As Giju Wishes Chapter 8.1

“Are you really getting out here?”

The taxi driver looked back with a puzzled face.

“Yes. This is Janggunsan Mountain, right?”

Giju said as he looked at the mountain outside the window—or rather, the sea of clouds.

“That’s true, but this isn’t a mountain where people usually go. It gets foggy often, so there’s no one around.”

“It’s okay, we’re here because we have some business to take care of.”

Looking at Giju suspiciously, the driver opened the locked door with a reluctant face.

“Call me if you want to go home, student.”

The driver said worriedly as he handed over a business card.

“Are there no rumors about ghosts appearing here?”

Choi Geon, who had gotten out first, suddenly poked his face into the car and asked.

“If there were such things, would I have given you a ride here so nicely? It’s just an unremarkable mountain, so don’t worry.”

Whether that was good news or bad news was hard to tell, perhaps because they had come here looking for something. Choi Geon wore an uneasy expression.

“Yes, thank you. Get home safely!”

Giju, who had tucked the business card carefully into his pocket, closed the door and bowed his head toward the receding car.

“He’s very kind.”

At the word ‘kind’, Choi Geon glared at him with narrowed eyes.

“Kind? Was that cultist not kind too?”

“Still, kindness is kindness.”

“Why don’t you just go to his house and bow to him too.”

Shaking his head, Choi Geon looked around.

“And why the hell is the weather like this.”

Giju also looked up at the cloudy sky. Not just the sky, but even the air was gray. The thick sea of clouds and fog hiding the mountain were eerie and bleak, creating an atmosphere that felt like crossing the boundary between reality and unreality, as if an immortal lived there.

“Aren’t you going?”

Choi Geon asked Giju, who continued to stare up at the mountain.

“Why. Is something strange?”

“No, just… the air is cold.”

The moisture-laden air clung coldly to his skin. That damp chill gave him a strange sense of déjà vu.

“Tell me if you see a ghost.”

“Forget about low-level spirits… it’s actually cleaner.”

“Here?”

“Yeah. Curiously, I don’t see anything. It’s a mountain, but… I don’t see anything.”

Forget ghosts, he couldn’t sense anything sinister at all. Giju had never seen such clean and pure energy before. He thought he understood why the Samshin-batgi ritual was performed on this mountain.

“Let’s just go for now.”

Choi Geon replied, hitching up Giju’s backpack which was slung over his shoulder.

“Okay.”

Giju took the first step onto the path where only a faint shape remained due to the overgrown grass. Choi Geon followed behind him.

“Haa.”

Choi Geon, whose breathing had become a bit rough, looked at Giju beside him. Other than looking short of breath, he seemed to be holding up well enough.

“I can’t see very well.”

Giju, who had been climbing well the whole time, slowed his pace and looked around. The sea of clouds had grown thick, making it hard to see ahead.

“We just have to follow this path anyway.”

Choi Geon didn’t mind much. Although it wasn’t maintained, they were following the traces of the path well. When he looked up Dongsam Spring on the internet, everyone had written to follow this path straight up and then veer left at the fork. As long as they had this path, finding Dongsam Spring shouldn’t be that difficult.

“How many meters high is this mountain?”

Giju asked.

“600.”

“It feels like it’s taking a long time.”

“600 meters is originally long.”

This time, too, Choi Geon spoke without much concern. It just felt further because the weather was gloomy. It wasn’t as if the mountain would suddenly get higher. Choi Geon overtook Giju and signaled for him to just shut up and keep coming.

“Geon-ah.”

At the call, Choi Geon, who was moving again, turned around.

“Aren’t you coming quickly?”

“Do you remember climbing Dobongsan Mountain?”

“No.”

Choi Geon answered without a second thought.

“That place was about 400 meters, but we went up faster than this.”

“That place is 400 meters.”

“Still, wasn’t it much faster than now?”

Thud.

Giju, who had come right up behind Choi Geon, stopped walking.

“Are we going the right way?”

The atmosphere turned strange in an instant. Giju’s black eyes seemed somehow even glossier.

“Hey, hey, don’t make the mood weird. I guarantee you we are going damn well. You should trust the internet more than your intuition…”

Trying to break the mood as if telling him not to talk nonsense, Choi Geon was about to turn his body again when something cold fell on his face.

“Oh, water droplets…”

Raindrops fell pitter-patter onto Giju’s face as he looked up. After blinking a few times, the rain turned into a fairly large amount of raindrops.

“It’s raining, Geon-ah.”

Compared to Giju, who was calm despite the sudden rainfall, Choi Geon reacted quite frantically and quickly pulled a raincoat out of the bag.

“Ah, fuck, the weather is absolute garbage. Which bastard cursed us again.”

“It really feels like a mountain spirit might appear. Do you know? A long time ago, a traveler got lost on a foggy mountain.”

“Traveler or whatever, shut your mouth and put this on quickly.”

Choi Geon, who had unwrapped the raincoat, approached Giju, who was enjoying the rain while looking at the sky, and draped the raincoat over his shoulders and put the hood on him. After that, he roughly tore open the packaging of the one remaining raincoat.

“There, he happened to meet a fairy, and the two of them played so happily together. They didn’t even notice the time passing. But the fog gradually started to lift.”

“Fairies my ass, it was probably a ghost—no, aren’t you going to button up quickly?!”

Choi Geon, who had roughly thrown on his own raincoat without even being able to fasten the buttons, shouted as he buttoned Giju’s buttons one by one.

“Do you know what happened once all the fog lifted?”

“How would I know?!”

Choi Geon snapped as he fastened the third button.

“The fairy he had been playing, eating, and talking with all this time was actually a tree.”

At those words, Choi Geon stopped buttoning, raised his head, and looked at Giju with narrowed eyes.

“If you’re a tree, you’re dead, seriously.”

At that, Giju smiled slily and answered half-jokingly or half-seriously.

“You never know.”

“In that case, there’s a damn easy way. I can find out if I hit you once, right?”

When you’re not sure, using violence usually settles things easily.

“No, even then, you won’t know.”

“Why not?”

“No one knows if the traveler who entered the fog crossed over to the afterlife for a moment, if the fairy crossed over to the secular world, or if it was just the hallucination of a tired traveler.”

“What about you. Does that look like a hallucination too?”

Choi Geon, who had finished buttoning Giju’s coat, turned his head to the side and pointed at something. At the end of his gaze was a roe deer. One with very large antlers, like a vision. Giju stared back at the roe deer, which was standing still and gazing intently this way.

“It looks real, but I don’t know if it’s really real.”

“What kind of bullshit is that.”

“That roe deer is real, but we might be the ones who are fake.”

Choi Geon’s face turned into a sour expression.

“Do you have to say something unlucky on a weekly basis? There’s no way this feeling of wanting to beat you up is fake. That roe deer bastard is the fake one.”

“No, I don’t mean it like that, but maybe we’ve crossed over to the afterlife for a moment. From the roe deer’s perspective, we’re the fairies.”

At the strange nonsense, Choi Geon’s expression crumpled further.

“Who said we’re fairies? We might be gloomy because we’re followed by ghosts, but we’re humans. We’re definitely humans.”

Choi Geon, who appealed that he was human more than necessary, pulled Giju’s arm.

“Stop staring at that crazy roe deer and just come quickly, Shin Giju.”

Giju looked at the roe deer, which didn’t take its eyes off him, for a moment before following after Choi Geon.

Swaaaaaa—

The rain, which was like a shower, wasn’t thick, but it was enough to interfere with walking. The ground was muddy and the fog had lifted a little, but the vision was still blurry.

“Haa, haa.”

As the temperature dropped, Giju’s stamina also began to fail. Choi Geon, who was conscious of Giju, slowed down. Choi Geon kept recollecting the posts and images he had seen on the internet before starting. They said if a fork in the road appeared, it was definitely the right. They said if you kept going straight to the right, a large tree and a stone tower would appear, and if you went down below that tree, Dongsam Spring would appear.

But now, an hour had passed since he had gone straight to the right, and not even a single large tree was visible, let alone a stone tower. They said it was a noticeably large tree, but they were all about the same size.

He hadn’t made any mistakes. He could be certain that he had never gone down another path. It wasn’t a difficult path to begin with. Therefore, Choi Geon, who had been walking without doubting this path in the slightest, took his cell phone out of his pocket once again just in case, just in very unlikely case.