Nightmare (2)
“In just seven more months, we’ll get to meet our baby. I’ve already picked out a name for her—‘Heukmi.’”
“……Just hearing that name tells me she’s your kid.”
Heehee. Baekmi laughed, her voice brighter than before.
“Come visit our Heukmi! You’re not some ominous black Imugi—you’re a divine beast that brings blessings and fortune!”
“What are you even saying? Anyway, just live well.”
[No.]
In that instant, another gaze turned toward him as he walked away.
[You can’t go back like that.]
Someone watched the Imugi depart and Baekmi enter the room with a more relaxed expression, wiping her eyes.
It was Rune Eclipse.
The scene shifted in that moment.
Baekmi stood just three or four steps behind, while a broken man knelt before the grave.
Dressed in rough hempen cloth, he tearfully called out desperately to his late mother.
“Dear, are you okay?”
“……”
His sobs quieted, and an eerie silence fell.
That was when Baekmi, worried for him, clutched her swollen belly and approached with difficulty.
“Why? Why didn’t you give up the fox bead?”
Baekmi’s face twisted in pain as she opened her mouth to speak.
But her husband was faster.
“We can always have another child. Why didn’t you try to save my mother, who I’ll never see again?”
“I told you, the fox bead doesn’t have that kind of power.”
Baekmi shook her head, her face crumpling.
“Besides, the bead is inside our child—your child. How could you even think of sending this baby away?!”
Her injustice and misery burst forth as she cried out, holding back her rage.
But her words didn’t reach her husband’s ears.
“Lies! You just didn’t want to part with it, didn’t you? I was the fool for marrying you. I fell for your pretty, flashy looks.”
“What……?”
His eyes gleamed with madness.
His bloodshot gaze seemed ready to burst as he spat venomous words.
“Didn’t you have something to do with my father dying on that mountain too?”
“H-how can you say such a thing!”
“I met you when I went to his death site. At first, I thought you were the mate he sent me, and I liked you!”
Horrific words poured endlessly from his mouth.
“You’re just a cunning yokai who tempted me with trinkets, claiming to love me!”
“Please, stop!”
Baekmi gasped, clutching her mouth, then her ears.
Her head shook side to side as memories flickered and vanished in her mind like lightning.
Her husband kneeling, begging to revive his mother with the fox bead.
Her horrified plea for him to never say such things, her first anger.
His furious rebuke, calling her an unfilial daughter-in-law.
Turning away as she wept, asking how he could say such cruel things.
Those scenes thrashed in the mud, slowly sinking into the mire.
[Stop.]
Rune, who already knew the end, muttered unconsciously.
Finally, her husband glared coldly at Baekmi and unleashed his rage in one breath.
“You’re just a yokai who came to devour my father and now my mother too!”
“Aah!”
Baekmi wailed in despair.
She was no longer a happy gumiho or a beloved human wife.
“You bitch who killed my parents!”
Slap!
“Kyaaak!”
A stinging slap flew.
She crumpled to the spot, but startled by the cold ground, she thought of the baby and half-rose.
“I was the fool for marrying you without knowing!”
Slap!
“Agh……!”
Baekmi’s feet tangled, she twisted and lost balance, falling toward her outstretched hand.
Thud!
A dull, ominous sound.
Red blood flowed from her temple, smashed against the tombstone’s edge.
Her stunned husband froze like a statue, staring down at her unmoving form.
“Darling……?”
Baekmi’s limp fingertips twitched, then stilled.
Blood from her split scalp soaked the grave site red.
“Ugh……, uwaaak!”
Everything ended in an instant.
“I-I didn’t kill her! I didn’t mean to kill her!”
The trembling man fled in terror from the spot.
That was when it happened.
Baekmi’s neglected lips moved faintly.
‘Muk-ah.’
Whoosh.
The Imugi’s black scale rose from deep within her embrace into the air.
The star-like gleam from the dark scale briefly held her emptying gaze.
‘Save my child.’
The black scale shot away like an arrow toward one place.
Transparent tears welled in Baekmi’s eyes, trickled down her cheek, mingling with the red blood.
‘Heukmi-ya.’
The child she’d called in her heart, never held in her arms.
In Baekmi’s dying eyes, a black dot descended from the distant sky.
The Imugi, arriving and meeting her gaze, knew she had already breathed her last.
“Damn it!”
There was no time for anger.
He wrapped her body in his shed shedskin, cast a spell to preserve the corpse from decay.
That was when it happened.
“Wh-who are you?”
In his distraction, the husband who had killed Baekmi and fled had returned.
To a mere human’s eyes, the Imugi looked like a grim reaper from the underworld.
“You must be Baekmi’s husband.”
“Hiiik!”
Thud!
The ominous black Imugi’s form loomed behind him like a shadow.
“I-I made a mistake……!”
“You fucking dog.”
Thwack!
“Hngh, urk!”
No mere human could withstand a divine beast’s killing intent.
Kicked in the gut by the Imugi’s claw, the man rolled on the ground, legs giving out as he collapsed, wetting himself in fear.
“Shameless, utterly depraved scum.”
“Kuhk……!”
Thwack! Boom!
Under the merciless beating, the husband gasped and retched, eyes rolling back.
Feeling like he faced the reaper himself, he flailed his arms, then clasped his hands in desperate prayer.
“Sp-spa……re me, please.”
With teeth knocked out, his words were slurred.
A chilling aura wrapped around the husband’s body.
“You, who killed your wife, dare beg for your own life?”
Crack!
“Hurk!”
Ribs and wrist snapped. As the aura of death brushed past, gauging his end, the husband sobbed snot and tears, curling and trembling.
“I want to take your life right now, but there’s someone else fit to exact your punishment.”
Events born of human affairs should follow their natural course.
Private vengeance would squander all the virtue he’d accumulated.
“Don’t think you’ve escaped for now.”
The Imugi’s lip curled in cruel sneer.
“Your soul will never find rest. In hell, your tongue will be torn out, you’ll suffer eternally amid swarming snakes, dance on blades only to be chained and sawn apart.”
Jet-black energy flowed from the Imugi’s fingertip, slithering snake-like across his face.
“Aaaah! Hot, it burns! So itchy!”
Sin
The character for sin (罪) that the Imugi imprinted on the husband’s face faded like ink after a moment.
Scratching his burning, itching face frantically, the husband stared at him in a daze.
“If you accumulate virtue in life, you might reincarnate as a bug at best.”
Seeing the red eyes laced with ghostly fury, the husband shrieked and scrambled away.
Watching him flee, the Imugi spoke into the air.
“Even a scum like that begs for a chance to atone in life?”
—Yes.
Baekmi’s soul stood beside the Imugi.
From the moment he arrived, she had explained everything and begged him not to kill her husband.
The Imugi sighed.
“He deserved death.”
He had no intention of showing mercy.
There was no reason to spare a human who tried to murder not just his wife, but the young divine beast in her womb.
No—sending him off quietly already boiled his blood with a thousand demons.
It was Baekmi who soothed his unbearable killing urge.
—He’ll go to hell anyway and pay for his sins. No need to dirty your hands.
“……”
He, who usually had a sharp retort, stayed silent this time.
Baekmi smiled bitterly.
“Where shall I bury you?”
—I’m a gumiho born and raised on this mountain. Right here, of course.
“You don’t mean near that wretched human’s village?”
Irritation surged, roughening his tone.
The gumiho hummed, hand on her cheek, and tossed lightly.
—Except for my husband, I lived so happily here as a gumiho. This mountain’s four seasons. The bustle of humans. Joyful times.
Heehet. Baekmi smiled, interlocking her fingers, and turned to the Imugi.
—Not too close, but somewhere you can see the mountain I lived on and the village below.
“Hoo. You’ve got no resentment at all.”
Calling him frustrating one last time, Baekmi gazed at the Imugi with a melting smile.
—I was so happy and glad to know you.
“Shut up. I’ll do as you wish, so pass on properly.”
—Stubborn to the end! Sigh, who’d befriend this hothead once I’m gone?
Baekmi’s soul faded gradually, but they pretended not to notice, bickering lightly a few more words.
Then, at the final moment.
—……Heukmi-ya, Mommy loves you so, so much. I love you.
The words she’d delayed.
Her whispering soul turned to light dust and vanished.
Rune paced around Baekmi’s grave, feeling regret swell in his chest.
‘Why am I made to see something like this?’
Rune pressed his throbbing head and muttered.
[Damn nightmare. Why won’t it end?]
That was when it happened.
Flash.
A small light appeared from somewhere, circling the grave and following Rune.
[?]
‘How does it sense me? There’s no light spirit like Rai here.’
Rune peered closely at the light.
It bounced excitedly in the air, as if thrilled to meet him—a bead containing rainbow hues.
[Fox bead?]
Twinkle!
Rune unconsciously cupped his hands and caught the bead.
That was when it happened.
A small window appeared over the bead, engraving information.
Bound
Descendant of the Gumiho.
The soul of the one-tail fox is contained within.
[Soul?]
The tiny bead in his hand held the soul of the child Baekmi left behind.
Rune’s eyes trembled, his grip tightening slightly.
‘Like that rose where a soul took root, can I revive the soul in this bead too?’
The knowledge in Rune’s mind answered: an unknown realm.
But possibility existed as well.
‘Let’s try.’
Rune clasped the bead in both hands and, throat tightening, intoned the Word of Power.
[Revive.]
Whoosh!
A light that whitened the world in an instant shrouded the dream.
On a blank white background, information updated.
Servant <Demon Realm Rose>'s soul resonating.
Soul embedded in Demon Realm Rose synthesized successfully with succubus!
Within the light, before his eyes appeared a little girl with black hair, perky ears, and transparent pink eyes.
The child smiled adorably and opened her mouth.
[Time to wake up!]
It was the nightmare’s end.