TBML 1

Big ones cost 100 nyang, medium ones 50 nyang, and small ones 30 nyang. And what are these prices for? They are the worth of a tiger.
For those who had spent their lives handling mere scraps of money, such sums were beyond imagination.

With just five nyang, one could buy a seom of rice. With a hundred nyang, one could purchase a thatched-roof house at the outskirts of Hanyang. Add a little more, and one could even buy a servant.

Crouching among the snow-covered shrubs, Yeon clutched his matchlock to his chest. He had only one shot.
Alone in the mountains, he would have only a single chance to take down the tiger.

Tigers, by nature, were experts at concealing their presence—far beyond what a human could contend with. The moment a person locked eyes with such a fearsome beast was the very moment the tiger decided to kill.

Yeon halted his loading for a moment, trying to suppress his impatience, and took a deep breath. Between the withered winter trees, he spotted the mottled stripes of a tiger’s fur. If he wanted to claim the bounty, he had to kill it before the chakho soldiers—the specially trained military unit for tiger hunting—got to it first.

Yeon had already received two rewards for past kills, making him a well-known tiger hunter in the region.

He pressed a paper wad into the gun barrel with his ramrod and opened the firegate. Snowflakes drifted down onto his small shoulders.

Snow absorbed sound.
In the stillness of the mountains, only the huhed sound of his breath and the careful loading of his matchlock could be heard.
One shot.
Holding his breath, he coiled his legs beneath him as if he were the tiger himself.

Typically, a tiger hunt required anywhere from ten to a hundred men. But for Yeon, hunting alone, escape was not an option.
A tiger was faster than any human—if he missed, it would seize him in an instant, crushing his skull in its jaws.

Even in such a perilous moment, his gaze remained steady as he tracked the beast’s movement.
The massive head swayed, shifting as if to calculate something.
Carefully, he adjusted his stance, stepping sideways in a crouched gait. At last, through a gap between the trees, he could see the tiger’s face in full.

Yeon held his breath and touched the flame to the fire gate.
He was so focused that he could hear the paper smoldering.
Even the tiger’s distant breaths…
Even the faint sound of melting snow…

At that very instant, the tiger lifted its head and locked eyes with him.
In the split-second that their gazes met—golden irises encased in black stripes—Yeon instinctively raised his matchlock.

BANG—!

The gunshot echoed through the mountains, shaking the trees.
The snow-laden branches trembled from the impact, sending a cascade of white blossoms tumbling down onto Yeon dark head.

The falling snow seeped into the folds of his thickly bundled clothing, but there was no time to feel the cold.
He threw his matchlock onto his back, drew his spear, and rose to his feet.

Slowly, he stepped forward, dry twigs snapping beneath his boots.
With each step, the outline of a massive fallen body grew clearer between the trees.

Blood pooled around the corpse, melting the snow into a sticky slush.
The tiger lay motionless, its thick pelt soaking in the crimson.
The bullet had pierced through its soft eyelid, cutting diagonally into the skull.

Yeon aim had been deadly precise.

The thrill of the hunt was fleeting.

With a gaze as calm as still water, he looked down at the lifeless beast. It would soon grow colder than the winter wind.

Another hardship had been overcome.

Kneeling beside the carcass, he placed a hand on its massive body and offered a short prayer.
Beneath his palm, he could still feel the lingering warmth and faint remnants of a heartbeat.

The tiger was already dead. The pulse he felt was nothing more than an echo of its last moments.
There was no reason to feel remorse.

Yet still, he spoke.

“I’m sorry. In your next life, come find me—and punish me as cruelly as you can.”

With practiced hands, he spread out a large straw mat beneath the body.
Now, he had to drag this enormous creature down the mountain.

If he could keep the pelt mostly intact, he might fetch an even higher price.
Of course, that was easier said than done.

Before exerting his strength, Yeon scooped up a handful of snow and stuffed it into his mouth.
The ice crunched between his teeth, sending a sharp chill through his body and clearing his mind.

He hoisted his matchlock and spear onto his back and puhed against the tiger’s weight.
But the massive carcass, heavy with layered muscle and fur, refused to budge easily.

Then—

As he rolled the body onto the mat, a sharp, high-pitched cry pierced the air.

Beneath the dead tiger, a small, trembling ball of fur struggled desperately.

A black-striped cub, its belly streaked with blood.

It was covered in its mother’s blood, staring up at Yeon with wide, terrified eyes, wailing helplessly.

Yeon paused, gazing at the tiny creature.
Should he count it as a “small one” and sell it too?

He wavered for a moment, then shook his head.

There were some hunters who, driven by greed, boasted of killing six tigers in a single day.

Yeon was also hunting for money—but even he had some sense of decency.

He suddenly recalled how the mother tiger had shaken her head before she died.
Perhaps she had been trying to soothe her cub, even in her final moments.

A pang of guilt stabbed through him.

Had he killed another’s mother to save his own?

But he quickly shook off the thought, brushing the snow from his hair.

It was just an animal.

If left alone, it would only grow up to attack humans in the future.

Instead, he would let the cub live.
It was the least he could do to ease his guilt.

It was hard to say how such a young cub would survive in this harsh winter, but…
It was the cub of a sanjun—a Mountain Lord.

Surely, it wouldn’t die so easily.

Yeon gave the cub one last glance before gripping the straw mat and dragging the tiger’s corpse away.

Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed sharply.

Whether it was due to exhaustion from raising a cub or simple starvation over the long winter, this hunt had been easier than the last.
Not that it made much difference. The road back was still grueling.

Each time Yeon dragged the tiger forward, a trail of blood-stained snow was left behind.

As he entered the village, no one spoke to him.

The blood that had soaked into his clothes gave him the appearance of a demon.

At the village outskirts, a group of butchers recognized him and hurried over with a wooden cart.

“Yeon-ah, you went alone again?”

“We know you’re desperate, but this is madness.”

“Exactly. What would happen to your mother if you died out there?”

They scolded him as they helped load the tiger.
Their words held no real weight—so Yeon simply nodded in response.

One of the men, face darkened from the cold, handed him a cloth.

As Yeon wiped his face, a pale complexion emerged beneath the bloodstains—white as lily-of-the-valley blossoms. He had been unable to get food, leaving him skinny, and his back was bent from carrying heavy loads. However, his face was so beautiful that it hardly mattered. Event the stars of the gisaeng houses frequented by high-ranking officials, hesitated to stand beside him.

Even caked in filth, Yeon was beautiful.

With skin as white as jade, jet-black hair and eyes, and straight eyebrows that exuded a masculine air, he was so beautiful that anyone, regardless of gender, would stop in their tracks. Before he became a hunter, there were even times when village elders fought over who would take him as a concubine.

The men who had been nagging him fell silent as they gazed at the jade-like face that emerged from the dark red blood. All of them blushed, but not one of them stepped forward to help him.

Yeon stood in the mud, where his feet were stuck. He was supporting his sick mother, a woman who ate away at money. Today, he had caught two large tigers and one smaller one. This marked his third tiger, yet he still didn’t have a house in Hanyang, let alone rice.

His sick mother, Sooni, picked up a child, Yeon, at the riverbank. Before taking care of his sick mother, he took care of his father. His father had died a few years ago, an ill man who could hardly take care of himself, let alone his child.

Without a child of her own, Sooni had picked up Yeon, and despite their extreme poverty, the couple raised the child with love. The village people had whispered about this, though.

To eat even rice porridge, Yeon had to wander the markets at a young age, working to provide for his ailing father. Even as he grew older, Yeon continued to borrow money from a ruthless moneylender in the village, despite his already crippling debt, in hopes of saving his sick father.

But in the end, his father passed away without paying off his debts, leaving nothing but more burdens for Yeon. The villagers whispered that it might have been better this way.

The following year, Yeon’s remaining elderly mother also grew ill and had to lie down, and once again, he was forced to struggle. He had tried almost every medicine, and had called in every physician he could afford as a commoner, but nothing worked. The cheap herbs they provided had their limits.

Now, burdened with the debt his father had left behind and the continuing needs of his sick mother, Yeon found himself constantly in need of more money. At one point, he even seriously considered giving up and becoming a concubine to survive. His small frame and the illness of his elderly mother made it hard to find work.

Fortunately, a kind-hearted hunter took pity on Lee Yeonand offered him a job, sending him on hunts in exchange for a small fee and teaching him how to hunt. It was something Yeon would never have dreamed of had his father still been alive.

A hunter, by tradition, was often a butcher, and even if they were officially a free commoner, they were still considered low-class. However, Yeon had no other choice, and butchery, it turned out, could be quite profitable.

Although Yeon wasn’t known for his strength or fighting skills, he was swift and had a calm temperament. Whether it was due to his temperament or innate ability, he soon started hunting not only tigers but also deer, badgers, and even bears. He didn’t hunt boars or cows, and instead of butchering the animals himself, he would sell them to other butchers and get paid.

Although his mother’s illness and his own situation made life difficult, the villagers didn’t drive Yeon and his mother out of the butchers’ village, for which he was grateful.

Then, the government’s official tiger hunting program, which offered rewards, became a turning point for Yeon. Instead of hunting in groups, hunters who went alone could earn 100 nyang by capturing a tiger, a large sum of money. Yeon used this money to buy expensive medicines from doctors who treated only the nobles, and his mother’s condition improved.

The result was noticeable. For at least the time she was on the medication, her illness improved, and Yeon’s empty purse was filled with hope rather than just coins.

When the chakho soldiers saw him, they marveled. He was small, yet vicious enough to catch tigers and survive.

Though the villagers thought of him as cruel, Yeon didn’t consider himself so. Like on this day, he felt guilty for taking a life to save his own, and there were times when he feared climbing the mountains alone. Just thinking of what would happen to his mother if something happened to him made his limbs tremble. There were moments when he just wanted to sit and cry, like a child, overwhelmed with despair.

Still, he couldn’t stop doing this work. Though he wasn’t his biological mother, Sooni had raised him with love, and Yeon feared being left all alone in the world when he passed.