As True as a Dream – Chapter 57

Author: Dakku-san

“You… How do you know so much about this painting? What else do you know? How much do you know? If your families were close enough to make a marriage pact… did Brother Yangbu tell you about it before he died? Did he send you a letter?”

Hae-Joo stopped walking towards Uncle Jige.

Uncle Jige’s words were strange.

“Uncle Jige, how do you know about the Guishan Dao? That’s… something only my father and I know…”

A lot of things don’t make sense to her.

Just then, Yi Ho walked up to her and stood next to her, facing Uncle Jige.

“I asked you earlier if you hadn’t done anything else besides gathering people to go on patrol. Can you tell me what you did?”

Yi Ho asked Uncle Jige as politely as he had in the thatched great hall.

“I don’t care… I need an explanation, after all you were one of the people trapped in that time. You deserve to know what happened to you, don’t you?”

The cold, calm tone of his voice seemed to bring Uncle Jige’s stunned spirit back a little.

Up close, Uncle Jige’s face glistened with cold sweat.

She could guess how surprised he was.

“Hae-Joo, do you really want to know? You might regret it. Sometimes it’s better not to know, right?”

Hae-Joo’s heart tightened at the increasingly strange atmosphere.

Her gut told her that she would regret it, but that she would regret it even more if she didn’t know.

But if Yi Ho was right, if the deaths that time had something to do with Guishan Dao and her own fever, she had to know.

Many lives were at stake, including her own.

And who better than her to know how important the Guishan Dao was to Yi Ho?

If she could give him a clue, he had to hear it, even if it was a horrible story.

“…Tell me.”

Uncle Jige turned to her, his face grim. “I promised your father…”

“It’s okay, Uncle. I’m not a child, I can handle it, and… there’s this guy.”

Hae-Joo smiled softly as he took Yi Ho’s hand and stood beside him to ease Uncle Jige’s burden a little.

“You can tell her. I’ll be with her.”

Hae-Joo felt her fear and anxiety ease as Yi Ho’s firm hand met hers.

“…Hae-Joo, was it because of the Guishan Dao that you asked me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, no one knows about it, so let’s talk about it over here.”

“Even aunt doesn’t know?”

Judging from the couple’s body language, she had assumed that her aunt knew.

“What I’m about to tell you, your aunt doesn’t know, and neither do most of the villagers. In our village, only I, the chief, and your father know. The only reason the others didn’t tell you about that year, that terrible year, is because they were afraid you would freak out and get sick again.”

Suddenly, Uncle Jige laughed in vain.

“Even if you hear all my stories… you have to remember. That so many people care about you.”

And so, Uncle Jige’s story began.

***

Eight years ago, in Sogok Village.

At the entrance to the village, the people gathered in front of the hornbeam tree, talking and worrying.

“This can’t be happening. It’s already been five days. How many people are there? What kind of omen is this?”

“What kind of omen is this? Didn’t some wild animal come down from somewhere and cause this?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Where is an intact carcass after a beast has eaten it?”

“So where is it this time? Kyorok Village? Two people? Where did they find the corpses?”

“One in the bush and one in the pigsty.”

The more people gathered, the louder they became.

The tiredness on their faces showed how much they’d spent the last few days drying their blood.

“When you wake up in the morning, make sure your family is with you. Drive, sing long songs, and pray.”

“When you go out at night, make sure you stay in pairs and don’t wander around!”

“They say the blood is gone from the corpses, but I don’t think it’s the beasts’ work. Are there any blood-drinking beasts?”

“This is strange even for humans. What kind of killer drains all the blood from its victim?”

“Or maybe it’s not like that, maybe the Japanese are killing people…”

“This guy! Are you crazy? Shut up! What if someone hears you?”

Boom!

At that moment, a loud clapping sound came from somewhere.

One by one, the people gathered in front of the hornbeam tree turned around to see Li Zhang standing on a large rock beside the tree, and their jaws dropped.

“Uh, as you all know, yesterday we gathered all the chiefs from Dongguan, Janggok, Gyorok, and even Sogok Village, where there are still no casualties. We even called the police, but those Japanese policemen arrested the wrong person and forced the case to be closed. Shouldn’t we protect our own bodies?”

“Exactly!”

The crowd clapped and chanted in approval as the elderly leader stood and spoke with a lump in his throat.

“As you all know, we don’t believe it could have been done by humans. All the bodies we found didn’t have a drop of blood in them. Where is this kind of killer? Judging from the marks left on the bodies, it wasn’t even for blood. For example, the doctor said that if you break the neck here, the blood will spill everywhere. So it’s not about the blood.”

He gestured to his own throat for all to see.

“And it can’t be a beast. If a beast attacked a man, how could the body be so clean?”

“Then what are you saying?”

Someone asked in frustration, and Li Zhang was silent for a moment before he spoke with difficulty.

“We are poor farmers, who do we turn to when something like this happens? When I talked to the village chiefs, they all agreed on one thing. We’ll call a brave shaman and do something good.”

As soon as the chief finished speaking, the area under the tree became noisy.

But no matter how much they disagreed, there was only one thing they could do: make a sacrifice, do some good, or gather a group of people to go on patrol.

The chiefs of the five villages deliberated and decided to call a nearby shaman who was said to have received the energy of Mt. Gyeryong.

The next day, four more people were killed, so it took a while to organize a good group.

The shaman, who had predicted the good and bad fortune of the victims from the spirits he worshiped, told the crowd to defeat them all.

He also told them not to come out of the house if they heard any noise, because he would perform the fortune telling at midnight.

Needless to say, the people were angry.

They had no one to turn to and no one to trust, and this lucky charm was, in a way, a ray of hope.

But the shaman, who had a cold and frightening appearance, spoke to the people in a fierce manner.

“The gods have told me that the path to this good is ugly, and if you make a mistake, you will be beaten to death! If you all talk so much, come, but if anyone is beaten to death, it will not be my fault!”

Everyone’s life was precious.

Only the village elders participated in the midnight patrol.

It was held in front of the Seonang tree in Dongguan, the village where most of the victims were killed.

The sounds of gourd drums, janggu, trumpets, and pheasant drums resounded in the deep night, and the shaman’s swords sliced through the air.

The shaman, who had been running in all directions as if he had wings on his feet, suddenly stood upright in his seat.

With unintelligible shouts and screams, the shaman suddenly began to run wildly toward something.

The elders in the room panicked and ran after the shaman.

Over small hills, through dense forests, and up and down fields.

He’d been running for as long as he could remember.

The shaman in front of them didn’t stop for a breath.

Three of the five chieftains had been killed.

The only ones who could keep up were the chiefs of Dongguan Village and Sogok Village.