Legend [YEONBIN] ✓

four ; soobin

I woke slowly from the dream. It took me a moment to realize I wasn’t in the forest but in my new bedroom. In a wrought-iron bed piled high with pillows. Large windows beside my bed let in the moonlight. I glanced at the clock and the bright numbers glared back at me: 3:33 A.M.

The memory of the dream clung to me like a film of grease covering my skin. Forest and mist and that boy. I rarely dreamed, and when I did it was never quite so vivid. It felt as if he’d walked into my mind. It’s worrisome. I’d said it in the dream and I thought it now.

I’d heard tales of gumiho who could walk the dreams of their victims. Driving them slowly mad before ripping out their livers. But I’d never done it myself, never thought it was a skill gumiho still possessed. Perhaps they didn’t. After all, I hadn’t meant to share a dream with that boy. Maybe I was just thinking about that boy and my subconscious had gotten out of hand. It made sense that I’d be stuck on thoughts of him; after all, he’d been there when I’d lost my bead.

I turned onto my side and pulled open my nightstand drawer until the bead rolled gently into view. It shone so bright, I wondered if it emitted its own light or merely reflected the moon’s.

I stared at the stone—a yeowu guseul—a fox bead. Myth said every gumiho had one, but I’d never given them much thought. Sunghoon sometimes went on about them, comparing them to the human soul.

Maybe I should have listened more to the shaman’s harebrained theories. They were varied and long-winded, so I had ignored most of them. I remembered the shaman warning that if a human ever gained control of the yeowu guseul of a gumiho, a human could command a gumiho to do his every bidding. And there was the story of a gumiho who lost her bead but still fed, slowly becoming more and more of a demon.

Closing my eyes, I rolled the stone across my palm. It sparked along my skin like static electricity. Or residual energy. It didn’t feel like the gi I’d absorbed from that ajeossi. That had been bitter and stale. This tasted fresh and bright. The boy? But I hadn’t fed from him. Why would his energy be in the bead?

But I could guess the answer. He’d touched it, held it directly. And it had absorbed his energy. I’d felt a boost of energy that had woken me, disoriented on the forest floor. Had the bead transferred a bit of his gi to ms even when it wasn’t inside of me?

If he had known what power he held but he obviously hadn’t. And I had it now; it was safe. Or as safe as it could be like this.
I didn’t know why I’d been driven to save that boy. But his actions afterward confused me more. How he’d stayed. How he’d charged the dokkaebi after knowing full well the danger.

I squeezed the bead in my hand. The boy was not what I should worry about right now.

I needed to figure out a way to reabsorb the stone. I might not know much about the myths that surrounded a yeowu guseul, but I knew its proper place was in a gumiho. Already I felt an emptiness in me, like a puzzle piece ripped from my middle, leaving a gaping hole.

Climbing out of bed, I padded my way down the hall toward my mother’s room.

The shower ran in the master bathroom. Steam sat heavy in the air, so thick it almost choked mw. It lit a panic that I calmed with deep breaths. Ever since I could remember, I’d been afraid of water. A phobia so deep I refused to even take a bath. My mother despised any sign of weakness in her son, so I did my best to keep it buried.

The water was turned off and Ara—my mom, stepped out of the shower. Through the curtain of steam I saw the crisscross of white scars on my mother’s bare back.