Honmono 本物: The Real Thing
BY SUNG HAENA TRANS. BY LEE KYUNG MIN
I can’t believe it. The shinaegi who lives across the street is sitting in the window of the fast food shop by the subway station—and she’s eating a burger. I watch the newbie as she gulps her Coke, mayonnaise all over her mouth. She’s removed all the pieces of lettuce and tomato, so she bites into a bun with just a bunch of patties stacked in between.
You’re telling me Halmeom’s eating meat now?
At this point, I’m more than annoyed, I’m fuming. My Halmeom, the Halmeom with the mouth of a queen who only took her rice perfectly cooked and her food plain, without any spice, the one who wouldn’t even touch anything slightly fishy or gamey even if it was good for her—that picky granny’s eating burgers?
I watch the shinaegi take a bite out of the bun and carefully dip a nugget into her sauce. I don’t know what she’s thinking—it’s not even a rest day for us, a Day of No Spirits. When Halmeom was with me, I couldn’t have even a lick of meat. And that was just for starters. I quit smoking and drinking. Suppressed my lust, because it could bring bad energy. Didn’t even go to see my own mom’s body washed and clothed at her funeral. All for Halmeom.
As I sit with my rage boiling over, the shinaegi stands and clears her table. I hurry to hide, in case she sees me. She inserts her wireless earbuds and walks down the alleyway of jeom houses, where us mudangs and fortune tellers work. With every step, the spirit bells on her tote bag chime and jingle.
At the shrine, where a long wooden table is set with candles and bowls, I go down the line offering the spirits water—first, to the Jade Emperor painted on the wall, then to the Spirit of the Seven Stars, and then to our Old Halmeom.
Before Halmeom I place a bouquet of fresh peonies, just as she likes. I picked them out in the early morning at a flower market, and the blossoms are nice and full. Even Halmeom, who never once showed any surprise or gratitude at my offerings, always liked when I brought peonies.
“Look at them, how beautiful the real ones are. I told you, what’s honmono is different.”
I don’t want to play favorites with the spirits that come down to me, but for the past few days, I’ve been showering Halmeom with extra care. She was the strongest spirit to be with me, the one who could see the furthest and predict the most. So I’ve been putting an extra sweet yakwa on her offering table, burning her the most expensive candles, sweeping and scrubbing her shrine. Even my offer of real flowers instead of paper ones is intended to match her taste. And yet.
I smile and ask, “Spirit, they’re so beautiful, aren’t they?”
And she offers no reply.
It’s already been two weeks since the shinaegi moved in across the street. I’d watched, standing at my window while she and her parents hauled boxes. I’d laughed—she was a total newbie, I could tell. With her baby face, she looked barely twenty, around the same age I’d been when I was first initiated as a mudang. Her parents lugged big pieces of furniture on their backs while she tagged along in her purple tracksuit, moving a couple of small boxes here and there. How long would this one last? This street had a strong field of cold yin energy, and most mudangs who moved in didn’t last a year. The one who’d previously set up in the new shinaegi’s house had stayed for exactly nine months before clearing out. Two months, I decided—that’s what I’d give her before she packed her bags again. I lowered the blinds and turned away.
That evening, her parents came knocking on my door with some red bean tteok. The shinaegi came with them.
Please take care of our girl, they begged. The spirits have just come to her, so she doesn’t know much yet. Yes, sir, we’d be so grateful if you could teach her anything you know. As her parents went on, the girl sat behind them and scrolled on her phone.
I didn’t want to just take the food and send them away, so I began to boil some Puer tea I’d received from a monk at the Muryangsa temple. The shinaegi’s father said he knew the tea well from his business trips to China and explained how to tell real Puer from the fake blends.
“There he goes again,” his wife muttered under her breath.
“You see, it might look similar but you can always tell once you steep it. The fake ones, your body rejects them. They smell awful too. Can’t trust appearances.”
The shinaegi paid no attention to what her dad said, just kept looking at her phone. With their slender faces and gentle demeanor, her parents resembled each other, but she was different. Her face was cold, uninterested. Only her eyes carried a strange intensity.
Her parents peered around the shrine while the tea steeped, taking in the walls painted with the Jade Emperor and the Spirit of the Seven Stars, the table with a statues of the Reclining Buddha and of Halmeom holding a white tiger in her arms.
“When did you first receive the spirits?” the shinaegi’s father asked.
“Thirty years ago now,” I replied.
“Thirty years…” He and his wife glanced at their daughter and sighed. I knew it didn’t look easy. Theirs was the same expression my mom had worn when she’d learned the spirits were behind the many illnesses, big and small, that had followed me since high school. I’d been chosen, they had said at the jeom house. It was my fate to live as a mudang now. My mom had sobbed then, saying it must be all her fault.
The shinaegi’s parents started going on about their family history. There wasn’t another person in the whole extended family who’d been chosen, they said. How could this make sense? “Our family’s actually Catholic,” her father continued. “How are we supposed to accept this when we’ve been told mudang work was simple superstition our whole lives? How are we supposed to believe it?”
“It’s normal to feel denial at first. Everyone does.” I poured tea into their cups. “It’ll be easier if you just accept it as inevitable, like fate.”
They looked somber as they drank their tea, but they still complimented its aftertaste: real Puer for sure. The shinaegi, on the other hand, took a sip and spit it out right away. “Tastes like hay.”
Her parents were more shocked than I was by her outburst.
“We don’t know what’s going on with her, she’s usually very polite,” her father said, apologizing for her behavior.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Everyone says it’s dry and bitter the first time.” But I thought, what a rude kid. Wait till you find out how expensive it is. Still, I kept my feelings to myself and poured some hot water into her cup instead.
“How did you end up coming here?” I asked her parents. “Most people stay away because the energy’s too strong.”
The shinaegi answered before they could. “Because Halmeom told me to.” She talked to me as if I were her age. A little shocking, but I decided to let it go. She was just a kid. And for the first months after starting mudang work, there were times when spirits would speak through you without warning. I softened my voice as if talking to a small child.
“Is that right, miss?”
She barely glanced up at me as she pushed away her teacup.
“If it’s too bitter for you, can I get you a piece of candy?” Child spirits can’t resist anything sweet. I went to the cupboard to find something to shut her up when I heard a mumble behind me.
“Halmeom also told me to move in across the street from this asshole.”
That’s when it had started. Our cursed history.
I looked back at her. Had I heard right? “What…what did you say?”
The shinaegi let out a laugh.
“Guess it’s true then, what they said. The spirits did leave you. You don’t even know Halmeom’s with me now.”
She stared me straight in the eye.
“Though what would a shitty poser like you know.”
I grab a handful of rice grains and throw them onto the table. Count them: they’re even. Still even on the second try and the third. Bad luck is all that seems to be hanging around me these days. I get the number for disaster, the number for parting with someone you love… When was the last time this happened in the past thirty years?
I stop trying to read my fortune and go to the window. Multiple customers have gone in and out of the shinaegi’s place since this morning. It’s booming, you might say. Word must have gone around because it’s barely been a month, and there’s a line down the block. She doesn’t even have a sign, much less the five-colored flags that every mudang is supposed to hang at the door. But still, somehow, people keep coming in. Beginner’s luck, I tell myself, but it doesn’t make me feel better.
The customers are entering, one by one, as their numbers are read aloud when I get a call. I have half a mind to let it ring out but decide to pick up. The loud voice of Bohyun Bodhisattva sounds from the other side of the receiver.
“Hey, where are ya?”
“At the shrine, where else?”
“Aren’t you supposed to go up Bukhansan mountain today?”
I flip open my calendar—there’s a red circle around today’s date. I always go up the mountain on the first day of summer to pray to the spirits, but it had completely slipped my mind this year.
“You sure your head’s screwed on okay?” Bohyun asks, and then he lays out the real reason for his call. “By the way, did you think about the offer?”
“I can’t read daily horoscopes, Bohyun.”
“What?” His voice grows louder, and my frown gets deeper. “Why?”
Bohyun recently found me a gig working for the local paper, but I don’t like the sound of it. “Today’s Fortune” is one of those sham mudang jobs where you write meaningless things like, “Always be positive,” “Think about it from the other person’s perspective,” or “Give back to those who gave to you,” as if that was the same as doing our real work. There’s no way I’m putting my name on something like that. Again I tell Bohyun I don’t want to, and he suddenly lowers his voice to a soft whisper.
“Hey, you know I’m not giving this to just anyone. Other mudangs are lining up for this job, and I still came to you.” He speaks as if he’s thinking of me, but I know his own jealousy is wrapped up in all this. That cruel bastard—he wants to take me down a peg after envying me my whole life. Halmeom used to see right through him.
“He’s like a snake without venom,” she’d say. “Not dangerous, but there’s nothing good to come from staying close.”
I move my phone to my other hand and search for a decent excuse.
“It’s just, you know, I haven’t been feeling well. Everything’s annoying me lately. And I have all these aches that weren’t there before.”
“Did you go to the doctor?”
“I did, actually. Couldn’t help but laugh, though.”
“Why?”
“They said I’m suffering from burnout.”
“A mudang with burnout?” Bohyun starts laughing loudly and won’t stop. “Now that’s one I haven’t heard before.”
But what if it’s true?
I pack my bags for the mountain but stay lying on the floor without making any move to leave. Every year for thirty years I’ve made this trip, yet today my body feels so heavy. Going up the mountain takes at least six days, including a whole day to prepare the food and drinks for the offerings, and then there are alarms every hour to remind you to pray, and nights spent on cold floors…
I eat up more time listing every reason not to go. A sigh escapes me. I really don’t want to, not this time. My heart’s not in it. Besides, who am I supposed to pray to now? All my spirits have … left me.
They could have given me a small sign, any funny feeling, but they just slipped away. All of a sudden. Without warning.
It was about two months ago that I realized they’d left. At the time, I was busy with endless work requests and physically exhausted, but I was also happy that everything was going well. Preparations were underway for a big kut ritual I’d been entrusted to perform in an apartment complex nearby, for the president of the homeowners’ association. He’d stopped by the week before to ask about his daughter’s chances of getting into a good college. Instead of giving him a straight answer, Halmeom had laid out a strange fortune: “That ground’s full of gold, but a bad spirit is blocking everything over there.”
After a close analysis of her words, I realized she was talking about the old apartment complex, which hadn’t met the city’s building standards for the past twenty years. In the end, we decided a kut would be necessary to purge the bad energy.
The ritual was held in the parking lot. There were more people than cars, both apartment residents who’d contributed to the kut fund and others who’d just come to watch.
“The residents usually don’t even allow any weekend flea markets here,” the HSA president told me. “They say they’re too loud. But look how many people showed up for our kut! If this can get the building approved for renovation, I’m sure people will be lining up for you in no time.”
The crowd stood around to watch the ritual with equal parts excitement and suspicion. People even came with cameras to record the whole thing and post it online. They captured everything—the exquisite offering table set with all kinds of colorful dishes and fruit, the folk musicians blowing the taepyeongso and ringing the gong. They focused their cameras on me as I waved a sword in the air and called on the spirits.
“That’s definitely fake,” someone said.
“It has to be, right? Looks legit, though.”
“Well, that’s the whole point. They know what they’re doing.”
I could have told them off and made them stop recording, but only a fraud would let that stuff get to their head. Staring confidently into the center of the camera lens, I stroked the blade of the sword across my left cheek as if to say, here’s your proof. I’m the real thing. And the spirits are with me now.
I waited for the usual response to a sword dance: some shouting or applause, maybe a scream here and there. But there was only a strange silence. Even the taepyeongso and the gong went quiet. I looked at the crowd. In the front row, the HSA’s face had turned white. What was going on?
One of the kids holding a camera finally broke the silence.
“Sir, y- you’re bleeding.”
My cheek did feel wet. Blood was dripping down my robes. No, I’d never made a mistake like this before. I took a breath and picked up my spirit pole as if nothing had happened. Just nerves, I told myself, from performing for a big audience. I could still call Halmeom now. I began to whistle and shake the pole with its white paper ribbons. I couldn’t speak. Just as if they’d known this would happen, neither Halmeon nor the other spirits came to me. Sweat was running down my limbs. My legs went weak.
“Spirits, spirits, are you there?” I called, but it was no use. I heard no voices in reply. I stumbled away from the crowd, wiping my bloody cheek with my sleeve, without even stopping to think how I could possibly clean up this mess.
The spirits hadn’t come back to me after that. Some said to get another mudang to put on a kut, others told me to drink blood from a chicken’s throat. Nothing worked. And when my public humiliation was released on the internet, all my work requests stopped coming in.
That’s why I’m starting to believe it: What if Halmeom really did move to the shinaegi? What if this little kid took all my spirits and all my luck? That sneaky rat, the one smoking a cigarette right now with a client at the end of our street?
I dream that all my teeth fall out. My fine, perfectly healthy teeth start coming loose, one by one, before tumbling out altogether.
My gums ache when I wake. I must have gritted my teeth the whole night. After a hot shower, I burn some mugwort around the shrine to chase away bad energy. The air is throbbing with the bitter smell when I get a text from Congressman Hwangbo saying he’s found a private bar downtown for us to meet. I have a rule against meeting clients outside of the shrine, but Hwangbo is my only exception. After a photo of him coming to see me was blasted in the papers, he got stressed and started to send different locations to meet. He’ll want to be especially careful now, with elections coming up.
If I can’t serve the spirits, I still have to serve my clients. I change out of my mudang robes and into my normal clothes.
Hwangbo’s wife had been one of my regulars. Ten years ago, she dragged him in along with her. I still remember him sitting before me with his eyes full of doubt and lips pursed as if to say, “Let’s hear the best you’ve got.” But when I picked out his lackluster political career, his worries that he might have to give up if he didn’t get his party’s endorsement again, and even his fight with his wife the night before, he sat up in his seat.
“I’ve never believed in anything before.” His eyes were wide. “But I’ll follow your word from this day on, sir.”
Hwangbo sits in a t-shirt and jeans with a glass of wine at the end of the bar. “Munsu!” He waves me over. He was the one who’d first suggested we call each other by our first names and not our titles, at least when we’re not in the shrine.
“Hwangbo!” I give him a side hug and sit down next to him. “I swear you get younger every time I see you. Look at you, in such great shape! And no wrinkles either.”
“No, I’m getting old now.” He points to his eyes and mouth and says he got Botox recently. He’d once laughed at other politicians’ fight to look younger. “I was so full of life back then. Who would’ve thought one day I’d end up just like them? But in this line of work, people like you if you’re young and ignore you if you’re old. That’s just how it is.”
He says that’s why he’s started wearing jeans. Next week, he has an appointment for eyebrow tattoos. It’s not just politics, I want to say as I sip my wine. Even spirits don’t want you if you’re old, apparently.
“You’re drinking?” Hwangbo stares at me in surprise. “I thought Halmeom didn’t like alcohol.”
I almost spew my drink but manage to swallow just in time. Look at me, making mistakes like this now that I can do all the things Halmeom didn’t like.
“This is, like, ceremonial wine,” I say quickly. “Even the spirits need a drink every so often to clear their heads and see better.”
Luckily Hwangbo doesn’t pry. He works on the cheese platter and asks me about his fortune for the upcoming election. I know he doesn’t like to beat around the bush, but his directness still surprises me. The drinks haven’t even kicked in yet.
“Am I going to get it or not?” he asks. “What’d Halmeom say?”
My hands are sweating. I scour my brain for a good response before deciding to change the subject to a headline I saw recently.
“Hyung, I heard you’ve started going to church?”
He freezes. “See, the thing is—”
I interrupt him. “Don’t go too often. It’ll take away all the good energy our spirit has brought you.”
Hwangbo lowers his fork. “It’s all for my image. For the votes. My wife goes to the temple and I go to the church. But you know the only person I follow is you.”
“I know, but the church I can’t accept.”
I pull out a small plate and some rice grains I’ve brought with me. I scatter a few on the plate and count them. Once again, it’s even—and not just even, but ending in two. An unlucky number.
Hwangbo glances at me. “Is it not looking good?”
“No, it is,” I lie. I search for something, anything to spin positively. “You’ve gotten—the number of death for your enemies.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s a good year.”
Hwangbo grins.
“It’s just—”
My words fade as I watch his expression. The corners of his mouth go back down again.
“What? Is there something else?”
I make him wait for my response, counting the rice as I think of what to say.
“There’s a bit of bad luck in June. When that’s the most important time for you. And if you miss this opportunity, it won’t come again until much later. We might have to throw a kut to purge this.”
What would Halmeom think? She probably would’ve cursed me out for making up stories like some fraud nisemono mudang, all for money. But what with the spirits gone and my disgrace being plastered all over the internet, is it so bad if a kut is the only thing I can look forward to right now? If this is the best chance I have to avoid going into debt just to pay my rent?
I sweep up the scattered rice and wait for Hwangbo’s reply. I stay quiet—one wrong word could break the whole illusion. Hwangbo sits and wets his lips with his drink.
“I wasn’t born into one of those powerful families, you know. It’s not like I’m well-connected either. The only reason I’ve made it this far is thanks to—”
I know what he’s about to say: Thanks to me. Thanks to me. From his early days as a party outsider to now, as a mayoral candidate, there’s nothing he’s done that I haven’t helped him with. I was the one who told him to move his ancestors’ gravesite from Gunsan to Yongin, which got him a win in the same district where he’d suffered bitter defeats two elections in a row. When he became a congressman, I was the one who told him to hang a painting of a fallen daechu tree in his house, after which he became the speaker for his party. He knows that everything’s gone too well to owe to luck. That’s why he trusts me. As he explains all this, I wait for him to finish. “Thanks to our Halmeom,” he says.
My body goes limp.
“I’ll do it. Kut or not, I’ll do whatever she wants.”
Is it me he wants to hold onto? Or is it Halmeom? I down the rest of my wine. Its aftertaste is bitter and dry.
I stand in front of the milk shelf at the convenience store, wondering as usual about the difference between banana milk and banana-flavored milk. Just then, someone grabs the last carton of banana milk. I recognize the purple tracksuit—it’s the shinaegi. I take the banana-flavored milk and stand behind her in the check-out line. Living next to each other means I run into her every so often. It also means I can hear what’s going on at her place even if I don’t want to.
A few days ago, I heard the sound of shattering glass and her father’s shouting. Money. Money. Money, over and over. He grew more aggressive as time went on.
It was nothing I hadn’t heard before. Everyone gets greedy once they’ve had a taste of money. Quite a few parents in the mudang world overwork their kids and use them for their own financial gain. My mother was the same. You should have seen how that soft woman, who used to feel guilty haggling over the price of tofu at the market, suddenly turned vicious after my first paycheck. There were times when I couldn’t win against her and took clients for forty-eight hours straight, pinching my thighs to stay awake. I once grew so tired I lied to her, saying that I couldn’t speak to the spirits at night. She didn’t even flinch, just shoved the spirit pole back in my hand, saying, “You think spirits care what time of day it is?”
The shouting had continued from the shinaegi’s place. Money, money, money. I didn’t want to get involved in another family’s business, but it worried me a little. Was this really necessary? I had wondered. With her being so young?
The shinaegi finishes at the register and looks back at me. Loud bass thumps from the headphones in her ears. She greets me with an unexpected bow. A little shy, sure, but decently polite.
“Hello,” she says.
“Oh. Hi.” With her soft freckled face and thick ponytail, she looks like any other student eating kimbap or ramyun in the convenience store. Completely different from the day she leered at me and said all kinds of ridiculous things to my face. Maybe Halmeom really has gone over to her.
I drink my banana-flavored (not banana) milk and think of my Halmeom. For thirty years we’d stuck together like mother and son. Now, though, it seems like even after all that time our relationship was more practical than intimate. Definitely unique. She was an eccentric old woman. Not just in her food preferences. Her tastes and habits were all singular, and I often felt flustered because she changed her mind at the drop of a hat. She needed to be given all the things she wanted and to be told all the things she wished to hear. When she got mad, she cursed so harshly in the old Japanese of the colonial time that my stomach turned.
But she was brilliant. Unlike the other spirits whose predictions were right maybe a third of the time, Halmeom’s fortunes were always spot on. Sometimes it scared me how she could read my mind.
“Munsu, you want to get registered as a National Intangible Heritage, hm? You want me to make that happen for you?”
Being acknowledged as an Intangible Heritage of the country is every mudang’s dream. It’s a well-respected, powerful position—and my secret wish. I’d never mentioned it to anyone, thinking it might sound crass, but Halmeom could see right through me. As much as I pretended not to care, I couldn’t help my excitement every time she whispered those words. She knew that I’d already been rejected a couple times, and that I’d even tried to pass some money under the table during the last audition and been told off, it wasn’t the 1980s in Korea anymore.
“Be careful,” she said. “If your ambition gets bigger as you age, people will notice and start to leave you. All that good luck can turn bad.”
“The older you get,” she added. “the more you have to conceal your true self. Or else you’ll only dirty your name. I can get you the Heritage title, Munsu. All you have to do is listen to me.”
Just when I’d convinced myself awards were nothing special, Halmeom would come and get my hopes up again. The thing is, I could trust her, more than any other spirit. She was the wisest and most shrewd, the one who could take care of any problem and make any dream come true.
I wipe the dust from Old Halmeom’s statue. I change the water and replace the shriveled peonies with fresh ones. Paper flowers would be less work, but what can I do? Real is what she wants. Honmono is what she loves. I cut the stems at a diagonal and place the flowers in the vase. Maybe this will get her back. Maybe then she’ll keep her promise. I pray that the flowers stay bright and healthy for as long as they can.
Campaign banners and posters line every street. I stop in front of one, for Hwangbo. He looks half his age. They must have touched up his smile, making his expression classy, yet soft, and erasing spots, white hairs, and wrinkles. All this effort, and he’s still polling neck-and-neck with the other candidate, who is ten years younger. I feel as restless as Hwangbo does. He might be a client, but we share a trust and a friendship that’s only gotten stronger over the ten years we’ve worked together.
I stand in front of the poster and recite a prayer for him: namu amitabul, namu amitabul.
Later, inside a mudang store, I select a fresh pair of robes and paper shoes for Hwangbo’s kut. I also buy a bunch of other things I might need, choosing the most expensive and well-made items.
“This kut must be quite big,” the store owner says. “What, is it for the whole country?” I just give him a flat smile in return. Hwangbo wants to hold a grand ceremony—set a large offerings table, hire multiple musicians, even personally pick out a cow to be slaughtered before and sacrificed. After hearing that his rival also holds kuts, for another famous spirit, Hwangbo wants his not just to measure up, but to be bigger and better.
Can I make it happen? After my failed kut, my heart pounds and my hands sweat at the mere sight of a sword. There’s still no sign that the spirits will come back to me.
“Would you… happen to have a fake jakdu?” I point at the real thing, a massive gleaming blade we mudangs are supposed to jump and dance on during a kut, while the spirits protect us. The owner looks at me as if he’s heard wrong. My ears burn. I shouldn’t have said anything, not when I could have checked online first. I can’t do this much longer, I decide. The nerves might kill me.
I’m walking into the underground mall with two bags full of things for the kut when I spot the shinaegi. I start to follow her without thinking. She’s got those earbuds in again, and she walks by herself. She tries on lipstick in a makeup store. At a clothing shop, she looks through a few cheap t-shirts and sweaters. An employee comes to ask what she’s looking for, and she quickly escapes. For a she while stands staring at a poster for a K-pop group, then lingers in front of a dessert shop before walking the other way. I know it doesn’t look great that I’m trailing her, but we’re going the same direction anyway. I match her slow pace as I walk behind her with my bags in hand.
Her hands in her pockets, the shinaegi comes to a sudden stop outside a chain coffeeshop. I move to hide, but she doesn’t look back. She just marches in. I hesitate before following her. Even on a weekday afternoon the place is full of people chatting about anything and everything. Most are students her age. Since I tend to stay on our mudang street, I often forget that we live near a university. I’d purposely avoided the college area when I first started this work, but that was in my early twenties. I’d aged out of being embarrassed or ashamed of my lifestyle long ago.
I grab a quiet spot two tables away from the shinaegi. Everyone has laptops, books, or friends in front of them but her table is empty. She blows bubbles in her drink and stops to giggle under her breath. She must have overheard the conversation of the two students next to her.
Does she have any friends? Even if she did, she couldn’t share her own experiences and laugh along at silly pointless jokes like the others. Few people understand the lives we have been given. At her age, all I’d prayed for was a normal life, a normal body. The fact that we each get only one life to live had seemed like a curse.
Does she feel that way too?
The shinaegi spends her afternoon blowing bubbles, like any kid. I secretly copy her and try it myself, puffing air into my cheeks. Bubble bubble bubble bubble.
I practice for the kut by watching videos online showing how to act when you make contact with the spirits. I try rolling my eyes and shaking my body, but it’s so mortifying that I stop. How in the world had I done it before? Called the spirits to me in no time, invited them into my body?
It’s been a few weeks since I ordered the fake sword and jakdu online. Now all that’s left is for me to practice, to make it look real. I blast a recording of the ceremonial kut music and wave my sword to its rhythm. Sweat is running down my body when I get a call. Thinking it’s Hwangbo, I hurry to answer—and flinch. It’s Bohyun. What’s it going to be this time? If he brings up the horoscope gig again, I’m hanging up right away.
“You’re calling about the job, right?” I ask bluntly. “I said I’m not doing it. Go find someone else.”
He asks a strange question in return. “Hey. Are you doing alright?”
What’s he on about now? I shake my head.
“You haven’t heard?” he asks, then quickly relays what he’s learned. As he talks, my barely-cooled body starts to heat up again. The room fades away, along with the ringing of the music.
“Are you sure?” I ask Bohyun.
“I mean, why would they lie? I met Jangkwang Mudang yesterday and he let it slip just to me.” He keeps rambling on, and I hang up. Without thinking of changing out of my sweat-soaked clothes, I sprint across the street.
The shinaegi stands smoking in front of her house. She doesn’t even give me a chance to speak.
“I knew you’d come.”
She presses the end of her cigarette with her fingers to extinguish the light and turns back toward her place.
“Come in,” she says, leaving the door open. I had wanted to say my piece as soon as I saw her but now that she’s in front of me, no words will come out. Am I scared of her presence? No, there’s no way. I shake myself out of it and enter her shrine.
The smoky scent of incense hits me, and I freeze before I can even take my shoes off. Her paintings of the Jade Emperor and the Spirit of the Seven Stars, her statues of the Reclining Buddha and the Old Halmeom with a white tiger in her arms—her whole display looks exactly like mine.
“You know what Halmeom told me?” she says. “She hates new environments.”
But isn’t this just rude? When we’re all living and working on the same street? I feel my anger rising but I remind myself that my opponent is a rookie half my age. It’d be more embarrassing to scold her and tell her everything I feel. I quiet my mind before I speak. “You see, the reason I’m here…”
“I know. Because you’re mad that I got Hwangbo’s kut instead of you. He thinks you’ve lost your touch,” she continues. She really won’t let up. “You think he can’t tell a nisemono from the real thing when he’s been in politics for all these years?“
Nisemono. That’s when I know. Only Halmeom used that word. That’s her.
“Spirit…? Is that you?”
Halmeom doesn’t even respond to my question, just keeps talking with the shinaegi. I stand in front of them while they exchange little secrets and snicker, pretending I’m not there, whispering on and on. The longer they talk, the more agitated I feel. Halmeom and the shinaegi seem to get along real well, unlike Halmeom and me. While I’d served and worshipped her for decades, she and this little thing already seem to be on equal footing.
“Spirit!” I can’t hold it in anymore. “How could you replace me with someone else?” I yell. “How could you leave me like this?”
The betrayal is so painful that my teeth start to chatter, but part of me is also paralyzed with fear. Halmeom is too powerful a spirit simply to shout curses or cast evil. I’ve never once criticized or disagreed with her until now, always accepting my place as the weaker one in our relationship.
“Did I ever do you wrong?” I spit out the rage I’ve been holding in. “I did everything you told me to. I gave you everything I could.”
The shinaegi’s been talking nonstop till now. But this time, she looks my way, straight into my eyes with that intense, active stare.
“Munsu.”
“Spirit…”
Finally she hears me. Finally. I listen for her next words.
“Remember what Halmeom said she’d give you? Well, it’s mine now.”
“What?”
“The Heritage title you wanted so badly. She says she‘ll make it happen for me. You’re too old apparently. Just old and full of ambition, which isn’t a good look.”
The shinaegi lifts her hands up to her mouth and begins to laugh. Hahahaha. Hahaha. The horrible sound of her snickering escapes between her fingers. All my blood rushes to my face. My legs feel weak, and my hands ache. The thing is, I can’t tell if the person laughing in my face is Halmeom or the shinaegi, a puppet or a human, a real thing or a fake. My chest begins to burn. All the pity and empathy I’d had for that little kid, all the love and hate and awe I’d had for my Halmeom—everything goes up in flames.
I run out of there before I can even properly slip my shoes back on.
In my shrine it’s quiet. My statue of Old Halmeom stands on the table, alongside the peonies that show no sign of fading.
I throw the whole vase of those red good-for-nothings across the room. Glass shatters everywhere and cuts my hand. Blood begins to run.
“Is this enough?“ I yell at the statue. “Is this what you wanted?”
No matter how much I shout, her empty eyes stare into nothing. “Say something. Anything!” I say over and over, but Halmeom remains silent. I can’t stand it anymore. I lift her statue from the table—and for the first time, I feel it. It’s so light, it’s laughable. Was it like this the whole time? This light… the whole time? I throw her against the wall. Thump. She falls to the floor and begins to roll. Thump, thump, thump.
I can’t help it—I start laughing. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahaha. Hahahahaha. I try to stop, but the laughs burst out of me like hiccups.
Hahaha. Hahahaha.
The first day of summer.
The sky is blue, cloudless. My robes flutter in the light wind. A day with as much good energy as this comes only a few times a year. All along the street, up the hill, are polished mansions and houses on Piloti-style stilts. They surround a quiet park where lush trees dance in the breeze. I carry my bags and slowly climb up the road. The faint sound of the taepyeongso grows louder. I follow its song into a two-story house hidden from its neighbors.
Hwangbo’s name is written in classic Chinese characters on the front door. It’s a big plot of land but he has raised a fence around it so you can’t see inside. This land—another thing I’d told him to get. He knows how hard I worked to find him this spot with the best energy, the one that other people had been lining up for.
From the house I hear the loud music of various instruments. The sound of someone reciting the sutras too. Something comes over me, and I march inside.
The first thing I see is the shinaegi, wearing a pointed bonnet and long mudang robes over a red hanbok skirt. Beside her are two other mudangs in gold, a fortune teller, and a few musicians with traditional drums and instruments, who are helping with the kut.
A kut ritual follows a four-part structure. When the curtain is “raised,” a long process begins, with one act following another. Right now, they are in the middle of a prayer in the yard. The shinaegi shakes her fan and bells, and she talks to the spirits while Hwangbo and his family kneel before her.
Namu amitabul, namu amitabul. We pray to you, we pray.
They’re so immersed, they don’t even bother to look behind them. I take one step toward them, then another. One by one, everyone sitting around the yard turns their heads. Hwangbo, his family, and the other mudangs stare, bewildered, as if in disbelief that I’ve squeezed myself back into this story. Only the shinaegi is unbothered, like she always knew I would come. She moves seamlessly from one act of the kut to the next. When she lifts her sword, the other mudangs clear the offerings table and bring in a thick jumping blade. Carrying my bags, I’m approaching the shinaegi when Hwangbo steps in front of me.
“Excuse me. I thought we already talked about this,” he says. He did call a couple days ago to tell me he’d decided not to go on with the kut, saying we didn’t seem to be on quite the same page. But I knew he was mocking me with his lies. He doesn’t talk to me like a friend anymore. Any affection between us has disappeared.
I don’t reply. I just start taking out the things I’ve brought, one by one: my perfectly ironed robes, my white bonnet, the real sword and double blade jakdu I sharpened last night.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Hwangbo yells, but I only stare at him. He acts like he has something to say but hesitates before stumbling back. I stand before the shinaegi, who sits waiting for the spirit’s call. As the musicians and other mudangs stare blankly between us, she raises her sword and begins dancing as if nothing has changed. I follow her lead and do the same.
This is between us now, two mudangs facing off with no distractions or temptations. The musicians slowly start to play. The drum beats, the flute sounds, and the taepyeongso begins to blow. The fortune teller recites the ritual prayers.
“Spirit, should you have arrived, please partake in the feast, please be touched by the offering of liquor…”
I lift my sword and hop first on one foot, then the other. The blade of the sword glistens in the sunlight. At the offerings table, the shinaegi brandishes her sword and holds it to a single apple. The hard fruit splits instantly. Having checked the strength of the blade, she scrapes it fearlessly across her tongue and arms. Everyone watches, holding their breath. The shinaegi shows no sign of pain. She’s completely calm as she continues the ritual without spilling a single drop of blood.
It’s my turn. I raise the sword I painstakingly sharpened the night before, the one that could split a whole watermelon. I hold the sword to my tongue and feel a sharp prick. The shinaegi looks at me, concerned. I know there’s blood. Its metallic taste fills my mouth. But I don’t care. I don’t feel any pain, any suffering. The shinaegi seems thrown off, but she prepares to step onto the jakdu anyway.
“May our hardships be put aside, may our good fortune come, may we enter paradise and be reborn in this world,” the mudangs chant, and the shinaegi hops onto the blade with her bare feet. This is the highlight of the long ritual, the moment where Halmeom will brandish her sword and armor, and chase the evil spirits away. Any words spoken, any fortunes given on the blade are the most powerful of all. The shinaegi jumps up and down as she calls to Halmeom.
Namuamitabul namuamitabul namuamitabul namuamitabul. Spirit, have you come?
Something shifts in her gaze. Halmeom must have arrived.
She continues her slow steps on the jakdu while Hwangbo and his family desperately put their hands together. We pray to you, we pray. I’m not in their line of sight, but I still step onto my blade. A sharp, cold shock rides up my feet, a terrifying sensation. All my hair stands on end. But I carefully lift up one foot, then the other, without asking anyone for help, without asking anyone for anything.
The chants grow faster and so does the rhythm of the music. I follow the beat as I begin to jump. My back is already soaked in sweat. The shinaegi’s is too. Now it’s a battle of who can last the longest—who will be the true star of this show.
The eye rolls and body shakes I practiced are useless to me now. My body trembles and my eyes spin of their own accord. Something pulls hard at my legs. The soles of my feet are covered in hot, sticky blood. Hwangbo looks horrified. The drum beats louder. The sky is low, and the sun is hot. As the clouds change direction, a shadow moves from my face to the shinaegi’s and back again. My hair and neck and back and toes are soaked—with blood, sweat, or some mixture of the two, I can’t tell. It drips onto the ground, and I keep jumping until I feel like I might fall over. The shinaegi looks exhausted too, but neither of us can stop. I grit my teeth and dance on the jakdu with all my might.
The music grows even faster, and the musician beating the drum spins his hands from left to right.
Namuamitabul namuamitabul namuamitabul namuamitabul.
The clouds are all gone. Even the teller and musicians seem to tire. I’m the only person who won’t ease up. I can’t look good covered in blood, but everything seems brighter, and a smile creeps over my face. I feel light, ecstatic, as if I really am close to the spirits. The music grows faster, and I go harder.
Namuamitabul namuamitabul namuamitabul namuamitabul.
In my thirty years as a mudang, have I ever had a moment like this? Straightening out people’s lives, praying for their luck—none of that is important now. Neither is fame or youth, jealousy or pride, what’s real or fake.
I feel even lighter, like everything is falling away. Like I can finally be a real fraud. My robes soak red, and I shake my spirit bells. They ring across the whole yard—bright, yet heavy.
The shinaegi hasn’t stopped dancing. Sweat runs down her face. She looks at me aghast, then finally steps off her blade. She falls to the ground and stares up at me in shock. Hwangbo and his family stop their prayers and look at me. I know Halmeom is watching too.
“How’s it feel?” I say to her. “Do you see now?”
“Though what would you know, a shitty poser like you.”
Haha. Hahahaha.