Unknown
……Why does he smile so beautifully?
When the Crown Prince was still, he looked dignified and composed—but when he smiled, his face turned strangely radiant.
It was like flowers blooming from an ink painting. And worse, it seemed to grow more radiant by the day.
And he's not just pretty, either……
Maybe it was because he was smiling while still bearing the battle's marks, his robes spattered with blood, but there was something seasoned and self-assured about him, like a grown man who'd seen it all. Which was somehow……
A grown man my foot! He's still a little kid!
The Crown Prince was twelve. A child!
She scolded herself, looked again—and this time properly saw a pitiful little boy who had fought a desperate battle and barely survived.
That startled her.
Right, we need to get out of here together.
She gathered herself and took the Man-in Hyeolseok from the Crown Prince, tucking it away.
"Thank you for your efforts, Your Highness."
"Not at all. I only followed what you taught us, my lady."
The Crown Prince smiled even more brightly.
If he smiles like that, I'm going to keep forgetting the kid just came back from the brink of death. Not that I can exactly tell him to stop smiling.
She turned her gaze slightly away from him and took a step forward.
"……Shall we go see what's on the other side, together?"
Lee Yeon-ju was born just before daybreak. Lee Yeon-jo was born just after.
The short span of a single gak—fifteen minutes—split night from day, making Lee Yeon-ju the elder sister born in the night, and Lee Yeon-jo the younger brother born in the day.
Lee Yeon-ju believed that because she had been born before the sun rose, she was a full day older, and so it was her duty to look after her brother.
Lee Yeon-jo believed that since he was a boy and his sister a girl, it was his duty—stronger as he was—to protect her.
And so, when the young twins woke in that shabby room, the very first thing they resolved was to protect each other.
"I shouted outside that there was a monster. The officers will have heard it. They'll come save us any minute now, so don't worry."
Lee Yeon-ju pressed her trembling hands into the hem of her skirt and spoke as calmly as she could manage.
"Mm. Okay, Noona."
Lee Yeon-jo nodded obediently, then rolled his eyes and scanned their surroundings.
The room they were in seemed to have once been a storeroom, and it was cluttered with junk. Rice jars were even stacked against one wall—old and rotted through, but there all the same.
The boy snatched up the only weapon-like thing to be found: a fire-poker lying on the floor. It was a decrepit thing, a rusted iron skewer fixed to a rotten wooden handle—but it was iron, at least.
I have to protect Noona, no matter what.
Lee Yeon-jo gripped the poker tight and crouched at his sister's side, his face taut with tension.
Lee Yeon-ju rose, leaving him where he was, and crept toward the door. Startled, Lee Yeon-jo cried out in a hushed voice.
"Noona, where are you going? Don't go out there!"
"I'm not going out. I'm just going to peek and see what it's like."
"Then we look together."
Anxious, Lee Yeon-jo trailed after her, poker raised. Lee Yeon-ju glanced back at her brother and clicked her tongue.
"Yeon-jo, just put that down."
"You're telling me to throw away a weapon? In a dangerous situation?"
"It's only a weapon if you know how to use it. Does that look like a weapon to you?"
"Better than nothing, isn't it?"
"Not when you're liable to stab your own foot. You'll swing it around wildly and hurt yourself, I just know it."
"I won't! You've got nothing in your hands, so get behind me. I'll open the door."
You get behind me. I'm opening it. I've got our Nabi to protect me."
"How is that tiny little thing supposed to protect you?"
"He's more dependable than a green little sprout like you, isn't he?"
"We were born on the exact same day, Noona!"
"I was born a day before you!"
"Not a day—one gak!"
"Not a gak—before the sun rose versus after! That's a day!"
"A day is twelve hours and ninety-six gak! One gak does not make a day!"
"Days are measured by the sun, aren't they? It's a day!"
"Can you even count, Noona?"
"You've got no common sense at all!"
Then, just as the twins were bickering in whispers by the door, they both froze—and jumped at the same instant.
"D-did you hear that, Noona?"
"I-I heard it."
A shuffling, dragging sound and a low, muttered stream of curses were drawing closer outside the door.
The twins backed slowly away.
While Lee Yeon-jo clutched the poker, shaking as he glared at the door, Lee Yeon-ju swept a glance around the room and then seized her brother by the scruff of the neck.
"What—!"
"Hide. Here."
She hauled him behind the pile of rice jars and shoved him in, then flipped an old straw sack over the boy's head.
"But Noona—!"
"I told you, Nabi will protect me. Her Highness the Crown Princess said Nabi is an extremely precious yokai, didn't she?"
"She said precious, she never said strong—"
"Shh! It's coming!"
Pressing her protesting brother down firmly with the sack, Lee Yeon-ju slipped quickly to the door.
The yellow-furred myodusa coiled around the girl's forearm poked its head out from her sleeve.
Lee Yeon-ju stroked the creature's forehead and whispered quickly.
"The moment it comes in, blast it with your smoke. Right in its eyes—fwoosh! Got it?"
Aeong.
The little yellow-striped kitten mewed softly, as if to say it understood. Lee Yeon-ju raised her sleeve high, myodusa poking out, and drew a breath.
The plan: when the kidnapper comes in, Nabi blinds him with smoke, and we bolt. He'll be furious and chase me, right? If I lead him off somewhere else, Yeon-jo can slip away in the meantime. Then I keep blinding him with Nabi's smoke while we run, and……
To her, it felt like a perfectly sound plan. Far sounder, at least, than her brother swinging a rusted fire-poker at a monster himself.
Meanwhile, the dragging footsteps drew near.
Someone gripped the door handle. The door opened.
"Nabi……"
Lee Yeon-ju had been about to cry Nabi, now!—but the words died in her throat.
A hulking frame so massive it filled the doorway entirely, even bent low enough that its hand dragged along the floor.
Jet-black, sodden strands that hung in ropes like seaweed. And between them, glowing eyes, bright as a blazing furnace.
……A yokai.
Her first-ever sight of a real, true yokai was a horrifying monster. Both of them yokai—yet it was nothing, nothing like Nabi.
The monster shouldered its way through the door and slid inside, then stretched its mouth into a long, wide grin. It almost looked like a smile.
"Human. Human children. Tender. Tender, tasty little young ones. Must eat, must keep strength up. Keep strength up to catch the Eoduksini."
A foul stench rolled over her, and a shadow tall as a village guardian totem fell across Lee Yeon-ju's head.
A existence beyond anything her imagination could reach.
The girl went white as a corpse and froze solid.
"Eat one now, save one for later. Tender things. Eat one, keep one."
A hand wide as a pot lid, tipped with long black claws, reached toward her. Lee Yeon-ju did not move. No—she couldn't. It was as if a boulder pressed down on her; her body would not obey.
Aeong!
A thin, piercing cry rang through the small room.
The myodusa had burst from her sleeve before anyone noticed, and with its tiny mouth stretched wide, it sank its teeth into the monster's finger with everything it had.
"Hm? Hm?"
The monster cocked its head.
The baby myodusa's desperate bite was nothing more than a brush of skin to the Geuseundae—not even enough to leave a scratch.
"Nabi!"
Startled back to her senses, Lee Yeon-ju flung out both hands to grab her familiar. But her fingertips never even grazed the yellow-furred tail.
The Geuseundae lifted its hand and peered up at the small creature dangling helplessly in midair.
"Myodusa? A myodusa. Precious thing. Precious."
Its mouth corners curled upward in a low chuckle, and the Geuseundae brought the myodusa toward its own mouth.
The little yellow-furred snake slipped neatly into that cavernous maw. The kitten head, ears flattened back, vanished into the monster's mouth with its claws still clinging to one finger.
The monster closed its jaws. With a wet smack, the finger slid back out—and nothing dangled from it.
Gulp.
The Geuseundae swallowed what was in its mouth and smiled in satisfaction.
"Precious thing. Good. Good."
"Nabi… Nabi……?"
Lee Yeon-ju's voice cracked apart. The girl looked up, hollow-eyed, at the monster smacking its lips—and then, with a scream that felt like it would tear her apart, she threw herself at it.
"Aaagh! Nabi! No!"
She hammered her fists down on the monster's body, again and again—as though sheer desperation might make it spit the myodusa back out.
But all her clenched fists felt was that unpleasant, squelching texture, like beating down wet seaweed. The monster simply stared down at the girl, blank and unbothered, as though it felt nothing at all.
"Give him back! Spit him out! Nabi!"
She knew it was useless, but she couldn't stop. Sobbing, Lee Yeon-ju kept striking the monster's body.
"I said spit him out! Nabi! Nabiii!"
"Human child."
The Geuseundae seized the girl by the collar as she flailed at it and hoisted her high into the air. High, the same way it had lifted the myodusa.
"Let go! Let go of me!"
"Soft and tasty as a piglet."
Pit-deep eyes burned as they gazed up at the struggling girl.
The moment her eyes met those burning pits, Lee Yeon-ju's body locked as if bound by something unseen. All the color drained from her face. The monster's mouth split into a long, wide gash.
"A tasty thing……"
Its mouth yawned open even wider than before, and in the instant the Geuseundae drew Lee Yeon-ju toward its lips, Lee Yeon-jo kicked the straw sack aside and burst out.
"Noona!"
His face was drenched in tears from crying in silence under the sack, but the boy drove the fire-poker into the monster's armpit.
"Let my sister go, you monster!"
It was, in its way, a clever attack—timing the monster's moment of carelessness to strike at what looked like a weak point.
But a twelve-year-old nobleman's son who had never held anything heavier than a brush, swinging a rusted fire-poker, was to the Geuseundae nothing more than a futile flailing—less than a chick pecking at its hide.
"You. Later."
The monster murmured and lifted its foot. A huge, black, wrinkled sole shoved against the child's chest.
"Aaagh!"
"You. Later. Dessert, after the Eoduksini. Dessert, so. Stay still. Stay very still."
The Geuseundae only gave a light push, intending to leave the boy alive for later.
Even so, to a child it hit with the force of a grown man's kick, and Lee Yeon-jo flew helplessly through the air and crashed down onto the rice jars.
"Yeon-jo!"
Lee Yeon-ju screamed her brother's name and reached out. The fire-poker slipped from the boy's limp hand and clattered to the floor.
To the girl's eyes, her brother looked dead—kicked down by the monster.
"You……!"
Lee Yeon-ju glared at the monster, fury flaring in her tear-filled eyes like fire. Her nails bit into the coarse hide gripping her collar as she wrenched her fist tight.
"……!"
The girl's pupils split into long vertical slits, and a bluish energy rippled across her whole body. Part of that energy rose to a point above her head, sketching the faint, blurred shape of a cat's ears.
Haaang!
Baring sharp little teeth like a serpent, the girl let out a yowl like an enraged cat.
"……A myodusa? Myodusa sorcery?"
The Geuseundae gazed up at the girl scratching wildly at its hand, looking almost intrigued.
"You've been close to yokai too long, soaked in their power. The power has gathered in you. A sorceress. But not a sorceress yet. A sorceress, and still not one."
The monster hesitated a moment—then flung the girl into the corner of the room.
"Shame to eat you before you're a sorceress. A pity. Must raise you. Raise you a while longer, feed you more yokai, grow you—and make a delicacy of you. A special dish."
Instead of tumbling, the thrown Lee Yeon-ju landed on all fours, supple as a cat.
"Ohh."
The Geuseundae tilted its head, as if this were a surprise.