The child seemed to know the area inside and out from how often he must have visited, and he darted ahead of her, leading the way.

“Noona! Right here! This is where my uncle’s hunk tree is!”

The hunch she had tried to dismiss turned out to be right on the mark. They climbed the mountain behind the house and walked for a good while, and when they emerged from a narrow mountain path, the vast open clearing she had seen before came into view.

“Huh? But why does our hunk tree look like… why does our tree look like that? Did someone set it on fire?”

The child looked ready to cry at any moment, his expression like someone who had lost the whole world.

No, shorty. That tree is the goblin tree Seo Hwido was hurling vicious curses at, the words rose all the way to the tip of her tongue before she barely managed to swallow them back down.

“Oh… it’s not fire, it was probably lightning. Noona didn’t see it herself, but… I heard the tree got struck by lightning.”

“What! Lightning?”

The child looked like he had taken quite a shock.

If he knew this was no ordinary tree but a goblin tree, he would probably be even more stunned. But she played dumb and patted him gently on the back.

“It got a little damaged, but… it’s alive. If you tend to it with care, it’ll recover in no time. So don’t be too upset. Noona will help too, as long as she’s here.”

At that, the child flung himself at her and sobbed. He blamed himself for not being there to protect the hunk tree, for not having kept watch over it. The sight of him reproaching himself was so endearing that she softly stroked his hair.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Noona will take good care of it from now on. All right?”

Comforted by her gentle words, the child buried his face in her soft chest and nuzzled against her. It was Yeon-ah’s first time being on the receiving end of a small child’s clinginess, so she simply kept patting his back.

“Wow… pretty noona smells nice…”

Was this really the same child who had been crying his heart out just moments ago. The little voice muffled against her chest sounded as peaceful and content as a child nestled in a warm mother’s arms.

“There, so let’s only cry until today. If you cry, your uncle will definitely be sad too.”

The shorty buried his face in her soft chest and sniffled a little longer, then lifted his head and met her eyes.

“Hic… but noona, what’s your name? I’m Kim Yul, please call me Yul!”

The dark eyes looking up at her sparkled. They were strange eyes, like the world’s light and darkness had been stirred together.

“Yul? Just one syllable? What a pretty name.”

“Just the name? I have lots of girlfriends too!”

“Ahahaha. Girlfriends? Sure, I can believe that. Your name is pretty and your face is handsome too, right? And on top of that you talk so sweetly, I bet they’re lined up. Aren’t they?”

“Hehe!”

Yul broke into a wide smile, his mood lifting in an instant. It was infectious, somehow. Yeon-ah laughed brightly, feeling as though all the weight that had been pressing on her was being washed away.

And then she gently pushed Kim Yul, who was still nestled against her for some reason, back a little and continued.

“Noona’s name is Yeon-ah. Baek Yeon-ah. What do you think? Noona’s name is pretty too, right?”

“Yeon-ah. No, Yeon-ah noona! I love it, it’s perfect!”

Before she even finished speaking, she caught the child by the shoulders just as he was about to burrow back into her arms. Then she spoke to him gently, in a coaxing tone.

“Yul, noona actually has a little something to take care of with this tree… could you wait over there for a bit?”

“Hm? Are you going to make a wish, noona?”

“…How did you know that?”

“How did I know! I’ve made wishes to this hunk tree myself, that’s how!”

It was at that moment. A sharp voice suddenly grazed her ear and Yeon-ah’s body gave a small jolt.

‘You think goblins dig in the dirt for a living? You think they grant wishes without taking something in return?’

Even a child this small had made wishes here without a second thought. What on earth was he on about?

“Phew…”

Yeon-ah let out a long breath and clasped her hands together. Then she spoke to Yul beside her in a soft, gentle voice.

“It’s not quite a wish, I just want to get acquainted with the tree and say hello. So can you wait a moment? When we go back down later, noona will make you some delicious tteokbokki.”

“Really? Wow! Noona, you’re the best!”

Watching the child bounce on his heels with shining eyes, she could tell his energy was something else entirely.

After confirming that the child had darted away in just a few leaps, Yeon-ah slowly approached the tree and closed her eyes.

***

‘You insolent wretch!’

The thunderous reprimand telling him to come to his senses jolted Hwido back to himself.

It had been three hundred years since the brand was seared across his spine. Which meant he had been cursing and raging at the very thought of gods for three hundred years already.

And yet here he was, going to a heavenly god with his pride cast aside, asking for his power back. How utterly galling it must have seemed. He was lucky not to have had even his remaining power stripped away.

D*mn it all.

‘It’s less that I know him well and more that… he feels familiar, I suppose… Joseon era, it makes no sense, but maybe it’s because I thought he might be the woman I saw in that dream.’

Joseon era.

At those words, Hwido found himself recalling the image of a woman he had erased from his memory for several hundred years.

“Ugh! Or… orabeoni…”

The summoned blade flashed. Its razor-sharp tip drove into a slender shoulder and carved a path all the way down to her side in a single stroke. Red blood burst forth without cease from between the gaping, torn flesh.

He gazed indifferently down at the crimson blood soaking the ground at his feet, then suddenly raised his head.

It was because the energy transmitted from the vibrating blade had seized his attention.

It was proof that the blade he had just swung had severed the woman’s next life, and the life that would follow after that. No, the entire thread of her lives to come.

So that this wicked woman could never be reincarnated again. So that she would fall into hellfire and suffer for eternity.

For Bun, who had to die so cruelly before he could even begin to understand where that bewildering feeling of wanting to protect and cherish humans had come from. For her sake, he had crossed a line a goblin must never cross.

‘I will never involve myself in human affairs again. I will live as though I heard nothing when I hear, as though I saw nothing when I see. I will live as one already dead.’

‘I will wait for the day you break that vow.’

It was the vow he had made to the heavenly god and to himself on the day his power was sealed.

And so he became half human and lived among humans, and the reality of it was even more wretched than he had imagined. He had known from experience that they were beings thoroughly kneaded from greed, but their selfishness and exclusion of others surpassed anything he had imagined. Their deceit and hypocrisy were enough to make him click his tongue in disbelief.

So the moment he recovered his power, his only thought was to settle his affairs in the human realm and return to where he belonged.

Of course, before that, if he could see Bun reborn once more, he wanted to atone for the past in which he had failed to protect her and wish her nothing but peace in this life.

She would have been born with a different face, a different voice, a different body, but he had thought it would be nice to see her just once.

And yet.

Baek Yeon-ah, who dreamed of Joseon. And the malevolent spirit lurking around that woman. Could it be a coincidence?

Of course, anyone could dream of Joseon as a backdrop. But if the woman she had seen in her dream was a malevolent spirit that had crossed back over hundreds of years, it was far from an ordinary matter.

What if the woman who had died harboring a grudge against him had planned all of this?

When his thoughts reached that point, an inexplicable unease stirred within him.

And so he had tried to borrow the power of the heavenly god who had said he would wait for the day that vow was broken.

‘All this time you showed no intention of lifting the seal. And after three hundred years you show up and the first thing out of your mouth is a demand for your demonic energy back? You arrogant, presumptuous thing!’

The position of executor, the one who would collect the souls of malevolent spirits, remained vacant, and it was a position that would not be filled unless he returned.

Because the majority of goblins had chosen coexistence with humans, saying there was no difference between humans and malevolent spirits.

So at present, even if malevolent spirits ran rampant in the human world, there was no one to bring them to judgment. And was that not precisely why all manner of religions had sprung up, spirit shrines had been erected, and charlatans were running amok.

Given the situation, he had pleaded that it was time to return his power, that the human realm needed to be cleansed, but the only answer that came back was a mocking refusal.

‘Cleansing the human world. Does that mean cleansing the humans themselves? If you want your power back, start by completing the form of the brand. Though of course you’ll have to find that method on your own as well.’

“Phew…”

He had gone to the trouble of dressing neatly to face the heavenly god, and in the end all he had gotten was a wasted trip with nothing to show for it.

Hwido walked along the now-darkened country road and thought. How long did it take for a human to reach reincarnation?

He had no other intention. There was just a face he wanted to see from a distance, just once, before he recovered his power and left the human realm.

The face of Bun, who had smiled so sweetly and called him ‘my lord.’

Hwido stopped walking and stood quietly gazing at the hanok that had come into view. With the lights out in every room, it seemed she had already fallen asleep.

The soft glow of light illuminating the yard looked, for some reason, forlorn.

Ribbit, ribbit. Only the loud chorus of frogs carried on, and at last Hwido reached the house that had fallen into stillness and pulled the gate open.

And at the sight that greeted him, a curse ground out between his teeth.