The Anomaly (2)
As things turned out like this, I suddenly found myself regretting Dokgo Ryeon’s absence.
Ryeon was a little strange, sure, but her instincts were sharp. In a situation like this, she would have been a huge help.
“This is really a mess.”
“It is, isn’t it? But, um, unnie.”
As I muttered under my breath, Cheongha propped her chin on her hand.
“Are you really in the mood for snacks right now?”
The teahouse we were in sat in one of the liveliest spots in the market, right where foot traffic was heaviest.
Apparently, it was a famous place, always packed with customers.
I picked up a colorful piece of danggwa from the plate in front of me and popped it into my mouth, answering with complete calm.
“Try some too, Cheongha. The danggwa is very sweet.”
“Unnie.”
Cheongha was staring at me with a grave expression.
Completely unfazed, I lectured her as though I were being wise.
“Cheongha. When you need to use your brain, sweets are essential.”
“…I see.”
She didn’t seem to believe me at all.
Honestly!
This was the Middle Lands, so she just didn’t know better, that was all. The brain ran on sugar!
Cheongha usually followed whatever I said without question, but since this whole mess concerned her hometown, she seemed to be taking it far more seriously than usual.
To soothe her, I shrugged and said, “Don’t worry. We’re here, aren’t we? Calm is the greatest weapon of all.”
“Sigh. Fine.”
At that, Cheongha finally let out a sigh and accepted the piece of danggwa I held out to her.
As she chewed it with small, careful bites, her face gradually softened.
See? I told her sweets were the best.
Smiling in satisfaction, I took another piece and carried it to my mouth.
That didn’t mean I was just idling around, though.
Inside the crowded shop, I was listening carefully as always, gathering information the way I always did.
Before long, an interesting conversation snagged my ear.
“I had the strangest dream last night.”
“Same here.”
“It was a bizarre one. Red light was shimmering and drifting about, and then blue light came down from the sky and the two crashed into each other, didn’t they?”
“Huh? That’s the same dream I had.”
“You too?”
“Me too.”
That was extremely suspicious.
Not only those two, but even other people nearby who overheard them began talking to their companions, saying they’d had the same dream too.
“I found it already.”
“Huh?”
Cheongha looked confused by my sudden remark, but I ignored her reaction and walked over to the men who had started the conversation.
“I had that dream too! That’s amazing!”
“You, miss?”
Pretending to be startled, I approached them, and the men gave me a quick once-over before greeting me warmly.
Mm-hm. This was what being a beautiful girl got you.
Middle-aged men never stood a chance.
But that wasn’t what mattered.
I asked them more about the dream to see what was really going on.
“Isn’t it such a strange dream?”
“It is. In all my life, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Could it be some kind of sign of fate? For so many people to have the same dream…”
The men exchanged expectant looks, as though they were hoping for something, and stared at me.
This is what being a beautiful girl did.
They were already thinking of ways to tie it all together.
Feeding them the line as if it were nothing, I deliberately spoke a little louder.
“But wasn’t there someone in the light? I think there was a man standing there.”
“Hm? Was there?”
“Yes, there was. Someone was definitely there.”
Of course there wasn’t.
I’d never had such a dream. I was just making it up.
What mattered wasn’t the men’s reaction, but the reaction of the people around us who heard me.
They too began nodding along, saying someone had appeared in their dreams as well.
“If I remember right, it was a member of the Jegal Clan.”
“Right! But who was it?”
Everyone began murmuring together, debating who exactly the figure from the dream had been.
That was when I decided to add one more variation.
“No, wait. Was it someone from the Hwangbo Clan?”
“Huh? Yes, that’s right. It was someone from the Hwangbo Clan.”
As soon as I said it, everyone immediately began murmuring about which member of the Hwangbo Clan it had been.
This was hopeless.
It was the same as before.
Once someone made a claim, everyone else accepted it without a shred of doubt.
I could understand the men who were already paying attention to me, but even the people around us were like this. That made no sense.
Could that many people really be discussing one thing and then, all at once, switch topics without even questioning it?
If anyone had contradicted me, I’d have pressed them for more details about the dream and used that to dig up information, but like this, there was no point.
I stood up and returned to Cheongha.
“Let’s go, Cheongha. I don’t think we’re getting any useful information here.”
“All right.”
Without a word of complaint, Cheongha rose to her feet.
After we left the teahouse, she leaned toward me with a serious face and whispered, “Unnie, those people from earlier were weird. No matter what was said, they just believed it all.”
“Exactly. At first I thought it was just hypnosis, but this is far stranger than that. Maybe it’s some kind of wicked sorcery that erases a person’s will and turns them into a puppet that only accepts what it’s told.”
As I nodded while speaking, Cheongha’s face went pale.
As expected, Cheongha’s reactions were excellent.
The whole thing was starting to feel like some absurd conspiracy theory, and that somehow lifted my spirits as well.
“Then next…”
Just as I was looking over Cheongha’s face to decide our next destination, a flash of deeply familiar red hair cut across my field of vision.
Was that Ryeon?
She was forcing her way through the crowd, walking quickly.
“Ryeon…”
The moment I tried to call out to her, Dokgo Ryeon’s figure vanished around a side alley.
It was so unlike her usual relaxed, leisurely self that I was taken aback.
As I stood there staring blankly to one side, Cheongha spoke up cautiously.
“Unnie, is something wrong again?”
“Hm? No, nothing.”
She must have been in a rush.
She’d said she had business to take care of, so I figured she’d handle it herself, and we decided to keep investigating.
“Let’s go to the clothing shop next.”
“That’s part of the investigation?”
“Of course it is. You trust your unnie, don’t you?”
Cheongha seemed to doubt my utterly flawless route.
Eat, dessert, and now shopping.
It was the perfect investigation plan.
I strode ahead with confidence.
On the way to the clothing shop, we ran into the men who had been drinking in the vacant lot near the teahouse earlier.
They’d apparently just moved locations and were still drinking away.
“Who do you think will win the Yongbongjihoe this time?”
And even their conversation topic was still the same.
Drunk people: say the same thing over and over.
“Obviously the sword of Mount Hua! The Mount Hua Sect’s core disciple has this one in the bag!”
“Exactly! Who could compare to the beauty of the Plum Blossom Sword Art?”
“Mount Hua is the best! Mount Hua is the best!”
Huh?
A moment ago, they’d been praising the Jegal Clan to the skies. Now they were praising the Mount Hua Sect instead.
“Are they that drunk?”
Tilting my head, I entered the clothing shop at last.
“Look at this. It’s pretty. Suits me, right?”
“Maybe this color is better.”
Holding a gorgeous silk dress against my body, I asked Cheongha’s opinion, and she, too, relaxed and happily helped me pick out clothes.
Now that we were in the shop, it seemed her mood had improved a little.
She eagerly held one outfit after another against me, searching for the best match.
I took the clothes I liked to the counter, but no one was there.
“Excuse me?”
I called for the clerk, and someone shuffled out from the back.
His hollow, dazed face and unfocused eyes wandering through empty space gave off a strangely unsettling feeling.
“I’ll take this.”
“….”
He stared at me in silence.
What’s his problem?
Then suddenly, one thought flashed through my mind.
“I already paid, so I’m taking it with me.”
I told him that without handing over a single coin.
He obediently nodded in agreement.
Wow, free stuff? What a score.
“Unnie!”
Cheongha, standing beside me, was horrified and clutched my arm.
“I was joking.”
I paid properly.
The clerk, still dazed, accepted the money and put it in the cash box, then resumed staring into space, standing there as if nailed to the floor.
Once we stepped outside, Cheongha rubbed her arms.
“That was creepy.”
“It was, wasn’t it? Strange. Keep going.”
By now, I was starting to feel oddly unsettled too.
I’d just wanted to play detective and wrap everything up in no time.
But wherever we went, the same eerie situation kept repeating, and it was making my head spin.
“I don’t think everyone’s just confused about their memories. Their emotions and judgment are all blurred too.”
“What could be causing it?”
Memory, emotion, judgment.
A phenomenon that restricted human behavior and warped it into something unnatural.
No matter how I thought about it, this felt like an attempt to create puppets.
Then how?
And who?
Questions upon questions.
The first place to suspect was still the Jegal Clan, the long-established power in this region.
But this was the time of the Yongbongjihoe. With the realm’s experts gathering here, there was no reason for them to pull tricks like this on ordinary people.
On the contrary, if something happened now, the Jegal Clan would be the first to draw suspicion.
If I were them, I’d avoid this time of year too.
We reviewed everything strange that had happened today and huddled together to think it over for quite a while.
Then, all at once, I thought of Dokgo Ryeon, who wasn’t with us.
“Actually, there’s one more thing we should check.”
“What is it?”
She’d said yesterday that something was up with the Jegal Clan’s formation.
Cheongha had agreed with that too.
First, we needed to find out whether that was true.
I jumped to my feet and told Cheongha, “You know a thing or two about formations, don’t you?”
“Unnie, I’m a member of the Jegal family.”
She looked up at me with a rare expression of irritation.
Seriously, the people of the Jegal Clan had this ridiculous pride in formations for no reason, and apparently she was no different.
We hurried toward the fortified wall where the formation had been set up.
Just then, members of the Jegal Clan were there, checking the formation.
What exactly were they checking for over the course of several days?
As we approached, one of them spotted us and waved cheerfully.
“You’ve come!”
“Huh…? Yes, do I know you?”
I was taken aback by how warmly he greeted us when I’d never seen him before.
Ignoring my reaction, he went on with a smile.
“Ah, Young Clan Leader invited the two of you. He asked that you come to the Jegal Clan for dinner tonight.”
We went there yesterday and he wants us back today?
How badly did he want to see us?
Song Hyeon, what a sinful woman.
“We already went yesterday, though?”
“Huh? I was guarding the mansion gate yesterday, and the two of you definitely never came.”
What was he talking about?
We had clearly gone to the Jegal Clan last night and suffered through an awkward meal full of nothing but vegetables.
His certainty actually left me flustered.
“Are you sure?”
“I remember clearly.”
The Jegal Clan martial artist thumped his chest and spoke with full confidence.
He was so certain that it became embarrassing to even insist otherwise.
“What is this, unnie? Turns out my memory was right after all. We ate braised pork at the inn yesterday.”
Cheongha said this with obvious pride, letting out a relieved breath.
My head was spinning.
What? Then was I the weird one?
With two people making the same claim, I started to think my memory was the one that had gone wrong.
Cheongha’s memory, the teahouse people, the drunk men, and now the Jegal Clan martial artist’s reaction.
Everything was wrong.
It felt as if I alone had fallen into a different timeline.