The Tentacle Mudang and the Furry-Obsessed Shaman
A place stocked neat and orderly with every kind of ritual implement imaginable.
In a room that anyone would take one look at and declare a mudang lived there, a mudang in flamboyant robes muttered to herself.
"If you're here, say you're here. Why are you just standing there staring?"
She spoke with the absolute certainty that someone else occupied the empty space around her. And it wasn't empty talk — a gust of wind swept through, and a bald man holding the Executioner's Cleaver stepped into view.
"Anyone with a shred of common sense wouldn't call someone at the crack of dawn. That was a monumental first night for me, you fucking bitch. This better be an emergency, or I swear to god I'm leveling this place before I leave."
"Meeting a fox girl didn't fix that filthy personality of yours, huh. So much for the old saying. 'A good woman can change a man's whole nature' — pure bullshit, turns out."
"I only have to put on a good face in front of her. Why the hell would I bother putting one on for anyone else?"
The bald man set the Executioner's Cleaver on the floor, sat down in front of the mudang, and tossed out a question with a lazy, insolent air.
"So. Why'd you call me this time? Some evil spirit you can't handle on your own? I wiped out a whole swarm of hungry ghosts not long ago — I figured nothing would be crawling out for a while."
"Unfortunately, this isn't a simple kill-or-be-killed situation. It's a complicated mess between humans."
"Then shouldn't you be calling some other shaman? You know damn well I'm useless at that kind of thing."
"I needed muscle, so I didn't have a choice. Why else would I call a human whose temper is worse than a chihuahua's?"
The mudang drained her teacup and continued in a calm voice.
"The Lily Church — which hasn't stirred in centuries — suddenly started moving."
"The Lily Church? That batshit cult that only has 'lily' in the name and whose only actual lesbian is the goddess herself?"
"Yeah, that one. And it's not some low-ranking peon either — a full-blown Saintess is on the move, and she's specifically coming to Korea. Doesn't that reek of something fishy?"
"So what? Maybe she's just a foreigner who likes K-pop."
Raksasa dug in his ear like he'd just heard the most trivial thing in the world. The mudang sighed and opened her mouth again.
"My guess is this whole thing has something to do with your friend. Your lover. Whatever she is — that fox girl of yours."
"The Lily Church's Saintess coming here has something to do with Seonghun— no, Seongha? What kind of brand-new bullshit is that?"
"It sounds like brand-new bullshit, sure. But listen..."
The mudang pulled something grotesque and slime-like out from under the desk and kept talking.
"Not long ago, some big-shot woman calling herself the Fox God showed up and undid every single seal you'd put on me. Still want to call it bullshit?"
The bald man took one look at the disgusting thing she'd produced and immediately started gagging.
"Ugh, fuck... She undid the seals on a woman who gets off on tentacle fetish tags? From where I'm standing, the Fox God isn't right in the head either."
"What did you just say, you furry-obsessed chrome dome? Tentacles are a hundred times better than furries. A tentacle that uses every single hole and wrings a full-body climax out of you — how is that not the most beautiful thing alive?!"
"Yeah, it's pure degenerate shit. Using every dirty trick in the book to reduce a woman to a breeding bitch and eventually turn her into a seedbed — how the hell is that supposed to be hot?"
"Listing off all the hot parts yourself and then claiming it's not hot is a little rich, don't you think?"
The mudang sighed, stuffed the tentacle back under the desk, and the bald man addressed her again in a serious voice.
"What was the condition for undoing the seals? The Fox God wouldn't have just lifted them for free."
"She said she had a plan and wanted me to take part. Just once would be enough, so I agreed to the contract."
"Did she tell you what the plan was?"
"Nope. All I heard was, 'The goal is to defeat a goddess for the sake of pure love.' She didn't give me the details, so I don't know either."
Glug, glug.
The mudang refilled her empty teacup and watched the bald man brood with a grave expression, quietly turning a thought over in her mind.
Just what kind of being is that fox girl, that she managed to tame Raksasa — a man infamous for his foul temper?
It normally takes the classic three visits and the grit of falling seven times and rising eight just to get this lazy bastard off his ass. What kind of sorcery did she use that a single word about her being involved is enough to make him move?
Still hunting for an answer she couldn't find, the mudang quietly set down her teacup. The moment it clicked against the table, the bald man spoke.
"So. What do you need me to do? Murder? Arson? Kidnapping and false imprisonment?"
"That's a crime, you dumb bald bastard. Just stand next to me when the Saintess arrives. That's it."
"Why are you going out to greet her? Where's everyone else? What about the old-timers?"
"Fuck if I know — I got stuck with the grunt work. 'Do as you're told.' It's painfully obvious they just don't want to go because it's a hassle, those pieces of shit."
At the mudang's furious tone, the man tilted his head as a sudden doubt occurred to him.
"Hey. If you're just going out to greet her, you don't need me, do you? Why call me at all?"
"You never know. That religion might be a nest of lunatics like a Satanist cult. The goddess they worship has a famously terrible reputation up in the heavenly realm. How am I supposed to trust the followers of a goddess like that?"
The mudang laid out her perfectly reasonable arguments, and the man agreed to help — then demanded his fee.
"Helping is helping, but how much are you paying? Don't lowball me like last time. Let's keep it clean."
"Five hundred large if nothing happens. Five times that if combat breaks out. Sound fair?"
"That'll do. We're done talking, right? Can I go? I left a note, but I'm not exactly comfortable leaving her home alone."
The man prepared his earth-shrinking technique as he asked, and the mudang nodded and waved him off.
"Have a good love life, Raksasa. I cast a fortune — if you lose that girl, you're dying alone."
"I've got no intention of losing her, so don't worry about it. And one more thing — if I catch you messing with her using tentacles one more time..."
The bald man pointed at the little tentacle squirming under the desk and delivered his warning in a voice sharp as a blade.
"Next time, I won't put a seal on you. I'll take your head. Got it?"
I left her place at three in the morning, handled everything, and by the time I got back it was eleven.
That was far too long to call a "quick errand," so the guilt hit me hard — the second I opened the door, I started apologizing in the direction she ought to be.
"I'm back. Sorry I'm la— huh?"
No presence where she should have been. Instead, I felt it on the bed.
I let out a breath of relief, thinking I'd made it back before she woke up — then I spotted the crumpled note on the table and sighed.
She'd already woken up. Woken up, and gone back to sleep.
Looking at her sprawled across the bed like a corpse only made the guilt worse, so I picked up the comb from the table, sat down, and carefully started brushing her tail.
"The sun's high in the sky. Get up!"
"Five more minutes..."
"Five minutes, my ass. You've been dead asleep for twelve hours and you want five more?"
"None of your business... Whether I sleep twelve hours or twenty-four, what's it to you..."
Still grumbling, she wound her lush tail around her entire body until she was cocooned inside it. Seeing that lazy side of her for the first time in a while stirred up a strange sadistic impulse in me.
So I leaned in close to where her ears would be and whispered in a tiny voice.
"Honestly? Fox beastfolk are pure fap material."
"..."
"I've been thinking about it, and cats are way hotter than foxes. Their fur's fluffier, and they're flexible as slime — you could shove something of any size in there and they'd take it no probl— ghhk—"
Mid-sentence, one thick, sumptuous tail coiled around my face, and her voice — dripping with murderous intent — slid into my ear.
"What did you just say? Say it one more time. Fucking cats are what?"
"..."
I'd never seen her look this ready to kill. Caught off guard, I shut my mouth — and she uncoiled her tail, produced a frying pan from god knows where, and leveled it at my head.
"There's shit you say and shit you don't. Fucking cats are what? Hotter than foxes? Do those furry cockroaches have a tail this lush, this thick, this soft? Are their personalities even good? By every single metric a fox is the clear upgrade over a fucking cat, so what kind of garbage are you spouting?"
"...Looking at that filthy temper of yours, cats are starting to look like angels."
"Bullshit. You think cats get called furry cockroaches for nothing? Those little bastards would've gone extinct ages ago if they weren't cute, you asshole. There's a reason they're infamous for being absolute menaces, okay?"
Look at her — acting like a proper canid, recoiling from cats in pure disgust.
If I tell her after we get married that I want to keep a cat, she's going to have an actual seizure.
The murderous tone was completely at odds with the ridiculous content, and I couldn't help bursting out laughing. Right on cue, her frying pan crashed down on the crown of my head.
"You spew that garbage and now you're laughing?!"
CLANG!!!!!