Clipped Nails and Birthday Coupons
Catching his breath, Tae-yang unzipped his bag. Hanging inside was a melon soda keychain he'd received from the Blu-ray crowdfunding for Fatchehi.
He switched on his phone and skimmed the public reactions with practiced ease.
Reactions are good.
Episodes 5 and 6 of Strange Tales, which had aired recently, were burning up the internet too.
There was a creature of superstition — the Jaw Ghost — that, by feeding on a person's fingernails and toenails, could mimic their appearance. To smoke out the one hiding among the villagers, Seoryeong paid a visit to the household of Choe Hun-do, the village headman.
It was a village so wary of outsiders that its suspicion bordered on hostility, yet opening the door of the headman's house turned out to be surprisingly easy.
"They say your son beat you."
"Yes, but…"
"If two strangers went and asked you to open the door, would you?"
Seoryeong decided to exploit the soft heart of the headman's wife.
"Go to the dry goods shop, buy a woman's clothes, and let it slip — casually — that she suffered a great deal before coming here."
"What shall I say she suffered from?"
"…A burning heart. Tell her she was desperately lonely as a child, after her mother passed. That her older brother beat her often, too."
With cool, unblinking eyes, Seoryeong carved straight into a human heart.
"No mother could refuse to open her door to that."
Seoryeong was right. The village's wariness ran both ways — the tighter the guard, the faster the gossip traveled. Once the headman's wife heard of Seoryeong's plight, she opened the door without hesitation.
Throughout the Jaw Ghost arc, Seoryeong grasped everything at lightning speed: that the real son was hidden somewhere inside the house, and that the headman's wife and her household had been living as if they knew nothing at all.
Having slipped inside without a hitch, Seoryeong found the son in the courtyard behind the master's quarters — in the storehouse where the headman's wife was said to keep her treasures.
"Shh. You want to get out of here, don't you? You can't want to go on living like this."
At the sight of Seoryeong pressing a finger to her lips as if she'd come to rescue him, the comment section detonated.
Seoryeong spoke in a low voice.
"Picture what you want. Desperately…"
At her words, the gaunt son's eyes lit up with madness.
The moment he got out of here, he would kill them all — the eyes brimmed with vengeance. His hands and feet were bound and his mouth gagged; he couldn't so much as squirm, but the malice in that gaze burned vivid and clear.
Seoryeong drew out a small blade and dragged it along the lifeline of his bound palm. Blood welled up and pooled, slow and patient, in a gourd bottle. Tucking the bottle back into her robes, she looked down at him.
"Well then. Take care."
Her voice was indifferent, as if her errand were finished.
Looking down at the stunned son, Seoryeong made to leave. Straining against his bonds, thrashing as if possessed, he slammed his forehead into the floor.
But thanks to the thick, soft blanket the missus had laid down in advance, he walked away without so much as a scrape. Seoryeong gazed down at him with contempt, then pressed her small foot firmly against his head.
"How does it feel?"
The son glared up at her with eyes that wanted to kill.
"Isn't this what you did to the beasts you kicked and abused? Lured them in under the pretense of feeding them, then hacked at them with a blade, back and forth?"
"Ugh…!"
Gagged as he was, the son kept trying to force out words. Seoryeong smiled and answered as if she understood every syllable perfectly.
"Ah — 'how can a beast and a man be the same?'"
"Mmph! Ummph!"
The son nodded his head like a madman at her question. Seoryeong sneered, then turned to Myeong-do beside her.
"Hey. In your eyes, does that thing qualify as a person?"
Myeong-do regarded the creature pinned beneath her foot with a cold, level gaze.
A man who drank himself blind every day and took it out on his household. A man who lured dogs and cats with food to hunt them down and toyed with them like playthings. A man who dragged his dead father's name through the mud. A man who, in the end, committed the ultimate unfiliality against his own mother.
"…No, my lady. He does not."
"Right? That's what I thought too."
He was human, yet not human. If anything, the Jaw Ghost seemed more human than the son. It was modest and warm-hearted, and held a kind of reverence for humankind — better, she judged, for that creature to live on in the son's place.
Because the people of Yeomhoguk, whom Myeong-do had sworn to protect, were not this.
"Mmph! Mmph!"
And so Seoryeong and Myeong-do vanished once more — leaving the son alone in the storehouse.
Creeeak—. Hearing her son's frenzy, the mother opened the storehouse door and looked at him with a heart full of conflict.
And then — he was still her own flesh and blood — she tucked the soft blanket around him again, took out a pair of scissors, and trimmed his overgrown fingernails and toenails.
"When you were little… you promised that you'd hurry and grow up, and trim this mother's nails for her."
Not even a window had been permitted in the pitch-black storehouse, and the stale, fetid air hung thick. In the light of the oil lamp she'd brought, her tears shimmered unevenly.
The son she had once loved so dearly — the son who had been her whole world. Where had that son gone, that something worse than a beast now rolled on the floor before her, glaring at its mother with eyes that promised to tear her apart?
Looking at her son's palm, freshly gashed by something sharp, the mother stroked it ever so gently. A touch that couldn't bear to press down even slightly, for fear of hurting him more.
But greater than her love for her son was the wound that had been accumulating, layer upon layer, from all his rampages.
Nor was this a problem that would solve itself if only she endured. The lives her son had recklessly maimed were not one or two.
As a mother, she needed to make a decision… yet she could not bring herself to kill him with her own hands.
"Keep the beast well managed."
"…"
Seoryeong said this the next day, when she called on the headman's house before leaving the village. Yesterday's demure manner was nowhere to be found — in its place was an imperious air, as if she held the high ground. And the headman's wife understood, without being told.
She knew everything all along.
"So that it can never, ever break free."
When she said beast — what did she mean? The Jaw Ghost, or the son? Unable to manage a single word, the headman's wife could only bow her head.
"I can't kill him. Isn't that so?"
"…I know it's greed on my part."
The headman's wife wept, forcing a broken smile. She knew her son would never be mended. But she could not go on living as she had before.
For the sake of her household and the villagers, who would suffer in her son's grip — she knew this was the only way.
"Here. A gift."
Seoryeong drew a talisman from her robes. When the headman's wife gave her a questioning look, Seoryeong turned her back and answered over her shoulder.
"A talisman that lets you leave together with him, on the day you depart."
"…"
"The owner of the gukbap house gives these to me — her suyuk is excellent. You helped her set up her tavern once, didn't you? Well… I can't exactly freeload off kindness, so consider this your payment."
What will happen after I die? Will my son go on living at the hands of the household staff? Or will he be put down like a mad animal? And if someone ever unties him — will all that grudge erupt into a knife attack on the village…?
The headman's wife, who had lived trembling on tenterhooks day after day, collapsed where she stood.
Behind her, kneeling and sobbing uncontrollably, Seoryeong and Myeong-do went on their way.
The Jaw Ghost arc was a smash hit. The acting, the direction, and a story that never once let the audience down. Viewer reactions and comments poured out, and the show became the topic of conversation everywhere you looked.
Tae-yang skimmed the reactions once more and lingered over a few comments.
Tae-yang hit the like button on the comment. Then he liked another clip, and another — and at last, he arrived at Wangsimni GCV.
I'm really not this kind of movie person.
IP 85.152 bought a bottle of sparkling water at Wangsimni GCV. Normally, his film diet consisted exclusively of cinephile favorites and award-season darlings — flashy popcorn entertainment like this was foreign territory.
Predictable plot, predictable ending, predictable tone all around.
Unlike art films, where even breathing had to be done with care, a theater full of this kind of movie would be packed with people sneaking glances at their phones mid-scene, chatting with their neighbors, crunching popcorn at full volume… in short, a concentrated dose of everyone capable of ruining IP 85.152's mood.
Still, you know.
A birthday coupon had just landed in his GCV account, so it seemed worth trying at least once.
Because you had to give an occasional nod to genres outside your usual rotation — that was how your cultural world grew wider.
Plus it'd make decent small talk material at the office.
So no, he had not come because he wanted to see it. It just so happened that he'd taken a half day off because he wanted a full day of rest anyway, the theater near his office was Wangsimni GCV, and the timing worked out…
"Admission for the 3:50 PM screening of Faster Than the Law—"
At the staff member's announcement, IP 85.152 darted inside. Twenty minutes before showtime. The theater was fairly large, and it was crawling with people. He spotted plenty of Yoon Hyeon-jo's fans clutching placards and headbands.
A stage greeting is just where you see the leads' faces and the director tells you to enjoy the movie, right? This is all way over the top…
IP 85.152 fidgeted with the hand holding nothing but sparkling water and took his seat. The aisle seat, naturally — chosen in case he needed the restroom.
I came to watch a movie. Obviously I'm going to sit where the screen's best.
Which meant the back row. It certainly wasn't because he'd come to see Han Yeo-reum. Absolutely, categorically not because reviews on the nameless forum said she mostly took selfies with the back-row audience. Not at all.
"Entering now—"
Someone came in through the open front door, and camera shutters went off all over the theater.
"Actor Hyeon-jo!"
"Over here! Take this headband!"
Yoon Hyeon-jo's fans went into a frenzy. With his hair swept back neatly, he bowed with composed, graceful hands and accepted the gifts one by one. When one fan couldn't manage to put her headband on by herself, Yeo-reum, standing nearby, stepped in to help her.
Wait — why doesn't Han Yeo-reum have a headband?!
IP 85.152 had simply assumed someone would bring one for her. Before he knew it, he was on his feet. The male student seated nearby shot up too.
"Yeo-reum—!"
That was the moment. Someone who had sprinted into the theater pressed a bouquet and a headband into Han Yeo-reum's arms.
She stared at the fan with wide, startled eyes — then broke into a radiant smile and hugged the gift tight.
"What the—!"
IP 85.152, who had bellowed out loud entirely without meaning to, dropped back into his seat with lightning speed.
"What was that just now? A mic? Did the sound come through?"
"Uh… I think it did…"
The theater rippled with murmurs at the uncharacteristic shout. IP 85.152 arranged his face into studied nonchalance and pretended to look at his phone.
By then, the boy in the school uniform had quietly returned to his seat as well — and for some reason, seemed to be hiding his face behind his hand.