1440 - Chapter 12

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 12
Even on a cold night, Yeon-su wore nothing but a thin shirt as he passed through the main hall and entered the Inner Courtyard. There, he carefully set down a bowl of Jeong-hwasu—the pure dawn water drawn from a sacred well, used in prayers to the divine—upon a Large Earthenware Jar.
The water in the White Porcelain Bowl rippled slowly, then gradually grew still. Soon the quiet surface reflected a black night and a pale moon.
Yeon-su knelt before it. He paid no mind to his dress pants soiling in the dirt, bringing his palms together with reverence.
A crescent moon night, when the moonlight was faint. A night when the stars shone brighter.
Today was the day to offer Ritual Devotion to the Star Deity. Since receiving his Divine Calling, Yeon-su bowed once more to Chilseong, who had never once granted him a proper answer.
Everyone said the same thing: Chilseong was inherently silent. This was not a deity who descended during Divination Reading, so it was acceptable that no Divine Message would be bestowed.
Yet Yeon-su could not accept this. Belief in Chilseong had flowed deeply through the Korean peninsula since the time of Gojoseon. But how could he offer his whole heart in Ritual Devotion to a deity who would not even answer his own chosen disciple?
Could one ever offer a satisfying prayer to a god who touched no mortal through any path? When he did not even know what that god desired?
Yeon-su wanted an answer. But even today, after hours upon hours of prayer, he received none. Not a single fragment of a Divine Vision descended.
This was not something he resented. Rather, he felt only a melancholy that such a great deity had severed communication with her disciple. His peers would likely rage at him for such spoiled words, had they heard them.
Only when the crescent moon’s reflection in the bowl began to shift angle, gathering at the bowl’s rim, did Yeon-su finally rise. His brow was slick with sweat—a testament to how deeply he had been absorbed in prayer.
I hope to meet you someday.
After finishing his prayer, he turned his head gently toward the gaze he had felt for some time. There, through the slightly opened back door, lay a man with his eyes closed, his form still on the bedding.
“……?”
That door had been tightly shut to keep out the cold wind. Which meant the man had cracked it open just now to watch Yeon-su’s prayer in secret.
But surely nothing could be seen from such a narrow opening? Even so, when Yeon-su turned around and saw the man hastily feigning sleep without even having time to close the door properly, he found him oddly endearing.
But since he did not wish to embarrass him, Yeon-su pretended not to notice, took the bowl, and left.
“Hmm? Why is the door open?”
As he did, he remembered to close the back door quietly behind him.
After closing the back door and heading to the Kitchen to empty the water, he heard the front entrance of the Separate Building creak open with careful deliberation. His body tensed for a moment, but the cautious air suggested it was neither In-eum nor his son.
Yeon-su held his breath, standing motionless in the darkened Kitchen.
Whoever had opened the door peered inside for a moment before stepping in. The person moved with careful, soundless steps into the Kitchen, setting something on the counter. Then, catching sight of the white feet visible on the floor, they started in alarm.
That they were so startled yet didn’t cry out was proof enough of a long-time servant of the Baek Family.
Yeon-su approached the familiar employee with slow, deliberate steps.
“What brings you here at this hour?”
At his question, the employee’s eyes narrowed. In the darkness, she confirmed Yeon-su’s face and visibly relaxed.
And well she might, for she was the caregiver who had looked after him in the Main Building when he entered elementary school. She was the one who had washed him, dressed him, and cared for him in place of his stepmother until he entered middle school.
Yet Yeon-su kept his guard raised inwardly. He simply offered a smile suggesting warmth.
“Auntie! It’s Kim Hye-won, isn’t it?”
“Oh my, yes, yes. Young Master, it’s me. Oh, you gave me such a fright. Why are you standing in such a dark place?”
Kim Hye-won, the employee, shifted a precariously balanced basket more securely onto the counter. Yeon-su’s eyes followed it, then returned to her.
“It’s been years since we’ve met. Have you been well?”
“Of course, Young Master. I saw you growing so quickly even after you started High School, and now you’re even taller. I heard you returned the day before yesterday—so you’re staying now?”
Yeon-su answered her fond inquiry with a gentle smile, then tilted his head with curiosity.
“But what business brings you to the Separate Building at this hour of the night? Weren’t you working in the Main Building?”
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In other words: what were all these ingredients doing here? At his words, Hye-won’s shoulders contracted slightly, and she glanced surreptitiously about. It was the motion of someone reassuring herself that no one but the two of them was present.
“Well… you see, some fine ingredients came in. And since there was no one to deliver them here…”
Yeon-su recalled having made it clear that he would handle all the affairs of the Separate Building himself, so the Main Building need not concern itself.
He had thought that if he said as much, no one would visit this place, since both the servants of the Separate Building and the ladies of the Main Building avoided coming here. So why now?
Yeon-su’s eyes turned again to the basket’s contents. Expensive, rare herbs and high-quality fish—clearly fine goods. Yet why deliver them in the dead of night, in secret?
“Thank you. I did need to do some shopping anyway. I’ll enjoy this.”
But rather than press the matter, he simply greeted her with a smile. At his casual dismissal of the subject, Hye-won openly relaxed and laughed along with him. Yeon-su accompanied her to the Separate Building’s entrance.
Hye-won, unaware that Yeon-su was escorting her out, smiled and spoke to him.
“Still, it’s good to see you’ve returned healthy, Young Master.”
“I’m glad too. It’s good that you’re still here, Auntie. …Well, then, please go in.”
He was an illegitimate child, yet remained the second son of the household head. And in this Shaman House, where hierarchy remained rigidly defined despite the changing times, Yeon-su was the only employer who treated his servants with such warmth.
Hye-won smiled contentedly at the young master, so well-mannered and well-raised, and forgot her earlier alarm entirely. She returned quietly to the Main Building.
The moment she left, Yeon-su locked the door from the inside with a bolt. It was a separate lock that could not be opened from outside.
After confirming the door was properly closed, he returned to the Kitchen and examined the contents of the basket one by one.
There was nothing suspicious. No ricin, no cameras or wiretaps—just genuinely fine ingredients, nothing more.
“Hmm.”
After turning through them meticulously, Yeon-su’s lips curved upward in amusement.
***
Jang Du-hee stood before the imposing traditional Korean mansion, staring at the gate in confusion. He checked his navigation and current location several times over.
“……This is really supposed to be a shaman’s house?”
A shaman house that was a traditional mansion. If one said it that way, it might sound plausible enough, but the problem was not that it was a mansion. It was the scale of it.
The compound was so enormous that even at a glance, the far ends of the boundary wall could not be seen in a single frame. The gate stood so high and broad that it felt like being Gulliver in the land of giants.
Yet no matter how many times he checked his phone, the address he had been given was indeed this place.
The grand traditional Korean house before him—unmarked by the red and white flags or lotus-patterned decorations commonly seen at shaman houses, resembling instead a yangban estate from a historical drama—confirmed that this was indeed his intended destination.
“A doorbell or something… where would it even be…? Surely they don’t expect me to just call out ‘Come here’ or something ridiculous like that?”
Jang Du-hee, already deflated, mumbled weakly. After examining the gate for some time, he finally spotted an intercom mounted on the wall.
……
Even seeing it, he hesitated for a long moment, then wiped his clammy palms frantically against his trousers. Only then could he bring himself to press the bell.
Once he pushed it the first time, his finger wouldn’t stop moving. He jabbed the button again and again, as though someone were chasing him from behind. An unpleasant electronic buzz—zing, zing—droned on without end.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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