Translator: Wan ED/PR: Personal Ghost
⟨Chapter 66⟩
“Good for me.”
At Monghwi’s answer, Baek Ran took out a paper. It was packed with phrases he couldn’t understand. Yu Dan stamped his thumb under the place the fox ordered him to. After that, Monghwi took out a stamp made out of jade and stamped it. When the contract turned into light and disappeared, she spoke urgently.
“Now, hand over the qilin dream.”
“Give the horn first, please.”
“The contract was finalized, what are you wary of!?”
“It’s just a habit. Let’s do it at the same time.”
“Good. After counting down to three, we will place it in the center at the same time.”
When the moment to hand over the qilin dream, Yu Dan’s heart raced in his chest. What was this fox yokai thinking, asking for trouble like this? There is no way that he didn’t have any plans, right? He glanced to both sides with an anxious expression.
“One, two, three.”
The horn and the scroll were placed in the middle of the table at the same time.
Monghwi quickly snatched the scroll and unfurled it. And was shocked.
“What is that!?”
On the paper was a crudely drawn like by a child with crayons qilin. Baek Ran abruptly stood up.
“How could it be?! It’s fake!? You have checked the heavenly official jade belt so carefully, so why didn’t You check if it’s a real qilin dream!? You have already signed a contract and bought it, so what are we going to do?!”
“What?”
Monghwi sharply raised her head in rage.
“You, you bastard, Cheon-ho! It was all your doing, huh! You dare to sell a fake dream to the goddess of dreams?! No matter how audacious you are, do you think you will be able to keep your life after doing something like that?!”
“What are You talking about? I also had no idea! I’m also a victim!”
“Stop talking nonsense and give me that human!”
“No! I’ll punish him!”
“Give him to me!”
With the booming roar, Monghwi’s long hair shot out. Her face, which was haughty and pretty before, turned scary like that of a monster.
At that moment.
Taking the opportunity of the chaos, Do-ssi, who stealthily approached the pedestal, raised his hand and slapped the mask that Monghwi took off a moment ago and put there.
“Aaack! My mistake! I touched it wrong!”
Perhaps he hit it with quite some power, the mask flew straight towards the wall like a soccer ball. Monghwi and two boys freaked out and rushed towards it.
“Now! Run!”
As Do-ssi nimbly jumped out, he threw the box, he was clinging to, to the side. And he lifted the heavenly official jade belt, he took out at some point, high.
“The king orders! Open the way!”
At the sound of the long string of jade beads hitting against each other, the wall receded, the door opened, and the road cleared by itself. Do-ssi ran at the extreme speed. Baek Ran was also quick to follow behind him.
“You know what will happen if You get caught, correct?”
He knew all too well.
Wasn’t his heart exploding? Weren’t his legs breaking? Even when feeling all this, he fled with all his might.
A pitch-black smoke rose from somewhere and surrounded everyone.
At some point, Yu Dan was just running on the road in a pitch-black darkness. As if the road was alive, it kept stretching out in front of him. Under his feet, he heard ‘Aack!’ and ‘Ouch!’ screams. He glanced down. It was not a road, but the heads of numerous kinds of creatures.
“Hic!”
He floundered in surprise, stomped on someone’s bald head and slipped. Do-ssi hastily caught him.
“Don’t look down! We’re currently fleeing using the Road to Hell! Cheonho-nim, how far do have we to go?”
“We just have to escape the mansion.”
Beyond the weeping willow, tied with the clothed skeletons, forest, the pair of red gates shined. Seeing this, he remembered. That was the mansion’s entrance and exit. If he just gets through this door, he will be fine.
But as if something happened, the gate became gradually more distant, the more he ran. Do-ssi shouted:
“To heck with it! It’s the dream within the dream! We’re trapped in a nightmare! Because in Monghwi’s dream, Monghwi is the lord! As expected, it was much too reckless plan to play a fraud and run! We were wrong! We yokai are drawn more to the dreams than to the reality by virtue of our birth! We can’t escape!”
“Calm down, please! If just one of the three comes back to senses, we can escape! Because of it, I made preparations for the emergency.”
Baek Ran took out a golden bell hanging on a blue thread from his sleeve. When he shook it, instead of the bell sound, a very familiar sound rang out.
An alarm clock.
The painful mechanical sound shook his head. Because he was brainwashed by this sound since middle school, he suddenly came back to his senses.
“I have to go to school!”
“Look at that! One of us woke up!”
“Ooh, good! Forward!”
The red gates that were flickering in front of them clearly affixed themselves in one spot. They woke up from the dream within the dream. Yu Dan ran again with all his might.
Before the sweeping tide of dreams behind them caught up with them, they succeeded in stepping over the doorsteps of the door. The dokkaebi leaped.
“We did it! We’re alive!”
Baek Ran turned around. The tide of dreams, that tried to swallow everyone, clashed with the fox’s spear and broke into pieces.
“As the saying goes, there is a time to stop dreaming [1].”
He spoke as if it was fun, but Yu Dan didn’t felt an ounce of fun. That dream tide was full of things resembling the frog eggs, and in the center of it was something in the shape of a fetus with black eyes. Extremely disgusting.
“She is not going to chase us anymore?”
“Monghwi’s dream ends here. She will never step outside of it.”
Baek Ran swung his spear again and retrieved the Road to Hell demons.
“And of course she has no reason to come out. Monghwi is arrogant because she controls everything in the dreams she controls, but blinded by the qilin dream, she considered yokai she summoned only secondary, and got the ancient dokkaebi horn she personally hunted down stolen from her? She will not let a word of it outside and take it to the grave.”
Do-ssi sighed in relief.
“My heart that escaped when fleeing a moment ago, still didn’t return. I really thought it was the end of us. Huu, really. If it went just a little wrong, we wouldn’t be able to escape.”
“Didn’t I tell You no such thing will happen?”
Baek Ran said, smiling. They really survived, huh? At the same time as relief, he lost all energy. Yu Dan slumped with a thud.
“How did I get blindly pushed around and got dragged into such a place?”
“My apologies. I didn’t mean to deceive You… No. I did mean to deceive You. Anyway, for this plan we needed a human, who believed that the qilin dream was real.”
“Then you should have told me what you were going to do beforehand.”
“It couldn’t be helped. If I told You beforehand, You wouldn’t do it. Isn’t that right?”
Yu Dan shut his mouth without a comment.
Well. Would he really not do that?
Even though this fox yokai saved his life a few times, he didn’t think much of it. He should have been thankful for that, but it one-sidedly hurt his pride. As such, if there were things that only a human could do sometimes, that condescending attitude of his wasn’t all that bad, right?
He had such thoughts, while watching Baek Ran take out the dokkaebi horn, place it on the floor, and observing it as he was marveling.
Like that, his anger settled. However, he wanted to keep pretending to be angry.
“That Monghwi or something. If I just close my eyes, I see that scary face. She won’t come to find me in my dreams, right? I probably won’t be able to sleep for a while because I’m so scared. I just want to live some peaceful life. Is that the thing you wanted?”
“No.”
Baek Ran said that as he stabbed down the horn with a spear. Yu Dan was shocked.
“What are you doing?!”
The ancient dokkaebi’s horn, which was stolen after such hardships and putting life on the line, turned into dust?! That was so absurd, he couldn’t say a word. However, only Yu Dan was surprised, the fox and dokkaebi were calm.
“In fact I don’t need that thing.”
Baek Ran put his hand into his bosom and took something out.
It was another glistening black horn. It was smaller than Monghwi’s horn, but had even stranger brilliance. He never saw such an old looking thing.
“This is the horn we stole from Monghwi. Got it?”
At the border of the dream and reality, the dust of the broken horn scattered and disappeared. Yu Dan was simply dumbfounded.
“Where did that come from?”
“It’s something I had in my possession. However, no one could know about this. Even if they know, they shouldn’t. So I couldn’t take it out to the world. Until now that is.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Do-ssi stepped forward.
“It’s kind of laundering. Money laundering I mean. Don’t they teach you all about how to do it at school?”
“No. What do you think human schools do? I don’t learn such things.”
“Hm, okay? Got it. Let me explain. It’s like a slush fund. You keep hiding it, and then suddenly want to take it out, but wouldn’t it be quite troublesome if someone asked ‘where did that come from’? So you make a new source for it. That’s what ‘This is the dokkaebi horn we got from Monghwi’ means.”
“So all this trouble was because of such a mere thing?”
“It’s not ‘mere’.”
Baek Ran handed him the horn.
Yu Dan placed it in his palm and examined it. When he looked at Monghwi’s horn, he just had a feeling it was marvelous, but this was both marvelous and strange. The black and bizarre brilliance drew him in for some reason. He stared at it, mesmerized, and then came back to his senses.
“It’s certainly special.”
He tried to hand the horn back, but Baek Ran stepped back.
“What’s the matter?”
“Didn’t I say that I’m asking for help at the beginning?”
“You did.”
“That’s it then. Please take this horn.”
“What?”
Yu Dan was shocked again. Because of sheer ridiculousness of it, he just stared blankly.
“Why are you giving it to me?”
“Don’t worry about this. It isn’t anything like misfortune. Anyone, who sees it, will covet it. Because it has a very powerful power.”
“This?”
“Of course, there are many powerful weapons in this world, which possess the powers of gods, demons, yokai and monsters. However, this is fundamentally different from them. No one knows what the owner of this horn we call dokkaebi was or what power it has. Even I, who lived for over a thousand years has no idea. It will remain as unknown existence even in the future. A thing of unknown name. An impossible thing. Do You remember the source of the powerful power by itself?”
“I remember.”
He heard about it when he was driven into a deadly corner, because of the ghost painting with the soul of the lady from the Joseon period. The power of that ghost painting came for its secrets.
“So you mean this thing here contains a powerful power, eh?”
“Yes. If I was to tell, this thing is even older than antiquity, the immemorial supernatural.”
“There were supernatural things even in such a distant age. But I don’t understand just like before, why are you giving me such a precious thing?”
“I hate it very much.”
Baek Ran reply was mixed with a sigh.
“Of course I hate it. So I plotted this. What are you going to do?”
Yu Dan stared at the horn again.
It was strange. When looking at the supernatural, he felt bad, but this thing wasn’t like that at all. Instead, his left eye was gradually getting hot.
He felt heat when recalling the devil with eight eyes, but this was different. Rather than like being burned by fire, it felt like it was slowly warming up. At some point the horn started to vibrate a little. When he took it into his hand, the vibration stopped and it calmed down.
At that moment, he made a decision.
“I’ll take it.”
Yu Dan raised his head.
“I don’t think I will hate it. But I don’t know where I should put it.”
“You can just leave it on the bookshelf and do nothing with it.”
“If not, how about making it into a protection talisman? No matter what, it’s a treasure. It’s better to have something than have nothing.”
The fox and dokkaebi spoke.
“Anyway, I’m glad it seems to suit You.”
“Thanks to all this trouble.”
They seemed to smile happily. Those were expressions of disposing a headache they had for a long time. If so, it seemed he did a good job by taking it.
Yu Dan said:
“Well, I’ll put it to a good use somewhere.”
“And I don’t want that. I stole it from someone, but it’s much better if I don’t have it. Don’t let it enter my hands twice.”
Baek Ran mumbled with a lighthearted face.
***
Protection talisman. A talisman which protects the body.
When he searched it up, it had such meaning.
He laid down, rolled and took it out again.
The horn appeared with just a thought. They told him that unless someone stole it, or he was dead, he could put it away or take it out at any time. Wasn’t it similar in principle to Baek Ran’s weapon, the enormous spear, he sometimes took out?
Yu Dan laid it down on his pillow and stared at it.
No matter how he looked, it was amazing. While possessed by the geureumae and rummaging through the Banwoldang, he saw all kinds of amazing items, but nothing like this.
A supernatural thing from the immemorial?
He tried to imagine such a distant time. The period when humans used stone tools and made pots from clay, like the ones he saw in the museum. The period when the enormous animals, whose even names disappeared now, strolled around. The supernatural from that period.
When he grabbed the horn into his hand again, with its cold, firm and smooth feeling, his mind settled for some reason.
When they were almost caught by Monghwi, it was really scary, but the moment he got away, the feeling was already fading. Is that why humans take reckless actions. While chasing numerous dreams?
He said that the dreams are vestiges of reality. However, it wasn’t all. There were several kinds of dreams. Even fake dreams. Like the qilin dream made by the fox yokai. The moment they returned to the reality, that strange luck disappeared, but…
He said there are really special dreams.
Thinking about it, Yu Dan fell asleep.
His consciousness sunk deep. Very deep into the darkness. Even deeper. Strangely, even though he was sleeping, he could feel it.
His body, which was sinking down endlessly, touched some pillowy place. He didn’t know since when, but this place was no longer dark. The light brushed his eyelids.
Sunlight… unfamiliar sunlight.
He wanted to open his eyes, but they didn’t move. As if pressed by a mare, he couldn’t twitch even a finger. Through his half-closed eyelids, he saw the scenery as unfamiliar as the sunlight.
Old trees covered with moss like a green carpet. Between the trees, the majestic forest of crossing dazzling light. A wind brushing his face. Everything was different from the present.
This place… where was it?
Someone stood with the sunlight draped behind their back like a transparent curtain. Because his eyes were dazzled, he couldn’t see them very well. He blinked his sleepy eyelids, and at some point, caught a clearer focus.
It was a small fox cub.
Two ears on his head were perked up, the treasured[2] eight tails moved swaying gently, and his golden color was so deep, his eyes hurt, and he couldn’t see it clearly. However, he was certain that if the current Baek Ran reversed to when he was a few years old, he would be like that fox cub.
How long was it?
Even when young, he was making that expression, eh?
He had the two thoughts at the same time.
He tried to open his eyes a bit wider, but his eyelids didn’t even twitch. While he worked hard, the fox cub slowly approached. Looking now, he was hiding something behind his back.
He felt a presence from the other side.
The fox cub was startled, and he turned around. His pretended dignified expression, disappeared in an instant. I didn’t do anything. He looked someone in the eye with such a side profile, while smiling widely.
When was it?
Yu Dan opened his eyes.
His left eye strangely hurt.
Half asleep, he stood up and looked into the mirror, and as expected, his eye was strange. Something in the shape of a bright red wheel was turning in his left eye.
What? What is it now?
He looked down at the horn in his hand.
Was it a trace of it? Did he look into the memories remaining in here? But Baek Ran said he didn’t know what that horn was. Was it another lie?
He just stood there blankly.
Even if he didn’t know what that scene right now was, he thought that he would really hate it if he tried to look into it. It was always like that. This eye showed him things even if he didn’t want to see them. He was just hated by everyone because of that. He didn’t look into it because he wanted to.
Yu Dan put down the horn on the pillow again.
I can’t see anything.
After he laid down and covered his left eye with his hand, the heat slowly subsided.
Because he refused to dream for a moment.
Yu Dan fell asleep again.
This time, he fell into a deep sleep without dreams.
*~*~*
[1] time to stop dreaming — literally ‘shatter dream’. It’s colloquially used to mean to get real.
[2] treasured — in the meaning that something is coveted, makes you desire to have it.
Translator’s note: The end of the story ‘Qilin Dream’. Now excuse me, I have to go subside any panic among the ex replay readers that might have arisen after that last sentence.
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