The Stolen Marble
Yeo-won's question made Cheong-sil freeze.
His face went blank as he hesitated for a moment, then shook his head vigorously. Seeing the clear refusal, Yeo-won frowned.
"Why can't you tell me this one thing?"
"Shin-wol-nim will probably scold Cheong-sil... you know!"
Only then did Cheong-sil seem to grasp the situation. He glanced around nervously and clamped his mouth shut.
In truth, even what he had already said was probably enough to earn a scolding, but he kept that to himself.
More importantly, he had to coax the rest of the story out of the little fox somehow.
She could not threaten him, of course. And since she did not know what he liked, she could not bribe him either.
While she racked her brain desperately, one idea flashed across her mind.
"...I helped you earlier, remember? When you were nearly skinned alive, Cheong-sil."
Cheong-sil flinched at her words. Noting the promising reaction, Yeo-won put on a pitiful expression and continued.
"Shin-wol-nim said that if someone receives a favor, they must repay it."
She narrowed her eyes at him, and he began fidgeting restlessly.
"At this rate, Cheong-sil will never become a magnificent gumiho."
The sly remark surprised even Yeo-won herself.
"No, that's not true! Cheong-sil can become one too, you know! What do you want?"
Cheong-sil had taken the bait she tossed out in frustration.
"Then tell me why the marble disappeared."
"That is..."
"In return, I'll keep it a secret. All right?"
Yeo-won whispered coaxingly. She tried to smile as innocently as possible, but a faint twitch pulled at the corner of her eye.
"A secret? What is a secret, you know?"
The unexpected question threw Yeo-won off balance. The word was so ordinary to her that her mind went blank for a second.
"Well... it's an absolute promise. An unbreakable vow that I will carry your words with me until the day I die. If I break it, I'll be struck by divine punishment."
The words tumbled out as they came to her, growing heavier than she intended, yet they seemed to strike a chord with Cheong-sil.
Seeing him swallow hard in alarm, Yeo-won sensed her opportunity.
"D-divine punishment."
Cheong-sil's pupils quivered with unease. She was almost there. To drive the point home, Yeo-won gently lifted his front paw.
"That's right. So humans even perform this kind of ritual to show they will keep a secret."
Yeo-won hooked her pinky finger around his small paw.
"A secret means we trust each other."
She looked down at him with the most solemn expression she could manage.
Cheong-sil stared at her pinky finger wrapped around his paw and went completely still.
Was she treating him too much like a fool? He was a spiritual being who had lived a hundred years, after all.
Worry began to creep in, but then a small murmur rose from below.
"Gr-great..."
"Hm?"
Cheong-sil jerked his head up.
"That's amazing, you know! So incredibly cool, you know!"
His lovely golden eyes sparkled with excitement, their color growing brighter.
Cheong-sil hopped cheerfully around the room, humming the word "secret" to himself.
It had worked, at least. Still, she could hardly believe it had been that easy.
"Then will you tell me now? Why the marble is gone."
"Ah!"
Cheong-sil, who had been darting about the room, rushed to her side in an instant. He leaped lightly onto her lap, placed his front paws on her shoulders, and whispered into her ear.
"It was a human, you know."
"A human?"
"A few hundred years ago, a human stole Shin-wol-nim's marble, that's what he said, you know."
"......"
At Cheong-sil's words, the lucid dream from the night before surged back into Yeo-won's mind.
The girl who had spoken with such maturity despite her young appearance, and the scholar who resembled Shin-wol.
Now that she thought about it, she vaguely remembered someone on Mount Inwol muttering the word "descendant" to her.
I thought it was only a simple lucid dream. Was it something more?
Yeo-won had always hated getting dragged into troublesome matters, which made her unusually quick to read a situation.
She frowned and bit down hard on her lip—a habit that appeared whenever she was deep in thought. Sometimes she bit hard enough to draw blood, yet she never tried to break the habit.
Cheong-sil resumed hopping around the room. He seemed far more enchanted by the idea of a "secret" than worried about revealing heavenly information.
It was not certain, but if that dream had not been an ordinary lucid dream, one theory took shape.
A few hundred years ago, Yeo-won's ancestor had stolen the marble belonging to the gumiho named Shin-wol, and that same marble was now inside her body. An absurd hypothesis, yet it fit.
Come to think of it, the ghost that had followed her had been strangely fixated on her eyes.
And the ancestor was probably the child from the dream. Her name was Mun-a, wasn't it?
Unlike Yeo-won, the girl had possessed a bright, cheerful aura, which had kept her from noticing the resemblance at first. But the more she reflected, the more the memory overlapped with her own childhood.
Yet a question remained.
The two people in the dream had seemed quite close. How had things deteriorated to the point of theft?
Just as her thoughts threatened to spiral deeper, Yeo-won shook her head.
Worrying about the past is pointless. The present is what matters.
First, she needed to confirm whether the marble truly resided within her.
Yeo-won turned her gaze toward Cheong-sil, who was happily tapping at the grasshopper in front of his bowl.
"Cheong-sil."
At her call, his ears perked up.
"Do you know why I'm here?"
"I do, you know! It's because a human possesses Shin-wol-nim's marble!"
She had asked on a hunch, but Cheong-sil answered with complete confidence.
He knew she held the marble, yet he did not seem to realize she was the descendant of the human who had stolen it five hundred years ago. Or perhaps he simply had not connected the dots.
If he had known, he would not have revealed so much.
Even though Shin-wol had been so cold to him, the mere mention of his name sent Cheong-sil into raptures. He launched into a long, proud speech about things he had not even been asked, bragging endlessly.
For whatever reason, the little fox followed Shin-wol with blind devotion. If he learned that Yeo-won was the descendant of that human, his attitude might shift in an instant.
I need to watch my words.
In any case, this was a fox's den. She had to stay alert.
No matter how innocent Cheong-sil appeared, she could not afford to lower her guard.
"Then could you find out where the marble is?"
"It's the eyes, you know! When Shin-wol-nim uses his spiritual power, the marble glows and becomes visible, you know!"
Just as she had suspected. And if he was willing to share such information so easily, she should have asked him from the beginning instead of struggling alone.
"In that case, could you take the marble out of me?"
At her question, Cheong-sil's tail drooped instantly to the floor.
"Th-that is beyond Cheong-sil's ability, you know. Cheong-sil has not yet created his own marble and lacks sufficient spiritual power..."
"I see. I'm sorry for asking something unreasonable."
She had asked without much hope, so the disappointment was mild.
Thinking about it alone would lead nowhere. Yeo-won possessed no knowledge in this realm, and if a simple solution existed, it would not have remained unsolved for hundreds of years.
She knew speaking with Shin-wol would be the quickest path, yet the thought made her uncomfortable.
His face was so devastatingly beautiful that it left her speechless, and every time she looked at him, the memory of their kiss flooded back, tangling her thoughts uselessly.
They had not shared many words, but it was obvious he was not as simple as Cheong-sil.
Yeo-won, who had been staring blankly around the room, suddenly startled and reached into her back pocket.
The phone was there, as expected. She turned it on with a surge of hope, only to see it display "no service" before going completely dead.
She had anticipated it, yet the phone's uselessness only reinforced that this was no ordinary place, filling her with fresh frustration.
With a heavy heart, she looked out the window. At some point a crescent moon had risen in the pitch-black sky.
She could not even recall whether it had been day or night when she arrived.
I don't even know where this is...
She had neither the courage nor the energy to attempt escape in a place she did not know.
The only thing Yeo-won could do was wait for the man called Shin-wol.
Living is truly exhausting...
She had thought she escaped the ghosts, only to encounter a gumiho instead.
Yeo-won felt utterly lost, with no idea how she was supposed to navigate this absurd situation.
*
When the slender crescent moon slipped behind the clouds, a darkness without a single speck of light descended.
In this alien night where not even the cry of an animal or insect could be heard, the surroundings sank into a profound hush, as though the wind itself held its breath. Yet one place remained untouched by the silence, producing the only sound.
It was remarkably regular and steady, like the tapping of wood.
The sound leaked from Myoilgung.
In the northern reaches of the complex palace lay a hidden, intimate space—Shin-wol's personal quarters.
Shin-wol sat alone, playing a game of Go.
Yet the appearance was deceptive. He was merely recalling a game from long ago and placing the stones in their predetermined positions.
The motions felt unbearably dry.
It did not seem as though he played because he enjoyed it. Rather, it looked like an imitation of human behavior.
Shin-wol, who had been arranging the stones with mechanical indifference, opened his mouth with a languid expression.
The moment the words left his lips, a low beastly growl rumbled from the darkness.
The deep, resonant sound evoked a ferocious predator.
Soon the clouds parted, and a faint shaft of moonlight illuminated the surroundings.
From the dark shadow of the trees, a massive beast slowly emerged.
It was an enormous tiger with the character for "King" clearly marked on its forehead. When the tiger threw back its head in booming laughter, the ground itself trembled.