Ripples from a Single Stone
"Seokdu, what's the matter? Are you hurt somewhere?"
Seokdu's mother was lying in bed, sick, as she was every day.
It was an illness she'd picked up after her husband died. At first it was nothing more than a lingering sorrow that gnawed at her, but for the past six months she hadn't been able to rise from her bed at all. The coughing never stopped, and not a shred of strength remained in her body. *I'm going to die like this* — there wasn't a day she didn't think it. If it hadn't been for her young son, she might have let go long ago.
And that son came bursting through the door.
"Mom! Mom!"
His face was bright red and he was drenched in sweat. He must have run the whole way down from the mountain.
"Seokdu, what happened? Are you hurt?"
"No! It's not that — on the mountain, I met an immortal on the mountain!"
"...What?"
"It's true! I thought he was a goblin at first, but he turned out to be an immortal! He draws pictures and they come alive and move, and he drew me hotteok, and medicinal herbs, and...!"
His mother sighed.
Here we go again, she thought. Where had the boy picked up such a strange tale? She made him work so hard — maybe he'd seen some kind of vision. Her heart ached.
"Seokdu. How many times has Mom told you? Those things are just old stories..."
"But it's true! Look at this!"
Seokdu spilled what he'd been carrying in his arms all over the floor of the room.
And his mother lost her words.
What had tumbled out was a heap of herbs, spotless, without a speck of dirt on them. And not just any herbs.
Plump roots fanned out with fine whiskers like a beard. That was... wild ginseng. And unlike anything she'd ever seen — the size of a grown man's palm.
Beside it lay bellflower roots as thick as a forearm. Jujubes plump and full. Bright red goji berries. Every single one was the finest of the finest, the kind you couldn't find even at the market town.
"S-Seokdu. Where... where in the world did you get all this...?"
"The immortal gave it to me, I told you. He said to take it all."
His mother's hands trembled.
If this was real, selling just one of these would cover months of medicine. No — this one ginseng root alone...
...That's impossible.
She couldn't believe it. Not that an immortal had drawn these with a brush, as her son claimed, nor that such treasures lay right before her eyes. It all felt like a dream.
But the herbs in her hands were real. The fresh scent of ginseng stung her nose.
She decided to brew them first and see.
Whether what her boy had brought really came from an immortal, or from somewhere else entirely — what mattered to her right now was only one thing: whether this medicine actually worked.
She simmered the wild ginseng with the utmost care. A rich medicinal smell filled the whole house.
And on the night she drank it.
The cough that hadn't let up for months simply stopped.
The change came day by day.
Three days after she drank the ginseng brew, his mother sat up in bed. It was the first time in months.
On the fifth day, she went out to the kitchen and cooked rice with her own hands. She even made the soybean soup Seokdu loved.
On the seventh day, she was out in the field beside her son, weeding.
Color returned to a face that had been bloodless. Flesh crept back onto a body that had been skin and bone. The coughing that had shaken the house every night vanished as if it had been washed away.
A woman who had been waiting only for the day she died was now walking about, hale and healthy.
Naturally, the village could not stay quiet.
She had been at death's door for half a year. Now she was drawing water at the well and weeding in the fields — how could anyone not be astonished?
"Seokdu. How on earth did your mother get better?"
A neighbor asked him at the edge of a field. Seokdu answered, bursting with excitement.
"I met a goblin on the mountain!"
"...What?"
"Ah — no. I thought he was a goblin at first, but he turned out to be an immortal!"
Seokdu chattered away about everything that had happened that day. He'd seen a black carp in the stream and it turned out to be a painting; he'd trembled in terror thinking it was a goblin, and it had drawn him hotteok and given them to him; and when he mentioned his mother's medicine, the immortal had drawn a whole heap of wild ginseng and more and handed it over.
"He swishes his brush, and the thing just pops right out! It comes alive and moves, and you can even eat it!"
The neighbor's face turned skeptical.
"...There goes blockhead Seokdu, talking nonsense again."
"It's not nonsense! I'm telling you, it's true!"
"How can a picture come alive and move, you little fool?"
Naturally, no one believed him at first.
Paintings that walked and breathed. An immortal living on the mountain. Clearly the boy had picked up some storybook somewhere.
...And yet.
Seokdu's mother really had recovered, and everyone had seen it with their own two eyes.
That much could not be waved off as a tall tale.
That evening, the same story passed from mouth to mouth all over the village.
"But still. The fact is, that woman really did get better."
"That's true. Someone who'd been sick for half a year..."
"Where did that Seokdu brat get his hands on such expensive herbs? In his family's situation, no less."
It made no sense.
The brat Seokdu hauling back a heap of wild ginseng. An immortal drawing medicine into existence with a brush. Neither story held water.
"Could there... really be something up on that mountain?"
"Oh, come off it."
"But you saw it too, didn't you? That woman's face was absolutely glowing."
"...Well. That's true."
They didn't believe it, but their mouths never stopped.
"Immortal or goblin, whatever it is, something must be up there."
"It's not like that Seokdu is the lying kind. Slow in the head maybe, but not a liar."
"True. What would a simple soul like that even make up?"
And so the story traveled from house to house, whisper by whisper.
"They say an immortal lives on the mountain."
"Oh, surely not."
"But Seokdu's mother really did recover."
Like a single pebble dropped into a pond, the ripples were still small — barely wide enough to cover one village. But that's how every ripple begins.
And among that half-believing crowd, there was one man.
He'd been listening at the edge of the field, and now he quietly sidled up to Seokdu. He was a fixture of the market town, known far and wide for his scheming cleverness.
"Seokdu. This immortal of yours — did he do anything else? You're saying he can make anything, just by drawing it?"
Seokdu's eyes lit up.
Finally, someone believed him.
Thrilled, Seokdu told the whole tale again. When the man drew a picture, beasts appeared, and food, and even a whole heap of those priceless herbs.
This time, the man didn't laugh.
Instead, his eyes narrowed, and he listened very, very carefully.
A man who could conjure wild ginseng with a single stroke of a brush.
...If that was really true, then this was not a story to be brushed aside.
Inside the man's head, something began to turn, quickly and busily.
I was sitting in the courtyard, drawing a rabbit to pass the time.
Snow-white fur, ears standing straight up. Round black eyes, a nose tinged pink at the tip. And since I was drawing anyway, I took extra care to make its coat even fluffier than the real thing.
The moment I lifted my brush, the rabbit hopped right out of the paper.
"Well, hello there."
The little thing stepped onto my knee, climbed up my arm, and finally settled itself on the very top of my head. All that fluff carried a surprising bit of weight.
"Is it really that comfortable up there?"
Instead of answering, the rabbit twitched its nose.
An old folk song from my previous life came to mind.
"Mountain rabbit, rabbit, where do you go...?"
Humming to myself, I kept working the brush. The rabbit on my head showed no intention of climbing down. Well, it was warm and pleasant enough. Now this was the idle amusement of an immortal.
But for a while now, my ears had been itching.
First the left one, then the right. I put down my brush and scratched, but it was no use. Something kept tickling at them.
And it wasn't just me.
The rabbit on my head was shivering and twitching too, as if its ears itched as well — long ears flapping, whole body shuddering. It seemed to be just as restless as I was.
"You too, huh?"
I reached up and gently scratched around the rabbit's ears. Its eyes slid shut and it nuzzled its head into my hand, wearing the blissed-out expression of a creature in heaven.
It was so adorable that I petted it for a good long while.
...But what on earth was making me itch like this?
Could someone be talking about me?
The thought made me snort with laughter. Who on the mountain would be talking about me? The only person who even knew I existed was that little tyke Seokdu who'd come by the other day.
...Come to think of it, did the kid make it home all right?
Well, he'd have managed somehow.
Rabbit perched on my head, I picked up my brush again. My ears were still itching.
I scratched at them for a long time, then just let it go.
What could possibly be the matter, after all?
A little later, the rabbit hopped down from my head of its own accord and bounded off into the brush. Well, it was a mountain rabbit — of course it would go back to the mountain. If it got hungry, it could always come back at mealtimes.
Gombo first heard the rumor at the market town.
He'd been cadging free drinks at a gukbap house, and the country bumpkins at the next table were talking with spit flying.
"They say an immortal's living up on the mountain!"
"And that whatever he draws comes to life!"
"It's about the village right next to ours. That Seokdu kid's mother — remember how she was all but dead? She up and walked again."
"Cured, they say, by drinking wild ginseng the immortal drew for her. And he handed over a whole heap of it, no charge."
"I heard the goblin keeps boars, too. Beasts come jumping right out of his paintings, they say."
Gombo snorted.
An immortal, my foot. He'd lived long enough to know that anyone calling himself an immortal or a sage was a fraud, every last one. Con men who beguiled gullible country folk, collected alms, and vanished.
But as he listened, something about the story struck him as strange.
One called him an immortal; another said a goblin. One said he'd drawn wild ginseng; another said he'd commanded wild boars. The versions of the rumor didn't match — and that, oddly enough, smelled like there was something to it.
Goblin or immortal, what's the difference to me?
That wasn't what mattered to Gombo. Goblin, immortal — so what? True or false, there was only one question worth asking: was there something in it for him to take, or not?
And then, suddenly, his mind started turning.
Gombo was, after all, an old hand in this corner of the world. No martial arts to speak of, but quick with sums — a nose that could smell money in a single rumor.
Paintings that come alive? Forget that part.
That was just a parlor trick — nice to have, no big loss without it. What had caught Gombo's nose was something else entirely.
Wild ginseng. A whole heap of it.
If a man would hand over that much ginseng just by drawing it — whether he drew it or stole it from somewhere — then how much more must be piled up in his lair? If it was true, the place was a treasure trove, plain and simple.
And if it's a lie?
Then he was just a madman holed up in the mountains. Rob him blind and be done with it.
Gombo grinned.
It was a bet with nothing to lose.
And so Gombo called together his two boys and climbed the mountain.