The Shy Child - 3
I woke No. 1 and sent him off on patrol, then set about cleaning the house. I was running the vacuum and wiping the floors down with a damp mop when, almost without thinking, I glanced out the window.
"Who's that?"
Morning mist was drifting slowly up the hillside, and through it I made out the faint white silhouette of a person's back. My lips parted before I realized it.
"Grandpa Hosik?"
Sure enough, it was him. He seemed to have started working on the half-finished chicken coop from yesterday, filing down the edge of the wire mesh all by himself.
After staying up so late working on it, too.
I quickly threw on a jacket and hurried out into the yard.
"Sir, what are you doing out here this early in the morning? You can't be working on an empty stomach like that — you haven't even had breakfast."
"This is nothing. Here, take a look. What do you think?"
I turned my head where his gaze led, and there stood a rectangular chicken coop that had all but taken its final shape.
"Wow, you really do have golden hands!"
"Haha, well, I've always been good with these old hands of mine."
Grandpa Hosik stepped inside the coop as he spoke.
"Hand me a couple of those boards over there. Come winter, no amount of wrapping a coop up in insulation will keep the birds from dying if it's done wrong. The best thing is a house inside the coop, where the chickens can huddle together and ride out the cold."
According to him, you had to build a smaller shelter inside the coop so the hens could go in and warm each other through the winter. Sometimes they would even lay their eggs in there and try to brood, but that could set the hens squabbling among themselves, so it was best to collect the eggs the moment they appeared. If you actually wanted chicks, you should just buy an incubator — nine out of ten eggs would hatch that way.
When Grandpa Hosik had finished explaining, I asked him carefully.
"When the temperature drops to around negative twenty degrees, couldn't I bring them indoors somewhere? What about the room where I cooked yesterday?"
The heated-floor room had a wood stove installed. I was thinking it might serve as an emergency shelter for the chickens, but Grandpa Hosik shook his head without a moment's hesitation.
"Even if they can't fly, they're still birds. Given the choice between indoors and out, which do you think they'd prefer? Besides, these are birds whose ancestors survived our winters for centuries. This will do just fine."
Once the board shelter was built and the perches were set inside, the chicken coop was complete.
"When the cold sets in, throw a plastic sheet over the top there. And the most important thing is raising them without any smell — you'll need to change out the rice hulls at least once every five days."
He told me I could get rice hulls for free at the Ugok rice mill, where they pile up as a byproduct of milling. Spread a fresh layer inside the coop and replace it every five days, and the coop would never stink.
"And the hulls you clean out? Sprinkle them with that enzyme the township office hands out for free, let them ferment, and you've got yourself natural fertilizer. It's this stuff right here."
"Oh, you mean EM — effective microorganisms?"
"You know about it?"
"I think I saw a notice about free giveaways in front of the township office."
"That's the one. So take it, sprinkle it on the hulls, turn them into fertilizer, and spread it on your fields."
Stepping out of the coop, Grandpa Hosik straightened his back and said,
"I'd say that's paid off about a hundred thousand won of the five million you gave me, wouldn't you?"
"Honestly, sir."
"But then again, I ate my fill off you yesterday, so I suppose we're even. Hah — looks like I'll just have to bring the chickens over after all."
He smacked his forehead as though he'd only just remembered, having long since picked out which birds to give me, and hurried off toward his house at a brisk pace.
How does a man his age keep a heart that generous all his life?
When I'd shared my wild ginseng with the village elders, Grandpa Hosik had been the very first to come looking for me, bearing a gift of lingzhi mushrooms.
I have to take good care of him.
He lived alone, so he had to fix his own breakfast every morning. What would it cost me to set one more bowl at my table alongside my own?
"Better get breakfast going."
**
"Hens, come on. Hey! Move along now, hurry up!"
At the sound of Grandpa Hosik's voice, I abandoned breakfast mid-preparation and opened the door.
"Ah."
Against the backdrop of a quiet mountain hollow, pale fog unspooling along the foothills, Grandpa Hosik came herding the chickens toward me. It was such a heartwarming scene I wished I'd had a camera to capture it.
And the chickens waddling along behind him all looked plump, healthy, and clever. They kept craning their heads this way and that as they came, glancing back and forth between him and my house.
"Sir, you're giving me all these chickens?"
"What's six birds? Even after giving you these, I've still got ten back home."
Grandpa Hosik spread all ten fingers and grinned.
"Still, that's a lot, isn't it? That's six eggs a day."
"One of them's a rooster."
"Five, then."
At my words, Grandpa Hosik chuckled.
"Some hens skip a day or two, you know. This many is just right to keep. That's about thirty thousand won of the five million you gave me, paid back."
"Oh, come on, don't keep doing that. It really does weigh on me."
"Haha. Fine, fine. I'll do my accounting in my own head. I'll be off, then."
Having built the coop and delivered the birds, he declared his work here done and turned to go. I darted after him and caught his sleeve.
"Please, have breakfast before you leave."
"Those hens laid nine eggs already, I'd bet. I need to get home and eat a few of those first. I'll eat there."
He told me his breakfast had been steamed egg custard drizzled with perilla oil for as long as he could remember. Was that how a man stayed so hale and hearty into his eighties — health food every single day?
"You're a busy man — go see to your errands. I have to stop by the agricultural co-op myself, split the land money among my children, you know."
With hurried steps, Grandpa Hosik headed for home.
I herded the chickens into their new coop and set out the feed and water I'd bought in advance. He'd told me to keep them cooped up for several days so they would come to think of the place as home. Once they'd settled in, I could let them roam free in the mornings and they'd always return to the coop by evening — and that would be the time to lock the door, to keep any wild animals from raiding them in the night.
"Live well, little chickens."
I was just heading through the backyard toward the kitchen for breakfast when it happened.
[Master! Master! It's bad, Master!]
No. 1 came sprinting toward me and burrowed into my arms, trembling all over.
"What? What is it?"
I lifted him up carefully and met both his eyes as I asked. Thump-thump-thump. I could feel No. 1's heart pounding against my palm.
"What on earth has gotten into you? What did you see?"
What could possibly terrify an evil spirit — one steeped in the blood of all the men his blade had beheaded on the Manchurian plains?
[I'm scared. Master, what do I do? It can't happen like it did back then. It can't.]
"Back then? You mean when Yeon Chumo was sweeping across Manchuria?"
[Yes. The reason our unit was wiped out — it was because of things like that.]
No. 1 shuddered from head to tail. First things first — I needed to calm him down, so I stroked his back and carried him inside. Maybe I could warm up some milk for him?
But No. 1 clung to me so tightly, refusing to let go, that I couldn't move either arm freely. Something I could manage one-handed, a snack that needed just one hand... Ah!
There were still some of the eggs Grandpa Hosik had brought — the leftovers from the rolled omelet, sitting in the fridge.
"Want a raw egg? Or should I boil you one?"
[Just give it to me. I'll stop shaking once I get something in me, quick.]
Grandpa Hosik raised his chickens so scrupulously clean that his eggs carried no bacteria at all — safe to eat raw, he'd assured me.
I got out a bowl and cracked an egg one-handed, setting it down on the table for him.
Slurp-slurp.
For all his terror, No. 1 demolished the raw egg in a matter of seconds, then squatted down for a proper cat-style face-washing. Watching him settle, I asked carefully.
"Now. Tell me what happened."
No. 1 stopped mid-wash, heaved a deep sigh, and let his head droop.
[There was a Parasitic Spirit. At that house.]
"A parasitic spirit?"
[Yeah. A spirit that lives by gnawing away at a person's life.]
"What — you can't be serious—!"
[The Master was right. It's latched onto the girl.]
I shot to my feet.
"Then let's go rip it off her right now!"
[And if she dies while we're doing it? A parasitic spirit becomes part of the body it possesses. It clings on here and there, genuinely believing it's a piece of that body. It can peel away eventually — but this one had a face exactly like the kid's.]
"The same face?"
[Yeah! Identical, like twins. Only, the size was different. Probably the size it was when it first attached to her.]
I couldn't make head or tail of any of it. I didn't understand the details, but if it could scare even No. 1 like this, then something truly foul must have its hooks in Seongeun.
But why couldn't I sense it even now? Because it had become part of the body it clung to? Then what was the elementary school girl I'd seen?
"Tell me everything. What exactly is a parasitic spirit, and how do we send one to the afterlife?"
"Well... the first time I ever learned those things existed was..."
No. 1 pulled a face like a child being forced to remember something awful, but under my steady gaze he had no choice but to open his mouth.
**
Back in the days before No. 1 became an evil spirit — when he was merely a killing curse bound to Yeon Chumo's black blade, Black Cloud, as it roamed the Manchurian plains — he had crossed paths with the parasitic spirits.
He told me the forests there had teemed with things like droplets of water, born from tangled, clumped, and shattered souls. They drifted about with no idea who they even were, until they found the easiest thing available and began to feed.
[A parasitic spirit that seeps into the heart seizes it, thrashing around inside — sometimes it drives its host to become a murderer. Other times it becomes the eye, and drives them mad.]
The unit Yeon Chumo led was ambushed by parasitic spirits, and it suffered devastating losses.
[Our unit was attacked too. At first only a few died. But then more and more of them went mad and died, one after another.]
Yeon Chumo had wept tears of blood as he cut down his own rampaging soldiers with his own hand.
[No one ever imagined they'd be fighting ghosts. But what could he do when his own men went berserk?] No. 1 said, smoothing down his bristled fur.
[Go ask the girl's mother. Ask her whether there was ever a terrible accident — one that nearly killed the child.]
"And if she says there was?"
[Then take the child back to that place. We gather up everything that was shattered and torn, merge them back together, and send the whole of it to the afterlife.]
Just what could a parasitic spirit possibly look like, to make him react this way?
First, let's go see the girl. Only then will I know what to do.
I poured myself a cup of coffee to clear my head, then turned to look at No. 1.
A parasitic spirit gnawed away at human lives — but No. 1 was an evil spirit who could kill a man with a single strike.
Way I see it, you're the stronger one here.
[Huh? What was that? Couldn't hear you.]
I'm saying don't chicken out just because of some bad memory from when you were young.
[What on earth are you talking about, Master?]
No. 1 began trotting briskly across the living room, clearly making his escape.
"Halt!"
No. 1 froze dead in his tracks at my command. He was the one bound to obey me, after all.
"No going outside until further notice. We eliminate that parasitic spirit as fast as we can. Understood?"
[Grrrrh. Fine.]
**
"Seongeun! Sweetie, Mommy's going to help Grandma Mak-sun with her meal, take her over to the community hall, and then stop by your aunt's to pick up some work."
Han Mija called out to her daughter, who lay sprawled on the floor of her room reading a book. Seonghyun had borrowed it for her from the school library yesterday — something at a high schooler's level, so Han Mija had braced herself for her daughter to struggle with it.
And yet, would you look at that. Seongeun had her nose buried in it, lost completely to the world of the book.
"Did you hear what Mommy said?"
"Mm-hm. You're going to get work."
"That's right."
The job was folding cardboard boxes for packing tomatoes — about two hours' work for around twenty thousand won in day wages. It wasn't offered every day, which made her all the more determined not to let it slip.
Every won counts. I have to earn every won I can.
Country living certainly cost less, that much was certain. Housing was free, and food could be had without spending a cent. Out at their vegetable garden, the cabbage and radishes they'd stored away were waiting. The frost had come before they could pick all the peppers, and plenty had shriveled on the vine — but picked, dried, and fried, they made a delicious side dish.
A wilted scallion was still a scallion. Dug up from the soil, its roots gave off that sharp, biting green-onion fragrance just the same.
This morning she had sliced radishes paper-thin and simmered them with perilla oil into a soup. The rest she'd cut up for radish rice, mixed through with soy sauce — it tasted like honey.
If they could just get through the winter like this. Come spring, when the mugwort sprouted, they could make mugwort rice cakes like Grandma Mak-sun said and sell them at the market.
"Mommy, folding boxes takes about two hours, right? You'll be okay?"
"Of course. Off you go."
Seongeun answered, lying on her stomach and swinging her feet in the air.
"If you get scared or bored being alone, call Mommy right away."
Handing her daughter the old clamshell phone, Han Mija stepped out of the house.
"They're gone! Songji-yah, it's just you and me now."
The moment the words left her lips, a hazy mist began to rise from Seongeun's body. The gathering moisture swelled into beads of water, and the beads began to take shape.
Arms. Legs. A face. A torso — every piece a different size, a different shape.
At last it finished assembling itself into a young girl wearing a pink t-shirt and navy pants.
Seongeun looked at the girl and beamed.
"Songji-yah, should we play tag again today?"