The Sacred Ink
Shin Jaye…
As Seonwu silently voiced her name, Yonghwa the Shaman scanned her eyes back and forth between him and the Okhyeon seated beside him.
“From this moment on, the two of you must commit every word I say to memory.”
Okhyeon leaned toward Yonghwa the Shaman. In that posture, it was clear she stood ready to obey whatever impossible command the so-called nun might issue.
“Mr. Jeong Seonwu’s fortune is too strong for any curse to be banished by holding it in official hands and performing the funeral rites. We must deceive the spirits by other means.”
“Yes, Bodhisattva.”
“Jaye will become Seonwu’s Samjae Spirit—his talisman of destruction—and stay at his side for three years. If you do exactly as I instruct, the talisman’s powerful aura will ensure Mr. Seonwu survives the three disasters unharmed.”
Listening to Yonghwa the Shaman’s words like flowing water, Seonwu clicked his tongue inwardly.
A non-shaman speaking as though she were divine, ordering others to follow her words—it was nothing short of cult behavior.
Yet Okhyeon was different.
“This is also a meeting the spirits prepared in anticipation of my husband’s death.”
At those words, Okhyeon’s nose began to twitch. Every time her husband’s story surfaced, her heart twisted sharply.
“I will do anything the Bodhisattva says. If the Bodhisattva demands that I give my own life in place of Seonwu, I will give it.”
Her eyes, gripped by the fear that her husband might die suddenly, held nothing but despair.
Seonwu despised the fanatic look in his mother’s eyes, but ten years of sleepless worry while watching his wife suffer had left him powerless to rebuke her outright.
Until that moment he had never imagined they would tattoo a human talisman onto a person.
He had only assumed that once the person became the talisman, they would merely pray or offer incense in his place.
While Seonwu turned over those thoughts, Yonghwa the Shaman suddenly changed course.
“Tonight, Seonwu will stay at the hermitage with Jaye and drink the Chunhwanju. The ceremony will be performed in the simplest rite.”
At the mention of “Chunhwanju” and “the simple rite,” Seonwu frowned.
“A rite…? What in the world is that…?”
He had never imagined that keeping the protective talisman close to the body and living as husband and wife meant placing the talisman on the person’s body.
“In a few days the first lunar month begins. The real calamities of the three disasters will soon arrive. Therefore, we must apply the talisman and keep it close at all times.”
“I will obey the Bodhisattva without question.”
Seonwu looked at his mother with bewildered eyes.
“Tomorrow you will descend the mountain and register as husband and wife.”
“Yes. I will do exactly as you say.”
From the conversation it was clear that every detail—how to turn Jaye into a human talisman and how she would live as his wife for three years—had been decided.
Seonwu, now completely at a loss, longed to undo the entire arrangement. But he could not speak the words while he saw Jaye sitting quietly on the floor and her mother’s face beside her.
The thought of spending three years living beside a stranger filled him with dread. Yet when he looked at Jaye’s white fingertips clenched around her sleeve and her mother’s face ravaged by illness, he could not bring himself to say they would leave the hermitage at all.
Declaring the whole thing a void felt like dropping the two of them beneath a narrow bridge as they stood on it.
“Then, since our discussion is over, I must prepare the talisman.”
Yonghwa the Shaman rose and herded everyone out of the shrine.
“I will pay especially close attention to this talisman for Seonwu’s sake. If you keep it close to your body at all times, no disaster will be able to harm him.”
“Thank you. I will never forget this favor, Bodhisattva.”
Until that moment Seonwu had assumed the shaman would simply draw a plain talisman on yellow paper.
He had believed three years as husband and wife was reasonable and that was the end of it. But he had been wrong.
***
That night at 11:30, during the ominous hour of the hour of the rat, Yonghwa the Shaman summoned everyone staying at the hermitage into the shrine.
She lit incense, faced east, and bowed. Then she clapped her hands three times. It was preparation for inscribing the talisman.
Summoning Jaye into the center of the shrine, Yonghwa the Shaman stripped off her top and forced her onto the floor.
Watching the shaman inject pigment into the tattoo machine beside her, Seonwu’s heart lurched.
“What is this…? What are you doing?!”
He tried to intervene, but Jaye’s mother grabbed her.
“Be still, Seonwu. It’s too late to stop it now. Just stay quiet.”
Even Jaye’s mother watched her daughter’s fate with silent eyes, and Jaye herself endured the coming pain without a sound.
“This mad act—stop it at once. You’re inscribing a tattoo on a human being. What is this…?”
Ignoring Seonwu’s shouts, Yonghwa the Shaman pressed the tattoo machine against Jaye’s back.
“Stop it! Stop it…!”
Seonwu’s voice died in his throat when he saw Jaye’s hands clenched around the blanket on the floor. Her knuckles were bulging with blue veins.
“Why…?”
Why would she endure such agony for this nonsense?
While Seonwu stood frozen, Yonghwa the Shaman muttered incantations under her breath and drew the talisman in one unbroken stroke.
He had heard that the talisman had to be completed in a single pass without lifting the brush, but the shaman never removed the tattoo machine from Jaye’s skin.
All that could be heard inside the room was the shaman’s mumbling.
“What is this…?”
The head of the Samduiljogungbo had been fully inked onto the pale skin by the tattoo machine.
Okhyeon let out a delighted sigh, but Seonwu could not.
Instead of admiring the artist’s steady hand, his eyes fixed on Jaye’s trembling back as she lay face-down on the floor.
She endured the pain of her back being covered in ink without a single whimper.
“This is cruel… please stop… what is this… what is this…?”
Shocked, Seonwu tried to stop the shaman, but Okhyeon pulled him close.
“Don’t, Seonwu. If you stop it now, she becomes a fool.”
Unmoved by the chaos, Yonghwa the Shaman continued drawing while Jaye’s back grew steadily redder by the second.
Watching Jaye’s hands shake like pine trees as they gripped the blanket, Seonwu felt as if his own flesh were flaying away.
“Is this for me? Is this some insane stunt?”
“Yes. Everything is for you. Everything I do is for you.”
“Ah…”
At that point it was impossible to stop the act because of the pain Jaye was enduring.
If they stopped now, she would live with the ugly red tattoo branded into her back.
If not her, they would choose another woman to become the human talisman and keep inventing ways to block the three disasters.
By dawn, Jaye’s back was completely covered with the terrifying Samduiljogungbo that Yonghwa the Shaman had drawn.
“Now Seonwu’s Samjae Spirit is complete. Because your wife will always be at your side, the effect will be far greater than simply pasting the talisman at home.”
Not only would the disasters that came with the three calamities be powerless, but anyone who looked at the drawing would feel a chill run down their spine. The image of a twenty-one-year-old girl’s back was now forever inked on her skin.
Seonwu clenched his teeth and glared at Yonghwa the Shaman.
She was nothing but a fraud. She could spin sweet lies to captivate people’s hearts while committing acts that sealed eyes and ears.
Jaye lay face-down on the floor, her back exposed like raw flesh, enduring the pain alone.
She trembled all over, unable even to raise her head.
“Are you all right?”
Seonwu moved closer to Jaye and picked up the clean cloth beside them to cover her back.
That night, the only thing given to the Jaye who had received the enormous tattoo was a single painkiller.
After swallowing the pill with water, Jaye held the Chunhwanju with bloodshot eyes and became Seonwu’s wife for three years.
Seonwu’s mind froze the moment he saw Jaye’s white hand trembling from the pain as she gripped the bronze cup.
***
Every time that day’s events resurfaced, Seonwu’s heart grew heavy. Lying in bed, he pressed his knuckles hard against his eyes.
He was twenty-one—legally an adult—but in reality he was only a big child who had just become an adult.
Moreover, Jaye, living with Yonghwa the Shaman, would have been unable to resist her.
As someone who had lived longer than her, Seonwu should have stopped that inhuman act, but he had become a mere bystander who watched Jaye’s back get covered in ink. And Okhyeon, who had paid for the act, was his own mother.
Afterward Yonghwa the Shaman insisted that Jaye must be taken to maximize the talisman’s power.
Even the demand to sleep together as husband and wife was added. The impossible was happening right here in his own house.
Seonwu swallowed the hatred in Okhyeon’s eyes and never touched Jaye.
Rather than become the kind of person who would commit the same madness as those consumed by insanity, it was better to endure the disasters.
But now that things had come to this, he had to do something. He had to fix what was wrong at least for her sake.
He chose to remove the tattoo cleanly, leave Jaye to live as she wished, and take Okhyeon—the mother brainwashed by that madwoman Yonghwa the Shaman—out of the hermitage.
Once he brought Jaye to Seoul, he enrolled her in a private university with enormous scholarship funds.
Even so, the guilt over that day never faded.
Every time he saw Jaye, the ugly things humans had done to other humans flashed before his eyes, leaving him disgusted with himself.
In the two years and eleven months they lived together, the way Jaye treated Seonwu with pure sincerity began to change.
Seonwu, who was quick to notice, saw affection begin to stir in her eyes. Yet he could not reciprocate it.
To him, Jaye was not a woman.
To him, she was simply someone who had suffered and needed to be compensated.
Therefore, while he could protect her like a brother and send her to school, he could not look at her as a woman and love her.
The contract would end in one month. His wish was to part from Jaye safely in one month’s time.