Spiderweb 2
Anxiety about everything that might still go wrong filled her heart, but Namgung Eun had already followed her sister this far, so she did as her sister and the young hero asked and set about searching for tracks.
There was only one way left to escape their father's reprimand.
Just as her sister said, finding whatever ghost it was and bringing the truth to light was the only path that might spare them his wrath. He might even reward them instead of punishing them. So Namgung Eun peered in every direction as diligently as she could, hunting for any sign at all—and she made certain never to stray far from her sister. The deeper woods felt far too dark, and a shiver kept running through her.
She kept glancing back to make sure her sister was still nearby as she moved. For a short while that was all she did, eyes strained, scanning the undergrowth for anything out of place.
Then the darkness around her seemed to thicken. By the time she understood what was happening, the world had already closed in—a dense fog so thick she could not see a single step ahead.
"Sister?"
Her heart hammered at the sudden knowledge that she was alone. Fear seized her, and the only sound that filled her ears was the frantic beat of her own chest.
Thump-thump.
Afraid even that would give her away, she could not cry out. She drew her sword instead.
Shiiing.
She had thought holding a blade would steady her. Something was wrong, though. At first she blamed simple fear—but as the moments stretched on, her heart only raced harder, pounding faster and faster. Something was definitely wrong.
She knew it the instant she realized her body was sweating without her noticing. Even if she had not yet reached the realm of Hansŏbulchim—immunity to heat and cold—a martial artist of her level should not break into a sweat from terror alone. And there was something else: a sweetness on every breath, as if she had been drinking wine. Each time she drew the fog into her lungs, her heart seemed to race even more.
Then, young as she was, the face of Young Hero Wi—the one who was Dang Hwa-eun's match, the one she had somehow found handsome—rose unbidden in her mind. The feeling that took hold of her was uncomfortably close to the brief crush she had once nursed for Do-ryong as a child.
Wh-what is this…?
Caught between fear and that strange heat, she wiped the sweat from her temple with one hand while gripping her sword with the other.
The fog thinned a little, and something began to take shape ahead of her. She focused her gaze. A blurred human outline emerged, and with it a presence.
Rustle.
"Sister? Seol, is that you?"
The build was so like her sister's, and the silhouette at that distance felt like hers. Sword raised, Namgung Eun advanced carefully toward the figure. Wind or something like it brushed the fog and the clouds aside, and a face came clear.
Her sister stood before a thicket of tall grass. For some reason she held a finger to her lips—quiet, it said—and when her eyes found Namgung Eun, she beckoned her closer, urging her to hurry over.
Relief flooded her at the sight of that face and that gesture. Namgung Eun thrust her sword back into its scabbard, clapped a hand over her own mouth, and ran to her sister.
Sister, what is it? Hah… I was so scared. And Young Hero Wi and Hwa-eun…
She flung herself into her sister's arms and began babbling in the pure relief of having found her. A hand rose to her shoulder, as if to soothe her. Reassured all over again, Namgung Eun quickly laid her own hand over her sister's.
What she felt then was not relief. It was a wrongness.
Why does this feel so wrong? The thought came, and with it a sudden realization: her sister's hand was unnaturally cold.
What…? Why is Sister's hand so cold? Like a dead— Wait!
The instant the comparison formed—like a corpse—every hair on her body stood on end. She could not bring herself to meet her sister's eyes. In terror she let her gaze slide slowly downward. If this was not truly her sister—if it was something else wearing her shape—she did not think she could bear looking into its eyes.
That choice proved worse than meeting its gaze would have been.
What filled her vision when she looked down was her sister's bare feet. And more shocking still: those feet were floating, just slightly, above the ground.
"Aaaah!"
Namgung Eun recoiled with a scream she could not stop. The hand on her shoulder clamped tight. Something glittered between her sister's legs—then a sharp sting bit into her thigh, and every ounce of strength drained from her body. She crumpled like a felled log.
Thud.
Pain burned in her thigh. Her mind was perfectly clear, yet her body would not move. A scream tore through her thoughts, a scream that felt as if it might split her open, but though she could still blink, she could not force a single word past her lips. From the nose down, everything was numb.
What betrayed the extremity of her terror was not any sound from her mouth. It was the sweat pouring from every pore of her body.
Drip.
Something wearing her sister's face looked down at the fallen girl. From behind that false sister's back, something bright crimson slowly emerged—and scooped Namgung Eun up as she lay there.
Th-this is—!
Scarlet limbs closed around her. From the slightly parted legs of the sister-shape, pure white threads spurted out and rained across her body. The world spun. She felt like a roast suckling pig—the kind her family prepared for joyous occasions—being trussed and turned. The white silk wound roughly around her, and then her body shot upward.
She rose some thirty feet and hung from the crown of a tree. Looking down from that height, she finally saw, in the moonlight, what the thing wearing her sister's face truly was.
A-a spider?!
Yes. The thing that had worn her sister's shape was an enormous spider—larger than any she had ever heard of, larger than any she had ever seen. A spider's body bigger than a person, and fixed upon its head, a human torso. She did not know how it had taken her sister's likeness, but this had to be the source of everything that had happened.
Her hair stood on end again. Her heart battered her ribs like a mad thing. Confirming the culprit of this entire affair only plunged her into a deeper fear than before. From the treetop she cast desperate looks in every direction, praying someone—anyone—might come to save her.
What she saw as she searched was this: the uncanny fog formed a perfect circle around the spider, and far beyond its edge her sister stood with her sword drawn, fighting to scatter the mist. Hwa-eun, too, sat cross-legged near the fog's rim, straining to drive something out. The thought that neither of them would reach her in time—that the creature might do anything to her before they did—was just beginning to curdle hope into despair when she saw him.
From that direction, parting the fog—no, as if the fog itself were splitting open for him—Young Hero Wi came running, straight toward where she hung.
Y-Young Hero Wi!
She had thought him frivolous for falling so easily for her sister's request. But watching him charge without hesitation toward her, that same young hero, she felt something close to admiration. So that's why Sister Hwa-eun fell so hard, she thought. When she had asked how the two of them met, Hwa-eun had looked thoroughly smitten; the way her sister's eyes rested on the young hero had said she was completely caught.
Hope lasted only a moment.
Below, the wicked spider hid most of itself in the grass the same way it had when it deceived her, then presented itself in Seol's form with its shoulders provocatively bare—so bare that the upper swell of the chest showed. So that was how the missing people had known about the mole on her sister's upper breast. Of course. That was why.
Y-you shameless bitch!
But Young Hero Wi was a man already betrothed to Sister Hwa-eun. No matter how beautiful her sister was, he would not fall so easily. He would see through the spider's disguise. Namgung Eun clung to that hope.
Yet the closer he came, the thicker the sweet fragrance grew. Her own chest grew hot with it, and she realized the spider was doing something. If even she, a woman, was stirred and her heart racing, a man would never endure it.
Her prediction struck true. When he reached roughly the place where she herself had first spotted her "sister," he confirmed the figure—and then, eyes gone vacant, began to walk slowly toward it. Half-lidded eyes. Completely taken by that seductive form. Even a boy that young was still a man, and her sister's beauty had undone him.
At last Young Hero Wi buried his face in her sister's breast—no. In the breast of the spider wearing her sister's face.
Namgung Eun glanced at the empty space beside her in the web. The thought that he would soon be hanging there next to her filled her mind.
"Aaaah!"
A woman's scream tore through the darkness and the fog. It was not my sister's voice. It had to be either Namgung Eun or Namgang Seol.
I unwound Bini from my left hand and Hyangi from around my waist and set them down.
"Bini, Hyangi—can you find your mom?"
I asked in case they could sense the energy my sister carried. Their antennae twitched as if nodding.
"Then find her and protect her. Got it?"
Chirrrr.
Hyangi and Bini looked back at me once in acknowledgment, then vanished swiftly into the fog. In a situation that already felt like a scene from a horror film, I could not leave my sister alone—and I could not send Hyangi or Bini into an unfamiliar dark place by themselves, either. That was why I had sent both. My own body was more than safe with the remaining Cho, and I had already set a safeguard for my sister. It was time to move.
I ran hard in the direction of the scream. Even as I sprinted toward the sound, what filled my head was not worry for Namgung Eun or Namgang Seol, but spider silk.
Why had that silk been there at all?
The question would not leave me. What on earth is it?
Spiders fall broadly into two types: sedentary and wandering. Sedentary spiders build a home in one place and live there; wandering spiders roam. Laying long lines of silk across the ground was a behavior that made little sense. Ground spiders dig burrows and line them with silk, yes—but they do not carpet the floor like that. It was hard to understand.
I was still heading toward the source of the scream when moonlight broke for an instant between the clouds. Darkness and fog recoiled, and a fantastic sight filled my vision.
This is—!
Everywhere beneath my feet, spider silk glittered, beaded with dew from the fog, laid out in every direction—and then the moon slipped back behind the clouds, and the sight vanished as if a web of light had been switched on and off. The afterimage of that silk still hung in my mind when I saw her: standing at what I took to be the center of the web, Namgang Seol, smiling at me with a strangely alluring smile.
There you are!
A giant spider. A ground spider of a kind I had never seen. It spun silk like an arboreal species, yet the web lay across the ground rather than in the air—a new species, without a doubt. Everything that had happened until now finally began to make rough sense.
What was seducing me now in Namgang Seol's form was almost certainly the spider's pedipalp, modified for mimicry. A pedipalp—an antenna-leg, in plain terms. It looks like a spider's leg, but it is a specialized organ used for sensing, mating, and seizing prey. You cannot really call it a leg, because it is attached to the head. A scorpion's pincers are the same: not true legs, but pedipalps fixed to the head.
It had bared its shoulders and was putting on a thoroughly seductive display for my sake, but that had to be the result of evolution—refined to lure the men it took as prey. It flashed that bewitching smile to draw me in, but honestly, it need not have bothered.
I was already thoroughly captivated.
If it had shown me its true body instead of the pedipalp, I would have been even more so.
I forced my racing heart to calm, put on a vacant expression, and walked toward it. As I drew near, I could see the creature's glittering eyes between the legs that wore Namgang Seol's shape, and a flash of red limbs half-hidden in the brush. Feigning ignorance, I walked right up to the pedipalp that had taken her form—and pulled it firmly into my arms.
As if I were enchanted. No—exactly as it intended. I was enchanted.
Then I shouted toward Cho.
"Cho! Bite!"