The Forge That Fell Silent
A rural village hugging the sea.
Low buildings with blue roofs stood scattered far apart from one another, and the wind sweeping through was thick with the smell of the ocean. Not a single person could be seen coming or going.
That didn't mean the place had withered away from depopulation, either. Here and there, houses had laundry hung out on lines in their yards — proof enough that while the population was thin, people still lived there.
"Stay in the car."
At Kang Hyeong-seok's words, Shin Jeong-ah blinked.
"Why?"
"If it turns into a formal greeting, this could take a while."
There was a great deal to explain when it came to meeting a blacksmith. Kang Hyeong-seok got out of the car alone and started slowly toward the smithy.
Taking the day off, is he? Something that looked like a forge stood there at a glance, and an anvil as well. But there was no ring of hammer on metal, no heat to be felt anywhere. It felt less like a working shop and more like a collector's house with antiques strewn across the yard.
"Excuse me. Is anyone home?"
He made his rounds of the yard, where not a trace of human presence could be felt, but no answer came. This is awkward. Doesn't seem like anyone's here.
He was rubbing the inside of his cheek with his tongue when he heard it.
"Wooo... wooooo..."
A sound so faint he would never have noticed it had the surroundings not been silent as the grave. Kang Hyeong-seok's brow creased as his head snapped toward it.
"Is someone there?"
"Wooo... wooooo..."
This time he heard it, clear as day. But why on earth would an answer sound like that? Brow drawn tighter still, Kang Hyeong-seok walked cautiously in the direction of the sound.
It looked like some sort of small storage shed. The trouble was the narrow window — frosted glass, opaque, offering no glimpse of the interior.
"Sir? Are you in there? My name is Kang Hyeong-seok — I reached out to you by text."
Strangely, the closer he came, the more a crawling unease snagged at his ankles. And then he realized what was setting off his instincts.
Security bars...?
Angle-iron pipes — quite obviously welded on by someone's deliberate hand. They crossed the inside of the window like the bars of a cell. As if to make absolutely sure that whatever was inside could never come out.
"Woo! Woooooo!"
This didn't feel right. The beast-like sound drifting from within was bad enough, and that suspicious door was swelling the whole scene into something out of a crime scene.
Kang Hyeong-seok stopped in his tracks and pushed a breath out through clenched teeth. Doubt came flooding in. But he let out a single sigh and started walking again. Just take a look. That's all.
WHUMP!
A shadow burst up from inside the door and plastered itself over the glass. Frosted as it was, a shape pressed that close could be seen all too clearly.
A human face.
Abnormally huge eyeballs rolled and roved behind the glass, hunting for Kang Hyeong-seok.
"Hey!"
His heart had already been jolted once. With a voice barking from behind on top of it, it very nearly plummeted through the floor.
"Gah—?!"
Kang Hyeong-seok whirled around to find a middle-aged man in shabby brown clothes. The stench of alcohol. Clothes like something bought off a market stall floor. A thicket of greasy hair. And in his hand, a rusted sickle.
Eyes fixed on the sickle, Kang Hyeong-seok spoke with deliberate care.
"I wasn't trying to peep, sir."
"Who the hell are you, poking around another man's yard, you little shit?"
It seemed the drink had rotted him clear down to the gums — the breath riding every word he spat was enough to make your eyes water.
"My name is Kang Hyeong-seok."
"Don't care. Get! Out! Shoo! Shoo!"
The man flapped the sickle at him like he was driving off a stray dog. Even as the rusted blade sheared through the air with sharp whistling cuts, Kang Hyeong-seok kept talking.
"I did send you a text message. Did it perhaps not reach you?"
If he could just get the man talking, maybe he could dig something out of him.
"Text?"
The man's hand stopped.
"Yes. I was referred to you by Lee Geum-kyeong. I'd been hoping you might craft me some ritual implements, so I reached out."
"Ritual implements...?"
The light in the man's eyes changed. Not the clouded stare of a town drunk — this was the glinting menace of someone nursing a deep and ancient grudge.
Why the hell?
No sooner had the question formed than the man curled his lips back in a savage snarl.
"Where does a piece of shit like you get off talking about ritual implements! Get over here! I'll tear you limb from limb!"
Whoosh! Swish!
Sickle swinging in great, wide arcs, the man came charging. Kang Hyeong-seok faltered a step, then bolted for the car.
"Get over here! You fucker! Hey!"
The car was just ahead, the man's bellows closing in behind him — and right then—
BANG!
The door flew open and Shin Jeong-ah's deathly pale face thrust out.
"G-get in! Quick!"
She'd read the situation with uncanny speed — the engine was already running. Kang Hyeong-seok threw himself into the driver's seat and dropped straight into gear.
THUD!
In the same instant, the man's palm slapped flat against the windshield.
VRRRM!
Backing up at speed, Kang Hyeong-seok put the smithy behind him. Whether the man had never truly meant to give chase, he simply stood off at a distance, hauling in breath after breath.
"That absolute lunatic! What the hell is his problem! Fuck!"
Still clutching her chest in shock, Shin Jeong-ah cursed the man roundly. Watching him dwindle away behind them, Kang Hyeong-seok shook his head. He didn't know either. Couldn't say why that man had acted the way he did.
"You okay? Manager Kang, you hurt anywhere?"
Hands on the wheel, Kang Hyeong-seok told her he was fine. But something felt wrong. As though a stone had settled onto his chest, as though some massive, loathsome serpent were churning through his gut. A sure, ugly hunch that something was there.
His fist closed hard, and Kang Hyeong-seok pressed a hand against the smothering weight in his chest.
A dead smithy. A shed where someone was locked away. He glanced back at the bag on the rear seat — the bag holding the meteoritic iron and the sacred shaman bells — sitting there as if it were staring back at him.
"Let's just go home."
The bus stop at the village entrance. A rural shelter with nothing but a sun-bleached route map, a bench, and a roof draped in spiderwebs. Perched on the bench, Shin Jeong-ah lit a cigarette and threw Kang Hyeong-seok a look weighted with worry.
"This time we do it my way. We just go back."
"One moment."
"Manager Kang."
"I've already got plenty on my mind as it is. Just give me a minute."
"You nearly took a sickle. It's not like a ghost even showed up. And it's not something the two of us can do anything about anyway."
She was right. Completely right — and yet something about it refused to add up, in a way that defied all reason.
"I don't know. It's just a feeling."
"What feeling? That man tried to put a sickle in you! You could've been cut open!"
"Just bear with me a little. I need to think this through."
Perhaps it was the steadiness of his voice. Even Shin Jeong-ah, mid-tirade, shut her mouth and waited while he ordered his thoughts.
"I'm going to ask him for one thing only — crafting the implements."
"You're still on that?"
"I am. And seeking out another blacksmith doesn't sit right with me either."
Turning fully to face her, Kang Hyeong-seok went on. "The meteoritic iron was a gift from her, for one thing — and it's not something any random smith can handle."
"I'll look it up online. It's not like Korea has one or two blacksmiths total."
"Ritual implements are not something just anyone can make."
And that was the crux of it. A smith who could work meteoritic iron and craft ritual implements besides was vanishingly rare. And among those few, he needed one he could trust — someone guaranteed not to quietly pocket the precious metal. Which meant someone as rock-solid as Lee Geum-kyeong's referral. A blacksmith who satisfied every one of those conditions might, in all of South Korea, number exactly one.
"Genuine question — do you actually think that man can make anything properly?"
Shin Jeong-ah jerked a thumb back toward the smithy, cigarette clamped between her lips, and he honestly couldn't bring himself to answer.
"He must have his reasons."
"Reasons, my ass."
"His entire attitude flipped the instant he heard the words 'ritual implements.'"
Everything before that could be written off as wariness. But after? Sheer hostility. And a grudge.
"As if something terrible had happened to him because of the implements — no, because of shamanism itself."
Shin Jeong-ah fiddled with her lighter, never quite managing to touch flame to the cigarette. For an ordinary civilian, she'd been through her share of the strange. But the world of shamanism was still a distant one to her.
"Bus is coming."
Kang Hyeong-seok murmured it, watching the small bus crawl toward them from far down the road, and Shin Jeong-ah tucked the cigarette back into its pack. This was a bus that came once an hour at best, once every half a day at worst — and meshing so perfectly with the slow scenery of a seaside village, it lent the whole scene a strange, unplaceable charm.
Kang Hyeong-seok rose smoothly to his feet, and Shin Jeong-ah's eyes glued themselves to him.
"What?"
"I'm going to ask the passengers getting off."
The smithy was far too conspicuous. So if he asked a fellow resident of the village, perhaps something would surface.
HSSSS!
Air hissed through the cylinder and the bus's rear doors folded open, spilling out its passengers. One elderly man, one young man. The young one was hauling a huge pack — an obvious outsider to anyone — so Kang Hyeong-seok approached the old man.
"Excuse me, sir. I was hoping to ask you something."
"Eh? Hm?"
The old man looked him up and down, guarded, and Kang Hyeong-seok gestured toward the smithy as he spoke.
"The smithy here in the village. Is it still in operation these days?"
"Why's an outsider asking about that?"
"The thing is, I have a favor I need to ask of a smith. I only caught a glimpse of the place, but it looked shut down, so I thought I'd ask."
Perhaps it was the politeness — the courteous, deferential manner of a proper office worker. The wariness drained from the old man's eyes by degrees, and he set a cigarette between his lips as he answered.
"Nothing to see there. Ever since his daughter went mad, it's been years since that man last picked up a hammer."
"...His daughter?"
The old man drew a slow circle in the air with the finger he'd pointed at his own temple.
"Snapped clean, I'm telling you. And she used to be a right capable mudang, too. Anyway — don't you so much as go near that place."
His lips had gone dry; he ran his tongue across them. So that was why the man's guard had shot up the moment he'd heard the words "ritual implements."
"Did something happen to the mudang, by any chance?"
"No — wait. Who are you, asking all these questions? What is it you do, exactly?"
Sharp suspicion flared in the old man's face. Kang Hyeong-seok could have parried with something vague, and for a moment he weighed the best answer — the one least likely to draw distrust.
"I'm from the shamanic side of things."
"What?"
Before the gaping old man, Kang Hyeong-seok laid a hand on his chest, utterly unashamed.
"I am one who serves a god, and I was guided here."
Granted, the one who had guided him here was Lee Geum-kyeong. Shin Jeong-ah was already giving him a look that said she couldn't believe what she was hearing — but there was a reason Kang Hyeong-seok was playing it this way.
"Wh-wha — so you're, uh — a mudang...?"
The old man had been showing deference to a man who looked a good decade younger than himself. Call it prejudice if you like. But in outlying villages like this one, shamanism carried more influence and standing than it ever did in the cities.
"I was making inquiries — in case there might be something I could do to help."
"No, it's just... you don't much look like a mudang."
"Because this seems like the kind of matter that calls for great care."
Sliding his bag around to his front, Kang Hyeong-seok let the sacred shaman bells peek out from within.
"Aigoo, aigoo! So you really are a mudang!"
To the old man, Kang Hyeong-seok must have looked like nothing so much as a young Taoist mystic, sent by the will of the divine to save the blacksmith's poor wretched daughter. At the very least, the old man's saucer-wide eyes were brimming over with awe and reverence.
"Please, look after that house. She's been that way for three years now — it's beyond words. Every night she wails like a beast, and dear Lord, the way it wrings the blood right out of you. It truly does."
"I will. Thank you — this is more valuable than you know."
Kang Hyeong-seok even took the old man's hand in both of his own. The old man stroked the back of it again and again, repeating over and over that he was counting on him.
"Go on home, now. I'll pray for peace upon your household."
"Aigoo, thank you."
Head bobbing in little bows, the old man vanished toward the village. Whereupon Kang Hyeong-seok carefully ducked Shin Jeong-ah's gaze.
Manager Kang, you can even pull that off...?
Because that look of hers was drilling into him, sharp enough to sting.