YS 64

Side Story: Wild Ginseng Boy and Mr. Kim (Part 2)

I handed the bowl containing the healing water to the man and spoke.

“Feed this to your elderly mother! Then her illness will vanish as if washed away! Hehe.”

The man looked at me with eyes that seemed unable to believe my words, then stared blankly at the bowl I held out. To him, the situation unfolding before his eyes must have seemed like a mere dream.

“What… what do you mean by….”

“I am a Wild Ginseng Boy, a ginseng root of several hundred years with the power to heal!”

“Is, is, is that truly true?”

“It is true!”

At first, the man seemed wary and distrustful. However, perhaps he thought it was simply miraculous that a young child dressed in a single layer of clothing had appeared in the mountains in the dead of winter; soon, he looked at me with an expression of deep emotion. Then, with trembling hands, he took the bowl. I puffed out my chest and said,

“This is a special healing water I made, so it will certainly be effective!”

At that, the man began to shed tears and bowed his waist deeply to me.

“Thank you! Thank you, Boy….”

“Ahem! I hope your mother recovers safely!”

“I shall never forget this grace for the rest of my life! Thank you so much, Boy!”

Leaving behind a tearful farewell, the man hurried down the mountain.

It was a few days later when the man returned to the mountain.

“Boy! Boy, are you there!”

Calling out to me with a bright expression, he set down the A-frame carrier on his shoulder and abruptly handed me a large bundle. Inside, it was packed full of food and clothing.

As I looked into the bundle, bewildered, he shared the joyful news. He told me that after drinking the healing water, his mother’s illness had vanished like a lie, and she had risen from her sickbed as if she had never been ill.

“That is wonderful! I am so glad! Hehe!”

“It is all thanks to the grace you bestowed upon us.”

The man had come to visit me with gifts to repay even a small fraction of that grateful kindness. My eyes widened at the strange foods and objects of the human world, which I was seeing for the first time, inside the bundle. And from that day on, the man began to climb the mountain every day to see me.

In that way, we became friends like no other in the world.

I truly enjoyed playing with the man. He brought me dried persimmons, and snacks like yakgwa and sorghum cakes. They were all things I had never tasted before. Since a Wild Ginseng Boy can naturally survive on dew alone, there is normally no need to eat food. To my mouth, which had lived on nothing but dew for a lifetime, how wondrous, sweet, and delicious those first human foods must have tasted!

While letting me taste delicious foods, the man told me plenty of interesting stories about the human world—the life he had lived until now and the lives of the villagers. Later, he even took me out to show me around the village and brought me to scenic spots in the mountains and fields. We went to the marketplace together to buy snacks. I played with the village children, losing track of time.

Then, several years had passed since I first met the man.

The man finally married a young woman from the village and entered her family as a son-in-law. He quit his life as a woodcutter and took over his father-in-law’s family business to open a pharmacy in the village, which was a truly wonderful turn of events. Since he stopped being a woodcutter, the man visited the mountains to dig for medicinal herbs instead of wood, so our relationship never grew neglected or distant. No, if anything, it only grew stronger as time passed.

Around that time, the Mountain God caught me associating with the man and gave me a severe scolding… but back then, I loved playing with the man so much that the Mountain God’s warning—that I must not get entangled with humans—did not enter my ears.

The man treated me with respect, yet cherished me as if I were his own child.

Whenever the sun set and it was time to part with the man, I felt so regretful and sad! Eventually, I reached the point where I would sob out loud because I didn’t want to say [Read on Read BL Novels]style="position:relative;display:inline;">[stolen content]style="position:absolute;left:-9999px;font-size:0;">[unauthorized copy]goodbye. Every time, the man would look flustered but would soothe me.

Then, one day it happened.

As I was sobbing as usual, reluctant to part, the man spoke to me cautiously.

“Boy, what if I serve you and live with you for the remainder of my life?”

“What do you mean by that?”

The proposal the man made was nothing short of astonishing. He asked if I would leave the mountain and live harmoniously in his home. He said that if we lived in one house, we would no longer have to part as we do now.

“It seems I have no destiny to have children in this life anyway… I will think of you as a child sent to me by heaven and spend my life serving you to repay your grace. My wife would also wish for this.”

“Is that true? Is it really alright to do that?!”

I jumped up and down with joy and excitement.

So, I ran straight to the Mountain God and requested permission to leave the mountain. Naturally, the Mountain God adamantly opposed it, saying the human world was dangerous, but in the end, he could not break my earnest stubbornness.

“You intend to leave your siblings and friends, and all the plants and trees stolen contentour site">visit stolen contentour siteof these mountains and streams, to stay beside a mere human?”

I nodded.

It would only be for a short while anyway. I knew well enough that human time and my time were different. I figured I could spend a fun time with him until his life reached its end, and then simply return here later, right? With a “hehe” laugh, I spoke bravely, saying I would return once the life of the human I chose had ended.

“How foolish… fearing a short parting, you choose a long one.”

“What do you mean by that?!”

“That is what it means to pour one’s heart into a human.”

The Mountain God spoke calmly, stroking my head with deep eyes.

“Once tamed, it will be difficult to ascend to heaven. However… my child. Should you ever lose your way while living in the human world, or should the place your heart longs for disappear, return here at any time.”

Thus, I left the mountain valley I grew fond of, my friends, my siblings, and the Mountain God to live with the man.

After that, every single day was as happy as a dream.

Of course, that happiness did not last long.

Time flowed and flowed, and it was a year when a severe drought struck.

Around that time, the man’s worries grew deeper by the day. He told me that while his family had grown, there was no food, and due to the drought, the supply of medicinal herbs had been cut off, leaving his livelihood bleak. My heart ached as I watched the man lament sorrowfully that it was a crisis, as they had no food for even tomorrow. I apologized, saying I was sorry that there was nothing else I could do to help. Then, after hesitating for a moment, the man spoke as if pleading.

“Boy, could you perhaps give me a little bit of the healing water, as you did before?”

“Why are you suddenly asking for healing water? Is someone sick again?”

“It is not that… but….”

The man’s thought was this: since obtaining medicinal herbs was currently like plucking a star from the sky, he intended to add just a tiny bit of my healing water to the herbal medicines he brewed and sell them. I readily granted his request.

Because it was a request from a dear friend!

Thus, the man began to mix the healing water into his herbal medicines and sell them, and the pharmacy soon became a sensation.

This was because the patients who drank the medicine the man brewed saw their conditions improve in the blink of an eye and regained their health. Well, since my healing water was in it, wasn’t that only natural? Ahem! In that way, the man was able to safely overcome the crisis of the famine using the healing water I provided. It was a truly fortunate thing.

But why was it?

It was clearly a good thing, yet from that moment, things began to go wrong.

Even after the drought ended and the famine passed, the man continued to ask me for healing water. At first, without much thought, I granted that request a few times. However, the man’s demands showed no sign of stopping. Only then did I feel something was strange, and I refused the man’s request, telling him that the healing water must not be abused recklessly. But at that moment… the man’s face distorted terrifyingly.

“I fed you, I raised you, I treated you so well, and yet you dare defy me?”

The face of the gentle man—who was simple, unassuming, and always knew how to be grateful for small things—had vanished without a trace, and in its place stood a monster with a face blinded by greed. The man roughly seized me while I was trembling and locked me away in a dark shed where not a single speck of light entered.

That was when it began.

The beginning of my days in hell.