WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 23: Twilight Market (4)

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“Blood, flesh, and bones. Enough for one person.”

That cost that much? And it might even have been the cheapest option?

The price was ridiculous. For bargaining purposes, I lowered my standards for what counted as a person as far as I could. A newborn baby weighed around three kilos. The meat and congealed blood in my bag came to about five kilos.

If I gave up any blood here, I might not be able to afford the oil I was after. It was called goblin-fire oil, after all. I had brought the usual folktale staples too: buckwheat jelly, sorghum rice cakes, red-capped soju...

“It costs more than I expected. Do you have anything simpler and sturdier?”

The foundation of any transaction was bargaining. Especially in a place like this, where merchants could name whatever price they wanted. People haggled with goldsmiths over wedding rings all the time. Why would this be any different?

One of the clerk’s pearls darkened, and it brought out more items from the display case. This time, they were obviously old secondhand goods, mostly with fake stones.

Ha. Nothing here was normal.

Thanks to their distinctive appearances, I quickly recognized several items from the wiki. A cursed ring that would cause the body part wearing it to rot away. Cufflinks that gave you nightmares...

Buying something like that would be worse than having no information at all.

“What’s that?”

A small, dust-covered box beneath the display caught my eye. The clerk showed its alarm by letting its pearls drip and melt for a moment. Then it waved its hands dismissively, as though it was not something to show customers.

“But I’d like to see it. May I?”

Reluctantly, the clerk took out the box and opened it. Resting on shabby gauze instead of velvet was a keychain-like thing, a delicate silver chain hanging from a small clump of fur with something like a jewel at its end.

“Is it silver?”

The clerk shook its head. It had no face, but I could still tell it looked puzzled.

I examined it more closely. A label with instructions was attached to one side.

“No matter where you wear it, it will take the form that suits it best. Once worn, it will never come off until it is unfastened.”

“How much is this?”

The clerk shook its head again. If anything, it looked uncomfortable, as though it wanted to put it away as soon as possible. I thought I might be able to make use of that.

“What if I dispose of this for you? Could you deduct its value from that item’s price?”

The classic bulk-disposal bargain. The same tactic as asking for a free extra item when buying something at a market. I had nothing to lose.

Surprisingly, the clerk considered it for a moment before nodding.

It worked that easily? It looked incredibly expensive. I hoped I had not made the wrong choice.

As the clerk dusted off the box, it held out a new price tag.

“Blood, flesh, and bones. The amount for two chickens.”

The price had instantly dropped by fifty percent. Half doubtful of this unbelievable discount, I took out a container of congealed blood, a chicken, chicken legs, and pork and held them out. The items vanished into the clerk’s hand, and the scale tipped once.

“Please wait a moment.”

With practiced hands, the clerk began wrapping the card set and accessory in separate gift boxes. A little later, it handed me the packages along with a small pouch, one box containing a red velvet case wrapped with ribbon.

“What’s this?”

The pouch had a little weight to it. When I opened it, I found a handful of coin-like objects inside. Some looked like scales, some were crushed, and some had symbols instead of numbers engraved on them...

There had not been any mention of currency in Twilight Market.

Still, it looked like change, so there was no reason not to take it. I put the items away carefully in my bag.

“Now please tell me the shortcut to the next alley.”

The clerk stepped back and opened a door marked Employees Only. It gestured for me to follow, then led the way.

It seemed to be an inventory warehouse. It was dark, with boxes and packing materials constantly catching around my feet. I hit my head on protruding boxes several times. Still, instead of a musty smell of dust, a strange medicinal scent lingered in the air. It was an odd place.

The clerk pulled a handle between the boxes. Bright light seeped into the warehouse.

“Thank you.”

I gave a brief farewell and stepped outside. The door closed soundlessly behind me as soon as I emerged, and the place... became a wall again.

“...Ah. Seriously.”

Despite it being night, the bright lights stabbed at my eyes. The excessive streetlights left countless afterimages in my vision. After blinking several times to clear them away, I let out a hollow laugh.

“I’m really not letting that shop owner get away with this.”

I had returned to the exact plaza where I had started. Some time must have passed, because it was now packed with stalls and felt like a proper night market.

I just wasted time. They could have told me properly from the start...

Then again, only humans recognized that the alleys changed. From an uncanny being’s perspective, “after passing three alleys” might have literally meant the alleys in this plaza...

Still, the profits had been good.

If I had enough time, I would have liked to sit somewhere and try the things I had bought one by one. But I only had about fifty minutes left.

Since the bargaining had eaten up so much time, I had to trust my instincts and move quickly now.

I returned near the small convenience store and counted the alleys. After passing the third, a fourth alley appeared. Behind the night market, a narrow new alley had appeared like another section of a grid.

Unlike the plaza filled with the night market, it was neither colorful nor lively. Shops were crammed together like those on Hwanghak-dong Curio Street or Busan’s Kkangtong Market.

The already narrow alley was choked with mountains of goods, tilted beneath newspapers with dates all jumbled up and old plastic wrapping until barely one person could pass through. Sagging electrical wires filled the alley like spiderwebs.

The smell of oil was strong. It was the slick, strange gasoline smell of an auto repair shop.

The sixth shop... One, two...

As I counted the shops and walked deeper into the alley, the stores on either side rapidly changed appearance. First, they became Dongdaemun clothing shops. Then came traditional instruments from a flea market, medicinal herbs...

Finally, the shops changed for the sixth time. The workshop alley was a chaotic mixture of Japanese colonial-era houses, red-brick apartment buildings from the 1980s, and glass shops.

Sound began to overwhelm the space.

Tick. Tock. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick.

Hundreds, no, thousands of clocks moved their second and minute hands at different times and rhythms. Their sounds were all different too. Electronic chimes, old pendulum clocks, even a steady medical rhythm.

I slowly ran my hand over the display windows of closed shops, searching for one that was open. Countless things appeared and disappeared within the beam of my flashlight.

Springs, clocks, time, decorations...

Just as I began to feel like I was walking through an endless series of badly copied images, I found the shop.

“...”

It was, somehow, a very familiar sight. At least, it was not the sort of exterior I expected to find in Twilight Market. Beneath a faded blue awning hung a tacky sign.

“Gold Star Clock Repair and Seal Engraving.”

Despite being a clock shop, a basket of red chili peppers was drying atop a box outside. Beside it, a bamboo tray was piled high with dried greens and shredded dried radish.

“Excuse me... Hello?”

The inside of the shop was far darker than outside. Clocks packed the room all the way to the ceiling, pouring out sound like waves.

Even amid that chaos, details like dried pollock hanging where pendulum clocks should have been and the smell of sesame oil mixed with clock lubricant left me dizzy.

“...What brings you here?”

A hunched silhouette moved in the darkness. It was a small old man. When he raised his head, dozens of springs rotated in place of pupils behind the magnifying lenses over his eyes.

“I heard this was the only place that sold this oil, so I was referred here.”

At last, my goal. I placed the bottle of oil on the counter and cautiously added, “And I’d like to buy as much as possible with what I brought.”

The old man reached out and took the bottle. Aside from his eyes, he was the most human-looking thing I had seen in this market so far, which somehow made him feel even more out of place.

He spent a long time studying the bottle, shaking it, and even dabbing a little of its contents onto his fingertip to taste it. Then he frowned and took off his magnifying lenses.

“That old geezer’s liquor.”

Liquor?

“Never mind that. You want to buy this? Then put everything you have here.”

“E-Everything?”

“What are you hesitating for, lad? Go back if you don’t want to!”

“N-No, that’s not it. Just a moment.”

I obediently turned my bag upside down and emptied it. Red-capped soju, makgeolli, buckwheat jelly and sorghum rice cakes wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, and even meat pancakes. I had brought enough food for at least five people.

“D-Do these need to go up too?”

The things I had purchased along with them rolled out of my bag. But the old man clicked his tongue harshly and waved them away.

“Put those away! If old men didn’t make them, I don’t need to see them.”

The springs in place of his pupils spun madly as they examined the food.

Then he picked up a block of buckwheat jelly with his dry hand and shoved it into his mouth. The jelly, as big as a person’s face, disappeared between lips that had opened only as wide as his palm.

Wow.

Before I could even marvel at it, the old man began frantically stuffing food into his mouth with both hands. He emptied a bottle of makgeolli in two gulps, and the soju went down smoothly, one gulp for each sorghum rice cake.

He was not so much eating as dropping food into himself.

Before long, every container had been scraped clean. After swallowing the final drop, the old man let out a long burp. The springs before his eyes spun wildly, then slowed.

All I could do was fold my hands politely in front of me and wait for him to settle the price.

“Heh heh. You know how to show sincerity, at least.”

“I’m glad you liked it... So how much does that make?”

The old man took an old brass kettle and a gourd flask from beneath the workbench. After wiggling his fingers as if measuring out a quantity, he began pouring liquid into the flask.

Gush, gush, gush.

Huh...

The flask was only palm-sized, but the liquid kept going in without end. It was like magic. The kettle also kept pouring without ever running dry. It felt like I watched for a long time before the flask was finally filled.

“There. It all went in.”

At last, the portioning was complete. The gourd flask was still small, but when it rolled to one side, it made a heavy sound. This was a huge success.

“Th-Thank you, sir. Then...”

“Hey!”

The moment I reached for the flask, a sharp pain shot through my hand. The old man had struck my knuckles with a pair of nippers.

“W-Why did you do that?”

“I filled it, but I never said you could take it!”

What?

“What do you mean?! Didn’t I pay for it?!”

“Who says everything in this world is settled with words? Whether you can take this with you requires another price.”

That damned goblin. I had to keep my expression under control. If I got angry or let him set the pace, I might go looking to get one lump removed and come back with another.

There were no dokkaebi folktales in Twilight Market. This goblin must have appeared because another ghost story had overlapped with one corner of the market after reacting to the blue-and-red lantern oil I was after. If so, this place was literally a traditional folktale showdown.

Whether I wrestled the goblin or got along with it well enough to call each other brothers, I was betting that it would return as good fortune.

“I’ll give you riddles. For every answer you get right, I’ll give you one more flask. For every answer you get wrong, you must give back an amount equal to one flask. Will you do it?”

Here it came. I smiled confidently.

“Fine. Go ahead.”

The old man laughed in a harsh metallic voice. The pendulum clocks throughout the shop stopped ticking all at once, and silence fell.

“All right. What medicine works best for a stone Buddha’s cold chest?”

“Wouldn’t it be to cut off a carp’s horns in winter and boil them into medicine?”

One right answer. The old man placed another gourd flask on the counter.

“Then how do you measure the distance from the eastern end of the sky to the western end?”

“Why go as far as measuring in ri? One handspan is enough. The east is in my left eye and the west is in my right, so all I have to do is blink once.”

The second. It had been worth going through every dokkaebi folktale and memorizing them all. He really was asking questions like these.

“What has been mine since birth, but is used more by others?”

“I won’t have cause to call my own name even ten times while I’m alive, so it can only be my name.”

The old man burst into hearty laughter. Even my smiling mouth was beginning to twitch. There were now three gourd flasks, and the old man rolled them half a turn toward me.

“If you get this one right, you win.”

“I’m learning a great deal from you, sir.”

The old man mimed flicking cigarette ash, then brought his hand down on the counter.

Thump!

“Though I have no feet, I travel ten thousand miles. Though I have no mouth, I command the whole world. I dance atop a king’s head and sleep beneath a beggar’s instep. What am I?”

Footnotes:

“To go have a lump removed and come back with another” is a Korean idiom for making a bad situation worse, drawn from folktales involving goblins.

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