The Snow White Flower
Seoryeong worked her spoon with relentless industry, as though determined not to leave a single morsel of food on the table. No matter how much she ate, her cheeks kept bulging, rounded with the stubborn insistence of someone who had not eaten in days.
Watching her shovel rice into her mouth like a soldier storming a fortress, Myeong-do let out a sigh.
"Perhaps you might slow down."
"Mmf— can't— talkin' wif food."
Even at that brusque, mouth-full dismissal, Myeong-do said nothing and simply poured her a cup of water. Seoryeong gulped it down, snatched up a fistful of grilled meat, and crammed it into her mouth.
"There are a few things I would like to ask you."
To his polite inquiry, Seoryeong answered with a careless jerk of her chin—an insolent gesture that said she'd answer only whatever she felt like answering.
The hilt between the two of them, as always, rested in her hand.
"How is it that you knew someone was there?"
Seoryeong replied to Myeong-do's question as if it were nothing at all.
"I just... know. You know how the wind blows when it blows, don't you? And why the rain falls when it rains? It's like that. I just... feel it."
Myeong-do absorbed her answer, then pressed a second question.
"Then could you not have stopped it? With the divine power you possess."
A faint shadow of guilt threaded through his voice. It was as if the memory of that withered, shriveled child had flashed before his eyes—he had not touched a single spoonful of the soup and rice set before him.
Seoryeong dragged that very bowl across the table to her own place.
"See this on my arm? What does it look like to you?"
"You wear the Five Blessings String and a wooden bracelet."
"The Five Blessings String—correct. But that bracelet isn't just wood. Wrong answer!"
Still chewing her way through Myeong-do's soup, she went on.
"It's a restraint. A seal binding my divine power. Because of this thing, I can only use about a tenth of what I actually have. Well—it's better than it used to be, at least. Jeong-an used to channel a share of her power into this bracelet to hold it for me."
At the name Jeong-an, a flicker of loneliness crossed Seoryeong's face—then vanished in an instant.
As though she had never once missed her at all.
"When that broke, a tiny bit came back to me. Of course, that's a drop in the bucket compared to what's still locked away!"
"Why is your power sealed away?"
At that question, Seoryeong set down the spoon she'd been holding. It was a serious expression none of them had seen from her before.
"Why do you think? Someone with power like mine... my energy alone would give me away."
Her soft, gentle eyes sharpened with a glint of kill in a heartbeat.
"Where I am. What I'm doing. Whether this thing is alive or dead."
The mock-casual voice sliced through the cold night air.
"Well... anyway, right now it's hard for me to sharply detect Yeomga's energy. I can't sever this restraint just to hide myself. But if I strain my spirit, I can manage a little."
Seoryeong carelessly grabbed a carrot off the table and chewed on it. Myeong-do gave a short nod.
"What nearly became that child oracle earlier has failed even as a Yeommae, so there is nothing more for us here. At first light, I will make preparations to depart."
Myeong-do wasn't entirely wrong. The child's corpse had been cremated and burned to ash—nothing remained. To enslave a soul through Yeommae, some part of the body was required.
As Myeong-do rose first from the bench and went off to ask the innkeeper for a room, Seoryeong muttered at his back.
"Says who there's nothing left to do?"
She tilted her head back toward the sky, and darkness pooled in her eyes.
A murky heavens without a single star hung over Cheonmaekji like something coiled to swallow the whole district whole.
"There's already malice thick in every inch of this place..."
IP 85.152 was in the middle of moderating concept posts in real time when one thread caught his eye.
"This absolute lunatic..."
IP 85.152 let out a groan without meaning to.
Now that he'd read it, Seoryeong felt all the more heartbreaking. Comments of agreement were already piling up beneath the post, and the upvote count was climbing.
Watching the analysis rocket to concept-post status in a matter of minutes, IP 85.152 steeled himself.
"Fine. I need to analyze like my life depends on it too..."
He had years of drama-fandom seasoning behind him—he refused to lose on interpretation to the movie-gallery crowd.
"Hey."
Deep in the night, Myeong-do woke to a small hand shaking his shoulder. Seoryeong gave a curt jerk of her chin.
"Come on. Up."
Without a word of question, he rose obediently and followed her out.
Their footsteps layered softly as the two slipped past the inn's threshold. Seoryeong's destination was the backyard just behind the building.
Someone was crouched there in the dark.
"Mm. Mmmmm—mm."
A woman was swaying something cradled in her arms, humming a tiny lullaby under her breath.
"You must have loved them very much."
Seoryeong spoke to her. The woman glanced back over her shoulder and nodded, her smile pale and sweet.
"And they weren't even born of me."
It was the stepmother of Jang-hwa and Hong-ryeon. At Seoryeong's words, she carefully drew the bundle of old, worn clothes tighter against her chest. For a brief moment, her mind seemed fully restored—her bearing was that of a dignified lady.
"I bore them with my heart, so they are my own children. I do not care that the world points fingers and calls me a stepmother—but I fear what the children might hear, were they to listen. Please do not say such things."
"Oh? Then... where are those beloved children of yours right now?"
Seoryeong snapped her fingers with a sharp crack.
The instant the sound rang out, the woman mid-sway in her gentle rocking went utterly still.
Sssslik—. She came crawling on all fours, seized the hem of Seoryeong's trousers, and screamed with eyes rolled white.
"Janghwa!Hongryeon!Janghwa!Hongryeon!"
The kind, maternal face of moments ago was gone; the stepmother's features twisted with agony and bottomless confusion.
"Where did my girls go?Hm?Did you see my girls?Where are my daughters?Hm?You saw?Did you?Saw them?Hm?"
Seoryeong lifted the wretched woman's chin with her index finger as she hunted desperately for her children.
"Shall I find them for you?"
Unable to answer, the woman only sobbed and keened, nodding her head with everything she had.
Seoryeong took the hand clutching her leg and pressed a blade against it.
"Stay still... and remember that feeling."
Blood welled red along her lifeline and trickled down, filling a gourd with a soft, sloshing sound.
Seoryeong bent down until her eyes were level with the stepmother's.
"Was there anything strange about the bodies? There must have been. Even one thing. Something different from usual... a wrongness."
The stepmother, who had been shedding tears in a daze, spoke.
"There was... a scent of flowers.... Very... thick, and... murky...."
As she listened, Seoryeong tilted her head to one side. Her eyes turned razor-sharp, as though a hunch was taking shape.
The next morning, two men came knocking on the giru's door at the earliest hour. BANG BANG BANG—! The brisk rhythm rang through the gate and out into the street.
"Anybody home—!"
The man hollering with a tipsy lilt was adorned from crown to boot-heel in the most expensive goods money could buy—a figure unlike anyone ever seen in Cheonmaekji.
"Yes, good sir."
Taking advantage of the girl whose cheeks had flushed faintly pink at his handsome face, the man flashed a roguish grin.
"To be welcomed by such a darling little thing—I must have stumbled onto a fine establishment indeed."
He slipped a hand into his coat, fished out a handful of copper coins, and pressed them into the girl's palm.
"Now then—go fetch me the most beautiful flower this place has to offer. I intend to buy out this entire establishment today."
As the man walked off in a gorgeous swirl of violet-purple robe, another man in a deep indigo one trailed in behind him with a long-suffering sigh.
"Honestly..."
The innocent girl, coins still clutched in her hand, gasped in awe.
The two men were Seoryeong and Myeong-do.
"Is that really true?"
"I'm telling you it is, unnie! Geumsoon heard it. Apparently the second the market opened this morning, two men spent a staggering fortune at the fabric stall—I bet it's those customers of ours."
The girl, flushed pink with excitement, chattered on breathlessly.
"You should've seen how free they were with their money—everything they touched was top-shelf! At one point it sounded like they were about to buy out the whole market, can you believe it."
"Well. Customers are customers either way... let's open the giru's doors for the day."
Hwa-yeong, elegantly dressed, walked toward the guests who had descended on them before the sun had properly risen. Laughter and the lively strumming of instruments spilled noisily past the gate.
Inside, she could see one flushed, red-faced man who radiated nothing but money, and another sitting with his weight measured carefully on his coin purse.
Coming to a courtesan house before the sun's even up—they're shameless wretches, clearly...
The girl playing the geomungo caught Hwa-yeong's eye and gave her a tiny signal. As expected, they were exactly the kind of trouble Hwa-yeong had predicted.
Hwa-yeong took a seat beside Seoryeong and lifted the bottle.
"With such distinguished guests gracing this remote mountain valley, allow me, Hwa-yeong, to pour you a drink."
That was the moment.
Seoryeong flipped the hand holding her cup upside down. A thin ribbon of clear liquor spilled out across the table.
At that small, casual act of violence, the geomungo player's fingers halted for a breath.
"What I want to drink isn't some crude swill like this."
Seoryeong, draped in her violet-purple robe, tilted her head with a playful little sway.
"Seolbaekhwa. The Snow White Flower."
At those words, the expression drained from Hwa-yeong's face.