The Owner of the Pond (2)
“Hey, Se-hwan.”
“Yeah?”
“Sorry about last time….”
“…It’s fine.”
As expected, there was no way we could make the trip on a weekday. From what I’d heard, the neighborhood where Vivy lived was all the way in Taebaek, Gangwon-do—pretty far from Busan. So we had no choice but to schedule it for the weekend and head out then.
True to her title as the king of aquatic creatures, the Imugi’s home was just as extraordinary. Her residence was Hwangji Pond, the spiritual source of the Nakdong River in Taebaek. Technically the actual origin of the Nakdong is a spring called Neodeol-saem, but from a spiritual perspective, Hwangji Pond was considered the true source. That was because most of the river’s spiritual energy flowed from there. Even our ancestors had largely viewed Hwangji Pond as the river’s birthplace.
The Nakdong wasn’t just any river. It was the third-longest on the Korean peninsula and the longest in South Korea. The spiritual energy it carried was immense, and an Imugi had made her home at its very source.
‘Jang San isn’t your average spiritual beast, so I guess her friends aren’t either.’
She was clearly no ordinary yeong-mul. And yet the power contained in mere rumors—strong enough to reduce even a being like her to a mere yokai… it really was something else.
“And thanks for helping. But I have one question.”
“What is it?”
“Why is she tagging along?”
Jang San pointed to my left as she spoke. Well…
“I’m not entirely sure myself.”
“What do you mean you’re not sure? You’re supposed to be helping me on the weekends. If one of my employees says she’s not coming in, what else am I supposed to do? Drag her along, obviously!”
It wasn’t just Jang San standing next to me—Baek Seol-hwa was there too. There really hadn’t been any reason for her to come, but she’d stubbornly insisted, so I’d had no choice.
“Didn’t you say you wouldn’t take pay for this week?”
“No way. I’m low on spiritual energy. Once this is over, you have to help me.”
“…Only if we finish quickly.”
“We will, right? From what Jang San said, it doesn’t sound any different from last time.”
To be honest, if she’d been dead weight I wouldn’t have brought her. But in case something unexpected happened, she wouldn’t be completely useless, so I’d let her tag along.
“That’s exactly why I came. It’s so far away.”
How long had it taken to reach Taebaek? We’d ridden an intercity bus for a full five hours. The first bus left at 9:30 a.m., so by the time we arrived it was already past two and pushing three in the afternoon.
Baek Seol-hwa stared at me for a moment, then suddenly puffed out her chest with an air of confidence.
“If any evil spirits show up like last time while you’re performing the ritual, I’ll chase them all away!”
“Huh? No, that’s really not necessary.”
“What? Why not? If you do another exorcism ritual, tons of evil spirits are going to swarm in, right? Especially here—there are so many mountains perfect for them to hide in….”
“Yeah, that part’s true. But you don’t need to strain yourself.”
“What do you mean….”
“Are you really that much of a dummy? I’m right here.”
Jang San pointed at herself.
“Where do you think we are? This is Taebaek, home of Mount Taebaek. It’s practically the heart of the Baekdudaegan mountain range. My spiritual energy manifests strongly in a place like this.”
“So you’re saying you can handle everything yourself?”
“Of course. Isn’t that what Se-hwan said too?”
…What were these two even competing about? And they seemed to be seriously misunderstanding something.
“Neither of you is needed, actually.”
“…Huh? What do you mean neither?”
“He said neither~? You’re not needed either~? Then where did you get all that confidence from?”
Baek Seol-hwa giggled as she teased her, and Jang San’s brows furrowed slightly. She glanced at me.
“Then Se-hwan, why don’t we need to help? It sounds incredibly dangerous to do alone.”
Oh, right. Jang San hadn’t been there that time, so she wouldn’t know. Showing her would be faster than explaining, so I pulled out one of the talismans I’d tossed into my messenger bag.
“I brought these guys. It’ll be fine.”
“A shikigami? It doesn’t look like the lightning beast you summoned last time….”
“I brought that one too.”
“Hey, why use a shikigami? We can just protect you and that’ll be the end of it.”
What was she even saying now?
“Don’t you remember how badly you both got wrecked by evil spirits last time?”
“T-that was…!”
“I-it was just a mistake, Se-hwan!”
“How can I trust people who get cocky about their own power and let their guard down? I’ll use my shikigami—they always give it their all.”
“Ugh…!”
“Khh…!”
Baek Seol-hwa and Jang San both shut their mouths, apparently unable to argue. Still, they looked upset and kept shooting me glances that said they should be the ones doing it.
Jang San probably felt that since I was helping her, she should return the favor. But…
“…Hmph.”
…Why was she acting like this?
Baek Seol-hwa’s attitude was strange. The moment I said I wouldn’t borrow her power, she suddenly seemed sulky for some reason.
“Will we be able to see it right away once we reach Hwangji Pond?”
“Ah, we’ll probably have to wait until nightfall. Imugis don’t reveal themselves during the day….”
“That’s going to take a while.”
“…What kind of Imugi can’t even take care of herself?”
When Baek Seol-hwa muttered in disbelief, Jang San replied.
“We spiritual beasts are easily corrupted without people’s faith. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Still, it’s weird that a spiritual beast is a moderator on a forum run by yokai.”
They were about to start another pointless argument, so I cut in.
“What’s so weird about it? The word ‘yokai’ refers to all supernatural beings—every spiritual entity. It doesn’t just mean monsters and ghosts; spiritual beasts are obviously included. The Ghost Gallery is a forum for yokai, so in theory even dragons could use it. Not that they’d have any reason to.”
“……Is that how it works?”
“You’re a yokai yourself—how do you not know what the word means…?”
“Baek Seol-hwa is a dummy, Se-hwan.”
Jang San let out a little laugh, and Baek Seol-hwa glared at her, forehead creased.
“If you two keep fighting, I’m sending you both home and going alone.”
“W-we weren’t fighting!”
“R-right, we weren’t fighting! Don’t misunderstand, Se-hwan!”
…It felt like I was babysitting elementary school nieces.
After walking while exchanging silly banter, we eventually arrived at Hwangji Pond. It was one of Taebaek’s major tourist attractions, so it was very well maintained, with a park built around the pond. It was a pleasant place to stroll around.
From a human perspective, anyway.
The increase in artificial structures—walkways circling the pond and such—wasn’t exactly good news for a spiritual beast who lived as part of nature itself. Still, because it was a major tourist spot for the city, the management was thorough. Even with so many visitors, the water itself looked relatively clean.
Being a pond, it wasn’t all that deep, so you could see quite a ways beneath the surface…
‘Not that we’d see the Imugi anyway.’
They dug enormous caves beneath their habitats and lived there, so there was no chance of spotting one. Even after falling to the level of a yeong-no, their lifestyle would be similar, so she was probably still hiding inside her cave right now.
“There definitely won’t be anyone around once it gets dark.”
“Won’t the park staff still be here?”
“Of course they will.”
“Should we put them to sleep for a bit?”
“Don’t even think about it. What if some suspicious person shows up while the guards are asleep?”
…Come to think of it, weren’t we the suspicious people?
Anyway, there was no need to knock out the guards. There was a method exorcists often used in open places like this without causing harm to hardworking staff.
“An illusion will be enough. Let’s come back at night.”
“Sounds good.”
“What are we going to do until then?”
“Kill some time. And at the same time….”
I needed to figure out how the Imugi had ended up falling to the level of a yeong-no.
“Let’s ask around the nearby area and gather some stories.”
We needed to identify the source of those rumors in the local region.
Unlike the Jangsanbeom legend that had spread far and wide across the internet, the yeong-no was an extremely unfamiliar yokai to modern people. It occasionally appeared in media dealing with monsters, but it wasn’t particularly famous. Therefore, unlike Jang San, Vivy hadn’t become a victim of a complete shift in public perception.
The most likely cause was that stories from residents near Hwangji Pond had become distorted.
“Jang San, were you already a yeong-no when we first met?”
“No, I wasn’t. The first time I met her was right after the Japanese invasions….”
“The Imjin War?”
“Yeah.”
……That was a really long time ago.
“We weren’t close enough to call each other friends back then—just acquaintances. The whole country was in chaos because of the war, and the spiritual energy of the mountains had become completely jumbled. I came down this way to assess the situation. That’s when we briefly met. Much later, after I’d completely moved my residence to the south in the 1950s, we met again….”
“And by then she had already become a yeong-no.”
“Yes.”
So somewhere between the 1600s and 1950. It meant that during the mid-to-late Joseon period up until liberation, something had caused the Imugi to fall and become a yeong-no.
“Alright, got it.”
“Isn’t that too little information? Can you really find anything out from that?”
To Baek Seol-hwa’s question, I simply shrugged.
“I can’t say for sure. But I at least know what kind of questions to ask.”
“Really?”
She looked puzzled, but my method was actually very simple.
“Hello.”
“Welcome~ There are plenty of seats, so sit anywhere you like.”
“Thank you.”
We entered the restaurant area near Hwangji Park and picked one. Baek Seol-hwa and Jang San stared at me with expressions that clearly asked why we’d come here.
“We haven’t even had lunch. After riding a bus for five hours, we should eat first.”
“That’s true, but….”
“Weren’t you going to ask around for information?”
“I am. Hurry up and decide what you want to eat.”
By the time we’d roughly chosen our menu, the owner came out.
“Have you decided?”
“Ah, yes. Two Korean set meals and one stone-pot bibimbap, please.”
“Two set meals and one bibimbap… You young students must be here on a trip?”
“Ah, we’re actually here for a school assignment.”
“An assignment? Where did you come from?”
“We’re from Busan.”
“Oh my, students these days are so busy. Coming all this way for an assignment.”
“Haha, well, about that, sir—would it be alright if I asked you a few questions?”
“Hm? What about? Go ahead.”
“We came all the way here because our university assignment is about Hwangji Pond.”
The moment I brought it up, Baek Seol-hwa and Jang San finally seemed to catch on and looked slightly surprised. Yes, being college students gave us the perfect excuse.
“If you know any legends, folktales, or stories related to Hwangji Pond, could you tell us about them?”
Asking around for local legends, folktales, and myths under the pretense of an assignment.
“That’s an interesting assignment. Are there professors who give out tasks like that these days?”
“I’m a history major. We’re currently researching old legends from Gangwon-do.”
“Ah, so you’re studying that kind of history? That makes sense.”
The restaurant owner thought for a moment, cleared his throat, and then spoke.
“Actually, our village head recently told us not to spread any bad rumors about Hwangji Pond since it’s an important tourist spot. But since you’re students doing an assignment, I doubt you’ll go around telling everyone… I’ll tell you, but please don’t spread it around, okay?”
“Oh, of course. What is it?”
I deliberately took out my phone and opened the notes app to look like a diligent student taking records. The owner seemed pleased by my attitude and continued with a satisfied smile.
“There’s a folktale that says something terrifying lives in Hwangji Pond. It’s a story that’s been passed down through the elders of our village for generations, so outsiders usually don’t know about it.”
“…Interesting.”
“What do you mean by terrifying?”
When Jang San asked, the owner lowered his voice as if sharing a great secret.
“They say there’s a monster living under the pond that eats people!”
This was it.
“…No way, sir. We just saw the pond earlier, and it didn’t look that deep. If something like that lived there, wouldn’t we have seen it?”
When I deliberately said that, the owner waved his hand.
“The rumor is that it dug a cave under the pond and lives there. That’s why you don’t usually see it.”
“Could it be something like an Imugi? While researching for the assignment, I found that Imugis tend to live that way.”
“Imugi? Aren’t those sacred creatures? From what I heard, it’s not. They say it’s a yokai. A monster.”
We were able to hear the story more easily than expected. This was the root cause that had corrupted the Imugi. If even a restaurant owner knew about it, it meant the story was quite famous among the people living in the area. There was no doubt.
Bad rumors about the Imugi living in Hwangji Pond had spread, and Vivy had fallen from Imugi to yeong-no.
“Do you know when this story started being passed down?”
“I’m not sure about that. But it’s definitely old—probably goes back to the Joseon dynasty.”
“Thank you so much. This was incredibly helpful.”
“Glad to hear it. I’ll bring your food out soon, so enjoy your meal.”
“Thank you.”
Once the owner went back into the kitchen, I glanced at Jang San.
“What do you think about that story?”
“…The possibility seems high.”
“Right? If it’s a story that’s been handed down for hundreds of years, there’s no way we can fix it now. There’s only one solution.”
There was virtually no way to completely erase the calamity created by words that had been orally transmitted over such a long period. It wasn’t something that could be scientifically proven, and we couldn’t go around telling the villagers, “It’s not a monster, it’s an Imugi.”
I told Jang San.
“Vivy has to move her habitat. As long as she stays here, she’ll continue to be tainted by that corrupted calamity.”
Assuming Vivy’s mind was still intact, we would use an exorcism ritual to wash away the temporary calamity, after which the Imugi would have to move to a new home herself. Only then would she stop being affected by it.
“But… couldn’t you just keep believing in her as a spiritual beast like you do for me?”
“That would be difficult. As you know, I’m already worshiping you as a spiritual beast.”
“Ah….”
When one person worshiped two spiritual beasts, the power of that faith weakened. Jang San probably knew that, but because it was her friend, she couldn’t judge the situation coldly.
“But if the Imugi leaves her habitat….”
“She won’t be able to become a dragon.”
Everyone knew the purpose of an Imugi as a spiritual beast. It was to train diligently and ascend to become a dragon. An Imugi was a being that trained for a thousand years before rising to the heavens as a dragon. If during that process they lacked training, gave up, or encountered other obstacles and failed, they would never become a dragon.
Giving up on training meant leaving the place they had chosen as their training ground.
“But if she stays here, she won’t become a dragon anyway. How close is Vivy to becoming a dragon?”
“It probably won’t be soon. She’s still quite young. When I first met her, she wasn’t even two hundred years old.”
“At most five hundred years then. She still has a long way to go to become a dragon.”
Then there wasn’t really a problem.
“If she doesn’t want to become a monster, she has to move. Even if she can’t become a dragon, she can continue living as a spiritual beast.”
“…I’m not sure she’ll see it that way. For an Imugi, becoming a dragon is practically the purpose of their life. If you tell her to give that up, will she accept it?”
“That’s something you’ll have to persuade her about. She’ll probably listen to her friend’s advice, at least to some degree.”
That part wasn’t something I could handle. My role was to cleanse Vivy’s calamity. From there, it was Jang San’s job.
“Now that we’ve heard the story, what should we do until evening?”
“We should look around.”
“Then shall we go to a café?”
“…Not a bad idea.”
I was usually the one making coffee on weekdays, but sometimes I wanted to be the customer enjoying a cup.
“Let’s go kill some time.”
The time of dogs and wolves passed, and darkness covered the sky. As expected of a sparsely populated tourist spot, there were few pedestrians after seven or eight o’clock, with most people staying in the restaurant area. Naturally, there was almost no one near Hwangji Pond.
The park was quiet, and aside from us who had come with a purpose…
“…There really aren’t many people.”
“That makes it nice and quiet, doesn’t it?”
I nodded at Baek Seol-hwa’s words. It looked like we’d be able to handle things comfortably.
“Let’s go.”
The park wasn’t closed yet, so we naturally entered first. We headed toward Sangji (Upper Pond), the largest of the three ponds that made up Hwangji Pond.
I asked Jang San.
“Can you reach her?”
“…No, I can’t.”
Jang San bit her lip while looking at her phone. If she was active enough on the Ghost Gallery to be a moderator, she should have adapted to modern culture, so the fact that she wasn’t answering…
‘…She might not be in good condition.’
As soon as we reached Sangji, I took out a talisman. It was a shikigami talisman I’d brought from home. Baek Seol-hwa hesitated for a moment.
“Why are you taking out a shikigami…?”
“I said we’d use an illusion. This is for that.”
The shikigami I was about to summon wasn’t a combat specialist like the lightning beast. It was specialized in assisting exorcists, and its job now was to make sure the spiritual work we were about to do remained invisible to ordinary people who couldn’t see such things.
“Shik”
When I chanted the spell while holding the talisman, the characters written on it glowed faintly before bursting into flames. What appeared was…
With a peep, a small bird resembling a chick landed on my shoulder. It had colorful feathers all over its body, a long red tail, and a crest. Baek Seol-hwa’s eyes sparkled as she watched it flap its wings and preen its feathers.
“Wow, it’s so cute…!”
“Cute? It’s your natural predator.”
“Huh?”
“This is a phoenix.”
“……What!?”
The king of birds. The divine beast at the top of the avian hierarchy, one of the Four Spirits. Yes, that very phoenix. Why was a divine beast representing sacred creatures contracted as my shikigami?
“I-is that really a phoenix!?”
“Of course, it’s only a fragment.”
“Ah.”
Yes, what I had contracted wasn’t the main body but a fragment of the phoenix. That meant its power was limited, and most of its abilities leaned toward support rather than combat. If it had been the main body, it would have been capable in battle too. It could even become the Vermilion Bird, one of the Four Gods.
Of course, forming a shikigami contract with the main body of a phoenix was harder than plucking a star from the sky.
“Its name is Bongbong.”
“…Why is your naming sense so terrible?”
“…I was just joking, but you’re really blunt about calling it terrible.”
“Because it is.”
Was it really that bad? I thought Bongbong was kind of cute. I felt a little wronged, but if I said anything she’d just complain more. Better to stop arguing and get to work.
“Spread the veil. So no one else can see.”
The phoenix let out a peep and vigorously flapped its wings. It looked like a tiny sparrow desperately flapping, but despite its adorable appearance, an extraordinary spiritual energy spread out in all directions. Enough to make Baek Seol-hwa flinch in surprise.
I reassured her.
“It’s not meant to harm yokai, so it’s fine even if it touches you.”
“Ah, okay….”
“Se-hwan, but then….”
“We have to call her out anyway.”
This was partly to prevent other people from looking at us suspiciously, but it was also to draw out the one hiding in the pond who had no intention of coming out. She must have sensed the spiritual energy Jang San carried and the yoki Baek Seol-hwa carried, yet she wasn’t reacting or appearing. We had no choice but to force her out.
“With this much energy, she should feel the stimulus and come out.”
“…I could have done it.”
“It’s fine. We have to do this anyway, even if it wasn’t for calling her. Might as well take care of two things at once.”
And just as expected, there was a reaction.
Bubbles began boiling up vigorously from the center of the pond, and several ripples spread widely across the surface.
Bibibibibi—
Along with the unique cry of bibi, the water churned violently. Soon, a massive shadow surged out of the pond.
“Ah.”
Jang San’s expression darkened rapidly. Both I and Baek Seol-hwa stiffened slightly, and the phoenix on my shoulder peeped anxiously, wary of the newcomer.
This…
“Bibibibi——Those who trespass upon my territory——.”
…She was in really bad shape.
“I will not tolerate any of you——.”