A Real Immortal
The mountain path was rougher than they'd expected.
They'd been huffing and puffing their way up for a good while when one of the lackeys trailing behind kept glancing nervously over his shoulder.
"H-hey, boss. They say a goblin actually lives up there... Do you think we'll be okay?"
"Screw goblins."
Gombo snorted through his nose.
"I've lived this long and never once met a soul who's actually seen one. It's all nonsense people make up. Scaredy-cat."
"B-but still... Seokdu's mother really was healed, wasn't she? He drew a wild ginseng for her and everything..."
"Which is exactly what makes him a con artist."
Gombo smirked.
"Think about it. Drawing a picture that turns into a wild ginseng? Does that make any sense to you? The bastard obviously steals the real thing somewhere, then uses it to hypnotize these country bumpkins. Spreads rumors about immortals and goblins to keep 'em fooled."
"Ooh, now that you put it that way..."
Another lackey slapped his knee.
"So then that wild ginseng—might it still be at his place...?"
"Idiot, he'll have brewed and swallowed that already. But a guy like that who steals ginseng must have a hideout where he stashes the rest. Think how much is piled up in there."
Three pairs of eyes gleamed with greed.
"We strip the place bare. Immortal or not, what's he gonna do against the three of us?"
"You're a genius, boss!"
Gombo was overflowing with confidence. Immortal or raving lunatic, nobody could handle the three of them. Besides, there was no way a real immortal would be holed up in some backwater mountain village like this.
It was obvious. A fraud playing on rumors, fleecing gullible country folk.
And the more pathetic the con man, the easier the mark. Scare them a little and they'd tremble like leaves and cough up everything they owned without being asked twice.
After a long climb, a house really did come into view.
Gombo let out a snort of laughter.
This is where an immortal lives?
It was a humble mud-walled house, the kind you'd find anywhere in a mountain village—nothing to write home about. The yard held nothing but a small vegetable garden with a few heads of lettuce. And sitting at a platform table in that yard was a man, painting.
Gombo's grin widened.
The man's appearance left everything to be desired. Dirt-stained hemp clothes, hair tied back carelessly, shoes worn through to the point of falling apart. An immortal? Please. Just some penniless vagrant rolling around in the mountains.
Well, this is basically free money.
Gombo sauntered forward.
"Hey."
The man didn't even lift his head. Just kept moving his brush.
Gombo's brow twitched.
This little bastard. Ignoring Gombo the boss?
"Hey, oh great immortal. When someone talks to you, the least you could do is look at them."
Only then did the man raise his head.
His face said he was annoyed beyond all patience.
When I looked up, three men stood there, and even from a glance, none of them were welcome guests.
All three wore it on their faces from the start. Venom in their eyes, smiles that never reached their gaze, hands already calculating what they could snatch. The one in front calling himself Gombo was the worst of the lot—a face that mugged people for a living.
I knew faces like that.
I'd spent twenty years of my past life as a painter. Painters paint people. And to paint people, you have to watch them—carefully, endlessly. Every fold of an eyelid, every corner of a mouth, every wrinkle caught in the brow.
For twenty years, I'd dissected thousands of faces that way.
And somewhere along the line, you learn something. A face carries the life its owner has lived. A man who lived kindly wears a kind face; a man who lived by robbing others wears exactly that face. Not a hundred percent reliable, but close enough.
And the three faces in front of me right now?
They might as well have been stamped with HERE TO ROB YOU in bold letters.
Well, still.
A man deserves a chance first.
Judging people by their faces alone is poor form. You never know. Even someone who looks rough as gravel might just be here to ask for directions. Unlikely, sure. But you never know.
I left my brush hand where it was and opened my mouth.
"Who are you?"
And even as I said it, I casually slid a blank sheet of paper within reach of my hand.
Just in case things went sideways.
After all, I'd need something to draw.
"Who are you?"
Who are you? Seriously?
Gombo was dumbfounded. Strutting around like he owned the mountain—wait, whose mountain was it anyway? Whatever. This lunatic con man was actually talking big to him.
"Who do you think? The guys here to settle your accounts."
Gombo crooked a finger, and the two behind him fanned out to encircle the man.
"Let's be civil. Hand over everything. The paintings that move on their own? Where are they? Bring those out first."
The man remained utterly unbothered.
"Don't have any."
"What?"
"No such thing as paintings that move. It's all rumor. Nonsense."
Gombo smirked. There it is. The con man was denying everything now that he was cornered.
Truthfully, Gombo couldn't have cared less about paintings. Living, moving pictures—hogwash like that only worked on country simpletons. What Gombo wanted was something else entirely.
"Never mind that. Where are you hiding the wild ginseng?"
"...Wild ginseng?"
"You handed that Seokdu kid a whole armful for free, didn't you? Stuff like that, a guy keeps it stacked to the rafters in his stash. Hand it all over, and I'll let you keep your life."
Gombo's eyes gleamed with naked greed.
Yes—this was it. The paintings had never been more than noise. Wild ginseng, precious herbs, whatever expensive odds and ends this fraud had tricked out of the villagers. Carting off the whole hoard was the real reason Gombo had climbed this mountain.
"Where's the stash? Better talk while talking's still good for you."
The man stared at Gombo for a moment, then muttered, as if the whole thing were beneath him:
"Stash? I just paint whatever's needed, whenever it's needed."
"You little—still playing innocent to the end."
It was hopeless. Gombo's patience snapped.
"Fine. Have it your way."
Gombo reached out to grab the man by the collar.
At that exact moment—
The man's brush moved.
Exactly three strokes.
A long sweep down the spine. A slash for the front legs. Two dabs for the eyes.
That was all. Three strokes of the brush. To Gombo it looked like nothing but a crude scrawl in black ink—sloppier than what children doodle, some beast-shaped smear thrown onto the page.
"What the hell do you think you're—"
—doing, never got finished.
The scrawl.
Stood up.
The roughly sketched spine swelled with muscle, the slashed front legs planted themselves on the ground, and the two dabs became gleaming, golden-yellow eyes.
A tiger.
An ink-drawn tiger the size of a house.
Gombo's hand froze mid-grab, inches from the man's collar.
The tiger opened its mouth.
KRRRROOOOOOOAAAAAAR——!!!!
The mountain shook.
The roar tore through the air, leaves rattled down in showers, and birds exploded in every direction. Gombo heard that sound with his entire body. His stomach lurched and his legs gave out beneath him.
Something reeked of piss.
Whether it was his own, his lackeys', or all three of theirs, he couldn't say.
It was all three.
"U-uwaaaaaagh!!!!"
The ruffians shrieked and tumbled over one another, shoving each other down as they scrambled away on all fours. One bolted without even noticing he'd lost a shoe; another rolled down the slope with a soaked pair of trousers.
In an instant, the yard stood empty.
I set down the brush and looked at the tiger.
"...Might have overdone it a little."
I'd only meant to scare them, but apparently it had come out rather more vivid than intended. Then again, this was what I managed even painting in a hurry, sloppy as it was.
The very beast that had been roaring the mountain into submission moments ago crept close and flopped down at my side, resting its enormous head squarely on my knee.
All that majesty—gone without a trace.
Curling its house-sized body up as small as it could manage, it rumbled deep in its chest and nuzzled its nose against the back of my hand. It wanted to be petted. Nothing more than a cat with a frankly excessive amount of size to it.
"Silly beast."
I chuckled and stroked that enormous head. I'd drawn it in haste, so the tail came out a bit short, and the right front paw was a hair larger than the left—but the fur felt convincingly real, at least. Soft enough for my hand to sink right in.
The tiger squinted its eyes in contentment and swished its tail lazily back and forth.
Was this really the same creature that had just scared three grown men into wetting themselves?
After petting it for a good long while, I found myself glancing down the mountain path.
Screams were still faintly audible in the distance.
"Honestly. So noisy."
The tiger gave that direction a brief glance too, then, clearly uninterested, buried its head back against my knee.
I gave its back a couple of pats and picked up my brush again.
The three ruffians had no memory of how they'd made it down the mountain.
By the time they came tumbling into the market town, all three were a sorry sight—clothes torn, faces caked with mud, and their trousers... better left unmentioned.
They huddled in a corner of a gukbap house, trembling for a good long while.
The youngest lackey broke the silence first.
"B-boss. That thing... that really was a tiger, right?"
"...Yeah."
"But it came out of, out of a painting..."
"You saw it yourself, you idiot. It swished the brush a few times and just—jumped out."
Gombo's voice was shaking. Those golden eyes still flickered before his own.
"S-so then... was that thing actually a goblin?"
"Screw goblins."
Gombo swallowed hard.
"...It's an immortal. A real immortal."
All three fell silent.
Just that morning, Gombo had been crowing that immortals and goblins were all frauds, sneering that turning painted pictures into wild ginseng was just a trick to fleece country folk.
But he'd been wrong.
It was all real. Paintings coming to life. Tigers leaping off the page. Every last bit of it, real.
"I... I tried to grab that gentleman by the collar."
Gombo's face drained white.
"Demanding his ginseng, asking where his stash was... To that venerable one, of all people..."
"B-boss, what do we do now? What if he's furious and decides to punish us?"
"He's right. He could have killed us on the spot. No—wait, he spared us. He showed us mercy!"
"That's it! If that gentleman had wanted it, we'd have been tiger chow before we knew what hit us!"
Only then did the realization truly land on all three of them.
They should have died. No—they deserved to die. They'd barged into an immortal's dwelling, grabbed him by the collar, and threatened him into handing over his property. Being torn apart by that tiger right there would have been more than fair.
And yet he'd let them live.
That alone made the immortal an endlessly merciful being.
"...We have committed a grave sin."
Gombo murmured the words with a tremble in his voice, his face wearing a solemnity that would have been unrecognizable to anyone who'd watched him scheme about robbery just hours before.
"We never, ever set foot on that mountain again. Understood?"
"Y-yes, boss!"
And so the three thugs who'd climbed the mountain to rob it came back down as the immortal's most devout believers.
From that day on, the rumor spread.
And with every mouth it passed through, the rumor put on more weight.
When Gombo first told it, there was one tiger.
By the next teller, there were three.
Then five.
By the time the story reached the far end of the market town, the immortal had ten tigers at his command.
"Did you hear? The immortal on the mountain commands ten tigers!"
"Ten? I heard that once he got angry, he burned the whole mountain to the ground."
"Burned it down? Then how come the mountain's still standing?"
"They say the immortal painted a new mountain and brought it back to life."
"Ooooh..."
Utter nonsense, all of it.
And yet people passed the nonsense along with sparkling eyes.
That's just how it works. Whether a story is true doesn't matter—a good story travels, and a frightening one travels faster.
A rumor that began with a single tiger crossed the market town in three days.
On to the neighboring villages, and from there to yet more market towns.
The ripples made by one small pebble were now soaking an entire pond.
And I—
Still knowing none of this, was watering my vegetable garden in the mountains.
Or more precisely, struggling to water it.
Because that blasted tiger kept blocking my way.
Every time I tried to water the lettuce patch, it flopped down in front of me; go anywhere else and it followed, pressing its body against my legs. It wanted to play. And when something that big threw a tantrum, it was no small nuisance.
"Won't you go somewhere else?"
I flicked the water ladle and splashed it.
The tiger wagged its tail as if the shower of water were the best thing ever, then pressed its soaked body against my legs again, caking the both of us in muddy splatter.
"...Honestly."
The ferocious beast that had terrified three grown men into pissing themselves days ago was now begging to play in the water.
Would anyone in the world believe it? That this fearsome-looking tiger was, in truth, a big cat who melted at the first splash from a water ladle?
No guests had come by in days. Not a soul since those thugs. And honestly, I liked it better that way.
Quiet. Peaceful. Just right.
"If life could just go on like this, I'd want for nothing."
I murmured the words, patting the tiger's damp back.
Just how enormous a misconception that was—
Would only become clear a little while later.