The Hilt of the Knife
Clink.
"Please, eat as much as you like, Teacher."
The owner of the poultry farm—the son of the woman receiving the ssitgimgut—set a blazing-red stew down on the table, watching their faces for a cue. It was the restaurant he ran. The farm sat close by, but he must have managed things well, because there wasn't so much as a whiff of chicken droppings about the place.
"I'm sorry to you. You had to see an ugly sight."
"Oh, no, it's nothing. With that many people gathered, these things happen."
The son waved it off, then turned his gaze to Kang Hyeong-seok, seated across from Lee Geum-kyeong.
"Eat your fill, and if there's anything more you need, just say the word."
"Yes. Thank you."
There was nothing simple in the way the son's eyes rested on Kang Hyeong-seok. He knew Lee Geum-kyeong was a great shaman, and he could see that while every other shaman sat apart, this man alone kept to her side. Having gathered that this was no ordinary person by any measure, he withdrew with marked courtesy.
Bubble, bubble, bubble.
Even as they sat there, the hotpot the owner had left behind simmered away appetizingly. When Kang Hyeong-seok went on staring at something like an egg yolk sunken in the broth, Lee Geum-kyeong gave a short laugh.
"It's chicken giblet soup. Never seen one before?"
"It's not that I haven't—only never eaten it."
"This place does it right. Eat up."
Only after Lee Geum-kyeong lifted her spoon first did Kang Hyeong-seok begin his meal. The broth was deep and rich, the giblets without the faintest trace of gaminess, and the flavor was staggering—as if chicken, condensed once and then condensed again, might taste like this.
Those yolk-like morsels were the most fascinating of all—springy on the tongue, yet heavy with the true flavor of yolk.
No wonder this place supplies to a major corporation. The thought even made him covet a contract with a place like this; casting a single glance at the son to bury the urge, Kang Hyeong-seok carried on eating.
He was midway through the meal when—
"Tell me—what do you make of Shaman Hong?"
Kang Hyeong-seok lowered his spoon and met Lee Geum-kyeong's eyes. She, too, had set her spoon down.
"He's no sage, but I wouldn't say everything out of his mouth was a lie."
"I'd say the same. Some of what he told us was worth believing."
"But are you all right, Teacher?"
Lee Geum-kyeong's brow creased and her eyes went wide, and Kang Hyeong-seok, folding his hands atop his knees, went on.
"Your friend. She accepted help from Shaman Hong Gyeong-soo, didn't she."
A death curse and a calamity far beyond anything her own strength could master. To deal with them, Lee Geum-kyeong's friend had taken Hong Gyeong-soo's help. He had never imagined such a thing was even possible. He had never needed it—until now, Kang Hyeong-seok had always broken every death curse and calamity with his own two hands, and never once thought to look for any other way.
"You think I didn't know?"
Lee Geum-kyeong took a sip of broth and clicked her tongue softly.
"That friend of mine has reached past her abilities any number of times. I'd kept thinking something was behind it."
Now Kang Hyeong-seok understood why Lee Geum-kyeong had tried to perform the ssitgimgut. So you knew all along, Teacher. Because she was her friend. Because they were both shamans. Lee Geum-kyeong had known.
"The fool. When a thing is past her strength, she need only do what anyone else would. What could weigh on her so, that she keeps reaching beyond what she can carry?"
She spoke as though murmuring to herself, and her face stayed composed. Her eyes and her voice did not.
"Take heart, Teacher. What matters is that it can still be resolved."
"Yes. That is the way of it."
Lee Geum-kyeong picked her rice spoon back up and resumed eating. Nothing, after all, had been resolved yet. But they had to eat, to gather their strength, before they could do anything at all.
Shaman Hong...
As the meal went on, Kang Hyeong-seok found his thoughts returning to Hong Gyeong-soo. To bring the ssitgimgut to its end and untangle her friend's karma, they would in the end have to strike at the source the death curse had flown from. And only Hong Gyeong-soo knew where that source lay.
He did not like it. For all intents and purposes, the hilt of the knife sat in Hong Gyeong-soo's hand.
"I have thoughts of my own on that."
Kang Hyeong-seok turned to Lee Geum-kyeong as she ate.
"There's something black at the bottom of that man. He must have had a design in mind, to move the way he did."
"Do you mean the way Shaman Hong went off alone?"
Lee Geum-kyeong nodded.
"I have my suspicions. Word from him will come soon enough—and his purpose will not be a clean one."
Kang Hyeong-seok nodded in silent agreement. Not so long ago, he wouldn't even have known where to begin guessing. But now, having walked the shaman's path at least a little way, he could piece together a fraction of what Hong Gyeong-soo was after.
"You said he was a man who dealt in curses."
Lee Geum-kyeong looked at him with a flicker of surprise, then nodded with a wry twist of her lips.
"You're thinking of a mugol."
"Yes. If he's been stockpiling something vile, it will take the form of a mugol—a curse effigy."
The damgeumju. The shaman ghost. Things he had lived through before. Back then, Kang Hyeong-seok had seen a shaman ghost that clung to its mugol even in death. A mugol made a potent instrument of cursing, and Hong Gyeong-soo—a dealer in curses in his black ritual robes—could not possibly be ignorant of that.
"There will be other reasons besides, I should think."
"What... do you mean?"
"I don't know yet. But that man took an interest in you strange enough to notice."
Time and again, Kang Hyeong-seok's gaze had crossed Hong Gyeong-soo's. He had naturally felt something strange in it, yet never once could he fathom the intent behind it.
"And your patron deity—said nothing on the matter?"
"He is always working his secret arts to keep the death curse from turning back on him. So it is no easy thing for me either."
A curse always comes home. How deep must the dread run, in a man who makes cursing his very trade, for the death curse and divine punishment that must one day return to him?
Kang Hyeong-seok let out a breath, as if he understood. Right after that—
"There is nothing to fret over. A great spirit walks with you—what tricks could the likes of him possibly work?"
Kang Hyeong-seok smiled ruefully, and Lee Geum-kyeong, without a sound, lifted only the corners of her mouth as she took up her spoon again.
It happened in the very next moment.
Clunk.
A female shaman came up to the table carrying a bottle of soju.
"Teacher! Have just one glass with me, please!"
The shaman's face was already flushed with drink.
"Didn't I tell you to go easy on the liquor?"
"But it goes so well with the broth, Teacher. Come now, just one glass."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk."
When Lee Geum-kyeong held out her soju glass, the shaman filled it with a beaming smile.
Glug-glug-glug-glug.
"Enough! How much do you mean to pour?"
"You know the saying—a glass should overflow. That's how much heart goes into it."
"Goodness me!"
"It's overflowed! You know how much I respect and love you, don't you, Teacher?"
Watching the pair of them, Kang Hyeong-seok let a faint smile cross his face.
Clink.
"By the way, our young master here really is handsome. So tell me—is there a lucky someone seeing him?"
"If you mean to act the drunk, go on back."
"Aigoo, Teacheeer."
"Haah... if you don't put that bottle down one of these days, you'll drink your whole household into ruin. How many times have I told you?"
"I'll be careful, I will."
Lee Geum-kyeong drank her soju with eyes of genuine worry, and the shaman who had brought it grinned sheepishly.
"By the way, Teacher—when will you be continuing the ssitgimgut?"
"The source of the death curse must be dealt with first. There's an order to these things, isn't there."
"Then I suppose word will have to come from Shaman Hong first?"
It had likely been a question tossed out without a thought. Yet contrary to the shaman's intent, the heavy atmosphere that had receded for a while poked its head back into the room.
One way or another, the game was drifting along exactly as Hong Gyeong-soo intended. With Lee Geum-kyeong's friend at the point where she might depart this world at any moment, that was nothing to be glad of.
"Teacher. There is something I must say."
Lee Geum-kyeong's gaze and the shaman's were drawn to him. Then—
"I think it best that I make contact with him."
"You...?"
"If what you say is right, Teacher, it shouldn't be a dangerous situation."
She had said Hong Gyeong-soo's purpose was to verify something. If so, it hardly seemed dangerous at all.
"No. This is nothing for you to trouble yourself over."
"But wouldn't it be better to find out what he intends?"
Lee Geum-kyeong's face conceded the point in her head and refused it in her heart.
"I mean to keep that man well away from you. That is all."
"A great spirit is with me. He will not dare lay a hand on me."
Hong Gyeong-soo was a shaman too, so that much was certain. Faced with his resolve, Lee Geum-kyeong folded her arms and loosed a small groan, while the shaman beside them watched with unmistakable interest.
Then—
"Once the ssitgimgut is finished, you will be at ease as well—will you not, Teacher?"
"...Mmmm."
"And I have heard she was a shaman who spent her whole life aiding others. For someone like that, I wish to help her pass on in peace."
Gratitude welled in Lee Geum-kyeong's eyes as she looked at him.
"Look how you've grown. All grown up."
Murmuring it half to herself, she raised her water glass and went on.
"If there is some scheme in him, he will be the one to reach out his hand first."
"Yes. I believe so too."
"Then we shall hear what he has to say, and decide after."
"Understood."
At his answer, given without a shade of hesitation, the shaman beside them sent him a look of open admiration.
"A true bearer of a great spirit, all right. A true bearer of a great spirit."
From a few minutes of conversation alone, the shaman had seen straight through to what he was—a man fit to carry a great spirit—and she marveled aloud again and again, while Kang Hyeong-seok shook his head hard.
"You'd best head back too. Aren't you uncomfortable there?"
"Aigoo, Teacheeer."
"Cut back on the liquor. And not another drop today."
"Gah."
That was when it happened.
Riiiiiiiing!
The phone Lee Geum-kyeong had set on the table rang out, dragging every gaze in the room toward it. The name on the screen was Kim Mi-suk.
For an instant Kang Hyeong-seok wondered who that could be—but Lee Geum-kyeong's face had gone rigid. As if the caller were someone bound up with Hong Gyeong-soo.
Click.
The moment the call connected to Lee Geum-kyeong, the woman exhaled a long plume of the cigarette smoke she had been holding in.
"Hello, Teacher."
(What brings this?)
Her name was Kim Mi-suk. She, too, was a shaman. She ran a small shrine in the area, and the place she took the call was right outside it. It was a lonely spot, where a single battered streetlamp held the dark at bay, and Kim Mi-suk set a fresh cigarette between her lips.
"Well, it's—um—something's come up, I think."
(About what?)
"You know Shaman Hong Gyeong-soo? He came to my shrine, and..."
(What?)
Kim Mi-suk narrowed her eyes, pulled deep on the cigarette, and breathed the smoke out.
"It's dongti."
(What...? Shaman Hong, struck with dongti?)
There was plain incomprehension in the voice. Dongti was the sort of punishment that fell on you for doing what must not be done—for violating what was sacred.
"No, it's not that Shaman Hong Gyeong-soo has dongti. You know that man who goes around with him?"
A man had trailed after Hong Gyeong-soo like a shadow. He drove for him, saw to the ritual implements, lent a hand in moving the rituals along.
"That man came down with dongti, and he's lying in my shrine right now."
(What in the world... And Shaman Hong? Is he not at his side?)
"No. He's off doing something beside the man."
(Hoo. Tsk.)
Frowning, Kim Mi-suk burned her cigarette down as she spoke.
"Teacher—you're not caught up in anything dangerous, are you?"
(No. Nothing of the sort.)
"That's what Shaman Hong said himself. That he had no time to spare. He even asked me to lend him a hand—and of course, this is what happens."
(...)
The silence stretched. By the time it broke, Kim Mi-suk had smoked one cigarette down to the filter and was holding a fresh one hooked between her fingers.
(And Shaman Hong?)
"Was there something you'd like me to pass along?"
(If that man has dongti, then Shaman Hong can't be untouched either. Is Shaman Hong all right?)
Kim Mi-suk arched her brows toward her forehead and smiled wryly.
"He's not all right. And neither is Shaman Hong."
(Good grief.)
"Who knows where the man had been crawling around, but his face was a complete wreck. He staggers when he walks, too."
(Anything else?)
"There was a raw, bloody reek on him."
A thick ghost-stench, and the fishy smell of water. That was what Kim Mi-suk had caught on Hong Gyeong-soo's body.
(If Shaman Hong's condition is sound, tell him to come back. If not, then have him tell you his location at the very least.)
"Will that do?"
(It's enough.)
"Understood. I'll do that."
The line went dead.
Kim Mi-suk let the hand gripping her phone fall slack, and with the cigarette still clamped between her lips, pulled open the shrine's door.
And there, right behind it, stood Hong Gyeong-soo.