The behemoth had crashed against the cliff and broken its neck.
Its eyes were devoid of life; its giant beak still gleamed silver in the light. A wingspan wide enough to wrap over the ridge of the mountain, but the stiff feathers were so clumped and crushed that they looked like rough cloth.
He stood still and stared at the dead bird.
The bird was dead, and it would never steal again, nor would anything be stolen from it. The only evidence the bird ever existed would be the scars on the youth’s body from when he had been its prey.
A realization that somehow saddened the youth.
Without knowing why, he found himself wishing the bird would revive, that it hadn’t died so easily, as he stood there and gazed into its blue eye.
Then, he began to limp back toward the village where the woman was waiting.
XXII
Dusk was settling by the time he arrived at the village. The red sun had fragmented and its pieces were dissolving into the spaces between the iridescent clouds, a sight that he would never tire of.
He took the path through the village and began walking up to the forest in the mountains beyond. There were no lights seen from the road. The woman’s brother had gone out to the forest and hadn’t returned, and the woman was blind so she didn’t need the light. That was what he told himself as he hurried his pace.
At the threshold of the hut, before he opened the door, he called out the woman’s name. He didn’t want to barge in and surprise her.
No sounds came from within. He pushed open the hut door.
The woman had been sitting at the table, and she stood up as she heard the door open. Approaching him, she held out her hand. In his gladness to see her, he also reached out for her hand.
The moment his fingertips brushed hers, the woman transformed into thousands of water droplets and scattered into thin air.
XXIII
Overwhelmed by what had just happened, he stood frozen by the door, his hand still stretched out for hers.
Behind him, a cry as if from a beast. He turned.
The woman’s brother charged at him with a hunting knife.
The youth sidestepped just in time.
He tried to explain, but the brother did not want to listen. In truth, the youth did not understand what had happened, either.
The brother’s momentum carried him past the youth. He turned and rushed at the youth again while uttering his cry.
The youth grabbed the man’s arm and gripped his wrist, trying to make him drop the knife, but it was impossible to overpower the man, who was filled with mad strength. No matter how much the youth resisted, the man’s blade inched toward his neck.
Its tip touched him. The youth felt it pierce his skin, and blood beginning to flow.
And in that moment, the youth saw his hand that was gripping the man’s wrist was turning into a steely gray.
The man’s wrist began bending back in an impossible angle. White bone popped out from his skin. The man screamed and fell to the floor, clutching his broken arm.
The youth stared down at the man. Incandescent rage had vanished from the man’s eyes. They were soon flooded with fear.
That was the last thing the youth remembered.
XXIV
When he came to again, it was morning.
The woman and her brother’s hut had vanished without a trace. Where the shed had once stood were what looked like the man’s scattered remains, along with oceans of blood. Finding it unbearable to look at, he turned his head and quickly left the scene.
When he came down the mountain to the village, he saw that it was in ruins.
Where yesterday there had been houses and people passing by, now stood an old tree, hundreds of years old, standing there as it had since time immemorial. Where there had once been a fence thick with vines and a blacksmith’s, was now just a field of dried grass. The inhabitants were almost all gone. Two or three stragglers, wandering the scene with dazed expressions, took one look at him, turned white with fear, and disappeared from his sight.
He despaired.
He hadn’t wanted revenge. At least, not this kind of revenge. He simply had not known that the village’s survival had hinged solely on the existence of It.
The absurdity of the conclusion made him feel helpless. The strangers who stole his childhood with their sorcerer and beliefs, the despondent life he had lived on the brink of death, it had all been meaningless in the end. Mourning his years of suffering and despair, he stood there in the ruins of the village and wept.
And once his tears had finally ceased, he began to walk toward the rising sun, in search for that place in this world where his life was waiting for him.
Home Sweet Home
“Surely you must know that it’s only good manners to compensate me thirty million won in this situation, if you know what I mean, dear.” The owner of the blood-sausage stew restaurant spoke to the young woman and the young woman’s husband in an oddly unsettling confusion of polite and informal speech.