The Great Preta
"The air's nice."
I'd only come an hour out of Seoul, and already the air was different. All the way through Goyang it was still unmistakably a city, no real difference at all. Push a little farther north into Paju, though, and empty fields started opening up everywhere.
On the bus I'd searched up farms, meaning to look them over one by one. The closest to the stop—
"Might as well start with the strawberry-picking farm."
Pretas, I figured, would rather gather where there was plenty to eat than at the livestock farms packed with tourists. According to the Joseon Record of Strange Beings, even pretas couldn't endure the yang energy people gave off for long.
I trudged on. The trees along Seoul's roads held blue lines so faint you had to stare to make them out at all. The trees here showed clear blue lines without my trying.
"Moving out to Gyeonggi wouldn't be half bad."
Paju was a little far, but even Goyang was a forty-minute ride to the office in Gwanghwamun. Seoul housing prices aside, my body had already turned into something obsessed with blue lines. If it meant eating food with even slightly richer ones, there wasn't a place I wouldn't go.
"Oh. That must be it."
Geumchon Strawberry Farm
Climbing the mountain path, a chill prickled over me. The sun hadn't even set. There was no reason I should feel like this. The higher I went, the sweet smell peculiar to strawberries gave way to something strange and rank.
Looking around, I found a snapped branch. Its blue line was unusually deep. Just in case, I picked it up. Strangely, it settled into my palm as if it belonged there. I could feel the blue line flowing from the branch and the blue lines gathered near my heart moving together, alive to each other. The right hand gripping it felt as though it had grown longer. I gave the branch a few swings, and a strange pleasure ran through me.
"So that's why the wizards in movies walk around with staffs."
I was going to need a staff the blue lines could properly run through. First, though, I'd finish the Paju farm tour. Then I'd go looking.
"Oh."
A yellow line. Nothing like the dozens I'd seen in Gapyeong. A thick, enormous yellow line, as if hundreds had fused into one, writhed across the horizon. It looked like a hundred-year serpent rising into the sky to become a dragon.
Strength gathered of its own accord in the hand holding the branch. It wasn't fear. It wasn't terror. It was excitement. If I exorcised—no, corrected—a preta pouring out a yellow line that thick and huge, I couldn't begin to imagine how much thicker the blue lines of the company ginseng would grow.
Instinctively I poured my blue lines into the branch. Unable to bear the flood, it crackled and began to split.
"A little more... just a little more..."
Fortunately the branch held about half of them, though it shook violently. It looked ready to burst at any moment, and still it was doing the hard work.
Thank you. My first staff.
The fence stood open. I passed through and walked toward the farm. In the distance a shed came into view, its door creaking and swinging in the wind.
Then something came out of the shed. No—came out wasn't enough. It burst forth so violently it looked ready to smash the door to pieces, each step a heavy thud against the ground.
It resembled the preta I'd seen at the ginseng farm. It was no ordinary preta. There wasn't a gaunt place on it. Pretas were supposed to eat and eat and never put on flesh, forever craving more, and yet the one before me was several times larger and far more solid than any I'd seen. The moment it left the shed it kept growing, until it stood well over three meters tall. For ease of distinction, I decided to call it a Great Preta.
"Sniff... sniff..."
The Great Preta flared its nostrils and glanced this way and that. Then the tip of its nose stopped. It was pointed at me. A hazy light rose in its eyes.
"It's here... it's here... something that smells delicious... food... food... something I can crunch between my teeth..."
A voice so vile anyone else would have pissed themselves. I was fine. It had a mouth, eyes, and ears, so I'd already figured it could talk. Thanks to all the books I'd read, my store of secondhand experience was enormous, and it seemed ordinary shocks no longer reached me.
"Ah... I'm drooling... drool, running down... where is the tasty prey... why is there only stuff that tastes bad..."
With a faintly dazed expression, the Great Preta drew closer and closer, the ground shuddering under it. It wore something like ragged cloth, soaked through with blood. Some of the stains had browned with age. So there had already been victims. For better or worse, this farm itself seemed to have none.
Quietly, I leveled the branch I was holding at the Great Preta. It had swollen until it wouldn't have been strange for it to explode at any second. A little closer. Come a little closer. At last the Great Preta came within true reach.
Suddenly it stopped. It rolled its eyes east, west, south, and north, one after another—and then our eyes met. The corners of its mouth shot upward as if they might tear.
"Found you at last... a delicious crunch...!"
The Great Preta opened its mouth wide and lunged to swallow me. An ordinary person would have been sucked into that enormous maw, pierced by those sharp fangs, and burst with blood. I calmly aimed the branch at its mouth—more precisely, a little above it. Last time I'd only punched through the mouth and failed to kill it instantly. A lesson learned in the field.
From the tip of the trembling branch, a blue line—no, a long, thick line that deserved to be called a rectangle—shot forth. At the same instant the branch exploded, splinters flying in every direction. The thick blue line pierced the Great Preta's palate, punched through its skull, and lanced into the sky.
"Khek..."
Blood poured from its mouth like a waterfall. Its eyes clouded gray. Staggering, the Great Preta pitched forward. A boom, and dust filled the air.
Fanning it aside with one hand, I approached the fallen thing. The Great Preta lay dead, its skull pierced through. A success.
"Hm. It's too big."
The thought of dragging that bulk home left me at a loss. I could shoot a blue line and punch a hole, but I couldn't cut it into pieces. Even if I did, the sheer amount was too much. There might be another way. I left the Great Preta for the moment and walked to the shed.
Inside, everything was blood. No people—only carcasses of rabbits, chickens, and the like, strewn about. But—
"Ugh..."
In a corner sat a steel box that had no business being in a farm shed. About the size of an ordinary backpack. Locks were fastened all over it; there was no ordinary way to open it. The moment I reached it, the locks came undone by themselves. Like magic.
The inside was full of blue lines. As if someone had stretched a transparent membrane over the box, they couldn't get out.
"Hm?"
I understood at once. I could put that Great Preta's corpse in here, couldn't I?
I carried the steel box outside, set it on the ground, lifted the Great Preta's right hand, and tried slipping it in. Blue lines burst from the box and wrapped the body. The corpse was sucked inside, and the blood scattered all around went with it. The locks that had opened snapped shut again.
"Be nice if the box shrank a little too—"
Before I could finish, light flared from the steel box. It shrank until it could rest in my palm. I didn't know the principle, but it was entirely possible. It was magic, wasn't it? There was a security camera, but it was a small farm, left unmanaged, and the thing looked broken.
I tucked the steel box into my bag and raised a thumb. Magic really was the best.
I gathered the exploded fragments of the branch. A faint blue line still clung to them, so I could tell which pieces they were. I piled them neatly in one place and pressed my palms together.
A short memory. But I was grateful.
My first staff.
I'd meant to visit a few more farms. But I'd burned through nearly all my power, and nothing was left in me. Before I knew it, the sun was almost down. First, the bus back to Seoul. The moment I sat, I sprawled out completely.
Still, there was work to do. I opened my phone and asked an occult expert for help. The Great Preta I'd just seen wasn't in the Joseon Record of Strange Beings either.
Pretas usually lived one to a farm. Territorial creatures, like cats. Which meant that to catch a hundred of them, I would have had to tour a hundred farms. Instead I'd settled it in a single stroke with a Great Preta—no, a Preta King—worth a hundred ordinary ones.
Put simply, the return was excellent.
"Wonder if there's another one of these."
On the bus, I slid into sleep. Tomorrow happened to be Sunday. I'd have to come back to Gyeonggi.