The Snake, the Flower, and the Tiger - Chapter 41

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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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41

It was back to the beginning. The same lonely place she’d been left before, without her mother or father.
She pressed her lips shut and swallowed hard. Something thick lodged in her throat before finally passing down.
“Still, Grandmother, please don’t worry so much. That chairman, Kim Jong-hyeop—he seems to know something. I’ll find out whatever I can, so please don’t fret. And stop waking up at dawn every single day to pray for me.”
Once she’d tied her loose hair back neatly, the elderly woman’s appearance looked far more composed.
Hee-seo touched the creased hands gently and whispered.
“I need to find Wol-cheon soon so I don’t worry our dear A-seon any further, don’t I?”
Though she swallowed hard several times, her throat kept tightening. Blaming it on the chill creeping into the weather, Hee-seo bowed her head low.
The new electric heating mat she’d bought gleamed under the yellowish-brown flooring. Hee-seo forced brightness into her voice.
“Grandmother, I’ll definitely find your spiritual daughter and bring her back. We’ll come back together. So don’t be cold this winter—I bought you this heating mat, so you have to use it. Don’t worry the other nuns by trying to light wood fires. Understood?”
“Mm-hmm. No wood fires.”
“You said the same thing last spring and then wouldn’t even turn on the electric pad, so you caught a cold. It’s really dangerous, so don’t do that. This won’t cause any fires. It won’t start any fires, so don’t worry and use it. The mountain gets cold at night already, so start using it from today. Understood?”
“Hee-seo, dear.”
“Yes, Grandmother?”
For the first time since Hee-seo had come to the temple, the elderly woman lifted her clouded eyes and looked at her.
A-seon—the abbess of Baeksong Temple and spiritual mother to Wol-cheon and So-myeong—had lost her sharpness to the years, yet she remained precious to Hee-seo.
“Hee-seo, you.”
“Yes, Grandmother. Speak, please. I’m listening.”
“That man… that snake.”
“Hmm? A snake?”
Even with Hee-seo before her, A-seon’s eyes moved side to side in slow pursuit of something invisible. To an onlooker, it would have been startling, but Hee-seo watched with practiced calm.
Even as A-seon’s mind had grown dim, she still occasionally experienced visions like this. And her spiritual sight still held formidable prescience.
“Grandmother? Grandmother, what do you see?”
“Hee-seo, you… you must not go there. You cannot go there.”
“Where can’t I go? Grandmother, what are you saying? Please, explain it to me. Can you?”
A-seon’s eyes moved faster. They quickened further, until within moments they seemed to be moving independently.
Realizing that something was wrong, unlike before, Hee-seo reached for A-seon’s shoulders, about to shake her awake with force.
A-seon’s small frame seemed too frail to contain the cry that tore from her lips.
“A Snake Pit! That place is a Snake Pit, Hee-seo! You cannot go there, absolutely not! You cannot!!!”
The cry burst forth with a lion’s roar, its force enough to jolt the mind awake. Yet Hee-seo responded to A-seon with calm and measured words.
“If it’s a Snake Pit, does that mean something about desecrating tombs? Grandmother, please tell me what you see. What appears before you?”
Unlike ordinary shamans who served ancestral spirits, A-seon’s spiritual mother was the Buddha. For this reason, her visions were often incomprehensible to ordinary people.
“No one in our family has ever been buried in a grave. So that Snake Pit can’t be about us, can it? Or does it mean that I’m going to enter a tomb?”
Though it was difficult to interpret the will of the divine, A-seon’s visions had never once been wrong. The words that tumbled unbidden from her lips called up recent memories.
The image of Kim Je-eon falling past the window in her place suddenly came into sharp focus.
‘This is no time to be thinking about that, Hee-seo. What are you doing, losing your mind?’
She quickly pushed Je-eon from her thoughts and bit her lip.
Since her mind had grown dim, A-seon always fell gravely ill when she experienced a vision. Her frail body could not withstand the force of the divine.
“Uh… uh… Hee-seo. My child, Hee-seo.”
“Grandmother, I’m here. Grandmother, Grandmother?”
A-seon’s body convulsed and swayed as though struck by lightning. On her blanched face, inescapable agony bloomed. Hee-seo, watching helplessly, gripped her grandmother’s hand and called out to her again and again.
“It’s a Snake Pit, a Snake Pit. You must never set foot in that place, Hee-seo. You cannot. You alone cannot. Even if a flower bearing poison smells sweet, you must not pause in your steps, Hee-seo. Hee-seo, my child…”
“I understand. Grandmother, I understand. I’ll be careful. I won’t go near any graves. Please, stop now, Grandmother.”
“No. My child, you cannot… you must not lower your head in that place.”
“I won’t. I won’t. Grandmother, can you see me? Grandmother?”
As she wrapped her arms around the skeletal frame, Hee-seo felt almost no weight at all—a sadness unto itself. What danger did such a frail body see?
She held the gaunt frame carefully, as though it would shatter under pressure, and bowed her head.
What would her mother have done now?
Wol-cheon had raised her like a true mother—not bound by blood, yet bound by everything else. Perhaps she could have gathered the spirit that tormented A-seon and sent it back to its proper place.
If Wol-cheon were here—if her mother were here—it might have been possible.
‘If Mother had lived… or at least if I’d undergone Spirit Possession properly, I could have helped.’
Bitterness rose in her mouth like nausea, filling her throat. Holding the trembling frame against her, Hee-seo steadied her ragged breath. Helplessness seeped slowly through her entire being, making her weak.
A-seon’s painful vision showed no sign of ending. Hee-seo held the suffering elder in her arms and begged some unseen force dozens of times over.
“Buddha, please let the nun rest now. Please, no more…”
Just let her rest, she silently pleaded.
Grant her freedom from the touch of the divine.

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“The doctor who used to make house calls doesn’t come anymore?”
“Yes, ma’am. The doctor said that given his age, house calls have become difficult. So the last time A-seon needed treatment, we had no choice but to go down to town to see him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You should have called me.”
“When A-seon came to herself briefly, she made me promise not to bother you with such troublesome matters.”
“Even so, you should have called. There are only elderly people here, all of us together.”
A note of loneliness crept into Hee-seo’s voice—something uncharacteristic.
Tae-young, who had watched over Hee-seo since childhood, smiled warmly and tried to comfort her. If A-seon had been like a grandmother to Hee-seo, then Tae-young was something like an uncle.
“Don’t reproach yourself so, ma’am. You know better than anyone that there’s no one in this temple A-seon’s equal. Besides, she was certain you’d come around this time of year and that she’d be well by then. We’re just the sort who’d say yes and amen to whatever A-seon says, even if she told us the Buddha had a tail.”
“In any case, A-seon may be exhausted after using her Spiritual Sight just now, so I’ll find another doctor instead of that one. Keep a close eye on her.”
“My goodness, it’s gotten so late—you’re going down now?”
“Yes. It’s a path I could walk with my eyes closed. Don’t worry. If I go now, I can bring a doctor back by morning. Keep close watch through the night.”
“Still, ma’am…….”
Hee-seo left Tae-young behind, who tried to hold her back several times, and hurried down the mountain path.
The surroundings grew steadily darker. There was not a single streetlamp to light the mountain path, yet it was a road she could descend with eyes shut, just as she’d told Tae-young.
She had parked her vehicle halfway down the slope, so the plan was to get there quickly and find a doctor who could make house calls. The ascent took an hour on foot, but the descent would need only thirty or forty minutes.
Hee-seo had been descending the narrow, unpaved road—barely wide enough for a single motorcycle—for about ten minutes when she felt it.
A faint vibration made her reach instinctively toward her waist. The phone in her pocket seemed to be ringing.
“What is it?”

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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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