No Longer Ignatius
Creeeak.
Shin Yo-sep pushed open the door of a pork belly grill tucked into the market district. It was early morning on a day that was no market day. Inside, the smell of the meat grilled the day before still lingered in the air, though every trace of warmth had gone—for only a single soul sat within.
"Ah, Ignatius."
The man greeted Shin Yo-sep by his baptismal name and smiled, as if tugging up the corners of his mouth. He wore glasses, and he was so gaunt that even his roomy cassock couldn't quite conceal the shape of him.
Snick. Thud.
Having shut the door behind him, Shin Yo-sep bowed his head. "Father Hilario."
"Sit. Thank you for coming."
Shin Yo-sep took the seat across from him. Then, with a face gone very grave, he looked at the priest and spoke. "I never expected you to ask to meet here, of all places."
"It's been a while, hasn't it? For this place, too."
Hilario swept his gaze around the grill house with wistful eyes, as though the room were steeped in old memories. Shin Yo-sep, however, only sat frozen, his face hardened, as if he could not bear to take in any of it.
Then—
Swish.
Hilario held out an envelope. "My letter of recommendation. It will help when you come back."
"Father..."
"Let's forget what deserves forgetting. Nothing is ever solved by staying chained to the past."
Shin Yo-sep shifted his gaze from the envelope to Hilario's face, his expression heavy with thought. "Not yet. You know that."
"If he could see you drifting like this, Father Leo would grieve."
For an instant, Shin Yo-sep's brows twitched. But he could not manage a single word in reply and only bowed his head—because there was nothing there to deny.
"He was my teacher."
"He was your friend as well."
"Yes. That is why I cannot forgive myself."
"Forgiveness is the Lord's to give. You of all people, a priest, know that best."
"How could He save a man worse than Judas?"
It was an answer that laid Shin Yo-sep's heart bare, exactly as it was. The betrayer—Judas Iscariot. That he would name himself worse than such a man left Hilario at a loss for words.
"Father Leo died because of me."
"..."
"If only I had not run away, there would be three of us sitting at this table now."
Shin Yo-sep turned his eyes toward the grill plate, cold and long gone dark. How many years ago had it been? Back then, he and Hilario and Father Leo had gathered around this very table, grilling pork belly with a pan of bean sprouts hissing alongside. There had been shots of soju passed around, and Father Leo had liked to boast that Shin Yo-sep—still only a deacon in those days—would one day surpass him. Warm memories, golden and easy. And it had been Shin Yo-sep who turned them into a past that could never come again.
"Even if God forgives me, I cannot forgive myself, Father."
Only when he heard the faint tremor running through that voice did Hilario squeeze his eyes shut.
"If you need the rite of exorcism, say the word. If there is any help of mine you require—anything at all—only name it. But I cannot return to the Order. Not now."
"...Ignatius."
"It's Shin Yo-sep."
To a man who had left the Order, the baptismal name was an honor he no longer deserved. Shin Yo-sep held his silence for a long moment, then made to rise, as if pushing back from the table. "I should be going. It was good to see you again, after so long."
"Just a moment."
Shin Yo-sep stayed where he stood, and Hilario looked up at him as he went on. "What will you do, then? Will you keep writhing in torment like this, forever?"
"No." Shin Yo-sep ground his molars together, then gave a small shake of his head. "I will atone. I will repent, and I will set my wrongs right."
"You mean to save yourself?"
"I will wash my sins away."
To Hilario's eyes, Shin Yo-sep looked like nothing so much as a wounded animal. He was setting out on a road far too punishing for one man to walk. And yet Hilario could not reach out a hand to him—because it was a road that only Shin Yo-sep himself could ever walk.
"...By what means? How, in God's name?"
"There is someone who can help me."
With Hilario watching, a sigh escaping him, Shin Yo-sep went on, quiet and immovable. "That person is my hope. I will never allow the same mistake to be made twice."
"...Ignatius."
"Look after your health, Father. When it is all finished—someday—I'll be in touch."
Hilario's hand, half-extended toward him, stopped short.
Thud.
The door swung shut, and left alone, Hilario let out a long, heavy breath. He had called him Father—as the laity do, not as one priest addressing another. Shin Yo-sep had.
"So he has no intention of coming back."
The meaning behind it grieved him. Father—the word the faithful use for the priest who tends their souls. Now that Hilario understood Shin Yo-sep had no thought of standing as a priest again, he could only stare at the space where the man had vanished, bitterness settling over his face.
His chest felt tight. And yet there was something there he could allow himself to cradle, just a little, as hope.
"May it prove a good bond, at least."
That he might go on living with hope in his heart, rather than despair. Left alone in the empty restaurant, Hilario gathered up the envelope still lying forlorn on the table and rose from his seat.
Vrrrooom.
The shrine where Lee Geum-kyeong resided sat halfway up the mountain. Kang Hyeong-seok, driving toward it, slowed the car at a sound drifting down through the trees.
"Hck! Hnnnnngh! Hck!"
A man, weeping. When someone sobbed like that outside the shrine, there was always a story behind it—never a small one. Face clouded, Hyeong-seok eased the car up the slope, and there before the shrine he saw a middle-aged man leaning on Cheong-geum's arm.
"Stay strong, sir. You must stay strong."
"Hck! Hnnngh."
Hand on his seatbelt, Hyeong-seok held still inside the car and watched for a moment. It was a weekday afternoon—the hours when Lee Geum-kyeong received her booked visitors. Before a sleek imported sedan, the man sank down as though his bones had given out beneath him and groveled against the ground. Hyeong-seok looked on, pity tightening his chest.
"What do I do, what am I supposed to do about my son! Hnnnnnngh!"
"Please, calm yourself. Sir—please."
"Hnnn—aaahhh!"
It was a wail that tore the heart just to hear. Hyeong-seok waited a long while yet, until the man had been helped into his car and had gone.
Once the vehicle had shrunk into the distance, Cheong-geum came and rapped on the driver's-side window. "You've been waiting a while, haven't you?"
Hyeong-seok climbed out, shaking his head with an awkward smile. "It sounds like your last visitor had some bad news."
"His son has fallen gravely ill, they say. With no remedy left to try, no way out at all—that's why he's like this."
"Ah..."
Shamanism could not solve everything. Sickness, least of all. And yet that man had come here clutching at straws, the way a drowning man seizes anything at all—and now he would have to go home carrying no hope whatsoever.
"He has to keep his strength up somehow, for the boy's sake..."
Hyeong-seok gave a silent nod at Cheong-geum's murmur. But he wondered whether anyone truly could. It was his own child at stake. A parent will stake life itself if only it might save their child—how was such a man to simply rally his spirits?
"But my goodness, Young Master—whatever brings you here at this hour on a weekday?"
Cheong-geum forced brightness into her voice. Unwilling to let the effort go unmet, Hyeong-seok dragged up the corners of his mouth and answered. "There is something I'd like to seek the Teacher's counsel on."
"Hm? Ah—you mean the dream you spoke of before?"
"Yes, that's right."
Whether he ought to obtain a new Sinjangkal. And if so, what manner of blade he should seek. Those were the questions he had come to lay before her.
"Well then, that's convenient. The Teacher was just this moment wishing to see you about that very thing."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. Come along, then."
Following Cheong-geum's lead, Hyeong-seok walked to Lee Geum-kyeong's quarters—a hanok house of quiet dignity and stillness, as ever. Before it, he pressed his palms together and announced himself in a voice weighted with courtesy. "Teacher, it is Kang Hyeong-seok."
"Enter."
Cheong-geum waved him on in a hurry, and Hyeong-seok removed his shoes and stepped into Lee Geum-kyeong's presence. There he bowed his head to the old woman seated upon her cushion. "I trust you have been in good health."
"Hmph. What is all this formality? It has been no time at all."
"I heard you were kept away on business, and came back up late."
Lee Geum-kyeong's mouth tugged into a wry smile, and she shook her head. "That is not yours to fret over."
"As you say. Actually, the reason I've come today—"
Just then, Cheong-geum came in bearing a small tray of tea. She set it down between Lee Geum-kyeong and Hyeong-seok, and just as she turned to withdraw, the old woman spoke. "You—stay and sit with us."
"Pardon? Yes, Teacher."
Looking genuinely surprised, Cheong-geum knelt and seated herself against one wall. Lee Geum-kyeong did nothing without cause; there was surely something behind this. Thinking so, Hyeong-seok straightened his posture and met her gaze.
"The truth is, some days ago, I beheld my Momjusin in a dream."
"Cheong-geum told me. That He showed you a blade?"
"Yes. The hilt, to be exact."
As if to say: take hold of this. The Momjusin of his dream had turned the sword's hilt straight toward him.
"He is not one to act without reason. There is something He means to say to you—of that, be certain."
"That is what I believe as well."
It had been only a few words, all told. Nothing of substance had come of the exchange. And yet simply trading speech with Lee Geum-kyeong settled his heart, and he felt himself drawing closer to an answer. "I believe my Momjusin is bidding me obtain a Sinjangkal."
"Mmm."
Lee Geum-kyeong nodded as though the reasoning held water. Then she laughed softly to herself and regarded him with eyes full of thought. "Tell me—what is the Sinjangkal to you?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I asked what the Sinjangkal means to a mudang."
Hyeong-seok thought for a moment before answering. "A weapon."
"There are many kinds of weapons. What role, then, does the Sinjangkal serve among them?"
Somehow, he thought he grasped her intent. She was testing whether he was ready—ready enough to bear a Sinjangkal in his hand. So Hyeong-seok squared himself still straighter and answered in a grave, deliberate voice. "A symbol of the god."
Lee Geum-kyeong nodded, waiting to hear whether there was more. And there was. "It sweeps away defilement and strikes down calamity-bearing evil. It welcomes and honors the souls of ancestors and the departed. It comforts the gods, and soothes them."
The Sinjangkal answered to other names as well—the divine sword, the Seven Stars blade, the great god-blade. However the names and forms might differ, its purpose was unmistakable. The emblem of the gangsinmu, the spirit-possessed shaman. The weapon of one who serves the gods. To calm the restless dead and drive off calamity—and to console the soul.
"You have comforted the wandering dead and delivered them, time and again. Tell me—with what heart did you do it?"
The fist resting on Hyeong-seok's knee curled tighter. She spoke true. He had faced souls and comforted them in abandoned warehouses, in people's homes, in open fields, on mountains, beside dark reservoirs. "My heart ached for them."
Cheong-geum's attention fixed wholly on him now, and Lee Geum-kyeong's gaze deepened. "So it is with deliverance. The han that is set free does not simply vanish—it seeps into the living who set it free."
Whether that was literally so, he could not say. Still, he understood her meaning. Every moment he had spent coming to know a grudge-bearing spirit's story—feeling what it felt—had settled inside him like silt at the bottom of a river.
"Do you regret it?"
Perhaps it was the weight of the room. Lee Geum-kyeong put the question in the gentlest of voices, and Hyeong-seok shook his head, a bitter smile crossing his face. "Even if I went back, I would do it all the same."
A thousand times. Ten thousand. He would not fail to do it. Not because the Sugye burned into his palm commanded him to do what was right. Nor because it was his Momjusin's will. It was, purely and wholly, Kang Hyeong-seok's own resolve.
"Good. That is the answer I wished to hear."
Lee Geum-kyeong broke into a bright smile. Abashed, Hyeong-seok laughed awkwardly, and she turned her gaze to Cheong-geum. "Cheong-geum. Go and bring it."
At that, Cheong-geum—silent until now—started, her eyes flying wide open.