V1S2C6

A monster. A true monster.

Wailing in terror, the mother-in-law hacked the body into smaller chunks and doused them in ash. Coated in ash, the meat finally stopped moving. She gathered the mutilated remains, dumped them into a large kimchi jar buried in the backyard, and packed them heavily with salt, as if fermenting fish paste. That evening, when her son returned and asked where his wife was, she calmly replied she hadn’t seen her.

Finally, I won’t have to look at that wretched sight anymore.

She thought it was over. But her idiot son kept talking to the empty air, acting as if his wife were right there beside him. I chopped your wife to pieces and salted her in a jar, what nonsense are you spouting? Thinking it a cruel joke, the son ignored her and continued searching for his bride. Terrified he would discover the truth, she decided to move the heavy jar. Grunting and straining under the weight of the A-frame carrier, she lost her balance and tipped over.

The jar shattered.

There was no daughter-in-law inside.

To be precise, the butchered meat was gone, replaced by a writhing mass of black, slug-like creatures pouring from the broken clay. The sight of the limp, salted slugs was so repulsive she hastily buried them in the dirt, grabbed the shattered shards, and fled. Impossibly, a late monsoon arrived, and suddenly, every field and every home was infested with black river snails.

Behind the jangdokdae pots, in the flooded rice paddies, thick, black snails popped up everywhere. They were plump and meaty, and the village children happily gathered them in woven strainers. Boiled, pan-fried—they were delicious, a rare treat. Amidst this bizarre feast, the foolish husband vanished without a trace.

Where did that idiot go?

Accustomed to him lingering around begging for scraps, the villagers noticed his absence. Soon after, the questions changed: Where did his wife go? Where is the beautiful bride?

Sitting around eating snails as drinking snacks, the men gossiped.

“I had my fun with her too.”

“Yeah, me too.”

As the filthy confessions spilled out, the women serving the alcohol giggled along, completely oblivious to the fact that their own faces were slowly turning a necrotic, rotting black.

The summer days were long, the sun reluctant to set. The drinking party dragged late into the night, the village reeking of cheap liquor. Then, suddenly, every single person present felt their bodies grow heavy, a violent, unquenchable thirst gripping their throats.

That thirst—whether it was a thirst of the upper mouth or the lower mouth—any being with a shred of humanity wouldn’t know. But those worse than beasts surely would.

***

“That is where the story I heard ends.”

“…”

His stomach churned violently. Kang-soe scrubbed his dry face with trembling hands.

Would throwing up make me feel better?

Observing Kang-soe’s pale, horrified expression, Yeom-gon merely smiled his serene smile. Was this a story to smile at? Demanding to know what happened next, Yeom-gon silently pointed at the old man.

The old man stood awkwardly, clutching his sickle, his eyes darting frantically around the ruins. He scratched his body violently, revealing raw, torn flesh beneath his filthy clothes.

“It was divine punishment. A curse from heaven.”

The old man glared at the charred remains of the house with pure, unadulterated hatred. What more was there to tell? In the suffocating silence, the old man continued his tale—why the house had burned to the ground, and what truly became of the foolish husband.

The sun hung high in the sky, yet a chilling darkness seemed to swallow the world, a testament to the horrific truth of the story that followed.

◇ ◇ ◇

Stark naked, the son sought out his mother, demanding endlessly to know where his bride was.

Not since the bride’s dismembered, fermenting corpse had been scattered across the floor and the shattered clay jar hurled into the backyard had the mother laid eyes on her. She shook her head, insisting she didn’t know.

“My bride. My bride.”

He wouldn’t listen, not even when told she wasn’t there. Instead, he relentlessly tore the house apart in search of her. A sour stench rolled off his dripping sweat, and when he tried to force his way into the main bedroom, his mother grabbed him to drag him back. The moment her fingers brushed his skin, his sweat stretched between them in long, viscous strands.

She recoiled in horror. In that same instant, the son’s neck abruptly elongated by a handspan, his head swiveling in every direction before he hunched over and shambled off toward a singular destination.

The backyard—where the broken clay jar had been discarded. Though shattered, the base remained intact, its broken upper half allowing rainwater to pool within.

Lifting the water-filled vessel, the son spoke to his mother.

“She’s right here, so why did you say she wasn’t… Hehe. My bride. My bride.”

My bride. My bride. Let’s live together, he muttered to no one in particular before shoving his head directly into the jar, sending the pooled water overflowing through the jagged cracks.

Startled, his mother tried to smack his back, shouting at him to stop, but his skin was so repulsively sticky that she snatched up a rough bush-clover broom and thrashed his back and legs instead. Head jammed into a water-filled vessel, he should have been suffocating, yet he refused to pull free. The jar was large, but nowhere near large enough for a full-grown man—though, to be fair, his wife had at least been chopped into small pieces first.

“You fool! You’ll suffocate and die! You fool!”

Why shove his head into a space he couldn’t possibly fit? Even as she beat him mercilessly with the broom, he kept crawling deeper, his impossibly large body continuing to sink into the cramped space, cramming his chubby frame inside, flesh squirming and twisting.

His entire body was terrifyingly slippery—coated in what first appeared to be oil, then thick sweat, then viscous mucus, all of it emitting a stench identical to rotting meat. Unfazed by the beatings, he moved sluggishly inside the vessel, his torso engulfed by the jar, his hands barely grazing the earth as he crawled forward. He looked exactly like a mud snail—his hands swelling and flattening, his eyeballs stretching into long, fleshy stalks, his mouth dissolving and fusing into a shapeless mass.

As he slithered sluggishly back toward his hut, his mother—unable to bear the horrific sight any longer—lunged at him. Oh god. Oh god. You fool. You absolute fool. Where do you think you’re going? She grabbed his slippery body and threw her weight backward, flipping the fool onto his back.

Why did the memory of murdering her daughter-in-law surface now, of all times? Just as she had done on that pitch-black night, she pushed her son. Roll, roll, roll. His encased body rolled with disturbing ease. When they reached the unused dry well, she used every ounce of her strength to shove the jar into the abyss and slam the heavy wooden lid shut.

“How do you know all of this in such detail?”

At Kang-soe’s question, the salt merchant laughed—a strange, hollow sound—staring off at a distant mountain. His eyes seemed to look through the two men standing before him, fixing on something else entirely.

“I have no choice but to know. Because I was selling salt right there.”

“Right there?”

The merchant grinned, and a sudden wave of goosebumps erupted across Kang-soe’s skin, prompting him to grab Yeom-gon’s sleeve. As Kang-soe discreetly tried to step back, a pale hand shot out and snatched his wrist.

“Are you thinking of running away?”

“N-no, that’s not it. Just… just because.”

At Kang-soe’s stammered reply, Yeom-gon made a very strange expression—though fortunately, the corners of his mouth didn’t curl into a smile. Meanwhile, the salt merchant continued his tale of selling salt to the fool’s mother.

After shoving her son into the dried-up well and slamming the lid shut, a bizarre noise began echoing from the depths—kke-kke, kke-kke. Startled by the eerie sound, she fiercely boiled a pot of water and poured it scalding down the shaft. That quieted him for a moment, but soon the kke-kke, kke-kke resumed. When her son’s grotesque form came slithering sluggishly up the stone walls, she frantically fetched salt from the kitchen and hurled it at him as if warding off an evil spirit. He writhed in agony and plummeted—thud—hitting the bottom with a heavy crash, yet the jar encasing his body didn’t break.

What do I do? What do I do?

Just then, the salt merchant happened to be passing by. The mother slammed the lid shut, purchased an entire sack of salt from him, threw the well open again, and began dumping the contents inside. Wherever the white grains touched, her son’s face and arms dissolved and sank inward like melting wax. She threw the salt feverishly.

But inexplicably, the mother’s own arm—the one hurling the salt—suddenly shrank, contracting rapidly all the way up to her shoulder blade. Shocked, she let out a bloodcurdling scream. As she screamed, her body twisted violently, her back bulging grotesquely as her spine hunched and forced her to the ground. She thrashed and floundered in sheer agony the moment her mutating flesh touched the spilled salt scattered around the well.

From deep inside the well, only that strange kke-kke, kke-kke echoed. The salt merchant, who had been secretly watching the horrifying ordeal, fled in absolute terror—yet no matter how desperately he tried to escape the village, he found it impossible to leave.

It likely started then. The sweet scent of chestnut blossoms had long since faded, replaced by a fishy, musty stench as the villagers’ backs began to bulge and every single one of them started mutating into mud snails—and from that moment on, no one could leave. A few who hadn’t immediately transformed hid deep in the mountains, but whether they remained sane was a question no one could answer, since someone sane had to remain to do the confirming. Even the salt merchant, who had managed to retain some of his humanity, didn’t know their fate.

The entire village turned into mud snails, completely forgetting the farming season to busy themselves swarming and writhing in damp, shadowed places. The snails fed on dead things. On clear, sunny days they occasionally reverted to human form, remembering nothing of their time as snails, but the moment rain touched the earth, they dissolved back into sluggish, grotesque creatures crawling mindlessly across the mud.

The salt merchant soon realized the snails wouldn’t come near him because he carried salt, so he barricaded himself inside his storehouse, stamping his feet in endless, paralyzing anxiety. How many days? How many months? Had a full year passed? He couldn’t remember how many times the sky had cycled from pitch black to white. He didn’t know who had survived or who might hold a different piece of the story. He simply wanted to escape this endless nightmare.

“If I lose my mind, I might turn into a snail too.”

The old man said this, then suddenly burst into manic laughter and swung his sickle wildly at the air, cackling about divine punishment as he thrashed at nothing before sprinting frantically down the hill. Watching him go, Yeom-gon made no move to give chase, merely stroking his chin with agonizing slowness.

“What to do with this han (resentment)?”

At the muttered question, Kang-soe asked bluntly, “What do you mean?”

“That is…” How could he explain it? Unable to answer easily, Yeom-gon paused before throwing a question back at Kang-soe instead. “If you were the Snail Bride, little brother, who would you resent the most? The villagers who turned a blind eye to your suffering? Or the mother-in-law who maliciously blamed you for everything? Or perhaps…”

“Obviously the fool of a husband, isn’t it? She ruined her life because of that bastard, so what else is there to say? If it were me, I would’ve ripped off his cock and ground it into paste in a stone mortar.”

At those words, Yeom-gon’s eyes widened slightly, and a strange, thoughtful sound escaped him. I see. Right. I see. Muttering softly to himself, he gazed off at a distant mountain, lightly tapping the dirt with his foot.

“Anyway, shouldn’t we chase after that salt merchant?”

“His part in this is done. Resolving the han takes priority over chasing him.”

“Will we be able to leave this village then?”

And what if they couldn’t? Kang-soe fired off his anxious questions, and Yeom-gon answered without a hint of hesitation.

“Then we will not be able to leave.”

Even if they avoided becoming snails for now, as time passed, wouldn’t they slowly mutate just like the salt merchant? Was Yeom-gon seriously alright with that? At the horrifying thought, Kang-soe’s eyes turned fierce. Is that even a question?! he shrieked, shaking with indignant rage. He viciously kicked a pebble far into the distance, huffing heavily as he swallowed his anger.

“Then what do we need to do?”

“You’re willing to do it?” Yeom-gon asked, abruptly dropping into casual speech.

“What other choice do I have!”

This man is so infuriating. Kang-soe was fuming, yet Yeom-gon smiled pleasantly, as if something deeply amused him. Like the old saying—you can’t spit on a smiling face—Kang-soe couldn’t find the words to yell at him and resorted to kicking innocent rocks instead. When Kang-soe threatened that Yeom-gon had better explain exactly what was going on in plain terms once they escaped, Yeom-gon merely smiled his sly smile and tossed out proverbs about how seeing is believing and doing is better than seeing.

Kang-soe was dying of urgency, but Yeom-gon strolled along at an agonizing pace, hands clasped behind his back. When Kang-soe grabbed his arm in frustration, Yeom-gon just smiled, swaying effortlessly like a willow branch in the wind.

“And if you’re going to talk down to me, just do it. Stop bouncing back and forth between polite and casual speech. It’s confusing.”

“You mean I should either use honorifics consistently or speak casually?”

Kang-soe didn’t know why the conversation was pivoting this way. Feeling as though a nearly identical exchange had happened the day before, he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. He might have let it slide last time, but not this time. When he firmly demanded Yeom-gon just speak casually to him, Yeom-gon’s expression shifted into something unreadable—neither angry nor smiling, just a single eyebrow arched with subtle intrigue.

“Do you really want to be spoken down to that badly?” Yeom-gon asked if Kang-soe had that kind of specific inclination.

Unable to grasp the implication, Kang-soe just shook his head. What does he mean, ‘that kind of inclination’?

“W-well… rather than that, I just mean you should be comfortable.”

His tongue felt twisted—he didn’t even know if he was speaking properly anymore. He scratched his head nervously with his free hand, growing visibly irritated, but quickly felt self-conscious under Yeom-gon’s gaze. Sneaking a sideways glance, he found Yeom-gon still wearing that exact same expression, so he hastily added, “Wouldn’t that be much better for you?”

“You said I was mixing honorifics and casual speech chaotically?”

“…Yes.”

“That… is likely just a mistake on my part.”

How is that a mistake? Regardless of Kang-soe’s bewildered looks, Yeom-gon stubbornly insisted it was a simple error. He then proceeded to treat Kang-soe like a petty, narrow-minded fool incapable of overlooking a tiny mistake, leaving Kang-soe’s head spinning at how completely the tables had turned. Hearing Yeom-gon loudly lament how harsh the world was when a man couldn’t even make a simple mistake in life, Kang-soe instinctively shrieked that wasn’t what he meant at all.

“Right? People make mistakes in life. Don’t they?”

Having the question thrown back at him like that, Kang-soe realized he had walked right into a trap.

Kang-soe stayed as silent as a mute who’d eaten honey, and Yeom-gon smiled his pleasant, infuriating smile once more.

By then, they had reached the well.

It wasn’t far—a short walk down the slope from the charred house, and the stone structure came into view. The earth surrounding it was scorched black as well, not a single blade of grass daring to grow.