Wandering Through Vol. 1 Chapter 28 - Second Life 01

The hands and feet were calloused, her voice hoarse, and she wore rags.

 

The dirt-painted face gave away her age at first glance, but it didn’t seem to matter. She clutched at his leg and stammered, “Find, find my, uh, my, my…”

 

He realized that his life had existed to lead this girl to the man. His entire life had been laid out for this one moment.

 

Now his mission was clear. All he had to do was take this girl back to the shrine and give her to the man lying there.

 

But he couldn’t.

 

“Help…, please…”

 

When the man opened his eyes, Huishan smiled. 

 

So he decided to deny the reason for his entire existence. 

 

He picked up the girl and returned to the shrine. He locked her in a cage so that no one would see her.

 

The next day, Huishan took the man who had opened his eyes down the mountain, and a few days later, a bundle of riches was brought to him in gratitude, but he was too ill with fever to see it. 

 

The price for interfering with an arranged fate was harsh.

 

‘Huishan, I…’

 

But even with the fever, he did not regret his choice.

 

‘… if only you could keep smiling.’

 

When the fever was over, they brought the girl out of the madness and asked her where, why, and how she had come to be here, and she calmly replied.

 

“I became a servant when my family fell apart in my youth, and I didn’t want to be a concubine to my master, so I was cursed on purpose.”

 

There was definitely a demon attached. I didn’t know if she was a good vessel or not, and honestly, I couldn’t call her a shaman. 

 

She felt his gaze on her as if she were a shaman, and the corner of her mouth twitched.

 

“My mother called me a Mongmae because she said that all four of them were useless for anything other than a glimpse of the future, but I can see the future and the fate of others, and I have become one.”

 

The twisted corners of the girl’s mouth twitched into a smile. Her eyes were clouded as if she was remembering something.

 

“When I came here, I knew I would see him, I knew you would take me to him, when will you take me to him?”

 

He couldn’t answer and finally turned away. His tongue, which had never told a lie in its life, moved with difficulty.

 

“…Shouldn’t your body get better first?”

 

It was true that the girl’s body had been weakened by the hardships she had endured traveling from the distant mountains to Hanyang.

 

The girl, Mongmae, nodded.

 

As he left the room he had given her, he didn’t know what to do next, and he didn’t have much time to think about it.

 

The very next day, after Mongmae woke up, there was another caravan carrying the three people to the shrine.

 

He told Mongmae not to come out, as he had an important guest arriving in a short time, and put her back in the temple. 

 

Once again, she woke up soon afterward and went down the mountain.

 

After that, it was more of the same.

 

At least once a month he fell for reasons unknown to him. 

 

If he did not come to the shrine, he could not get up, no matter how many precious medicines he used or how many great priests he invoked.

 

When this happened again and again, he became known to the people of the East Palace as a brave shaman who could revive even the dying.

 

Word of him spread to the villages in the foothills, and people would often steal the five-colored silk cloth tied to the pine tree in front of the shrine. 

 

Some rumors say drinking the bath water would cure illnesses.

 

The imperial courtiers, who didn’t like him, secretly enlisted him in their service. 

 

Rather than traveling up and down the mountain every time, he left him a position at the Sacred River Temple and called on him whenever possible.

 

In addition, Mongmae, who had gotten healthier, asked why he didn’t take her to him. He gave her this excuse and that, but only once or twice. 

 

Her gaze grew colder by the day.

 

‘I felt like I was sinking into the mud.’

 

Without Mongmae, the Prince would die. But if Mongmae and the Prince were to meet, the Prince would never look back at Huishan for the rest of her life.

 

One day, after doing nothing to prevent them from meeting, it finally happened.

 

Mongmae, who had always been with guests on errands or asked them to stay in their rooms whenever they came to visit. 

 

She went down the mountain on an errand, and on her way back up, she ran into the Prince as she was leaving the temple.

 

Unbeknownst to him, the relationship had begun.

 

💫

 

The third year of King Sejo of the Joseon Dynasty.

 

He saw the Prince and Mongmae on a mountain path, and after a long day of pondering, he asked Mongmae.

 

“Have you met the one you were looking for?”

 

Mongmae, no longer the same woman she was when she first entered this shrine three years ago, looked back at him with cold eyes.

 

“Yes. Why did you hide from me all this time that he was the honored guest you speak of?”

 

“And did you not also hide from me that you had met him?”

 

“Because I wasn’t sure either!”

 

Resentment was evident in Mongmae’s eyes.

 

“What I could see was so little-not a speck compared to you, all I knew was that you were taking me to him, and you rather hid him from me, how was I to be sure that he was the one, the one I had been waiting for!”

 

“…”

 

“I waited half my life for a man whose face and name I knew not. I loved a man I had never met, and though I recognized him the moment I saw him, I held back because of you, because you wouldn’t take me to him!”

 

He watched her anger, uncharacteristic of her usual calm, and then asked.

 

“Did it ever occur to you that the honored guest was not the one you were waiting for?”

 

“I recognized him at a glance.”

 

“But you said you hesitated, that you were not sure.”

He added, faster than Mongmae could open her mouth to retort.

 

“My honored guest is already married.”

 

“…I cannot believe anything you say now.”

 

“Does he tell you he loves you, or ask you to live with him, or tell you who he is?”

 

“…”

 

Her silence convinced him that she had heard nothing of his identity or his feelings. If so, it was easy to convince her.

 

“If you haven’t heard anything, what makes you think it’s him?”

 

“…”

 

“You’re just young, he’s a handsome man, and you’ve fallen for him. You claim to have been rejected as a concubine, and now you’re going to wring tears from the eyes of a man’s wife.”

 

He stared into Mongmae’s eyes, which wavered uneasily. 

 

It suddenly occurred to him, ‘Barely twenty years old, what confidence can one have in one’s life and choices?’

 

She must be the daughter of a traitorous enemy. 

 

All the men in the family must be dead, and the women have been reduced to commoners and scattered. The phrase ‘fortunate orphan’ probably refers to her.

 

“You said you came all this way to find a man whose face and name you know nothing about, and you just needed an excuse to run away.”

 

He rambled on. Everything he’d told her, why she’d come here, and how she’d met the prince.

 

She wondered if the notion that she had known and loved him before they ever met was a delusion, concocted by someone who had no one to turn to.

 

“In truth, I didn’t know what you meant when you kept asking me to take you to him, so I deflected and avoided it. I don’t see any connection between you and him, so who are you talking about?”

 

She wasn’t even a shaman’s vassal in the first place, and the price she paid for her descent was nothing more than a job. 

 

Despite her loud proclamations that she could see the future, she couldn’t have doubted what she saw. 

 

At least, she wanted to believe so.

 

He wanted her to doubt herself and him.

 

I hoped they had already crossed paths and that their paths would never cross again.

 

“I took pity on you. If you wish, I will make you my goddaughter and pass on this shrine and my things to you, so why don’t you stop looking for a man to save you?”

 

“I never wanted to be saved.”

 

Mongmae glared at him with a flaming gaze and spat out the words.

 

“When my father died a traitorous death, when my mother hanged herself, when I was reduced to a servant!”

 

She bit the fingers of the master who reached out his filthy hand, and struck the back of her stepmother’s head as she tried to sell her daughter into slavery. 

 

Mongmae never expected help from others.

 

“Even if no one had saved me, I would have survived and come this far. How could I have run a hundred miles expecting to be saved by a mere stranger!”

 

He grew weary of her vehemence. 

 

If she had been born a man, she would have been a great warlord, even if she had been born a squire, but in reality, she was only a lowly maiden, and her heart was with the Prince.

 

“He’s mine, he should be mine, I can’t be delusional, I don’t believe in illusions, how can all of this be delusional when every time I think of him I go crazy like this!”