Absorb 7
After I finished recounting the tale and waited a short while, Bin-i, Cho, and Yo-hwa returned from the water’s edge, having washed the bedbug fluids from their bodies.
Then, perhaps because of the lingering dampness, they each began grooming themselves right beside me.
—Scratch-scratch.
—Slurp-slurp.
A centipede’s grooming always starts with the antennae.
Sure enough, Cho and Bin-i seized their antennae with their mandibles, brought them to their mouths, and began licking them over with meticulous care. Yo-hwa, too, raised her forelegs to her mouth.
They might have been spirit beasts who had already rinsed off in the water, but ordinary centipedes and spiders clean themselves exactly like that—by licking. You could say it was rather like a cat. Except they never shed fur, so you could honestly call a centipede a cleaner animal than any housecat.
Aigoo, look how tidy they are.
People often mistake centipedes and spiders for filthy creatures, but that is a truly unfortunate misunderstanding. Both of them are obsessively clean. Centipedes live in damp places and are vulnerable to mold, so they keep their bodies spotless at all times; spiders constantly groom themselves so their silk does not leave them sticky. After a meal, carefully licking clean every antenna and fang is simply basic hygiene for both.
Our kids never actually eat in front of us, so I rarely got to see this, and I watched them in a blank daze. The sight of those enormous centipedes and that giant spider daintily, adorably licking every last nook of their bodies was a precious scene indeed.
Aigoo, precious, so precious. Sweet, so sweet.
I suddenly understood why parents film their children growing up. Lamenting the complete absence of any phone or camera, I burned the image of their grooming deep into my mind. This was a moment that could never be allowed to slip away; it had to be seared into my brain forever.
I was still spacing out, watching them for a long while, when Seol-noona’s question drifted over from beside me.
“So-ryong, earlier you said you’d dig once Bin-i came back.”
“Ah—!”
I had completely forgotten while staring at the kids’ grooming. We still needed to dig a moat around the village. Bedbugs naturally dislike water itself, so I had figured a surrounding moat would block them effectively. These ones were not spirit beasts—just ordinary bedbugs that had grown huge—so they would still retain the habits they had when they were small.
I quickly turned toward Bin-i, ready to ask her to dig right away.
“Bin-i? Uh…”
—Chirp?
The instant I called her name and looked again, what met my eyes was one of Bin-i’s antennae, gleaming sleek and polished in the light. She was right in the middle of grooming. Asking her to dig again left me speechless. She had just made herself so clean, and now I had to send her back into the dirt.
Is this okay? I feel a little sorry for Bin-i…
Having finished the right antenna, Bin-i was midway down the left one. Without stopping her licking she looked up at me as if asking why I had called.
—Chirp?
Eh, it’ll be fine… right?
A little worried but deciding it would be all right, I spoke in a careful voice.
“Bin-i, I feel bad asking this right after you’ve washed… but can you do Daddy a favor? Nothing big—just need to dig a little ground.”
The antenna she had been holding slid free of her mouth with a soft swish. Bin-i glanced down at her own body as if checking herself over. Then her whole frame began to tremble.
Come to think of it, even our Bin-i’s personality was that of an extremely tidy child.
Like making her scrub the floor right after a bath and full makeup?
She had just finished bathing and had nearly completed her grooming; of course she would be annoyed if I asked her to dig. Yet because it was Daddy’s request, Bin-i agreed even while clearly irritated.
“Th-then I’ll just dig all day with the uncles and their shovels… We’ll finish eventually…”
—Chirrrr!
Reading her mood and offering to dig the whole day with the water bandits myself, I received a feeling from Bin-i that was pure “Who said I wouldn’t dig?!” That, of course, was part of her charm.
—Crrrunch.
Bin-i plunged into the earth and tunnelled straight across. Dirt mounds bulged upward one after another exactly as when a mole ploughs underground. Moments later the raised earth split open, leaving a long trench like a proper ditch.
Watching from the sky with Cho, I waited until Bin-i burst out on the far side, then signalled I-tae who stood ready at the starting point.
“I-tae! Now!”
“Understood, So-ryong-nim!”
At my order, I-tae and the water bandits smashed open the embankment nearest the river. The last of the bank crumbled; water surged in and poured madly into the channel Bin-i had just carved.
—Gush-gush-gush.
The current, gathering force, scoured away the surrounding soil and raced all the way to the opposite end. Following the waterway Bin-i had dug, the water arrived at the far terminus, burst through the thin plug of earth, and spilled back into the river. The channel slowly widened until the flow finally settled into a steady current.
I-tae’s water stronghold—and the village built on the reed-choked alluvial flat below the mountain—had become a complete island.
Once I confirmed water circling the entire settlement, I turned my head. From the place where the evacuated villagers had gathered with Hwa-eun, a few water bandits and Yo-hwa were already walking toward us. They must have seen that the channel work was finished.
Hwa-eun’s voice reached us a moment later.
“So-ryong, we’re ready!”
“Coming down! Cho, let’s go.”
—Chirp!
As we had promised before the digging began, Hwa-eun had brought Yo-hwa and several people. Descending slowly with Cho, I followed Hwa-eun as she led us toward the old defensive line that had held the bedbugs the day before.
“Around here should be fine, right?”
“Yes. Further out is uncertain, so that house looks good.”
Nearly at the destination, Hwa-eun pointed to a dilapidated house standing close to the spot where we had blocked the bedbugs. She stepped inside, closed her eyes, lifted her nose, and carefully scanned the air.
“Fortunately. They’re here.”
What she was doing was scent-tracking—using the Tang family’s famously keen sense of smell to locate the hidden bedbugs. After a short while of examining every corner with her eyes shut, Hwa-eun pointed to the bamboo wall deeper inside.
“There. Between the walls!”
The water bandits approached carefully. From the gaps in the woven bamboo, bedbugs poked their heads out. During daylight they hide in dark crevices like that, only emerging when they sense a nearby heat source; the approach of the bandits had triggered them.
Oh, as expected of a Tang-family nose.
Thinking back, if Hwa-eun had not stayed behind to check the corpses for poison, we might have found these bedbugs much sooner. I turned at once to Yo-hwa.
“Yo-hwa, catch every last one of them!”
—Kishit!
At my command she fired silk at each protruding head, reeled them out one by one, and stuffed them all into a large pouch woven from her own thread.
Sample bedbugs successfully captured.
We were collecting them so we could test Hwa-yang’s poison. It was a toxin that set the body ablaze; I had a feeling it might work especially well on bedbugs.
“For now, let’s take these to the ship.”
“Understood, So-ryong.”
Eight in total. Carrying the wriggling pouch of Yo-hwa’s silk, we headed for the vessel. The moment we boarded I pulled one out and pinned it to a wooden board with Tang-family needles, exactly as one would mount an insect specimen. Its legs thrashed uselessly, held fast by the pins.
I scooped a little of the water Hwa-yang was swimming in and let a few drops fall onto the bedbug’s abdomen.
—Drip.
A bedbug’s respiratory openings sit on the belly; I thought that would be the best place for the poison to enter. Yet the creature showed no reaction whatever.
“Hmm… What?”
It was a poison potent enough to make me cough up fire, yet nothing happened.
“Could this only work on humans?”
My first suspicion was that it might be a mammal-only toxin. After all, plenty of poisons that kill people leave insects completely unharmed. The old saying that any fruit eaten by beasts or bugs is safe for humans is, frankly, nonsense—some insects happily feed on poisonous mushrooms—so the doubt felt entirely reasonable.
Hwa-eun, however, offered a different idea.
“Maybe the dose is too weak? It’s basically diluted in water, after all.”
If that were true, even a perfectly effective poison would be almost useless to us. The amount Hwa-yang could produce alone was limited; if we needed pure concentrate, practical use would be nearly impossible.
“Well? Let’s check properly.”
Still, confirmation was necessary. I pinned a second bedbug beside the first. This time, instead of the swimming water, I rubbed a wooden stick across Hwa-yang’s body and then across the new specimen. Even after a long wait, nothing happened.
Disappointing, but I was beginning to think we would have to return to the family and examine the toxin more carefully with the elders. I myself had clearly been poisoned, yet something about it simply was not working on the bedbugs.
“It seems the two of us won’t be able to figure out much more here.”
“Yes. We’ll have to ask Grandfather once we’re back.”
A pity, yet even without the poison we would stay safe until the ship was repaired, so we decided to focus on surviving the night. I left the concentrate-coated bedbug pinned on the board and returned the water-dosed one to Yo-hwa’s silk pouch, tossing it onto the deck.
There was still a chance the bedbugs might cross the water somehow, so I settled into the cabin to rest and prepare for nightfall. Having not slept a wink the previous day, I was deep in sleep with Bin-i hugged tight like a body pillow when a sharp, acrid smell brushed my nose.
—Chirrrr!
—Kishit!
The kids’ frantic noises snapped my eyes open. Blue flames were rising from the table in the cabin.
—Fwoosh.
“W-what!?”
Looking for the source of the surging blue fire, I saw the bedbug still pinned to the wooden board—spewing blue flames from its mouth and abdomen. Strangely, only the bedbug itself was burning. Unlike when I had coughed fire, these flames refused to ignite the wood or anything nearby.
“Th-this is…”
Hwa-eun, who had been sleeping in the next room, rushed in at the commotion and stared wide-eyed at the blazing insect. At the same moment, startled shouts rose from the deck.
“F-fire!”
“It’s on fire!”
I grabbed the board with the blue-burning bedbug and ran outside. Something else was already burning on the deck. I hurled the board into the water, then used a wooden pole the sailors handed me to fling the flaming silk pouch overboard as well. In mid-air Yo-hwa’s thread burned away completely, scattering eight bedbugs across the surface, each still vomiting blue fire. They continued to burn for a long while even while floating, only sinking much later.
Watching them go under, I realized the poison simply took time to work.
Hwa-eun stood beside me, gazing at the sinking bedbugs.
“It seems the toxin needs more than three shichen to take effect. Even if it works on them, that makes it awkward to use.”
From the moment we had applied the poison until now, roughly three shichen—about six hours—had passed. As Hwa-eun said, the poison apparently required a delay between intoxication and the appearance of symptoms. Yet one part of her assessment was wrong. This was not an awkward poison at all; it was probably the perfect insecticide.
“No. It’s a poison that fits our situation perfectly.”
“Fits perfectly?”
The young bedbugs poured out at night, then when the sun rose they clumped together and seeped into dark crevices. If even one poisoned individual slipped in among them, the entire mass would chain-react exactly like the ones inside Yo-hwa’s pouch and burn. A pure, dedicated insecticide.
Sunset was not far off. I asked Bin-i to request more poison from Hwa-yang. Bin-i translated the answer in a single word.
Food.
She needed more fuel if she was going to produce more toxin. Dry reeds and bamboo were piled in the village clearing; when a great fire was lit, every last flame was sucked straight into Hwa-yang’s mouth. Once the blaze had completely vanished, Hwa-yang—now grown even front legs—clung to the rim of her water tub and looked up at me.