The Wind That Ends the Long Deprivation
When Shin-wol gave her forehead a light push and withdrew his fingers, Mrs. Yoon’s head fell back limply. Her eyes, fixed on the ceiling, turned hazy as though she were drunk.
Her mouth, which had opened in shock, trembled before stretching wide at both corners.
“Ha, haha… hahaha!”
She laughed with all her strength, savoring the power that now saturated every inch of her body. The whispers brushing her ears and the chill piercing her skin felt sharper than they ever had before.
The woman she had been in her prime was no more than a newborn babe compared to this power.
“This is it! This is the divine strength I’ve longed for!”
Mrs. Yoon clutched her own body and writhed in surging ecstasy. The pitiful gesture—meant to guard power that could never leave her—filled Shin-wol with disgust, yet he offered no comment.
Instead, the sight soon threatened to turn his stomach, so he left the shed with unhurried steps.
The night breeze that met him outside felt refreshingly pleasant. He swept back his long hair, tossed by the wind, and a sensual smile bloomed across his face.
Humans with clear desires were easy to manage.
On the contrary, when they wanted something the way the old woman did, it was convenient for him as well.
If they craved wealth, he could grant riches no nation could buy. If they sought honor, he could bestow knowledge and insight. If they desired power, he could give them raw might.
What was always difficult were those who did not know what they wanted. Yet such humans were rare, and even they eventually fell to the power he displayed and followed the same path as everyone else.
Even Mun-a, who had seemed incapable of betrayal, had ultimately sold him out in the face of her family’s death. She, too, had loved her blood kin with desperate ferocity.
Was obsession with bloodline also hereditary? He gazed at the thin moon floating in the sky and smiled bitterly. For a fleeting moment sorrow flickered behind the smile, but no one was there to see it.
The important thing was not to repeat the same mistake.
Separate from the feelings he harbored toward her, Shin-wol did not trust Yeo-won.
More precisely, he did not trust her will to live.
As long as her blood relatives remained alive, she would never change. The devoted love she showed her family was a pathological mechanism born of deprivation.
Therefore, if that old woman continued to live, Yeo-won would remain stagnant, unable to flow forward.
She would resent him for the grief of losing her kin and for breaking his promise, but that did not matter.
Hadn’t she said it herself?
Then I can simply cover it with better memories.
Yes. That would suffice.
She would grieve the loss of her family, but in the long span of life that awaited, the event would be no more than a fleeting instant.
Painful memories could be buried beneath good ones.
Just as he had buried Mun-a, she too would be able to do the same.
Shin-wol believed without doubt that if he gave her joyful memories sufficient to blanket all that pain, she would once again smile at his side.
Conveniently, the old woman’s body was already so ruined it could no longer endure spiritual energy, so frail it would crumble in the slightest breeze.
He would become the wind today—the wind that would place a period at the end of long deprivation.
*
When Shin-wol opened the door to the old woman’s room, the foul stench of a corpse rushed over him. Beneath the dim moonlight slipping through the window, her face already lacked any trace of life; it would have been fair to call it a corpse.
With an expressionless face he walked past the lying old woman and sat at an angle by the window. Opening the closed pane revealed Mount Inwol, the moon suspended above its ridge.
Thinking of Yeo-won somewhere on that mountain made his eyes glint with pitiful longing.
He wanted to return to her side at once.
Even while he lingered here, time continued to flow, and the waste of it was almost enough to make him lament.
Once everything was finished, he had no intention of descending to the lower world again for at least two hundred years. Naturally, he would not send Yeo-won down either.
It would take at least fifty years for the marble inside her body to be fully absorbed; until then, he planned to care for her within his palace.
His palace was an isolated realm severed from the lower world. While inside it, humans neither aged nor fell ill.
Fifty years would pass in the blink of an eye. They could play baduk, drink together beneath the moon, and the time would vanish before they knew it.
What else should he do? She liked walks, so perhaps he would expand the palace and lengthen the garden paths. He could create ponds here and there so she could watch goldfish. Come to think of it, her house had held a fair number of books; it might be pleasant to turn one entire palace into a library.
And for Yeo-won, who enjoyed strange foods, he would send a shaman to fetch them.
Shin-wol gave a small laugh. How many centuries had it been since the future felt this full of anticipation? He savored the excitement he had not felt in so long and took out a cigarette.
He lit it, drew in a deep breath, and a groan rose from below.
“Ugh…”
The warmth in his eyes froze over in an instant.
The wrinkled old woman’s eyes fluttered open. Her unfocused pupils found the black silhouette hidden in the backlight and trembled without direction.
“Wh-who…”
He exhaled hazy smoke and looked down at her with cold eyes.
“……”
Shock held the old woman frozen for a moment, but she soon lowered her eyes in apparent acceptance.
“You… are you the grim reaper…”
It would have been better if she had been more shaken. Shin-wol found her swift composure uncomfortably similar to Yeo-won’s. Deciding the resemblance was extremely unpleasant, he turned his gaze back to the window.
A suffocating silence settled between them. Several minutes later, the rustle of bedding accompanied a calm voice.
“Mr. Grim Reaper. It is shameless of me to ask, but… could you wait just one more day?”
“My granddaughter is home right now. At least until she leaves Inwol… or even just until the child steps out of the house…”
Ha.
A sharp, short laugh cut her off. The cigarette in his hand vanished as though shattered, and a voice like ice crystals drove into the grandmother’s ears.
At the frigid tone the grandmother flinched. Something about his manner of speech and voice stirred a strange sense of déjà vu. At that moment the clouds parted and the faint moonlight flooded the room.
When moonlight finally touched his beautiful face, the grandmother’s expression slowly twisted.
“You… are the man who stood behind that child?”
“…Why were you beside Yeo-won? Don’t tell me her time has come as well?”
The old woman’s face drained of color. The calm she had shown at the news of her own death was now submerged in terror. Shin-wol, who could read emotion as easily as breathing, saw that the fear was genuine, yet his contempt only deepened and nothing changed.
At the low, suppressed voice the old woman’s shoulders shrank as if in fear. Yet her eyes showed no sign of retreat.
Was she no longer afraid because death was certain? A murderous glint flashed through his gaze for an instant.
He considered killing her immediately rather than waiting, but Yeo-won’s request rose to mind and he exhaled an irritated sigh.
At the savage words the sound of the old woman holding her breath reached him. Just as he thought that should have been enough, a hollow laugh came from beside him.
“Yes… so that’s what it was.”
His indifferent gaze shifted back to the old woman. Had she not heard him tell her to be silent? He was already raising his hand, thinking he really would have to cut out her tongue this time—
“You seem to cherish Yeo-won quite a lot.”
The old woman’s eyes folded gently. The expression so closely resembled Yeo-won that Shin-wol’s hand stopped in midair.
“So that’s how it was.”
She repeated his words in a distant voice, then turned her head with a face lost in thought.
Her gaze fell upon a photograph of the man who appeared to be Yeo-won’s grandfather.
“The old man can finally close his eyes in peace.”
Shin-wol frowned at the sight. Looking only at that face, one could never imagine she was the person who had wounded Yeo-won. He had deliberately stirred her emotions, yet he had not forced her to speak falsehoods.
Which meant every word the old woman had ever spoken to Yeo-won had been sincere.
Faced with the contradiction, Shin-wol regarded her with displeasure. The old woman gave a small laugh.
“I know. How ridiculous it must sound for me—the one who hurt that child—to speak such words.”
She slowly turned her head and straightened her spine. With her chin drawn in, she asked in a composed voice.
“Mr. Grim Reaper, will I fall into hell?”