Beneath the Red Plum Blossoms
Thud. Thud.
Jangle. Jangle. Jangle.
As he passed between the chang-gwi, the sacred shaman bells tolled low. The creatures stood in long ranks to either side of him, and it was a night of cold rain beating down without mercy.
There wasn't a single light to be seen, and the only sound was the rain; through that lightless, rain-drowned dark, Kang Hyeong-seok walked the path the chang-gwi parted for him.
They did not lunge. Not one of them dared so much as look at him — heads bowed, they lay flat against the ground, groveling.
The Mountain Lord's decree. The command of the one who owned them. An escort laid on by the beomgwi — a summons, calling Kang Hyeong-seok to it.
Ssss... Squelch. Squelch.
Exhaling breath that was already turning white with frost, Kang Hyeong-seok picked his way through the horde — and then he saw the thing that had no right to exist.
...Red plum blossoms?
Plum blossoms, vivid as though gorged on blood. It was decidedly not the season for plum trees to flower, and yet the red plum standing far off flaunted a crimson so fierce it seemed to belong to some other world entirely.
The Mountain Lord waited beneath it. The massive beomgwi stared at him from under a red plum tree in lavish, drowning bloom.
Kang Hyeong-seok stared back.
And then —
Shring. He drew the Sinjangkal he had pulled from inside his coat.
“Aaargh!”
Yoon-sang swung his phone at the chang-gwi closing in on him. Any thought of getting the creatures on camera had been blasted clean out of his skull.
“D-don't! Don't come any closer! Stay back!”
Yoon-sang was desperate. But the chang-gwi came on at their leisure, faces smirking down his terror.
They had no use for anyone but Kang Hyeong-seok. A toy to gnaw on, at best — meat. That was all Yoon-sang was in their eyes.
“I said stay back!”
Flailing the hand that clutched his phone like a madman, Yoon-sang seized his bag strap instead — and swung the bag itself at the chang-gwi. Pure reflex. And then something happened that no one could have predicted.
Zzip! Rat-a-tat-tat!
The loose zipper burst open as though the seam had ripped, and the plums inside scattered every which way. Plums Kang Hyeong-seok had bought at the hypermarket.
Plop. Plop-plop.
The plums rolled through the muddy water and stopped, and Yoon-sang remembered what Kang Hyeong-seok had told him.
He said the chang-gwi love plums.
When the rigid, breathless Yoon-sang lifted his eyes, what he saw were the creatures sidling toward the plums. He stumbled back — but the chang-gwi ignored him completely, burying their noses in the fruit and sniffing. Then they began to crunch the plums down noisily, rind and all, and Yoon-sang felt every hair on his head bristle.
Oh my god. It's real. Hyung-nim was right.
Saved! Yoon-sang spun on his heel and bolted. Even mid-flight he kept glancing back, but the chang-gwi had their heads buried in the fruit and showed no interest in giving chase.
Pat-pat-pat-pat — whoosh! Rat-a-tat.
Hurling a few more plums even as he ran, he finally staggered to a stop a good distance off and dragged ragged air into his lungs. He'd been running for ages, and still there was no sign of pursuit.
“Hah! Haaah!”
He'd run so hard he could taste blood at the back of his throat. Face contorted, Yoon-sang forced down a painful swallow; his head was more than tangled — it was burning up.
What do I do now?
He was worried sick about Kang Hyeong-seok, but he was just a civilian. There was nothing he could do. Going back was the right call. And yet, somehow, his feet refused to carry him off.
“...Damn it.”
Lost in thought, Yoon-sang swallowed dryly and raised his head.
“I haven't even squeezed all the good footage out of this yet. Where the hell'm I going.”
The whole thing wasn't finished. He'd come too far to walk away now — and more than that, he was terrified that bolting might wreck whatever fragile thing he had going with Kang Hyeong-seok.
Haah...!
Turning his face toward the mountain, Yoon-sang clamped his lips shut and started to move.
The mountain-god shrine had been no use at all.
Something'll turn up. And I've still got plums — what's the worst that could happen? I'm so dead.
Something would be up there. There had to be. Lantern held out ahead of him, Yoon-sang all but ran up the mountainside. This was the mountain with the tiger-shaped heap of stones.
After climbing for a long while like that, he came to a halt before something that was not the mountain-god shrine.
“Huh? Wh... what is this...?”
A mound of stones reaching as high as a grown man's chest. He'd run into these once in a while on his old hikes — but in a situation like this, there was no ignoring it.
A stone tomb. A grave raised for those taken by a tiger, which the living could not bear to bury in the plain earth — so they had sealed it behind talismanic devices instead, meant to keep whatever was inside from ever coming out.
It was a hosikchong — a tiger-bite tomb.
Jangle-ja-ja-ja-jangle!
Raindrops sprayed off the ringing shaman bells. The rain was falling with a viciousness, but the bells that scatter malign spirits were earning their keep many times over. The blood-reek and grave-miasma rolling off the chang-gwi thick in the air around him thinned, and the ones nearest him even shuffled backward a step or two.
But the beomgwi hadn't moved so much as a muscle.
—Grrrrrrr.
The beast dropped low and rolled a growl out of its chest. That was all it took — every hair on his body stood on end, and the hand shaking the shaman bells stopped, if only for an instant.
A Mountain Lord is a Mountain Lord, after all.
And no ordinary one — a beomgwi with the power to do harm even to gods.
Kang Hyeong-seok held its gaze, his face stiffening bit by bit. Part of it was refusing to be cowed — but more than that, he had the feeling that if he looked away even for a heartbeat, the thing would be on him.
He regripped the shaman bells and the Sinjangkal in a vice-tight clench, ground his molars together, and opened his mouth.
"The Supreme One declares: Yellow Heaven upholds me, Yellow Earth sustains me — sun and moon to light me, the star-spirits to stand guard."
"Bear me, O immortal riders; watch over me, O Lords of Fate. Tae-eul descends to me — the Jade Spirit guides my road, the Three Officials keep me."
⟨ Tae-eul Bosin-gyeong ⟩
Squelch. Squelch, squelch. Stepping through mud that grabbed at his shoes like a tidal flat, Kang Hyeong-seok recited the Tae-eul Bosin-gyeong, the sutra of Tae-eul's protection. A scripture through which the immortal spirits shield the one who chants it. The fear coiled in his chest began to settle, and his trembling hands and feet found their steadiness again.
And that was when—
—Grrrowl.
The beomgwi rumbled its throat and rose. In the same instant, the calm the sutra had given him wavered — only slightly, but it wavered — and the shaman bells, too, fell silent for a heartbeat.
Tramp.
With heavy, weighty footfalls, the beomgwi began to advance on him. Its face was nothing like an ordinary tiger's. Warped like the tiger of some old folk painting, eyeballs rolled up and bulging — the face of a beast caught a breath before it pounced on its prey, drawn larger than life and then made flesh.
Tramp. Tramp.
The beomgwi came on. The sheer weight of its presence and its killing intent seemed to press his body into the mud — but Kang Hyeong-seok set the bells ringing again and swung the Sinjangkal.
“A great god walks with me.”
Muttering it low, he fixed all his attention on the two sacred implements in his hands. It did not come easily. Wielding two at once. But he knew that no matter how potent the implements, the heart and intent of the one who bore them mattered more — so he concentrated with everything he had.
Jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle!
His communion with the divine deepening at speed, he could feel a tremendous energy gathering — because the Sinjangkal was in his hand. A mudang who grips a blade, as the General Deity does, can bring about a far deeper descent of the god. And just as the Momjusin was about to step into Kang Hyeong-seok's body—
—Grrrrr.
The beomgwi's throat rumbled in what sounded like irritation, its jaw writhing. Its belly undulated then, fur rippling in a wave toward the jaw. And at last it became a yukhon — a soul dissolved into the tiger's flesh.
It was the chang-gwi's way to cling to a tiger's jaw and whisper to the beast the names of the people they had known in life. Someone who knew Kang Hyeong-seok. Someone Kang Hyeong-seok knew.
Professor Jang Jun.
“Hyeong... seok.”
The beomgwi seized control of Jang Jun's mouth and began to toy with him. The tears of blood dripping from the professor's eyes told Kang Hyeong-seok exactly how vast the agony of that possession was.
“Save... me. It hurts... so much. You... can do it, can't... you? Hyeong... seok.”
Professor Jang Jun had been close to him, too. The man had spent his university years alongside Kim Jae-sik; he'd been a professor Kang Hyeong-seok respected, and there had been afternoons when he and Kim Jae-sik had cadged a cup of coffee in that very office. He still remembered how the coffee had tasted that day.
“Professor.”
And to Kang Hyeong-seok, his face contorting, Professor Jang Jun heaved up mouthfuls of blood as he forced the words out.
“Put down... the blade. And... do a cheondo-gut... for me.”
The voice came out strangled, as though a hand were squeezing his throat.
Kang Hyeong-seok wanted it — God, he wanted to perform the cheondo-gut for Jang Jun. But he could not. Not yet.
Rrrk.
He felt the chang-gwi at his back sink into crouches, ready to spring, and he saw the beomgwi's yellow eyes fixed on him. The moment he lowered the Sinjangkal, his throat would be torn open. He would be devoured alive and become a chang-gwi himself — and a ghost that had been a mudang in life would be, to the beomgwi, a tiger given wings.
Jangle—!
Giving the shaman bells a light shake, Kang Hyeong-seok clenched his teeth and spoke.
“I am going to exorcise the beomgwi now.”
“Hyeong... seok.”
“Just bear with me a little longer, Professor.”
“Hyeong-seok... listen... to me.”
“And so——”
Kang Hyeong-seok lifted his gaze from the writhing, agonized Jang Jun and fixed it on the beomgwi.
“——quit your games. You rotten, long-festered bastard.”
Shaaaaa!
With one great sweep of the Sinjangkal, the Momjusin descended into his body. The outer corners of his eyes drew upward, and his pupils kindled with radiance. Made one with the god, he rattled the shaman bells and advanced with the Sinjangkal held before him.
"Myriad ghosts of grievance, hundred-thousandfold, who thirst to work me harm — cease, cease your harm! Shield me, O heavens above — Great General who banishes demons!"
He seized the hilt of the Sinjangkal in a crushing grip and recited the next passage.
"Dragon-bearing Sword of Heaven, descended among men — Dragon-Heaven Sword, one sweep, fourfold still."
"Strike the mountain: the mountain collapses. Strike the tree: the tree is severed. Strike the stone: the stone shatters. Strike the water: the water parts. Strike the fire: the fire dies. Strike a man: the man yet lives. Strike a ghost: the ghost is brought to heel — O selfless Sword of Heaven!"
It was the Chuk Ak-gwi-gyeong — the Sutra for Subjugating Evil Spirits, the scripture by which ghosts and demons are brought low with the heavenly sword. Leveling the Sinjangkal at the beomgwi, Kang Hyeong-seok strode forward, step by measured step.
"Once swung: heaven itself quakes — Sword of Heaven."
"Twice swung: the earth's veins shudder — Sword of Heaven."
"Thrice swung: mountains and rivers convulse — Sword of Heaven."
The Sinjangkal was his heavenly sword.
"Four times swung: every ghost is swallowed into oblivion, the four quarters set right, the five stations cleansed; the fortress broken, the fortress held, its walls roaring yet standing strong; the cloud-steeds of a hundred years — and ghost and spirit alike are shaken to their knees!"
The moment the sutra ended—
—GrrROWL!
The beomgwi threw its head back and roared to the heavens.
Psshh-sh-sh-sh-sh!
The leaves around them shuddered savagely, and rain and water-drops came pouring down like the tears of all those the tiger had devoured. And then the beomgwi lunged at Kang Hyeong-seok.
Gulp.
Yoon-sang swallowed dryly, staring at the hosikchong. He had no idea when the chang-gwi might come swarming back, and yet his feet wouldn't take him away. It was nothing but a simple pile of stones over a grave — and yet, somehow, the hosikchong would not release him. As though it were begging him for help.
And that was when—
Fwoooooosh!
“Urk—!”
A violent gust tore past and the rain grew fiercer still. Hurriedly wiping the water from his eyes and mouth, Yoon-sang raised his phone and shone its light on the hosikchong. Somehow, he simply could not bring himself to leave the thing be.
Gulp.
Swallowing spit gone thin and watery with rain, he reached out a hand toward the stone mound. And the instant his fingertips made contact—
Grrrrrumble.
—the hosikchong shuddered hard, and several stones rolled loose and clattered down.
“Huh—huuuh!”
Yoon-sang recoiled in horror — and then went white as a sheet.
“Th-that. Aaah. Ah!”
The words wouldn't come. And small wonder — because in the gap where the stones had crumbled away, an eye was staring out.
“Uh! Uh-uh-uh! Aaaaargh!”
His legs buckled beneath him, and Yoon-sang screamed up at the hosikchong. And the pupil gleaming through the gap in the stones stared back down at him.