“Hmm. It seems you’re faring better than expected, which truly puts me at ease.”
A situation that’s hard to comprehend.
It’s a genuinely incomprehensible situation.
But Jinseong had no intention of patiently explaining things to the Great Witch and walked straight into the room instead. He acted as though Odilia’s rented room was his own, casually setting down a briefcase and carelessly throwing his jacket over a random spot as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He then dragged an empty chair to face the Great Witch and, sitting down quite naturally, began to speak.
“Well, judging by your appearance, you’ve eaten breakfast, but do you plan on resting here in the hotel today?”
An extremely calm and ordinary tone.
Anyone listening would have been forgiven for assuming he was merely a traveler accompanying Odilia.
“How did you…?”
But Odilia had come to America alone. Jinseong’s family and coworkers only knew that she’d “gone on a business trip,” and none of them had any idea that she was here. In all the world, only her two closest confidants and her precious disciple, Agnes, would know of her presence here.
And yet…
How?
How could Park Jinseong be here?
And how did he even get into this room?
Odilia stared at Jinseong with all her doubts laid bare in her gaze.
Jinseong responded to her curiosity with…
“Ho ho ho. Such a strange thing as fate. While it may simply be coincidence that I’ve stumbled upon it, I perceived that something was amiss; how could I not come to check? This is the simple story of why I’ve come.”
…a truly cryptic answer.
Despite its lack of clarity, the Great Witch understood.
In her mind, Jinseong was both a Shaman and a Prophet, simultaneously reading the past and foretelling the future. He was someone who had seen her future and read her past, someone who lived detached from the linear flow of time, traversing back and forth as he pleased. Therefore, his words felt like nothing less than a prophecy to her—perhaps even a divination.
Maybe he read it in a hexagram.
But whether prophecy or hexagram, to the Great Witch, it was clear: “A person of great ability knew of your difficulties and came seeking you.”
And thus, the Great Witch understood, at least in part, why Jinseong had come to find her.
…Of course, not everything, only a part.
“Could it be that some great calamity is arising…?”
The Great Witch asked Jinseong cautiously.
Her shoulders trembled, and her expression turned cautious, markedly different from her usual confident demeanor.
It was like the expression an adult might wear waiting nervously for the results of a dental checkup, or perhaps the look a dog gives as it clings to its master upon realizing the existence of a vet’s office.
Worry filled Odilia’s face, clouding it with the fear that the situation she was currently in might be an overwhelming calamity beyond her ability to handle alone.
Forgetting she was wearing a negligee that had become loose from her tossing and turning on the bed, she suddenly sat up, startled by the silk’s distinct sensation against her skin. Realizing it was about to slip off her body, she quickly adjusted it and reseated herself on the bed.
She then anxiously glanced at Jinseong.
Worried and wondering just how grave the situation was that brought him all the way to America to find her. Hoping for some answer from him that would relieve her anxiety.
“Hmm… let me see…”
But Jinseong, instead of giving her the answer she wanted, slowly scrutinized her face.
“Your countenance is clouded with worry—it seems things aren’t progressing smoothly. However, no calamity has overtaken you, your body has not been defiled or tainted. Yet, there is a sticky emotional residue clinging to you—like long-drawn threads of attachment. It is a persistent longing, deeply rooted over a long period… perhaps tied to someone who has entwined their existence with yours.”
“…”
“Something akin to material for a shaman’s ritual might be found here; it’s saturated with such strong delusions. This is not a lingering aftermath but direct contact indeed. This could be sufficient cause for your distress. I see…”
Jinseong then, fire in his eyes, looked at the Great Witch’s face and shoulders closely.
And he reached a conclusion.
“…You are entangled in a bad karma.”
Of course, upon hearing this conclusion, the Great Witch was startled.
No, more than startled.
Her eyes widened like a rabbit’s, and her body instinctively moved toward Jinseong.
“Bad karma?!”
“Yes. Long-standing bad karma.”
Jinseong declared this with certainty.
Bad karma.
That all her current suffering was due to this bad karma.
Jinseong paused in his declaration before frowning thoughtfully.
“Hmm. But there’s something off…”
Something didn’t fit.
Something nagging, unclear, was off.
Muttering to himself, Jinseong drew a pen case from the folds of his clothes.
It looked like a tube, about the size of two fingers combined, and it gleamed with a high-quality sheen, indicating it was made from fine materials.
When Jinseong unscrewed the top of the pen case, the contents within were revealed.
Inside were ballpoint pen refills—slender, thin ones.
“What’s that?”
“They are rods made from mountain branches.”
Mountain branches.
Used in Eastern mathematics for counting.
In China, they are called “suan-mu” (算木), or simpler “suan” (算).
“This is also an ancient tool used for calculation, though it wasn’t just limited to math. They were used in games, and sometimes in divinations.”
From China, Korea, to Japan.
Before the calculator or abacus, they were tools everyone used.
However, what Jinseong had was a reinterpreted version of these rods.
The pen case in his hand served as the container, the ballpoint refills as the modern mountain branches.
“Though, can this really count?”
Yes, it can.
They can be used to count, and even for divination.
After all, isn’t any tool valid as long as it adheres to its essence?
Whether the knife is made of stone or metal, its essence is to cut. Whether the hoe is made of wood or metal, its essence remains farming.
Similarly, these ballpoint refills in Jinseong’s hands were essentially rods for calculation and divination.
He slowly shook the pen case, pulled out one rod, and began casting his hexagram. It seemed similar yet different from the traditional methods.
It was too modernized to be from the Warring States period and too haphazard in its execution to have undergone systematic changes over long centuries. It appeared almost like something an individual had made up casually, with loose and spontaneous elements, yet it was too coherent to be random.
This was truly a strange form of divination.
But the strangeness existed because it was forgotten.
It was a form of divination lost in history because it fell victim to the “Literary Inquisition” in ancient China.
In the days of emperors, speaking or writing the wrong words risked severe punishment. If punished, not just the individual but their entire family would lose everything, their writings burned. They would vanish from history altogether.
This divination method Jinseong held onto had met the same fate, disappearing from history until it was luckily rediscovered, in partial form, within an artifact uncovered from the ruins. Thanks to the generous funding from the Chinese Government, the document was restored, escaping the fate of other texts consumed by the Literary Inquisition.
Through a twist of fate, it found itself in Jinseong’s possession, discovered by him while investigating a terrorist attack.
It was a method that carried its tragic history proudly.
Though this method, while having a framework, was rather ambiguous in interpretation, and it wasn’t precise enough for predicting the future. Hence, despite having its price, it wasn’t widely used.
“Seems useful enough in uncovering trivial matters.”
It was serviceable in its current use.
“Hmm. The streams are twisted, the mountain ranges distorted; a situation slowly askew over time, but gradually becoming worse, defying the natural order. However, such twists are also part of the world’s principles. Only, the forms moving, the hot qi meeting the cold qi at their borders but swirling together like tails—this is quite remarkable now.”
Jinseong occasionally tilted his head in confusion, then at times, seeming to gain some new insight, nodded slightly. He looked up at Odilia, who eagerly awaited an interpretation.
“From what I see, there were no false words during the ordeal. All the information provided back then was truthful…”
In the past.
Odilia had shared many things.
Among the revelations was that of the Great Witch, bound by a decades-long feud.
She had explained: a jealous rival considered her an eye sore, once friends now unable to coexist under the same sky. A series of calamities and perils Odilia had faced were all, she claimed, the work of that particular woman.
“However…”
The divination told another story.
“Is this… similar to love readings?”
The sensation from the divination felt almost like a romantic entanglement.
But asking if it was romantic in nature also felt wrong.
It seemed closer to twisted love or twisted friendship.
“Twisted affection, twisted friendship…”
“To sum up, you’re not enemies who cannot exist under the same sky. It seems to be the kind of karma you can endure, not too severe.”
Instead of recounting the exact divination results, Jinseong gave a simple interpretation.
Then, he reached out into the air and drew a witch’s purse toward him.
He opened it.
Zip.
He took out a wallet and pulled out a few dollars.
“The service charge stops here, as this amount matches it.”
Casually putting the dollars into his own pocket, Jinseong continued.
“Alright, that concludes the fee for the divination. Great Witch, I need you to come with me for a little while.”
*
“Who are you?”
—
