Caring for the child was, paradoxically, a way of caring for his own life.

He had always turned his eyes away, telling himself it was guilt, but in truth, that had only been an excuse. Myojeong was a man who knew when he would die. Perhaps he had wanted a companion, someone to walk beside him through a life that was like a death sentence. In this fate of his, there was no family, no lover, no friend. Now, there was not even a place for him to return to. If the child was fated to die anyway, he thought, perhaps it would be all right to keep him by his side.

Myojeong stopped nursing the sick child.

He left the child as he was, letting him remain ill. It was a kind of test. If the child safely opened his eyes and returned to his side, then Myojeong would take him in until the day his own life ended...

Watching the child wither in fever, Myojeong made that vow.

And yet the life of a fragile human being was tenacious.

The child admirably fought off the fever and recovered. Returned from the brink of death, the boy was as ill-mannered as ever, snatching Myojeong’s food and eating it with a face that had grown slightly gaunt.

Watching him, Myojeong could not help but laugh.

He decided to admit it now.

Myojeong wanted to live with the child.

He decided to stop thinking about reasons or justifications for keeping the child alive. He would simply focus on where his heart was leading him.

To do that, he first considered what had to be done. From observing the child, he knew that whenever the boy’s emotions ran wild or he reached his physical limits, a red mist would seep out.

First, he had to stop that.

Myojeong trained the child’s body and mind. He taught him how to control and manage his spiritual force, and whenever that force ran rampant, Myojeong stayed by his side and suppressed its power. He frequently fed the child medicinal tonics mixed with burned talismans, and when the child slept, he would trap him inside a barrier and perform a ritual to subdue the god of calamity. As long as he could not remove the god of calamity completely, it was nothing more than a temporary measure, but it was the best Myojeong could do.

Several years passed that way.

At some point, Myojeong had truly become the child’s teacher.

As the years went by, Myojeong and the child moved several times, wandering across the eight provinces. During that time, the child grew and grew, until before long he stood on the threshold of boyhood.

At times, everything felt overwhelming. The problems he had set aside piled up over the years like a snowball, weighing heavily on Myojeong. The thought of his remaining lifespan and the god of calamity inside the child would quickly drag him into despair.

Even so, Myojeong sometimes felt that he was standing in the sunny patch of his present life.

His daily life with the child was unexpectedly full, and warm.

Today, as on other days, Myojeong called a messenger bird and stroked its head.

“I’m counting on you.”

The messenger bird fluttered its wings and flew up into the sky.

For some time now, Myojeong had been sending letters to Hwirim. The reason he had begun writing in the first place was because he thought that Hwirim, of all people, might understand his confused heart. Myojeong wanted to confess his guilt and his faults in full detail to someone, anyone, and unburden himself of his worries and anguish.

So at first, the letters he sent were almost a kind of memoir.

That he had not been able to kill the child. That he had taken him as a disciple. That they had moved.

But at some point, a certain phrase began attaching itself to the end of his words.

I miss you.

The letters that had begun as confessions had, at some point, become love letters. He sent them a few times a year, but Hwirim never replied even once. Myojeong had taken measures so that no one but Hwirim could open the letters, so even if they fell into someone else’s hands, there was no fear that their contents would leak.

But the letter he sent today was completely different from the ones before.

Could you return the item I entrusted to you before?

The item he had entrusted to Hwirim was the Bangsangsi mask.

After years of deliberation, Myojeong had finally decided to put his idea into action. He had long been absorbed in finding a way to prevent the child’s death. It was something he had been picturing in his mind from the moment he acknowledged and accepted his own desire not to kill the child.

Even if he did not take the child’s life himself, the boy would one day die, his soul devoured by the god of calamity. If that was the case, Myojeong had to find a way to prevent the god of calamity’s soul from mixing with the child’s.

The method Myojeong devised was a double seal.

In other words, he would place an immutable seal on the child’s soul.

To use an analogy, it was like adding a protective layer to prevent the god of calamity’s soul, which was attached to the child’s living soul, from mixing or merging with it any further. If he placed a seal that rendered the soul immutable, the god of calamity would be unable to completely possess the child’s living soul, and the vessel would not shatter from the two souls becoming one.

Of course, Myojeong knew very well that this was only the next-best option.

The best solution would be to remove the god’s soul, but even Myojeong had struggled to find a way to do that. Because of the existing seal, the two souls had long since stuck together and become intertwined. The double seal was meant to prevent them from fusing any further. If the individual souls could not be detached, and if they could not be completely separated, then the best course was to make them coexist within the smallest possible domain.

If the child trained his spiritual force and strengthened his own consciousness, he would be able to control it without great difficulty. If they could minimize the god of calamity’s power and presence that way, then even though the child was, in essence, a vessel sealing the god of calamity, the result would be a state in which the god of calamity was merely parasitic.

But that alone was not enough to put Myojeong’s mind at ease.

Myojeong thought of a final safety measure.

To bestow a name, and issue a command.

For that, he needed the authority to name that resided in the mask. His calculation was that if he gave the god of calamity a name, called that name, and issued a command, the being so called would be bound to obey.

A bird cried in the distance. Myojeong gazed toward the far sky.

“Myojeong, what are you doing? The food’s ready.”

“All right.”

Myojeong sat across from the child with a small table between them.

“Did you burn the rice again today?”

“...Rice tastes better when it’s a little burnt.”

“Hah, honestly.”

It was a daily life that felt like fumbling down a path by the light of a small lantern.

Even so, there were many happy days.

About a fortnight after he sent the letter, Hwirim came to visit.

“Here. This is the item you entrusted to me before.”

Myojeong felt a pang of disappointment that Hwirim, who had not answered him for years, had come immediately once he stated his exact business. And yet the mere sight of Hwirim’s face left him flustered, like some foolish boy.

Hwirim, whom he had not seen in so long, was just the same. He treated Myojeong as casually as if they had parted only yesterday.

“Do you have a spare room? I’ve come a long way, so I was thinking of staying the night.”

Myojeong stood dazed for a moment, then quickly nodded.

Hwirim said he would go wash at the stream. Myojeong hurriedly swept and wiped down one of the side rooms of the thatched house. Seeing Myojeong make such an uncharacteristic fuss, the child looked at him in confusion.

“Can’t the three of us just sleep together?”

“Hm?”

“We’d have to light a separate fire, so we can just sleep in one room.”

“......”

Myojeong was at a loss for words.

It seemed the child thought Hwirim was a woman.

Myojeong, lost in thought for a moment, was just about to part his lips to correct him.

“Actually, that person is...”

“I have a terrible habit of tossing and turning in my sleep.”

Just then, a voice cut in from behind them. Startled, Myojeong turned his head and saw Hwirim peeking through the crack in the door. When their eyes met, Hwirim held back a laugh and twitched one eyebrow.

Myojeong nodded awkwardly.

“Th-that’s right. He has a terrible habit of tossing and turning in his sleep...”

Hwirim was still a mischievous person.

Myojeong lay down to sleep.

For some reason, however, sleep would not come. He had met Hwirim again after so long, and yet it felt as though the day was simply passing by like this. After tossing and turning for a while, Myojeong sat up. The child was sleeping soundly, his belly exposed. Faint moonlight seeped through the papered window. Myojeong reached out, covered the child’s belly, and pulled the blanket up to his chin.

After stroking the heated floor for a moment, Myojeong quietly got up. He could not sleep, and the floor felt somewhat cool, so he thought he would go to the firebox and check the fire. Myojeong closed the door so as not to wake the child and stepped outside, only to stop short.

Hwirim was standing in one corner of the yard, bathed in moonlight.

Sensing his presence, Hwirim turned to look at Myojeong. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

His heart thudded, but Myojeong did not let it show as he slipped on his shoes. As he drew closer to the motionless Hwirim, Hwirim glanced toward the closed door, then opened his mouth and whispered,

“Why are you out here instead of sleeping?”