The Snake, the Flower, and the Tiger - Chapter 82

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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 82

After a long silence, Kim Jong-hyup asked in a fractured voice. The shock of nearly destroying Je-seon with his own hands hadn’t faded, but his purpose remained unchanged.
His very obsession, paradoxically, made Hee-seo calmer still.
“Find the Shamanic Instrument my mother used. Whether it’s a ritual or a spell—if someone did something as significant as transferring a soul, there must be something left behind.”
“……Yes. Understood.”
After a moment of silence, Kim Jong-hyup answered, and Hee-seo’s eyes twitched faintly beneath.
Hee-seo had two reasons for demanding Wol-cheon’s Shamanic Instrument.
The first, as she’d told Kim Jong-hyup, was that possessing a soul in someone’s body was no trivial feat. There had to be a medium still in existence.
If she reinforced it further, Je-seon’s Spiritual Energy would grow stronger. Conversely, if she destroyed it, Je-seon might vanish entirely.
The second reason was that she needed to confirm whether Kim Jong-hyup might know Wol-cheon’s whereabouts.
If Kim Jong-hyup didn’t possess the medium for the soul-transferring spell, the shaman who performed it almost certainly did. And from Kim Jong-hyup’s just-given answer, that possibility had narrowed.
Either he had the spell’s medium in his possession, or…….
‘You’re keeping my parents somewhere. It has to be one of the two.’
Hee-seo’s lips hardened into a line, then softened again. She kept her gaze lowered, speaking in an unhurried voice.
“And there are things between you and me that need to be cleaned away, aren’t there? Why don’t we talk about that instead? It’s not even ghost-calling time yet. Slowly, one piece at a time. Nothing forgotten.”
From this moment forward, Hee-seo was resolved to untangle and obliterate everything binding her to Kim Jong-hyup.

***

Even as night deepened, the Estate’s Garden held not a trace of shadow.
Kim Jong-hyup’s lingering gaze still caught at her feet. Hee-seo stopped and turned back.
Standing as she was in the middle of the brightly-lit Garden—unlike the dim interior where they’d spoken—the old man hidden behind curtains remained invisible, yet his stare felt relentless nonetheless.
‘How could I not have seen it?’
After losing her parents, her entire life had been a struggle to reclaim them. Then Kim Jong-hyup appeared as if from nowhere, approaching her using the very parents she sought as bait.
Even though she’d sensed he had to be connected to their disappearance somehow, why hadn’t she doubted him?
‘No—I did doubt him.’
She had suspected him all along. The mistake was grasping his outstretched hand in her desperation.
Kim Jong-hyup had reeled at the thought that his carelessness might have erased Je-seon, but Hee-seo felt it just as acutely.
‘……If I had forced the spirit from that body by any means necessary…….’
She’d had options. Among them was a final method: using her parents’ disappearance as pretext to drive the soul from Kim Je-eon’s body by force. Even a routine possession would leave lasting damage that way.
Worse, if she performed an Exorcism on someone deliberately bound by a Shaman’s Spiritual Power like Je-eon, one of them would inevitably be torn apart. Both might be destroyed.
“Grandfather—you could have lost both grandsons at once.”
Hee-seo murmured words that wouldn’t reach Kim Jong-hyup.
Even knowing this, questioning whether Kim Jong-hyup would regret it as he did now, she turned and began to walk.
As she made her way toward her destination, a familiar face suddenly bloomed in her mind.
“Why on earth…….”
Winter, which had crept to her very doorstep unnoticed, stole her body heat. Yet as she thought of Je-eon, Hee-seo forgot even the cold.
Remembering the man who had abandoned life itself, the man who had still desired her—strangely, heat rose through her entire body and she felt no chill at all.
As Kim Jong-hyup’s Estate receded, Kim Je-eon’s drew closer by the same measure. Between the two similarly-built houses, Hee-seo looked up at a sky heavy with clouds.
The clouds couldn’t completely obscure the heavens, and beyond the darkness they failed to cover, tiny stars scattered like dust.
‘Mother.’
Hee-seo called out to Wol-cheon in a language that wasn’t quite words. The fact that her mother had placed Je-seon’s soul in a living person’s body still felt impossible to accept.
‘Was it really you who did this? Mother. If it was really you, what am I supposed to do?’
Until now, Hee-seo had never known what it was like to live as a criminal, nor as a criminal’s child. Even when she was ostracized for being a shaman’s daughter, she’d endured because she bore no shame for herself.
But how could she accept that the architect of such terrible suffering to the man taking root in her heart was the person who gave birth to her and raised her?
Hee-seo grimaced, laughing as though she might weep. She had no right to cry.
“……What am I supposed to do? Mother. This is too hard for me. Really, what should I do?”
A guilt so immense its weight couldn’t be measured clenched around Hee-seo’s throat. Her gaze fell from the night sky to the ground.
Every time she faced Je-eon, who had no attachment to life, she felt anger—yet she couldn’t determine whether her anger was even justified.
“Why of all people…….”
Why him? Why Kim Je-eon? Why of all people…….
Countless hypotheticals swirled into thought, dizzying her vision.
Vertigo seized Hee-seo and she sank down where she stood. Soft grass had grown thick along the Walking Path, so her awkward sitting pose wasn’t uncomfortable.
She stretched her legs out carelessly. Then she wanted to lie down. Without shame, Hee-seo sprawled full-length across the grass.
Her nose and fingertips seemed to stiffen against the cold, but she didn’t want to move a single finger.
“……I’m really thinking pathetically now, aren’t I, Hee-seo.”
One thought led to another, each more damning than the last, until she became something contemptible in her own eyes. A bitter laugh slipped between her lips before she could stop it.
“What if my mother hadn’t existed? What if Kim Je-eon hadn’t? What if I hadn’t? Then would everything be fine? What kind of cowardly thinking is that?”
Hee-seo muttered low, as if someone were listening to her confession. The shame rose hot in her throat, and she had to speak it aloud or suffocate.
“Would it be okay if it wasn’t happening to Kim Je-eon? Would you be fine if it wasn’t something your mother did? Then you’d feel confident standing in front of Kim Je-eon? Then you’d feel like you could actually hold onto him?”
The words tumbled out faster than she could catch them, each one more shameful than the last.
She bit down hard on her tongue to swallow the confession that had leapt out unbidden. When the delicate flesh tore and she tasted iron, she gathered the blood and swallowed it down with her saliva.
As if that might make the petty thoughts nested inside her disappear. As if she could steal Wol-cheon’s spiritual energy and erase the selfish fantasies she harbored, no matter the cost.
But despite her desperate wish, the hypotheticals that began with “what if” refused to fade.
If Wol-cheon had never become entangled with the Kim family, if Je-seon had never parasitized her younger brother’s body, if she herself hadn’t fallen so easily into Kim Jong-hyup’s trap—
Wouldn’t she have been able to hope for a happy ending with Kim Je-eon, even just a little?
Hee-seo drew in a breath so deep her chest heaved. The night air filled her expanded lungs until her ribs ached. The sensation was close to genuine sorrow, but Hee-seo didn’t know how to read her own heart.
She flexed her fingers, which were beginning to stiffen from the cold. It was a reflexive gesture to quiet her anxiety, but the soft grass felt comforting against her skin.
“Sigh…”
Hee-seo gathered a handful of grass and soil, bringing it to her nose. The fresh scent of earth and grass seemed to clear her mind.
After sniffing at the soil like a mole for some time, Hee-seo suddenly lurched upright—as though a vampire had burst forth from its grave.
She raked her disheveled hair into place and exhaled with a sharp “Phew.”
‘Instead of whining, just wipe your feet and get some sleep. Go pray, do your practice, get your head on straight. You can whine all you want after you’ve done what needs doing—come on, Hee-seo.’
She shook her head vigorously, as if to physically dislodge her spiraling thoughts. That wasn’t enough, so she clapped both cheeks smartly with her own hands and stood up with determination.
Dirt clung to her hands and had smudged across her face, but Hee-seo paid it no mind.

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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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