It was a thoroughly hopeless situation. To get back, they needed to find the Cheonrok, but there wasn’t the slightest clue as to where the celestial deer might be. The only lead they had was that long ago, it had gone off in search of Hwanggwaju. Yet even the denizens of the Underworld shook their heads, saying they had no idea what that was. So what on earth were they supposed to do now?
“It is strange. I mean, I’ve never been much of a drinker, but… I’ve never once heard of any liquor called Hwanggwaju.”
Hallakung muttered thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. Beside him, the child spirits nodded in agreement.
“We know other ones though. Bamboo Leaf Liquor!”
“Sayu Liquor!”
“Handujae Liquor!”
…Huh? The names were unfamiliar, yet oddly recognizable at the same time.
Jae-ha frowned, sifting through his memories to catch the faint sense of déjà vu. Had he once tried those drinks at a bar or club? Maybe someone had given them to him as a gift? Or had a friend brought them back from overseas? If not, then…
As his thoughts shuffled through old scenes, the memory of a sheet of paper suddenly flashed before him. Jae-ha’s eyes widened.
“Hae-hyun, give me that box.”
“Huh?”
He took the keepsake box still in Hae-hyun’s hands and opened it. Aside from the missing Guardian Talisman, everything else was still intact. Jae-ha carefully unfolded a sheet of paper lying at the very bottom. Thin hanji sheets covered in dense Hanja, with bits of Hangul scattered here and there, spilled across the floor.
“What’s that?”
“It belonged to my grandmother. Looks like she wrote down the names of different liquors and notes about them… I’m sure I saw the ones those kids just mentioned in here. Hwanggwaju might be too.”
“Your grandmother?”
Hallakung tilted his head in puzzlement.
“That doesn’t make sense. Bamboo Leaf Liquor, Sayu Liquor, Handujae Liquor—all of those are Underworld drinks. A human shouldn’t even know their names.”
“My grandmother had a Guardian Talisman from the Guardian Agency. She loved drinking and used to hang around with heavy drinkers from both the Celestial Realm and the Underworld.”
“…If that’s true.”
“Then it might be written here somewhere.”
The moment Jae-ha finished, the child spirits leaned in curiously, whispering excitedly as they scanned the papers.
“Wow, there’s a ton of them!”
“Sayu Liquor, Dugwa Liquor, Bulmaehwan Liquor!”
They rattled off the tangled Hanja as easily as if they were reading children’s books. Hallakung and Su-min, too, seemed to have no trouble deciphering it, their eyes gleaming with interest. Feeling a little left out, Jae-ha glanced at Hae-hyun.
“…You can read this too?”
“Yeah. Most spellbooks are written in Hanja.”
So that was it. He was the only idiot here who couldn’t read it.
“The person who wrote this… seriously frivolous.”
That was Hallakung’s blunt verdict after skimming the sheets. Jae-ha hadn’t noticed anything like that when running them through a translation app before. What the hell had she written? His curiosity only deepened.
“You said these were your grandmother’s keepsakes, right? She wrote down the liquor names, their ingredients, even little reviews. She must’ve really loved drinking. And not just human drinks—she wrote about Celestial and Underworld liquors too…”
Su-min clicked his tongue, as if worried the hanji itself might reek of alcohol. For a moment, Jae-ha wondered if he should step up and defend his grandmother’s reputation, now branded a legendary drunkard. But what defense was there? To fill page after page with liquor names left no room for excuses. If she’d been alive in his generation, he would’ve introduced her to Cheong-hee.
“What about Hwanggwaju? Is it there?”
Eager to steer the conversation away from his grandmother’s drinking habits, Jae-ha asked quickly. Su-min scanned the sheets again, this time with care. His eyes moved slowly down until they stopped near the bottom. He tapped the corner of a page.
“Here it is. Hwanggwaju.”
“It’s really there?”
Jae-ha’s eyes widened. Hallakung and the child spirits, who hadn’t expected much either, looked just as surprised.
“Read it. What does it say?”
“Hwanggwaju. Ingredients: golden strawberries, Baeksa fruits, others unknown. Base liquor assumed to be either Hyangsang Liquor or Jeimun Liquor. An extremely rare brew, only ten bottles made every hundred years. Begged and begged Yeon-je until finally got a single cup. Flavor was insane. Must drink if possible. Hope to drink at least once more before dying.”
“……”
Suddenly, Hallakung’s earlier remark made perfect sense. It really was nothing more than a frivolous review.
“Yeon-je?”
At that name, Hallakung’s eyebrows shot up. The child spirits, who had been lying on their stomachs stacking little towers, perked up immediately.
“It’s the Cheonrok!”
“She must’ve drunk with the Cheonrok!”
“She must’ve been close to the Cheonrok!”
“…Yeon-je is the Cheonrok?”
Wait—what? Did that mean his grandmother had actually gone drinking with the ancient progenitor itself? Jae-ha didn’t want to believe it. His vague, dignified image of his ancestors shattered like glass.
“Yes. That’s the Cheonrok’s name. It almost never allows anyone to use it. Your grandmother must have been very close to the Cheonrok.”
“Well… I guess so.”
To be friends across generations was, in its way, an extraordinary feat. Jae-ha gave a sour reply, then turned the details over in his mind. Golden strawberries. Baeksa fruits. Base liquors—Hyangsang or Jeimun.
“Do golden strawberries and Baeksa fruits grow here too?”
“This isn’t an orchard. Golden strawberries only sprout from the venom-fed soil of Viper Hell. Baeksa fruits, I don’t know—probably fruit from the Celestial Realm.”
Hallakung’s sharp, prickly glare made it clear his pride had been touched. Jae-ha quickly changed the subject.
“The Underworld and the Celestial Realm…”
He muttered faintly. Their search range had only widened. If only his grandmother’s notes had said where to find them. But she had passed away long ago. There was no asking her now…
“……”
…But wait. This was the Underworld, wasn’t it?
“Uh, can’t we summon the dead? If we just call her here for a moment, that should do it.”
“When did she die?”
“Let’s see… about twenty years ago?”
At Jae-ha’s words, Hallakung’s gaze drifted upward, his eyes darkening as if running calculations. Of course, even Underworld beings couldn’t just wander freely wherever they liked. If she had sinned, they’d have to plead with the great king of the hell where she was imprisoned. And passing such a request to Seo-cheon, an autonomous realm separate from Hell, would mean bowing far too low. He could already picture Taesan Daewang sneering—“What’s this, coming down from your flowery palace to ask favors?”—and the thought alone was infuriating.
Hallakung solemnly closed and reopened his eyes. A little mockery wasn’t the issue here.
“I’ll contact the Ten Kings.”
But his dramatic declaration came to nothing. Before he’d even finished a cup of tea, the child spirit he’d sent running returned breathless with bad news.
“She’s not there!”
“Then she must’ve reincarnated.”
Hallakung’s voice grew heavy. A soul who’d lived a clean life could have already reincarnated within twenty years, leaving no trace in the Underworld. He’d held onto a slim hope, but it had been dashed. If she’d already returned to the human world, her memories would’ve been wiped clean anyway.
“No, that’s not it. They said her soul isn’t here at all!”
“…What?”
The child spirit repeated the Underworld’s curt reply word for word.
“‘Lee Seong-won has not yet entered the Underworld as a departed soul! Therefore, looking for her here is nonsense!’ That’s the message!”
“She’s… not dead?”
Her grandson was the most shocked of all. What the hell was this? There was an urn at the columbarium. He’d been there himself, several times. She had been cremated—so how could she not be dead? …Was the whole world playing a joke on him?
“Maybe she didn’t actually die? Maybe she faked her death.”
Hae-hyun offered the most reasonable explanation. Now that he thought about it, the Chief had suddenly vanished without a trace too. …Could she really be alive? His mother might actually be happy… or furious. The situation was so unreal it felt like a movie, and Jae-ha just stood there, dazed. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Su-min. His junior’s face looked lost in heavy thought.
Come to think of it, Su-min had been strangely quiet for a while. Was he overwhelmed at the thought of going to Hell? Jae-ha studied his expression, but then Su-min suddenly snapped his head up. Their foreheads nearly collided, and Jae-ha barely avoided it with quick reflexes. Pretending nothing had happened, he looked at him calmly.
“What’s wrong?”
“Actually… something just occurred to me.”
