A Thousand Years of Han
"Hah! Hah!"
Not even twenty minutes into the climb, and the Youth President was already breathing like a man at death's door.
Shaaaaaa!
The rain fell on without pause, and the sodden ground clutched at their ankles with every step.
Squelch!
"Aigoo!"
He had stepped on a jutting stone and very nearly gone down hard. Kang Hyeong-seok caught him before he could, and smiled wryly.
"Are you all right?"
"Y-yes, yes."
The Youth President answered as though he were dying of exhaustion, then shot an apologetic glance at Kang Hyeong-seok, who was draped in his black raincoat.
"I feel like I'm just holding you back."
"Not at all. Without you, President, I'd have lost my way long ago."
That was no empty politeness.
The downpour and the savage wind shook the senses, and the stifling walls of trees on every side robbed a man of even the sense of which way was which.
Crack!
Kang Hyeong-seok broke off a branch of the right thickness and held out the smoother end to the Youth President.
"Take hold. I'll lead the way."
"...Ahh."
"It's really no trouble."
With a look that bordered on apology, the Youth President gripped the makeshift staff, and Kang Hyeong-seok set off ahead, half-towing him along.
"Ngh— hup!"
Though they were moving at nearly a run, the Youth President drove out a grunt with every single step.
"What did you used to do, anyway? Where does a body get stamina like that?"
"I did my military service somewhere a bit demanding."
"They say the army's gone soft these days, but I reckon that ain't quite so."
"Hard places ought to stay hard."
The place where Kang Hyeong-seok had served, especially so.
"Hooh! Hooh!"
Towing himself along the staff, the Youth President pointed out the way from time to time.
They were just crossing the middle reaches of the mountain when it happened.
Kang Hyeong-seok came to a halt, and the Youth President trailing behind him let go of the staff with a face that read, Finally, a rest!
But he had not stopped for rest alone.
Shaaaaaa...
This was a mountain under rain.
And a mountain drunk on rain gives birth to fog thick as cloud.
Some called it hwalseung mist — and it was already welling up from the mountainside.
"Do you truly believe it's the Imoogi, Baksu-nim?"
Staring into the smothering fog, which looked ready to disgorge something at any moment, Kang Hyeong-seok answered.
"Yes."
"Even if it is an Imoogi, it's still a snake in the end, ain't it?"
"That's true."
Kang Hyeong-seok drew a deep breath.
A strange, fishy reek hung in the air. He could not tell whether it came from the rain itself or from the stench of earthworms rotting in the floodwater.
"All this over a snake. Goddamn it."
The Youth President swept the rain from his face as though wiping away tears.
"It's no mere snake."
"A snake is a snake. How many people has it killed already?"
Two, Kang Hyeong-seok had seen with his own eyes. Five more had died, he later learned. For a country village already bleeding its people away, that was no small number.
"It's an Imoogi. It must be carrying a han."
"What the hell kind of han could run so deep it kills people like this...?"
"That's exactly what we're going to find out."
Kang Hyeong-seok ran his tongue across his lips as he watched the fog, then went on.
"They say that when an Imoogi which has trained for a thousand years rises to heaven, if someone calls it a dragon, it becomes a dragon — but if someone says 'it's a snake,' it must begin its training all over again."
The Youth President lifted his rain-slick face and looked at him. Then—
"A thousand years of effort, come to nothing. Imagine how vast that han must be."
"...Even when I was a boy, there wasn't so much as a rumor in the village that anyone had seen an Imoogi."
"Perhaps it happened so long ago it was simply forgotten."
Kang Hyeong-seok studied the fog a moment longer, then turned his gaze on the Youth President.
"Or perhaps there's more that no one knows yet."
"Whewww!"
"For now we'll go just as far as the lake — and you head back down before the sun sets."
"...Yes, sir."
The Youth President had just reached for the staff Kang Hyeong-seok held out when—
Flash! KRARARARUM!
Lightning struck dangerously near.
"Ughyaaaah!"
The Youth President reeled back in horror, while Kang Hyeong-seok watched a tree groan and topple with a heavy roar.
Krr-ack! Ss-splinter!
The tree was falling as though aimed squarely at the Youth President.
WHAM!
Kang Hyeong-seok shoved the man aside and flung himself the other way.
KUUUOOM!
The fallen tree landed precisely between Kang Hyeong-seok and the Youth President, walling them apart.
"Ahh! Aaaaghh!"
The Youth President, who had been sent rolling, clambered up caked head to toe in mud.
"A-are you all right?! You're not hurt, are you!"
"Y-yes! Th-thanks to you."
Kang Hyeong-seok and the Youth President stood in silence, the fallen tree between them.
And the positions they had come to stand in were freighted with meaning.
Kang Hyeong-seok on the mountain's upper side. The Youth President on the lower. That was all — and that was precisely what made it so.
"Is— is this— is this really okay?"
The Youth President asked it again in a shaking voice, and Kang Hyeong-seok could not bring himself to answer.
This is no accident.
An Imoogi can command the rain. And this had happened while climbing the very mountain where one dwelled.
It was a warning.
...Kang Hyeong-seok regarded the tree in silence, then moved his gaze to the Youth President beyond it.
"Wait here."
"What?"
"It seems something is calling me alone. And — we can't be too careful."
The Youth President had nearly been crushed beneath that tree. If the two of them kept climbing together, one of them would certainly die. He could feel it in his bones.
"Will— will you be okay?"
The Youth President, too, clearly sensed that something was badly wrong; he asked again with a tremor in his voice, and Kang Hyeong-seok nodded heavily.
"Yes. How do I get to the lake from here?"
"You— you just keep straight on along this path."
The Youth President, his voice damp almost to the point of weeping, wiped at his eyes with a mud-caked hand.
"You're really going?"
"I have to."
The man had evidently felt the danger for himself.
"Aigoo, aigoo!"
"If anything should happen to me, I'll shout for you. When I do, please come and help."
It seemed that unless he gave him this much, the Youth President would never set his heart at ease.
"Yes, yes! Understood! I'll— I'll come, I swear it!"
"Please wait for me."
Leaving the Youth President where he stood, Kang Hyeong-seok turned away, then walked out into the deep fog.
For a long while he pressed on, ever toward the summit. And then—
KRARARARUM!
A tremendous sound rolled through the air.
Kang Hyeong-seok stopped and searched his surroundings through the murderously thick fog.
What is that?
Something was in the fog.
As though it had waited only for him to be alone. As though it had waited for this very moment, something began to reveal itself.
Sssssssss...
What moved within the fog was a colossal white mass.
Ssss... sssss!
And with it came that vicious serpent stench.
The Imoogi.
The Imoogi he had seen on this mountain only the night before was showing itself on the mountainside, out of the fog.
Ssssssssss!
Each time the rapidly moving Imoogi flickered half-visible through the mist, Kang Hyeong-seok's head turned to track it — and that was how he arrived at a chilling truth.
Everywhere his eyes could reach, the Imoogi's body was there. There was no telling where its bulk ended and something else began. At the very edge of his vision, another curve, another gleam of scales, writhed.
Sssssss!
The Imoogi was encircling him with its gigantic body — as if to seal him off from the world beyond. As if to bind him fast where he stood.
Walaralang!
Kang Hyeong-seok drew out his sacred shaman bells and shook them in time with the Imoogi's movements.
"If you have intent, then say it aloud!"
And with that he cried out to the Imoogi at the top of his voice.
"There must be a reason you do this! What has grieved you so bitterly that you take living lives!"
Srrrrrrk!
"Speak to me!"
He was ready to listen. Please — let that voice be given to him.
Walaralang!
"Reveal yourself, and speak!"
His voice thundered across the fog-shrouded mountain — and then, for one instant, the drumming of the rain eased.
As though the ruler of this rain truly were the Imoogi.
Walang.
The sacred shaman bell rang out of its own accord, and Kang Hyeong-seok looked upon the Imoogi's body, grown still within the wind-stirred mist. Then, slowly, he raised his trembling head.
But his gaze never reached the sky.
"Imoogi."
For the great serpent's head had blotted out the heavens, and was gazing down at him.
Shurrrrk.
Between the serpent's sealed lips, a tongue red as though steeped in blood rippled and slid.
"...I believe that you are not a creature of evil alone."
Shaaaaa...
His voice was small. But the rain had thinned, and silence held the world around them — quiet enough that, trusting his words would carry even to the Imoogi, Kang Hyeong-seok went on.
"What is your han?"
So this was what it sounded like when a beast spoke a man's tongue. High and piercing — and at once uncanny and dreadful.
"Many lives have already died at your hands."
Kang Hyeong-seok swallowed the rain that ran into his mouth, along with his spit, and continued.
"I am a mudang."
— And so?
"I will hear what you have to say."
— Why.
Thick killing intent and fury bled from the Imoogi's voice — an emotion vivid enough that it would have surprised no one if that enormous maw yawned open then and there and swallowed him whole.
"Because I wish for no one to be left grieving."
And not for humankind alone. Last night, the master of that barn had wept as she cradled her calf. A mother cow's sorrow differed not at all from a person's. However small the creature, however much a beast, feeling dwelt in all of them, no different from what people carry.
"What is your han? What do you wish me to do for you?"
— Why.
"Because han is suffering."
Suffering spills out into the world. That is han — and han is a living thing.
— Why.
"Because I wish for the pain to end."
— Why.
"Must there be a reason?"
— Why.
Looking up into the Imoogi's black eyes, so hard to read, Kang Hyeong-seok felt his Adam's apple bob heavily.
"Because I believe that you, too, are one who grieves."
The Imoogi made no reply. It only gazed down at him with those glossy black eyes.
Pit... pit-pit... pit.
The sheets of rain dwindled by degrees, yet every falling drop grew fat and heavy — until it felt like tears spilling from the Imoogi itself.
"A thousand years of training, come to nothing? Who was it that called you a snake?"
— Yes.
"Is that the whole of your han?"
If it were, the mere thought would stop his breath. A thousand years rendered void — how immense must that sorrow and rage be? Could a han like a lump of white-hot iron ever be unwound at all?
— No.
"...Then what is your han?"
— All.
"...What?"
— All.
The same answer, repeated.
The creeping, dreadful force that rolled off the Imoogi froze the blood in Kang Hyeong-seok's veins.
The Imoogi's han was not one grievance. Beyond the rage of a dragon denied, beyond a millennium of training come to nothing, there was something else — something that had left it no choice but to kill the people of that village.