Snake Spirits, Ghost Dogs, and Fourteen Thousand Yen Ramen
“Aaaagh!”
“Whoa, what? What is it?”
That was the moment I parked in front of the abandoned house and opened my car door.
A crowd of people came scrambling out, vaulting clean over the fallen gate.
“What the hell?”
Thud. I shut the car door with a bang and raised my voice.
“What exactly do you think you're doing...?”
“Run! It's a snake! A snake!”
“Hwanggu went berserk barking and it's total chaos in there. There's blood streaming down its leg, and the venom's spreading fast—it's about to snap at anything that moves.”
The man who came sprinting out holding a selfie stick wiped the sweat from his forehead.
A snake? Hwanggu?
There was something like that in the abandoned house?
I'd been in and out of that place any number of times, and I'd never seen anything of the sort.
Did these YouTubers release a snake and bring a dog along to film some haunted mountain lodge content?
I had bought this abandoned house deep in the mountains precisely because I wanted to live quietly. Crowds of people swarming around were the very last thing I wanted.
Scowling, I looked around, and irritation got the better of me.
“Whoever parked there, move your car. This is private property.”
There was a single step's difference between the parking area and the space where the house actually stood.
The flat ground where I'd pitched my tent sat low, and only after climbing the stairs did you reach the gate of the abandoned house.
Beyond the gate lay an overgrown yard with the modest twenty-pyeong house sitting quietly at its heart.
All of it put together doesn't even reach two hundred pyeong.
Meaning the house and yard alone measured maybe sixty? Either way, well under a hundred.
The open ground below the stairs, outside the house gate, was even more spacious.
And that was where these people had parked their cars, leaving only the spot where my tent stood.
So now my tent sat planted smack in the middle of a row of vehicles.
My mess kit, which I'd washed and stacked to dry, had been knocked to the ground by someone and was caked in dirt.
The towel I'd washed and hung up yesterday was the same—dropped in the wet mud and filthy.
It didn't look like anyone had gone into my tent and rummaged through my things, at least.
Imagine you're wild camping, and cars are boxed in tight in front of and behind your tent.
Whether this was private property or a campsite, there was no way not to be angry.
“There's an open lot by the village hall, and riverbank space down by the valley. Why on earth would you park your cars here?”
“Didn't know a place like this had an owner.”
“I bought it recently. So move your cars.”
“What are you going to do about the dog, then?”
The man who'd been wailing moments ago about Hwanggu lunging at him barking now shouted at me instead.
“I don't care if it's an abandoned house—what kind of person lets a dog run loose without a leash? And the thing was injured! Why haven't you taken it to a vet?”
“What? Where exactly is this dog?”
When I reacted with plain disbelief, the man pulled his phone off the selfie stick and played back the footage he'd recorded.
Then, all of a sudden, he shrieked.
“Aaagh! Damn it, the dog's gone! Aaah! Then what the hell did I film?”
The man flew into a panic.
“What? The dog's gone?”
“Let me see.”
The people who'd gone into the abandoned house with him crowded around to check the video.
“It really is gone? Though honestly, I only heard barking. I never actually saw a dog.”
“Barking? I didn't hear any barking either. I just saw this gigantic snake.”
“What snake? Is everyone here insane?”
As if possessed, the crowd murmured among themselves, then all turned their eyes toward the abandoned house.
“What if a ghost lives in that house?”
“What? You mean a dog ghost?”
“No! I definitely saw a living dog!”
“I only heard it bark.”
“For me it was a giant spider! It was disgusting!”
You would never have guessed these people had entered the house together, they contradicted each other so wildly.
Even what they claimed to have seen inside was all different.
Have they all been possessed by something?
I studied them carefully with calm, level eyes.
Assuming they weren't lying, it seemed each of them had gone into the abandoned house, seen something different, and frightened themselves half to death.
Hold on.
The old man in the Saemaul hat had said the guardian spirit of the property was a great serpent.
And the old man had hurt his ankle.
He was wearing a beige jacket.
The snake they claim they saw, and Hwanggu with the injured leg.
Could those be the serpent and the old man in the Saemaul hat?
“Hey! Let's go back in and look.”
“No way! It's terrifying.”
“Excuse me. There is a dog, right? Even if there isn't, say there is.”
“Move your cars first. Before I call the police.”
Honestly, guardian spirits and ghosts aside, it was people I hated more than any of that.
The whole road here was nothing but open ground and empty fields, yet they'd insisted on driving in and kicking up this whole mess. They were getting on my nerves.
“Get going already!”
***
Once the commotion died down, the crowd drove off in whatever vehicles they'd brought.
They'd apparently come out of curiosity after hearing a meteorite had fallen.
But seeing as they'd done nothing but poke around the abandoned house before leaving, it seemed hunting for the meteorite had never been the point.
They won't come back. Please don't come back.
I picked up my dirt-covered mess kit and towel and headed down to the valley.
“Looks like it rained the other day.”
With the crisp water tumbling cheerfully over the rocks, I rinsed the dishes clean and scrubbed the towel again.
“Ah, that's refreshing.”
It was the very beginning of autumn now.
The leaves hadn't even begun to turn yet, but the wind drifting down from the mountain already carried the scent of fall.
It was as if the leaves that had fallen too early, soaked with yesterday's rain, were quietly preparing to become one with the earth.
Humming to myself, I came back, pulled the cooler out of the car, and got to work.
Before leaving Seoul, I'd bought pork head meat and makgeolli.
The shop selling pork head also had assorted savory pancakes, so I'd picked some of those up too.
They said they saw a snake and Hwanggu, didn't they?
While washing the dishes, I turned over what those people who'd come running out of the abandoned house had said.
And then I made up my mind.
The guardian spirit and mountain god of the abandoned house?
Or maybe a spirit creature, actually—since they called it Hwanggu.
Whatever it was, it changed nothing.
The fact that I have to live here doesn't change.
Even being near the abandoned house cleared my head and made the ringing in my ears fade.
This place was the ground where I could live in health.
Everything else is beside the point.
I arranged the pork head meat and pancakes on a plastic plate, took two cups, and went to the abandoned house.
“Elders, I'll be in your care from now on.”
This time I bowed twice all the way down.
Please don't chase me away. I'll make sure no outsiders come in and raise a ruckus. Once I've fixed up the house and settled in, I'll help out with the Village Head's village work too. In a few days the pine mushrooms will be ready to pick, and I'll sell those as well. When the earnings come in and I buy myself something good to eat, I'll share a little with you each time.
Having recited my resolution in my heart, I offered a quiet, respectful bow.
“Please, eat your fill.”
***
“All right. So now it's finally my turn to eat?”
I lit the charcoal and took out a beef tenderloin.
Come to think of it, I gave pork to the residents of the abandoned house, and I'm eating beef?
Next time I'd have to buy them beef too.
Actually, why bother setting the table twice? Before I ate, I'd just set aside a portion for them and eat the rest myself.
I salted the tenderloin, lightly seared over the charcoal smoke, and inhaled it.
“Ohhh, it melts. It just melts.”
I didn't even need the side dishes my mother had packed separately for this trip.
Clean mountain air, tenderloin perfumed with the fragrance of charcoal, and salt—that was more than enough.
“Oh, right. There's liquor too.”
I pulled a soju bottle from the cooler and swallowed a mouthful in one go.
The electric burn scraped down my esophagus and slid pleasantly into my stomach.
“Ahh, now that's the stuff.”
Soju and beef.
But I had to admit, after the soju, I found myself craving something with broth.
“Chilly day like this—should I make ramyeon?”
I'd eaten ramyeon earlier, after all.
From tomorrow I should cook proper meals. I had side dishes from home, after all.
The ramyeon was just coming to a bubbling boil.
“Say, would you sell that?”
A man came huffing down from the mountain, swallowing hard as he approached.
He wore an enormous backpack and hiking gear from an extremely expensive brand.
Looked like one of the meteorite hunters.
Ah, well. He seems to have spent all day combing the mountain.
Because I have all the meteorites, that's why.
Feeling a little sorry for the man who'd toiled all day for nothing, I smiled and spoke.
“You look pretty famished, so how about—”
I stopped mid-sentence and closed my mouth.
My gaze had caught on the diamond logo engraved on the trekking pole in the man's hand.
Wow. So there really are people who buy things like that.
It was an extraordinarily expensive pole. The kind most people could never afford.
How do I know that?
Back when our branch manager got obsessed with hiking, he'd ordered us to gather at exit one of Gupabal Station once a month.
Having been dragged into hiking against my will, I learned that hiking gear had its own hierarchy of nobility.
Literally—depending on what you wore and what you carried, you were sorted into the precious and the lowly.
Back then, when I heard the price of a pole with that logo, I'd wondered if anyone could buy such a thing short of losing their mind.
The man, completely unbothered, poked the ground with the pole as he came closer.
Even if I sold every meteorite I own, I don't think I'd buy that pole.
I had no desire to spend money on things like that.
It meant being a sucker for the outdoor gear industry.
But for this man, apparently, it was no problem at all.
“Ten thousand won work? For that ramyeon.”
He was actually offering to buy a bowl of ramyeon from me for ten thousand won.
This was a man who seemed determined to live as a mark.
It's only right to show magnanimity to someone poorer than yourself.
But this man didn't look poor in the least, and he'd volunteered himself for the role of sucker.
“Ten thousand won doesn't get you kimchi.”
Even as I said it, honestly, I wondered if I was being too harsh.
“Fifteen thousand!”
Another man came bursting out of the forest path behind him, shouting.
He was carrying an equally expensive pole.
Are these guys in some kind of club?
While I blinked, the man who'd first offered to buy the ramyeon scowled.
“Twenty thousand, then. I'm so hungry I might collapse.”
“Hey, Gokdong-su. You're the only one starving? Weren't you the one who flopped around all morning and left late, so we couldn't even pack food?”
“If you hadn't insisted on coming this way, I'd have found the meteorite already. I told you—it's on the far side of the mountain.”
The man who had already walked up in front of me pulled twenty thousand won from his pocket and held it out.
“Sell it to me. In situations like this, it's first come, first served.”
“Hey, you—!”
The two of them were apparently friends, yet they couldn't yield a single bowl of ramyeon to each other.
I took the money and said,
“I bought a whole box of ramyeon planning to camp out here for a while, so no need to fight over it.”
I handed the already-cooked ramyeon to the first man, poured fresh water into the pot, and set it boiling again.
I'd definitely given them two pairs of chopsticks, but the two men didn't bother dividing anything.
Bubble, bubble.
“There you go—already done.”
I set the freshly boiled ramyeon down in front of them, pot and all, and passed over the kimchi too.
“Wow, this is absolutely heaven.”
The men sprawled on the ground and inhaled their ramyeon.
Just like that, I sold two bowls and made forty thousand won.
But that wasn't the end of it.
Voices came chattering up the trail.
“Hey, you punks! You're eating without us? Some loyalty you've got!”
“What? When did those punks get down here?”
About five more men came running up.
All of them looked half-starved. They raised a commotion, trying to steal even a single bite of ramyeon.
“Hey, you guys buy your own. Twenty thousand won.”
“Then me too.”
“Me as well, please.”
“Me too!”
The crowd scrambled to pull out their money.
What? So I'm about to sell ramyeon at twenty thousand won a bowl to seven people total?
I didn't even have to cook it myself. They took turns boiling water in the pot and cooked their own ramyeon, one after another.
I sat quietly and earned 140,000 won.
As it turned out, they were a society of collectors—people born with gold spoons in their mouths who gathered rare items.
There's a profession called collector in this world?
Though it wasn't really a profession.
They didn't do it to make a living, after all.
But you couldn't exactly call it a hobby either.
They did it to satisfy themselves—and somehow made money doing it.
When I heard the figures involved, my jaw dropped open.
“Last time, that Joseon-era cursive manuscript—wasn't a billion won too cheap for it? If we'd set up a bidding war, we'd have made double.”
They were kkoon—professional treasure brokers.
Relics, meteorites, rare stones, cultural artifacts, and the like.
Brokers who sold rare finds and turned their hobby into profit.
“But you actually live here?”
The man who'd introduced himself as Lee Ho-young asked me.
“Your tent's soaked, and it looks like you staked the fly down before the rain—which means you've been here at least three days. I was wondering whether you happened to see the meteorite come down.”