Renovating the Abandoned House—6
The vet drew blood from No. 1, dripped it into a test kit, and watched the reaction. His face brightened almost immediately.
"Everything came back negative. Once we finish all the vaccinations, he'll just need to be neutered."
At the vet's words, No. 1 jolted in alarm and tried to bolt.
[No! No way!]
'It's not even your real body, you know.'
The body scheduled for the neutering surgery was nothing more than a possessed vessel. There was no reason removing the peanuts from a borrowed body would affect the evil spirit inside it.
[Still, no! Without it, I'll feel so empty.]
'It's not like you're ever going to use it. What is there to be empty about?'
[Heukrangdo—the Black Wolf Blade that was originally my home—was forged by Yeon Chumo himself. He hunted a tiger on Mount Baekdu and sealed its blood and bones into the sword. I was originally a spirit with a tiger's power. But if that's gone? Aaaagh!]
No. 1 hung his head and groaned in anguish.
He wanted so desperately to protect Sojunghana—was I really right to ignore his wishes on this?
I stared into empty space and tried to imagine it.
'Say I possessed someone else's body. And that body... didn't have one???'
A chill shot down my spine. Goosebumps rippled across my skin, and I shuddered.
Forget it. Absolutely not.
I spoke up carefully, addressing the vet.
"I'd like to think over the neutering, actually. There are no other cats in the village, so we have a rat problem."
"Ah, planning to keep him as an outdoor cat. Even so, if you skip neutering, an intact male has a high chance of developing prostate cancer down the line and dying in terrible pain."
[I'll worry about that later. Please, just let me protect my Sojunghana.]
No. 1 looked up at me, eyes brimming with tears.
"For now..."
I hesitated, then went on.
"Let's start with the vaccinations. I'll give the rest a few days of thought."
"Understood. In that case, since his peanuts are fully ripe, I'd recommend keeping him indoors."
"Indoors?"
"If you let him roam outside, he'll disappear chasing after females. And if he wanders into another cat's territory, he could get into a fight to the death."
'Ha. Listen to me, getting a whole education on cat mating seasons that I never asked for.'
In any case, the neutering could wait until all the shots were done.
No. 1 was prescribed his vaccinations, oral dewormer, and a topical all-in-one antiparasitic.
Stepping out of the livestock clinic, I noticed far more people about than usual.
'Hmm, what's going on? What are these smells?'
The scent of frying batter, of simmering anchovy broth, of blood-sausage stew, of puffed rice—it all teased my nose at once.
None of these were smells I'd ever caught on my usual trips into town.
"It's market day?"
My eyes went wide.
I'd been meaning to check out the Five-Day Market someday, but it wasn't easy to time a visit to market day. Yet today, just as the saying goes—the day you go is the day the market opens—I'd wandered into town right in the middle of it.
"Stay in the car for now."
[Whyyy? It smells delicious! You promised you'd buy me cake.]
"I'll buy it and bring it out. Stay in the car."
I wrapped the white porcelain jar in bubble wrap, double and triple layers, then placed it in a wooden box I'd bought in Seoul. I wrapped that box in yet more bubble wrap, tucked it into a soybean paste carton, and loaded it into the back seat of the car.
Disguised so that no one would ever guess what was inside.
Since workers would be coming and going constantly at both my house and Mak-sun Halmeoni's, the jar had to be kept somewhere safe—and that somewhere turned out to be my car. After all, no one goes around breaking into cars in a mountain village.
Still, today was market day. Crowds everywhere.
'Better safe than sorry.'
I set the cat down inside the car.
"You guard the soybean paste box with your life. If anyone so much as touches it, you teach them a very thorough lesson."
[Kill them?]
No. 1, droopy from his shots, snapped his head up and flicked his red tongue.
"Tsk. Not again!"
Do evil spirits actually find killing people fun?
"They say male cats calm down after being neutered, you know. Less aggression and all that."
[I apologize.]
No. 1 climbed onto the soybean paste box and curled himself into a ball.
[Don't forget the cake.]
Perhaps because the possessed body was worn out from the shots, No. 1 drifted off almost at once.
'He really does look just like a sweet little kitten when he's like this.'
The cat evil spirit who had fully opened my Yeongan—my spiritual vision—made his home in Heukrangdo, the Black Wolf Blade.
According to him, Yeon Chumo had forged it with the blood and bones of a Mount Baekdu tiger he had hunted with his own hands.
Years of killing had soaked into that blade until it became a gwimul—a dwelling place of vengeful spirits. And whatever lived inside such a thing was no ordinary strength.
Yet here I was, wielding that very creature as I pleased.
'What exactly am I?'
The White Porcelain Grandmother had said I was a medium on an entirely different level.
But would a mere medium walk around with a gate to the afterlife strapped to their back?
'I don't think so.'
Was it just my imagination that I might be something far greater, and far more dangerous?
"Wow, the market's pretty big today."
I followed the noise and the smells, and before long I stood gaping at the tents that had sprouted up along both sides of the alley running from the back of the Nonghyup branch to the township office.
"There's nothing they don't sell here, is there?"
Fruit, fish, fresh meat, all kinds of wild greens. Knife sharpeners, puffed-grain vendors, clothes, shoes, potted plants, mountain herbs—the works.
It was as if someone had picked up the entire traditional market near my parents' place in Seoul and laid it out here, stall by stall.
"Oh right, I need to buy rubber boots."
Out in the countryside, you were supposed to wear rubber boots instead of hiking boots to fend off snakes and ticks.
"And I need a rain poncho, tick spray..."
By the time I'd gathered everything essential to country living, I could barely manage it all with two hands.
'Should I head back now?'
Right at that moment, a rich, nutty aroma hit my nose—impossible to just walk past.
Soybean oil was bubbling furiously in an enormous cauldron. The vendor was cutting strips of well-proofed dough, twirling them into twists, and tossing them into the oil in a practiced rhythm. The blazing-hot oil coated the dough's surface and puffed it up, until golden-brown twists of kkwarabaegi were scooped out and rolled in sugar, releasing a sweet fragrance that brushed right against the tip of my nose.
"There's no resisting that!"
How could anyone pass by freshly fried twists of dough?
"How much are these?"
I stopped in my tracks to buy some—just as the stall next door began stir-frying pork intestines on a griddle.
Chicken feet glistened red with sauce, piled up in a mountain; I gathered they grilled them over charcoal the moment you ordered.
"Can't pass this one up either!"
They'd be snacks for Carpenter Jang and the crew, but I bought the lot, figuring I'd taste everything myself first. On the way back I stopped by the bakery for the cake too, until my fingers were white from gripping bag after bag.
"Phew."
By the time I hauled all my loot back to the car, No. 1 was fast asleep. The possessed body must have been too weak for him to stay conscious.
'Cats really are at their cutest when they're sleeping.'
I smiled to myself and turned the ignition with a rumble.
Bam! Bam! BAM!
The moment I pulled into the abandoned house's yard, I heard the sledgehammer smashing through walls.
I carried the snacks and walked over to the house.
"Tear that whole thing down and scrape it clean!"
Carpenter Jang was bustling about, barking out instructions left and right.
Since I'd told him I wanted to preserve the original rafters, it seemed they'd started with reinforcing the support columns. Several steel posts now stood holding up the roof while demolition of the walls and removal of the floorboards were underway.
There were four workers besides Carpenter Jang, and apart from one who looked to be around sixty, the other three appeared to be foreign laborers.
'I should have checked the faces of the men riding in that truck earlier.'
I'd exchanged greetings with Carpenter Jang without paying attention to the workers, so I'd gone and bought armfuls of chicken feet, pig's trotters, and stir-fried pork intestines.
'Will foreign workers even eat this stuff?'
I'd heard that Indonesian workers avoided pork for religious reasons.
"Sir, I brought some snacks for everyone."
"Oh?"
"Yes, sir."
I held up the plastic bags bulging with food in both hands. Carpenter Jang blinked in surprise.
"That's all snacks?"
"It was market day, so there was a lot of good food for sale."
"Goodness, why'd you buy so much? Haha. Now I feel terrible. This could pass for a full meal, you know?"
"Then feel free to treat it as one."
"Ah, and after you treated us to eel yesterday too... Keep this up and I won't know how to thank you, hahaha!"
There wasn't a decent restaurant anywhere in Ugok 1-ri, and town was a twenty-five-minute drive away. Fifty minutes round trip, plus parking—that made an hour. There was no way the crew could shuttle back and forth on that road for lunch.
That was why Carpenter Jang had them eat a hearty breakfast before setting out—lunch had to be something quick like bread or triangle gimbap.
"You can't even dream of Chinese food delivery out here. But with you bringing all this, today we've got nothing to worry about."
"I'll bring snacks regularly."
"No, no, then I'd feel too indebted. Besides, isn't the homeowner's job supposed to be keeping a hawk's eye on the renovation?"
At his words, I smiled.
"Don't worry about the hawk's eye."
Even a casual glance would tell me whether the work was being done well or not.
"All right, everyone! The owner brought snacks, so come and get it!"
Carpenter Jang called the workers over, and the men pulled off their hard hats as they walked up.
"Wow, thank you so much!"
Thankfully, the foreign workers welcomed the snacks I'd brought with genuine delight.
"Thank you, Boss!"
"Sho delicious!"
They devoured the spicy food with such gusto that they seemed every bit as Korean as the rest of us. Caught up in the mood, I picked up some chicken feet and started eating too.
'Ah, this is the stuff!'
Spicy and sweet, chewy, with that subtle hint of charcoal smoke. Absolutely incredible.
"Hey Boss, de heawth in de kitchen won't bweak. I twied to smash it wid de hammer and almost died." (The kitchen hearth won't break. I tried smashing it with the sledgehammer and nearly got killed.)
"You have to chip away at it bit by bit with a machine. It's been fired for decades—it's even harder than ordinary stone."
"De concrete bweakew? Tun took it. We're doing constwuction at de house down dere." (The concrete breaker? Tun took it. We're doing construction at the house down there.)
Work had started on Mak-sun Halmeoni's yard too, so it seemed they were passing the tools back and forth between the two sites.
"Just keep eating. I'll go get it."
Carpenter Jang started to rise, abandoning his snacks midway. He'd rounded up the crew at the crack of dawn, loaded the trucks, driven to the township office and then out to Ugok 1-ri, and had been wearing himself out shuttling between the two houses without a moment's rest.
"No, no, stay seated. I'll bring it."
I sprang to my feet—parting, just slightly, with the chicken feet I'd been so happily devouring a moment ago.
"Please rest. It's the electric drill, right?"
"Well, it's the one for drilling asphalt... No, I should go myself."
"I'll get the details and bring it. Don't worry."
I urged Carpenter Jang back into his seat and picked up the car keys. And then, suddenly—
"The hearth?"
I stopped mid-stride and turned my head toward the kitchen.
That was where the Serpent Guardian had lived. When the shaman and the Janggu Player had come rampaging through last time, the guardian spirit had fled through the back gate and up into the mountain.
'But he might have come back.'
He couldn't be allowed to get hurt.
I turned toward the kitchen and said to Carpenter Jang, "Give me a moment—I need to check something."
"Huh? What is it?"
"It'll only take a second."
I slipped quickly into the kitchen and looked toward the firebox where the guardian had emerged. Nothing was visible right away, but there was space behind the firebox, where the flames heated the ondol floor of the room.
He might have crawled in there. It had certainly been loud enough.
I glanced around, then picked up the sledgehammer.
'They said the firebox won't break, didn't they?'
If I tapped it gently with the hammer and made a little noise, surely the guardian inside would come out.