with him."

The man opened his mouth — then gulped in silent, ragged breaths.

And then—

Wara-rang!

The shaman bells rang out of their own accord. In the same instant, a faint dizziness washed over Kang Hyeong-seok. He pressed a hand to his brow — and before him, an image began to take shape.

"Hyung-nim."

The voice belonged to a man around Kang Hyeong-seok's own age.

"What? What is it?"

And the middle-aged man trading words with him — that was the man now prostrate before Kang Hyeong-seok.

"Hyung-nim, I heard you used to be a mudang. Do you still work in that line?"

"Aw, that was ages ago. Who've you been hearing that from, anyway?"

"Everybody knows, that's why. There's hardly a soul who doesn't."

"I-is that so?"

"So I wanted to ask you. It's about our worksite. Can you tell, Hyung-nim, if there's anyone there whose ki runs weak?"

"And why would you...?"

"If there are folks low on vital energy, I'd like to give them some medicinal liquor."

"You rascal! If I had anything like that, wouldn't I be handing it out myself?"

"Not you, Hyung-nim."

"Why not?"

"You're in good health, that's why. Anyway — not you, Hyung-nim."

"Ha, you brat."

Kang Hyeong-seok scanned his surroundings. The season was not the one he stood in now. Which meant this was no recent memory.

When on earth was this?

The moment the question formed, the scene around him shifted again.

"Hey, you little bastard! Wh-what was that stuff? What was in that liquor! You son of a—!"

"What do you mean? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠What about it?"

"The liquor, dammit! You crazy bastard, wh-where did you even get that!"

"Aish, don't worry your head about it. It's medicinal liquor. Just medicinal liquor."

"You insane son of a bitch! Somebody ought to beat you to death!"

"Aish, seriously! Are you going to let go or not?"

"You lunatic! So this is why you asked me to mark out the ones with weak ki for you? Huh?!"

"Whoa! Hyung-nim, is this because I haven't been looking after you?"

"Wh-what?"

"Here, tuck this away. Go on — put it away."

A wallet appeared from inside the man's jacket. And from the wallet, banknotes. Folded in half, the bills passed into the middle-aged man's hand.

"For you, Hyung-nim. Think of it as wages for the trouble."

"...What?"

"You used to be a mudang, after all. You can't practice anymore, I know — but I'll pay you the respect due the title."

"You crazy—!"

"Hyung-nim, this is your own gift doing the work, isn't it? Then there'll be no backlash, and it's nothing bad for you, either. Isn't that right?"

Kang Hyeong-seok could only stare, hollow, at the middle-aged man holding the money.

Don't take it.

The thought sprang up unbidden. But what lay before his eyes was neither reality nor the present. And so, though the wavering of the man's heart was vivid enough to seize in his own hand, there was no way to stop it.

All Kang Hyeong-seok could do was knit his brow — and at that moment the man loosed a heavy, soundless sigh.

"...All right."

"I'm counting on you, Hyung-nim."

With that, every image vanished. His surroundings were once more the dark yard of an old, run-down house, and the middle-aged man lay prostrate before him.

Looking down at him, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke.

"...You knew all along."

Because a mudang had done what no mudang must ever ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠do. Because a human being had done what no human being must ever do. Kang Hyeong-seok found he could no longer look at the man quaking and trembling before him the way he had before.

"You knew the money was one you must never take, and the favor one you must never grant. You knew all of it."

"Ah... aaah!"

Shuddering, the man bowed himself low enough that his forehead nearly touched the ground. Tears brimmed in his wide-blown eyes.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry."

The man did not string together lies or excuses. Having made his living in the shaman trade, he knew far too well that such things meant nothing before one who carried a great god.

"I'm truly sorry. Hnnngh! Huk!"

"Where is that man?"

The man clamped his mouth shut, then twisted his body as if swimming across the dirt. Then, weeping without a sound, his shoulders and back heaved.

"Speak. Only then will your sin grow lighter — even a little."

"Hnnngh! Khhnnngh! Uuuurgh!"

It was shallow pride. That was what had driven this man to do what he should never have done.

He had been a shaman who'd lost every last scrap of his power, yet as he ground through hard, exhausting work, he still talked of his mudang days as though they were his glory days. And a man like that met someone who treated him as a shaman once more. That was what had dragged him down into ruin.

"Donggwan."

At that single word falling from Kang Hyeong-seok's mouth, the man felt darkness close over his eyes.

Donggwan — the word shamans used to address one of their own.

He, too, had been a mudang. A shaman whose duty was to help people — and he had lent his hand to harming them instead. The instant he heard the word donggwan, he understood it, all of it.

"If you still take any pride in having been a donggwan — in having been a shaman — then speak. Where is that man right now?"

"Khhnnngh!"

The man spilled out an anguished groan and clawed up fistfuls of dirt. His mouth hung open, dragging in air, and only after a long, long while did he grind out a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠voice squeezed down to almost nothing.

"...The mountains. He'll be in the mountains right now."

"The mountains?"

With his forehead still pressed to the earth, the man nodded.

"Yes... He said he would be brewing the liquor on his ancestral mountain."

An ancestral mountain — ground handed down from one's forebears, where their graves lay. That anyone would brew a liquor to harm people on such ground sounded like the talk of a madman. And yet this was a man who had set out, deliberately, to pour calamity over other human beings. There would be a reason for it, surely — and still, Kang Hyeong-seok could well believe he was exactly the kind of man capable of that degree of madness.

"The name of the mountain?"

"I heard it was Cheongdeok Mountain."

Kang Hyeong-seok pulled up his map and searched the name. It was one of any number of unremarkable mountains, passed over even by hikers for its poor access.

"C-can I go now? Am I... am I all right now?"

Having confessed everything he knew, the man asked in a voice wet with tears, and Kang Hyeong-seok lifted his gaze from his phone to him.

"I've told you everything I know. I'd hand you his contact if I could, but he changes his number all the time, and he's always the one who calls first. Even that much, I don't have."

Kang Hyeong-seok was silent for a while. Then, looking down at the man, he slipped the phone into his pocket.

"Donggwan. You know as well as I do what happens when one of us sins."

Power lost or not, a mudang was still a mudang. And a mudang had joined hands in harming human beings. The price of that would not be a light one.

"Wh-what?"

Just then the man suddenly panicked, a hand flying to his face. And in the same instant, something changed in his sight.

"Wha—what! Whaaat!"

The world he had seen through his right eye was being devoured by darkness. The man rubbed at it, blinked, panicked — but a sight once taken did not come back.

Blindness in one eye. That was the punishment this man had earned.

"Aaah, aaah! No, no. No!"

Terror-stricken, the man floundered, blinking like a madman. Watching him, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke in a low voice.

"Nothing more will come before your debt is paid."

Even having taken his eye, the god would not grant him death.

"Aaaaah! Aaaaargh!"

Kang Hyeong-seok turned away from the screaming man.

Clunk!

Even once he was outside the front door, the man's screams and weeping did not stop. With his heart a tangled knot, Kang Hyeong-seok walked away, the entrance at his back.

Bzzzzz!

A text had just come in, setting his phone buzzing. It was from his uncle — and its contents were nothing but two unfamiliar addresses.

Even so, from the room numbers at the end of each line, he could tell they were hospital rooms.

Bzzt!

"Hello, Uncle."

Kang Hyeong-seok ended the call, found Cheong-geum in his contacts, and dialed.

Rrrr-rrr-rrr.

To her, he put the question — whether there was any mudang who could go, right now, to the addresses his uncle had sent — and as he asked it, he raised his eyes to the sky.

There was a moon there.

A first-quarter moon, canted to one side, as though it were watching over someone.

Thwack! Thwack!

Deep in the mountains.

In darkness so total he could not see a hand's breadth ahead, the man swung his cudgel down onto a sack. Each blow wrung a tearing cry from the beast within, and the sack strung up from the tree swayed as though it were dancing.

"Hah! Hah! Hah!"

Wheezing for breath, the man set the cudgel down at his feet, fished out a small plastic bottle, and took a drink. Nowhere in his expression or his movements was there any guilt, any wariness.

"Pwah... hooooh."

He might have been doing any chore of an ordinary day — everything about him was casual, bloodless, matter-of-fact. When the water was gone, he picked the cudgel back up, eyes on the sack that still leaked thin, threadlike moans.

And then—

Flrrt-flap-flap!

A crow alighted atop the tree from which the sack hung.

"Caw! Caaaw!"

The crow looked down at the man, and the man looked up at the crow. He brandished the cudgel in threat, but the crow never so much as beat a wing. It only went on looking down at him, as if it were studying him.

"The hell's wrong with you. Goddamn crow."

Muttering, he swung the cudgel back over his shoulder and brought it down on the sack with everything he had. Something inside was crushed with a dull, wet crunch; he hammered the sack again and again, then lowered the cudgel.

Shhhk... shhhhhk.

The man drew the sack down and flung its bound mouth wide open.

Five kittens.

One full-grown cat.

Two snakes.

A dog and a raccoon dog, one apiece.

Skulls burst open, chests caved in, they were pouring out blood.

He cinched the mouth of the sack tight once more, then began to walk — in the direction leading away from the tree.

From the sack dragging along behind him, scarlet blood welled out and soaked into the soil.

Like the trail of a snail, a dark red stain followed in his wake.