Yeah, if I think about it, it was strange from the start.

No matter how brazen its temperament, a spirit beast had no reason to show itself in front of people.

Especially when, by its own account, anyone who saw it tried to catch it.

After getting put through that by humans a few times, a wild animal naturally grows wary of people.

Beasts that have nearly been hunted down several times grow so vigilant that they usually flee the moment they catch a whiff of human scent.

And yet it showed itself.

And with downright shameless composure, at that.

Why?

Like a stray cat trying to steal some food?

When the place is crawling with termites?

No, probably not.

Even if it brazenly ate the termites I’d trapped, wild beasts generally don’t like to eat anything that’s been handled by human hands in the first place.

Then why did it go out of its way to appear in front of us and eat what I’d caught?

Why did it reveal itself to us first, even though it had almost been caught by people several times?

It was probably because it was lonely.

It was lonely, this guy.

Spirit beasts in this world are very peculiar beings.

Because they flatly refute the logic of the evolutionary scientists from my previous life.

Evolutionary scholars fundamentally tie the development of intelligence to sociality.

They say the more social an animal is, the higher its intelligence.

When scholars explain evolution—especially intelligence—they say primates’ brains developed further because they lived in groups.

They claim that in the process of maintaining relationships—cooperating and competing within a group—the brain evolved to become larger and more complex.

While, as they say, highly social animals are generally intelligent, spirit beasts flatly rebuke such scientists’ claims.

By their very existence.

Spirit beasts do not form herds, yet they possess lofty intelligence.

So from an evolutionary perspective, you could call them something that fell straight from the heavens—outside the framework—and judging by what people here say, that description might not be wrong.

They explain spirit beasts as auspicious beings descended from the heavens.

But if so, are these auspicious beings from the heavens so lofty that they are beyond the Five Desires and Seven Emotions?

The Five Desires are lust, appetite, desire for honor, desire for sleep, and desire for wealth.

The Seven Emotions are joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hate, and desire.

So while they may be far removed from greed for wealth, if you look at my kids, you know they are by no means free of the Five Desires and Seven Emotions.

Joy, rage, grief, fear, love, hatred, greed.

Emotions every one of my kids has.

You could say they’re practically like people, and that’s why a question arises here.

If they have emotions like humans, how can they live alone?

Humans are social animals—cut them off from society and they feel loneliness.

You might say these friends have a beast base, so unlike humans they can’t feel loneliness, but I can never agree with that.

Beasts with high intelligence feel loneliness, and my kids feel it the same.

Ranghyang longed for a friend out of loneliness and couldn’t leave him even though he was a bad friend, and Soto, out of loneliness, had joined a troop of highly intelligent monkeys, hadn’t she?

And if you look at how the others joined up the moment I invited them in—like they’d been waiting for it—it’s clear they felt a lot of loneliness.

Which meant Hongbi would be no different.

He smoothed his expression and spoke in a calm voice.

No—he tried to speak.

“Kwaa-kwAA. 『W-what nonsense is that? You really mean to scold me? If I use my strength, nothing will remain, so what kind of foolish talk is that?』”

But the guy stammered.

I was wondering how to make him spill the truth when suddenly his name popped into my head.

The name I’d thought little of before now flashed in my mind.

More precisely, its meaning.

Ah!

I immediately asked Hongbi:

“That name, Hongbi. Did you come up with it yourself?”

“Kwaa? 『Y-yeah. Why do you ask that?』”

Even though he’d been mad at me and about to charge me just a moment ago, he still answered my question.

It was clear his heart was soft. And from that name, I could see the cause of his loneliness.

Hongbi.

The hong for red, the bi for sorrow.

Red Sorrow.

That was the meaning of his name.

Unless he was suffering from adolescent chuunibyou, why would he name himself Red Sorrow?

Looking at how he only ate termites for survival and didn’t casually kill even the smallest of other insects, it was obvious his sorrow and loneliness stemmed from his ability.

If you had the power to erase anything you willed, would that be a blessing or a curse?

For self-protection it might be a blessing, but it couldn’t be only that.

Because with one slip, you could lose what you hold dear, never to get it back.

He must have experienced that himself.

I grinned and said:

“A way not to dissolve other things. I know it.”

At that, Hongbi’s eyes widened.

He froze, then asked in disbelief:

“Kwaa? 『R-really? You can make this cursed thing disappear!?』”

Looked like I was right.

***

The world was, indeed, full of beautiful things.

It had been so since the moment he hatched, poked his eyes out of the water, and looked around.

Blue skies, yellow flowers, butterflies of every color, white clouds.

Even to the eyes of a little tadpole, the world had been truly beautiful.

The tadpole thought the things it saw were beautiful, and it longed for those beautiful things.

The reason the tadpole that became a frog ended up with such splendid colors was probably because it had yearned for beauty.

“Kwaa.”

The first thing the tadpole, now a frog, did when it climbed out of the water and croaked for the first time was head toward the source of a delicious smell.

Led by something, following the scent flowing into its nostrils, it hopped along for a long while.

After passing a valley and climbing over rocky hills, just before it reached its destination, voices drifted to its ears.

A sound it had never heard before flowed into the frog’s ears.

“Oh my, what a pretty frog.”

“Wow, I’ve never seen a yellow frog before—it’s really pretty.”

“Its forelegs are red.”

“And its hind legs are blue.” 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Suddenly, a shadow fell overhead.

The frog, seized by fear, raised its head, and there stood enormous creatures it had never seen before, looking down at it.

As the frog cowered in terror, one of them stretched out a long hand toward it and said:

“It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”

At those words, the shivering frog cautiously reached out and touched the hand offered by the creature it had never seen before.

A warm hand, different from its own.

When that warmth seeped into its body, the owner of the hand asked the frogling who had only just become a frog:

“Hey, want to come with me? I live in the mountains with my grandfather. Will you be my friend?”

The gentle warmth in the hand, the tender tone of voice.

Forgetting entirely that it had been heading somewhere, the frog nodded.

It had always longed for the creatures that moved together outside the water, and now someone was inviting it to join a group.

“Kwaa. 『Okay.』”

“Oh my, it feels like it understands us, doesn’t it? Then I’ll call you Hong, since your forelegs are red.”

“Kwaa? 『Hong?』”

“I don’t know what you’re saying, but yes, it’s a name. Hong.”

And so, thanks to the creature that gave it a name, the frog became Hong and gained a home.

Carried in the girl’s hands, they arrived at a mountainside overlooking the place Hong had been headed toward.

The small house in the mountains was where the girl who had given him a name lived with her grandfather.

The girl and her grandfather made their living by gathering and selling herbs from the mountains, and the house already had many friends.

A dog that immediately slobbered all over Hong’s body, and a cat.

As well as the chickens and ducks the girl kept.

“These are your friends. The dog’s Heuk, the cat’s Baek-a. Get along well with them, Hong.”

The girl taught Hong many things.

The names of things in the world.

“Hong, you’re staring blankly at the sky again. Do you like clouds that much?”

“Kwaa? 『Clouds?』”

“Mm-hm, those white things up there are clouds. White like feathers. Feathers are the hairs that fall from a bird’s wings. Birds are those things that fly in the sky.”

One day with the girl became two, and two days became three.

The days passed slowly.

As time went by, Hong, who had only just become a frog, lost his tail and grew larger.

And the girl became a woman.

“How much bigger are you going to get, Hong?”

“Kwaa? 『?』”

“No, I don’t mean it’s bad that you’re growing. It’s just amazing, that’s all.”

The young woman rejoiced at Hong’s growth. But as he grew, Hong began to feel a certain discomfort.

An ever-growing, intense urge.

His gaze kept being drawn down to that place below.

The place he had been headed from the moment he was born, pulled by something unseen.

Where red stone pagodas jutted up everywhere.

The urge to go there grew stronger and stronger inside him.

In the end, he couldn’t resist. On the night of a great full moon, while the young woman slept, Hong headed there.

And drawn by something, he swallowed a {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} white thing that had poked its head out of a hole.

Then something began to boil inside his body.

As if he had swallowed fire, he felt something burning deep in his chest.

At the same time, energy surged through his whole body.

His spirit soared.

Madly, he roamed the area, swallowing the creatures that poked their heads from hidden burrows.

That was when light began to brighten.

The morning sun was rising.

He had been so absorbed in eating that he hadn’t even noticed dawn approaching.

Hong decided to return to the young woman before day fully broke.

With steps swifter than before, he climbed back up the mountain and arrived in front of the house.

Sensing Hong’s return, Heuk, the dog who always slobbered all over him, rushed out.

“Woof-woof!”

Tail wagging, Heuk bounded up happily and began licking Hong’s face all over.

“Kwaa. 『S-stop it.』”

Even as Hong recoiled in disgust, Heuk kept chasing him, licking him all the way into the house.

Then one of the roosters, up at the crack of dawn, sidled up and pecked Hong’s hind leg.

“Kwak! 『Ow!』”

Unlike Heuk or Baek-a, the damned roosters had no fear and often pecked at Hong.

Just as he was about to shout in anger—

A surge of boiling energy welled up inside him.

The power that had boiled since he’d swallowed that thing now surged from his belly throughout his body.

His vision turned red.

And then—there was the thud of something falling beside him.

Turning his head, he saw Heuk collapsed on the ground, only his lower half remaining.

A faint red aura spread around Hong.

The foolish rooster charged again, but fell with its head gone.

It was the moment Hong was seized by terror at what had suddenly happened.

A scream rang out.

“Kyaaah!”

Looking toward the voice, he saw the young woman staring at him in horror.

Hong, stricken with panic at the sudden turn of events, took a step toward her.

The woman screamed:

“D-don’t come any closer!”

Her eyes and voice—something he had never seen before.

Filled with fear, with dread.

At that instant, an old man burst out, a stick in his hands.

“So what we’ve raised all this time was a monster!?”

At that sight, Hong bolted down the mountain.

It wasn’t because he feared the stick.

It was because he couldn’t bear the thought of hurting anyone else.

Thus his name, Hongbi—Red Sorrow—came to embody the grief of shattering his happy life with his own hands.

***

“Well then.”

When I answered with a grin, tears began streaming down Hongbi’s eyes.

And from his quivering mouth spilled words begging for help.

“Kwaa. 『I don’t want to make anything disappear ever again... Please, help me. Huuuk.』”

The croak of a frog is said to sound sorrowful, but this one sounded especially sorrowful.