It's a Dokkaebi That Commands Painted Fish!
I was grinding ink for my next painting when, without warning, I felt someone watching me.
I looked up, and there it was — a little kid, peeking out at me from behind a boulder.
Dead pale in the face.
"Who's there?"
The moment I asked, the kid leaped a foot in the air, then dropped flat onto the ground.
"I-I'm sorry! P-please spare me, Dokkaebi!"
Dokkaebi. I was baffled for a second — then I spotted the ink-black carp drifting in the stream, and the situation clicked.
Ah. He saw that and panicked.
"I'm not a dokkaebi."
"Th-that's a lie! You're a dokkaebi who commands painted fish!"
He wasn't wrong, exactly. But I still wasn't a dokkaebi.
I was getting a little tired of this, though. A child climbing all the way up a mountain like this had to have some reason for it, and it felt wrong to just send him off trembling in fear because of me. Besides, his stomach had been growling for a while now.
Hunger was one thing I absolutely couldn't stand. I'd been starving myself not so long ago.
I picked up my brush. Dipped it lightly in the ink, and set my hand over the paper.
Hotteok was easy. How hard could it be to draw a round thing? Still, since I was drawing it anyway, I put in a little effort to make it taste good.
With the brush tip, I traced a circle. Not a perfect one — with a slight pressed dent on one side. A real hotteok gets squashed when it's griddled, so the dent was what made it authentic. Around the edge, a few short strokes for the golden-brown marks left by the oil.
In the center, I gave it a faintly swollen texture — the part where the syrup gathers and puffs the dough up. Over that I spread the barest wash of ink, so thin it seemed to bleed outward, creating the sheen of hot oil.
And finally, one dark drop of ink pressed into the crease of the dent.
The black-sugar syrup seeping through.
I lifted the brush.
The painting stirred.
The paper swelled, and the hotteok I'd just drawn rose right up out of it — golden crust, pressed dent, even the seam where the syrup had soaked through. Steam curled off it in wisps.
Painted in nothing but ink, yet what sat in my hand was a genuine, honest-to-goodness hotteok.
I picked it up and tossed it onto the kid's open palm.
"Eat."
Seokdu watched the whole scene, slack-jawed.
The dokkaebi had picked up something like a twig and swished it across a sheet of paper. It was just a black drawing. No color at all — only an ink circle.
But then that drawing had swelled up.
A real hotteok had popped right out of the paper. Steaming. Even smelling — that nutty, sweet scent of black-sugar hotteok.
The dokkaebi had tossed it over.
"Eat."
Seokdu caught it in both hands without thinking.
It was hot. Really hot. How could a painting be hot? How could a painting smell like anything?
But it was definitely a hotteok. The black-sugar hotteok he'd had exactly once, on market day. It looked the same. Smelled the same. And until a moment ago, it had been nothing but a black drawing on paper.
"H-how can this be…… a drawing……?"
"It's a hotteok. If you're not going to eat it, hand it back."
At the words hand it back, Seokdu instinctively clenched the hotteok in both fists — ho-ho-ing on it to cool it down, but with the expression of a boy who would never, ever let go.
……And yet, the moment it was actually in his hands, a chill of fear ran through him.
This was food given by a dokkaebi. In the old stories, anyone who greedily accepted what a dokkaebi offered would have his soul stolen — or turn into a dokkaebi himself. If he ate this, would he become one of them?
Seokdu's eyes darted between the hotteok and the dokkaebi.
But then—
Not eating was scary too.
This was a gift the dokkaebi had gone out of his way to give. What if he offered it back and the creature took offense and decided to eat him instead? The village elders always said you must never provoke a dokkaebi's temper.
Eat it and be scared, don't eat it and be scared.
After a long stretch of trembling, Seokdu finally squeezed his eyes shut.
……Ahh, whatever happens, happens.
Soul stolen or whatever else — the first priority was not to cross that dokkaebi. With his mind made up, Seokdu took a careful bite.
Crack.
The shell gave way first. The golden, oil-fried crust crumbled thin and delicate under his teeth, and the toasty flavor of the oil spread across his tongue.
Then came the real problem.
From inside the broken shell, hot syrup burst out all at once.
Black sugar, melted down into a thick, syrupy lava. Hot, and sweet. Hot enough to scald his tongue — but the sweetness arrived before the heat did. That sugary warmth sliding all the way down his throat made Seokdu shudder from head to toe without meaning to.
Sweet.
When had he last eaten something this sweet?
Once, last year, on market day. The day his mother sold her herbs for a good price, she'd bought him half a hotteok. She'd only pretended to eat the other half before pressing it into his mouth too.
It tasted like that.
No — hotter than that, sweeter than that, better.
The dough inside was chewy — moist where the syrup had soaked in, crisp on the outside — and with every bite, more sweetness welled out. His whole mouth was warm and sweet.
Seokdu chewed like a boy possessed.
A few tears slipped down his cheeks. Whether it was the heat, or the spice of it, or something else entirely, he couldn't have said.
It was just — delicious.
Even after taking the hotteok, the kid didn't eat it for a good long while.
He just trembled, glancing back and forth between the hotteok and me, like he couldn't decide whether to eat it or not. What was there to be so scared of? Did he think I'd poisoned it?
Well, I suppose not scarfing down food from a stranger isn't a bad habit to have.
At last, the boy screwed his eyes shut and took a bite.
And then his eyes went wide as saucers.
Guess it tasted good.
After that he demolished it without another thought. Judging by the spectacle, he'd been genuinely starving. I picked my brush back up and returned to the painting I'd been working on.
"When you're done, go home. This place is dangerous."
"U-um……"
"What?"
The kid, the hotteok still half-finished in his hands, stared straight at me.
"Are you…… a bad dokkaebi, or a good dokkaebi?"
I paused the brush and looked at him.
About twelve, maybe. Rail-thin, clothes worn to rags, hands caked with dirt from digging herbs. One look told you this kid had it rough.
He reminded me of my past self.
Nobody who sees you. Struggling alone, tooth and nail. I knew a little about how that felt, so I answered a bit more kindly than usual.
"Hmm. Probably not a bad dokkaebi."
The kid's expression eased a little at that.
"Name?"
"……Seokdu, sir. Seokdu."
"Stone Head, huh."
"……Everyone teases me about it."
The kid's face fell. That hadn't been my intention.
"Stone is a good thing. It doesn't break. Whoever named you chose well."
The kid blinked at me, eyes round. He looked like he'd never heard anything like it in his life.
"Go on. You need to get down the mountain before dark."
But the kid made no move to leave.
Told to go, he just shuffled in place, scuffing at the dirt with the toe of his shoe. He clearly had something to say and couldn't get it out.
"……Well? Why aren't you going?"
"I-I, um……"
He started, then stopped, sneaking a glance at my face. Scared. The exact look of a kid wondering whether he was allowed to ask a dokkaebi for anything more — whether opening his mouth again might make me angry.
I waited in silence, and finally the kid forced the words out in a voice barely above a whisper.
"……I, I came up here to gather herbs."
"Herbs?"
"Yes…… my mother's, she's been ill……"
He let the words trail off, then stole another glance at me — unable to hide the threadbare sliver of hope that maybe, maybe the dokkaebi would help him. And yet too timid to come right out and ask.
Ah. So that's why he'd climbed such a treacherous mountain.
I studied him for a moment. A scrawny little thing who'd scaled all the way up to the dokkaebi's lair to earn money for his mother's medicine.
It felt a bit wrong to just send him off.
"Which herbs do you need?"
"Huh?"
"Tell me, and I'll draw them. What do they look like?"
The kid's eyes went wide. Then, as if he'd been waiting his whole life for the question, he reeled off everything he'd picked up along the way.
"M-my mother coughs terribly. The herb-seller at the market says balloon flower root and schisandra are good for coughs. And she has no strength at all, so…… he said when the body's run down, you should boil ginseng or astragalus root……"
"Mm."
"But those are all far too expensive. So I was just going to dig some mugwort, or motherwort, or maybe kudzu root. It's better than nothing, I figured…… and he said if I could find even a few licorice roots, they can be added when brewing the medicine……"
Seokdu counted them off on his fingers, one by one, reciting herb after herb. Wherever a boy that young had learned it all, he'd clearly spent his days desperately asking around. That alone told the story.
There was just one problem.
I understood half of it, and the other half went right over my head.
I wasn't a man of the martial world — there was no way I'd know the names of medicinal herbs here. Motherwort this and astragalus that meant nothing to me. But I did know a few things picked up from my old world. The stuff that's good for you. The things parents stocked up on for the holidays. The jars glimpsed through the windows of herbal medicine shops.
Yeah. That much, I could manage.
"Something good for coughs? That'd be doraji — balloon flower root."
I flicked the brush, and a plump, white balloon flower root sprang right out of the paper.
The kid stared at it, eyes huge.
"I-I've never seen a gilgyeong this thick……!"
"Gilgyeong? Oh, that's what you call doraji here? Then this'll do too. Low energy calls for ginseng."
This time I drew a ginseng root — thick-bodied, with a beard of fine tendrils branching out. Shaped exactly like the ones that arrived in gift boxes every holiday.
The kid sucked in a breath.
"A-a wild mountain ginseng……! And one that huge……!"
"Mountain ginseng? It's just regular ginseng. Well, if it's dug up on a mountain, I suppose that counts."
I brushed it off and kept drawing.
"Jujubes and goji berries for the blood, boiled into a tonic. This one's licorice. And this is, what's it called — oh, kudzu root. Arrowroot. Supposed to be good for hangovers."
Jujubes. Goji berries. Licorice. Kudzu root.
The ones I'd seen in holiday gift boxes, the ones bottled in the glass jars of herbal medicine shops, the ones painted on signs outside health-food stores. I sketched everything I could remember, piling each one up beside me.
And with every stroke, the kid's face grew a shade paler.
"W-wait, please, Dokkaebi-nim. E-each and every one of those……"
"Hmm?"
"In the market town, those all cost as much as a whole chicken. Even one. But ones this big and fine……"
His voice was shaking.
I stopped drawing and looked at the heap of roots piled up beside me.
Balloon flower, ginseng, jujube, goji, licorice, kudzu…… I'd drawn a few extra while I was at it, and somewhere along the way it had turned into a proper mountain.
……All of this was that expensive?
Honestly, I had no idea which was which. I'd drawn them because they were supposedly good for you. Which ones were actually valuable and which were common — I couldn't tell them apart at all.
And it was too much trouble to sort it all out now.
"Eh, forget it."
I shoved the entire heap of roots toward him.
"Take it all."
"Wh…… what?!"
"I don't know which ones you need, and you look too dazed to sort it out anyway. Just take everything and pick out the ones you can use."
The kid's jaw dropped.
"A-all of it……? The whole thing……?"
"Yeah. If it's too heavy, leave some behind."
"N-no! I'll take it all! I can carry it all!"
The kid frantically swept the roots into his clothes, his basket, anything that could hold them. Then he hugged the whole armful tight to his chest, as if terrified of dropping a single one.
And then his eyes brimmed with tears.
"Th-thank you…… Dokkaebi-nim, thank you, thank you so much……!"
"That's enough. Get down before dark."
"Thank you! I will never, ever forget this kindness!"
The kid bowed over and over, then, hugging the mountain of herbs to his chest, went bounding down the mountain as if running for his life.
Seokdu was halfway down the mountain trail before he finally stopped walking and looked down at the bundle of herbs cradled against his chest.
A dokkaebi.
……No. That wasn't right. The dokkaebi Seokdu knew lured people into the mountains and trapped them, stole their souls, and snickered about it afterward. That was how every story the elders told went.
But that man had given him a hotteok. Had waited for him to blow on it and cool it before eating. Had heard about his mother and drawn him a whole mountain of herbs, asked nothing in return, and told him twice to get down before dark.
No dokkaebi would do that.
Then what was he?
A being who lived alone in the mountains, conjured things out of nothing with a single stroke of his brush, and lavished good things on people as if it cost him nothing.
In all the old stories Seokdu knew, only one kind of being did that.
……An immortal.
The moment the thought formed, everything fell into place. Seokdu hugged the herbs tighter to his chest — and began to run again.