TBML 7

TN: I apologize for the mistake in the translation. I mistakenly thought that ‘Lee’ was his surname when, in fact, it should be’Yeon’, because he doesn’t have a surname. I appreciate your understanding and will correct it moving forward.

Ever since that incident on the mountain path, Yeon had to live in constant fear for a while. If Du-soe hadn’t found him crawling back on nearly all fours at the edge of the village, strange rumors would surely have started to spread. Anyone who saw Yeon returning from his early-morning hike would’ve thought he’d just survived something terrible.

The tiger had been terrifying—but even more terrifying than that were people. At least, to Yeon now, they were. Everyone says the first time is the hardest, but would those shameless, arrogant thugs really stop at just once? Not a chance. The second son of the county magistrate and his gang were bound to keep tormenting Yeon over and over with things like this.

After fleeing desperately from the tiger, stumbling down the mountain trail, the closer he got to the village, the more afraid he became. At least in front of the tiger, he’d had a spear in hand and put up a fight. But now, he was too scared to even set foot inside the village.

In the end, with his face smeared in blood and his whole body coated in dirt from rolling on the ground, Yeon came to a trembling stop at the village entrance. People were more frightening than tigers. Only then did he feel the fear, crawling up from his feet and wrapping itself around his body.

What had happened once could easily happen again. They were probably grinding their teeth right now, blaming their failure and plotting worse. And who was to say they weren’t lying in wait the moment he crossed that threshold?

The more he thought, the heavier his fear grew, riding on his back as he shuffled anxiously at the village entrance. At that point, getting dragged off by a tiger might’ve been better.

There’s even that saying: Even if a tiger bites you, you’ll survive if you keep your wits. But these thugs? They were worse than a tiger. More terrifying than hohwan (tiger attacks) were yanghwan—attacks by humans. If Du-soe hadn’t come back early with firewood, Yeon might never have stepped foot back in the village.

His neatly braided hair was now tangled and wild. The warm, layered clothes he’d left in were soaked in snow, dirt, and blood. One look at him, and Du-soe turned pale, dropped his walking stick, and ran to him.

“Those sons of bitches…”

That was the first thing Du-soe said after hearing the whole story. Nothing more needed to be said. Yeon gave a faint smile at Du-soe’s fury and sympathy, but the hands hidden behind his knees were trembling like aspen leaves. Once Du-soe finally left late into the night, Yeon locked the door behind him and succumbed to a surge of anxiety.

Maybe it was the emotional exhaustion, but sleep came over him like a tide. And yet, he couldn’t let himself fall asleep. What if those bastards barged in during the night and carried him off? What if they sold him into slavery, or worse? Every worst-case scenario kept piling on top of each other and wrapped around Yeon like chains.

The village was smothered in a silence that swallowed all sound, and the only thing he could hear through the night was the faint, raspy breath of his mother—like a ghost hanging on to life. Each time Yeon dozed off, he startled awake as if he’d heard a hallucinated voice. Though he had acted indifferent in front of Du-soe, now he clung to his mother’s shriveled hand and cried like a child, sobbing uncontrollably.

He didn’t want to become those thugs’ plaything. He didn’t want to be sold off as a slave. He didn’t want to end up as someone’s kept man, either. All he wanted was to live a normal life like anyone else—look after his parents, do honest work, and live quietly.

But the shoulders collapsed over his blanket felt too heavy. The only place he had to lean on was the withered hand of his sick, powerless mother. Yeon spent that night with his eyes wide open, unable to sleep at all.

Even days later, Yeon couldn’t shake off the shock of that day. He stayed shut in his house, not stepping past the threshold unless it was to eat. He kept his door locked until the wounds from that day’s scuffle—rolling on the ground, struggling to resist—had all scabbed over and begun to heal.

Every morning, as the sky began to lighten, Du-soe’s shadow would appear behind the paper door, peeking in. But Yeon pretended not to notice. Du-soe was a good man, innocent in all this—but right now, Yeon hated and feared people in general. Facing a tiger again seemed less terrifying than dealing with people.

As the slow-burning sun began to tint the paper doors with a reddish hue, Yeon finally, cautiously slid his door open. Peering through the crack, he saw the courtyard blanketed in snow. It must’ve snowed again overnight—only Du-soe’s heavy footprints marked the fresh white canvas.

He’d only been eating watery rice porridge for the past few days. Yeon could get by on that, being young, but his sickly mother needed something more nourishing. She needed the strength to endure those harsh, bitter medicines.

Though he still feared the outside, his mother’s health was more important than his own fear. Crawling out, Yeon rekindled the dying fire in the kitchen hearth and tied his outer coat tightly before cautiously surveying the area around the house. Just in case.

Luckily, other than Du-soe’s footprints, there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Yeon was just beginning to feel relieved when—flutter!—a crow suddenly swooped down past his head with a loud caw.

Startled, Yeon jerked his head upward, looking to the sky. But the sudden movement made him dizzy, and the world went pale. It made sense—he’d been cooped up for days, only eating thin porridge.

Unable to fight off the dizziness, Yeon finally collapsed, dropping to the ground. As he fell hard onto his backside, he winced and reached out to push himself up—but his fingers brushed against something soft and dense, a thick, fine-textured fur that felt both plush and firm.

Startled by the strange sensation, Yeon snatched his hand back and leapt to his feet.

Right beside where he’d landed, in the shadow cast by a half-collapsed thatched roof, a wild pheasant lay on its side. Judging by its rich plumage—snapped and frayed in places—it might’ve been caught by a chakho soldier who used nets or a falconer who handled hawks.

It looked as though it had been deliberately placed there for him to find. Curious, Yeon picked up the pheasant and lifted its wing to examine underneath. Perhaps Du-soe had left it for him, out of concern. He checked it over carefully, searching for signs of an arrow wound.

There was a mark, like it had been pricked by something sharp—but as far as Yeon knew, there was no hunting method or tool that would injure a pheasant like this. And it didn’t seem likely that it had simply wandered into his yard and died of illness. Its feathers, bent and damaged, still brimmed with energy, as if it had been alive and flailing around just moments before.

Though it puzzled him, a part of him was relieved—at least he wouldn’t have to go out hunting today. Some might sneer and say, Would you really eat something if you don’t know what it is or where it came from? But Yeon wasn’t in any position to be picky about warm rice or cold porridge.

He decided to boil the pheasant until it was soft enough to eat bones and all, and turned to go back into the house. But as he moved, a strange sense of unease made him stop.

Yeon had sharp eyes, no worse than a hawk’s—and what he saw was a line of round footprints leading from where the pheasant had been lying, curving around the brushwood fence, and trailing off into the mountainside behind his home.

He’d seen this print countless times. As a mountain hunter, it was familiar—unmistakably so. He crouched and touched the tracks with his fingers, following them around to the back of the house. The prints were fresh, clearly stamped into the snow that had fallen overnight. That meant whatever made them had come through after the snow stopped. And the depth—they were pressed in deep—meant the creature was heavy.

“A tiger…”

They were tiger prints.

Occasionally in winter, when food grew scarce, a tiger might come down as far as the fields. But it wasn’t common. Still, Yeon’s house stood at the outermost edge of the village.

He looked from the pheasant in his hand to the tracks in the snow. Had the tiger come down to catch the pheasant and fled when it sensed human presence? The black tiger from the mountain path flashed in his mind, and Yeon shivered instinctively. The pawprints weren’t large enough to be a full-grown tiger’s—they had to belong to that black tiger.

The black tiger.

Whether it had meant to or not, that black tiger had already saved his life once. Now, on top of that, it had left him a pheasant.

On the day he killed the tiger’s mother, he had spared the cub—out of guilt, maybe, or pity. And the next day, he’d fed the starving cub the entrails of a wild boar. Not because he pitied the creature, but because something inside himself had been shaken—perhaps because of his own circumstances, because he saw a bit of himself in that pitiful, orphaned cub. That had been the same reason Sooni had taken him in when he was a newborn left to die.

Yeon tilted his head, staring at the pawprints in silence. It was just a beast, but it felt like it had returned his actions with a kind of repayment. The thought was absurd, and a bitter smile spread across his lips.

Even if he had spared the tiger life, the truth was, he had killed its mother. If it were truly capable of gratitude, a beast should also be capable of revenge. Like a human.

Yeon shook his head, trying to chase the thought away. Just foolish thinking. From far off came the harsh caw of a crow—kaak, kaak.

He still felt uneasy, but physically and emotionally, Yeon wasn’t in any condition to leave the house. He still couldn’t bring himself to step onto the path leading up to the mountain. Just the thought of that narrow trail made cold sweat break out. He could almost see those dark figures blocking the path behind him, feel shadows creeping up, and the chill that raced down his spine made him want to scream.

All he could do now was hope that this pheasant in his hands truly was a gift of good fortune.

Trying to erase both the black tiger and the men from his mind, Yeon lifted his eyes toward the distant mountains and offered a word of thanks—hoping that by showing gratitude, the pheasant would truly become a blessing and not some omen.

Clutching the pheasant by its legs, he trudged back into the kitchen.