The Three Sisters
Cho, Hyang, and Bin: three personalities.
Personality is the unique psychological system each individual develops and maintains as a particular pattern of response to their environment. The word usually applies to people, yet pets are not so different.
Anyone who has ever kept a pet knows that animals, too, react differently depending on the situation.
That is why, if I had to describe the personalities of my three Ohgongs, it would go something like this.
First, Cho.
Her most obvious physical trait is that her antennae are the longest of the three.
As for her nature, she is a natural leader, full of quiet charisma.
I call her the eldest, though honestly I have no idea who hatched first. All three woke from their eggs while I was asleep. But watch the way she carries herself and there is no doubt: Cho is the firstborn.
Churrr! Churrr!
Like a rooster crowing before dawn, that warning cry was what always shattered my sweet sleep.
I never needed to look; the owner of that sound was always Cho.
When she woke me it was her way of saying, Get up and go to morning training. I would burrow deeper under the blankets and plead with her.
“Cho, just a little longer… Daddy’s still growing…”
I was in my growth phase, after all. If she wanted a tall, handsome father she ought to let me sleep.
Churrr!
The next cry always sounded like, Daddy, get up right now or Grandfather will scold you again and Mother will be angry too!
With that insistent churring right against my ear I finally sat up.
“Aigoo. All right, Daddy’s up, Cho. Haa… What kind of murim man sleeps only four hours a night when he isn’t even a high-school senior cramming for exams? And Cho, you’re far too diligent. You never skip a single day.”
Because I was terrible at waking up, Big Sister had once joked in passing, “Cho, be a dear and wake Daddy in the mornings.” Ever since, Cho’s faithful morning alarm had never failed.
Driven by her nagging I lit the extinguished lantern, washed my face with the water the maids had left, and only then did Cho climb onto me, rousing the even sleepier Hyang and Bin along the way.
Watching her take such thrifty care of both her father’s commute and her younger sisters, there was simply no denying it: Cho was the eldest sister.
And that was not all.
By the time I reached the training ground with the three of them—already growing heavy—Big Sister would be waiting to take them off my hands. There, once again, Cho’s big-sister side shone through.
Far off in the dim pre-dawn gloom she stood holding a lantern. Because she was the one who prepared their soft food, the children adored her. The moment they spotted her, Hyang and Bin would get excited and try to leap from my shoulders.
Chut!
A sharp warning cry.
Both of them froze mid-motion and looked at Cho.
At first I had no idea what it meant. Later I understood.
In a moment Big Sister and I would meet and I would hand the children over properly. There was no need for them to crawl across the dirt first and climb onto her. Centipedes that crawl on the ground inevitably get soil on their bodies; if they climbed onto Big Sister like that her clothes would be filthy. So Cho kept her younger sisters in line.
“So-ryong.”
“Hwa-eun, good morning—or rather, good dawn.”
“Yes, So-ryong. Come here, little ones.”
Only after the others had crossed did Cho rub her cheek against mine once, as if to say Well done, and then go over to Big Sister herself.
Looking after Daddy, looking after her sisters, even thinking of Mother—the perfect eldest daughter.
That was why Cho was first.
She’s so dependable. A real household treasure, that one.
After seeing the children and Big Sister off, I trained the dawn Five Poisons Arts until I was drenched in sweat. Then it was time for breakfast.
I found them at the pavilion. Big Sister was waiting with the children.
“So-ryong, you’ve worked hard.”
“Any trouble today?”
Instead of answering she simply stared down at her own skirt.
Her gaze fixed on one particular set of antennae among the three that were peeking out from the folds of her clothes, hiding from the rising sun’s harsh light.
The most restless pair belonged to our second child, Hyang.
You again?
Hyang was a peculiar one.
If I had to sum her up in two words they would be: curious and lazy.
The two do not usually go together, yet with her I had no choice. She spent most of her time asleep, but the moment she woke she could not stay still for a single second.
It was as if she recharged all her energy while sleeping just so she could discharge every last drop of it into mischief.
The second Big Sister looked away, Hyang would be found high in a tree, or following a fluttering butterfly only to get stepped on by a startled maid, or clinging to the ceiling watching the servants eat.
She loved her morning sleep, and outside of her waking hours she slept so deeply you could have carried her off without her noticing.
So while Cho had recently caused the biggest incident, the everyday troublemaker was definitely Hyang.
“Today I was talking with a maid and only just managed to catch her crawling toward the Golden-Haired Bee Kings’ nest.”
“Heavens, that could have been disastrous.”
“Yes. The Bee Kings all came swarming out.”
“Ah, so that racket I heard during training was this little one’s fault.”
I tickled Hyang’s antennae. Big Sister sighed as if only then remembering.
Feeling my touch, Hyang’s antennae went limp. She had fallen peacefully asleep under my fingers.
Big Sister looked utterly flabbergasted.
I remembered something from my previous life: when a newborn arrives, parents must feed it every three or four hours and change diapers around the clock, so they joke that they cannot wait for the child to grow up. Yet once the child starts walking, it races around and frays the parents’ nerves even more. I suspected Big Sister was feeling something very similar right now.
People always say that once a toddler can walk, the days when it just lay there were the happiest. With our Ohgongs it had been the same—back when they simply clung to my body had been the good times.
After two molts they started roaming freely, and suddenly they were more than anyone could handle.
“Haha, you’ve had it harder than I have. Shall we go eat?”
“Haa. Yes, So-ryong. You must be hungry.”
We left the still-sleeping Bin and the others clinging to her skirt and headed for the dining hall.
Then one of them raced up Big Sister’s body, stretched a leg tentatively toward me, and began gauging the distance.
Closer, farther, closer again—timing the moment to cross.
Big Sister smiled softly at the sight.
There she goes again.
The one trying to cross was our youngest, Bin.
I pretended not to notice and edged a little closer to Big Sister. If I acknowledged her openly she would refuse to come, too embarrassed.
She was a prim little thing who loved me most of all, yet she would not cross if I made it too obvious.
Perhaps because she was the youngest she followed me the closest, but she was also the shyest. When I had fallen into the snake pit she had reacted more violently than anyone, and even though cold-blooded creatures must find a human body quite hot, she still glued herself to me every night to sleep.
Sure enough, when I pressed close to Big Sister she crossed over with the utmost stealth—or so she believed.
Given her weight, “stealth” was impossible.
As we walked to the dining hall she began subtly advertising that she had made it across: lifting her head from my shoulder and tickling my cheek with her antennae.
If I ignored her she would give a little cry or squeeze the legs she used to grip me—demanding recognition for having crossed.
Chut.
There it was, that prim little sound.
If her words could be translated they would probably go something like this:
“Daddy, I have arrived. Pet me at once. I grant you permission.”
I smiled inwardly and stroked the top of her head with a fingertip. The prim sound melted into a pleased churring.
Churrr.
A charismatic eldest sister, a lazy little troublemaker of a second, and a tsundere third.
They might look alike, yet each of my Ohgongs had a completely different personality.
I hoped they would grow up quickly into magnificent Azure-Spotted Centipedes just like their mother.
In the dream, at least, their mother’s body had been truly magnificent.
I meant nothing improper by it. Snuggling with the little ones felt like cradling a small dog; being held by their mother had felt like being embraced by a large one.
I wanted to feel that for real someday, not only in a dream.
Once Na Ok settled into the Tang Family, the feeding system of the Poisonous Creature Garden began to run with rock-solid stability.
She was an extremely meticulous woman who never overlooked a single dirty corner.
Where the Tang warriors cleaned the cages and fed the stock once a day and then left the leftovers, Na Ok stayed glued to the garden from morning till night, feeding, cleaning, feeding, cleaning without rest.
Moreover she seemed to have been a breeder in a past life; she even performed selection, culling the weak or deformed specimens and gathering only the healthy, robust ones to breed separately.
It was only natural, then, that the crickets—which had previously been eating one another—began what every breeder dreams of: explosive breeding.
The mealworms were multiplying nicely as well, and the cricket supply was now fully secure.
Chinese hamsters were being born in such numbers that even after we switched the feed for the smaller frogs and toads that went to the striped snakes entirely over to pinkies, we still had pinkies left over.
In my previous life we would simply have frozen them into frozen pinkies, but this era had no refrigerators, which left us in a bind.
Mealworms—the yellow mealworms—had already proven their taste to the Tang family and could be eaten; crickets could be eaten in a pinch as well. Hamsters, however, were another story.
Being too good at your job can be a problem too.
I finished my quick inspection and stepped outside. Gu Pae, Commander of the Poisonous Creature Squad, followed and asked,
“Lord So-ryong, it looks as though we will have far too many Chinese hamsters.”
I nodded.
“We will have to fill the Poisonous Creature Garden with new residents soon.”
“At last we are going out to catch poisonous creatures!?”
Gu Pae’s face lit up. The warriors behind him wore the same eager expressions.
“Yes. Crickets and mealworms can at least be eaten as snacks, but Chinese hamsters are inedible for most of the warriors. We could stop the breeding, of course, but the best solution is still to feed them to poisonous beasts. I think it is time we expanded the family a little.”
“I look forward to it.”
“We will have to wait for news from the Murim Alliance first, though.”
“Indeed.”
Their excitement cooled into serious nods.
To go collecting poisonous creatures we would need to form an expedition, and right now permission to leave the estate was not easy to obtain.
All because of those blood-sucking Blood Cult bastards. That was why the news I had mentioned was the first condition for our expedition: word of victory from the Alliance Leader who had gone to suppress the Blood Cult.
According to my father-in-law, they had recently captured a spy inside the Alliance, raided a Blood Cult branch near Wuchang, and from the prisoners learned the location of the cult’s largest headquarters in the Central Plains. The Alliance Leader had marched out at once. Whether that expedition succeeded or failed would decide how soon—or whether—we would be allowed to mount our own.
If their greatest stronghold in the Central Plains was wiped out, the remnants would most likely go to ground again, and the family would feel safe enough to let us leave.
Three days later, morning.
Crack!
“Khuh!”
A juicy impact against my back.
Crack!
Another meaty thwack against my thigh.
I clenched my teeth, swallowed the scream, and circulated my inner energy.
What I was training was the Fist King’s personal art—the Iron Safe Technique.
It was a truly vicious martial art.
When a person is struck, the muscles contract and flinch by reflex. The Iron Safe Technique forced you to circulate inner energy into those flinching muscles and harden the body still further.
In plain language: you had to get beaten like a dog if you wanted your level to rise.
So I had begun taking beatings all over my body with the help of the Poisonous Creature Squad warriors.
The silver lining was that progress came extremely fast.
I could already harden my body to stone-like density for a single well-timed instant.
I was in the middle of being thoroughly thrashed after breakfast when a commotion rose from the direction of the Family Head’s hall near the training ground. Then my father-in-law himself appeared.
“Son-in-law!”
“Father-in-law, what brings you here?”
He was usually busy at this hour of the morning. I tilted my head; he smiled and stroked his beard.
“I have brought the news you have been waiting for.”
“The news I have been waiting for?”
At my blank look he explained.
“Word has finally arrived from the Murim Alliance. The expedition was a complete success. The Alliance Leader stormed a village on the border of the Great Viet Kingdom and smashed the Blood Cult’s headquarters to pieces. Half the cultists are dead or captured; the other half fled into Great Viet.”
“Th-that means—!”
“Yes. It means you may now go catch the poisonous creatures you have wanted so badly.”
“Ohhh! If I had known it would happen this quickly I would have decided on a destination already. So where should we go?”
While I was still thinking that I should have prepared a target in advance, my father-in-law’s voice continued.
“For the first outing of the Tang Family’s Poisonous Creature Squad, where else but Yunnan—where poisonous creatures carpet the land?”
“Ah, of course. Yunnan!”
Yunnan, the tropical region.
Even at the entrance lived Golden-Haired Bee Kings. I could hardly wait to discover what other venomous insects thrived deeper inside.