Foundations of the Labyrinth
Jinseong smiled with satisfaction as he settled into a lotus position right there. He focused on the movements stirring within his stomach.
"ॐ—"
He channeled his spiritual power, wrapping it around his index finger, then pressed that finger against the skin over his stomach and began to draw a pattern. A blunt line. The line drew a vertical stroke, then a curve resembling a circle, followed by a horizontal stroke. The horizontal became vertical again, and then another horizontal. In this way, he completed a square that looked almost exactly like a circle. Its shape closely resembled the character for “mouth” (口) written in clerical script.
Jinseong did not stop there. He pushed his finger inside the square and drew a smaller square within it. Thus, a pattern resembling a circle within a circle, a square within a square, glowed with a bluish light as it was etched in spiritual power. Its form was strikingly similar to the character for “return” (回).
A mouth within a mouth. A fence within a fenced enclosure. It was a labyrinth drawn in Chinese characters, a symbol carrying the meaning of something that continues endlessly.
The pattern began to shine with a bluish light and seep into his stomach. The stomach became a prison. The acid pooled inside it boiled fiercely, defying reason as it climbed the walls and coiled around them. The gastric fluid transformed into something like a sphere made of pure acid, and the snake meat that had flowed into the stomach could not withstand it. It began to melt away.
And within that melting flesh, a tiny something dissolved—not in the acid, but in the spiritual power that had seeped into the stomach—becoming a single meaning.
“One collected.”
Starting with the snake he had eaten, Jinseong began to roam the mountain. With his eyes closed, he wandered, reaching through empty space to gather various creatures. Some were grotesque larvae, others were half-grown mushrooms. He roughly prepared what he had gathered, stuffed them into his mouth, and continued wandering the mountain until he finally reached a small valley deep within it.
“ॐ.”
The moment he arrived at the valley, he kicked off his shoes and stepped into the water, then clenched his hand in the air.
Splash—thud!
Every time he grasped at empty space, fish and crayfish hiding in the crevices of the rocks were dragged out one after another. Jinseong tore off only their heads and shoved the rest straight into his mouth without hesitation.
Crunch! Crunch!
The crayfish shells were mercilessly crushed by his teeth. The sharp fragments did not leave a single wound inside his mouth before melting into his stomach. The fish, too, entered his belly whole except for the heads, and the moment they did, they dissolved instantly in the gastric acid that had turned into something like slime.
Jinseong repeated this process for a long time. Only when most of the fish and crayfish in the valley had been caught did he stop and murmur,
“One. Two. And three.”
He sat down on a rock in the lotus position and lit an incense stick. The incense seemed to rise normally at first, but then, as if blown by wind, it flowed toward him. Though it appeared to be heading straight for Jinseong, something blocked it, forming a wall of smoke around him.
“One.”
Inside the wall of smoke, Jinseong concentrated and erased the “return” (回) pattern he had drawn on his stomach, then began drawing a different one. It resembled the previous pattern but had a different appearance. If the earlier one had been a square that endlessly resembled a circle, what he drew now was a circle that endlessly resembled a square. It was merely a geometric figure, not yet imbued with a single meaning.
“A snake within a snake. One, yet many.”
The drawn circle stimulated his skin, making his blood vessels bulge prominently as it revealed itself. As if only the area where the pattern had been drawn was stimulated, the vessels swelled red and blue, then turned purple and discolored, looking almost like a bruise. At first glance it seemed like an ordinary shape, yet it also appeared as if snakes were crawling through his veins and drawing the pattern themselves. It even evoked something more primal and smaller than a snake.
Shaaaak—!
The blood vessels writhed as if alive, bulging and squirming as though something were about to burst out. The movement was so violent that it almost created the illusion that the snake he had devoured was being reborn inside his stomach and moving again. Yet Jinseong calmly moved his finger to the back of his neck.
He drew a single vertical line along his spine. The place his finger had passed turned a grayish hue. It looked as if the flesh were rotting, or as if something unclean had clung to his skin—only the spot he touched took on a corpse-like gray color. A powder unlike any normal dead skin flaked from that gray area, but then, as if it had all been an illusion, the powder melted away in an instant and smoothed his skin once more.
“Three.”
Jinseong murmured the final word and moved his finger back to his abdomen. His finger traveled across his lungs, liver, and intestines before returning to his lungs, drawing a triangle. The areas his finger touched sank inward as if the flesh beneath had vanished, revealing an alien sensation, but then they filled back up and returned to normal. Still, the traces remained clearly enough that anyone with keen observation would notice how severely that patch of skin had lost its elasticity.
“From one to two, from two to three. All numbers gather into six. Since what was begun has found balance, it would not be strange for wings to sprout from it.”
With Jinseong’s incantation, the marks engraved on his body began to disappear. The bulging circle vanished without a trace, the gray hue on the back of his neck scattered like smoke, and vitality returned to the skin that had lost its elasticity. When the incense finally burned out and its ash was sucked into his nose as if being drawn in, he at last opened his eyes and smiled.
“The foundation is laid.”
Creak—thud.
Jinseong rose with a groan like an old man and used instant movement. With a creeeak, the air twisted, and he returned to the mansion in the blink of an eye.
“Weird.”
“Right? It’s weird.”
In a room tucked away in a corner of the mansion, the sisters were whispering to each other. Lee Serin, flapping the sleeves of her pajamas printed with crows, said,
“Oppa’s been really strange lately.”
Her usual gloomy impression had, thanks to the animal pajamas, turned into one that looked sleepy and tired. Because of that, her flapping arms didn’t look like a witch performing some suspicious ritual, but rather like a crow that had exhausted itself in the water, finally crawling onto land and flapping in joy.
“It is weird. He was always weird, though,” replied Lee Arin from across the room. With her hair down and all her accessories removed, she looked like an ordinary girl, yet the yellow pajamas somehow gave her the aura of a lioness.
“Remember when? He said he was going to become the greatest curse user or something and brought home a ton of weird bugs.”
“Yeah.”
“There was even a cockroach mixed in with them and it caused a huge mess. You remember that?”
“I don’t want to remember…”
The two animals sat on the fluffy bed, chatting softly. But when the topic suddenly turned to something repulsive, Lee Serin made a sour face, clearly displeased.
“Ugh.”
“I wonder what he did to those bugs~ Just thinking about it gives me chills. That cockroach resisted pesticides, survived an electric fly swatter, and was still fine. If we’d left it alone, we could’ve made a horror movie. My friend said there are tons of weird horror films with cockroaches in them.”
When the demon she had contracted with even mentioned other insects, Lee Serin naturally recalled the countless bugs Jinseong had brought that day. The mere thought of those things with far too many legs—or horrifically, no legs at all—made her face twist even more. The memories Lee Arin continued to share only helped bring those terrible shapes back to life more vividly, which made it all the worse.
“There were other bugs that were gross too, but~ Ah, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I mean he’s been way too weird lately. You know what I mean, right?”
“I know…”
I probably know even better than you do.Lee Serin barely managed to swallow the words she wanted to spit at her twin. But while she could hold back the words, she couldn’t stop the complicated expression from rising to her face. Seeing it, Lee Arin’s own expression turned strangely puzzled.
Lee Serin let out a sigh at the whisper from the demon she had contracted with.
Yeah… I saw it.