TBML 44

In the blink of an eye, he bit and killed the two humans, whose stench was overwhelming. What the black tiger had done was not hunting, but slaughter. Though it was his first act of slaughter, carried out by instincts and motives he himself did not understand, he felt no excitement; instead, his heart felt heavy and beat slowly.

Though he had been observing humans all this time, thanks to Zao’s nagging, the black tiger had never shown himself where two or more humans gathered, especially where big humans congregated. But today, Zao turned a blind eye.

The scent of the blood filling his mouth with a metallic tang brought his lost sanity back into focus. The black tiger looked at the carnage he had created. It had stained the snow red.

The black tiger watched the man, who seemed not human, scurry away on all fours and let out a roar filled with rage.

After taking two lives for no reason, the black tiger realized that further slaughter was meaningless, and more importantly, Yiyeon’s condition took priority. He ignored Young Master Seo, who was wetting himself and approached Yiyeon.

He gently touched the small human, careful not to leave any claw marks.

After confirming that Yiyeon was still breathing, the black tiger finally shifted his gaze to Young Master Seo. Based on his past experiences with Yiyeon, the black tiger knew that, as a non-human, there was nothing he could do for Yiyeon in a situation like this.

Not only could he not do anything grand for him, but as he had just demonstrated, he couldn’t even speak to Yiyeon properly because he had never personally experienced human habits or life.

So the black tiger ambled over to observe Young Master Seo. His attire was similar to when he had stood before Yiyeon in his Hyunhak robes. The black tiger closely observed the way he wore his long robe and the disheveled yet still-intact headband.

The black tiger learned everything quickly and grew up fast. Even if Yiyeon hadn’t killed his mother, the black tiger— though still a newborn —would have soon left his mother’s protection to stand on his own. Unlike the black tiger, who possessed mystical powers, his mother, while an exceptional individual, was nothing more than just an ordinary tiger. It was not a case of the mystical giving birth to the mystical.

Growing twice as fast and excelling in every way, the black tiger could take human form, speak like a human, and even fold the earth to leap over mountains.

He grew bigger by the day, like a weed that shoots up overnight, and his extraordinary nature was far beyond what an ordinary mother tiger could handle, so his nurturing period was less than half that of a typical tiger.

The same was true for Zao. Such extraordinary beings simply appeared out of the blue one day. Like a single grain of rice of a slightly different color mixed in among beautiful white grains. Just as white mice, white snakes, or white crows are born only very rarely.

Like the black tiger, such beings transcended the ordinary and defied easy categorization. With just a single glance, the black tiger had learned how to tie knots, and after overhearing a few words, he had grasped human speech. With just a quick glance at Young Master Seo, the black tiger had gained a rough understanding of the attire of the noble class.

To be precise, Seo couldn’t actually run away, but the black tiger intended to quench the thirst for humanity still lingering within him by facing this human who had come to meet him after so long. But the moment he actually looked at that smug face, the image of Yiyeon flashed through his mind, and his insides boiled over. Without even realizing it, the black tiger swiped his front paw across Young Master Seo’s face.

Just like the last time they met, everything about this human was unbearably repulsive. The black tiger hadn’t controlled his strength, making him wonder if Seo had died, yet he was as loathsome and tenacious as a cockroach.

The black tiger calmed his seething impulse and began to imitate him. Young Master Seo was a good-for-nothing, but unlike Yiyeon, he had been raised as a nobleman. He wasn’t as accomplished as his older brother, and his own lack of proper conduct detracted from his image, but his tone, gait, and polished appearance were on par with any young nobleman. The black tiger tried mimicking a few of Young Master Seo’s phrases.

This was the first time the black tiger had spoken aloud with a complete stranger other than Yiyeon and Zao. Fearing that his stammering, self-taught speech might give away that he wasn’t human, he had much he wanted to say to Yiyeon but couldn’t even open his mouth, perhaps that left him with a lingering regret.

After mimicking Young Master Seo’s speech a few more times, he soon shed the tone of a child who had just learned to speak and began to speak like a fairly mature adult.

“Do all big humans speak like you?”

“Like… like me?”

Although there was still a hint of awkwardness, it wasn’t enough to be a major concern. Seo Doryeong’s face paled even further as he watched the black tiger speak so skillfully that he could simply disregard it as a bit odd. Well, with the four gashes covering his entire face and the blood smeared all over him, no one could tell what was going on.

Young Master Seo was visibly flustered, but he realized that the black tiger was learning to speak to him like a human. When he realized that the black tiger was at least interested in humans and had a goal he wanted to achieve, Young Master Seo struggled to save his own life.

For the first time in his life, he bowed his head not before his father, but before a beast, and groveled as if he were in the presence of His Majesty the King, offering up his very liver and gallbladder. After all, if things went wrong, he would have to spill his actual liver and gallbladder onto the ground just like that Byeon fellow over there.

“Yes! Yes, that’s correct. That’s exactly it. Please.”

“Please?”

“Please, just spare my life, Mountain God. If you spare my life, I’ll do anything!”

What couldn’t he say? If it meant clinging to life for just a moment longer, he could even promise a high office to a tiger ignorant of human affairs, or deceive him by calling him “elder brother.”

The black tiger alternated his gaze between Yiyeon, who lay unconscious on the cold ground, and Young Master Seo. The black tiger could not comprehend the events that had shaped Yiyeon’s life. No matter how spiritually potent a being he might be, who could possibly explain to a tiger the complexities of human society, with its schemes and lustful desires? Since he had no way of knowing the detailed cause-and-effect relationships, the black tiger could only base his judgment on what he knew and had seen.

Yiyeon and this foul-smelling fellow before him lived in the same village. Just like last time, this fellow was always the one hunting Yiyeon. That [Read on]meant Seo the Young Master, a big human, was stronger than Yiyeon, a smaller one.

As the black tiger understood it, Yiyeon was a small, weak creature, like the rabbits, wild boars, and deer that had made their homes in these mountains, or even Zao, living within the black tiger’s territory.

And Young Master Seo was, in other words, a being capable of hunting those small creatures like the black tiger and deciding their fate. 

If Yiyeon had seen the complex thoughts swirling through the black tiger’s mind, he might have spent the night correcting where those thoughts went wrong, but it wasn’t entirely wrong. Young Master Seo was nothing more than a pipsqueak from a backwater town who had achieved nothing on his own and was merely bragging while relying on his father, but since he was nonetheless using that authority to rule the village like a Mountain Lord, it wasn’t entirely wrong.

But for some reason, the thought that he was similar to that Young Master Seo made him feel irritated even though he didn’t know why, and the black tiger’s whiskers twitched.

‘Why am I even listening to this anymore? Should I kill him?’

The black tiger pondered this alone as he shook his head from side to side. What would happen if he, the one who ruled this mountain, were to die?

After his mother died, this mountain naturally became the black tiger’s territory. If the black tiger’s power were to wane or he were to die, a stray individual – like the leopard that had attacked Yiyeon last time – would likely claim the land. The new Mountain Lord might be a relatively benevolent being, like the black tiger, or a cruel ruler driven by unbridled greed.

The black tiger narrowed his eyes. In his gleaming amber eyes, the black pupils shrank to the size of specks.

He wanted to bite the head off the creature before him, but the black tiger hesitated for a moment, distracted by a thought floating in his mind. Although his rage had been temporarily quelled by tearing those two creatures to pieces earlier, he hesitated even more now, knowing that even if he saved him, Yiyeon would try to return to the village.

After already sending Yiyeon back once, the black tiger assumed without a doubt that he would once again try to return to that village where humans lived. Of course, this stinking bastard wasn’t exactly a pleasure to deal with, but killing him didn’t seem like the best option for Yiyeon either.

Perhaps, he thought, he could use this opportunity to protect Yiyeon.

Even among the beasts living in the mountains, there were certain unspoken rules. For instance, there was an unwritten law that while a group of creatures— no matter how foul-tempered, noisy, or persistently bothersome —might be nothing more than easy prey, one should avoid disturbing them whenever possible.

The tiger does not bother the crows, and the crows offer the tiger various pieces of advice.

Since this human before him said he would listen to anything he said as long as he spared his life, what if he told him not to hunt Yiyeon anymore and to grant him every wish? Wouldn’t that allow him to live comfortably among the humans, eating well and laughing happily?

He also wondered if this fellow might be able to tell him all sorts of things about humans that the black tiger himself wanted to know. The black tiger put off tearing Young Master Seo to shreds for the time being.

The tiger, who had been speaking as eloquently as a human, suddenly fell silent, making Young Master Seo feel uneasy. He could no longer chatter away. The wound on his face, inflicted by the tiger, was gradually widening, making his speech slurred, and the pain he had been forgetting began to resurface. Furthermore, perhaps because he had lost too much blood, his vision grew dizzy.

Seo Doryeong hadn’t even been laid to rest yet, but he felt as if the ground were pulling him down. Just as his consciousness was about to fade, a voice – not that of a human – reached his ears, split in two by the wound.

“I’ll spare you. In return, never harm the small human again. Grant the small human whatever he desires.”

“Thank you! Thank you! O Tiger!! I will do whatever you command.”

Upon hearing the words he had longed [Read on]to hear, Young Master Seo expressed his gratitude in a stammering voice. At least the joy he felt in that moment was genuine.

However, he wasn’t the least bit curious about – nor did he care to know – who the “small human” the tiger was referring to. In any case, he had no intention of heeding a single word the tiger said once he returned alive. Young Master Seo crawled away on his hands and knees.

The black tiger, who had been staring at Young Master Seo as he crawled away from him, tapped the ground with his tail and looked back and forth between Yiyeon and Young Master Seo. Although he had done this for Yiyeon’s sake, he somehow felt reluctant to simply let him go. He had promised to spare his live, so shouldn’t he just let them go?

As the black tiger silently looked down at Seo crawling across the floor like a puppy, he let out a roar, and a scream rang out high in the mountains.