A Thread That Cannot Be Cut

Cha-mu's gaze landed on Yu-yeong's hands, which were clutching his own with all their strength.

They were fingers like bare, withered white branches, and they were grasping his wrist as if for dear life — as though letting go would mean death.

"There's no way to help you."

"You're lying... Just sitting here like this, just touching you, my head feels so much clearer, doesn't it? And after I heard the bell that time, nothing else got into my body. Right?"

Ah. So she's more perceptive than I gave her credit for.

Cha-mu thought this as he looked at Yu-yeong, at her desperate hands, her desperate eyes.

He understood all too well why she was clinging to him so fiercely. For someone who had lived her whole life in a damp, dark place, exhaling shallow breaths, to finally be able to breathe freely under the sunlight for the first time — how precious, how desperately dear would that sensation be?

The trouble was that he was the one who had opened that airway, and it grated on his nerves.

Becoming necessary to someone — especially to a living human being — was the last thing he wanted.

"You're imagining things."

"Don't lie. It's not my imagination, and you know it."

"..."

"If—if I stay near you, other spirits can't get inside me. Right? Right?"

It was the look of someone who had lived through winter seeing spring for the first time — the heart of a person clinging desperately to that warmth so as not to freeze to death. Cha-mu read every ounce of that desperation.

He knew the will to live couldn't be called a sin. And yet he had no desire to be entangled with Yu-yeong.

"I don't mind seeing ghosts, really. The rest of it, I can live with too. But the things coming inside me... won't you please help me?"

"You think it's the things drifting in and out of you that are widening the hole? The problem is inside you."

At his utterly heartless words, Yu-yeong flinched and bit her lip.

"At least! At least, at least... whoever stays inside me doesn't make trouble for me. They don't turn me into the biggest whore under heaven."

Whore.

At that wretched word, Cha-mu's face visibly crumpled. It was an ugly thing to hear — to describe a person as a whore. To describe oneself that way.

For a moment, an image surfaced: Yu-yeong's face tilted up toward the sky, laughing brightly. That face belonged to no one who would ever deserve to be called such a thing.

"..."

"Please."

How many times in her life had this woman looked up at the sky and smiled so brilliantly? How many times had she lain down to sleep without fear? Having her body stolen from her, screaming silently as she watched the things her own flesh committed, cleaning up the aftermath alone — with what heart had she endured it all?

"I know. I know... that what I'm saying sounds like foolishness. But I..."

"..."

"At least until my grandmother passes away, I want to spare her pain. At least let there be no more days where she suffers because of me."

She wasn't thinking of herself. This was love for the grandmother who had protected her — an orphaned child — and raised her.

'Accept the gods? Even in death, even after death!'

The thought flashed, and suddenly Cha-mu was remembering the day his grandfather died.

He would have done anything to save the old man. But the gods had ignored his pleas, forced the vessel upon him, and torn his grandfather from his arms all the same.

What would have happened if his grandfather had lived?

Cha-mu would have accepted the gods without a word of protest. If they promised to spare his grandfather, he would have taken the gods a dozen times over. Instead, the gods had taken his grandfather from him.

"..."

Watching Yu-yeong weep, saying she didn't want to hurt her grandmother any further, Cha-mu was looking at his own past.

"That's foul play."

The curse escaped his mouth before he could stop it.

"If I help you, what do you have to offer me in return?"

Yu-yeong looked at him with an awkward expression. What could she offer? What...

"Ah — m-money, I could—"

"I have more than I need."

"Oh."

Money, after all, was something Cha-mu had plenty of.

"A trade only works when both sides give and receive roughly equal things, doesn't it?"

"..."

"And I have nothing to receive from you."

His voice was endlessly cold, but Yu-yeong didn't back down easily. They hadn't known each other long, nor met many times — but the Cha-mu she'd come to understand was a man who, if he truly had no intention of making a deal, would already have walked out without a backward glance.

Thinking of it that way gave her courage.

"Deal's off, then."

"If you ever need something—!"

"I won't. Nothing like that."

"You can't know that! Nobody can predict what life brings!"

For an instant, Yu-yeong's voice rose sharp and loud.

She seized Cha-mu's hand again and squeezed with all her might. She could not let go. She didn't want to give up this easily.

"You never know how things will turn out. I — I never imagined I'd end up living like this either."

"So you're saying I might someday find myself needing to ask you for help?"

"Even if it's not help — a moment might come when you need me for something, couldn't it?"

"..."

"When that time comes, remember me. I'll stay tucked away somewhere, quiet, out of your way. Just... just don't forget. That I exist somewhere. That there might be someone who could be of use to you. That one thing — please, just remember that."

For someone so useless, she certainly has a silver tongue.

Cha-mu thought this as he looked down at the hand gripping his.

He could simply shake her off and walk away. There would be nothing in his life that required the help of a person like Yu-yeong — of that he was certain. And yet, somehow, he couldn't bring himself to fling her off.

You never know how things will turn out.

And that was precisely why Cha-mu wanted, all the more, not to be entangled with Yu-yeong.

Because there was no telling what filthy end he might meet, should he dare to forge a bond with a human being.

But Yu-yeong, knowing nothing of the turmoil in his heart, simply clung to him with a piteous face.

It wasn't only the brother and sister of the old tale who feared to let go of the rope that led to heaven. This woman, frozen forever at fifteen, not grown a single inch since — she was no different from those children.

"Please remember..."

Cha-mu gave no reply. He said neither that he would remember nor that he would forget. He only stared for a long while at his wrist, trapped in her grip, and then slowly drew it free.

No matter how desperately she held on, Yu-yeong could never match a man's strength.

He gazed quietly at his large, faintly bloodless hand, then turned his back without a word and left her apartment.

"..."

Yu-yeong couldn't bring herself to stop him.

Tinkle.

Tinkle.

To the ears of Yu-yeong, still standing dazed after he'd gone, came the familiar sound of a bell.

That can't be. He's already left...

Thinking this, she rose from her seat and walked slowly toward the entryway.

The talismans he'd placed were exactly where they'd been, and...

"Huh?"

Something was glinting atop the small side table beside the door. Yu-yeong approached it carefully and looked. It was a bell — a golden bell just a little bigger than the nail of her thumb.

There was no mistaking it: the bell Yu-yeong had picked up days ago and handed to Cha-mu.

"Ah."

As if entranced, she reached out and closed her hand around it. In that instant, her vision brightened, and she felt her mind clear just as it had when she'd taken hold of Cha-mu's hand.

The man who'd insisted there was no deal to be made had clearly left this behind — a quiet act of charity, thrown down like alms.

Charity or anything else, it made no difference. Whatever it was, all that mattered to Yu-yeong was the thought that she now occupied some small corner of Cha-mu's mind — and for that alone, she was grateful.

That night, Yu-yeong fell asleep with the bell clutched tight in her hand. The voices that had gnawed at her ears every night were gone, and so was the cold, creeping chill that had left her tossing and turning until dawn.

Perched on Cha-mu's shoulder as he walked into Wolryeongsa sat a six-year-old girl in a yellow dress.

Everything in the world seemed new and wondrous to her; she sat on his shoulder craning her neck this way and that, again and again.

"Hey, brat!"

Just then Seong-mu — Seong-min — came bounding outside, spotted the girl, and jabbed a finger at her. The moment that short little digit pointed at the small child on Cha-mu's shoulder, Cha-mu caught it in his hand and glared at him.

"Keep pointing, and I'll cut it off."

Hic!

At the warning, Seong-min clenched his fist, sucked in a sharp breath — and promptly hiccupped. Because he genuinely believed Cha-mu was a man who would do it, and then some.

"Get down."

Cha-mu said this to the girl on his shoulder and walked inside.

Now that she had crossed the boundary, the child could never again make her way back to the film set in search of Yu-yeong.

The yeong-ga who lived within Wolryeongsa could not leave its bounds of their own accord. That was simply the kind of place this was.

It had been a long day.

'A moment might come when you need me for something.'

Somehow, Yu-yeong's words clung to him like a wad of chewing gum stuck to the sole of his shoe. Every step he took, her voice surfaced again. It irritated him. It irritated him so bitterly that a sigh escaped him before he knew it.

He'd been so irritated, in fact, that he'd left the bell behind — but whether that had been the right thing to do, Cha-mu couldn't say.

"..."

His gaze dropped, for a moment, to his own hand. He had become entangled with something pointless. It felt as though an invisible red thread had been tied between them — and the feeling was dreadful.