< High-quality death 4 >
When the village women and men who had gone to work with Na-ok entered the village entrance a step behind Na-ok, they saw a large flame burning brightly in the distance.
People who go to bed early are probably already asleep.
People ran screaming into the burning house.
“Oh, it’s fire!”
“Fire!”
Since Songga Village was a clan village, if someone’s house caught fire, it was like a family matter.
“Fire!?”
“Whose house is that!?”
“It looks like Na-ok’s house to me!”
“What! Na-ok! Na-eun!”
And when they arrived in front of the burning house, they found Na-ok, covered in burns and her clothes all over the place, hugging her cold younger brother in the middle of the yard.
Smoke rising from all over the body and dazed eyes.
Even though the pain must have been severe, Na-ok remained half-conscious and showed no reaction.
“What, what is going on!?”
“Naok-ah!? What the hell is going on!?”
A question from my cousin Song Ho-jung.
Na-ok looked up at the old man with blank eyes and said.
“Ah, mister, I, Naeun···. Naeun···.”
Half-naked clothes and a bruised face exposed by the blazing flames.
Mr. Ho-jung, who works as a representative of the country, asked with an angry face after seeing Na-eun’s miserable appearance.
“Were you already dead when you arrived!? Or did you see what kind of guy he was!?”
“Sir, I saw a man I don’t know coming out of the village entrance…
Song Ho-jung shouted at the villagers who had gathered at Na-eun’s words.
“Elders, take half the men and women and prevent the fire from spreading to other places. The other half of the men, follow me! How dare you come into our Songga village and take my cousin’s daughter! She couldn’t have gone far! Let’s go!”
Behind Naeun’s back, people rushed to the burning house and poured water on it, and young men carrying torches ran around Songga Village and began searching the area.
And like a dying flame, Na-ok’s spirit began to fade.
-dump.
“Naok-ah! Naok-ah!”
The urgent voice of the old woman was fading away, and Na-ok wondered if all of this had been just a fiery one-night dream.
***
When Na-ok regained consciousness, more than two weeks had passed.
He was on the verge of death for several days due to the burns he had sustained on his body, and he was so shocked by the brutal murder of his younger brother that he couldn’t come to his senses.
“Me, Naeun-ah!”
Herbs applied all over the body, and a cloth wrapped around it.
And the terrible pain that comes all over my body.
That was the reality that greeted Na-ok as she came to her senses.
But what was more painful was not the physical pain, but the reality that my younger brother was no longer of this world.
It was the fact that the younger sister he had raised like a daughter, refusing to even propose marriage, was no longer in this world.
“Khuuuuuuu! Oh, ma’am, did you catch that guy?”
As soon as I woke up, I gritted my teeth in pain and asked, but my mother shook her head with a pitiful expression.
“Your uncle even asked the police to send out a man with excellent tracking skills to search for him, but he hasn’t been able to find him yet. I don’t think it’ll get any harder….”
“Sob···. Naeun-ah···.”
The search, which lasted several more days, ended without any results, just as the woman had said.
Na-ok was the only one who saw him, but it was difficult to see his face properly in the darkness, and too much time had passed while Na-ok was lying unconscious.
Even the man with excellent tracking skills that the old man brought along couldn’t find any traces of the bastard among the traces that had been created while putting out the fire.
“I feel sorry for this old man. How will I ever see my cousin’s face again….”
Even though Mr. Hojung apologized, Naok couldn’t say anything in response.
I couldn’t even complain that it wasn’t Mr. Ho-jung’s fault or that he missed it. I just wanted him to catch him and avenge my brother, but I lost my mind when I heard that he had missed me forever.
Na-ok lowered her head to the opposite side of the bed in the guest room of Mr. Ho-jung’s house and did not respond at all.
As all living things fall asleep in late autumn, Na-ok’s heart also fell asleep.
Sometimes, the only communication I have with the world is the small groans I make as I change the cloth to heal the scars on my face.
The poem flowed like flowing water.
-Crunch, crunch.
It was when winter passed and spring and Silsol woke up again that Na-ok’s spirit returned.
The sound of Silsol crying outside the window sounded like my younger sibling’s voice, and I came back to my senses like a light was turned on in a extinguished lamp.
‘Sister, catch that guy. Please take care of my grudge. Sob···.’
To Naeun’s ears, the cries of the silkworms sounded like the desperate cries of her younger brother.
“How are you?”
-Crunch, crunch.
A grudge that runs deep in the bones.
Yes, Na-ok decided to recover first because she thought that since she was the one who raised her younger brother, she should also be the one to avenge him.
And as soon as I recovered, I went to see Mr. and Mrs. Shin Se-jin and bowed deeply to them.
“I’m leaving.”
“You’re leaving? Your house hasn’t been rebuilt yet?”
The old man asks if she is planning to return home after hearing that she is leaving.
Naok shook her head and answered.
“No. I’m leaving Songachon.”
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“What!? Where on earth are you going? You’re not even in good health yet!”
“Yes, Naok-ah, are you feeling burdened by that? Don’t think like that. How will you meet your parents in the afterlife? Take better care of yourself. I’ll talk to the elders and rebuild your house.”
Na-ok shook her head again at the two people’s words.
“No. How can I, as the older sister, live a comfortable life while my younger sister cries out in pain every night? I will take revenge on my younger sister.”
“How can you, a woman, take revenge!? You don’t even know who that bastard is!”
The old woman locked Na-ok up and did not let her leave, but the sound of the pine needles every night made Na-ok’s heart grow stronger, and she eventually surrendered to Na-ok’s determination to stop eating and drinking, saying that she would starve to death if she did not avenge her younger brother.
On the day when Na-ok was leaving after visiting her younger brother’s grave, the old woman handed her a bag of incense covered in dried blood and said,
“Please, come back alive.”
***
The first place Naeun headed after leaving Songachon was Seongdo.
It was because I thought the guy had collided with Naeun and moved away from the saint.
I never worried about how I could find someone whose face I had never even seen.
Just like the red burn scars left on Na-ok’s face and body, that bastard’s voice, that unforgettable voice, was left like a brand in Na-ok’s memory.
‘Hey, Joe, be careful!’
That’s why Naeun just started talking to men on the streets of Seongdo.
“excuse me···.”
“Ugh···. What is it!”
“excuse me···.”
“Oh my! This is surprising!”
It was a very difficult task, as the face that had once made people feel good had become a face that made people look bad due to the burn scars.
One year, two years like that.
When the season came when the chirping of crickets could be heard, Na-ok would wander the streets of Seongdo half-maddened, and would only come to her senses when the chirping of crickets was no longer heard.
And the streets are lined with gambling dens.
The voices of men were heard as a man entering and leaving the casino collided with each other.
“Oh my. Hey, be careful!”
“Oh, you should be careful.”
Na-ok, who was taking shelter from the rain under the eaves of an alley where the sound of the pine needles had disappeared because of the rain, finally found the owner of the voice she had never forgotten.
-Whoooooooo!
It seemed as if lightning striking from the pouring sky had struck Na-ok.
It’s been three years.
***
“oh my god···.”
The incredulous voice that came from my sister’s mouth.
Our feelings after hearing the woman’s story could not be expressed in a single word.
Even the old chieftain, who had lost his parents to bandits while riding in a carriage, said that he felt the same way about the woman, but after hearing the woman’s desperate story, his eyes turned into a look of surprise that he had not expected it to be this bad.
Because this wasn’t just a desperate situation.
The woman’s words were interrupted for a moment.
My older sister asked me urgently.
“So what happened?”
“When I was half out of my mind, a beggar I had become friends with told me that this guy was coming to the gambling house where I worked every three days.”
“Oh, so that’s why you asked me to work at the casino?”
A woman nodding her head to her older sister’s question.
“Yes, that’s right, Miss. At first, I thought about following you behind and stabbing you with a knife.
But the old beggar spoke as if he knew everything. He was a martial artist, so I, a woman, would not be able to take revenge on him…
So he begged the owner of the casino to let him do any job he wanted without taking any payment. The beggar said that the best way would be to put poison in the food or drink he was drinking.”
Only after the woman’s explanation did I understand what the master had said.
“Oh, so what did the casino owner say about the food tasting strange?”
“I bought poison with the money I begged for in a back alley, but I think it wasn’t poison.”
In order to get revenge, he bought poison and put the medicine in the food he was eating. But here, too, he bought counterfeit poison in Jungwon.
The woman who was eventually chased out to the underground cricket farm because of that incident explained that she was half-mad from the sound of the crickets chirping, but she seemed to have come to her senses for a moment when we took her out.
-Crunch, crunch.
“That’s why it happened…. Oh, I understand. Naeun-ah. Oh, I’ll hurry…. I’m sorry I’m late….”
A woman crouching down again and muttering to herself as she hears the sound of crickets outside the window.
There is no disagreement that we should help because the circumstances are dire, but I asked if it would be okay to bring that person into the family.
I guess he’s not in his right mind. We have to raise crickets, but don’t you go crazy when you hear the sound of crickets?
[But is that okay?]
I was wondering if I could take him with me when he was feeling mentally unstable, so I quietly told the old master and my older sister, and the old master and my sister nodded as if it was natural.
[Things like that will be cured when the grudge is repaid. That’s because the grudge is deep. And the person who repaid the grudge will never betray, so he is very good as a member of the Tang family.]
[That’s right, Little Dragon. Before I avenged my parents, I used to talk to Bido alone. But after I avenged my parents in Dangga, I felt like I was washed clean.
And as the young lady said, he who takes revenge on someone’s grudge never betrays them.]
I wondered if this was a psychoanalytically possible story, but what can I do if my older sister and Daeju say so?
I nodded, thinking that it would be most helpful when I was in my right mind, and that if I just taught our poison corps the know-how of raising crickets, they would do everything they had to do.
[Okay, then.]
Helping a woman probably meant killing that bastard who was the woman’s enemy, and even though I had never killed anyone before, I felt a burning desire to kill when I heard the story of the woman’s desperate life.
As I listened to the woman’s story, the more I felt a sense of horror, the more my murderous desire for the man boiled over.
It’s as good as killing two women.
He is a criminal who deserves to be executed.
Since there’s no way a guy like that would stop committing crimes after one or two, I even thought that there might be more crimes we don’t know about.
First, I asked the Wukongs to quiet the crickets.
“Hey guys, can you please be quiet?”
Cricket babies are cowards who keep their mouths shut when a predator is present.
-Tsrrrr!
When the Wukongs who had climbed up to the window made a noise as if to scare them, the surroundings became as quiet as a ghost.
And after waiting a moment, the woman asked again in a clearer voice.
“Can you really help me? My mind keeps wandering, and I feel like I can’t do it alone anymore… If you help me, I’ll serve you with all my life until the day my useless life ends!”
I have already reached an agreement with my older sister and the owner.
And didn’t you say that this wasn’t a place for justice and cooperation?
He nodded and asked.
“So, who is it?”
Should I tell the Wukongs to bite it?
Or should I take him to a witch and have him hang him on a tree?
Or maybe murder?
It seemed like it had to be regulated in the best way among various methods.
