Chapter 47: How to Enjoy a Festival (5)
The beckoning was subtle.
If you didn't pay attention, it looked like hands and drew your attention, but when you focused, it suddenly changed into wave foam, deceiving people again. Then the foam would turn back into hands, and if you lost yourself in that sight, your gaze and attention would concentrate there, gradually allowing you to clearly perceive the shape of the hands.
And if you kept watching it quietly, you would naturally become entranced.
It was also a typical method of water ghosts trying to lure people to drown them.
"They move in groups and their method is subtle. They're very well-matured ones indeed."
But Jinseong rather brightened at this sight and unpacked the luggage he had brought.
What he took out was a jar slightly larger than a palm.
It was a durable jar that was said to have been obtained from the Imari pottery village in Saga Prefecture.
The jar was filled to the brim with contents that looked like ash kneaded well with something sticky. Moreover, there was an inexplicable fishy smell and stench that stung the nose, and white maggots wriggling here and there were peeking their heads out.
A yellow special paper was attached to the lid of the jar, on which something was drawn. The pattern made of mixed red and black letters looked more like a slightly eerie work of art than an ordinary talisman, and also looked like a meaningless child's scribble.
Jinseong tied long straw ropes well to each of these jars and threw all 20 of them into the air outside the wire mesh.
The jars, flying far away as if they had wings, flew without difficulty to the area where the ghosts were beckoning, and started to fall to the ground one by one like they had weights attached.
Splash—
Splash-
The jars sank deep into the water with a splash.
Jinseong, who had been quietly watching this scene, took out a bundle of white silk from his luggage again.
The glossy white silk felt like it would melt your hand just by touching it, and if you gently lifted it with your hand, it seemed like it would have no weight at all, as if lifting air.
At the end of this luxurious silk was a brown lump wrapped in silk, which looked similar to but slightly different from Korean meju (fermented soybean).
It was Japanese miso, specifically kome miso which was made of rice.
There were five bundles of silk in total.
He levitated the silk bundles in the air like the jars and threw them beyond the wire mesh.
The fluttering silk, as if it weren't cloth, ignored even the thorns of the barbed wire and gently hung over it, covering the wire mesh like a fluttering curtain and descending below the bridge.
Splash-
Finally, with five splashing sounds, the kome miso sank into the sea.
Splash!
Splash!
Swoosh! Swoosh!
And as if the falling of the kome miso was a signal, the water ghosts began to go berserk.
Like throwing meat into a river full of piranhas, or sprinkling blood where sharks have gathered, the water ghosts competed with each other to cause a commotion and splash water. Their momentum was so fierce that water splashed even to where Jinseong was located.
Splash!
As if it were a lie that they had been beckoning to Jinseong until just a moment ago, the water ghosts all circled around the jars and kome miso that had sunk into the sea. The water ghosts seemed to have forgotten about Jinseong, whom they had been desperate to lure just a moment ago. They were busy circling around the jars and kome miso, fighting among themselves, allowing Jinseong to watch the water ghosts fighting over food from the bridge with a calm mind.
And how long had this frenzy lasted?
The movements of the water ghosts began to subside.
Splash
Swoosh!
Although the sound of splashing water could still be heard, it had clearly decreased compared to earlier, and the splashing sounds were now only heard sporadically.
As if it was about time, Jinseong got up from his seat, took out an incense stick, and lit it.
Hiss.
Unlike ordinary incense, as soon as it was lit, it burned with a violent sound like a firecracker and instantly emitted an enormous amount of smoke. The smoke, which was not like that from ordinary incense but had a slightly reddish color, writhed as if alive and circled around Jinseong. And when slightly pushed away by Jinseong's hand wave, it flew towards the wire mesh and began to spread.
The smoke spread sideways as if there was an invisible wall.
After spreading like that for a while, the smoke started to punch holes as if it had found an exit. It looked like cheese with holes punched all over it.
As expected, there are gaps in the barrier.
A barrier was a wall.
A wall meant a boundary, and a boundary meant separation.
In other words, if the barrier had been properly erected, people wouldn't have died because of water ghosts, and the water ghosts who noticed Jinseong's presence wouldn't have caused a commotion trying to lure him.
The fact that suicides occurred on the bridge every year was partly due to people who had heard that it was a famous suicide spot, but surely these gaps in the barrier had also played a role.
It seems they didn't make it properly due to money.
But it couldn't be helped.
This wasn't because Japanese onmyoji and monks didn't properly set up the barrier, but probably because they had to do it roughly due to budget issues.
Sorcery was expensive.
Especially creating a barrier to indefinitely block such powerful water ghost groups, and a huge barrier that covered this entire giant bridge, would have been a big burden even for the prefecture. Therefore, creating a barrier to the best of their ability within the allowed budget and blocking it with wire mesh and barbed wire was probably their maximum effort.
Let's see. The hole in the barbed wire is... Right. Here it is.
Jinseong carefully examined the holes in the barrier and found a large hole in the upper part of the barbed wire.
Splash!
Splash!
Jinseong's hand grabbed the air again.
Then, with the same splashing sound as before, the jars and silk bundles that Jinseong had thrown began to emerge from the sea and float up into the air. They slowly flew up through the air and piled up neatly in front of Jinseong through the hole in the barbed wire.
Rattle.
Rattle.
Rattle rattle rattle rattle.
Rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle.
The jars piled in front of Jinseong shook violently as if they contained fish. The movement was so strong that it seemed like the jars might break, but strangely, despite this violent movement, the jars didn't fall over or tilt.
Thump-!
Thump--!
Had whatever was inside the jars realized that it couldn't escape by shaking?
It tried to escape through the hole at the top of the jar.
But the special yellow paper attached to the top of the jar, despite being paper, blocked all resistance from what was trying to escape as if it were a lid made of steel, and while it stretched and vibrated, it never showed signs of tearing and continued to seal the lid.
What was strange was that the drawing on the special yellow paper attached to the lid had now become a talisman with something written in seal script.
The black color that had made the special yellow paper look like a work of art had disappeared without a trace, and only red cinnabar remained to form the characters, which looked like the character for "seal" (封) scrawled in seal script.
Jinseong quietly watched the water ghosts in the jars make futile struggles and then picked up the silk.
The silk looked the same as before, just wet.
However, when Jinseong untied the end of the silk, the lump of kome miso wrapped inside fell to the ground with a splat, and long, colorful strands of hair that hadn't been there when Jinseong first put the kome miso in were sticking out of the thick brown lump.
Jinseong pulled out all the hair from the kome miso, levitated it in the air, and shook off the water thoroughly. Then he blew a gentle breath as if blowing dandelion seeds.
Then the hair swayed like paper airplanes riding the wind and settled into different jars. Some jars received long black straight hair, some received short dyed blonde hair, some received white hair.
After the hair found its owners like this, he took out the dolls that Kenji had prepared from his luggage.
Palm-sized dolls that were 3-heads tall.
They were small figures called Nendoroids in Japan.
Jinseong placed the Nendoroids on top of each jar and poured rooster blood over the dolls. Then he began to chant an incantation.
"-------------"
It was an incantation that had no form to be called a sentence, no meaning to be called a word, and was closer to an animal's cry or scream than speech. But the incantation kept circling around the jars, changing pitch, gradually becoming sharper and more refined, and finally becoming a sound like a high frequency.
And when that high-frequency-like sound became heavy as if sinking down, contrary to its sharpness, Jinseong grabbed the air and removed all the talismans attached to the jars.
Rip!
The talismans fell off simultaneously.
And the dolls placed on top all fell into the jars as if people falling into the sea, and as if they had been waiting for this, the water ghosts sealed in the jars rushed at the dolls, emitting a strong fishy smell. And at the same time, the hair that had been in contact with the dolls wrapped around them and disappeared as if melting.
And perhaps because the water ghosts had entered and were moving, the dolls rattled for a long time, and the blood smeared on the dolls' bodies gradually faded as if something invisible was licking it off, becoming like new.
After the water ghosts had entered the dolls and settled in, Jinseong finally moved to levitate the dolls and put them into his bag.
Twenty water ghosts.
"Good, very good!"
Jinseong stroked the bag that had turned into a den of water ghosts, smiling with satisfaction.
* * *
Time passed, and the day to go to the villa arrived.
"Future Shinto priest, I've come to escort you."