As the sun tilted behind the ridge, darkness came rolling in. Hwido had been savoring the scent of blossoms carried on a soft breeze when a strange fragrance suddenly pricked at his nose, and he lifted his eyes.

Plum blossoms were everywhere, yet this particular scent was uncommonly thick. Someone was clearly very eager to catch another’s attention.

Respecting the intent behind it, Hwido followed the trail of the fragrance and walked on.

Splash, splash.

No matter how many times he heard it, the sound of water was too deliberate to be natural. But out here in the mountains, and at this late hour of the night. What fearless soul had come all the way up here.

At the edge of a cliff where a waterfall plunged down, Hwido cast an idle glance below. And there he found a human woman, grunting and struggling with a water jar nearly as large as herself.

“What on earth is that?”

This place had long since been abandoned by people, owing to rumors that goblins roamed here lighting blue flames.

Humans who claimed to have wrestled a goblin in the dead of night. Humans who said the goblin’s pranks had gotten so out of hand they’d spent the whole night trading jokes. Humans who said they’d lost a wager and been beaten with a club until dawn. It was thanks to the groundless rumors those people had spread on their own.

But was it truly normal for a lone woman to be crouched here at this late hour, scooping up water?

Splash, splash.

After a long struggle with the water jar, the woman finally straightened her back. The slight furrow between her brows suggested something was not to her liking. Her clear, glistening eyes looked ready to spill over at any moment, and it was a pitiful sight.

Shhhh.

Having filled the jar to a reasonable level, the woman promptly poured the water back into the stream.

What in the world was she doing?

Hwido approached carefully and studied the woman once more. Her face seemed familiar somehow. But from where.

Just as he was trying to pull up a hazy memory, the woman crouched back down by the water’s edge and repeated the same thing. When it still refused to go as she wished, her face crumpled at last into something close to tears.

“What are you doing here?”

Curiosity was the problem. It was exactly the sort of thing that made him grudgingly agree with what humans said about goblins being especially fond of mischief.

Startled by the sudden voice, the woman dropped the water jar. Her lips moved as though she had something to say, and a dazed look settled over her wide eyes.

Hwido caught the jar as it floated away downstream. Had the sight of her glistening, wet eyes stirred some impulse in him? He had no time to ask himself before he was already moving slowly toward the frozen woman.

The closer he drew, the more plainly the emotions in those wide eyes revealed themselves. Surprise and flustered confusion, and then, arriving a beat late, helpless dismay. But soon a quiet gladness settled into eyes that had grown still.

Had she come here on purpose? Pretending to have stumbled upon a goblin by chance, in order to satisfy some desire.

Humans lived with greed at their foundation, so it was nothing out of the ordinary.

He was still in the middle of his suspicions when a sunlit smile spread across the woman’s face. At the same moment, the gentle breeze that had been blowing and the noisy rush of water both ceased at once. All that filled his sight were clear eyes holding the bright light of the moon.

“Do you know me?”

“Yes, my lord. I am Yeonbun, a servant attending Lady Hwiryeong at Jeongheonjae.”

He realized he had made a mistake. He had used his demonic energy in front of a human who might know him, so it was only a matter of time before word spread.

“You mean the household of Minister Shim of the Ministry of Rites.”

“That is correct, my lord.”

Hwido stared fixedly at Yeonbun as she nodded. He may have been mistaken, but the eyes that had been bright just moments ago now seemed to hold a trace of anxiety.

What was the reason?

Was it connected to why she had climbed this rough mountain path at such a late hour to fetch water from the valley stream? Curiosity stirred, but he quickly set it aside.

There wasn’t a single goblin who had come out well from getting tangled up with greedy humans.

Hwido idly adjusted the brim of his hat and parted his lips.

“Well then, Bun. I have something I wish to ask of you in earnest. Can you grant it?”

“Yes, of course, my lord.”

As the woman lowered her head, an air of compliance seeped across her pale face.

“I would like you to forget everything you have seen here tonight. What do you think?”

The rest, that if she refused he would have no choice but to carve out her memories from the moment she dropped the jar, he left unsaid. It seemed unnecessary to resort to threats.

Fear crushed under the weight of his presence, anxiety. And compliance. A faint, lingering affection she could not quite conceal swirled in a jumble across the woman’s eyes.

“Yes, I saw nothing here. So please do not worry, my lord.”

A frail voice that seemed ready to fade at any moment tickled at his ear. Hwido spoke again to the woman clutching the water jar he had handed her as though it were a treasure.

“Then, as my thanks, is there something I can help you with? If there is, go ahead and tell me. In exchange for your silence, I will gladly grant you one wish.”

“A wish…”

The woman tilted her head as though she could not believe it, then broke into a wide smile. In that smile, untouched by a single speck of worldliness, dwelled an innocence that made him feel he ought to grant whatever she asked.

In that moment, Hwido quickly gathered his thoughts against the unfamiliar warmth spreading near his heart.

She was still just a human busy looking out for her own interests, wasn’t she. He could wrap things up by pressing some suitable object into her hand.

It was just as Hwido tilted his head to one side. The answer that came from Bun was something to behold.

“…I only wish… I only wish to… fill this leaking water jar to the brim and go home. My lord.”

“……”

What kind of woman was this?

It was the moment the straight line of Hwido’s lips curved faintly to one side.

***

Hwido exhaled a long breath, slowly releasing the smoke he had drawn deep into his lungs. Looking at the sarangchae with its lights still unlit, it seemed she intended to sleep straight through until tomorrow.

He had wanted to learn more about the malevolent spirit from the Joseon era that she claimed to have seen in her dream, but for some reason Baek Yeon-ah was being uncooperative.

And yet, seeing that she had packed the refrigerator full of buckwheat jelly, her mind hadn’t changed about going to find that wretched goblin tree.

Should he just come out and tell her? What price a person had to pay when an ordinary human made a contract with a goblin.

That when a contracted party’s lifespan ran out, their soul would be consumed as the goblin’s daily sustenance, and having strayed from the path of reincarnation that way, they would never be born into this world again.

So he ought to give her a firm warning not to even dream of making a contract.

“Whether she makes a contract or not, f*ck.”

Right, it was none of his concern. It wasn’t, and it had to stay that way.

It was probably just because he didn’t want to see Kim Yul’s smug face, getting what he wanted without lifting a finger. There was no other meaning to it, and there couldn’t be.

Hwido drew in another breath of smoke, held it for a moment, and slowly let it out.

Right, forget about it. Whatever happened to that woman was none of his business. The fact that his body had reacted on its own was nothing more than a momentary impulse, and judging by the fact that there had been no reaction at all today, there was nothing more to say.

“So I’m dropping it.”

“Hic, hh. Hic.”

It was the moment he was reaffirming that to himself. A faint, muffled sound of crying from the sarangchae bored into his eardrums. Without thinking, Hwido flung down his cigarette and ground it out roughly under his shoe.

Then he strode right up to the door of the sarangchae, before catching himself and turning his back.

***

Yeon-ah showered first thing as soon as the morning sun rose. It was because she had apparently cried in her sleep all night through her dream, leaving behind nothing but a lingering sense of unease.

She soon returned to her room and switched on the hair dryer. It was then that the white jade hairpin caught her eye, and she stood looking down at it for a long while.

Honestly, she didn’t want to touch it. She wanted to leave it right where it was and not go near it.

Because there was no telling what kind of resentment was loaded into that hairpin, dropped and left behind by the vengeful spirit. But when she saw Seo Hwido come running, she had reached out without thinking and slipped it into her pocket.

And that was when it started.

The dreams followed without pause, as though they had been waiting, relentless as if their purpose was to drain the very blood from her veins.

The dreamer was herself, yet all she could do was watch helplessly. There were moments when she became Shim Hwiryeong against her will and drove Bun, a maidservant, out to a mountain valley in the dead of night.

There were times she had deliberately withheld food from Bun, who faithfully carried out errands that seemed utterly impossible. And in the end, she had gone to her father Shim Chunbae and begged him to drive out Bun, who was making her life difficult.

But Shim Chunbae had held firm. He told her to endure it, adding that she must keep Bun by her side.

Each time, Shim Hwiryeong had been so consumed with bitterness that she nearly spilled the secret buried in her chest, but she bit down and held it in.

Whatever it was she was hiding, it seemed she believed the time had not yet come to let it out.

Even amid that desperate situation, Bun trusted and followed Shim Hwiryeong and her father Shim Chunbae.

It said everything that it was Shim Chunbae who had taken in Bun and her mother after her father had taken his own life and the two of them had nearly starved to death.

Every time she watched Bun, who wanted to somehow keep herself and her mother alive under Shim Hwiryeong who wished her gone, Yeon-ah’s heart ached.

She had no wish to send Bun out into the mountains at night, where goblin flames were said to drift, or along a ridge with a cliff face ahead. But no matter how loudly she cried out, her voice went unheard, nothing but a meaningless echo.

So today, she absolutely had to go find that goblin tree. If she went there and prayed and pleaded earnestly with the goblin who dwelled within, the vengeful spirit clinging to her would disappear and she would stop having these strange dreams.

She held onto that thought the entire time she dried her hair, then opened her door and stepped outside. Now she would go to the kitchen, put together a simple breakfast, pack the buckwheat jelly and makgeolli, and head up the mountain.

With that resolve in mind, she opened the refrigerator door.

“Where did… these go?”

The buckwheat jelly and makgeolli she had carefully stored inside were gone without a trace.