Deep within Seoraksan.
The hour when mist draped the ridgelines like a dragon cloud and owl calls began to sound one by one.
“……Great Elder! Greeaat Eeldeeer!”
“Ugh…… you little punk, loud as hell.”
“Sir. That’s too much.”
“Too much, my ass. Did you boil and eat a megaphone you found on the street or what.”
“……Your repertoire of curse idioms expands daily. Yet the man who still can’t score even 30 on basic dictation.”
“What was that, you brat?”
“I don’t care! Just get up! A carrier pigeon came!”
A novice monk up on tiptoe, hollering at the top of his lungs.
A boulder like a wall.
Up on it, toward the figure lying with a magazine draped over her face.
His hands pressed together, his shout looped through the valley like an echo.
And yet mountains are mountains, waters are waters. The slumped shadow didn’t budge, corpse-still.
A mutter, flattened beneath the magazine, continued.
“Carrier pigeon, my ass. Don’t care. Fing…