On a moonless night when everyone held their breath, a small boy stood atop a low hill, gazing at the lake with vacant eyes. Shortly after, the thickly hanging clouds grew even darker, and when another darkness covered the already draped shadows, the center of the lake began to swirl as water surged upward. Then a bolt of lightning struck down from the darkened clouds around the lake, and with thunder that seemed to split heaven and earth, rain began to pour like a torrent.
The child stood alone in the pouring rain, watching something shoot up from the swirling lake. Writhing black scales, a body undulating as if swimming through the air, a majesty almost too overwhelming to behold. It was like a dragon, yet could not be called a dragon—it was an imugi. An imugi ascending to heaven. Its vivid yellow eyes seemed to look at him. The child moved his lips as he watched it.
“A snake.”
With his breath and fever rising, his vision blurred; rain poured down like a deluge and thunder and lightning raged noisily. The boy who had etched into his eyes the massive body flying up through the darkness collapsed right there and did not open his eyes.
#1
The town center of a small rural village. Even the main road leading to the train station was quiet and deserted, with no people coming or going. The only mart in town, situated along one side of the road, was equally idle without customers.
“Yugeon-ah.”
Yugeon, who had been organizing the mart’s outdoor display shelves, turned his head at the sound of someone calling him. Far off at the corner of a building, he saw a middle-aged man beckoning to him. Yugeon tilted his head and approached, asking.
“Why?”
As Yugeon approached, the middle-aged man, Choi Jacheol, raised his hand to the side of his mouth and whispered.
“Hey, that Mr. Kim brought something good, you know.”
“Something good?”
Despite Yugeon’s question, Choi Jacheol just giggled and added, “You absolutely have to have some,” as he led Yugeon along. The place they arrived at was a warehouse located behind the mart. When they went inside, several other people had already gathered. They were all mart employees, but among them was one unfamiliar face. It was the Mr. Kim that Choi Jacheol had mentioned.
“Hello.”
When Yugeon greeted him with a short bow, Mr. Kim laughed heartily and welcomed him. After finishing the brief greeting and approaching, Yugeon could see the large glass bottle Mr. Kim was holding. Yugeon unconsciously hesitated and stopped walking.
It was partly because what Mr. Kim was holding was snake liquor with a snake inside, but for a moment it seemed as if the snake had opened its eyes and was looking at him.
When Yugeon stopped, Choi Jacheol, who had been following behind, said “What are you doing, man,” and pushed Yugeon’s back. Without any chance to resist, Yugeon was pushed forward toward Mr. Kim.
With Yugeon being the last to arrive, Mr. Kim set the snake liquor down on top of some stacked logistics boxes and opened the lid without delay. The strong smell of alcohol and an unidentifiable fishy scent immediately wafted out.
Yugeon unconsciously pinched his nose and took a step back, but the others swarmed around the snake liquor like bees.
“Wow, this is the real deal, isn’t it?”
“Just smelling it, it’s incredibly strong, right?”
“I feel like I’ll live longer already?”
“Hurry, hurry and give me some!”
“Damn, look at the size of that snake. Isn’t this a python? A python?”
“How did you catch a snake like this?”
Admiration and urging poured out from all sides. Mr. Kim laughed heartily and told them to wait, then began ladling out the liquor with paper cups, distributing one cup to everyone. Among the people gladly receiving their cups, Yugeon was reluctant for his turn to come. Snake liquor all of a sudden?
Mr. Kim finally held out a cup to Yugeon. But Yugeon couldn’t accept the cup and shook his head.
“I, I’m fine.”
When Yugeon smiled with effort and refused, Choi Jacheol pressed him not to decline.
“Hey hey, I’m telling you, you absolutely have to drink this?”
“Why, why?”
“You’re so frail. You look like you’d collapse if someone just poked you.”
“Right. Always coughing all the time.”
Even his coworker Han Yunyeong joined in agreement. Yugeon looked at Han Yunyeong with a troubled face.
“I just have weak bronchial tubes, that’s all?”
His bronchial tubes had weakened after he nearly died from pneumonia as a child. He did catch colds regardless of the season. But he had never heard anywhere that this could be cured with snake liquor.
“Just drink it, man. You get body aches and colds whenever it’s a change of season or winter, right? If you drink one cup of this, you’ll be fine all year. Nothing an adult gives you is bad!”
Choi Jacheol raised his voice and held out the cup on Yugeon’s behalf. Additionally, everyone’s eyes turned toward Yugeon. They were looks that said they would watch until he drank it.
Reluctantly taking the cup, Yugeon looked at the liquor bottle with an uneasy face. The snake submerged in the bottle had its eyes closed without moving.
‘Did I see wrong earlier?’
As Yugeon still hesitated, Mr. Kim chuckled.
“Kid, this is something you can’t even get for money elsewhere. It’s a full ten-year vintage! It’s precious, so hurry and down it in one gulp.”
At his good-natured nagging, laughter erupted here and there. The only one not laughing seemed to be Yugeon. Realizing he couldn’t escape from the gazes directed at him like surveillance, Yugeon swallowed his dry saliva, let out a sigh, then squeezed his eyes shut and downed the liquor in one gulp.
Along with a burning sensation, the fishy scent traveled down the back of his throat.
“Ugh!”
Yugeon immediately covered his mouth and dry-heaved. It was painful and nauseating. If he could, he wanted to spit out the liquor he’d swallowed. But despite his violent dry-heaving, the swallowed liquor didn’t come back up. When Yugeon smacked his lips with displeasure, his face scrunched up, the coworkers finally laughed and swallowed their own portions of snake liquor.
Talk full of expectations about the efficacy of the snake liquor went back and forth, and noisy chatter continued for a while. In the midst of it all, Yugeon couldn’t shake off the uncomfortable feeling and kept glancing at the liquor bottle containing the giant python. The fishy smell seemed to keep lingering in his mouth.
After work, Yugeon returned home and collapsed onto the floor as if falling. Perhaps because of the snake liquor he’d drunk during the day, his stomach churned all day. Thanks to that, he skipped both lunch and dinner.
“Ugh, making me eat such weird things…”
An indescribable fishy smell still lingered in his mouth. It was so nauseating that he asked the other coworkers who drank the snake liquor if it normally smelled this fishy, but they only blinked and asked where any fishy smell was coming from.
“Am I the only one smelling it?”
Since they drank from the same bottle, his portion couldn’t be the only one spoiled, so thinking perhaps the cup was the problem, Yugeon got up, took out cold water from the refrigerator, filled it with ice and drank it down. Whether his mouth or throat was numbed, the fishy smell subsided a little.
Yugeon washed up and immediately laid out his bedding and lay down. Though it was still early, it seemed better to fall asleep before the fishy smell surged back up. Though it was summer and the days were long so it was still bright outside, Yugeon’s room was a small underground studio that didn’t get much light, so it was appropriately dark. The room that usually felt stuffy felt cozy just for today. Yugeon let out a long breath and closed his eyes.
At some point, his eyes opened.
“?”
He had thought he was sleeping, but he was sitting in the middle of his room. Yugeon looked around the room with a bewildered face. At some point, pitch-black darkness had descended in the room. Instinctively he checked the window. Even the window, which should be faintly lit if the sun hadn’t set yet, was pitch black. Yugeon began groping around for his phone to check the time. As he fumbled around on the floor, a strange sound began to be heard.
Swish, swish.
It was the sound of something massive crawling across the floor. Yugeon, who had stopped groping the floor, raised his head toward the direction of the sound. In the darkness, something like fog or smoke was rising thickly. Thinking perhaps there was a fire, he tried to get up quickly when something cold grazed his fingertips. At the same time, his whole body froze as if he couldn’t move.
Black smoke spread out like billowing clouds in a corner of the room. Though a chill flowed down his spine, Yugeon couldn’t move or avert his gaze.
Within the rising black smoke, bright yellow eyes looked at him. The pupils were vertical like a snake’s.
“Huk!”
Gasping for breath as he woke from sleep, Yugeon bolted upright. His ragged breathing rose up to his chin as he panted miserably, and his whole body was soaked with cold sweat. Panting with a pale face, Yugeon hurriedly looked around. He was sitting on his bedding, and through the one window in the pitch-black room, faint light was seeping in. It was morning.
“A dream…?”
Yugeon muttered in a trembling voice and looked at the place where black smoke had risen in his dream. As if to prove it was a dream, there was nothing there. Suddenly he thought of the bright yellow eyes that had looked at him from within the smoke, and goosebumps broke out all over his body. Even though it was midsummer, the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped to a chill.
Perhaps because of last night’s dream, Yugeon was in poor condition all day. Far from gaining tiger-like energy from the effect of the snake liquor, he looked like a sickly chicken that hadn’t even gotten rice porridge, and every coworker he encountered added a word or two.
“No way, the guy who even drank snake liquor yesterday got even more feeble?”
Choi Jacheol, who had grabbed passing Yugeon, asked with a very puzzled face. His face was smooth and shiny, perhaps thanks to the snake liquor. Yugeon let out a deep sigh with a tired face.
“That thing… I guess it doesn’t agree with me….”
“What, the snake liquor?”
Yugeon nodded weakly as if he had no energy to answer, and Park Seongjoo, who happened to be passing by, heard the two’s conversation and approached. Park Seongjoo was one of the coworkers who had shared the snake liquor in the warehouse yesterday, a woman around Yugeon’s age.
Park Seongjoo looked at Yugeon’s face and made a worried expression.
“Your complexion really doesn’t look good…. It really must not agree with him. Even medicine works differently depending on one’s constitution.”
At Park Seongjoo’s words, Choi Jacheol clicked his tongue.
“That thing is something you really can’t even get for money…. You’re so picky, man.”
“Yesterday too, you kept saying it smelled fishy and whatever, and skipped all your meals. Did you eat breakfast?”
“No….”
“You didn’t eat breakfast either? Haven’t you been starving since lunch yesterday?”
“I really have no appetite…. Maybe because of the snake liquor, I had a strange dream too….”
At Yugeon’s words, Park Seongjoo and Choi Jacheol asked simultaneously.
“A strange dream?”
“Yes…. But about that snake yesterday. Wasn’t it alive?”
“What?”
“Hey, it’s supposed to be a ten-year vintage liquor—how could it be alive? Don’t say such creepy things.”
“I’m sure it opened its eyes….”
“This kid, you had strange delusions while drinking, so you got contaminated with bad energy. Look at me! I properly received the medicine’s effects and I’ll be fine for ten years!”
Choi Jacheol exaggeratedly showed off his forearm. Yugeon and Park Seongjoo looked at Choi Jacheol’s forearm with expectant eyes, but only the flabby flesh completed by alcohol jiggled. Park Seongjoo completely let go of her expectations and said to Yugeon.
“If you’re feeling really bad, why don’t you leave early? Anyway, tomorrow is your day off, so if you rest well and come back, won’t you feel better?”
“If I take a day off, my pay gets cut…. Anyway, tomorrow is my day off, so I’ll just endure today.”
Park Seongjoo sighed and nodded as if she was used to Yugeon’s stubbornness.
“Geez…. Alright then.”
