RPPL C14

Bipa didn’t answer. Unaware that Muyun was hiding and listening, he simply avoided the village chief’s gaze. The chief’s eyes, much like his bustling footsteps, were also hesitant. He looked at Bipa, then at Bipa’s hands.

“And besides, you too…. I remember when you first appeared in the village. How…”

The chief, his hair frosted with white, shivered slightly as he said this. Bipa’s appearance had been eye-catching at first, but now that it hadn’t changed a bit from back then, it had become strange and suspicious.

“You know the children went missing for a while, right? That… among the people, it seems they’re wondering if it might be the work of an outsider living near the village, but who never gets close….”

He mumbled the words, but the message was clear. They suspected Bipa, and to top it off, they didn’t like the young child he had brought with him, who seemed ominous. Even if the incident had been a few years ago.

And they don’t even know that Bipa got hurt solving that case back then. Muyun, without realizing it, took a step forward.

At the sign of a presence, both the chief and Bipa turned their heads. Spotting Muyun, the chief looked surprised, let out a dry cough, and then hesitated even more.

With Muyun’s appearance, Bipa felt he had to end the conversation. He didn’t know how much Muyun had heard, but he just hoped that Muyun had just arrived and had no inkling of the situation.

“I understand what you’re saying. You can go now.”

“Huh? You understand?”

“Yes. There won’t be anything more to worry about, so please go back. The weather is bad, too….”

At Bipa’s words, the chief let out a sigh and looked up at the sky. As he said, the weather was foul.

The chief smiled awkwardly and turned to leave. He tried to pass by without even a brush of his clothes against Muyun, but the boy wouldn’t budge. In fact, a shiver ran down his spine at the boy’s intense stare.

Even so, the chief, pretending otherwise, forced a fake smile that made the corners of his lips tremble and patted the child’s head as if doing him a favor. Of course, even that fleeting contact was clearly uncomfortable, as he hurried out of the house by the gravesite.

“When did you get here?”

Once the chief was gone, Bipa greeted Muyun in a bright voice. Muyun approached with a dark expression, a mix of displeasure and unease, and asked.

“They’re telling you to leave because they hate me, aren’t they?”

“What? No.”

Bipa, bursting into a hearty laugh, placed his palms behind him and leaned back.

“They said they need more grave sites.”

If he puts it like that, he would surely feign ignorance even if I said I overheard the conversation. How kind his master is.

“The fox… you were the one who sent it away, Master….”

Muyun mumbled. Bipa pretended not to hear the mumble, though he had. He intended to not tell him until the end. Muyun felt sorry and embarrassed. Looking at Muyun, Bipa suddenly frowned and teased him.

“By the way, what’s with your shoes. Did you step in poop?”

“No, I did not!”

Muyun retorted sharply. If you say no, just say it with words, Bipa grumbled as he brought over the water he had already drawn. It was just a little mud…. Muyun, still young, quickly turned his attention to his own feet.

“I should wash up too while I’m at it.”

Since it was a secluded place, Bipa had no hesitation in taking off his clothes. He took off his white ramie robe, threw it into the laundry bucket, and called for Muyun with his upper body completely bare.

“It’ll get colder when the sun sets, so come and wash up quickly.”

Muyun looked at Bipa’s bare body, feeling a bit awkward, before tentatively approaching.

Soon, cold water seeped between his toes. Oreureu, he shivered, and Bipa opened his mouth and laughed loudly.

“Is it that cold?”

“That’s because you don’t get cold, Master.”

“That’s right. Is that why you just look like a crybaby to me?”

“A crybaby? Absolutely not!”

He splashed water as if for revenge, chalbang-chalbang, but Bipa just found Muyun’s pride cute and funny. He let himself be splashed a few times before standing next to him and washing his own feet. Then he suddenly compared Muyun’s feet, standing side-by-side, with his own.

“You still have a long way to go before you grow up….”

Strangely, Bipa looked a little happy as he said that. But Muyun felt the complete opposite. Muyun hated his young and powerless self.

But since Bipa was smiling, he tried to smile too. Thinking about the long days they would spend together in the future wasn’t so bad.

“I may not be a friend your age, but playing in the water with your master isn’t completely boring, is it?”

Soon, water dripping from his whole body, Bipa stepped onto the wooden floor without hesitation.

“You have to live joyfully.”

He hummed as he looked for a cotton cloth. It was a song he’d apparently learned from a Dokkaebi who loved merrymaking and song, but to Muyun’s ears, he couldn’t make heads or tails of the tune. It was just a mess.

Muyun waited for Bipa and looked down at his own feet. He wiggled his toes.

The truth was, living wasn’t fun at all. Having come down from a slash-and-burn field where only burnt ruins remained, everything he saw should have been a new world, but to Muyun, it was as monotonous and boring as a colorless world, a world without sound.

When he went to the market, people avoided him, calling him a child who wasn’t childlike, who didn’t smile much. It was probably because they felt an unspecifiable ominousness and awkwardness from him.

But, when he was with Bipa, even just washing his feet was fun. He even became curious about his own grown-up self, something he had never wondered about before. That was truly strange.

For Muyun, the new world was with Bipa.

Everything Bipa showed him, everything he taught him.

And to such a Bipa, he was a shadow, a burden, a nuisance.

Muyun was very worried that the day would come when Bipa would find him bothersome. If he were abandoned by him, he would not only have nowhere to go, but he wouldn’t want to go anywhere.

So he tried even harder. Please, please don’t abandon me.

“What are you thinking so hard about? If a kid worries too much, his hair will fall out.”

Bipa, who casually said things quite unsuitable for a child, brought a cotton cloth and lifted Muyun’s foot.

Even the mischief of deliberately lifting it high to make him wobble wasn’t very adult-like. But Muyun, looking at the size of his foot, which Bipa’s hand generously covered, felt anew just how young he was.

After drying Muyun’s feet, Bipa lifted his head and mumbled. As if to himself.

“I’m thinking of leaving this place.”

“Ah….”

Muyun remembered the conversation between the chief and Bipa, which he had forgotten for a brief moment.

“It’s time to leave. I… I think I have the wanderer’s curse, I can’t stay in one place for long.”

As if this matter had nothing to do with Muyun, Bipa even brought up a pointless talk of a wanderer’s curse. Muyun grabbed Bipa and spoke as if pleading.

“You’ll take me with you, right?”

“……”

Bipa quietly gazed at that endlessly desperate look.

He had never said it, but Bipa liked it at times like this. When Muyun looked at him with unchanging eyes. When he was the only thing in the world Muyun saw…. But once he grows up a little, these eyes will change, and once he grows up a little more, he will no longer see only the benefactor who saved him.

That time hadn’t even come, so there was no way he would leave Muyun behind. He couldn’t leave him behind in the first place. The time they had stayed here was by no means short, yet no one regarded the child Muyun with any affection. No attachment had formed, no feelings were exchanged. In fact, they wished for him to leave, so how could he abandon him.

“Of course. Who else would mend the holes in our clothes? I’m just getting the hang of this whole ‘master’ thing, so I’ll have to keep at it for a few more years, if only for my own curiosity.”

Muyun whispers at the playful tone. I’ll get better at sewing, let’s go together. Bipa couldn’t say anything back to those words. Because it was the first time in his life he had ever heard someone say, “let’s go together.”

❀࿐

As soon as dawn broke, Bipa and Muyun came out into the yard. They had packed everything they needed, yet their belongings were simple.

Bipa had Muyun wait outside the wicker gate and approached the house that had been his home for several years. Though there must have been no small amount of accumulated memories and time, he seemed to have no lingering attachment whatsoever.

He tapped the main beam with his hand, then took out his fan. He then struck the middle part of a pillar three times in a row with the fan. The bell, which Muyun had newly attached with a sturdy string, dangled from the end of the old fan.

Having finished his task, Bipa stepped backward. As he reached where Muyun stood, the main beam collapsed in an instant. As if it had been rotting from the inside for a long time. As the perfectly fine house crumbled, Muyun’s eyes went wide.

“This house’s time was up long ago. I didn’t do anything bad.”

Bipa, as he said this, had a transcendent look in his eyes, as if he were someone who would never once look back. On Bipa’s face, which he had always thought of as un-adult-like, an immeasurable amount of time suddenly flashed by. The experience and all sorts of emotions that came with it vanished in an instant.

Bipa confirmed that even the thatch on the roof had completely decayed before turning on his heel. Muyun, too, turned his back without any lingering attachment and followed beside Bipa.

“How far do we have to go?”

“There’s no limit to where we can go, so it’s hard to answer a question like that.”

Answering in an enigmatic and tricky way was also one of Muyun’s complaints. But when Bipa saw his straw shoes caked with mud and quietly took his hand, that complaint soon subsided.

Holding hands. At first, he thought it was awkward.

The slash-and-burn farmers could not be called affectionate. They were busy surviving, and had to struggle not to die, so they had no energy to love, nor to express it. Muyun, feeling a strange tickle in his chest, scratched at his other arm for no reason.

“I smell something simmering in soy sauce…. And of all places, it’s coming from the direction we’re heading.”

“Where are we heading?”

“To a rather remote place.”

“A place that even people avoid?”

“A place like that would be the icing on the cake.”

Bipa answered with a small laugh. Right, if we’re looking for a place people avoid, I guess smelling something like this can’t be helped, he added.

They took a step forward to go to a place that, like Muyun, was ominous, unvisited, and unwanted by anyone. The smell of dust rising from the collapsed house followed them with the wind.