The Intruder
"The weather's turned warm, hasn't it."
A tepid early-summer breeze drifted across the platform table, skimming over the meticulously arranged trays of traditional sweets and tea.
Tink. Granny Yoon-hwa, her pure-white hair braided into a neat chignon, set down her teacup and spoke in a gentle voice. The indigo-dyed hanbok she wore rustled softly as she moved.
"Looks like summer's finally on its way."
Seated across from her, Lee-seol chewed thoughtfully on a sweet candied fruit and glanced up at the great camellia tree standing tall in the center of the garden. Judging by the profusion of white buds weighing down its branches, summer was indeed arriving in earnest this year.
"I was thinking we ought to have the garden pruned before the season turns."
"Shall I call Boss Jang at the flower nursery? Ask him to come take a look at the Sehwawon grounds?"
"Yes, do that."
Deep in Gangwon Province, on the slopes of Mt. Hyeonak, sat Sehwawon — a small, tranquil three-story manor of considerable age.
The old building wove together the charms of traditional hanok woodwork and Western architecture, and time had left its mark everywhere. Blue ivy climbing the walls, trumpet creepers spilling long and lovely over the garden fence, the camellia tree keeping watch over the courtyard. The traces of passing years hadn't grown shabby — if anything, they lent the place a quiet, antique grace.
And this was the refined mistress of Sehwawon: Granny Yoon-hwa.
She had received an immense spirit while still young, and now she was seventy.
She was an austere mansin, a supreme shaman before whom lesser mudang — upstarts who'd received some paltry god or other — dared not so much as lift their heads.
There had been a time, they said, when the great names of every field — politics, business, finance — tramped in and out of her shrine's threshold until it wore smooth, clutching land deeds and stacks of cash in hopes of a single reading.
Even a president, it was said, had knelt on a cushion behind her folding screen while she divined his fortune.
But Lee-seol had never once witnessed those bustling glory days.
Lee-seol was twenty-three this year, and she had lived here twenty-one of them — which meant Granny Yoon-hwa's prime was truly a thing of the distant past.
White blossoms hanging in lazy clusters swayed slowly in the wind that came through. She was gazing at them, savoring another sip of cleanly brewed wild white tea, when a luxury sedan glided to a smooth stop in front of the main gate.
She had never seen the car before.
"...Grandmother, were you expecting a visitor today?"
Lee-seol blinked her round eyes. Granny Yoon-hwa shook her head quietly, saying it was nothing.
Then why on earth had that car come all the way up here? And who, exactly, had it brought?
It was a strange occurrence.
Sehwawon had been gifted personally to Granny Yoon-hwa — servants and all — by the chairman of a massive conglomerate, in gratitude for the grand seven-day rite she had performed for him, the rite that marked her retirement from the shaman's life.
And Lee-seol had grown up here, in this very place.
A two-year-old child, abandoned on the mountain ridge. Granny Yoon-hwa had taken pity on the girl and raised her as her own — as tenderly as if she were a granddaughter born to her own hand.
Only Lee-seol was permitted the privilege of calling the mistress of Sehwawon not 'Mistress,' but 'Grandmother.' And along with that privilege came many others, rightfully hers as the old woman's granddaughter.
In twenty-one years of living here, visits from strangers could be counted on one hand.
Lee-seol set down her teacup and stared at the unfamiliar car.
The climb up the mountain road had left muddy splash marks near the wheels. From the back seat, a man emerged with unhurried ease.
Bathed in the brilliant June sun streaming down on him, and yet gray from head to toe, the man announced with his entire being that he was an outsider here.
A crisp white shirt tailored close to the body, black dress trousers, gleaming leather shoes. He stood nearly two hand-spans taller than she did. His broadly set shoulders and long, lean legs were so faintly rooted in reality that she might have been looking at a finely carved statue.
He was entirely unlike anyone she knew.
In her small, sheltered world, she had truly never seen a man like this.
Cocking his head to work loose a stiff neck, the man stretched long and slow. Even his furrowed brow, the ripple of muscle along his back — there was something handsome in all of it.
Lee-seol yanked her gaze away. A strange, disquieting sensation had pricked at her, warning her that she shouldn't keep looking. Simply watching a man stand there shouldn't have felt like glimpsing into some other world.
He drew closer. Crunch, crunch — the sound of leather shoes on the gravel path trailed all the way to the platform.
At last the crunching stopped. The man standing before them broke into an easy smile.
"Good afternoon, ma'am."
His body blocked the sun like an awning, casting him in silhouette. It was not a distance at which a guest could be politely ignored. Blinking against the light, Lee-seol looked up at the visitor.
He was strikingly handsome. Lee-seol had always considered it rather pointless to fuss over a person's looks — yet even to her eyes, this was a face that could make a person's life exhausting.
Black hair, smoothly combed back — a rarity in these parts. The nose rising proud and straight at the center of his face was as clean-lined and elegant as an ancient tree reaching for the sky.
Thick brows, deep-set eyes, and pupils so black they seemed to carry a bluish sheen — dark, and deeper still. The sea on a black night must be exactly that color.
For an instant, their eyes met.
Those dark eyes, incongruous against the fresh green of early summer, were bleak and unreadable. There was no telling what thoughts moved behind them. Somewhere in the distance, a cuckoo called, clear and bright.
The man, who had been quietly looking down at her, settled himself onto the platform with the smooth, sinuous ease of a snake. Then he dug into his breast pocket and produced a business card.
"Woo Tae-shin, Managing Director of Haeun Construction."
Even his courteous gestures radiated a strange confidence and audacity. Lee-seol slowly searched her memory.
Haeun Construction.
The construction subsidiary of the Haeun Group, Korea's second-largest conglomerate by market capitalization — the company that had recently launched a massive resort development partway up this very mountain, Mt. Hyeonak.
Since ancient times, Mt. Hyeonak had been renowned as an auspicious mountain.
Its name implied 'wise mother' — the sort of meaning the elders delighted in — and folklore held that a man who climbed it alone would gain wealth, a woman who climbed it alone would gain fame, and a couple who climbed it together would gain a child.
Wealthy men with nothing left to strive for had a way of dabbling in shamanism and superstition. It was only natural that villas belonging to people overflowing with money had sprung up here and there across Mt. Hyeonak.
And to meet that demand, Haeun Construction was planning a resort development built around a golf course.
Word had it that the blood of a young director ran hot at the center of this whole project.
Chairman Woo's one and only grandson, born of the finest stock — Woo Tae-shin, Managing Director.
A man said to have been born with a golden spoon between his teeth, yet never once given to recklessness; so strikingly handsome, in fact, that his looks overshadowed the remarkable achievements he had stacked up — a rare figure indeed, praised for his competence on every count.
Today's uninvited guest was that very man, Woo Tae-shin.
She could now verify for herself the truth of that absurd rumor — that his abilities were too easily eclipsed by his superfluous good looks. On looks alone she would have dismissed it as sheer nonsense, but annoyingly, she found herself nodding along.
"You don't seem very pleased to see me, ma'am."
"I received no word that a guest would come today."
"Urgent business, I'm afraid. That's why I came without announcing myself."
This was a man who had been handed an entire major subsidiary of the Haeun Group, and who was destined to become the group's chairman one day. She had expected someone who would swagger through the world as if it all belonged to him, blind to everything around him.
Instead, he seemed the affable, easygoing sort.
Faced with Granny Yoon-hwa's openly bristling hostility, he simply kept smiling, pleasant as could be. The deep dimple carved into one cheek caught her eye, and it was somehow infuriating.
"And this would be?"
The man tilted his chin slightly, studying Lee-seol. Their eyes clashed once more, at close range.
It was a gaze that was difficult to decipher. Those black eyes, seeming to take her apart piece by piece, revealed nothing beyond a flicker of good will and curiosity. Lee-seol swallowed a dry, useless mouthful of nothing.
"My granddaughter."
"I see. A pleasure — I'm Woo Tae-shin."
At Granny Yoon-hwa's brusque reply, Tae-shin readily extended his hand, offering a handshake.
...Am I allowed to take it? Caught ambiguously in the middle, Lee-seol stole a cautious glance between them. Granny Yoon-hwa gave the slightest dip of her chin, as if to say, go ahead. It was the look of someone reluctant, but with no proper grounds to refuse.
"I'm... Shin Lee-seol."
After a moment's hesitation, she cautiously offered her right hand. His was a firm hand, faintly damp with sweat. She gave a small bow and withdrew her fingers.
"Ah — I've come all this way because of the Dangsan-namu, of course."