The Insatiable Hunger
At 1,915 meters tall and covering roughly 483 square kilometers, Jirisan—South Korea’s highest mountain outside of Hallasan—teemed with yokai in numbers as vast as its territory.
No matter how capable the Jirisan National Park Yokai Extermination Office was as a nationally certified agency, it could not possibly eradicate every single yokai hiding across the mountain.
Yokai were born naturally every hour, every minute, even in this very instant. For an office already crippled by chronic understaffing, covering them all was physically impossible.
That was why the stage-based yokai classification system had been introduced—to measure the demonic energy each yokai possessed and categorize its threat level.
The demonic energy that served as the source of a yokai’s power was indeed a mysterious force, but fortunately it could be converted into waveforms and measured.
Low-threat yokai would receive minimal monitoring but otherwise be left alone. High-threat yokai would be exterminated without exception. This was the best compromise the understaffed Yokai Extermination Office could manage.
Yokai were divided into nine stages according to the demonic energy they harbored.
Damage Potential:No recorded casualties in the past five years, but caution is advised
Response:Monitor only. No need to waste manpower unless they cross the designated line.
Damage Potential:Likely to cause human casualties
Response:Monitor closely. Exterminate as situation demands. From Stage 6 onward, yokai are considered capable of harming humans.
The office’s primary duty was monitoring these Stage 5 and 6 yokai. Unsurprisingly, they made up the overwhelming majority. Fortunately they were not especially powerful, so the office’s personnel could handle them without major losses.
For reference, the fox yokai named Miho that had appeared two years earlier was initially classified as Stage 6, but because she was a fox yokai she received an unconditional extermination order.
Damage Potential:Likely to cause hundreds of human casualties
Response:Unconditional extermination. From this stage onward, it becomes a war between humans and yokai.
Damage Potential:Likely to cause thousands of human casualties
Response:Issue emergency evacuation orders to nearby residents. Dispatch nationally certified force masters and Taoist masters.
From Stage 3 onward, the yokai essentially left the office’s hands. Exterminating one required force masters and Taoist masters. While it was not impossible for the office alone, the casualties would be catastrophic. Officially, no Stage 3 or higher yokai had ever appeared in Jirisan.
Damage Potential:Likely to cause tens of thousands of human casualties
Response:Issue district-wide evacuation orders. Dispatch at least four nationally certified force masters and Taoist masters. Transfer jurisdiction to the military. All non-specialists must flee immediately.
From Stage 2 onward, the situation was reclassified as a national disaster and jurisdiction shifted to the military. At that point, ranking lost all meaning. These were living calamities that the nation had to eliminate at any cost.
Stage 1 yokai had never been witnessed, officially or unofficially. Both their destructive potential and countermeasures were impossible to measure.
……
It was a Stage 7 yokai. Since Stage 7 yokai were not considered worth the effort to exterminate, the Jirisan Yokai Extermination Office knew it existed but saw no reason to waste manpower eliminating it. To both humans and yokai, it was an insignificant creature.
It began to move. It was a bird. No—a human? It was a bird with a human face. Even for a shabby Stage 7 creature, its size was unbelievably massive. Its tail feathers stretched five feet—nearly 7.5 meters—and its beak was the same length. The hulking thing flapped its enormous wings, drool spilling from its maw as it fixed its gaze on something.
Its target was a corpse. Had a yokai killed it? Or a carnivorous animal? A rotting roe deer lay on the ground, swarmed by flies and reeking of decay.
This was not food. Even a beast driven by pure instinct could tell it was not food. Every living thing except scavengers knew that much.
Yet the five-foot yokai, though no scavenger, perceived the corpse before it as food.
Then—
Crunch. Crunchcrunchcrunchcrunch.
Crack. Cracklecrack.
It began devouring the roe deer carcass whole, bones and all. The gluttony was so revolting it made the stomach turn.
A few minutes later, the five-foot yokai had consumed even the bones completely. Strangely, its body seemed to have grown slightly larger despite having just eaten an entire roe deer.
* * *
“Hungry…”
I whined at the drab ceiling. Are these people even civil servants? Isn’t this straight-up negligence? When the hell are they bringing breakfast…?
After I smashed the clock, one of the officials had rushed to my room, knocked politely, and asked me to wait just a little longer while they prepared a meal. I had generously answered that I understood.
So I came down to the lounge and waited five minutes. No—five minutes and thirty seconds. Breakfast still hadn’t appeared.
It wasn’t exactly a proper substitute, but the lounge table was lined with all kinds of snacks. They must have prepared them for me in advance. Was this their way of telling me to eat this crap and disappear?
Who fills their stomach with snacks first thing in the morning? Sure, I’m a yokai, not a human, but my tastes are still human.
Snacks aside, though…
“...”
Why the hell were there bags of dog food and cat food? There was even a note written in pretty handwriting.
Mix 30% dog food with 70% cat food before serving!
What the fuck. Seriously. This is the part where I’m allowed to get angry, right? They’re not actually treating me like a dog, are they? Why the hell would I eat this? I’m a person. A person! Have you ever seen a human being chow down on dog food?
“...”
Gulp.
Despite my disgusted thoughts, my body was being a little too honest. Why did it keep whispering that it might actually taste okay? Just one… Maybe I could try just one?
Come to think of it, I’d seen a post about this on an online community once. Someone had mixed dog food with milk because there was nothing else to eat and said it was surprisingly decent. It was pretty common knowledge that dog food was harmless for humans anyway.
So… maybe one piece wouldn’t hurt…?
“Huff, huff, huff… Lady Miho! Sorry to keep you waiting!”
Right on cue, someone rushed over just before I crossed the line and set down an American-style breakfast in front of me. My human dignity had been one second away from shattering. Thank goodness.
As I diligently dug into the meal one of the officials had brought, my eyes—for reasons I couldn’t explain—kept drifting back toward the dog food.
* * *
“Miho! Good morning!”
“Yeah. Morning.”
Crunch. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Lee Ha-neul watched the girl devouring something with obvious pleasure and thought to herself, The more I look at her, the cuter she gets. Of course, she had been far cuter when she looked like a girl of about ten, but her current appearance was still plenty adorable.
Lee Ha-neul felt an overwhelming urge to stroke those perky fox ears and the tail that swayed so gently. She barely managed to hold herself back. To suppress the impulse, she deliberately spoke up.
“What are you eating? Snacks? Chocolate balls?”
“Ah, this…”
At the question, Miho stared blankly at the unidentified snack in her hand, then answered with a faintly flushed face.
“Y-yeah… It’s chocolate balls…”
“Can I have one?”
“No.”
“...”
Rejected by Miho, Lee Ha-neul felt strangely depressed.