TBML 27

In human form, the black tiger rummaged through the things scattered on the ground. He picked up a satchel that gave off a rather tempting scent, along with several other items.

Since Zao was being so uncooperative, and the black tiger had no way of knowing what the little human needed, he decided to just take everything he could find, whether useful or not.

When the black tiger ignored him and simply went about his task, Zao started screeching without even being asked.

–I’m not telling! Not telling, not telling!!

“Hmph, suit yourself.”

With a snort, the black tiger gathered the human’s belongings into both arms and began to walk away. Zao though he was headed for the pit where the human had fallen, so he flapped ahead to lead the way.

But when the black tiger veered off in a completely different direction, the crow had to hastily turn and fly back to catch up. The sudden change in course had caught him off guard, and he landed on the black tiger’s shoulder, nearly crashing into him.

Zao shouted as he clung to the black tiger’s human-form shoulder, “Wh-where are you going?!”

But the black tiger didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to say it aloud, he had already set his direction and begun walking with clear purpose. Quick-witted as ever, the crow realized it and started flailing.

The black tiger climbed into the mountains.

Unlike the last time, when he’d descended the mountain with Yiyeon in human form, he now moved with ease on two legs. Thanks to his innate senses, he scaled high cliffs and steep [stolen content]ledges like a seasoned mountaineer, as if he had lived his whole life in the mountains.

Even the way he moved over narrow ridges and up dangerously steep paths looked like Yiyeon’s. Ever since he lost his mother and first encountered Yiyeon, the black tiger had spent countless hours observing and learning about humans – especially Yiyeon – to understand them. So it was only natural that his mannerisms, even his gait, had begun to resemble the hunter’s.

As he walked deeper into the mountains, so deep it was hard to imagine anything beyond, the sound of water grew from a trickle to a roaring rush like a waterfall. Following the valley upstream, and then even further upstream, a small house suddenly came into view, tucked in the remote forest.

It was even shabbier and more precarious than Yiyeon’s poorly kept thatched hut. When the roof, almost stripped bare of straw, peeked through the trees, Zao started screeching indignantly.

–Don’t go! That’s mine!

“How is it yours? You’re not even human.”

–It’s mine! Miiine!

“Shut it, you stupid bird.”

–Stuuupid? You’re the stupid one, you dumb tiger!

Standing before the rundown shack, the two of them bickered like six- or seven-year-old children. The place was so deep in the mountains, even someone banished into exile wouldn’t be sent this far. No sane person would try to get here, the path was too treacherous.

The mud-walled house, if one could even call it a house, was crude. If simply having a roof was enough to call something a home, then it qualified, but just barely.

No one lived here. The black tiger didn’t know when it had become abandoned.

Zao, who spent all his spare time lurking in this derelict house, might have known, but stolen contentthe tiger had no interest in asking, and the crow had no intention of telling.

Though it was man-made, the place had long been forsaken by people and forgotten. A place where no footsteps came.

This was the area where the black tiger had spent time with Zao after losing his mother. In other words, this was their den, a nest forsaken by humankind.

The black tiger kicked the crooked door with dirt-covered feet and stepped inside.

The door of Yiyeon’s hut had fit snugly in its frame, but this one hung crooked and wouldn’t close properly. It had barely been clinging to the wall, and now, after one kick, it collapsed completely.

Zao let out a long, drawn-out caw as he skimmed over what had once been the front yard, upset that the house was now dirtied with the tiger’s footprints.

Despite the cobwebs outside, the inside was clean, by the black tiger’s standards, at least. He knew that this was because Zao constantly flitted in and out whenever he had the chance.

Now that the black tiger had grown into the body of a full-grown man, the room barely fit him when he lay down. It was crammed with all sorts of odds and ends.

Some of the things had always been here, but most were objects the tiger had gathered while following Yiyeon or pilfering from other humans.

There were even books. Some of them weren’t words, but picture books, ones with drawings of people instead of characters. He remembered Zao peeking at those in secret.

Maybe those books show what humans eat?

He tossed the armful of supplies to the floor and started digging through the place, searching for the books Zao had hidden away.

The tiger’s clumsy hands turned the room upside down, and eventually, Zao flapped into Read on the room, wings beating in protest.

The crow skillfully circled the cramped space and landed right on top of the book the tiger had been about to grab.

With beady black eyes flashing, Zao shook his head and cursed.

–He’s going to die, you know?

“…Die? Why?”

At the crow’s cruel words, the black tiger’s face twisted.

Now a grown man in form, the tiger’s frowned.

He repeated the question, incredulous, as if Zao’s words had been beyond absurd.

Zao opened his beak wide, and out came a laugh, not a bird’s caw, but an almost human chuckle.

That sound coming from a crow’s mouth was grotesque.

When he saw the tiger’s confusion, Zao curled his wings in and held his belly like a human would. He rollee side to side in glee.

–Because he’s hurt! He’s in pain!

“He’ll get better.”

–You dumb tiger! That human was born to die. Weak, easy to kill, and rotten!

Whatever it was that made it so funny, Zao kept laughing, and the black tiger’s face grew grim.

That damned crow was always pretending to know everything. His words grated on the tiger so much he wanted to clamp that beak shut.

Pain?

Wasn’t that something everyone felt?

The black tiger felt pain too. When he fell and hit the ground, it hurt.

When he had saved Yiyeon and gotten mauled by a leopard, it had hurt.

The long scar that still stretched across his flank bore witness to it.

But with time, wounds naturally healed, and pain faded, such was the way of things.

Yet to say someone would die just because they were injured or in pain…

The black tiger, a spiritual beast whose powers far surpassed those of any ordinary tiger, could not understand this human notion of pain leading to death.

“Die?”

–Yes! Just like your mother died!

At Zao’s words, the black tiger raised his thick brows.

True, his mother had been slain by Yiyeon. But if one were to ask whether she had suffered… the answer would be no. She had vanished from the world as simply as a tiny flame blown out by a sudden gust of wind.

Zao’s example failed to stir any real sense of empathy in him.

Even so, hearing his dead mother used as a weapon against him – to be acknowledged, to his face, as a motherless beast – left a sour taste in his mouth.

He stared coldly at the crow who had just evoked his mother.

Perhaps realizing a moment too late that he had gone too far, Zao averted his eyes and feigned ignorance.

It wasn’t about how much pain one endured before death.

No, it was the thought that Yiyeon might cease to exist, just like his mother did, that made anger rise within him. That emotion was something entirely separate from the sting of being called motherless.

The black tiger had never once thought seriously about death, not like this.

But now, the idea came at him suddenly, like the desperate flailing of a fish caught in shallow water.

How many times had he saved the human from danger?

He’d received help himself once or twice, but if they were tallying up debts – by number and by severity – he had saved Yiyeon far more often.

Every time Zao asked why he bothered, he’d just snort dismissively and avoid answering.

But it had never been about reason. Not emotions, not logic.

He had saved him simply because he didn’t want him to die.

He hated seeing the little human wailing like a child.

Hated the sound of him groaning in pain.

At one point, his fear had been amusing, but when his face went pale, when he looked like he was about to die, that wasn’t funny.

He hated it when Yiyeon locked himself away in the village and wouldn’t come into the mountains.

Most of all, he hated it when the human’s faint scent, already so hard to track, was drowned out by the stench of others.

Perhaps he had misunderstood the black tiger’s silence, because Zao settled back onto his shoulder.

He may have realized that bringing up the tiger’s mother had been too much. But even as he eyed the tiger warily, Zao still puffed his chest out with pride, refusing to show any real remorse.

“…He mustn’t die.”

–Why not!

And after all that brooding, all that silence… that was all the tiger said.

That the small human mustn’t die.

Zao flapped his wings in outrage, like he was about to explode.

“I don’t want to kill him.”

–……

The black tiger turned his head to look at the now-silent crow.

It might’ve been the longest, quietest moment Zao had ever experienced in his entire life.

No complex reasoning, no tangled emotions, just a pure and honest instinctive response.

And for once, the crow had no words.

Like a well-crafted stuffed crow, Zao sat quietly on the tiger’s shoulder.

Even that brief silence seemed too long for him. Before much longer, his beak parted once again.

–That human is weak. Leave him like that, and he’ll die.

“Then what should I do?”

–Get him out, you idiot tiger!

This time, the black tiger didn’t argue back.

There was no point in running his mouth and risking the crow suddenly refusing to say another word about humans. That would only hurt him.

–Aaand humans light fires to cook their food!

Not that Zao knew everything about human affairs himself.

He’d merely spent a long time watching a man who once lived here alone, sharing pieces of the mountain with him. But that was ages ago now.

And no matter how uncanny or clever a crow he was, he was still a crow, not a man.

He couldn’t possibly understand every aspect of human behavior.

However, compared to the black tiger, who had only just come of age, Zao had seen and heard and learned far more than he had.