INV 1

Grandmother’s house was located on a Great Mountain.

The Great Mountain was a high and steep peak with a chilling atmosphere, rumored to be the site where several people had hanged themselves. Even hunting dogs, famous for being fierce and arrogant, would tuck their tails and flee upon approaching that mountain—as if they would run away in terror even if they tried to climb it recklessly. Even the noisy clowders of stray cats did not frequent this area. Thus, the Great Mountain was always quiet and desolate, devoid of the sounds of beasts. This was separate from the fact that Grandmother cherished animals.

Kwon Yihyeon was similar to those beasts. After graduating from high school and escaping to a university in the capital area, he had never once returned to the big house. Just as the wild animals, who had sustained their lives with the sacrificial food Grandmother had generously shared with a warm heart, ungratefully fled far away whenever they saw the Great Mountain… Kwon Yihyeon used to recall those memories whenever he saw an animal.

“Isn’t that the son from that house over there? You know, the one who hasn’t been seen for a while…”

Kwon Yihyeon, who had briefly stopped beside a stray cat, bit his lip.

Then, he began to walk, looking only straight ahead.

“It’s the Mansin’s grandson, right…”

As everyone in Cheongra-eup whispered, Kwon Yihyeon’s grandmother is a Mansin. There was a day when she herself whispered that she had never wanted the life of a mudang who serves and worships a god; therefore, Kwon Yihyeon does not believe in shamanism even a tiny bit, but regardless, in their world, she was said to be the shaman among shamans. The title that only a few among the most spiritually powerful and prominent shamans of this era can obtain—Mansin—was exactly who Kwon Yihyeon’s grandmother, Kwon Seon-ja, was.

Therefore, Kwon Yihyeon’s family was often called this:

The Mansin’s Big House. The Mansin’s Great Mountain.

Kwon Yihyeon’s childhood was surrounded by memories of a certain shrine where the auspicious sound of shaking bells, chicken blood, and five-colored fabrics fluttered.

Dense greenery always appears dark blue, even blackish.

In the dark blue mountains overtaken by thick fog, Kwon Yihyeon stood one step away from a shamanistic life under the judgment that he possessed no spiritual talent.

Still, being accustomed to the management of the big house, he assumed that if someone came rushing up the mountain range, they were surely seeking help in some form.

Because whenever someone dressed in expensive and precious clothes parted the dark blue, thick bushes and leaves to come and pray on their knees, the elder relatives would quietly accept their leaning bodies.

He was used to such things. Rather than hanging out with children his own age, he lived days where he would solve textbook problems scratch scratch in a quiet atmosphere where the sound of wind chimes occasionally echoed in his ears, and if someone came up wailing from afar, he was familiar enough to judge the weight of the case just by the sound of the crying, thinking, ‘This case is of a size that my maternal uncle will have to go down to meet.’

He lived such days. In every month of his youth.

At the very least, it was fortunate that the 21st century was an era where there were far more people who did not believe in shamanism than those who did. Had it not been so, instead of the quiet sound of wind chimes or the scent of incense, suspicious bundles of banknotes in apple boxes and the solicitations of despicable adults would have appeared as things that reminded him of his childhood.

Regrettably, he had actually witnessed adults carrying apple boxes. The problem was the grand presidential election period. Whenever that time came, politicians that even the young Kwon Yihyeon had seen on the news would come and go, but looking back, Grandmother was uniquely harsher and more severe toward politicians than toward other guests.

She had a line, and she had principles.

No matter how much they brazenly offered gold by the chestful, she did not accept them all. Usually, it is said that shamans live, eat, and build houses by sucking the lifeblood of politicians, but whether it was because Grandmother was indeed a Mansin, anyway, her expression would turn cold in front of those who do politics.

She did not reveal to Kwon Yihyeon what the criteria for filtering guests were.

There were those who heard a shout to get the hell out, and there were those who were judged not even worth opening the door for. Chillingly, those who were kicked out in such a manner always had their crimes of killing someone revealed within a few years.

In short, if one was a politician, just seeing the Mansin’s face could be considered great luck, but unfortunately, not everyone could grasp such luck at once.

A certain member of the National Assembly Kwon Yihyeon remembered had stormed out, saying the divination fee was absurd, only to crawl back within a few days, having lost a significant amount of weight, and rolled around at his maternal aunt’s feet while sobbing loudly. Begging to let him see her just one more time, saying his body was foolish and he had dared not to recognize her…

After storming out once and returning, the price became more expensive, but after spitting out the value of several apartments, he looked strangely satisfied as he left.

He didn’t know what kind of conversation the man had shared with Grandmother to make him storm out, nor what he had experienced after storming out.

Anyway, in that way, influential and powerful people promoted the development of Cheongra-eup simply because Grandmother lived here.

In his young heart, Kwon Yihyeon thought it would be better if they just gave Grandmother more money, but after hearing Grandmother’s words, he would quietly nod his head.

“A person, you see. In the end, one must live by touching the soil and treading on the ground. If your feet are separated from the ground, a person cannot remain a person… Therefore, you must be grateful for everything. It is a thing to be grateful for that Cheongra can still sprout a pure energy, and it is a thing to be grateful for that it allowed us to settle and take root.”

These were difficult words for the Kwon Yihyeon of that time to understand. Still, because Kwon Yihyeon liked Grandmother, he chewed and swallowed the words to familiarize his lips with them. He hoped that one day, the day would come when he could understand.

Not many days after that, a city bus stop, which previously required a two-hour walk to reach, appeared right in front of the village. Subway station construction began, pavilions and flower beds increased, and something like a community center or a welfare center was built.

Because of that, some villagers regarded Grandmother as a place to lean on when times were tough, while others mocked her as a cult leader who swindled politicians. The older villagers, perhaps because something had happened, did not even try to hide their sense of awe and avoidance toward the Mansin and prevented their children from associating with Kwon Yihyeon. So, the young Kwon Yihyeon was always treated as an invisible person. He lived his whole life being treated like a ghost or a contagious disease.

It was because he was raised by a mudang grandmother without parents.

He does not resent Grandmother. He loves her. However, he felt that this was reason enough for not wanting to carve his footprints back into this land.

“I heard he was living well in Seoul. Why did he come back.”

“Did he come to receive a spirit initiation?”

“I guess that child can’t deceive his blood in the end either…”

Even now, long after Kwon Yihyeon had become independent in Seoul using a university in the capital area as an excuse, the atmosphere of Cheongra-eup had not changed. The villagers, who recognized that the man with the urban and sophisticated aura was ‘that child,’ all whispered foul words. He noticed the woman who ran the supermarket in front of the elementary school Kwon Yihyeon used to attend, clinging to her mother’s arm and chattering about something while covering her mouth. The person next to her, and the person next to her, were all acquaintances. With every step, the gazes of acquaintances followed, and the backbiting of acquaintances followed. This was why he never wanted to return. To be honest, the feeling of walking back into his hometown—a place he said he would never return to until he lay down in his grave—was like crap.

However, from a certain point, Kwon Yihyeon naturally began to have nightmares.

He needed a superstition to end that dream.