He shrugged. What was another brain scan in the grand scheme of things?
The tests told them nothing. And the doctor left him with vague talk of possibly trying surgery if medication kept failing.
Jihoon made his way back to his halmeoni’s room and plopped down in the chair beside the bed. Detective Hae had long since left, but new flowers stood on the bedside table. A cheerful sight that Jihoon barely noticed.
“She left without a word,” Jihoon said to his halmeoni. “We’ll never see her again, so we shouldn’t hold our breath. Right?”
He stared at his halmeoni, like he was waiting for an answer. “Right,” he agreed with himself.
“It’s not like we haven’t gone through this before. People have left before. We don’t need anyone else.” Jihoon laid his head on his halmeoni’s shoulder, careful not to put his full weight on her. “We never needed anyone but each other.”
Nurse Jang found him asleep twenty minutes later.
WE’VE LEARNED HOW gumiho rose. How they were cursed. How they grew to hate the humans who both shunned and fed them. But there is the story of one gumiho in particular that we must learn.
Long after the first gumiho disappeared from the face of this earth, during a time when the stories had started to become myths . . .
There lived a man with three sons and no daughters. He prayed every day for a daughter to be born. One day his wife came home and presented him with a baby girl.
The family lived happily for years. The wife claimed he held his daughter so tight, she feared the little girl would be crushed by her father’s love.
When the girl turned thirteen, the livestock started to die. Soon, the man’s fortune began to dwindle from the loss. So he set his eldest son on watch to find out why the cows and horses were dying.
The next morning, the eldest son said, “I saw Little Sister going to the barn. When I checked, the cow’s liver had been eaten.”
Enraged, the man threw out his eldest son.
The next night, he set his second son to stand guard.
In the morning, he reported seeing his sister slaughter a horse.
“You want to kill your sinless little sister! I no longer wish to lay eyes on you!”
Finally, the man set his youngest son to watch the barn.
The third boy watched his little sister approach the barn, kill a cow, and devour its liver.
However, fearing banishment like his older brothers, he lied.
“The cow died naturally,” he claimed. “Then a fox came and ate its liver.”
The two older sons wandered the land until they came upon a Taoist master who taught them the ways of his magic. However, they could not forget their family. So they decided to return home.
The Taoist master bestowed upon them three bottles: one white, one blue, and one red.
The brothers thanked him for his gifts and left.
When they arrived home, the house was empty save for their younger sister.
She greeted them happily.
They asked her what had happened, and she told them that their parents and youngest brother had died.
“We are thirsty,” the eldest brother said. “Would you please go to the spring and get us water?”
When she left to fetch it, the brothers fled. For they knew she had killed and eaten their parents and youngest brother.
She raced after them, calling for them to return.
They threw the white bottle and it created a thicket of thorns. She broke free and continued to chase them.
They threw the red bottle and it engulfed her in fire, but she continued to race after them.
They threw the blue bottle and it created a river that carried her away in a strong current. They never saw her again.
But this was an important time in the life of this gumiho. For she survived. She grew to hate humans and she birthed a daughter, one we all know as Gu Miyoung.
39
JIHOON’S DAYS NOW started before the sun rose. His new reality left no room for the laziness that had previously ruled his days. In an attempt to pay the rent in Halmeoni’s absence, he’d taken on part-time jobs while school was out. His first was delivering newspapers and milk cartons to people’s front doors before dawn. He rode a secondhand bicycle, but sometimes the streets were so steep, it was easier to push the thing. The crooked roads he used to love became his enemy as he trudged up and down, up and down.
He worked meticulously to get each order of milk on the