Chapter 157: Absorption (5)
Translator: bjgoofy
-Tsurururu!
-Crack! Crack!
Bin's furious cry rang out, followed by the sound of bed bugs being smashed to pieces.
The room, which had been filled with the faint scent of coriander, was abruptly flooded with the rusty stench of corroded iron.
The reason the bed bugs gave off the smell of coriander is that the plant's scientific name, Coriandrum sativum, derives from the Greek word koriós, meaning bed bug.
In both East and West, coriander is commonly called "bedbug grass", a name given precisely because it gives off a smell similar to that of the bed bug itself.
And the reason the rusty stench of corroded iron filled the room as the creatures died was the blood common to both their excrement and their bellies.
The bed bug droppings that had been smeared down the wall earlier were, in essence, digested blood, and thus contained iron that oxidized to give off an unpleasant, rusty odor. On top of that, the half-digested blood that sprayed in every direction as the creatures burst apart under Bin was the source of that smell.
'Bin! Knock the lantern Papa dropped toward the bed, then get us out of here!'
-Tssrit!
I asked it of Bin from within my heart as it wrapped its whole body around me and fought to protect me.
Bin was sturdy enough that we could have kept fighting like this, but there was no telling how far the bed bugs had spread through the village, and I needed to warn the others quickly.
-Tap.
-Whoosh.
At my request, Bin's tail swept around, and I heard the sound of the fire catching and spreading.
Soon heat began to radiate from one side, and Bin's movements followed as it dragged me straight outside.
The moment we slipped out, Bin shook itself off, set me down to one side, and slammed down at the ground.
-Tsurururu!
-Boom! Boom!
In Korea, when something is flattened, they say it's been turned into a bindaetteok, a bed-bug pancake, and in Bin's fury those bed bugs were ground even flatter than that. [TL Note: "Bindaetteok" is a savory mung-bean pancake whose name puns on "bed bug" (bindae).]
Dark red blood spilled from the crushed bed bugs, lit by the blazing flames.
The squirming bed bugs stained the soil around Bin a dark red and vanished without a trace, and as Bin and I, having escaped that ghastly place, stood watching the flames.
Lee Tae's subordinates, the ones I'd asked to keep watch because of the ongoing murders, came rushing toward the sudden fire, shouting.
"F-fire!"
"Fire! There's a fire!"
At that, lights flickered on in the surrounding houses one by one.
That was when it happened.
Two houses stood out, plainly different from the rest.
Near the homes of the first victim and the second victim, two other houses remained dark, no lights coming on at all.
With this much commotion, and flames shooting up nearby on top of it, anyone might have woken, yet only those two houses stayed as silent as the grave.
Seeing this, I shouted toward the four river bandits who had rushed over, crying "Fire!" and floundering about helplessly.
"Leave the fire alone and go check whether anyone in those two houses is still alive! Be careful. There are bed bugs in there!"
"Bed bugs, you say?"
"Bed bugs?"
The river bandits, about to dash off toward where I pointed, failed to grasp the meaning of my words and blinked in bewilderment.
And no wonder, for in this era the bed bug, differing only in number from house to house, was an insect found in every home.
It was before the use of the insecticide with the long name Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, the pesticide better known as DDT.
Back then, bed bugs were inseparable from our lives.
It was precisely the bed bug that crept into the cracks of houses and into bedding and tormented people relentlessly.
So when I told them to beware of bed bugs, which were common everywhere, they couldn't understand what I meant, which was why the river bandits were wearing such dumbfounded expressions.
Pointing toward the burning house, I shouted again.
"Not ordinary bed bugs, those things!"
"What in the? Hiiik!"
"Hueeegh! Wh-what kind of bed bug is that!"
The river bandits recoiled in horror at the sight of the bed bugs crawling out, black and swarming, from the burning house my fingertip indicated.
Palm-sized, turtle-like bed bugs were scuttling out of the burning house in every direction, fleeing the flames.
At the sight, the river bandits flinched in terror and bolted for the other houses.
"L-let's go!"
"Quickly, let's go!"
'They'll see to saving the people themselves. I have to stop the bed bugs from spreading any further.'
I'd sent men to rescue the households nearby that had been attacked, so now it was time to keep the other creatures from crawling out.
Bed bugs were faster than one might think, so I ordered Bin to circle the burning house and burst every one of them.
"Bin! We have to keep those things from escaping anywhere else! Circle the house and burst every last one trying to flee!"
-Tsurur!
Bin circled the burning house swiftly, as if dancing the ganggangsullae, and mercilessly drove its claws down into every bed bug that crawled out to save itself. [TL Note: Ganggangsullae is a Korean circle dance performed by women holding hands and moving round in a ring.]
And only then did Lee Tae, Seol noona, and Hwa-eun, Cho, and Yohwa come running up behind me from the direction of the boat.
At the sight of the burning house and Bin stabbing palm-sized bed bugs to death in front of it, Hwa-eun and Seol noona stared with wide, startled eyes.
"Wh-what the hell.... What kind of bed bug is the size of a palm!"
"Cho! Help Yohwa and Bin!"
-Tsurururu!
-Hisss!
At Hwa-eun's request, Cho shot up into the air, and as the tall-bodied Yohwa moved about stabbing down at the bed bugs, their numbers dwindled with ease.
Things here looked about ready to be settled, so I gave Lee Tae an order.
I told him to go check on his subordinates, the ones who had gone to rescue people from the houses without lights.
"Lee Tae, your men went to help the people in the darkened houses, but they still haven't come back. Go help them there...."
In the meantime I'd been about to set fire to the house where the young couple had died yesterday, but at that very moment one of Lee Tae's subordinates came trudging out of a nearby house.
The man who had trudged out stared blankly toward Lee Tae with vacant eyes.
"Ch-Chief. R-run...."
And then, stretching out a hand toward Lee Tae, he stammered, and pitched forward flat on his face.
-Thud.
Seol noona shuddered at the sight and screamed.
"Th-then the thing I touched was? Kyaaaaah!"
She was a martial artist, not the kind of woman to scream at such a sight, but the bed bugs were clinging in a black mass to the back of the fallen man.
Their bellies were swelling in real time, and from the rears of some of them, clear bodily fluid was dripping in droplets, so she seemed to have been gripped by terror.
The bed bug is a truly greedy insect, sucking blood until its belly is taut, and then, not content with that, expelling only the fluid portion of the blood to shrink the volume of its belly so it can suck still more.
So the mysterious liquid Seol noona had found on the bed could be called plasma, the blood with its blood cells removed.
When the river bandit collapsed, Lee Tae shouted the man's name in a loud voice and ran toward him.
"Y-Yeon-geol!"
At first Lee Tae was at a loss, but then he grabbed a club propped against a nearby house wall, ran over, and struck at the bed bugs stuck to the man's back.
-Thwack! Thwack!
"Yeon-geol! You fool! Snap out of it!"
The man's back stained red with the bed bugs bursting upon it.
Each time the club swung, Lee Tae's face too was stained red.
The man did not stir, even under the swinging club.
Hwa-eun shook her head at the sight.
The amount of blood in an adult male's body is about five liters.
A bed bug normally sucks, in a single feeding, up to six times its own body weight in blood; so how much would a palm-sized bed bug suck all at once?
It's known that a person dies once the blood lost exceeds thirty percent, and even at a glance it was clear that man was already no longer among the living.
After all, a person dies once even a liter and a half has drained away.
I went up to Lee Tae, who was now slapping his own subordinate's pallid, whitened cheeks, and seized him by the shoulder.
"Yeon-geol, snap out of it! You fool! Didn't you say you wanted to see your mother back home! Yeon-geol!"
"Lee Tae, stop. He's already dead."
"N-no. Master Soryong. This one's the best diver of us all, he's surely just holding his breath!"
It seemed this bizarre situation had driven him half out of his mind.
As I hesitated at Lee Tae's reaction, Hwa-eun stepped forward and spoke in a cold voice.
"Pull yourself together! Do you mean to let everyone else die too!?"
"E-everyone?"
At that, Lee Tae blinked.
I nodded and said,
"There's no telling how many bed bugs are still in the village. Move everyone to the docks at once."
"R-right. A-all right."
The river bandits who came running after, together with Lee Tae, evacuated the people to the docks.
When I additionally set fire to the two houses gone silent and to the house where the second victim had been found, the bed bugs once again began crawling out in greater numbers.
By rough reckoning, it was now the hour of the Ox, somewhere between one and three in the morning.
It was going to be a long night, by the look of it.
"Cho, Bin, and Yohwa, we have to keep the bed bugs from reaching the village! There don't seem to be many, so let's deal with them quickly!"
-Chirr chirr!
-Hee-hee-hee!
The bed bugs pouring out in a black swarm clashed with the three venomous creatures against the backdrop of the burning houses, and the bed bugs' shrieks echoed through the night sky.
-Crack!
-Kieeeeee....
***
As day broke, every last bed bug vanished as if it had all been a lie.
Bed bugs are, after all, nocturnal insects, with the trait of hiding away in the cracks of beds or the seams of floor paper once day breaks, so they had all crept off somewhere.
"Hwaa, I'm exhausted."
Seol noona slumped down where she stood, avoiding the bed bugs squashed sticky against the ground.
And behind her, the river bandits who had swarmed in to help us sprawled out across the ground with disgusted looks on their faces.
"Huff, huff.... It's finally over."
"That was horrible."
I'd thought there wouldn't be many bed bugs coming out of just four houses, yet the reason we'd fought until this dawning hour.
It was because those creatures had been only the advance guard.
When we'd burned the house where the first victim had appeared, plus three more, I'd thought this whole uproar would be over.
After all, we'd dealt with every bed bug that had crawled out of the four houses.
But Seol noona pointed beyond the first house, already burned down to smoldering embers.
"Ryong! More are coming!"
"More!?"
At the word that more were swarming in, I drew up my Eye Power, and from the mountain's shadow behind the first house, where only embers remained, bed bugs were pushing out endlessly, on and on.
The source of the bed bugs was, most likely, that mountain.
That was why we'd had to fight until daybreak, and why this battle had finally ended once day broke.
Well, to be precise, it hadn't so much ended as the creatures had withdrawn into a brief lull.
"Are you all right too?"
-Tssrit!
-Hee-hee-hee.
-Tsurur.
Cho and Bin looked lively. Yohwa looked a little drained.
When I let Yohwa nip my finger, far more Yang energy seemed to drain out than before, and a slight wave of fatigue washed over me.
Sitting down on the ground alongside Seol noona, I said,
"Aigo, I'm worn out too. You're all filthy, so Cho, Yohwa, and Bin should go to the water and wash up a bit."
The three of them had legs covered in dried bed bug fluid.
When I pointed it out, the three looked themselves over and nodded.
As the three young ladies thus set off to bathe, Hwa-eun came over, handed me some water, and said,
"Are you all right, Soryong?"
"Yes. And you, Hwa-eun?"
"I'm fine."
Then, from beside me, came Seol noona's voice saying she was about to drop dead.
"I'm not fine, look after me too...."
When I went over with a smile and passed Seol noona some water, she gulped it down in great swallows.
Having drained the water, Seol noona shuddered, showing the same revulsion toward bed bugs as one might toward cockroaches.
"I hate bed bugs the most. But they'll come again tonight, won't they?"
"Probably?"
"We can't leave until our boat's repaired, right?"
"Since I'm told they've torn out all the leaking spots, probably so."
The leaking sections had been torn out for a fresh round of waterproofing, so we were stuck here for about another week.
At my answer, Seol noona let out a great sigh.
"Haa.... But where on earth did bed bugs that big come from?"
At that question I went and fetched one of the creatures that still more or less held its shape, and examined it.
'No different from Cimex lectularius....'
Cimicidae is the group name for the bugs that feed on the blood of warm-blooded animals, commonly called bed bugs.
And the one among them best known to us is called Cimex, and the bed bugs that had invaded the village were nearly identical in form to that very Cimex.
Apart from having grown to the size of a palm, and having a stronger saliva, with its anticoagulant compound and mild anesthetic effect, the two could be regarded as practically the same species.
Something occurred to me, so I asked Seol noona with a grave expression.
"Doesn't it smell the same?"
"Hm? Smell? The herb smell?"
Seol noona seemed to think I meant the bed bugs' coriander smell, but I shook my head and answered.
"No. I'm asking whether it doesn't feel the same as last time, with the Army Ants."
"The Army Ants!?"
Seol noona started in alarm at the words "Army Ants."
Hwa-eun nodded along, agreeing with my view.
"Certainly. The location where the bed bugs appeared is far too convenient as well. The Three Gorges of the Yangtze River is a place from which one could easily spread out in every direction. Just as Soryong says, it smells the same."
The reason I'd brought up the Army Ant incident was that, oddly enough, my gut was telling me this whole thing reeked of the Five Poisons Sect.
*****
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