Save Yourself
Shrrk.
A sleek blade slid into view. The patterns engraved into its spine were ornate, and the coat of black lacquer laid over them only deepened its air of refinement—less a divine general's blade than a jangdo, the ceremonial dagger of the old nobility. And not merely any jangdo: a work of art from a master's hands. That was the kind of blade the blacksmith had forged for him.
"What do you make of it?"
"It's a match."
At Lee Geum-kyeong's question, Kang Hyeong-seok answered without lifting his eyes from the Sinjangkal. He simply could not bear to look away. The energy that breathed from the steel—it was much like what he had felt the first time he closed his hand around the sacred shaman bells.
"I can feel it," he said. "This is no ordinary object."
Which meant—did it, too, carry something special, the way the bells did? On the off chance, he brought his thumbnail toward the edge. The instant nail met steel, a faint mark appeared. The blade had raised its edge, keen and sharp.
Lips pressed firmly together, Kang Hyeong-seok turned the blade over in his hands—and then Lee Geum-kyeong held out her own.
"Please be careful, Teacher. It has an edge."
Even with the caution, Lee Geum-kyeong touched the Sinjangkal's blade without a flicker of hesitation. He flinched on the spot—yet not a trace of it was left on her hand.
"So this one chooses its master, too."
Kang Hyeong-seok looked down at the mark the steel had left on his thumbnail. It was exactly like the bells. Just as the sacred bells had rung for his hand and no other's, the Sinjangkal bared its edge for his and no other's.
He wrapped his thumb in his other fingers with a firm squeeze, rose from his seat, and bowed to Lee Geum-kyeong in a full, formal prostration.
"Thank you, Teacher. Thanks to you, I have gained a precious divine blade."
"This blade has already claimed you as its master. There is no need to thank me." Returning the Sinjangkal with a faint smile, Lee Geum-kyeong went on. "It was you I gave the uncheol to."
"It was the uncheol you gave me, Teacher."
"It was yours from the very beginning."
With moved eyes, Kang Hyeong-seok looked at her, slid the Sinjangkal into its sheath, and tucked it away against his chest like a treasure. Perhaps because it rested so near his heart, a faint warmth seemed to seep from the blade.
Click.
The door opened, and back home, Kang Hyeong-seok set his bag down before anything else. It was evening. He threw together a quick dinner of rice and whatever side dishes the refrigerator still held, showered under hot water, changed into comfortable clothes, and then sat down at the table with the Sinjangkal and the sacred bells laid out side by side.
Two divine instruments.
He gazed down at them for a long while before speaking in a low voice. "Are you satisfied?"
Tap. He laid his hand atop the sacred bells. It had been his Momjusin, the patron deity that governed his body, who had guided him to them. "It was by your revelation that I came to possess these."
Tap. This time his hand came to rest on the Sinjangkal. Through dreams and through trance, the god had hinted at the blade. "Where is the path I am meant to walk?"
With a hand resting on each of the divine instruments, he went on, murmuring as though in prayer. "You told me to become a mudang among the people. Now that I hold a second divine instrument, what can I do—and what must I do?"
His Momjusin had always answered with silence, never once speaking directly. But this time, he hoped, it would be different. He waited a long while for the deity to manifest, and nothing stirred. Disappointment welled up in him, and he let it pass with a wry smile.
He was just reaching to put the implements away when—
Sssss...
A vast presence rose up from behind him. Darkness followed close after, flooding his vision black. A trance. The suddenness of it startled him, but he did not lose his composure as he had the first time.
Thud.
From the far end of the dark, a general clad in black armor began to walk toward him. His footfalls were heavy, and the aura rolling off him was anything but ordinary. And unlike before, his form was clean. No Chang-gwi, no corpses, no blood.
"So you have come."
Kang Hyeong-seok bowed his head to him with every courtesy—and then it came.
"My mudang."
A voice rang clear inside his skull. Gooseflesh swept over Kang Hyeong-seok's whole body as he looked up at his deity. The voice of the god he had yearned so desperately to hear. The summons of the god who had held his silence until this very moment.
"Just now—was that you, speaking to me?"
He asked again, searching the face the Momjusin kept veiled in shadow. The god answered only with silence, and Kang Hyeong-seok clenched his hand hard around the Sinjangkal.
The Sinjangkal was the emblem of a mudang whom the god descends to claim—a divine implement through which a mortal could draw near to the divine. And it was that blade which, only now, had opened his ears to the god's voice.
"Speak to me. What must I do?"
The questions poured out of him as though he were finally emptying a vessel that had brimmed for years. "I have striven to be a mudang among the people. I have never turned my face from those in pain. I have guarded those who needed help as if they were my own flesh."
He stopped, swallowed drily, and went on. "Have I been doing well?"
Whether everything he had done had been right. Whether it had truly been worthy. Only his Momjusin could tell him—and until now the god had given him nothing but silence.
"You are my disciple. My vessel."
The deity who had kept his silence was speaking to him at last. It was an answer that quenched a thirst long carried.
"You have always been right."
The answer came within the trance—not as sound, but as soul. And so the Momjusin's reply transcended any spoken voice. Soul spoke to soul, and everything passed across whole; in such an answer there was not a hair's breadth of hesitation, not a grain of doubt.
"You have walked the right path."
It was the most complete, most perfect affirmation the world could hold. An answer that seemed to bless his very existence—and it lacked nothing in its power to fill, utterly, every question he had ever carried.
"...Thank you."
Kang Hyeong-seok's voice came out low and wet, and the deity's words continued. "Now you have gained the divine blade."
And then—because he still stood joined with the god in trance, Kang Hyeong-seok could grasp the Momjusin's thought in its entirety.
"Tell me, please."
He read the deity's will, a will that left even his throat parched. "What must I do?"
At that moment, the Momjusin drew the blade from the sheath at his hip. And then he spoke directly into Kang Hyeong-seok's mind.
"There is a place in desperate need of your help."
Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes narrowed—
"There, save yourself."
The Momjusin's final words settled over him, and the darkness began, little by little, to recede. The world around him brightened even as the deity's figure dimmed, and soon his surroundings had returned to what they were—his own home.
Kang Hyeong-seok stared blankly around the room, then down at the implement in his hand, and let out a long breath. What is this? "Save yourself"...?
This time, use that power not for others—for yourself. That was how the god's command had felt. Then where, in heaven's name, was that place?
He was staring down at the Sinjangkal with troubled eyes when—
Bzzzzt!
The phone charging in the bedroom went off. Could it be? Was even this the deity's guidance? With his mind still churning, he set the implements on the table and went to the inner room to check the phone.
The caller was Professor Kim Jae-sik—his advising professor from his university days, and the man who had handed him a crucial hint during the dokkaebi affair. Tap. Looking thoroughly preoccupied, he pressed the call button.
"Yes, Professor."
"Sorry to call so late at night! Were you asleep?"
"No, it isn't all that late."
He smiled, a little embarrassed—he was, after all, the one who had called the man at the crack of dawn that very morning.
"That thing you asked me about before—did it get resolved all right?"
"Ah—yes! Thanks to you, it wrapped up cleanly, Professor."
"Good to hear. And nothing... out of the ordinary came up, did it?"
"No. Nothing strange."
He could hardly bring himself to tell the truth, and it was entirely because of what Kim Jae-sik was. A folklorist, through and through. If the man ever learned that Kang Hyeong-seok had met a dokkaebi—and that a greater dokkaebi had settled a malicious one—there was no doubt he would rain down questions without mercy. The truth of it wouldn't even matter to him. What would matter first was why such a thing had been said, and the moment it began to feel plausible, he would come at it from an academic angle and never let go. Just imagining it made his breath catch.
"So—did you need something, Professor? Why the call?"
"Well. It's been a while since I heard your voice. Does an old man good."
"I'm sorry I've gone so long without reaching out."
"Sorry, my foot! You're a working man now; it's only natural. Anyway, listen—what's your schedule like on the fifteenth, next week?"
"The fifteenth?"
Kang Hyeong-seok glanced at his phone and hummed thoughtfully. "I'm free that day."
"Then how about we go get some air together, for old times' sake?"
For a moment he was back in his university days. Back then, Professor Kim used to say exactly this kind of thing.
"Is there someplace you'd like to go?"
"Professor Jang, of all people, says we should meet up after all this time. You remember him? Professor Jang."
"Of course. He's your old friend, isn't he?"
Jang Jun—yes, that was the name. He had even caught the two of them eating together at the campus cafeteria now and again.
"Well, the thing is, he went back to the land a while ago—took up farming. Says it's somewhere the mountains are lovely and the air is clean. He keeps singing me the same song—come visit, come visit—so I suppose this time I really ought to go, don't you think?"
"Ah. I didn't know any of that."
Then a strange dissonance stirred in Kang Hyeong-seok. There was nothing remarkable about the flow of the conversation. It was the sort of talk a professor and his long-silent student might easily trade. But the call had come directly on the heels of the trance. In this world, human bonds were fate itself—and he could not shake the sense that Kim Jae-sik was being moved to lead him somewhere.
"Is there another reason, perhaps? Besides the visit?"
At his careful question, Kim Jae-sik burst into a hearty laugh.
"Ha! Sharp as ever! Well, the fact is—apparently something strange keeps happening out there these days."
"...Strange?"
"That's right. They say the animals in the livestock sheds keep dying, their bodies torn beyond recognition. And a fair number of people have died, too."
People, too...?
Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes thinned, and Kim Jae-sik went on.
"The causes of death are all different, mind you. But there's quite the tantalizing rumor making the rounds, it seems. They're calling it a curse. In this day and age, if you can believe it."
By now Kang Hyeong-seok had his arms crossed over the phone. Decidedly not ordinary. He could almost feel something lurking behind it. And yet his deity had commanded him to save himself. If there was a thread tying the professor's story to him, what could it possibly be?
"Did they say what the curse was tied to?"
Perhaps it was the gravity in his voice—or perhaps Kim Jae-sik simply took it for interest, because the answer came back bright with delight.
"Apparently there used to be two elephant statues standing in front of the place, and somebody smashed them recently."
"A curse of the elephants?"
Could such a thing even happen in South Korea? The absurdity of it arched one of Kang Hyeong-seok's eyebrows, and Kim Jae-sik clicked his tongue.
"No, no. They're not nearly old enough to breed a curse. But do you know why they were put up in the first place?"
"..."
"Well, from what I'm told—to press down a tiger."
A tiger.
Without a word, Kang Hyeong-seok touched his own throat. Something had surfaced unbidden. The thing that had threatened him back when he did not even own the sacred bells. The blood that had flooded the ground all around his deity—and the beast's corpse lying within it.
And the evil spirit bound inseparably to the tiger.
The Chang-gwi.