RPPL C9

By the time Bipa arrived home, Muyun had woken up from a light sleep three times.

He couldn’t sleep properly. When he closed his eyes, Muyun was back in the crock. No matter how hard he pushed, the lid wouldn’t open, and his strength was draining, yet no matter how much he struggled, he couldn’t break the walls he was trapped in, couldn’t close his eyes and rest.

Bipa opened the gate made of bush clover and laid Muyun down on the wooden porch. The back that had accumulated body heat cooled as the wind passed over it.

“Should we go inside?”

He had laid him on the porch where there was at least a breeze, rather than inside, because he had to cool the fever, but he wasn’t sure if it was okay.

When Bipa asked, Muyun shook his head. Though his eyes were more than half-closed, he struggled to stay awake, only grabbing onto Bipa’s sleeve. The strength of his grip, scraped together from who knows where, was so strong that Bipa’s sleeve quickly became wet and wrinkled.

He now understood the meaning of clutching the sleeve.

“…I told you I’m not going anywhere.”

Even though he had much to do, from cleaning to preparing meals, Bipa couldn’t get up.

As he sat still, Muyun’s breathing gradually became regular. But it was not an even breath. Listening to that sharp breathing, Bipa recalled his childhood from a long, long time ago.

He too had been young once. But he couldn’t remember being sick. The memories of his childhood were buried deep and had faded so much that they were difficult to discern. It had also been a long, long time since he had nursed someone who was ill. In truth, he didn’t even want to remember. That’s why dealing with a sick person felt so unfamiliar.

Bipa shoved the memories back into a corner of his mind to gather dust and gently pulled his sleeve free. Even in his sleep, Muyun’s brow furrowed in tandem.

But he couldn’t just spend time idly like this. Bipa truly hated flying insects, so if they were to stay on the porch, he had to be fully prepared before the sun set completely.

He went around the yard, picking mugwort. Unlike dried mugwort, fresh mugwort was hard to light, and as he burned it, he lamented the absence of Haesol. A single strand of his hair would have made burning this a piece of cake….

As he moved about busily, a groaning sound came from Muyun. Bipa placed a hand on his round forehead. The fever was high. He brought some lukewarm water, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and placed a wet towel on it. When he untied all the pus and opened it, his expression improved slightly.

Still, Muyun was small, frail, and ominous, and it wouldn’t be strange at all if he were to breathe his last tonight.

‘He could die from this.’

“…….”

Bipa sat beside the child for a moment, watching, then stood up and got a shovel.

If he left the house and went around to the back, he would be near the graveyard where commoners with no means to secure a proper burial site and no wealth buried their families. It wasn’t for nothing that Dokkaebi fire burned there. Bipa began to dig a little distance away from that place.

But perhaps he had marked out too large a plot, because he was already exhausted after digging just a little. Bipa paused for a moment, then began to dig again.

If Muyun died, he would be buried here. This place would be Muyun’s room. The thought made him feel a bitter sadness, thinking how truly ominous and unfortunate the young one was.

But, was Muyun the only ominous and unfortunate child? Bipa’s bitter feelings did not last long. For there had probably never been an era when the deaths of children were as common as now. As if to prove it, small burial mounds rose here and there around the grave Bipa was digging.

Plagues, poor harvests, frequent wars, and extortion that had become daily life. Mourning should not last longer than a single meal. For the living must prepare for the next meal.

❀࿐

Bipa awoke to a hand shaking him. He lifted his eyelids and saw Muyun.

Unlike his symptoms last night, Muyun looked healthy. The digging had been for nothing. Bipa, as always, roughly tidied his wrinkled and tangled hair and got up. Muyun, in the meantime, had already washed himself, and his hair was still damp.

“You…,”

Muyun quietly pointed outside the window. Through the window, the sound of rain, as if tapping, could be heard. The sound hitting the oil-papered window was quite heavy.

But he probably didn’t wake him up just because it was raining. Looking more closely, he saw that rainwater was pooling and flowing near the window. The new paper they had applied this spring, due to Bipa and Haesol’s shoddy workmanship, was wrinkled in places, allowing water to leak in easily.

What to do, he thought for a moment, but then Bipa, as always, just thought, it’ll work out somehow. He casually turned his head and asked Muyun.

“You’re not sick anymore?”

He knew the fever had mostly subsided when he had last changed the wet towel and wiped him down last night, but he asked because one could still be sick even without a fever. At the same time, he reached out his hand to Muyun’s forehead.

It was warm, but his own hand was naturally cool, so any moderate fever felt like a high one, which wasn’t helpful. Muyun, doubting if the half-asleep Bipa would even see his answer, nodded his head anyway.

Still, a child is a child, and it seemed he had recovered as quickly as he had fallen ill. Muyun was alert, and checking his complexion in the morning light, it was clearly much better than last night, which was a relief. At least he wouldn’t have to fill a hole on a rainy day. Bipa smiled without realizing it. A wave of relief spread across his face.

“It’s raining, and we have some corn we picked, so shall we make some corn porridge?”

It would be nice to add corn kernels to soaked rice and simmer it into a thick porridge. At that, Muyun nodded, then shot up and ran to the palm-sized kitchen.

The way he lit the embers in the hearth and blew, hoo, hoo, was deft, but the feeling that he was overexerting himself came first. Bipa, not caring if the rain fell on his head, went to the kitchen and pushed Muyun aside.

First, he put dry twigs and leaves inside to revive the embers. It was difficult due to the damp weather. In situations like this that required advanced skill and know-how, he couldn’t help but look for Haesol again. Damn Dokkaebi, never around when you need him.

“Ah, finally got it.”

After much effort, the flame began to burn fiercely, and the kitchen quickly filled with heat. It was humid and hot, which was quite unpleasant. Bipa nodded his head and took Muyun to sit on the porch. The room would get hot too, so it was much better to be outside.

He craned his neck to look up at the eaves. He thought the sky was completely overcast, but it wasn’t. Although it was cloudy, the sun was shining brightly. It was a sunshower.

Strange phenomena tend to occur during a sunshower. People say it’s the day the tiger gets married, but Bipa knew that the word ‘fox’ was in its name for a reason.

When a tiger gets married, spectators are bound to gather. A sound is made of a large fox leading smaller foxes in a procession. The larger and longer the procession, the greater the authority. But what if there aren’t enough small foxes? What would that proud, lofty large fox do then?

‘They say kids have been disappearing lately. Someone is loading children onto a boat and vanishing.’

The words of the cloth shop owner suddenly came to mind. If the villagers, who were used to all sorts of death from raids, pirates, and plagues, were all talking about it in hushed tones, it meant it was no ordinary matter.

“…….”

There was one thing that bothered him.

The fur pelts.

The long, soft animal pelts he had seen at the cloth shop during the day were too small to make clothes. And there were too many of them. If they were really the pelts of young foxes, the pelts of the small foxes that were to serve the large fox, what would the large fox do? How would it fill the empty spots?

As he was thinking this, Bipa was a little surprised by a sudden weight on his leg.

It was Muyun. The child was using Bipa’s leg as a pillow, breathing hot breaths onto his thigh. In that brief moment, the child was dozing off.

“…….”

Since he had built a strong fire, there was no lack of heat in the house, but the warmth on his leg was unexpectedly pleasant.

“Muyun.”

Bipa lowered his head and called Muyun softly. Bipa, who always called Haesol gruffly, found his own gentle voice, which had slipped out on its own, unfamiliar.

Muyun, in his drowsy state, thinks that Bipa’s voice, calling his name as if to soothe him, sounds like the wind, like a sigh, and like a flute. When he barely opened his eyes, Bipa was looking down at him. As their eyes met, Bipa suddenly said something out of the blue.

“If you hear a fox cry, go into the room and don’t even think about coming out.”

What fox all of a sudden, Muyun asked back with a hazy gaze. Bipa, having never done it before, stumbled through a clumsy explanation.

“It seems a large fox is taking children to make them its servants.”

“…….”

“I think it’s best to check. If it has passed, that’s a relief, and if it comes again, that’s a worry.”

Even to his own ears, it sounded less like an explanation and more like a story made up on the spot to scare him. Embarrassed, Bipa fiddled with Muyun’s hair and pulled it away. The way it stuck to his sweaty forehead looked like seaweed.

“You’re probably thinking, what kind of nonsense is this. But you’ll find out. No. It’s better if you don’t know.”

Bipa muttered, staring into the empty air.

“…….”

Muyun, looking up at the handsome lines of Bipa’s face from below, thinks that a person like this surely deserves to live in a luxurious house with more than twenty servants.

But the place where Bipa stayed was a collapsing thatched-roof house, with a desolate scene of a graveyard unfolding behind it, not a folding screen or a screen-like mountain. Yet, it also suited him well. Not in the sense of being secluded and impoverished, but in a way that seemed to be floating somewhere…….

Yes, he was like a man made of mist. Even if he reached out his hand to grab him, it felt like he could never be caught… like an illusion….

When thoughts start to border on futile delusion and illogical nonsense, one could say it is the prelude to a dream. The last thing Muyun saw as his mind grew hazy was Bipa, quietly gazing at the sky.

Bipa watched the leaves dancing in the sunshower. The sunshower, which usually ends quickly, was a little long this time.

Eventually, Bipa, discovering that Muyun had fallen asleep, laid him down. It was not a particularly careful touch. However, after watching a damp gust of wind sweep through the yard, he brought a blanket and covered the child’s body with it. Then, he took a fan, a conical hat, and a bottle of liquor and left the house.

Before leaving the house, he looked back once at the room where Muyun was. His lips moved, but in the end, there were no words like “I’ll be back.”