The reason Eun Seonmyeong was going to Sokcho with Shim Iyul was because of Kim Intaek. He had attempted to call using someone else’s phone instead of his own blocked number and unilaterally notified him he would be coming. It was precisely a notification. He said he’d come now, so wait. He also knew he was at home rather than the shop. He probably barged into the shop first without warning, found he wasn’t there, and then called.
‘Those who were in high positions are problematic because they’re unilateral.’
Having lived receiving adulation, they looked down on people and tried to control them as they pleased. Eun Seonmyeong naturally had no intention of being controlled. He didn’t want to face Kim Intaek and argue either. Just seeing an unpleasant face was tiring. It was better to be with the Fire Fox instead.
“How carefree.”
Shim Iyul was sitting beside him, sleeping carefreely. He had fallen fast asleep exactly thirty minutes after departure. There was no trace of the wariness a Yosu should have with a Hunter beside him.
The sight of Shim Iyul sprawled out sleeping beside him wasn’t even surprising anymore after seeing it several times. Though it was still absurd.
“Have some wariness, fox brat.”
The moment he clicked his tongue, Shim Iyul’s eyes snapped open.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“Wipe the drool from your mouth.”
“I don’t drool.”
Shim Iyul retorted confidently and secretly checked his reflection in the window. As expected, there were no traces of drool. He was still as pretty as ever, incomparably so to humans.
‘This Hunter is teasing me?!’
He was about to lift his eyes sharply in indignation when he caught Eun Seonmyeong’s face in the window’s reflection, glancing this way and smiling slightly. Shim Iyul gave up on confronting him and continued staring at the window. Eun Seonmyeong’s smiling face, reflected hazily in the dark window, was quite worth looking at. Though his temper was shit.
Anyway, I even went so far as to flatter him asking to revive Seungjin’s memories, but he wouldn’t even do that.
“I’m so~ curious about how the kid ghost ended up dying alone.”
“…”
“Why did he die there alone? The shaman was dying of curiosity too.”
“…”
“They say ghosts who die with their curiosity resolved have better complexions.”
“…”
“Humans sometimes die of frustration when they can’t resolve their curiosity, right? If the shaman dies, it’ll be because of you. To think the Gaju of the Eun family is trying to kill a Bongshin—truly, what times we live in.”
Shim Iyul needled him. Suddenly, Eun Seonmyeong sharply turned the steering wheel. Shim Iyul’s body swayed along with it. Shim Iyul instinctively grabbed the seatbelt and shouted, “T-talk with words!” The ill-tempered Hunter was pulling out his gun again…
“What are you doing? Get out. Let’s have a cup of coffee before we go.”
Eun Seonmyeong got out first. Only then looking outside, it was a rest stop. Shim Iyul got out nonchalantly as if nothing had happened. Then while Eun Seonmyeong bought coffee, he bought a hot bar. He saw walnut cookies so he paid for a bag of those too. Walking a few more steps, the small potatoes looked delicious so he had no choice but to buy them.
“Are you going on a trip?”
Eun Seonmyeong came out of the cafe, discovered Shim Iyul with his arms full of food, and shook his head.
“If we stop at a rest stop, we should eat at least this much. You boring Hunter. Ah, let’s eat over there.”
Shim Iyul pointed to an outdoor table. Perhaps because it was cold, the tables were completely empty. The humans were crowded inside. Several ghosts were visible too. Rather than inside where humans and ghosts mingled, the cold outdoors seemed better. Thinking this, Eun Seonmyeong silently followed Shim Iyul.
Shim Iyul roughly blew the dust off the table with his breath, then laid out the snacks. Hot bar, walnut cookies, small potatoes, and semi-dried squid—when did he even buy that? Watching him quickly demolish them one by one, he was seriously thinking, ‘As expected, that must be a pig wearing a fox’s skin,’ when it happened.
“Want some?”
Shim Iyul held out a walnut cookie. Even that seemed precious as his fingertips trembled.
“You eat a lot yourself.”
“It’s not that I didn’t offer—you refused, right? Don’t complain later that I ate everything alone and didn’t give you any.”
Shim Iyul happily demolished the walnut cookies. A fox with such gluttony—isn’t that really a pig? Should I peel off the skin sometime soon to check? He seriously pondered it.
“Do you pity the Dongjagwi’s mother?”
Eun Seonmyeong, taking a sip of lukewarm coffee, suddenly asked.
“…Huh?”
“Are you sympathizing with the Dongjagwi’s mother? Do you pity her for wandering around looking for him without knowing her child died?”
It sounded like he meant it was presumptuous for a Yosu to sympathize with humans. Shim Iyul put a walnut cookie in his mouth. He put three in at once, making his cheeks bulge.
“I don’t sympathize with humans. I’ve told you many times, haven’t I?”
“Then?”
Shim Iyul wiped his mouth where crumbs were stuck.
“I just… think a mother has the right to know whether her child is alive or dead. If the child died, why they died too. Because that’s what a mother is.”
“…You speak as if you have a mother.”
What’s this Hunter saying? Is he treating me like a fox born without a mother? Shim Iyul was about to open his mouth to shout, “I had a mother too!” when—
“I also…!”
“You’re a really funny fox. A fox who understands humans.”
Eun Seonmyeong, who had been muttering to himself, stood up.
“I’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
Shim Iyul looked up at Eun Seonmyeong with round eyes.
“Looking into the Dongjagwi’s memories.”
“You said you didn’t want to? You said you wouldn’t do it? You even ignored my desperate flattery, so why did you change your mind?”
“Let me say this again—that wasn’t flattery, it was provocation. And it’s just… let’s call it a whim.”
“So you’re capricious? How lacking in dignity.”
Eun Seonmyeong looked down at Shim Iyul, who was clicking his tongue while frowning.
“And you’re a fox who earns beatings. Just get up. Let’s hurry and leave. The weather looks like it’ll get rough soon.”
Shim Iyul gathered up the remaining food and looked up. Judging by how the air touching his skin was humid and heavy, it seemed snow or rain would fall.
Not long after leaving the rest stop, snow began pouring down. It was a heavy snowfall. The snow piled up quickly and froze rapidly in the cold weather. After barely arriving in Sokcho without an accident through turtle-paced driving, Shim Iyul and Eun Seonmyeong looked for lodging for the night. On the way down, he’d called Old Man Kang and found out which hospital he was admitted to, but getting there was too difficult.
There happened to be a hanok pension nearby, and when they contacted them, they said accommodation was available, so they headed straight there. What the pension owner provided was a single detached building separate from the main house, but it had only one room.
“Is there only one vacant room?”
“Yes. Our pension only has three rooms, and two are reserved, so this is the only room available right now.”
“I understand.”
Perhaps finding it strange that two men came looking for two rooms, the pension owner glanced at them with a look that said, ‘Are they a couple?’ before leaving.
“I won’t attack you. Don’t be scared.”
“Do you think I’d just quietly let you if you attacked? If it seems like your heat is coming, tell me. I’ll tie you up.”
“Even if you tie me up, I can break free easily, you know?”
He was confident he could break even iron chains.
“I’ll tie you with a Reaper’s rope. The one Reapers use.”
There was a rope Reapers used when catching ghosts like vengeful spirits or evil spirits that disturbed the order of the human world. It had the same shape and form as the ropes humans used, but a Reaper’s rope could seal wicked powers. Whether Yogi or ghostly energy.
“You have all sorts of things, don’t you?”
“I’m the Gaju of an exorcist family that’s lasted over a thousand years. Just say the word. I’ll tie you tight enough to cut off circulation.”
“Forget it. I won’t attack. And I don’t have my heat right now anyway.”
Shim Iyul snorted and opened the wardrobe. Fortunately, there were two sets of bedding. He laid one set pressed against the wall and kicked the other toward Eun Seonmyeong.
“Sleep far away over there. I hate the Hunter smell.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Eun Seonmyeong ostentatiously laid his bedding close to the entrance and lay down first. Shim Iyul also burrowed into his bedding. He was tired from running around here and there today. The moment he closed his eyes, sleep poured over him.
“Mmm, it’s cold.”
How long had he slept? A chill seeped in. It was as cold as when he’d lived alone in the shack. The roughly made shack had wind seeping in from all sides, so no matter how much fire he lit, he had to shiver in the cold during winter. At those times, he’d keenly feel that he was alone in the wide human world. Whether he was trembling from loneliness or cold, he didn’t even know, but dawn would break as he trembled.
Shivering with his body curled up tight, then instinctively wriggling and crawling in search of something to block the cold, Shim Iyul smiled faintly in satisfaction at some point.
He’d found warmth.
This was a dream and a memory of the past. Eun Seonmyeong looked at his past self sitting alone in the desolate funeral hall and thought.
‘This is when Father passed away.’
When his father passed away, Eun Seonmyeong was a greenhorn of eighteen. At the time, Han Seolju was staying in China with his father Han Myeongsu, and Ban Hanseong had just lost both his parents at once and had withdrawn from school due to bullying and was staying home. With no relatives or adults to rely on, Eun Seonmyeong had to handle everything from one to ten alone. There were hardly any mourners either. He’d notified every contact his father had about the death, but few came. The funeral hall was so desolate it was almost barren.
“Seonmyeong, we must not think of the power we possess as just a way to make money. Our family’s power was bestowed by heaven to protect humans from wicked things.”
His father’s words echoed in his ears. His father, who had inherited his old-fashioned grandfather’s ideology intact, had taught Eun Seonmyeong from childhood that they must protect humans from wicked things, that it was their duty and mission, and that they must not covet wealth and honor with their talents.
His father, who didn’t know how to doubt people and didn’t know how to assert the value he possessed, living a life close to sacrifice, was constantly backstabbed. Even after eliminating an evil spirit attached to a rich person, he was actually sued, with the arduous process as the reason.
Why would an evil spirit attach itself? Evil spirits attached because the person was wicked and had accumulated that much resentment. Humans tormented by evil spirits were generally selfish. Such humans were two-faced—they’d cling desperately as if they’d give up their liver when desperate, then turn their back the moment things were resolved.
His father rarely received proper compensation while accepting difficult and arduous jobs that ordinary shamans couldn’t resolve. He was a rigid person who didn’t even know to receive advance payment. Naturally, the safe grew emptier day by day to the point of worrying about meals. The family had already been gradually declining like a hole in a levee, but it reached the point of worrying about extinction because of the ancestors’ personalities that didn’t know how to be selfish.
Still, he’d thought they’d built up a decent reputation. He didn’t want to believe his father had only helped scoundrels. But guarding the funeral hall that was as silent and cold as a tomb, he realized. There was no need to live like his father. No, he must not live like his father.
‘I’m sorry, Father. I won’t sell my skills cheap, and I won’t bestow favors. I love and respect you, Father, but I’ll never live like you. I’ll only protect my own people. If they don’t have the money to buy my skills, I won’t use my power for anyone.’
He sat alone for a full day, looking at his father’s portrait, and made his resolution.
On the second day of the funeral, Ban Hanseong, who had belatedly checked his messages, rushed over, and only then did the tomb-like silent funeral hall become a bit noisy. Ban Hanseong prostrated himself and wailed for a while, then walked on his knees toward Eun Seonmyeong sitting bitterly and pulled him into an embrace. With such strong force he couldn’t breathe…
‘That’s strange?’
Did Ban Hanseong embrace me? Somehow it felt like the memory was distorted. It was correct that Ban Hanseong had rushed over on the second day and wailed. Him crawling on his knees was also accurate. But he’d been disgusted before embracing and shouted, “Men don’t hug each other!” before turning sharply away. It was 12 years ago, but the memory couldn’t be wrong.
Then who was hugging him now… Certainly someone was holding him tightly.
Feeling suffocated, Eun Seonmyeong opened his eyes slightly and saw vivid red hair in his vision.
