BBS (41)

Translator: Wan ED/PR: Personal Ghost

 
⟨Chapter 41⟩
 

“What’s the matter?”

The river spirit followed him with a dubious expression. Yu Dan didn’t answer and continued to approach the man as if possessed.

He didn’t have a good feeling about it. His heart raced and he felt nauseous.

He suddenly recalled the deeply buried memories.

Rebars protruding from between chunks of concrete. People underneath them. Where life left, corpses looking like piles of rubber dolls…

“No. No.”

A child hiding in a small gap, crouching and trembling. The child closed his eyes and covered his ears, while he continued to mumble.

“It’s not my fault…”

Yu Dan mumbled it unknowingly, while he approached the man.

The scene changed.

An ice cream shop. The window completely smashed to pieces, and the crushed signboard falling to the floor.

… I want to die instantly…

He heard a mumbling voice.

It wasn’t the man’s voice. It was a pitch black darkness wrapping around him and whispering into his ears.

… evil bitch! To leave for another man…

…when coming to the stop…

…I want to kill everyone and then myself…

The man tightly grasped a key with a dazed face.

He heard blaring of an alarm. Ice cream fridge crumpled like a paper. Scattered corpses drenched in blood. Car pierced through the shop. Inside of it was the bloodied man, dead.

He realized what it meant. Anger flared up.

“What are you trying to do?!”

Yu Dan screamed.

The darkness rose like a flame, and then scattered in all directions and disappeared. The man looked at him with a confused face. His dazed eyes slowly returned to normal.

“Ah…?”

Frightened and surprised, he threw the key away. What the hell was I thinking? The alcoholic stupor evaporated in an instant, and he trembled with a flustered face.

“You tried to cause an incident! Come back to your senses, uncle!”

“Yes. Yes.”

He replied politely on impulse and ran away, but he came back to pick up the key. And they disappeared like a lightning.

“Huu…”

Yu Dan took a deep breath.

His heart really sunk a moment ago.

He didn’t think there was a way for such a timid man to really take such an extreme action. Even if dragged by the whispers of that unknown darkness, he would get into the car, if someone suddenly called him, or his stomach would hurt, or he remembered that he had a baseball coverage to watch, he would return to his senses. He might later bring that up as a story at a drinking party, “At that time, because my eyes truly flipped over, I wanted to hit her with a car.”

But what if no one called him, he didn’t feel hungry, or he didn’t remember anything about baseball, and he arrived in front of that shop?

Then something really could have happened. Because such things happen.

… Somehow, it felt like something that the fox yokai would say. He even imagined him saying it with his special calm tone in his head.

Yu Dan shook his head.

Anyhow, he did well with the scolding and forcing it out. But in exchange for that he vividly recalled bad memories.

This would be the last supernatural thing he met, right? What was its name? Would there be some kind of story about it in the book? His mood became strange, as he thought he wouldn’t know to the end.

What about it? He will very soon forget it. It wasn’t bad that the last thing he did was something good. Was it annoying? Or should he stop grumbling?

When with such a thought he turned around.

The spirit wasn’t there.

Looking around, he found him lying on the ground, trembling.

“What are You doing?”

“I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong. Please don’t kill me. I didn’t have bad intentions. Spare me. Spare me, Your Majesty.”

The spirit wasn’t in his right mind. But it didn’t seem like he was in his right mind from the beginning.

Yu Dan made him stood up.

“What are you talking about!? Come back to your senses! There is no such person here.”

“There is! He is here! Here…”

He mumbled, while trembling like a leaf, and then suddenly raised his head.

“Uh? There is really no His Majesty.”

“Of course there isn’t!”

“Huu, you have a good voice. Because of that I mistook you….”

Then he became confused again.

“Who did I mistake you for?”

As expected from the spirit with dementia.

After solving a big incident with this spirit, who though strange, wasn’t bad, his suffocated heart was quite relieved. You know what? This spirit is visible for the ordinary people, so he could sometimes come to the Han River to play and meet him…

No. Why would he do that? After all, all his memories will disappear in a bit. He would completely forget the fact that if he turned his gaze in even a bit of a different direction from where he always looks, there would be all kinds of strange beings there.

Yu Dan shrugged.

“Then it’s a real goodbye now.”

He turned back and started walking, but wild wind blew again.

The spirit, who ran up to him at some point, tightly grabbed his arm.

“I remember! I remember! My original work was to take people somewhere! To the places they have to go!”

He stomped his two feet against the ground.

The spirit dragged Yu Dan with him. At an amazing speed. The night sky, the shining lights, the people, everything became a blur and flashed past them.

Yu Dan asked in surprise.

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know! Who are you? Aack!”

“I want to scream!”

“Ah, I remember!”

Soon his two feet touched ground.

His vision was swirling. He felt so sick, he couldn’t take it. He grabbed the tree at the side and barely came back to his senses.

“Where are we?”

The spirit looked around with a confused face.

He thought it was dark, but… it wasn’t dark. It seemed to be a thick forest. The moment he took a step back, a building entered his view.

“No! Why did I bring this child here?”

The spirit was startled. Yu Dan was also surprised.

In the darkness sprouted a traditional hanok.

The lights on the second floor were turned off, but the first floor was entirely bright. In the warm orange light, he clearly saw a familiar side-door and stone-mill.

Even if he didn’t want to, he couldn’t fail to recognize it. Wasn’t it the kitchen side-door that he ran errands to of getting fresh water from the backyard dozens of times by now? It was just that it was the first time he saw it from this angle.

Figures were illuminated in the door. Everyone was hustling and busing around. Maybe he wanted to be here for some reason, but looking at that scene, he suddenly hated to come in.

“I’m not going in.”

“Wait! It’s okay here! It isn’t dangerous!”

The spirit grabbed Yu Dan and dragged him. After there was no reaction even though he banged on the door, he suddenly opened it and entered inside.

He saw Baek Ran, twins and Do-ssi. Everyone was sitting huddled together, and turned their heads at the same time. The dokkaebi opened his mouth.

“Ah, boatman-nim…”

Then he finally discovered Yu Dan and his eyes almost popped out.

Then silence fell. Everyone went still like stones and no one said a word. They just looked at him with dumbfounded faces.

At that moment footsteps were heard.

“Did someone come for a meal again? There are a lot of customers today. I’m sorry, but tell them to go to the kitchen to get something packed to eat. I’ll have to go out again…”

The pouring like bullets words of the serpent yokai stopped.

She looked at him with a face as if she saw a ghost. The sword fell out of her hands which lost their strength.

Rattle.

At that sound, everyone seemed to come back to their senses.

Baek Ran shrugged.

“What an amazing sight, eh? In truly diverse ways—“

“What were you doing?!”

Heuk-yo shouted. Too excited, it didn’t seem like she even realized that she cut off the words of ‘Cheonho-nim’.

“What the hell were you doing, you punk! Do you know how worried everyone was after you disappeared like this? Why were you so reckless?!”

Yu Dan was surprised, and the spirit was surprised too.

“You know each other? You know Mario?”

Another silence fell.

“…Mario?”

Everyone asked at the same time.

The spirit took out a paper from his pouch and unfolded it.

It was a flyer he saw at the Han River. A poster looking for the Persian cat. Its name was ‘Mario’.

“I found him. He ran away and was endlessly staring at this flyer. I guess though he knows how to disguise himself as human, he doesn’t know how to read. He had no idea that his owner-nim was anxiously looking for him… He was saying that he is useless now because his eye doesn’t see, or that no one would be looking for him, because he usually had an ill-temper. In what despair he had been.”

Saying this, he stretched out his hand and patted Yu Dan’s back.

“I didn’t even dream of this. I just brought him here, but no way did I expect that you were raising this punk here.”

Everyone listened to the spirit’s words stunned.

They had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Yu Dan stared at him with a face as if he lost his soul.

“So, you mean I’m this cat?”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to hide here. Everyone here is a transformed yokai like you.”

“I know. But I’m not one?”

He scrutinized the picture on the flyer again. It was a Persian cat with a wild impression, and its left eye was bright red.

“Is my eye perhaps like this right now?”

“Yeah. It’s shining brightly. What kind of yokai disease is it? But it seems that this light isn’t visible in your eyes.”

“I’m not a yokai! I mean I’m a human!”

“What?”

The spirit fell into confusion.

Baek Ran approached. As he looked into his left eye…

“That is why I couldn’t find it.”

He came to a realization. At the same time, he made an absurd face.

“The eye functions are all alright. It was just overworked. It gave up, because it couldn’t work any longer like this. It was kind of like a strike, eh?”

“What?”

Yu Dan was dumbstruck.

“That’s it? That’s why I suddenly didn’t see the twins and couldn’t find this place?”

“We only knew that something bad happened to Yu Dan! When we came back to our senses, you suddenly disappeared, and Cheonho-nim also said He couldn’t find you at all…”

“How could you not find me? You know where I live!”

“We don’t.”

“Then how did you send the paper fox the last time?”

“I simply traced the powerful energy of that eye…”

“Have you never thought there is a problem with this method? What would you do if the eye broke!?”

The fox rolled his eyes, as he looked away.

“No way, I would know if it broke, right?”

“Ah, right! Thinking back, though I don’t know your home address, I know your school because I rummaged through your bag. So I could go find you at school.”

Chaeu mumbled.

“Now your head is finally working.”

Do-ssi clicked his tongue.

“You should have seen it in person yesterday. It must have been incredibly shocking when you disappeared into thin air in front of those punks. But didn’t everyone lose their minds because of that? Why didn’t you listen to me? I said he would be safe. I said that he would appear safely, if you stop worrying and calm down.”

Baek Ran asked with a dubious face.

“When was it?”

“In the midst, in my mind…”

“Is that so? A pity, but I guess we couldn’t hear Your mind’s voice, because our minds weren’t connected. What I heard was… Shouldn’t we release more yokai before something irreversible happens? It seems You said it like eight times.”

“Huhuhu. You heard that? Because You didn’t reply at all, I thought I should grab Cheonho-nim’s shoulders and shake You, thought it was impudent of me. We got some shut-eye in the middle, but…”

“How could You sleep under such stress? The atmosphere was as if we don’t find him, we will die from suffocation.”

As he listened to it blankly, he realized something.

“Even so, unexpectedly, everyone was searching diligently.”

Yu Dan regained a bit of energy and cut in.

“I thought you would look for me once and give up straight away. Maybe be a bit sorry? In no way I expected you would search for me so diligently.”

Baek Ran’s eyes turned sharp.

He regretted it straight away. It was a time for the arrow to turn towards him. The fox’s gaze spoke such.

“It seems You keep having some great misunderstanding. If You’re going to disappear, I don’t care how and when you disappear. I respect my and other’s wills. But there is one exception. If You disappear from this world, or disappear before our eyes, then it means trouble. Didn’t you see what happened under the Heavenly Punishment?”

Baek Ran turned around. The twins hastily grabbed the fox yokai’s sleeve.

“Cheonho-nim! Don’t be angry!”

“Please don’t go up!”

“I’m not going up. There is something I have been very curious about since a moment ago.”

The fox yokai pointed at the corner of the two-story hanok.

“See this? What is it?”

“Who doesn’t know that? It’s wood.”

“Then this?”

“Stone.”

“You know it? It’s a real building made from wood and stone. It exists in this world. You may not be able to see the ghosts, but you can’t suddenly stop seeing this building. Even ordinary customers, who don’t see such things, enter just fine. But You couldn’t find it?”

“I’m also curious about it. I searched the whole street from beginning to end, but it wasn’t there. Even when I grabbed and asked another shopkeeper, she said she didn’t know, and when I called Mia noona, she didn’t pick up.”

At that Do-ssi and the twins whispered to each other. When they looked at Yu Dan again, they had very sorry faces.

“What is it?”

“It’s a very typical symptom of possession.”

Baek Ran replied. This fox yokai was also making a sorry face.

“Possession?”

“Circling in one place for an entire night because of dokkaebi possession. Weren’t there such stories? The other shopkeeper that You said You grabbed and asked would be an illusion. The other shops that You saw at that street would be an illusion, and You wouldn’t make a call to Your maternal cousin noona in reality. The insignificant things played a prank on You, because of a weakness gap in Your mind. Usually they wouldn’t jump at You out of fear of trouble. But if Your state wasn’t very good…”

The fox clicked his tongue ‘tsk tsk’, as he looked at the spirit.

“Actually. If I recall Your words, You said he was saying ‘I’m useless now because I can’t see’ and ‘No one would be looking for me because I usually have an ill-temper’, while being ‘in despair’?”

“No! Because this spirit with dementia mistook me for a cat—.”

The fox yokai ignored Yu Dan’s words, and asked again.

“What was his state the moment You found him?”
 

*~*~*
 
Translator’s note: Yu Dan, I would be actually more concerned if they knew your home address… But I guess family is family?

Also, Happy New Lunar Year!

 

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