BBS (58)

Translator: Wan ED/PR: Personal Ghost

 

⟨Chapter 58⟩
 

In the end, he had to come here.

Because he was busy chasing the geureumae, he didn’t even realize that he skipped school. Perhaps if the monster disappears, it also will be somehow resolved? Won’t they forget about his absence? While embracing such hope, Yu Dan ran to the school.

The school seen from the outside at weekday’s noon felt unfamiliar. The school gates were quiet, and several buildings were seen through the trees. Classes were in the full swing around this time.

Anyway, this place matched the condition perfectly. Because the middle school and highschool were beside each other, the wide school campus was surrounded by the circling high wall.

Then shall he get started?

Yu Dan opened the bag, put his hand in and grabbed the dagger hilt.

He started from the red brick wall, that finished with the metal soundproof wall. Beside the road, ginkgo trees lined up, right beside was the bus lane, and cars rarely passed by, as it was noon.

Besides his footsteps, it was quiet. As he followed the wall, with all his nerves tense, a woman with headphones in her ears and leading two dogs passed him from the opposite side. They were long-haired yorkshire terriers, and they were sticking out their tongues, panting, perhaps because it was hot.

As he followed the curved road, making a circle, a courier car was standing in front of the school back gates. The courier car driver was out, talking about something over the phone. On the other side, an old gentleman was walking. He stopped for a moment and sneezed.

Yu Dan passed them and continued walking and passed through the school gates, where he began, again.

The sunlight poured down without mercy, but he didn’t rest and continued to circle. He believed that the thing would appear soon, according to the fox yokai words. Didn’t he say that what things like you always want is the same? To kill the real and become real yourself? So come quickly. He kept mumbling in his head.

It was a quiet midday just like before. Yu Dan walked following the wall brick wall over and over. He didn’t know how many circles he made. Out of the blue, he thought about a folk tale about a tiger, who tried to eat a boy, and circled a tree until it melted into butter. If he keeps on circling around like that, he won’t turn into butter, right? Having such daydream-like thoughts, he suddenly stopped in his tracks.

From the other side, the woman with headphones in her ears, led two dogs and passed him by. They were long-haired yorkshire terriers, and they were sticking out their tongues, panting, perhaps because it was hot.

He looked at them for a moment, and then quickened his steps.

A courier car was standing in front of the school back gates. The courier car driver was out, talking about something over the phone. On the other side, an old gentleman was walking. He stopped for a moment and sneezed.

He suddenly came back to his senses.

The situation from a moment ago repeated. Why was it so quiet? The cars passed by, but they made no sound. The sound of the wind rustling between leaves. The sound of his footsteps. He realized that the sounds outside the road around the wall were completely erased.

… It came.

He walked even faster.

He at last saw it in front of him. The back of his head and himself walking, following the road around the wall. Yu Dan tightly grabbed the hilt of the dagger in his bag again.

Now was the time to end it.

He hurriedly followed it.

The other also picked up speed. The faster he chased, the faster it fled. Faster. Faster! The scenery passed them in a blur. The thing gradually picked up even more speed, and suddenly disappeared.

Okay. That’s it.

It hated being caught, so it fled faster and widened the distance, and so it would end up behind Yu Dan. Because it was a circle.

Yu Dan slowed his footsteps, concentrated his mind on what was to come, waiting.

Then, at a certain moment, he heard his own footsteps behind him. He swiftly turned around, and saw his own shocked face.

“How about it? About being overturned?”

Yu Dan took out the golden dagger.

How many circles did he do? The distance between him and the thing gradually decreased. At last, its back was right in front of his back, and he plunged the blade, stabbing it with all his might. He never thought that stabbing himself in the back would feel so good. The sense of relief was much bigger than the sense of resistance.

He thrust the thin like ice blade.

The thing curled up and screamed. It lost colors and shape, and turned into a lump of pitch black darkness.

“You were right. Stabbing like this is very fun.”

The hardships he went through in the meantime flashed like in a kaleidoscope. Yu Dan stomped on the shrunken lump of darkness over and over. But as if something was not right, the black stain left on the ground didn’t disappear.

“What? Why are you like this? All supernatural must return to its original place. Your place is in hell. Disappear. Go, quickly, disappear.”

“It’ll disappear on its own if You just leave it alone.”

He raised his head in surprise.

At the top of the wall sat the fox yokai.

“You were watching?”

“It was fun.”

Baek Ran smiled widely.

“Truly. Last night, just when I was about to go to sleep, I was startled by some strange person who suddenly intruded and was holding a knife. I couldn’t sleep from that and had to clean, and had to go out in such hot broad daylight to settle the aftermath, so I was annoyed, but in reality, after coming here and watching You run, it was so fun, my annoyance disappeared.”

“So even though you came to help, you just sat and watched this spectacle? That’s so fox-like I have nothing to say. But I wanted to deal with it with my own hands any way.”

“I gave You a chance for that.”

Baek Ran easily jumped from the wall.

“Don’t change your words. That said, this knife is really good? It died right away when it was stabbed just once. If I just had it, I wouldn’t fear any monster.”

“Do You want to take it?”

“Ah, no.”

Yu Dan fumbled with his words, as he stretched out his hand with the dagger. This blade was cool, but it was somewhat ominous. He wished not to see it ever again.

“You mean You don’t like it.”

Baek Ran smiled, as he accepted the blade and put it in the scabbard.

Now, at last, it really felt like the nightmare was over. Yu Dan looked down at the stain left on the ground.

“Is the geureumae a truly wicked supernatural? The pure evil itself?”

“Yes. If I were to describe it, it’s a stain on the world. Usually everyone keeps the darkness in their hearts deeply buried, but when it leaks outside, You know that things can get very dangerous.”

“I didn’t want to know it. Was it like that since the past? Other things were exterminated well, why wasn’t this one exterminated? It serves no use and only causes harm.”

“That’s not quite true.”

“Yeah?”

Yu Dan stomped on the stain and then raised his head. Baek Ran spoke again.

“It’s not like it doesn’t serve any use. Even such things have their own role to play.”

“A lump of pure evil?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Shall I tell You an old story? On a certain mountain lived a wicked centipede which tormented people. One day, a dragon appeared in the village people’s dreams and told them: Gather people, tie a big rope, bring it in front of the centipede’s cave and pull it from both sides, while shouting. If You do that, the centipede will lose its energy and die. They did as the dragon ordered, and they were truly able to defeat the centipede. After that day, the village people would tie a giant rope every year and pull it from both sides to overcome evil and bring harmony. Didn’t it become a game nowadays?”

“Tying a giant rope and pulling it from both sides? Isn’t that tug-of-war?”

“Correct. That’s the legend of how tug-of-war came to be. In the same way, the people unite to fight against the supernatural. It’s said to have positive effects of removing the sick parts and maintaining the health of society. This time too the geureumae played a role.”

“What role?”

“Please think of it. Don’t You feel much better after all the running?”

Hearing those words, Yu Dan at last realized.

“My head doesn’t hurt now.”

While he concentrated on chasing the supernatural and eliminating it, the symptoms of early summer that made him sick and hurt, evaporated. It was amazing.

“Please look at that. Even though it was pure evil, it could be used for good, depending on how You use it.”

“In such a case, sometimes letting out the darkness of the heart would be good… no. That’s not it. The darkness had to be eliminated, right?”

“Well.”

Baek Ran smiled subtly. Yu Dan was confused.

“Was it wrong?”

“I’m not quite sure. Even so, I sometimes think about it. Don’t even the dazzling heavenly gods in the Heaven have darkness in their hearts? Even Gautama Buddha had to fight and overcome the allure of the demon king. For everyone, the darkness is something to fight against and overcome, and from the beginning, they don’t see it as a target they have to exterminate. If You look at that, isn’t a person, who eliminated all the darkness in their hearts rather somewhat abnormal? Because it’s healthy to face it and fight it.”

What Baek Ran said wasn’t easy to understand, but he did his best to try to understand them. As he thought deeply about it, he recalled a similar story.

“Is it like body immunity? I heard that if you live in too clean of an environment, your immunity will fall. It had to be a bit dirty, to be healthy.”

“What for are You keeping such things buried in Your head? I guess You really like that theory, eh? Anyways, it’s similar. It’s not good to reject and turn Your face away too much because it’s darkness.”

“Then?”

Baek Ran thought for a while and replied.

“Shouldn’t You first recognize it? If You’re going to fight, You first have to know Your opponent. Stare right at the shameful darkness hidden in Your heart, and You should start with truly recognizing its identity. As it only grows bigger the more You deny it and suppress it, I think it’s better to try to accept it first. Whatever it is.”

“That’s it?”

“…”

There was no reply.

At some point, a smile disappeared from the fox’s face. His expression was very uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?”

“I take back what I said a moment ago. There is one thing that I truly can’t accept.”

“What? Me?”

“If You say that, I’ll end up reflecting whether I mentally abused You too much in the meantime. But of course, that would be delusional.”

“It’s not delusional.”

“Anyway, this is the thing I’m talking about.”

Baek Ran put a hand to his forehead and looked up at the sky.

“It’s too hot. Is it necessary to be this hot? Isn’t the summer sunlight the epitome of absolute evil?”

“It’s about sunlight?”

“I’m not doing well. I guess I walked in the human world in the broad daylight for too long. There was no need to come. And I’m really at my limits now.”

Just as he finished his word, Baek Ran fled. The sleeve fluttered, and when he looked again, he already disappeared.

Yu Dan was dumbfounded.

What? He became so weak because of the hot summer sunlight? Yokai were said to be children of darkness, but even THE Cheon-ho was like this? Yu Dan had no idea about it and was asking all sorts of questions for no reason? Because he helped people for thousands of years, if he was asked something, he would do his best to explain, but shouldn’t he fix that personality of his a bit?

But Yu Dan abruptly realized that it wasn’t a time to worry about others.

There was no one around the secluded wall in the noon, but he didn’t know when someone may appear. If he was skipping classes like this, and someone who knew him saw him, wouldn’t he be in a real trouble?

Yu Dan checked his surrounding, while he stealthily sneaked out. Then, because of an abrupt thought, he looked at the ground.

The shadow returned at some point.

He sighed with relief.
 

***
 

With the thought ‘perhaps there’, he looked under the bed, and there they really were.

“You hid them really deep.”

Yu Dan stretched out his hand with difficulty, and took out the textbooks.

Did it think that if it did that, it wouldn’t have to study? It was terribly dusty, but compared to the other troubles that supernatural caused, it was cute.

As he shook his head while coughing, something caught his eye.

The robot was in the same place as before, laying with the exact same look when he discovered it last night. He put down the dusty textbooks and stared at it for a while.

He went with his dad to the electronic store to buy it, and they assembled it in the living room together. He had vivid memory of that afternoon, basked in bright yellow sunlight. The living room was filled with the smell of yellow, just like the sunlight, butter. His mom had an ambition of baking Soboro bread[1] at home. She often brought it and gave him a taste, asking if it tastes similar to those sold at the shop over and over.

He never put a piece of Soboro bread in his mouth after that.

Yu Dan picked up the robot.

At night, looking at the horrifically painted red robot made him uncomfortable, so he tried to turn his head away pretending that he didn’t see anything. However, Baek Ran told him not to do that and stare right at it.

So for a while, he stared at it.

For the first time he realized. That feeling was the feeling of guilt.

He loved his dad. He loved him the most in the world. There was such a time.

Of course, it wasn’t now. He hated him for a long time.

However, he was told he couldn’t hate him. He had to love his father. Had to express filial piety. Hating was the worst.

But it was also upsetting.

His father was bad. You can’t abandon your son, because something happened, and the family was destroyed. That is truly not an action worthy of an adult.

So his father was upsetting.

Yu Dan threw the robot with all his might. The plastic assembly of parts hit the ground and broke into pieces.

At that moment, he felt as if someone shot him in the heart.

He didn’t feel any more relived than this. He looked down at the robot debris for a while, and then threw it into the pile of junk.

Lights of other houses blinked beyond the darkness of the window. He looked at them for a moment, and then took out his phone. He scrolled down through the contact list and then looked at the number on the very bottom, saved only as a dot, without even a name.

Of course, he had no heart to contact him.

However, could things change? Like Baek Ran said one day, even if you don’t know it now, things can get better little by little?

“I don’t know.”

Yu Dan rolled over.
 

*~*~*
 

[1] Soboro bread — a sweet bun with a streusel-like upper crust.
 

Translator’s note: End of Summer Shadow story. Someone needs to give Yu Dan a hug, this poor kid. In the meantime, this translator will scheme with Baek Ran to take down that horrific sun.

 

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