After warning the young man again, the old plasterer left, puffing out smoke from his cigarette like a chimney.
He had intended to scare the young man. Still, there had to be some truth to what he’d said. The young man felt a chill run down his spine and trembled.
A comb shrine? Geez. I wonder if a woman was enshrined here after dying with a grudge. Is she really angry that her shrine has been destroyed? No, I’m not going to think about it!
The young man shook his head vigorously to drive away the fear rising in his mind. It’s okay. I’m a stranger—just here to do a job. The son-in-law is the one she’d be mad at, not me. I have nothing to do with this!
Still, he was overwhelmed by a desire to finish this abominable job as soon as possible, so the young man once again picked up the shovel, placed a leg on top, and pushed his weight onto it.
Oh. This is going to work.
The shovel finally reached the top of a huge rock buried in the center.
The young man shook the shovel, and the rock wobbled.
“All right!”
He couldn’t help shouting in joy. Using this leverage, he put his full weight on the shovel’s handle, and the stone slowly emerged from underground and was lifted like a tooth extraction.
“Okay, the tough part’s over.”
Cheering himself on, the young man set the shovel on the ground and reached with both hands to pull the rock out.
He proudly placed it on top of the small mountain he was making with the other rocks he had removed from the site, then he noticed something in the hole from where he had pulled out the big rock.
“Hmm?”
Puzzled, he kneeled on the ground, scraped the soil off the surface with his gloved hands, and saw a salmon-pink object with a coarse texture.
“What’s this?”
The man was curious and started picking at the ground with his fingers. It was an unglazed earthenware pot about the size of a small pickle jar.
The pot was damp and slimy, sealed firmly with what appeared to be the hide of some animal.
“It’s light. Whoa! What the heck?”
He had placed the pot on the palm of his hand and was brushing off the dirt to examine it, when he cried out in surprise.
A peculiar text and patterns in black ink covered the pot’s surface.
It was similar to the calligraphic writing on a talisman issued by a shrine—the kind you often found in Japanese horror flicks.
“This is creepy!”
The man’s hair stood on end when he saw this.
Isn’t this getting seriously bad?
The man almost dropped the pot, but then caught it just in time and wrapped his hands around it securely—not that he wanted to—before running to the site supervisor.
But the supervisor frowned disapprovingly when the pale-faced young man showed him the pot.
The site supervisor wasn’t a huge man, but the look in his eyes was intimidating as he asked, “So what?”
Still shaking, the young man held out the pot, moving it closer to his supervisor.
“I found it under the rocks. It was buried under the shrine, and I thought it might be something dangerous with all these weird patterns.”
The supervisor sighed, then spat on the ground.
“I told you to dig up the rocks. I didn’t tell you to look for a pot.”
“Uh, I wasn’t looking for it; I just found it under a rock. It’s probably old, and, um, I think I recall seeing somewhere—on TV, I think—that we have to report it to the board of education or something.”
“You complete dimwit! We don’t have time for that!”
The young man flinched. The supervisor pointed to the sky.
“We’re already behind schedule because of all the rain we’ve been having, but the handover date isn’t going to budge an inch! Don’t you get that?”
“I’m aware.”
“Then you should know what to do with that pot or jar or whatever it is. If you report it to the authorities, and if it turns out to be ancient, they’ll tell us to stop the construction work, and we’ll be in deep trouble.”
As soon as the young man asked, “Then what should we do?” the supervisor slapped his employee’s right wrist hard without hesitation or warning.
“Oh!” The young man yelped in shock.
The sudden movement made him stagger back, and the small pot fell from his hand to the ground.
“Aaah!”
As if in slow motion, the pot plummeted and then shattered into pieces.
Looking smug, the supervisor said, “All you have to do is pretend you never found it. Finishing our work on time is more important than worrying about some pot.”
Panicked, the young man squatted and tried to pick up the pieces, but the supervisor was faster. He stepped on the debris and smashed it further.
“You didn’t have to do that…,” the young man muttered as he remained crouched down, stunned at what the supervisor had done.
“See? There’s nothing in there,” the supervisor spat out. “It’s just garbage. Now hurry up and get back to work. I’m firing you if you can’t move all those rocks by the end of the day, and I’ll leave you here when we go! And if you dig up another piece of trash, you’re fired.”
With this heartless rebuke, the supervisor turned his back on the young man and walked away.
“Oh…the poor thing, after surviving all this time.”
Now that he knew nothing was inside the pot, the young man was no longer afraid and just felt sorry for it.
He looked at the shattered pieces, wondering if he could find some big enough to put back together, but the supervisor’s heavy shoes had crushed the fragile pot to the point of no return.
“I’m sorry. No hard feelings, okay?”
Unsure if he was apologizing to the pot or the enshrined deity, the man folded his hands in prayer, bowed, then gave up and walked away.
There was nothing more he could do for the pot, so it was better to get back to work before the supervisor decided to chew him out again.
The young man regained his bearings and started walking away, when a strong wind suddenly blew.
“Very good. As a reward, I will not eat you.”
“Huh?”
The young man was sure he’d heard a man’s voice, so he stopped in his tracks and looked around.
“There’s no one here… Am I hearing things? Ugh, I’m such a scaredy-cat.”
He slapped his knees, told himself to pull it together, and returned to his assigned area.
Little did he know that a sudden whirlwind behind him had picked up the shattered fragments of the pot and carried them high into the sky.