Yeonmae (3)
"Scared speechless, huh? Can't even manage a single word?"
Oops. Now was not the time to be impressed.
I stopped marveling at my first-ever delinquent encounter and turned my mind to how I was going to survive this crisis.
'Should I just run for it with Shadow Stepping?'
It was nighttime, and there were streetlights all around. The slightest movement meant an environment positively stuffed with big, fat shadows.
Escaping, in other words, would be no trouble at all. The problem was what came after I ran.
"Chosen by a legendary-grade, my ass... what a pain in the ass to watch."
By then, the cadet who'd blocked my path had closed to within about three steps.
I decided to keep watching a little longer. It was a necessary move even just for the sake of a comfortable getaway — when their shadows overlapped with mine, my range of movement grew that much larger.
"Not gonna answer? I said, answer me."
"...I don't know what I'm supposed to answer."
It wasn't exactly a question that demanded a response in the first place, was it?
Just as I was starting to get genuinely curious, the Ssangyonggeom called out to me.
"Master."
"Behind you."
The moment I heard those words, I chose to dive headfirst into the shadow.
My vision flipped over, and a world with no air to breathe unfolded before me. The beings I'd glimpsed the first time I used this ability were still nowhere to be seen.
No — were they truly invisible?
I saw something bound tight from head to toe. It almost looked like a cocoon, if anything. Between the cloth wound around its entire body, a single spot of color was visible.
Positionally, it seemed to be an... eye. Somehow I felt certain it was a vivid color, though for the life of me I couldn't perceive which color it was.
"Do not go there."
"Cross over, and you will only die."
Would I be able to make it out if I got closer? But the Ssangyonggeom held me back. Truth be told, even without their intervention, I could never have reached that far anyway.
'The space that's permitted to me is...'
I looked at the shadows of the living world. I could see the cadet who'd tried to ambush me from behind and the one who'd blocked my way, both of them flustered.
Their shadows kept shifting position, over and over.
"—he straight-up vanished, that doesn't make any...!"
"—never even fought you! Behind!!"
I resurfaced into reality at the coordinates just behind the cadet who'd blocked my path.
My legs scrambled backward at a distance closer than I'd expected, while the delinquent cadets, caught off guard by the turn of events, chose to regroup for the moment — which is to say, they pulled away from me and clustered together among themselves.
"Whoa, whoa."
Now that some distance had opened up, I finally had room to breathe. I raised both hands slightly in a gesture of calm and measured the gap.
Seven steps to the nearest cadet. The repositioning had completely dissolved their encirclement.
Conditions were far better than before. The price, of course, was that I'd seriously rattled their nerves.
"Sneaking up behind people like that — you scared me, you know."
"You little shit—"
If they were going to curse me out for suddenly appearing behind them, then why, pray tell, had they been the ones creeping up behind me? Was this what they called hypocrisy?
"Forget it — just take it from him!"
"He's nothing without the Ssangyonggeom—!"
So their little sneak approach really had been an attempt to steal the twin blades. A chill ran down my spine.
'That could've been really bad if I hadn't dodged.'
If they'd thrown a close-range punch at me, fine — that I could understand. But they'd tried to lay hands on the Ssangyonggeom of all things?
Would the blades really just sit back and let someone unworthy of them seize hold? And what about the moment when someone else grabbed them and dragged them more than five meters away from me?
It's true that I had my arrangements and promises with the Ssangyonggeom. The cloth I kept them wrapped in couldn't suppress the blades themselves, but the anti-theft countermeasures were properly in place.
Still — if I could have lived on that assurance alone, I never would have been assigned a separate dorm room in the first place.
I shook my head slowly at the cadets bearing down on me. Naturally, I didn't forget to keep dodging them while I did it.
These idiots were playing at being delinquents, sure, but that wasn't a crime worth dying for.
'I just need to run far enough, that's all.'
Stepping outside the reach of the streetlights, I quickly sized up my escape options out of the corner of my eye. The decision wasn't a hard one.
I would cut through the back garden and make for the dormitory building. Once I was inside, there'd be plenty of other cadets around, not to mention the training officers — surely those idiots wouldn't dare keep acting aggressive in there.
"What the hell is—"
Splash.
Except that at the very moment I entered the underworld, a voice cut in.
'Huh.'
That voice just now — it sounded like Pyo Do-hyeok.
Reflecting that the biggest downside of entering the underworld was not being able to hear anything from the land of the living, I flipped the world back over.
"—hui, what exactly do you think you're doing. Don't tell me a group of you is tormenting a single person?"
It was Pyo Do-hyeok, of course.
Judging by his direction of approach, he had come striding out of the back garden, stepping squarely into the middle of this whole mess.
"Uh. Hey, I'm fine, really."
"Irrespective of your well-being, I cannot stand idly by and watch such cowardly and dishonorable conduct."
If I'd been alone, I would have bolted without a second thought — but a third party barging in made things awkward now.
At the very least, if the person intervening had been a friend of mine, he might've said something like let's just run for it. Pyo Do-hyeok, however, was no such friend.
"Hah... who the hell even are you?"
"Hey, it's Pyo Do-hyeok. Do-seok's little brother."
"Fuck, you think I don't know that? And what does that have to do with anything? Has Do-seok ever once looked after his brother?"
"No, well, still..."
And just like that, Pyo Do-hyeok's intervention had thrown things into ambiguity — not only for me, either.
The delinquent cadets who'd been pressing in on me likewise halted at a cautious distance, reacting with open irritation.
"Hey, Do-seok's brother. Get lost. This isn't something you should be sticking your nose into."
"Whether I involve myself or not is my decision to make. Not yours."
"God, you're annoying. A guy who couldn't even get chosen by an anomaly, and he's lecturing us..."
"Whether I was chosen and whatever it is you're doing right now are entirely separate matters. Do not muddy the point."
"Fuck, this is the guy who got into 1st Platoon on his family name, and he's talking big?"
Crack. The instant his family was mentioned, Pyo Do-hyeok's fist clenched with tremendous force — so hard that his muscles pulled taut and you could hear the grind of bone against tendon.
"That. Also. Has nothing. To do. With the present situation. I will say this again — do not muddy the point."
Pyo Do-hyeok chewed out each word one by one and spat them back. Under that unbending bearing, even the delinquent cadets began to visibly sour. And that did not strike me as a good sign at all.
"Hey, let's just bail. Not worth dealing with him."
The dormitory was right there, and the training officers had to be on standby nearby — was there any reason to keep this up?
I offered up what seemed like the most sensible proposal on the table. Whereupon Pyo Do-hyeok whipped his head around in refusal.
'...This absolute bastard?'
Am I supposed to thank him for the help, or ask him why he barged in if this was how he planned to act?
"Ugh, this is suffocating as hell! Just hit them! Won-gwi, go!"
"Un- unplea— unpleasant!! Why, why, why only you—!!"
"Wait, wait a second. You're going to deploy an anomaly?"
"Send yours out too! What are you waiting for!"
"U- uh, co- co- combat hound—beast, awake—!"
KONG!
"...!"
At that moment, some of the delinquent cadets began to cross the line.
My own use of Shadow Stepping had been nothing more than an escape tool, but these people had just given their own anomalies a direct order to attack.
"Are you insane?!"
Cadets brawling among themselves ended in a moderate level of discipline. But if you fought with anomalies actually deployed? That could go all the way to expulsion.
Was this why — knowing that — I grabbed Pyo Do-hyeok in disbelief. The cadets' anomalies had already closed the distance to point-blank range in an instant.
"Hold your breath!"
"What do you—"
Shadow Stepping permitted anyone in contact with me to enter the underworld as well.
The world flipped upside down.
"Run!"
Thankfully, the spot where Pyo Do-hyeok and I had been standing was in shade.
Gripping a bewildered Pyo Do-hyeok, whose vision had been turned inside out, I ran toward the dormitory.
"What even is this place— ghk!"
"You can't breathe here!"
Even an ordinary person could hold their breath and run for ten seconds or so.
Watching the image of the living world reflected on the ground beneath us, I hauled Pyo Do-hyeok back into reality at exactly the right moment.
"Haahk!"
Shadow Stepping was practically designed to give first-timers motion sickness. Unfortunately, the situation was in no way kind enough for me to spare Pyo Do-hyeok's stomach.
"Run!"
The anomalies, having briefly lost their target, immediately began chasing us the instant we reappeared.
Some of them were beast-types, too — faster than we were.
"Hold your breath!"
"Ghk!"
I flipped the world one more time.
A dog-shaped thing with a deer's face brushed past through the empty air where we had stood only a heartbeat ago.
"Relocating."
"...Right."
Maybe because he'd been through it once already, Pyo Do-hyeok's expression was better than before. He'd gotten his breath back under control, too — he wasn't gasping anymore.
"This place— hm."
I nodded.
Pyo Do-hyeok pointed — not toward the dormitory, but in the direction where the delinquent cadets were standing.
I briefly wondered why on earth we'd go that way, and then the answer dawned on me.
Almost none of the anomalies were beside the cadets anymore. They'd dispatched the bulk of them chasing us.
What few remained were either non-combat types, or belonged to masters who were themselves of the "maybe anomalies are a bit much for me" persuasion.
In a situation like this, the delinquents' side was actually safer than the dormitory. The back garden was wider than I'd expected, and with so many streetlights around, the shadows connected only halfway, patchily — which made it all the more true.
I folded down my three extended fingers one at a time, and then I turned the world upside down.
Our bodies surged upward out of a patch of shade near the delinquent cadets. Near them, that is — there was one bush between us and them, so if we played it right, we could stay out of sight.
"Fuck, where the hell did those bastards go?"
"Don't tell me they're already inside the building?"
My calculations had landed perfectly.
I had deliberately held a crouching posture when I moved us into reality, so the bush covered our bodies completely. The delinquent cadets failed to spot us.
"Fine, then. I'm using it."
"Wait — hey!"
"Are you out of your mind? That's not something you can just gloss over and walk away from!"
At that point, one of the cadets pulled out a small bamboo jar. A single glance was enough to tell how ominous it was.
"How utterly lamentable."
"Cursed foolishness, this."
At the same time, the Ssangyonggeom made their displeasure known. This was no mere flicker of annoyance. It was a disgust and contempt welling up from somewhere deep in the chest.
"Hwadam's famous for being short-handed as it is — no way they'd go all the way to expulsion over this, right?"
"No..."
Which meant that bamboo jar was no ordinary entity...
"...Yeonmae?"
"What?"
Then Pyo Do-hyeok murmured a single word, and my body sprang upright on pure reflex.
"Stop this, right now!"
"Wh- what—!"
"What the— why is he—"
While the other cadets could only gape at my sudden appearance, the one holding the jar simply smirked. His hand moved to the lid of the bamboo tube.
"Opened it, have you?"
"Huh...?"
And the thing that came leaping out of the bamboo tube met the cadet's eyes dead-on.
"Opened it, didn't you?"
It was a baby. It had been a baby.
Skin hanging slack with the full measure of its starvation, hands stretched long with nothing but greed for food — they pressed down on the cadet's shoulders, his face, his arms.
It was impossibly huge for something that had supposedly come out of a small bamboo tube.
The baby's mouth yawned open, wide and cavernous.
"You've completely lost your mind!"
But before that gaping mouth could swallow the cadet's head whole — the bundled Ssangyonggeom in my hand swung up and knocked his arm, and the bamboo tube in it, clean upward.
THWACK!
"AAAGH...!"
CRACK!
The struck arm bounced upward, and the cadet lost his grip on the tube. It was so light that it shot straight up into the air.
Which meant the baby that had burst out of the tube went flying up with it — its bite closed on empty air, never reaching the cadet's head.
The bamboo tube holding Yeonmae came down on the grass a short distance away. The grass that had survived even winter rotted away to nothing in an instant.
"Get back, now! If you don't want to die!"
Yes, it had been wrapped in cloth — but the shock of being struck by ten kilograms of metal would be considerable regardless. Even if it broke the bones in his hand, that was a far better fate than having his head deleted outright.
Praying the fool understood at least that much, I seized the culprit by the collar and shoved him backward behind me.
"U- uuugh."
"Wh- what the hell..."
Thankfully, the rest of them had at least some grip on reality. Shaking with shock and terror as they were, they still had the judgment left to fall back, step by step.
"Yahui! You fall back too! That thing is not something a cadet can handle!"
"You think I don't know that?! Then tell those brain-dead bastards to back off first!"
Yeonmae. The curse that fashions a starving baby.
The tale behind it was so gruesome that it never appeared in the original manhwa. But the story itself was so famous that I'd run into it again and again while researching anomalies and spirits of every kind.
That was the only reason I'd been able to react the instant I heard the name.
"Hun— hungry."
In the meantime, the Yeonmae sprawled across the grass began to rise. It had no legs — but its arms were so numerous that they served in their place.
A monster resembling a spider, or perhaps a centipede, bent its face back and twisted its joints into place.
"HUNGRYYYYYYY!!!!"
Yeonmae was counted among the most dangerous of curses, and if the tale had been reflected faithfully, then the anomaly's grade would have to be high as well.
In other words — unless someone bought us time, it wouldn't be the least bit strange for every single cadet standing here to die.
"Damn it all— I'm calling the instructors!"
"Then call them fast!"
Rather than dodge the Yeonmae bearing down on me, I squared the Ssangyonggeom against it and took the hit.
I had no other choice. Directly behind me stood one more fool who still hadn't retreated — the very one I'd dragged back by his collar.
Even if he was the one who'd started all this, I couldn't just stand by and watch him die. Gritting my teeth, I braced myself and absorbed the Yeonmae's charge.
THUD! A weight that had no business existing shot up through my arm muscles and jarred my entire body.
"Hungryhungryhungryhungry!!"
All the while, the baby's teeth gnashed rapid-fire against the cloth bundle holding the Ssangyonggeom. The dozens of arms that got past the blades seized hold of the blades' body — or reached right past them to clamp around my forearms.
The grip strength in those skeletal, fleshless arms was terrifying; I could feel the pain setting in. My service academy uniform, made of supposedly sturdy material, began to fray away bit by bit.
"Run!"
Thankfully, the presence behind me had vanished. Pyo Do-hyeok had quickly grabbed the stumbling fool and gotten him out.
In that instant, I shifted my position through Shadow Stepping. Passing through the underworld to change my coordinates, I surged up directly behind the Yeonmae.
"Hungryhungry...!"
The Yeonmae, having momentarily lost its target, whipped its body around at once. It seemed to register my presence the very instant I re-entered reality.
Its grotesquely bent arms creaked and groaned as they rotated the whole mass of its body.
"...Ugh, that's disgusting."
"I SAID I'M HUNGRY!!!!!!!"
The Yeonmae came lunging at me once more.
And so began the fight for my life — a bullfight to the death.