Wildfire, Part 2
“So-ryong! Where do you think you’re going all of a sudden?! And why are you carrying Hwa-yang?! You’ll get poisoned again! Hwa-eun! Hwa-eun! Look at what So-ryong’s doing!”
Seol noona’s nagging stabbed into the back of my head like a volley of throwing knives.
I wasn’t even a member of the Tang Clan… and she was calling for Hwa-eun, who was still playing inside the cabin with Hyang, Bing, and Seol. They say snitching is the lowest thing in the world, and it looked like Seol noona was gearing up to tattle on me.
Seol noona… I trusted you… Why…
A tiny sting of betrayal hit me, but I couldn’t really blame her. Touching Hwa-yang meant getting poisoned, and here I was not only hugging the little glutton but bolting straight toward a burning mountain. Of course her lectures would stick to me like fate itself.
But even if I got poisoned again, even if I collapsed spewing fire and had to listen to Hwa-eun’s scolding later, how was a man like Fabre supposed to just stand there and endure this?
This was the perfect chance to find out exactly what kind of tadpole Hwa-yang had been. I had to do it even if it cost me my life.
Right now Hwa-yang was like an unscratched instant lottery ticket. I had to scratch it now; an opportunity this good might never come again.
If her food had been free like Cho’s or Bing’s, maybe I could have waited. But her meal was fire itself. Fuel cost money, and creating a blaze this size was no cheap affair.
So even if I cough up blood instead of fire, I can’t hold back.
Seol noona was clearly worried about my body, but I hadn’t touched Hwa-yang without a plan. I was Fabre, handler of venomous creatures—would I really grab her without thinking it through?
I had something to rely on. With Seol, Bing, and Dong-i around, the detox would be rough but doable. I’d already been detoxed once; maybe a little resistance had built up by now.
So I left those dagger-sharp shouts and knife-like glares behind, launched into light-footwork, crossed the waterway Bin had opened, and headed down the mountain.
One of the four ignition points was right ahead, and by now the entire mountain was roaring like one giant bonfire. The heat made it hard to get close, so if I wanted to feed Hwa-yang I’d have to nibble carefully from the edges first.
Like peeling an apple—nice and gentle.
With that plan in mind I arrived at the foot of the burning mountain still cradling Hwa-yang. Geomryong hyung, who had been watching the flames, turned at my approach and stared in surprise.
“So-ryong, little brother, this place is dangerous—why come so close? Hmm? And what is that? Another venomous creature I haven’t seen?”
The heat was intense, and while the others had all shown themselves at least once, Hwa-yang had been living in the water jar inside the cabin this whole time. First meeting for him.
“Yes, hyung. Another one of my venomous beasts. I’m just trying to feed her.”
“Feed her?”
While hyung blinked at the word “feed,” I felt frantic thrashing against my chest. Faced with an enormous meal, Hwa-yang couldn’t hold herself back any longer and squirmed hard, trying to leap forward.
“Okay, okay. Let’s go. Let’s go.”
I soothed her, turned her mouth toward the front, and stretched her out ahead of me. As I slowly approached the flames, a huge tongue of fire licking up a tree was sucked straight into Hwa-yang’s mouth in a swirling rush.
Geomryong hyung’s shocked shout came from behind me.
“So-ryong! The flames there are too strong—! Hah! Sh-she’s eating the fire?”
He clearly couldn’t believe the blaze covering that big tree had vanished into her mouth in an instant. I was a little stunned myself, so how much more must it have hit him?
What surprised me was how completely different her feeding looked now that both pairs of legs had grown in. When she’d still been legless the fire had been drawn in thin, like a narrow thread. Now it vanished in one gulp like some industrial vacuum cleaner.
Holy… that’s insane.
I stood there dazed after her one-shot fire feast. Hwa-yang twisted her head around to look at me, then whipped her tail and smacked both my cheeks.
Slap. Slap.
“Ack! O-okay, I get it, I get it!”
That was her way of telling me to hurry up and serve the next course. Just like Heungbu getting slapped awake by his older brother Nolbu, I snapped out of it and quickly moved toward the next patch of flames.
Getting smacked by her tail still made me ridiculously happy. The tail was incredibly soft and wrapped perfectly around my cheeks. Who else in the world could claim they’d been slapped by a giant tadpole’s tail?
It hurt, but I’m happy…
Grinning like an idiot, I thrust her forward again and sidled along the fire line. What unfolded next was pure spectacle. Every time I took a step, every time I shifted position, nearby embers and big flames alike were swallowed into Hwa-yang’s mouth—exactly like a vacuum cleaner sucking up everything in its path.
Yet she still looked unsatisfied. With a thoroughly grumpy expression she kept twisting her head back to hurry me along.
“I’m rushing as fast as I can, Hwa-yang. This isn’t easy.”
She wanted speed, but the job was anything but simple. Even though the mountain was burning, the edges were just scattered little fires that had linked up. To nibble from the rim I had to hunt them down one by one. Connected flames she could inhale in a single pull; separate ones she couldn’t.
The heat in front of her barely felt like a sauna because she absorbed the fire and its warmth together, but the flames off to the side were a different story. One wrong step inward and it felt like walking into a blast furnace. Checking every direction and approaching with maximum caution naturally slowed me down, and Hwa-yang clearly hated the delay.
“Looks like I need a different approach.”
I had to come up with something. At this rate satisfying her would be tough, and the fire wouldn’t last forever. Once the trees burned out the wildfire would die down, so I needed to feed her as much as possible, as fast as possible.
Isn’t there another way?
I paused, staring at the blazing mountain, searching for a better idea. While I was blankly watching the roaring heart of the fire, voices rose from behind me.
“So-ryong! Get over here right now!”
“So-ryong! It’s dangerous! Come back!”
Hwa-eun and Seol noona had somehow arrived and were calling me from the rear. My eyes caught on Seol noona’s clothes—more precisely, the leopard skin draped over her shoulders and head. Normally she wore miniskirts and short sleeves, so she must have thrown the hide on against the heat.
That pelt and the blazing core I’d just been staring at overlapped in my mind like afterimages. The fur on noona’s shoulders and the heart of the fire… the perfect combination sparked.
Should I risk it? High risk, high return, right?
I dashed over and asked to borrow the hide she was wearing. Instantly Hwa-eun and Seol noona grabbed me from both sides and started hauling me backward.
“Seol noona! Could I borrow that for a moment?”
“Don’t you dare change the subject!”
“So-ryong, we need to talk.”
While they dragged me, I explained that this was the only chance we would get.
“P-please just calm down and listen. If Hwa-yang misses this opportunity she might never reach her adult form.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Why?”
“Well, you see…”
I desperately laid out the situation while being frog-marched. Both of them fell silent, thought it over, then slowly nodded.
“I understand what you’re saying, but isn’t it far too dangerous?”
“That’s right, So-ryong. It’s way too dangerous!”
Worry still clouded their faces. The flames were so fierce they feared I’d get hurt. But was I the kind of man who gave up?
This Fabre knew no surrender.
“I’ll be as careful as possible. I won’t get hurt. Please. Please! Please! Hwa-eun! Seol noona! Please!”
“Ah—no, don’t hug me while you beg, So-ryong. No, don’t put your arms around my waist. No, ah, wait—”
“You think begging like that will make this noona agree—? Wait, my shoulders—”
They resisted hard at first, but when I put on the desperate face of a husband pleading for a new game console, their heads finally dipped in reluctant agreement. Giving Seol noona’s shoulders a good massage and wrapping an arm around Hwa-eun’s waist was just a free service on top.
In the end Seol noona handed over the hide she’d been wearing and asked,
“So what are you going to do with this?”
I took the pelt and hurried straight to the nearby waterway, soaked the fur thoroughly, then threw it over myself. The next move was to set Hwa-yang on my head and dive straight into the flames.
“This.”
“So-ryong!”
“So-ryong! When you come back I’m not letting this slide!”
I moved before they could refuse. Sure enough, furious shouts chased me from behind. But there was no choice. Even if I got beaten later, a man had to act now.
To feed Hwa-yang the maximum amount of fire I needed to reach the heart of the blaze—the true core. Without this method I didn’t think I could get anywhere near that roaring center.
Whatever happened after that was a problem for the other-universe version of me.
Other multiverse me… I’m counting on you!
Whoooosh—
Fierce flames above my head were sucked into Hwa-yang’s mouth as I immediately angled toward a stream running down the mountain. Even with a water-soaked hide, I’d burn to death if I stayed on this path too long. No matter how much water the fur held, it would evaporate, so I planned to keep wetting it along the waterway I’d spotted earlier while pushing toward the core.
I ran for a short while with Hwa-yang on my head vacuuming fire. When I reached the stream and dipped my feet in, the water felt as warm as a hot spring.
Fire really is no joke.
The shallow stream had been heated by the blazing temperatures. I soaked the hide again and launched myself upstream along the valley.
Sparks and embers poured down the burning mountain like glittering waterfalls. The searing flames made my eyes sting. I climbed for a long time following the stream.
“Damn, is this the end? We’re still nowhere near the summit.”
Hwa-yang and I never reached the true heart of the fire. After roughly two hours we hit the end of the stream, but the spring where the water began was still far from the core.
“Can’t make it to the heart, huh?”
The area around us was now a safe zone thanks to Hwa-yang devouring the nearby flames, but without a water path I couldn’t go higher. Frustrating as it was, there was nothing more we could do.
I took Hwa-yang down from my head, met her eyes, and started to speak.
“Hwa-yang, I tried my best, but this is the limit. So… Gyaaaaaah!?”
Just as I was about to say we should settle for this much and head back, my eyes locked onto her tail—only two-thirds of its original length remained. It hadn’t been cut off; the fire she’d absorbed on the way up had simply shortened it.
The words that came out of my mouth changed on their own.
“Right! Effort alone isn’t enough—you have to produce good results! Of course. Let’s try a little more! A man only dies once, not twice, right?”
Technically this would be my second death, but the bold declaration had already left my mouth. I squatted by the bubbling spring water, racking my brain for another method.
That was when it happened.
Tsrrt?
Cho’s voice asking where Daddy was rang inside my head. I looked up and spotted her circling in the sky, searching for me.
That’s it!
Realization struck like a spark. The fiercest point of any fire, the absolute peak of every flame, was the very tip—the apex. If I wanted to feed her the most, why not suck it down from the very end of the blazing mountain?
“Hwa-yang, first let’s clear out as many of the surrounding flames as we can!”
I needed to bring Cho down here safely, so I had Hwa-yang devour every nearby fire, then called her in.
Cho! Daddy’s right here! Come on down!
Cho spotted us through the flames, descended between the fire, and immediately started scolding me.
Tsrrrr! Tsrr! Tstsrrt!
The nagging felt like something she’d learned from her mother, Hwa-eun. I calmed her down and explained the plan mind-to-mind.
Cho, settle down and listen. Hwa-yang has been starving for ten years. If we miss this chance it’s gone forever. So we have to help her…
I quickly projected the mental images of my plan. Cho’s antennae shot straight up.
Tsrrt? — You’re seriously going to do that?
I nodded.
What I’d shown her was this: cut Seol noona’s fur into straps, lash my body to the front of Cho’s, then soar into the sky and drop like a meteor toward the burning summit with Hwa-yang held out in front. Since Hwa-yang would suck in both the fire and the heat, the rear would stay safe. Basically a full-speed charge at the flaming peak with Hwa-yang as the tip of the spear.
Cho sent back pure incredulity at my insane idea.
Cho, you’re Daddy’s most beloved daughter. You’ll grant your daddy’s wish, right?
Churrut?
A moment later we were falling through the air together.
“All right, everyone—here we go!”
The three of us plummeted like a meteor from the sky above the furiously burning summit, Hwa-yang thrust out ahead. The instant she touched the tip of the flames, every fire on the mountain formed one enormous whirlpool and was sucked into her mouth.
Kuuwaaaaaaah—
Like a gigantic black hole of fire—no, a red hole. And the moment every last flame vanished, the three of us dropped into the thick white ash piled on the summit.
Thud!
Everyone okay!?
Tsrrrrt!
She’d absorbed both fire and heat completely, and Cho had slowed us at the last second, so there should be no damage from the fall or the flames. Still I checked for injuries and received Cho’s “I’m fine” reply.
Then the ash that had billowed up from the impact scattered on the wind, and at last Hwa-yang’s form emerged from the mound.
Her adult form.
Gyaaaa… Wait, huh!?
Something about Hwa-yang’s appearance was… off. She was cute, yes—but so cute it was almost a problem.
Don’t tell me I scratched a losing lottery ticket!?
Hwa-yang was somehow lacking in dignity.