Geon-woo followed Ha-yeon into the hermitage.
Ha-yeon opened the shrine room.
“I’ll just go change my clothes, please have a seat.”
Geon-woo set down his sports bag and looked around the small shrine.
A painting of a small girl riding a white tiger, a painting of immortals, a painting of a general, and various divine figures... and the altar before them.
On the altar, there were modest offerings of apples, tangerines, melons, and a few pieces of confectionery.
Geon-woo’s eyes drifted again to the painting of the fairy riding the tiger. Strangely, it resembled Ha-yeon.
‘She said she was hiring a servant, but this is a fortune-teller shop...’
The door opened, and Ha-yeon returned, now dressed in a simple yet elegant hanbok , and sat down.
“It must have been tiring coming all the way here for the interview, right?”
“Oh, it’s fine. I enjoyed the mountain scenery along the way.”
“You brought your résumé, right? As you can see, this isn’t a place where I can check or print with a computer.”
“Here it is.”
Ha-yeon took the résumé from Geon-woo, turned slightly aside, and examined it quietly.
Her face still carried traces of youth.
Her white skin, slender jawline tapering down, sharp nose, and small red lips gave her a mysterious aura. Her unusually large eyes and twin braids added a vivid energy to that mysteriousness.
As Geon-woo watched her for a moment, Ha-yeon too glanced at him from behind the résumé. When their eyes accidentally met, they quickly darted away in opposite directions.
“Now, I’ll ask you a few questions.”
“Yes.”
“Do you currently live alone?”
“Yes, I live alone.”
“Since you’re a man, you must’ve completed your military service, right?”
“As written on my résumé, I was discharged as a staff sergeant from the XX Brigade.”
“What’s a sergeant first class?”
“It’s a non-commissioned officer rank. I was a career soldier.”
“Then like second lieutenant or colonel, does it go so-sa, jung-sa, dae-sa ?”
“For NCOs, it’s Staff Sergeant, Sergeant First Class, First Sergeant, and Command Sergeant Major.”
Ha-yeon’s face turned crimson.
It was natural for someone her age not to know military ranks, but as the interviewer, her embarrassment was obvious.
“Ahem, I know all that! I graduated middle school too!”
Flustered, Ha-yeon hurried to pick the next question.
“Let’s see... u-uh, are you strong?”
“I’m confident in my physical strength.”
“Have you ever had any interest in shamanism?”
“Honestly, I don’t know a thing about it. Until I came here, I had no idea this was shaman-related work at all.”
“Our work can be very hard and rough.”
“Can you tell me specifically how hard? I’d like to know what exactly a farm servant has to do here.”
“Well...”
Ha-yeon straightened her posture, set the résumé down, and looked at Geon-woo.
Her clear eyes were deep and calm.
Ripples stirred in her eyes, spread into waves, and then burst into laughter with a sudden “pfft!”
“I don’t know how hard it is yet either. Puhahaha! I’m just starting too.”
“Huh?”
“Ah, I don’t know, I’ve never even given an interview? Hahaha! Anyway, if you pass, you’ll be pulling weeds in the young radish field with me today. Hahaha!”
“What...?”
“Aaah, this is so embarrassing!!! How can someone as young as me conduct an interview! Hahaha!”
Ha-yeon laughed until tears rolled down, clutching her stomach and giggling.
Geon-woo felt the tension he hadn’t realized he carried dissolve with her laughter.
After laughing for quite some time, Ha-yeon belatedly remembered she had written “strict hierarchy!” in the interview guidelines, so she wiped her tears, cleared her throat, and straightened her posture again.
“First, let me explain. My grandmother passed away four months ago, and now I’ve just begun standing alone as a shaman. This Saeam-dang is where my grandmother and I lived together.”
Her explanation was this. Ultimately, for her to pray and study by herself here, she needed someone’s help.
The fruits, snacks, liquor, and offerings for the shrine’s altar, as well as daily groceries and necessities, all had to be bought down in the town beyond the mountain.
“Ah, I see...”
Carrying such heavy loads up and down this mountain path... it was clearly not something an ordinary person could do.
“Soon I’ll start receiving requests for rituals, and when I have to travel far, carrying the ritual tools all by myself will be too much. There’s a lot to assist with, and I also need help tending the fields...”
“I’m starting to understand what you meant by a farm servant and the work involved.”
“Even for ordinary rituals, if you pay, the shrine building sets it all up, but there’s still a lot we have to prepare ourselves here.”
“I can imagine.”
“And in possession rituals, sometimes the possessed person’s strength is so great you can’t predict what they’ll do. At those times, you must help me and protect me.”
Geon-woo recalled seeing a shaman on TV pinning down a person whose eyes had rolled back.
“If I may ask, how did your grandmother manage in the past?”
“I helped her since I was young, but most of the things a man would usually do, my grandmother did all by herself. If it was truly hard, sometimes she got help from Buddhist monks.”
A mist-like moisture spread across Ha-yeon’s eyes.
“She was never on TV or anything, but my grandmother was truly an incredible shaman.”
Ha-yeon pressed her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Even though I’m still young, I have to do this alone now. I don’t know how much of her power or connections will pass down to me, but from now on it’s my responsibility.”
The air in the room grew heavy.
“Oh dear, what am I doing rambling during an interview! Please, have some tea.”
“Tea? What tea?”
“I didn’t serve you tea yet?”
“No. You solemnly came in empty-handed.”
“M-My apologies”
Flustered, Ha-yeon jumped up and left the shrine again.
***
After about five minutes, Ha-yeon returned with a cup of coffee where undissolved coffee powder floated thickly in lukewarm water. The water was bland, and the powder on the lips was bitter.
“Could you perhaps give me your saju ?”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t misunderstand. Just your date and time of birth. I usually read through spiritual means, but I can also read saju to see if this work suits you, or if you clash with me. Saju is based on fate calculation and isn’t absolute anyway. If you’re uncomfortable, you don’t have to give it to me.”
“April 1X, 199X, lunar calendar. I was born around 4 a.m.”
Copying the Chinese characters of Geon-woo’s name from the résumé onto paper, Ha-yeon muttered, “Do Geon-woo (都建祐), born April 1X, 199X, at the Hour of the Tiger (寅時)...”
After scribbling on the paper for a while, Ha-yeon’s eyes suddenly widened.
“Uh, that’s lunar calendar, right?”
“Yes.”
Ha-yeon stared at Geon-woo for a long moment, then looked back at what she had written, then again at him.
“Born at In-si, you’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Geon-woo noticed Ha-yeon’s flustered expression.
Her face flushed red, she turned her head away from his gaze and waved her hand at the air.
Since earlier, a young female spirit had been circling the place, shouting.
- It’s a tiger~! It’s a tiger~!
“Go away! Hurry! I left you some yakgwa didn’t I?!”
“Excuse me? What yakgwa are you referring to?”
“Oh, no. The virgin maiden is being noisy.”
“Virgin maiden? What are you...”
“Such things exist! Anyway...”
Ha-yeon swallowed hard, reached for the ritual bells on the table, and knocked over a bowl of rice.
- Crash!
Rice spilled all over the shrine floor.
“Aaah! I’m going crazy.”
“I-I’ll clean it up.”
“No, I’ll do it later. I’m just nervous right now.”
In Geon-woo’s mind came the phrase ‘half-trained shaman’ and the saying ‘a half-trained shaman can kill people.’
He shook his head to force the thoughts away.
- Chara-rang~
In that instant, Ha-yeon’s aura, the very air around her, shifted.
“Let’s see... a strong saju, one that follows law, rules, honor, and trust.”
Geon-woo tilted his head.
“You may not be especially clever, but you’re upright and steady. Whatever you do, you’ll handle it with responsibility. Rather than leading your own work, you’re better suited to helping and supporting others.
Hmm... your nature is lonely. You might not feel lonely yourself, but to others your life would seem very lonely.”
‘That’s vague. It does sort of sound accurate though...’
“You’ll have work abroad when young, maybe again later.”
“As you saw in my résumé, I was deployed overseas.”
“Look here! It’s written in your saju!”
“My apologies.”
“But...”
Ha-yeon tapped the paper with her pen. This part wasn’t something to be spoken aloud.
‘A great sign of mourning fell earlier this year. Two of them... With such heavy mourning, and judging from the lifeless energy he gives off now, it must have been his parents. His saju shows little parental blessing from youth...’
It was not something she could say recklessly to an applicant. Ha-yeon decided to let it pass.
“For now! Our sponsor—no, the applicant—needs cultivation. Just by looking at you, I can tell you’ve suffered and have came to get your mind straight.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
- It’s a tiger~! The tiger that carries the fairy~!
“Ah, I told you to go away! You’re noisy! Later!”
Blushing, Ha-yeon waved at the virgin maiden again, pointing to the door to drive her out.
Geon-woo’s eyes went to the door, but outside he saw nothing.
“Startled, weren’t you? With the work I do, there are many things ordinary people can’t understand.”
“I don’t mind.”
“But when I pray and the spirits descend , I might become terrifying. Honestly, I don’t even see myself then.”
“I’ve seen it on TV and movies. It looked really frightening.”
“Do you want to see how scary it is? Ahem, hem! YOU WRETCH~~~!!!”
“Ah...”
Silence fell.
Geon-woo didn’t know how to respond and averted his eyes, while Ha-yeon’s face grew crimson, far from dignified.
“Puhahaha! No, no, forcing it doesn’t work. Pretend you didn’t see that, hahaha!”
Her energy was excessively high.
‘How has such a cheerful girl managed to endure in a place like this all alone?’
That was what Geon-woo found hardest to understand about this Saeam-dang.
“Sorry, it’s just that I’m so happy to see an outsider for the first time in months.”
Ha-yeon scratched her head sheepishly.
“So then, shall we try working together? Let’s say I’m saving a person—I’ll give you a pass!”
A sudden acceptance?!
Geon-woo was taken aback.
“Wait, but... shouldn’t we discuss work conditions and salary first? I need to check those before deciding.”
“Ah! The salary!”
“Salary, yes, but also days off, working hours, and meals and lodging...”
“4.5 million?”
“Ah... is that too little? I just thought of it because the workers here get 150,000 won a day during the busy farming season... I don’t really know about this sort of stuff.”
As Ha-yeon looked embarrassed, Geon-woo waved his hands.
“No. Honestly, that’s quite a lot.”
It was a very good deal. He still didn’t know the work, but the pay alone was a solid merit.
“How are days off decided?”
“Actually, in this work we never know when a ritual will be booked, or when we’ll travel out of town and stay for days. I can’t set fixed rest days. Sometimes it’s literally life or death for people.”
Ha-yeon lowered her eyes apologetically.
“I can only say it depends on the situation... Honestly, from farming to maintaining the shrine, there might be almost no days off. Sometimes I might work twelve hours, or even twenty-four when preparing for a ritual...”
“Understood. How are food and lodging provided?”
“Meals! We cook and eat together! We can take turns! As for sleep, come with me for a moment.”
‘I have to cook...?’
Ha-yeon stood up and stepped outside. Worried about cooking, Geon-woo followed after her.
Beyond the shrine, toward the cliff, stood a 4–5 person tent under a large acacia tree. Its many tears were patched with blue tape, leaving Geon-woo’s mouth agape.
“This was the tent used by the Buddhist monk who often came here to help while my grandmother was alive. You can use it! He said it was super comfortable!”
‘How on earth could that ragged tent be comfortable...’
“The monk said that lying here in the mountains makes you forget all the troubles of the world!”
‘Taking a short break here and actually living here are two very different things!’
Geon-woo was dumbfounded.
He could understand that meals had to be cooked given the shrine’s size and location, but the sleeping arrangements were unsettling.
Still, considering the pay and the fact that it was his own private space, the ragged tent in the middle of the field was tolerable, at least for a while.
Once he got his salary, he could always buy a proper one.
“What do you think...?”
Geon-woo took a deep breath. The poor conditions were something he could adapt to, and otherwise there seemed to be no major problems.
“I’ll be in your care.”
- The tiger has entered~! The tiger has entered~!
The virgin maiden spun in circles, running between the fields.