The villagers gathered around me.
[He’s here, the fortune of Jisan!]
The man with the megaphone shouted louder and louder, and before I knew it, the singing and the sound of gongs grew wild again.
A vortex of people.
“This way!”
I followed Agent Bronze, ducking through the crowd to hide from the villagers, but it wasn’t enough.
“Whoa, daebak.”
“Is that person really going to get the golden rooster?”
People who still didn’t understand the situation were murmuring, while the villagers all rushed toward me, leaving everything else behind, some bowing to the ground and praying toward the mountain, and Baek Saheon had disappeared into the crowd.
And then…“Please escape.”
I pushed Agent Bronze and Assistant Manager Eun behind me, trying to shield them from the villagers, but Agent Bronze stepped forward as if to face them.
“Calm down. At this point, the chances are high that I won’t be able to ‘safely’ leave anyway.”
“…!”
“And it was clearly written in the manual.”
I met his eyes.
“What to do in this kind of situation.”
It sometimes happens during rescue operations that one of the agents gets captured by the villagers.
But unless it’s the last day of the festival, don’t charge in recklessly or go up against the whole village.
You can always re-enter the village during the festival. What that means is, you can come back with proper preparation.
Don’t let emotions get the better of you and waste a precious chance by causing a commotion. Act wisely and decisively.
That way, the person who gets captured, those left behind, and those to be rescued can all escape the disaster alive.
“Go.”
“……”
“Go, and quickly figure out a way to rescue me, then come back. That’s the only way I’ll survive.”
I could see the struggle in Agent Bronze’s eyes, a tug-of-war between emotion and rational judgment.
But soon, rationality won.
“Tomorrow.”
“……”
“I’ll come back for you. No matter what.”
Agent Bronze quickly handed me a five-colored shoelace, which I stored in my inventory tattoo.
In the worst-case scenario, if I risked disappearance or suicide, it would be my last resort to escape.
Then Agent Bronze pushed his way through the crowd at frightening speed and ran for the entrance.
“He’s here! The fortune of Jisan!”
At the same time, the villagers swarmed over me.
* * * I blinked.
It seemed I’d lost consciousness for a moment.
And when I came to… I was lying on the wide, old-fashioned wooden floor of a house.
Sliding doors on both sides of the square room.
“……”
I saw a similar layout recently.
‘It’s that tile-roofed house.’
Assistant Manager Eun was nowhere to be seen. …It seemed she hadn’t been captured with me.
That was a relief.
‘……’
I looked down at my legs.
Both my legs were tied with a gold rope.
The gold rope ran out through a hole in one of the sliding doors.
When I gave it a little tug, I felt some elasticity. It seemed fixed in place.
‘So it begins.’
At that moment.
Drrrk.
The sliding door opened, and people came in.
No, only two.
One brought in a tray with festival food, the other carried a bottle of alcohol. The two bowed deeply, set down the neat food and drink.
Then faint music began to play.
It seemed that outside the building, a wild and frenzied festival was still going on, all night long.
“……”
The two brought out a small raffle box and drew lots. Eventually, the one who pulled out a stick with a rooster’s feather stayed behind, while the other lowered his head and left.
The one left was the person who had brought the alcohol.
“Saheon-ssi.”
“……”
The villager who had brought the drink, Baek Saheon, looked at me.
I could guess who had set things up so I would draw the special prize.
“Last night, did you make me draw the ‘special prize’ stick from your pocket on purpose?”
– …Check my pocket.
He’d definitely prompted me like that.
That was the only unusual action that might explain why I, who’d drawn a blank yesterday, got the special prize today.
“Was it to make me into someone who had already drawn the special prize, to make me ‘qualified’?”
“……”
“So that I would be guided to draw the special prize today?”
A deep satisfaction flickered in Baek Saheon’s eyes.
And in a hoarse voice, he spoke.
“If that’s what you think, so what?”
“So you’ve been planning this for a long time.”
“……”
“You must have thought hard about whether this would work, and what to do if the agents failed to rescue you.”
An ecstatic smile spread across Baek Saheon’s lips.
“That’s right.”
Liberation.
Madness.
“I thought about it every day. What would I do if I ever got chosen. I never wanted to end up like that. Every time I slept in this shitty house, every time someone died, even when my older sister died!”
He spat out the words like he was vomiting.
“I always thought, I never want to end up like that. Fuck, if I die, god or whatever…”
“God?”
Baek Saheon swallowed. There was a sense of unease and thrill in speaking a taboo.
“This festival is for worshipping a god, then.”
“Worship? No!!”
Baek Saheon practically screamed.
“This is a ritual to make a god!”
“……!”
“They pick an auspicious day, make it a festival, and whoever’s chosen is enshrined in the village shrine to become the god, the fortune of Jisan, who will free us from the ‘truth of the world’. They actually believe that crazy bullshit!”
“Is that really possible?”
“I don’t know! But…”
He panted.
“There’s really something here.”
“……”
“On the festival days, if no outsider wins the special prize, the villagers gather up the remaining sticks and draw them among ourselves. And if someone gets picked…”
Baek Saheon’s face stiffened.
“When the last day of the festival ends, they put a bag over your head like livestock and drag you to the village deity’s shrine.”
“……”
“They take you there and do something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. But, but there’s something…”
His face turned pale.
“When the ones who were dragged out come back in the morning, their faces are different. They can’t speak. They start preparing for next year’s festival together…”
“……”
“And when the festival they’ve prepared for is over, they hang themselves in the shrine.”
…!
“But then, every festival, they appear again. Even though they died, they come back. They walk out of the shrine.”
He howled.
“They play in the traditional band!!”[1]
“…!”
“They’re doing it now. Outside!”
Heeyaaaaaah!
“I’m not going to end up like that. I’m not going to die. No way.”
Baek Saheon’s eyes flashed with fear, anger, survival instinct, and a sense of relief that he’d made it… then settled down into rational calculation.
“Now that you’ve been chosen, the festival and the raffle are over. I don’t have to come back here anymore. Being trapped in this godforsaken Jisan village, being held here, it’s all over now.”
Note/s:
[1] Traditional band / Pungmul-nori – Korean folk music tradition that includes drumming, dancing and singing, with dozens of players all in constant motion.
Read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pungmul ↩