The Dokkaebi Waiting for the Moon

Chapter 18

I was going to stick it nicely on the celadon…

If I had known it would stretch so strangely like this, I wouldn’t have attached it to my hand in the first place.

Seeing Eun-hwi’s clearly disappointed appearance, Yeo Moon-beom smiled lightly and handed him an unopened bandage, saying,

“Take it. I brought it out intending to give it to you from the start.”

“Really?”

“Did you forget our promise? From now on, believe everything I say. It wasn’t just idle talk.”

“I didn’t forget!”

Eun-hwi shouted his answer loudly and quickly picked up the two new bandages placed on the large palm. He was overjoyed that he didn’t have to stick them on the celadon for storage.

“You heal quickly.”

“Huh?”

“It was quite deeply cut. It’s strange.”

Yeo Moon-beom reached out and slowly stroked the back of Eun-hwi’s hand, which was like a field of fresh snow. As he watched the fingers sliding along the texture of the skin, he felt a strange tickling sensation on the inside of his wrist.

Not because of the feeling of the caressed skin, but because of the strong presence of the one touching him.

“It’s such an enviable ability.”

The fingers that had been moving down towards the wrist changed direction and climbed back up over the back of the hand.

The movement, which crept up stickily as if licking the skin, made his wrist itch again. Eun-hwi tightly gripped the bandage in his hand. The tips of his fingers, curled into a round shape, turned pink.

“Come here!”

Just as he was swallowing dry saliva at the persistent itching, a thick shout calling for the house owner suddenly came from outside the gate.

“I-i-it’s Mr. Kim!”

Gabi’s words that he shouldn’t get close to humans were engraved in his mind like warning text, and he shrank at just the unfamiliar voice.

You stupid, foolish dokkaebi!

He had been so focused on Yeo Moon-beom touching his hand that he failed to notice the presence of another human.

While Eun-hwi was flustered and at a loss, blaming himself, a head wearing a hat pulled low suddenly popped up over the stone wall.

“Hello, Mr. Dokkaebi?”

A middle-aged man with a bushy beard covering his upper lip and chin, wearing round-shaped glasses, waved his hand gently in greeting. He seemed very pleased, as if they were acquaintances.

However, he was a stranger with a face Eun-hwi had never seen before.

“Aah! I’ve been discovered!”

He had inadvertently looked outside the wall and made eye contact. Startled, Eun-hwi quickly hid behind Yeo Moon-beom’s back.

“Y-Yeo Moon-beom. I think he came for the land deed.”

There was only one reason an outsider would visit the dokkaebi’s territory where villagers never set foot.

The land deed.

His heart sank as he remembered the group of young men led by the youth association president who had tormented him with curses too vulgar to repeat. He thought they had given up on threatening him and wouldn’t come here anymore, but apparently not.

Eun-hwi grabbed Yeo Moon-beom’s clothes and trembled like a rabbit facing a hunter. He was afraid that Yeo Moon-beom, who had nothing to do with the land deed, might get involved and cause a commotion.

“Go into the room. Quickly.”

Yeo Moon-beom said in a voice that seemed emotionless at first listen, but faintly leaked suppressed bewilderment.

He stretched his arms as much as possible to shield Eun-hwi’s body and didn’t ask any questions until they reached the main room. If anything, it was Eun-hwi who wanted to ask about the land deed.

“Don’t come out without my permission. I’ll send him away and come back.”

Yeo Moon-beom closed the door connecting to the main hall to cut off contact with the outside, and then lowered all the sliding doors, completely sealing off the mansion.

Only after creating an environment where not even a hair of the dokkaebi could be seen did he finally catch his breath. Looking outside, he rubbed his deeply furrowed brow.

Does he have a death wish?

Although he had revealed the location of this place out of necessity, he had no intention of having anyone visit directly.

He didn’t want anyone other than himself to see Eun-hwi. He should be the only one reflected in those mysterious golden eyes that seemed not of this world.

He hadn’t yet completely burrowed into his heart, and he couldn’t allow his attention to be diverted to other humans.

His forehead, with thick veins popping out, was revealed through his hair, which he had irritably pushed back. It was a clear display of his discomfort caused by the unexpected visit.

Holding his throbbing head, Yeo Moon-beom walked out to the yard and flung open the locked gate. The man who had been taking pictures of the scenery inside the wall with an old digital camera that showed the passage of time came running over.

“Well, well, who do we have here! Isn’t it Yeo Moon-beom, the gambling den manager!”

Yeo Moon-beom’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the man greeting him in a historical drama tone while wearing a hiking vest with many pockets and even carrying a trekking backpack.

Usually, he would have responded in the same tone, but now he wasn’t in the mood for jokes. Yeo Moon-beom replied to him with one corner of his lips slightly raised.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Bang Ki-bong?”

“Oh ho. I told you to call me Hong Sal-gwi, the Monster Doctor, not that name, Manager Yeo!”

“Yes, yes. Professor Bang Ki-bong of the Marine Science Department at Korea University, who wants to be called Hong Sal-gwi, the Monster Doctor.”

Professor Bang Ki-bong.

An authority in marine biology and a customer with a unique background who had become so obsessed with mysterious beings that he had poured money into monster research and even drifted into gambling dens.

He was a strange man who, despite his age, had a complex about his name and wanted to be called by the alias Hong Sal-gwi.

He was truly not a monster doctor, but an eccentric doctor.

Yeo Moon-beom looked at Bang Ki-bong, who was pretending to be upset in an ill-fitting manner, and spoke again.

“I’m sure I asked you to send it. Not to deliver it in person.”

Guessing that he was angry from his calm but frostily cold voice, Bang Ki-bong deliberately put on a good-natured smile and made excuses.

“My lifelong wish is to make friends with monsters. How could I resist when I heard there was a dokkaebi territory here? If I had known you were cozying up to such a cute dokkaebi, I would have come without charging.”

“Ha…”

Yeo Moon-beom couldn’t help but laugh bitterly as he frowned.

“We’ve known each other for three years, why don’t you understand me? I’m disappointed, Mr. Bang Ki-bong.”

To him, who dealt with tens of billions in cash daily, money was like a pebble easily kicked on the street.

It could be used as a weapon to attack someone, but it was useless against an opponent it didn’t affect – a pebble that didn’t matter whether it was there or not.

That’s why Yeo Moon-beom was annoyed at Bang Ki-bong for mentioning something worthless to him and putting on airs that didn’t exist.

“You know what? I really dislike people who look down on me. If they look down on me because they don’t know better, I can forgive them once with great generosity. But if they knowingly pretend not to know and look down on me, I want to cut their heads off.”

His black eyes, filled with pure killing intent, scanned the center of Bang Ki-bong’s neck. Startled by the chilling sensation, Bang Ki-bong instinctively brought his hands together to protect his neck.

“If you cross the line like this one more time…”

Yeo Moon-beom said, keeping his gaze fixed on the covered neck.

“Then I’ll help you fulfill your wish in the afterlife.”

His sharply raised eyes suddenly curved into a gentle shape. Perhaps because the smile felt at odds with his threatening words, Bang Ki-bong shrank his nape and wore a terrified expression.

Usually, Yeo Moon-beom liked to tease others with light wordplay and meaningless lies, so Bang Ki-bong could have hit him on the side and said the joke was going too far. But this time, Bang Ki-bong couldn’t brush it off as a joke and spoke in a trembling voice.

“L-look here, Manager Yeo. Aren’t we from the same hometown and alma mater? Instead of saying scary things about cutting necks, can’t we get along as fellow Korea University alumni?”

“I wonder. In a gambling den, even parent and child become strangers the moment they sit at the table, so what significance do school ties or regional connections have?”

Yeo Moon-beom poked Bang Ki-bong’s hand covering his neck with his index finger and continued.

“Don’t forget that I’m the one paying off your gambling debts under the guise of commission fees.”

It was a warning not to act recklessly anymore, confusing public and private matters, since this side held his lifeline.

To quietly provide only goods and information as he had always done.

The reason he started dealing with Bang Ki-bong, who had no psychic abilities at all, instead of all sorts of shamans, Taoist priests, Buddhist monks, and exorcists, was because he highly valued his attitude as a scholar who prioritized the pursuit of truth over personal ambition.

But he never expected that choice to become a hindrance now. He seemed to have underestimated Bang Ki-bong’s obsession, who continued his research regardless of losing all his fortune to his monster obsession.

“The camera.”

“M-Manager Yeo. Please, just this…”

“I said, give me the camera.”

Although he wasn’t the type to carelessly blab about such things elsewhere, it was better to make sure. When Yeo Moon-beom spoke firmly once more, Bang Ki-bong let out a deep sigh and unzipped the pocket on his vest to take out the camera.

“I’m surprised this old thing still works. Even the dokkaebi would be amazed, don’t you think?”

He didn’t expect that his penchant for collecting antiques would extend to research tools. Yeo Moon-beom clicked his tongue at the thick body of the camera that looked at least twenty years old and pressed the playback button.

“…What’s this now?”