Nightmares and Reckonings

I didn't answer Kim Chang-soo's call.

I'm having lunch with a friend. He can wait.

It wasn't as if I was the one in a hurry. After the meal with Ko Min-seok, we still had the remodeling of the old house to discuss, and I wouldn't have time to meet Kim Chang-soo until tomorrow, right before I headed down to Ugok 1-ri.

As it happens, the jobless man is always the busiest one.

"Min-seok, where were we?" I popped a piece of hanwoo beef into my mouth as I switched my phone to silent mode.

God, it was delicious. Rich and melt-in-your-mouth tender.

"You little bastard, I told you to keep your phone on—why aren't you picking up?"

Hands trembling, Kim Chang-soo jabbed at the call button again. He'd screamed so hard trying to wake from the nightmare that his throat burned as if scalded from the inside. His corneas stung as though someone had poured hot sand into his eyes; even blinking took effort.

"Please. Please..."

Despite his desperate prayers, all the phone gave him was a recorded message.

"No. No, you have to answer. Damn it!" He broke into an uncontrollable coughing fit, and then he retched up blood. The dark-red gore reeked so foully it stung his nostrils.

Looking closer, he saw that the mass of blood was writhing with tick-like insects. So that's what's been eating away at my stomach.

"Ugh—AAAAH!"

At his scream, his wife cracked open the door and recoiled in horror. "Son! Come here, quick! Your father just vomited up bugs. Shouldn't we report this to somebody?"

"Honey, what are you even saying? Report it? We need to get him to a hosp—blegh!"

Even she doubled over as nausea surged up, and through his own mouth, a tangle of earthworm-like things spilled out and began crawling across the bedroom floor.

"Gah! Boys! Get in here and look at your father!"

At his wife's shriek, the sons sauntered out of their rooms, unhurried.

"Ugh, disgusting bastard."

"What now? The old man who always had to act so high and mighty."

"Ew! Somebody shut the door first—what if the bugs crawl out into the hallway?"

Shuddering, his wife and sons slammed the door shut. Moments later came the sound of packing tape being slapped over the gaps in the frame.

"Honey! Boys!"

Bang, bang, bang. Kim Chang-soo pounded on the door even as he retched up blood. "Honey! I was wrong."

He'd brushed her off—told her to quit bragging about her fancy family background and learn to save money for once. He'd nagged his sons constantly, accusing them of trying to leech off their parents instead of finding jobs. And yet they'd locked a sick man in a room to die!

"Hee-joon! Hee-sang! Please, open the door. Please."

"Just die alone, old man. Don't bring your bugs over here."

"Don't do this. Please... ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ugh!"

His ankles and the soles of his feet were burning, and when he looked down, the insects were burrowing into his flesh.

"AAAAH!"

The moment he screamed, the bugs came pouring out of his nose and mouth—only to turn and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gnaw at his own body once more.

"AAAAAAAARGH!"

He screamed with everything left in his ruined throat, and suddenly—whoosh—a dry wind came howling out of nowhere.

When he forced his eyes open, Kim Chang-soo found himself dangling from a tree in the middle of a desolate plain, his hands and feet bound.

Now ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠what is this?

Reality and nightmare had bled together until he could no longer tell which was which.

"The time has come to collect what you owe. I will kill you as slowly as I can manage."

Sring. An armored warrior swept a blade over the crown of his head.

"Mmph!"

After a flash of blinding pain, something thudded wetly onto the ground. It was a piece of scalp, hair and all. The warrior had just skinned the top of his head.

"AAAAAAAAH!"

His skull burned as if a coal had been set upon it, and lukewarm blood ran down over his face. His vision flooded red; he couldn't see at all.

"I'm scared! Please untie me!"

Flap, flap. The flock of crows that had been circling overhead began to descend.

"No—no! AAGH! AAAAAGH!"

The crows pecked at his flayed scalp and gouged at his eyes. The terror was beyond anything the insects had inflicted; Kim Chang-soo wanted to beg them to just kill him and be done with it. But the crows had already eaten his lips and tongue. He couldn't even scream.

Please. Please, just end this.

Tears of blood streamed down his face. I don't care if I die. If I could escape this pain, I'd end my own life right now.

But even that desperate wish was apparently too much to ask. He jolted awake from the nightmare and scrambled upright.

"M-Mom?"

His mother—young again, fifty years younger—looked up from sorting beans and turned to face him.

Mom! I was wrong, okay? So please, make that bastard stop tormenting me.

It had to be that man—the one who'd called himself a grim reaper—who was behind all of this.

"From this very moment on, you're going to hurt so badly you'll want to die."

That bastard's words had come true. After the absurd mistake of a traffic accident, the doctors had said he wasn't injured at all. And yet his skull felt ready to split, and the pain wringing his guts out left him gasping for air.

"This is only the beginning. When you sleep, you'll dream nightmares. When you wake, you'll be in agony so bad you'll beg for death..."

He'd waved the phone in Kim Chang-soo's face.

"Call me. I'm the only one who can save you."

And now he wouldn't pick up.

Mom, call that bastard and beg him. Tell him to stop—damn it! I'm in agony over here!

"No."

What? No? Hah, you've got to be kidding me. Then why did you even have me, huh? If you were poor and ignorant and couldn't take responsibility, you shouldn't have given birth to me at all!

Every time he'd said that in the past, his mother had wept and apologized. She'd begged his forgiveness like a criminal—for failing to give him the pampered life other children had.

But now his mother looked at Kim Chang-soo with cold, dead eyes.

"That's exactly why I tried not to have you."

I'm already born, you—

"Look at yourself now."

His mother held a mirror up to his face.

Wh... what is this?

Kim Chang-soo was a fetus, floating inside an amniotic sac. When he screamed, the membrane burst, and he came spilling out onto the bedroom floor in a rush of fluid.

He couldn't breathe. His mouth worked soundlessly, gasping, and he squirmed and flailed, struggling to survive.

Then his mother fetched a rag and a washbasin, and scraped him up off the floor.

"I suppose I'll have to throw this trash away."

"WAAAAAAH!"

Kim Chang-soo choked up a mouthful of amniotic fluid and wailed. His mother, her expression flat and indifferent, carried the basin to the well and dumped him out.

No. Mom would never throw me away. Mom! Mom!

His mother had always been like an open door. No matter how horribly Kim Chang-soo behaved, she had always stood with her arms open wide, waiting for him. But now she had abandoned him without a flicker of emotion, turning and walking back into the house.

It's supposed to be me who abandons her!

Being discarded by the one person who had poured infinite love into him—that was what finally broke Kim Chang-soo.

"Huuuuhk!"

He'd lived his entire life by cold, rational calculation; he'd assumed tears weren't something he had in him.

"Waaah... Mom."

Hot tears ran down his face in rivers.

And then, at the edge of the well, the ants and centipedes and crawling things found the tiny fetal body he'd been discarded as, and began to eat him alive.

Ahh, please. Just kill me. Please.

"I won't be able to come up to Seoul until the remodeling's finished. Once the house is all done, I'll have you over. Come visit then."

The next day, I said this as I loaded the kimchi and side dishes my mother had packed into the car.

"You're going to have your work cut out for you, aren't you?"

"Me? I'm not the one suffering. It's the workers I feel sorry for—they have to tear down all the walls, after all."

"And yet it'll only take two months?"

"Yes. The plot was laid out so squarely that we don't even need foundation work."

"Still, the weather keeps getting colder."

My mother wanted me to spend the winter in Seoul and come back to Ugok-ri once things warmed up.

"I've become someone the village can't do without, so I need to hurry back."

There was simply too much on my plate. the Ministry of National Defense's remains excavation team was scheduled to visit, and I still had Park Mak-soon Halmeoni's affairs to settle. More than anything, though, I was eager to experience a winter deep in the mountains.

A winter day with fresh snow dusted over everything. Sitting in the living room of my finished home, sipping hot tea, music playing—just imagining it made me happy already.

My own winter, with no one to interrupt me. Reading books, lazing around, rolling about all day. My chest tingled just thinking about it.

"Honey, we agreed to let Yunho stand on his own, so no more meddling. Yunho, hurry home before the traffic gets bad."

"Yes, Father."

I bowed to my father, then gave my mother a light hug. "I'll call often."

"You'd better."

I got in the car—but instead of Gangwon Province, I headed for Gangseo-gu. I had a promise to keep with Kim Chang-soo.

"Teacher!"

The moment I walked into the coffee shop, Kim Chang-soo shot to his feet and bowed deeply toward me.

Two days of torment at the hands of the evil spirit had left his face half unrecognizable. But what was even more startling was the spirit itself—it had grown. What used to be the size of an ordinary alley cat had swelled to the size of a small dog.

Just how much has it been stuffing itself with?

Yeah, that's a malevolent spirit alright.

Yeon Chumo? As in the Yeon Chumo—the one I know?

Yeon Chumo was a Malgal general, the right-hand man of Dae Joyeong, founder of Balhae. It was the kind of appointment only Dae Joyeong would have made—he had a habit of keeping any enemy commander skilled enough, regardless of where they came from.

If it's the Yeon Chumo I'm thinking of, then yes, Malgal through and through. Fine, noted.

I took a seat and crossed my legs. In the meantime, Kim Chang-soo shuffled over on unsteady legs, ordered a coffee, and set it down in front of me.

"The coffee here is quite good, sir."

"You should drink it yourself, considering how you live. Have you given any thought to what you've done?"

"I—I was wrong. When I avoided your calls, it was because I thought you were a scammer trying to twist my mother's situation into an excuse to squeeze money out of me."

"Ha! Unbelievable."

Kim Chang-soo was apologizing to me. Begging forgiveness for treating me like a lunatic, for blocking my number. Apparently he didn't intend to offer a single excuse for what he'd done to Park Mak-soon Halmeoni.

Not that excusing himself to me would have done him any good. The cruelty was already done, and Halmeoni, lost in her dementia, had forgotten it entirely.

Which is exactly why I'd come prepared.

"You will designate me as Park Mak-soon Halmeoni's legal guardian."

"Pardon? Her guardian?"

"You're her family, so you'll stamp the documents and submit them to the court. From that moment on, no one touches Halmeoni's assets without her guardian's consent."

"B-but my mother doesn't have any assets."

"She will. I have things to collect from you on her behalf."

Just this morning, I'd sat down with a lawyer and tallied up exactly what Kim Chang-soo owed.

"Support payments for every year you failed to care for your parents. The cost of her dementia care, her living expenses, her medical bills. The assets you extorted from her unfairly after your father's death. Even the money you took as a 'wedding gift' from what she'd been given while your grandfather was still alive. You're paying all of it. Every last won."

"I—I don't have that kind of money..."

"Oh? Seems you're still living comfortably enough."

I gave the cat a little flick of my chin.

Bite him.

The cat mimicked a tiger's roar, gaping its jaws wide—and clamped its whole mouth around Kim Chang-soo's head, chewing.

"Uuuuugh! AAAH!"

Kim Chang-soo writhed in agony as his shriveled lips were gnawed. It bit down so hard that blood began to flow.

"Think it over carefully. Waste away and die—or submit the guardianship papers to the court and hand over the money."

In the end, Kim Chang-soo surrendered, promising to meet every condition I'd laid out. He would sell his house, apply for an early advance on his severance pay, and deposit it all into Park Mak-soon Halmeoni's bank account.

Truthfully, part of me wanted to have the cat latch onto him for another month or so and keep tormenting him.

But when I saw that Kim Chang-soo's trousers were soaked through as he left the café, I changed my mind—one more push and he'd lose his mind completely.

May you spend the rest of your life regretting everything you've done. May your sleep be restless every single night. May your children repay you in kind, day after day. That's what I'll pray for.

After all, once he sold the house and pulled his severance early to spend it elsewhere, did anyone think his wife and sons would just sit quietly? Divorce at the very least. Or he'd be treated like a cripple in his own home.

A man with that personality—like he raised his kids properly.

They might well decide to throw away the father with no money, same as he threw away his mother.

Leaving Kim Chang-soo behind, I headed for Lee Ho-young's office. I'd promised to drop the cat off at home.

And then—

The cat bolted inside the moment I opened the door to Miho Gallery, and let out a shriek.

"Sunbae-nim, you're here! I was just about to call you. You were absolutely right—experts confirm that longsword belonged to a Malgal general under Goguryeo's influence."

Lee Ho-young explained with barely contained excitement. He'd contacted an appraiser right after I left, to verify whether it was truly a Goguryeo artifact.

I frowned.

"Yeon Chumo was Malgal, yes—but he was the right hand of Dae Joyeong, the founder of Balhae. How could you let them cut such a priceless blade in half?"

A fine crack had run through the sword.

The cat began to puff itself ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up, larger and larger.

Well. This is a problem.