Fairytales of Gyeongbokgung

Having vacuumed up the night market's food, Ji-oh sat in silence.

"……."

"Do you have a question?"

"No. You just… really eat a lot."

"Yes, I do."

Ji-oh was a heavy eater.

"You're not full?"

"I normally eat quite a bit, so I'm fine."

"It's impressive enough to call impressive."

"If it weren't good, I would have stopped at a reasonable point. Everything was delicious, so it turned out like this."

"Well, of course the food has to taste good if people are going to come."

It was a sound principle, though if every restaurant and every dish were delicious, no shop would ever go under.

Anyway, in thirty-one years the tourist sites have gotten remarkably substantial. When I came here with my class, it was basically just walking into a history textbook. Calming down bored kids took a fair amount of energy.

Ji-oh casually brushed his veil aside and chewed on a rice cake grilled over charcoal and coated in grain syrup. This was Korean tanghulu.

Gyeongbokgung used to give off that classic cultural-heritage feel… the stuffy kind.

It was a place full of memories, but what had made those memories wasn't Gyeongbokgung itself so much as talking with students in hanbok who were still wandering around looking for their own identities.

That idol trainee of mine who cried for no reason and insisted he must have been a Joseon king in a past life… I wonder what became of him. I hope they're all doing well.

If his students hadn't been the kind of high-schoolers who, true to the reputation that they couldn't live with their heads on straight, faithfully spouted nonsense, Ji-oh wouldn't have enjoyed Gyeongbokgung half as much.

Hanok were beautiful and elegant, yes, but how many students had protested the moment anyone suggested coming here in summer?

But the Gyeongbokgung of today has substance. There's definitely more to enjoy.

People in hanbok were each absorbed in their own roleplay, and now and then they swapped the lanterns they'd bought with one another. Everyone looked happy.

"……."

If there was one thing he was curious about—

What is that?

Something like a translucent shadow was shuffling about in a hanbok.

At the fan shop, and in the alleys of the hanok village too… things that look a lot like that have been wandering around.

There might have been exceptions, but every one of them Ji-oh had seen was wearing a mask.

A cluster of shadows in the form of traditional entertainers swaying along the lines strung with lanterns; a cluster of children with dangling braids hopping and skipping through the crowd; a cluster of civil officials coming and going inside the palace, where entry was restricted…

"…Yu Seong-un."

"Yeah?"

"What do you call those?"

"What do I—ah."

Yu Seong-un answered as if of course Ji-oh would already know.

"Those are Fairytales. Living stories. First time seeing them in a place like this?"

"……."

"They usually prefer spots without people, so it's rare to see them at a noisy tourist site like this. Still, they're proper Children of the Source, one of the kinds that exist."

He had heard this before.

"You mentioned something similar last time."

"About what? The Children of the Source?"

"Yes. Could you explain in a little more detail?"

"…Ah. Right."

Yu Seong-un scratched the back of his neck and continued.

"I think I covered it roughly when I was explaining Gardeners last time, but I kind of skimmed over it then. It's hard to summarize simply, but I'll try."

"……."

"There's a transcendent existence we humans have defined as the Source. You could call it the god of gods. Across the entire universe and every dimension, it manages balance and generates all kinds of rules—a kind of system."

"A system."

"And this Source usually creates other children. We call those the Children of the Source. Beings that can be classified as a single natural phenomenon—waves, wind, beasts, humans, that sort of thing."

"……."

"These Children of the Source can also be sorted into a few types…"

Yu Seong-un pointed at the civil-official figures moving inside the palace. Enormous hats and veils hid their faces, and their sleeves were so unnaturally long that not a single part of their bodies could be confirmed.

Moving in formation, their motions had a sharp, choreographed charm, like watching a group dance—but precisely because of that, they did not feel like living creatures. It was more as if shadows had put on clothes and were imitating people.

"Those ones are called Fairytales."

"What sort of beings are they?"

"Like most Children of the Source, they have no interest in humans and don't do them any harm. A Fairytale is a living story and, at the same time, a being close to the human form."

"Then is their mind close to a human's?"

"They don't actually think like humans. They just imitate traces. Children of the Source are skilled at dressing up their outward appearance. It doesn't seem like something they learn later—it's more like a property of their essence itself."

Yu Seong-un took a long sip of his persimmon juice, then went on.

"Whatever kind they are, Fairytales all wear masks, and behind those masks there is no face. They don't possess a human body or anything approaching human thought. They merely copy the exterior."

"……."

"Just because you paint someone doesn't mean the painting becomes a real human being. Ah—well, in your case I wouldn't know… but ordinarily there are limits to a dimension."

"I understand."

A portrait like him would not be common in the world. When Ji-oh agreed, Yu Seong-un continued.

"They have stories of their own, and when those stories end, they vanish. Gyeongbokgung has a lot of people, but oddly enough it's a place where Fairytales like that nest in decent numbers."

Watching the crowd, Ji-oh asked,

"Can people not see those Children of the Source?"

"Not many can."

Yu Seong-un nodded.

"Ordinary people can't pick up the frequencies dolphins or bats use, right? Same idea. Children of the Source exist in the world, but very few people can perceive them. It's not even that those things are hiding."

"Ghosts?"

"Uh… you could look at it that way, but the fact that they don't understand humans at all makes them a little different. No matter how much they dress themselves up to look human, the inside is hollow. Different from the roots up."

Something seemed to occur to him.

"Ah, right. In the past, they say no one at all could see Children of the Source like that. After Earth came under heavy influence from the Source, dungeons appeared… Awakened were born… and because the whole ecology changed, people became able to see them."

It was a story as mystical as a fairytale itself.

"As you can see, I'm one of the few talents who can perceive that Source."

"Then so am I, I suppose."

"Mm. Yeah, you would be."

He was trying to hide it, but Yu Seong-un's expression was a little awkward. Probably because he thought of Ji-oh as something other than human.

Anyway, if it's Yu Seong-un, he'll know I'm a harmless existence who couldn't kill an ant whether I'm human or not, so it doesn't matter.

Reluctant to correct him for fear of being dragged outside the portrait, Ji-oh simply took in the view of Gyeongbokgung again.

Earth and humanity have grown strong.

He himself had clearly fallen behind. Ji-oh, who knew only how to eat, sleep, and paint, no longer felt confident he could survive in this harsh world.

"How many people can see the existence of the Source?"

"You're asking for a ratio among all humans? Hard to say. Not many."

"I see."

Being special meant getting stabbed. Ji-oh once again resolved to dedicate his life to the portrait.

"……."

Sitting blankly on the bench, Ji-oh soon noticed a small commotion.

"I hear the sound of a fight."

"Unusual, at a tourist spot like this."

Yu Seong-un, who had been leaning back in his chair, leaned his upper body forward.

"The guards will haul them off soon, but…"

Sure enough, guards in thick hanbok seized a man who was shouting wildly. He was middle-aged, thrashing about as he tried to throw himself at a rather handsome man in scholar's robes.

The scholar, tidying his upper garment as if his collar had been grabbed, looked awkward.

"……."

He was clearly a youth with a kind face, but—

Ji-oh's instincts kicked in.

"Ji-oh?"

"……."

A frame, was it.

Ji-oh raised both hands, shaped them like a camera, and held them up to his eyes.

Five stars.

Extremely dangerous, isn't he?

It seemed the guards had grabbed the wrong person to drag away.

Do I really need to?

"……."

The youth in scholar's robes locked eyes with Ji-oh.

Was I staring too hard?

Yu Seong-un seemed to find Ji-oh's sudden behavior odd, but he didn't add anything to it.

The scholar looked Ji-oh up and down as if sizing him up, then gave a brief bow of the head and passed by. His expression suggested he thought Ji-oh had been picking a fight.

"Kkureuk."

"Whoa—!"

Yu Seong-un jumped at Honey's sudden appearance.

"…Huh? A water bird? Wait a second, Ji-oh, is that the one you showed me last time…"

"This is Honey."

"You could bring this little guy out?"

"I haven't tried with the other birds, so I don't really know."

"Mm. Right. Uh… I see."

Yu Seong-un looked somewhere between enlightened and resigned.

"I guess it's about time for Earth to go under."

"It seems to be holding up fine. I don't know why you're suddenly saying something so random."

"Because it was always a sandcastle that would collapse the moment you poked it…"

Smiling with a look of surrender, Yu Seong-un soon returned to his usual expression and asked,

"So. What about that guy? Something bother you?"

"He looked dangerous."

"…Did he?"

"I don't think he liked me."

A scary person.

"I didn't mean to pick a fight."

He had briefly forgotten that locking eyes for more than three seconds meant a binary choice of Does that bastard like me? or Does that bastard want to fight me?

I should have spoken politely and warmly before three seconds were up, but his history was so dazzling I missed the window to act friendly. The instincts of Seo Ji-oh, once known as a twenty-first-century Pokémon Trainer, must all be dead.

In short, if eyes met, it was a battle. For better or for worse.

That man just now seems to have taken it in the bad sense.

In this tough era where businessmen in suits beat monsters to death, picking a fight with a gentleman whose danger rating was five stars—what did he think would happen?

No, the danger level of someone just walking past shouldn't be this high in the first place.

Cursing this completely deranged Hell-Korea, Ji-oh spoke from the heart.

"I'm scared."

"Even when you say you're scared, it's hard to take it at face value… Are you being sarcastic?"

"I think it would be best to return to the hotel."

"If that's what you want."

Ji-oh gentlemanly tucked Honey—who was trying to poke out from his scarf—back into place, then left Gyeongbokgung. Honey seemed to like the glittering fish lanterns so much that it had already stashed one in its belly.

And then, at 3:32 in the morning, after collapsing on the hotel bed and waking up—

"……."

Ji-oh confirmed that Honey was gone.

"Please."

Could it not leave him in peace for five minutes.

He was about to cry.

"……."

A dark alley in a sparsely populated slum.

"…So who the hell was that bastard earlier."

The man, now out of his scholar's robes, roughly raked his hair back.

Something felt off.

It had been some man in jet-black hanbok. He had been so thoroughly wrapped up that his face wasn't visible.

Height around a hundred ninety centimeters, maybe—but gender and height alone made it hard to pin down who the target was.

"Creepy."

Normally he would have just written it off as some weird bastard picking a fight and walked on.

But.

"That hand gesture back then…"

A motion as if mimicking a picture frame.

Only for a moment, but it had felt as if his entire personal history was being laid bare.

"……."

The man scratched his head hard.

"…This isn't good. Fuck. It's definitely weird. That bastard was an Awakened, right?"

The person sitting next to him had been Hunter Yu Seong-un. Bi Sa-beol's curator had been personally escorting him, so he was probably some newly awakened rich young master or something.

There was an unpleasant amount of manners soaked into his body.

But that was a problem.

If what I'm setting up gets found out…

For him, it wouldn't end with being demoted to a 5th-Class Citizen.

Awakened who held skills that could freely check someone's thoughts or memories, or peek into a person's past, were more numerous than people imagined. They just didn't talk about it for fear of getting stabbed somewhere—it wasn't that rare a skill.

So the jet-black man he had seen at the Gyeongbokgung night market might have used a skill of that kind to peek at his thoughts. Considering that sudden hand gesture, it was a very reasonable conclusion.

"……."

Huuu…

A sigh escaped him.

"The event's about to start, and now this."

If he thought about the aftermath, he couldn't just let this go. The work he was doing right now was extremely dangerous, and it was an act of betrayal against humanity.

He had never felt anything like guilt, but he couldn't afford the trouble of being discovered.

No matter how he looked at it—

"I'll have to kill him."

How much time and devotion had he poured into securing a place in the Temple of the Sun? He couldn't leave a risk factor alone now just because the aftertaste was unpleasant.

Having made up his mind, he was about to track the traces of the man he had seen at Gyeongbokgung when—

"……."

"……."

"…What."

A soft, squishy bird was sitting on a pipe.

A fish lantern—a tourist souvenir—was swimming inside it, so it was fairly bright. Bright enough that he couldn't understand why he had only just noticed it in this dark alley.

"……."

Strange.

…For an urban monster, I've never seen a form like that.

Besides, monsters that took bird form—especially small ones like this—generally moved in flocks. Beasts or monsters that traveled alone all had the power to protect themselves, which was why they could.

So what were the odds that this insignificant-looking single bird was an ordinary monster?

"…This—fuck—don't tell me…"

Was it a surveillance monster that bastard from Gyeongbokgung had attached?

A tamer?

He hadn't expected a hunter with a class. No wonder that shady bastard Yu Seong-un had treated him so carefully—so he was an Awakened of that much value after all.

The man gripped his staff tightly.

"…Well. Convenient enough."

The bird's owner seemed to be a novice. The master's scent was radiating plainly from the bird. He clearly hadn't considered that sending a spy might get him spotted in return.

The man forced a smile.

"If you noticed something wrong, you should have told Yu Seong-un right away."

This bird staring blankly at him alone gave off no sense of threat. It really did seem to be a surveillance camera—and that made it easy to reverse-track.

Not enough certainty to report to Yu Seong-un, huh.

Failing to report your suspicions to a superior promptly. A mistake novice hunters made often.

Dumbass.

Whatever this bird actually was, he needed to deal with it now.

Thinking that, the man stretched out his hand and grabbed the bird that was barely a mouthful—

—CRUNCH.

"……."

"……."

"Huh?"

His hand.

Was gone.

"……."

Inside the bird's transparent body, his hand was visible. The lazily swimming fish lantern wrapped around the severed hand.

Then both of them slowly melted away.

"…Ah."

"Kkung."

"Fuck."

It wasn't that the man was incompetent.

"Kkureuk?"

"This—this fucking…"

"Kkurrrrreuk?"

"…No way."

"Kkung-kkureuk."

As a priest of the sun of no mean rank, he was in a position where he was allowed to be arrogant.

But all of this was a situation in which events that, by common sense, could not exist had stacked on top of one another like disasters rather than miracles. It was not a hardship a single individual could do anything about.

The tiny bird's body began to swell grotesquely.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"Kkurrreuk?"

Feathers glittering with a light that could have been the moon or the sun.

Hard, hook-like talons and elongated legs.

And a massive beak.

"No…!"

Gulp—

The sound of water flowing.

"Ugh, uhp…!"

Then a stirring, swirling sound—

"…! …!!!"

"……."

"……!!"

"……."

"……."

And then,

silence settled.

"……."

There was no sign of the man anywhere.

"Kkureuk."

Only a very small bird flew leisurely away.

"Honey."

Ji-oh liked things that were small and harmless.

But Children of the Source were beings skilled at dressing things up.

"Where did you go."

"Kkurr."

"You're cute, so it's fine."

In that case—

what might their essence truly be?

"There's bungeoppang over there."

"Kkung!!"

"You really are my son."

"Kkurrreung?"

"You've got a nose for good food."

Even the Child of the Source itself would not know that.

(To be continued)