Someone Must Have Dropped It on the Way Up
Someone must have dropped it while climbing the mountain path.
"Is that… going to stay there?" Seol-ah asked.
"Yep. Normally it just sits there as a painting, but if a thief shows up, it comes out and catches them on its own."
The man replied as if it were nothing remarkable, his face suggesting he didn't find it the least bit marvelous, and picked up his brush again.
"All it does, really, is skip meals, skip sleep, and never go out drinking. Built for gatekeeping, through and through."
"…Drinking?"
When she echoed the word, the man jerked his chin toward the mountain.
"That tiger. I tried making him a gatekeeper too, but he's a hopeless case. He'll rampage around the mountain for days on end, then come slouching back just in time for meals. And when I actually need him? Not so much as the tip of his nose in sight."
Come to think of it, that was true.
Even since she'd arrived on this mountain, the tiger kept vanishing somewhere and reappearing, over and over. For a beast the size of a house, its behavior was unmistakably that of a willful housecat.
"Whereas this fellow——"
The man gazed fondly at the painting of the gatekeeper.
"He's diligent, isn't he? His job is guarding his post, and he never leaves it. What could be better?"
And that was the very moment it happened.
The tiger was just then slouching its way back down from the mountain's edge.
After days of roaming, it had apparently finally worked up an appetite and appeared right on schedule for mealtime—dragging its enormous body along, yawning wide enough to split its jaw, sauntering with the gait of a creature whose every comfort life provided.
But then.
The moment it stepped into the yard, the tiger froze stock-still.
It had spotted the new gatekeeper general.
The tiger's two ears shot upright. Its yellow eyes fixed on the painted guard, unblinking. In midair, the general's gleaming painted gaze and the tiger's stare collided.
For a moment, a strange silence settled.
Then, at last, the tiger slyly averted its eyes.
And with a strangely sheepish look, tail drooping low, it slunk toward a corner of the yard—as though worried someone might steal its food bowl. That carefree swagger from moments before had vanished without a trace.
After days away, some unfamiliar fellow had planted itself squarely in its own front yard. From the tiger's perspective, the situation was evidently more than a little awkward.
Curling itself up in the corner, the tiger kept stealing sidelong glances at the new gatekeeper. It was afraid to approach with that crescent blade looming there, yet couldn't bear to look away either. That, precisely, was its predicament.
At the sight of it,
Seol-ah found herself laughing before she could stop.
The beast that had once roared loud enough to shake the mountain off its foundations was now moping in a corner of the yard, fussing over a newcomer gatekeeper's opinion of it.
Only after she laughed did she flinch.
There it was again.
Ever since coming to this mountain, she kept doing this—laughing without meaning to. Back in the Demonic Cult, there had been nothing to laugh at. No—she had been forbidden to laugh. The Cult Leader's smile was a weakness, and a weakness meant death.
But here in these mountains,
again and again, her heart kept loosening over things that amounted to nothing at all.
Seol-ah forced the smile from her face.
…Pull yourself together.
She was staying here, in the end, only to measure that power. To learn whether it could be claimed—and whether she was even permitted to claim it.
And yet, even as she reined herself in,
her gaze kept drifting back to that sulking tiger.
Up the mountain trail under gathering dusk, a man crept on his hands and knees.
His name was Samson-i, a small-time thief who scraped by on petty burglary in the nearby market town.
Over the past few days, one particularly juicy rumor had reached Samson-i's ears.
That an immortal lived in the mountains. That every painting the immortal drew was a divine treasure. That he could paint wild ginseng into being, cure illnesses, and that a single one of his paintings fetched the price of a whole house—laughably easily.
A house for a single painting…
Samson-i swallowed hard.
And all of it just lying around in some dirt hovel in the mountains? Only a fool wouldn't raid the place. Immortal or not, he was surely just some old man shut away up there. Slip in while he slept, grab a few paintings, and Samson-i could wash his hands of thieving forever and live fat and happy for the rest of his days.
Perfect. Tonight's the night.
Samson-i waited for the dead of night, then crept up to the immortal's house.
The house was as shabby as rumored—an old mud hut. No fence to speak of; push through the brush and you were in the yard. Samson-i snorted. Some immortal. The man couldn't even manage to raise a single wall.
But then.
Stepping into the yard, Samson-i hesitated for a moment.
Near where a gate should have stood, a painting had been propped up—a portrait of an enormous, glaring general, clutching a bone-pale crescent blade.
…What is that ugly thing.
Even by moonlight, it sent a chill crawling up his spine. The painted general's eyes seemed fixed squarely on him.
Samson-i shook his head, forcing it away.
Scared of a picture? It's a painting, not a person.
Just some scrap of daubed paper. Samson-i moved past the general and moved to step inside the house.
That very instant.
Behind him—
CLANG!
The sound of metal striking metal.
A cold shiver shot down Samson-i's spine.
Something had definitely just sounded behind him. And something heavy at that—the dull clank of armor shifting.
…No way.
Slowly, creakingly, Samson-i turned his head.
And froze solid.
The general who had been painted so quietly inside the frame mere moments ago—
was stepping out of the painting.
A bulk the size of a house. Armor clanking. And in its hand, a crescent blade flashing cold and blue in the moonlight. The same two eyes that had glared at him from inside the painting were now all too real, looking down at him from above.
"H-hiiiik——"
As the general slowly raised the crescent blade, air hissed out of Samson-i's mouth.
"W-wait! J-just wait a moment! I-I was only passing through——"
The general slammed the blade down into the earth. The entire yard shuddered.
THOOM—!
Then he spoke, his voice booming like thunder.
"You there. To dare commit theft before the gate of General Guan! Be gone, and be quick about it!"
Samson-i wet himself on the spot.
"G-General Guan?! THE General Guan?!"
Even Samson-i knew the name. The legendary fierce general who bore the Green Dragon Crescent Blade—the martial god said to take an enemy commander's head in a single stroke, a match for ten thousand men alone.
And that very man was leveling his blade at Samson-i right now.
"M-my eyes deceived me! I didn't know this was the General's home, I swear——!"
"Silence."
General Guan's beard bristled.
"In all my years, I have never cut down a nameless lackey. However."
The blue edge of the crescent blade caught the moonlight and flashed.
"Thieving hands are another matter entirely."
"H-hiiiik——!"
"Which hand was it? The hand that meant to touch the paintings."
Samson-i whipped both hands behind his back and trembled like a leaf.
"I-I have none! No hands! I was born without them!"
"Now you're simply lying."
FWOOSH——
As General Guan's blade cleaved the night air and sheared off the last few strands of his topknot, Samson-i couldn't even manage a scream—he simply toppled backward where he stood.
Then, scrambling on all fours, he began to flee for his very life.
"S-someone save me—!! It's a goblin! No—G-G-General Guan's come out—!! General Guan walked right out of a painting—!!"
Samson-i barrelled down the mountain path he'd climbed, rolling more than running.
He never noticed his trousers soaked through, or that one of his straw sandals had come off. His only thought was to put as much distance as possible between himself and that terrifying General Guan.
General Guan watched the fleeing thief's back for a short while.
Half-suspecting he might return, the general held his blade at the ready and glared after him for a long time. But the thief never once looked back, vanishing down the mountainside—surely never to come within a mile of the place again.
Only then did General Guan lower his weapon.
Then, with measured, soldierly steps, he returned to his post—back into that painting propped near the gate.
The house-sized bulk smoothed flat into a plane; the clanking armor darkened once more into ink. As if he'd never left at all, General Guan settled back into being a single scroll of painting, hanging quietly in place.
Except—
The two painted eyes still gleamed bright and alert, sweeping the surroundings.
As if to say he would guard that gate all night long.
From a window in the inner quarters, the stir of someone briefly awake settled back into stillness. Whoever had opened their eyes at the sound echoing through the mountain must have confirmed what was guarding the yard and judged there was no need to rise.
And from that day on—
yet another rumor began spreading through the market town.
That General Guan guarded the gates of the immortal's mountain home. That any thief who tried his luck would lose his head to a general who stepped straight out of a painting. That a petty burglar named Samson-i broke into the place, came out with his hair shorn clean off, having wet himself in terror on the way down.
As rumors always did, the tale grew flesh with every telling.
By the end, General Guan had multiplied into ten, his blade hurled down lightning bolts, and a fence had erupted from the earth around the immortal's home, reaching all the way to the heavens.
Thanks to which—
not a single petty thief ever came near the immortal's house again.
Though the immortal himself, never having raised so much as one fence post, went on painting in perfect peace.
The next morning.
I strolled out into the yard as I always did and stretched until my joints popped.
Quiet as ever, peaceful as ever—another perfectly pleasant morning. General Guan was dutifully guarding the gate near the entrance again today. Only his painted eyes still gleamed with that same bright alertness, and somehow they looked even prouder of themselves than they had last night.
Probably just my imagination.
I was halfway across the yard when, without quite knowing why, I stopped in my tracks.
Lying in front of the gate was a single shoe, all by itself.
A worn, tattered straw sandal. It wasn't ours, and it didn't look like anything a villager would have left behind. What's more, there was only the one. Why would a single unmatched shoe be sitting here?
"…What's this?"
As I tilted my head, Seol-ah had appeared beside me without my noticing, looking down at the shoe as well.
"…Looks like someone came by in the night."
"Who? I didn't hear a thing."
"You slept like the dead."
Seol-ah shot a brief glance at General Guan's painting by the gate, then said nothing more. I followed her gaze—and felt, once again, that those two painted eyes looked distinctly pleased with themselves.
We stood side by side, studying that lone shoe for a good long while.
So, someone had come and gone in the night.
But if they'd visited, there should have been traces—and there was nothing but the shoe. I even looked around the house in case a thief had gotten in, but nothing was missing. The paintings were all exactly where they should have been.
A strange business, all around.
"…Eh, whatever. Someone must have dropped it climbing the mountain path."
I picked up the shoe without much thought and tossed it into a corner of the yard. If the owner ever came looking, I'd hand it back then. Simple as that.