Chapter 1.2

Chapter 1.2

No matter how miserably her wretched life turned out, this scenery wouldn’t offer any help.

Would it?

If there had truly been any intention to help, she wouldn’t have received the disastrous birthday present of a 1 billion won gambling debt left by her dead father after seventeen years.

Ara stopped in front of a pair of guardian posts at the village entrance. The fierce-looking totem poles, *Cheonha-daejanggun and Jiha-yeojanggun, stared indifferently into the distant mountains.

*Cheonha-daejanggun and Jiha-yeojanggun are totem village guardians.

“Liars,” she muttered, glaring fiercely and cursing at them. But naturally, the posts remained silent.

“Grandmother said that if we prayed to you, you would grant us blessings. You would ward off illness and bad luck. So, I prayed so many times to you on my visits.”

Once again, only the sound of the nearby tree branches dancing in the wind responded to her.

At least, she was gratefully free from the loan sharks… “Surely this isn’t all because you helped a little, right?”

Could it be that because she prayed earnestly for about ten years, she was at least able to shake off the loan sharks who were watching her and escape to this place?

If that were the case, how much more terrible could her real life have been?

Ara shuddered involuntarily.

What was the point of lamenting to guardian posts that couldn’t even respond? More urgently, she needed to find a place to stay for the night rather than grabbing the innocent posts by the collar.

Ara bit her lip as she looked down the narrow path leading into the village.

The house she used to live in with her grandmother… had been sold after her grandmother passed away, so that was out of the question.

Should she seek help from other neighbors in the village? She had no place to stay after all.

It had been seven years since she left, but the neighbors in the village probably hadn’t changed much. They were all kind-hearted and treated Ara like a relative, so they might let her stay for a few days.

But what if the loan sharks chasing her found out?

Ara shook her head vehemently.

Those guys didn’t listen even when she told them she had cut ties with her father seventeen years ago. They were the same scoundrels who caused trouble at the restaurant where she worked. She couldn’t bear to see innocent people get hurt because of her.

“Then what should I do…?”

Ara turned away from the village and looked towards the opposite hillside.

If those men had done their research properly, they would have known that her grandmother’s grave was nearby. In that case, it might have been safer to stay as far away from the village as possible.

At that moment, a small side path caught her eye.

It was dotted with the same multicolored cloths that hung from the Tangshan trees on the main road.

However, these cloths were much more faded, and some were torn as if bitten by something. The narrow forest path seemed oddly darker than the surrounding area.

“…The goblin house?”

Ara muttered to herself unconsciously.

“Ara, Grandma told you never to go there. Understand?” She spoke to herself, convincing her from doing such reckless thing her grandma had warned her against.

But it was such a long time ago…

“Why?” Ara used to ask her grandmother.

“If you go a little further up, there’s an old abandoned house. That’s the goblin’s house. They say that if you anger a goblin, you’ll definitely bring disaster upon yourself. There are countless stories of people who went there recklessly and died suddenly because they angered that creature!” Whenever Mal-soon passed by this area with young Ara, she would warn her repeatedly.

The abandoned house halfway up the mountain was where a goblin lived, so never go there carelessly.

Not just Mal-soon, but other adults in the village would give the same warning about the goblin house if asked. They would even grab her shoulders and pull her away, insisting she shouldn’t even look at it.

“That means… it’s a place where no one ever goes.”

Could there be a better hiding spot for a life-or-death game of hide-and-seek? This place was perfect! Ara took a deep breath and adjusted her tote bag.

Her grandmother’s warning about disaster striking if she got too close to the goblin house nagged at her a bit, but in her current situation, the loan sharks chasing her with physical threats were a hundred times scarier than some goblin she wasn’t even sure existed.

“Please… just let me get through tonight safely.”

In front of the guardian posts she had just accused of being liars, Ara shamelessly clasped her hands and prayed.

Under the sky slowly being painted by the sunset, a pair of worn-out white sneakers began to stride purposefully toward the mountain path.

***

About four hours later.

“Gasp… Huff… I thought I was going to die…”

As soon as Ara entered the yard of the nearly collapsed hanok, she dropped her tote bag and collapsed onto the dirt ground. Her labored breathing showed just how hellish the four-hour hike had been.

Soyasan, the rear mountain of Wolcheon Village, wasn’t as steep as to be difficult to climb. Although it wasn’t a well-maintained hiking trail, Ara managed to climb the mountain quite easily without exerting much effort.

The air was strangely chilly for midsummer, but Ara considered it as the best luck to cool down the hot hiking trail.

However, it was strange that the abandoned house in the distance didn’t seem to get any closer, no matter how much she walked.

After an hour of wandering, she thought she might be lost. After two hours, she wanted to retrace her steps down the mountain. By the third hour, fear began to creep in. But by the fourth hour, a ridiculous sense of challenge took over.

Even if I die, I’m going to get there and die. No matter what!

Fortunately or unfortunately, Ara finally made it to the abandoned house, nearly fainting from exhaustion.

“Did I really get cursed by a goblin?”

Ara still gasped for breath, her arms loosely stretched out behind her back.

When she climbed up, it was clearly in the evening, but now it was already midnight. With her eyes closed and her head tilted back, enjoying the chilly mountain night breeze,

“You’re smarter than you look.”

A strange voice suddenly came from above her head.