Chapter 73: Savory Death (4)
Translator: bjgoofy
When the villagers who had gone to work with Na-ok entered the village gate a step behind her, they saw a large blaze flaring up in the distance.
It was already a time when those who went to bed early would have fallen asleep.
The people shouted and ran toward the house on fire.
“F-fire!”
“Fire!”
Since Song Family Village was a clan village, a fire at someone’s home was practically a family matter for everyone.
“A fire!?”
“Whose house is that!?”
“I-it looks like Na-ok’s house!”
“What!? Na-ok! Na-eun!”
And when they arrived in front of the burning house, they saw Na-ok, covered in burns and scorched clothes, holding her cold, lifeless younger sister in the middle of the yard.
Smoke was rising from various parts of her body, and her eyes were dazed.
Despite what must have been severe pain, Na-ok showed no reaction, half out of her mind.
“W-what on earth happened!?”
“Na-ok!? What happened!?”
It was Uncle Song Ho-jung from the fifth branch of the family who asked.
Na-ok looked up at him with vacant eyes and said,
“U-uncle, Na-eun… Na-eun…”
Clothes half torn off and a bruised face exposed in the blazing firelight.
Ho-jung, who worked as an escort for the Escort Agency, checked Na-eun’s miserable state and asked furiously,
“Was she already dead when you arrived!? Or did you see who did it!?”
“Uncle, a-at the village gate, I saw a man I didn’t recognize leaving...
At Na-ok’s words, Song Ho-jung shouted to the gathered villagers.
“Elders, take half the women and men and stop the fire from spreading! The rest of the men, follow me! Someone dared to come into our Song Family Village and harm my cousin’s daughter! He couldn’t have gotten far! Let’s go!”
As the house blazed behind Na-ok’s back, people rushed in to douse it with water, and the young men, holding torches, dashed out around Song Family Village to begin a search.
And like the fire slowly fading, Na-ok’s consciousness also began to slip away.
-Thud.
“Na-ok! Na-ok!”
The aunt's urgent voice was fading distantly, and Na-ok wished all of this was just a one-night dream like that flame.
***
By the time Na-ok regained consciousness, more than fifteen days had passed.
It was because she had hovered between life and death for days due to the burns on her body, and had been unable to recover her mind from the shock of her sister’s brutal murder.
“Na… Na-eun!”
Her whole body was covered in herbs and bandages.
And then came the excruciating pain throughout her body.
That was the reality that greeted Na-ok when she regained consciousness.
But even more painful than the physical agony was the fact that her younger sister was no longer part of this world.
The fact that her sister, whom she had raised like a daughter, refusing even marriage proposals, was no longer in this world.
“Ghhk! A-auntie, d-did they catch him?”
As soon as she woke up, she clenched her teeth through the pain and asked, but her aunt shook her head with a sorrowful expression.
“Your uncle even asked the Escort Agency and sent out someone skilled in tracking, and they’ve been searching ever since, but haven’t found him. I fear they won’t be able to find him anymore....”
“Sob… Na-eun...”
In the end, just as the aunt had said, the search that had gone on for several more days ended without any results.
Na-ok was the only one who had seen the man, but she hadn’t clearly seen his face in the darkness, and too much time had passed while she was unconscious.
Even the skilled tracker her uncle brought couldn’t find any traces of the culprit amidst the added footprints from the firefighting efforts.
“This uncle is sorry. How will I ever face my cousin later...”
Uncle Ho-jung apologized, but Na-ok couldn’t say a word.
She couldn’t say it wasn’t his fault, nor could she blame him for missing the man. The thought that they had completely lost him and could never avenge her sister’s grudge caused her mind to drift further.
Na-ok, lying on a guest bed in Uncle Ho-jung’s house, turned her head away and gave no response.
Like all life fading in late autumn, Na-ok’s heart, too, went into slumber.
Sometimes, the only communication Na-ok had with the world was the faint groans she let out when her bandages were changed to treat the burn scars.
Time flowed by like running water.
-Chirr chirr.
Na-ok’s consciousness returned again when winter passed and spring came, when the crickets began to chirp once more.
The sound of the crickets outside the window felt just like her sister’s voice, and just like a flame catching in an extinguished lamp, her mind lit up.
‘Sis, please catch that man. Please avenge me. Sob…’
In Na-ok’s ears, the crickets’ cries sounded like her sister’s desperate wailing.
“Na-eun?”
-Chirr chirr.
Grudge carved into her bones.
Yes, she had raised her sister, so she believed she was also the one who should avenge her.
With that thought, Na-ok decided first to recover her body.
And as soon as her body was well enough, she went to see the uncle and aunt who had taken care of her and bowed deeply.
“I’m going to leave.”
“Leave? Your house hasn’t even been rebuilt yet.”
At the word “leave”, the uncle asked again, thinking she meant to return to her old home.
Na-ok shook her head and answered.
“No. I’m going to leave Song Family Village.”
“What!? Where on earth do you mean to go? Your body isn’t even fully healed yet!”
“Na-ok, surely you don’t feel burdened? Don’t ever think that. This aunt and uncle, how could we ever face your parents in the afterlife? Please look after your health more. We’ll speak with the elders and have your home rebuilt.”
At their words, Na-ok shook her head once more.
"No. With my sister crying out in pain every night, how could I, as her older sister, live a comfortable life? I will avenge my sister."
"How can you, a woman, take revenge!? When you don't even know who he is!"
Though the uncle and aunt tried to keep her confined and prevent her from leaving, the crickets that cried every night only strengthened Na-ok’s resolve. When she declared she would rather starve to death than live without avenging her sister, they finally gave in.
On the day she visited her sister’s grave and left, the aunt handed her a sachet stained with dried blood and said,
“Please, come back alive.”
***
The first place Na-ok headed to after leaving Song Family Village was Chengdu.
She thought the man must have fled that way after running into Na-eun.
She didn’t worry about how she would find someone whose face she had never seen.
Like the red burn scars left across Na-ok’s face and body, the man’s voice, that unforgettable voice, was seared into her memory like a brand.
'Hey you, watch where you are going!'
So Na-ok began approaching men on the streets of Chengdu without hesitation.
“Excuse me…”
“Ugh… What is it!”
“Excuse me…”
“Whoa! You startled me!”
The face that once made people feel warmth now, covered in burn scars, made people frown. That made it an incredibly difficult task.
And so, a year, then another passed.
Whenever the season came and the crickets began to cry, Na-ok would wander the streets of Chengdu in a half-dazed state, and only when the crickets fell silent would she return to her senses.
Then one day, in a street lined with gambling dens.
Two men bumped into each other, one entering, one exiting a gambling house, and their voices rang out.
“Hey. W-watch yourself!”
“Hey, you’re the one who should be careful.”
Sheltering from the rain under the eaves of a building in an alley where the crickets’ chirping had vanished due to the weather, Na-ok heard the voice she had never forgotten, and finally found the man.
-Boom!
A thunderclap from the rain-filled sky struck down like it had fallen directly onto Na-ok.
It had been three years.
***
“My goodness…”
The voice of disbelief from Nunim’s mouth.
There was no single word to describe the emotions we felt after hearing the woman’s story.
Even Squad Leader Gu Pae, who had said he felt a connection with the woman because he too had lost his parents to bandits during a journey in a carriage, now had an expression that said he never imagined her story would be this tragic.
This wasn’t simply a tragic story, it was something far beyond that.
After the woman paused briefly, Nunim urged her on with a question.
“So, what happened then?”
"An old beggar I had become friendly with when I was half out of my mind told me that the man visited the gambling den I worked at every three days or so."
“Ah, so that’s why you asked to be put to work at the gambling den?”
The woman nodded at Nunim’s question.
“Yes, that’s right, Young Miss. At first, I thought about secretly following him and stabbing him with a knife.
But the old beggar, as if he knew everything, told me. He said the man was a martial artist, and that a woman like me wouldn’t be able to take revenge with just her own strength...
So I pleaded with the gambling den’s owner, saying I wouldn’t ask for pay and begged him to give me any kind of job. The beggar told me the best way would be to poison the man’s food or drink.”
Only then did the words of the gambling den’s owner make sense.
“Ah, so when the owner said the food tasted strange?”
“I bought poison with the money I begged for in the back alleys, but I don’t think it was real poison.”
She had tried to buy poison to take revenge, but like many places in the Central Plains, it turned out to be fake.
Because of that incident, the woman had been kicked down to the underground area where crickets were bred. With the constant cricket noise driving her insane, she ended up half-mad, until we pulled her out of there, at which point she briefly regained her senses.
-Chirr chirr.
“So that’s what happened.... Ah, I understand now. Na-eun, sis will hurry.... I’m sorry I was late....”
At the sound of crickets chirping again outside the window, the woman curled up once more and muttered to herself.
No one disagreed about helping her because her situation was so pitiful. But I wondered if it was really okay to bring her to the Tang Family.
She wasn’t in her right mind, and we had to raise crickets. Didn’t she say she lost her sanity whenever she heard crickets?
[Will this be alright?]
I quietly voiced my doubts to Squad Leader Gu Pae and Nunim, wondering whether she could be relied on in such a state. But both nodded without hesitation.
[Someone like her can be healed once her grudge is avenged. It’s because her hatred runs deep. And someone whose grudge you resolve will never betray you, they make for excellent people in the Tang Family.]
[That’s right, Young Hero Soryong. Before I avenged my parents, I used to talk to my dagger. But after the Tang Family took revenge for them, I recovered completely.
And like the Young Miss said, someone whose grudge you avenge will never betray you.]
I wasn't sure if this made sense from a psychoanalytic standpoint, but if Nunim and Squad Leader Gu both agreed, what else could I do?
At the very least, she’d be useful while in her right mind. And if she could just share her knowledge of cricket breeding with our Venomous Creature Squad, then she’d already be doing more than enough. I nodded.
[Understood, then.]
Helping the woman meant, essentially, killing the man who was her enemy, and even I, who had never killed a person before, felt murderous rage bubbling up after hearing the woman's harrowing story.
The more we listened to her tale of horror, the more my rage against that man intensified.
He had essentially killed two women.
He was a criminal worthy of execution.
And it was unlikely that this man had committed just this one crime. It seemed certain he had other sins we didn't even know about.
First, I asked the Centipedes to quiet the crickets.
"Children, can you quiet the crickets a bit?"
Baby crickets are cowards who go silent when a predator is nearby.
-Tsurur!
When the centipedes jumped up to the window and made a threatening noise, the surroundings instantly fell silent like a ghost town.
After a moment of waiting, as expected, the woman spoke again in a clear voice.
“C-can you really help me? My mind keeps slipping in and out like this, and I really don’t think I can do it alone anymore.... If you just help me, I swear I’ll devote the rest of my worthless life to serving you with everything I have!”
We had already agreed, Nunim, Squad Leader Gu, and I.
And isn’t this the world of righteousness and loyalty?
I nodded and asked,
“So. That bastard... no— who the hell is that piece of shit?”
Should I have the centipedes bite him?
Or have Yohwa drag him up and hang him from some tree?
Or maybe go with a clean, brutal kill?
Of all the many methods, I’d have to pick the best one to deal with him.
*****
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