TBML 28

Zao flapped his wings and fluttered over to the bundle the black tiger had tossed aside. From within it, he pulled out something wrapped in white cloth. Once he unraveled the tightly knotted fabric, two smashed lumps of rice were revealed, likely the dinner of a traveling merchant about to set off on a long journey.

–They eat this kind of thing!

Though now crushed into a sticky mess, it had originally been a well-cooked mix of barley and other grains.

It wasn’t like the raw meat they used to eat, which was covered in blood and fur. This had been cooked, something Zao wanted to convey.

But he had no confidence in explaining the process, much less the reason, in a way the black tiger would understand.

“So I just need to pull him out of the pit and feed him things like this?”

The black tiger asked as if it were no big deal, arms folded and one brow arching smugly. This much wasn’t difficult.

His air of confidence made Zao shriek in frustration.

–You have to treat him too!!

“Just lick it and sleep. It’ll get better.”

–That works for you, for this human, he’ll die!”

Did tigers even have a concept of proper treatment? Such a thing simply didn’t exist in their world.

If time and the mountain couldn’t heal a wound or illness, then it was nature’s way of returning them to earth.

Otherwise, with enough rest, they’d get back up and move on.

The small human lying in the pit, not eating or moving, did bother him…

But could someone really die just from falling into a hole?

The black tiger was more concerned Yiyeon might starve to death than perish from injuries or illness.

“Then what am I supposed to do!?”

He had thought pulling the human out of the pit and giving him food and water would be enough.

But Zao kept insisting otherwise.

Humans were so needlessly complicated. He’d thought he’d come to understand them fairly well by now, but the more he learned, the murkier it became.

–You have to take him back to the other humans…

When Zao finally offered a solution, the black tiger puffed his cheeks in and out before giving a reluctant nod.

Compared to him, Zao probably knew better.

The crow actually did know about doctors, humans who could treat illnesses, but he saw no need to explain that much to the tiger.

He only told him that if they returned the human to his kind, they would help him.

It was an explanation pitched to the tiger’s level, and it worked. He nodded.

Now that he had a clear goal, the black tiger shifted from standing on two legs to four.

Well, more like he simply placed his hands on the ground.

But just as he was about to return to his beastly form, Zao stopped him.

The tiger, still big but mentally undercooked, had a habit of always asking “Why?” before doing anything.

Instead of answering, Zao fetched something from the pile of disheveled clothing in the corner of the room.

It was the garnement the black tiger had worn during a past encounter with Yiyeon.

Zao pushed the garment at him, and the black tiger took it and put it on.

He still remembered that rainy day.

The way Yiyeon had gently dusted off the fabric and smoothed it out with his hands.

He hadn’t made any effort to memorize it, but the black tiger was always sensitive to movement, and he remembered every detail.

The knot he tied was loose, sloppy. But fast.

It didn’t look great, but at least this time, one could say he was wearing clothes.

Zao hadn’t said why, but the tiger remembered something the crow had once told him:

Humans always wear clothes.

So Zao meant for him to take human form and pull Yiyeon out that way.

It wasn’t a bad suggestion, and the black tiger shrugged in agreement.

He could have just thrown the human over his back and leapt out of the pit as a tiger.

But what if “Yeon-ah” happened to catch sight of him and panicked?

He was already weak from hunger. Wasting what little strength he had left might kill him.

So the black tiger decided to be generous, and opted for the roundabout way instead.

Of course, even with clothes on, he still looked like a mess.

Hair wild, robe crumpled, his appearance was ragged and pitiful.

But when he kicked the door and marched off to save Yiyeon, he carried himself like a young scholar returning home in triumph after passing the exams.

As the black tiger – no, Kim Hyunhak, the name written on his identification plaque, ran off in haste, Zao let out a long caw.

The tiger had thrown a fit over the human not eating, yet had completely forgotten to bring the food with him.

–You idiotic tiger!!

…

His fever spiked.

He didn’t need to press a hand to his forehead to know it. His eyes stung like they’d burst from their sockets, and his mouth was parched as if he hadn’t had water in days.

The entire left side of his body was numb, but he could still feel the heat rising from his shoulder.

At least he wasn’t shivering, that was something.

Had he lost the will to survive?

Yiyeon’s condition had deteriorated rapidly.

Perhaps it was just that his injuries were too severe, but to him, it felt like he was dying.

Flickering shapes began to appear in the corners of his vision.

He was alone in the pit. Yet, in the shadows, he started to see something like a person.

A reaper, maybe?

As the dark figure approached, Yiyeon found himself wondering, in a detached sort of way, what kind of ghost he’d become when he died.

They said those killed by tigers became chang-gwi (vengeful spirits.)

But he hadn’t been mauled by a tiger. He’d fallen prey to his own cunning, so that didn’t apply.

Was this a kind of live burial?

Then perhaps he’d become a grave ghost.

But no, no dirt had covered him. Disqualified.

He had no idea how long he’d been down here.

Maybe he’d starve to death and become a hungry ghost?

But then again… his mouth was dry.

But strangely enough, he wasn’t hungry.

It was a useless train of thought, but Yiyeon couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Even as the black shadow came to a halt before his curled-up body, he neither raised his head to see what it was nor turned away.

He lay there as though he had turned to stone.

Like someone paralyzed in a nightmare, he simply stared at the feet of the figure looming over him.

Oddly enough, the figure was barefoot.

The feet were covered in mud, with decaying leaves clinging to the wet earth.

Are reapers usually barefoot?

How strange. Then again, there were those who kicked off their straw shoes before jumping to their deaths.

Shoes hardly mattered.

He stared at those filthy feet until the fever, burning hot, made his eyelids sink shut.

For a moment, he felt as if his body was floating, or was the ground falling away beneath him?

In that final moment, caught in an incomprehensible sensation, Yiyeon thought, Perhaps I’ve killed too many. I must be falling into hell, and then lost consciousness.

…

“Yeon-ah, come now, time to eat. Wake up.”

A gentle, weary voice brushed against his ear, but Yiyeon didn’t open his eyes.

His eyelids were too heavy, draped in darkness, he could see nothing.

But he knew exactly whose voice that was.

Had it been so long since he’d heard it?

Yiyeon found himself wondering: Was her voice always this soft?

Despite her nagging that wasn’t really nagging, Yiyeon didn’t move.

It wasn’t resistance. It just didn’t feel like his body anymore. He couldn’t muster the strength to move.

But he could still smell.

There it was, freshly cooked rice.

Not the scent of slow-simmered porridge, but honest-to-goodness steamed rice.

Just from the smell alone, Yiyeon, whose nose had grown ​visit our site​sensitive from running the household kitchen, could tell it was pure white rice – not a grain of barley, millet, or oats mixed in.

The scent alone sent hunger clawing through him like someone who hadn’t eaten in days.

His stomach felt like it had shrunken to cling to his spine, and saliva pooled in his mouth.

He wanted to obey that voice, sit up and take a spoonful of the rice laid out before him.

But not a finger would move.

“You’re still not up? Aren’t you going to eat? Yeon-ah, my Yeon-ah. Are you sick?”

A worried voice came alongside the gentle touch of a palm on his forehead.

The hand was so soft it reminded him of the silken hems worn by pampered children in noble households.

“You seem fine to me. Come now, I made it for you. Eat plenty, Yiyeon.”

And just like that, from those simple words, Yiyeon realized this was a dream.

Not from the feel of that soft hand, untouched by a day of hard labor.

It was that one “Eat plenty” that made it clear.

Before his father fell into debt, before his mother took to bed.

Even in those short-lived, happy days of his childhood, no one had ever said that to him.

Not once.

“Eat plenty.” It wasn’t much. And yet in Yiyeon’s family, not a single person had ever said those words.

Nor had Yiyeon ever said, “Eat well, Mother. Eat up, Father,” even out of courtesy.

There had never been food enough on the table to say such things.

Others, when faced with scarcity, would pile their bowls high with mixed grains and eat heartily.

But until Yiyeon took up hunting, his family had rarely even managed to put rice on the table.

More often than not, their meals consisted of bark boiled until it softened.

It wasn’t that his life had been completely unhappy just because it had been full of hardship.

But small, simple comforts like this, such ordinary abundance, had never once existed for him.

It felt unnatural.

If this is going to be a dream, he thought, why not something I actually wanted to hear, like “You’ve worked so hard.”

That “Eat plenty” had ruined the illusion, and made his awareness crawl back.

But it didn’t matter much.

He let himself enjoy the fleeting warmth of it.

But from somewhere far off, unfamiliar voices began to shatter the peace.

So faint they were like the whisper of rabbit feet crunching through snow, requiring deep concentration to make out.

“You stupid bird!”

“Yoooou idiotic…!”

The first was a man’s voice, furious.

The second sounded like someone squawking, stretching the syllables unnaturally.

Then, the sound of something crashing, furniture or crockery, it wasn’t clear.

And finally, a roar so loud it obliterated the need for concentration entirely.

Yiyeon’s ears, which had been straining to catch the quiet, now rang from the sudden blast of noise.

“Zao!”

He didn’t know what it meant, but something about it struck him as a name.

Like a mother calling a child by the riverbank, angry, firm, and urgent, yet without a shred of hatred in it.

The ruckus was too much to ignore.

Yiyeon frowned in annoyance.

Maybe now… he thought, Maybe I can open my eyes.

Under his lids, he rolled his gaze in a circle, once.

And then, with surprising ease, his eyes opened wide.