Kraaaaaaaaah!
The imugi’s mouth tore wide open and a horrible scream ripped out of it. That huge body thrashed one way, then the other, and surged upward. Dojin, still gripping the sword, went up with it, lifted clean off the ground.
Kkuuuu!
Hearing the slime shriek, Dojin poured everything left in him into the hand on the hilt. And then he let himself slide straight down.
Trrrrrrip. The imugi’s hide split in half. Blood burst out of the beast and drenched Dojin from head to foot.
“Huff... huff.”
When he reached the tip of the imugi’s tail, Dojin simply pitched forward onto his face.
A pool of blood spread out beneath him. Whether it was the imugi’s or his own, he couldn’t tell.
He lay there with his cheek buried in the puddle, blinking slowly. The shape that had been an imugi, now nothing but a gore-soaked mass, sat in front of his eyes like a slab of meat.
I killed it. I actually...
And then, right in front of his face, a translucent droplet of jelly.
Kkeu, kkeuuuu...
The slime.
Dojin went to reach out a hand. But as always, there was no hand on that side to reach with. So instead of petting it, he decided to smile for it. Thank God you’re alive. But the muscles in his face wouldn’t move, as though they belonged to someone else.
Kkeuuuu, kkeuuu...
The slime kept making sounds. They weren’t human words, but as always, Dojin understood exactly what they meant.
“’S... okay...”
His voice barely came out, like his vocal cords had been wrecked too. I wanted to pull the dog tags off my neck and give you one. He had no family to go back to, so the one thing he wanted was for the slime, and only the slime, to keep some trace of him in this world. But he couldn’t even manage that much.
“Th... anks...”
Kkuu, uu...
Thank you. For saving me. For staying beside me.
The slime looked like it was crying. There was no way it could shed tears, and yet its surface was melting damply, running down. At the sheer absurdity of the sight Dojin smiled again, though he couldn’t be sure he’d actually managed it.
I’m glad you’re alive.
Kkeuk, kkeuuu...
I was happy, having you here. His voice was so faint he had no idea whether the words got through at all. The slime came closer and rubbed itself against him. It was a pitiful little gesture.
Dojin took the slime in with his eyes one last time. It was such a clear, clean light.
When he closed them, a vast darkness came for him.
Soft sunlight filtered down between the leaves. Dew-heavy blades of grass stood damp and green, and the birds out hunting their breakfast chirped and flitted busily from place to place.
A branch swayed with a dry rustle. Beneath it, a white butterfly fluttered up and settled lightly on the gentle rise of a nose. It stayed perfectly still for a while, until the round little nostrils twitched, and then it lifted off into the air again.
A flinch.
Another gust of wind came through and tickled a cheek that was grubby and plump all at once. A sniffle. The man curled up there scrunched his brows. Then, a moment later, his eyelids rose slowly and long lashes fluttered. The black eyes revealed beneath them turned toward the sky, still fogged with sleep.
...Where is this?
A bright blue sky, clouds riding high in it, green trees and leaves, warm light, and an enormously wide stretch of earth.
Gasp!
The man shot upright.
It’s the outside world!
He scrambled hurriedly out of the little burrow he’d been lying in. Then he glanced down at the hand he’d planted on the ground without thinking, and jolted in shock.
A hand... And feet, too... and a face, too.
He brought his hands up and kneaded his own face all over like it was a lump of clay, and his mouth fell wide open.
That’s right, I turned into a person, same as Dojin!
Even looking at it a second time, he couldn’t believe it. That he was out here in the outside world, and human. Still reeling, he ran his eyes over his own body, then suddenly snapped his head up.
Is Dojin all better now? I did take him to that hospital place.
After Dojin collapsed, he had begged and begged to be able to save him, and all at once his body had changed into something like a human’s. He’d hauled Dojin out of the nest with enormous effort and wandered the area at random until he found people.
“Moong!”
“Aaagh! Wait, why are you naked? ...Huh. Report it, I have to report this right now.”
When he shoved the blood-soaked Dojin toward the human, who was frantically tapping at a flat square thing, the human had jumped, then immediately loaded them both into a monster that ran and taken them to that hospital place. And after he’d stuffed himself into the clothes thing the man gave him, and met the people who would look after Dojin...
He ran for it.
Because the human who grabbed hold of him and shouted things had an air about him that felt all wrong. And besides, there was that word he kept hearing from every direction: hunter. According to Dojin, hunters were his natural predators. As a slime, he had no choice but to make himself scarce.
After that he’d wandered lost for a while, until he barely managed to find this new burrow and crawl inside.
Now that I’m a human, maybe I can go back to that hospital place?
To go find Dojin, the slime braced his hands on the ground and tried slowly standing up. The two legs planted under him felt so strange that he took one step and then stopped right there, half-crouched and wobbling.
But where am I supposed to go?
He had definitely gone to the hospital that one time, but he didn’t know where it was, and he didn’t know how to get there. On top of that, the human world was far too big. He was staring out at that land stretching away with no end in sight, at a complete loss, when a human came walking up.
Pat, pat.
“...”
“...”
The slime and the human looked at each other. Before long, the small human spoke first.
“Are you done using it? ’Cause we want to use it now.”
“...”
“Eunchong! The oppa finally came out! Now we can play house in here!”
The small human pointed at the little tunnel behind the slime as she said it.
That was right. This was a playground, and the place the slime had fallen asleep in was the tube connected to the slide. Dropped into an unfamiliar world, he’d gone looking for a burrow that felt familiar and ended up washing into this spot, closed in on every side.
The slime, however, wasn’t listening to a single word the little girls said. He stood stock-still, his whole attention fixed on one particular object.
Kkorororok.
At the same moment, a crack of thunder rolled out of his belly. The little girl in front of him flinched, startled, and stared at the slime. Following where his eyes had gone, she found the bread in her own small hand. She hesitated, then glanced up at him and asked,
“Oppa, do you want to eat this?”
Nod!
“You could just buy one over there, though.”
The girl’s hand pointed off somewhere. He followed it and saw a big place where people were walking out with things in their hands. Is that where humans keep their food? He was about to set off at once when the girl caught hold of him.
“But oppa, do you have money?”
Money?
The slime tilted his head. The girl’s eyes dropped to his bare feet, caked in dirt. She let out a small sigh, took out the round food she’d been holding, and tore off a little piece from the end for him.
“You need money to buy things. Here, eat this for now. You look really hungry.”
“...!”
The slime snatched the bread up and crammed the whole thing into his mouth at once. His lips, smeared with fresh cream, worked away at it, and then his eyes went perfectly round.
Sweet and soft and fluffy. I’ve never tasted anything like this before!
It was, quite simply, a fantastic flavour. He gulped it down in no time and spun around on the spot. He’d have to go get something exactly like that from the food place. The slime pressed his legs together and went bounding off, kong, kong.
“H-hey! Oppa, I said you don’t have any mon...”
The girl was still saying something behind him, but she stopped mid-sentence at the sight of the slime hopping away. Her friend caught up a beat too late, took one look at him, and asked in shock,
“Whoa, why’s that oppa running like that?”
“...I don’t know either.”
“He’s super weird. And he’s not even wearing shoes.”
The slime, hopping toward the food place kong, kong like a jiangshi, soon came to a stop. Now that he thought about it, the little humans didn’t travel this way. Besides, this took far too much effort and he couldn’t run fast at all...
He thought back to how Dojin had moved when he walked. It hadn’t been anything like this. The legs went like so, and the arms went like this...
After a few rough attempts, his gait came out something close to Dojin’s. Just like Dojin said, I really must be a genius. Praising himself the way he always did, he walked on toward the food place. Entirely unaware that his arm and his leg on the same side were swinging forward together.
The slime strode boldly into the food place.
“Welcome.”
Inside was another world entirely. There were piles of brightly coloured things, and a delicious smell drifting in from somewhere. He was taking a slow turn around the place when he spotted something familiar.
These are... these are the gummies Dojin gave me!
He grabbed up a whole armload of them immediately. With every last packet gathered against his chest, he headed for the source of the delicious smell. He picked up as many of the odd-shaped black things as he could, admired his completely full hands with great satisfaction, and made for the door. And then a voice called out behind him.
“H-hey, customer!”
Bbojak, bbojak.
“Hey, you!”
Grab.
Something seized his shoulder, and when he turned, a human was standing there with a nasty look on his face.
“You didn’t pay for any of that!”
Pay? What’s pay?
When he just stood there blinking blankly, the man raised his voice and picked up a flat square device.
“What the hell is this guy? No shoes, either? Nothing but a beggar. Hey, you stay right there.”
He started saying something into the flat square device.
“Yes. Is this the police station? I’m calling from the 24-hour convenience store in front of Gisang Park, and there’s a thief who... H-hey! Hey! Stop right there!”
강시 (gangshi): a reanimated corpse from Korean and Chinese folklore that moves in stiff little hops with its arms held out.
