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“Gah!”

Startled, he flailed wildly as hot breath grazed his ear.

—Excuse me.

The whispered voice made his shoulders instinctively shrink. With a forced turn of his stiff neck, he spotted the familiar man smiling warmly at him. The jade-green coat and gat were replaced by the stark black robes and military hat. Kang-soe gasped for air. Staring at the man’s wildly blinking eyes, he finally spoke.

“By any chance, have we met before?”

“Wh-wh-what…”

Kang-soe was about to scream that he didn’t know him, but meeting those smiling eyes completely stole his voice. The shoe he had picked up from the river flashed in his mind.

Shaking off the hand gripping his collar, he offered a deep bow. “Are you not the gentleman from the tavern?”

At that greeting, the man’s lips curled into a crooked smirk. You knew, yet you pretended not to. The words were muttered so softly, yet they rang clearer than a shouted command.

Before the man could say anything else, Kang-soe hurriedly dug through his pack. He pulled out the single shoe he had rescued from the river and offered it up. He didn’t ask if the man had been the one watching him outside the village; handing over the shoe was answer enough. Exhaling a cautious breath, he waited, but the man made no move to take it.

The man merely glared at Kang-soe’s hand with sharp, piercing eyes, making the skin there prickle uncomfortably.

“Will you not take it? Is this not what you were looking for?”

Kang-soe couldn’t be entirely sure this was the exact shoe he had seen tumbling down the rapids. How could anyone clearly track something spinning wildly, sinking deep, and popping back up in such turbulent water? But given his dream and his hunch, he had gone looking for it, found it snagged on his foot, and kept it.

“It is indeed what I seek.”

Only after saying this did the man finally take the shoe.

Kang-soe peeked at him nervously before reorganizing his pack.

As soon as he hoisted it onto his shoulders, the man spoke, as if he had been waiting. “Where did you find this?”

“Well. Before entering the village, there are those massive twin boulders, remember? Right by the water’s edge. That’s where it was. I saw it on my way and picked it up, figuring I’d return it if fate ever brought us together again.”

Hearing his own words, Kang-soe realized how absurd it sounded—to take something he knew someone else was desperately searching for. He remembered wading into the water without a second thought. Just as he was about to apologize, the man asked another question.

“Then why didn’t you return it at the tavern?”

He had been terrified.

He couldn’t exactly confess he was too scared of him, so as Kang-soe hesitated, searching for the right words, the man preempted him by reciting the rumor. It was similar to the story told at the other tavern, but with one key difference. In the man’s version, the drunken peddler hadn’t been paralyzed by fear—he had simply stood there, ignoring the question, and ended up pissing and crapping himself, leaving the man in a terribly awkward situation.

Knowing how peddlers loved to exaggerate, Kang-soe realized the terrifying ghost encounter had likely been a massive, pathetic misunderstanding.

Once bitten by a turtle, terrified by a pot lid. He had clearly let his own imagination get the better of him. Nodding in agreement, Kang-soe confessed that he had fled because he genuinely wasn’t sure if the man was a human or a ghost. At this, the man chuckled softly. He asked if Kang-soe was still afraid. Seeing no reason to be terrified anymore, Kang-soe shook his head, and the man smiled again, his eyes crinkling.

It was a beautiful smile. His features weren’t traditionally handsome, but the thought arose nonetheless.

“Meeting like this is truly a stroke of fate.”

While Kang-soe stood staring, the man began walking ahead. After taking about ten steps, he stopped, turned back, and called out, asking why Kang-soe wasn’t following.

“Are you not going?”

“Excuse me?”

Where would I be going with you?

In response to the dumbfounded question, the man answered, “This is the only road leading out of the village. To comfortably reach the next town, even if we walk briskly now, the sun will be setting by the time we arrive. We do not have time to stand around.”

“Ah…”

Only then did Kang-soe hurry to follow. He wasn’t fishing. Kang-soe thought about why the man might have been squatting in the tall grass. A sudden realization hit him.

He was taking a shit.

And since Kang-soe had stumbled upon him, the man understandably wanted to leave the area immediately. Kang-soe couldn’t help but wonder if the man had adequate time to wipe properly.

Pushing through the thick, rain-fed grass, Kang-soe walked briskly, just as he always did. He was completely oblivious to the grass swaying in the wind behind him, as if the mountain itself were laughing.

This marked the beginning of a long journey with the man known as Yeom-gon.