GOBLIN [TAEGYU]

one ; soobin

I loved my mother.

I mourned my mother.

I was haunted by my mother.

I didn’t use to dream much, and when I did, they were often of my victims. But now, it seemed, I dreamed of my mother as well.

At night, mom came to me. Her skin so pale it seemed translucent. Perhaps that’s what happened to gumiho when they died. They became spectral things that could haunt you.

“Eomma,” I said. The innocent title a child gave their mother. The title I hadn’t called mom since I was a toddler. Except for once. Except when mom lay dying in my arms. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” In death Mom’s voice sounded hollow, distant. A shiver raced down my back.

“I should have tried harder to save you.”

“How could you when you can’t even save yourself?” Mom asked, sorrow tingeing her words. They hung thick in the air. More accusation than question.

“What do you mean?” I asked, fear joining the chill that spread over me.

“You can’t save yourself because you don’t even know what trouble you’re in. My sweet boy. My ignorant saekkiya.”

The words stung, but I couldn’t dwell on that.

“What kind of trouble? Is it because I don’t have my yeowu guseul?” I had always worried losing my fox bead would have dire consequences. I just didn’t know it would involve my mother.

Mom’s eyes shifted at the mention of my bead. A light pulsed, then faded into nothing. “I didn’t prepare you enough.”

“No, you did everything you could for me.”

“And now you must do for yourself.”

“How?” The chill seeped into me, so deep it took root in my bones.

“I wish we had more time.” Mom sighed, and it seemed as if she started to sift away, fading into the dark around her.

“Eomma!” I cried out as the cold spread from my spine to take over my limbs. I could barely move them, as if my very blood were freezing.

“How will you go on without me?” Mom asked. “How will you survive?”

“Maybe I won’t,” I said moments before my body petrified. Before I became stone, so cold I couldn’t even release the tears that pooled.

“Maybe you won’t,” Mom repeated before the world faded to an icy void. Darker than dark, like a vacuum engulfing everything it touched.

And when I awoke, my eyes burned. Not from tears. My cheeks were dry as bone.

When I’d first started having dreams about my mother after her death, I thought they were just that, dreams. A kind of coping mechanism. A way for me to mourn. But now I was worried they were more. Now I was worried something was wrong. Ever since I lost my fox bead, I’d felt like I was living in a weird kind of limbo. Not quite human, but not really a gumiho either. And it seemed that these visits from Mom were becoming more frequent. And her riddles becoming more threatening. They must be connected.