-Ssshhh.

At the crumbling mouth of an abandoned Daoist temple in the early dawn drizzle.

At the mountain entrance of the abandoned temple half-smothered by rampant tropical trees, Yeondu, Hongbi, and I descended.

“It’s been a while.”

Yes—this was where I lived alone before I met my master.

An abandoned Daoist temple on Hainan.

Like a hometown. Three days after setting out from the Beast Palace, I arrived at the Hainan ruin where I had lived.

We’d flown three days without rest, so Yeondu was flagging, and with the rain we needed a pause. Just then the ruin came into view, and we dropped to its entrance.

With me gone, human traces had vanished entirely; weeds grew rank across the temple yard, and grasses thrust long between the roof tiles.

The perimeter wall had collapsed in places.

The hall where my master once lodged was even more fallen in than before.

As we stepped through the broken gate, Hongbi looked around and asked,

“Kwaaa. “You lived here alone?””

“Yeah.”

When I said this was where I’d lived alone, Hongbi made a face that said it didn’t add up and continued,

“Kwaaaa. “Don’t human children not survive alone in places like this? I know humans are frail without parental care.

So-ryong, your body looks quite young. You look grown on the outside, but still.””

Does Hongbi have some instinct for reading the body’s age?

Or was it just young by its standards?

Hongbi knew I was younger than expected.

I smiled, a bit sheepish.

“That’s true, but I’m older than I look.”

“Kwaak? “Older?””

Hongbi tilted its head at my words.

It seemed hard to accept that I was “old.”

I nodded.

“I haven’t even told my wives, but I have memories of a previous life. So, mentally, I’m older than you’d think.”

“Kwa? “Previous life?””

At “previous life,” Hongbi cocked its head and looked at Yeondu.

Yeondu tilted her head too.

“I mean memories from before I was born into this body called So-ryong.”

“Kwaaaa? “Memories from before being born? What does that mean?””

“Shaaa. “I don’t really understand either, So-ryong.””

It seemed the concept of past lives was hard for Hongbi; Yeondu looked the same.

I thought a moment, then explained in a way they could grasp.

“Let’s see. How to say it... Ah, right. Humans believe that when someone dies, they’re reborn as another living thing. They might become human again, or a frog, or a snake.

I used to think that was just wrong, but it seems it isn’t. Before I was born as So-ryong, I was another person—and one day, I realized it.”

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t “one day I realized.”

I died to a black mamba; when I came to, I opened my eyes in this body called So-ryong.

I don’t know what this guy had been doing, but he had a few copper coins in his bosom and was lying in the grass outside a Hainan village.

“Kwaaaa. “Curious indeed. Then could I have been human in a previous life?””

“That’s right.”

“Shaaaa. “I want to try being human once too.””

While explaining past lives to the children, we crossed the courtyard and reached the hall I’d lived in.

A lizard clinging to the right doorjamb caught my eye.

Colors so sharp it looked like part of the door’s pattern.

A Bawangling Cave Gecko.

Normally the Bawangling cave gecko shows yellow stripes on the body and white stripes on the tail; this one had a yellow body and a white tail.

A mutation? No—one I had bred.

The very one I’d boasted of to my master.

When I left Hainan, I released them all, and it seemed this one had made the ruin its home.

They hide in rock crevices and caves by day; a ruin like this makes a fine house for such a lizard, so even after release it had clearly settled here.

“Ooooo!”

Just as I thought, Yellow’s still alive and well—

Startled by my movement, it scurried toward the ceiling—and above it I spotted smaller ones.

Five tiny, adorable lizards tucked in the gap between ceiling and wall.

They were the spitting image of their mother.

I had bred four in that coloration total.

Two females and two males; it looked like one female had dropped five babies.

Bawangling Cave Geckos can lay two at a time, three to four clutches per season, so she must have laid five eggs this spring.

I’d desperately wanted to witness their laying to confirm the trait was fixed—and there was the outcome.

Yellow bodies, white tails.

The color looked perfectly fixed.

“If this were my past life, Spicy Fabre would’ve gotten rich on the spot.”

There’s a word—“morph.”

A morph is a selectively bred line where a specific trait—usually color, pattern, texture, other outward features—is deliberately fixed and propagated. The first person to produce a morph like that can make a fortune.

With a specimen no one else in the world has, you name the price.

For a distinctive morph, even a hundred million won won’t scare buyers away.

But in this moment I felt a joy even greater than in my past life.

Because what I was seeing was my bred stock released into the wild becoming a wild strain.

I was sure no one in my past life had ever done this.

I couldn’t help but marvel.

“Kyaa!”

At my exclamation, Hongbi flinched and asked,

“Kwaaa. “W-why are you doing that?””

“Ah, that kid there is a friend I raised.”

“Kwaaaa. “Don’t startle a frog out of nowhere.””

“Sorry. ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) I just got excited.”

—Creeeeak.

Scratching my head, I left the scurrying ceiling crowd behind.

When I opened the door and went in, everything I’d left was sitting exactly as before.

The medicine chest where I raised the young.

The jar where I kept crickets.

The box where I saved the children’s shed skins.

Exactly as when I left.

I’d released all the living things I’d kept inside, but the interior was the same as then.

Only a layer of years’ dust on top.

This place saw so few people that it looked like no one had come.

I hurried to the fire pit I’d built at center, stacked the wood lying there, and lit it.

—Crackle crackle.

Warmth spread at once.

I took the quilts outside and beat them, then stripped off my clothes to dry and crawled under the covers.

—Ssshhhh.

The rain still fell outside. Listening to it, I drifted into old memories—and into quiet sleep.

***

When I woke, the rain had stopped.

Only the occasional drip from the eaves.

I stroked Yeondu’s head where she slept by the fire; feeling my hand, she woke.

“Shaaa, “Mmm... Did you sleep well, So-ryong?””

“Yeah. Did you?”

“Shaaaa. “Yes, but I’m a little sleepy.””

She laid her head back on the quilt, voice listless.

“Then sleep more.”

“Shaaa. “May I? I’ll nap just a little longer.””

We’d flown three days without rest; of course she was tired.

Leaving Yeondu, I stepped outside; Hongbi was sunning itself on the steps.

The campfire dries a frog’s skin, so last night it slept outside alone.

Spirit beast or no, it said the heat was annoying.

Sunning itself on the wet steps, Hongbi asked,

“Kwaaa. “Heading out?””

“No, Yeondu seems tired. I’ll let her sleep more.” 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

“Kwaaaa. “Then I’ll rest here a bit longer. Tell me when you’re ready.””

“Got it.”

I left Yeondu to rest well and went nearby to catch a rabbit.

Hainan has brown rabbits, and when I lived here I never caught one.

They were so quick I missed them every time, no matter how I chased.

But plucking and fluttering a leaf, I caught one at once.

“So it was this easy.”

How many tears did I shed, roasting poor reptile friends, because I couldn’t catch these things?

With the mindset of settling old scores, I dressed the rabbit, roasted and ate it, and lay on the steps with Hongbi for a long rest. Then I glanced up and saw the sun at the height of the sky.

Noon. I cracked the door and peeked inside.

Yeondu, coiled, still asleep as expected.

“Is it the rain cooling the air making her sluggish?”

At first I thought the rain had lowered her activity.

Reptiles slow down when the temperature drops.

But it was odd.

If the frog Hongbi was fine, there was no way the snake Yeondu would be this sluggish at this temperature.

Worried she might be unwell, I went to check—and Yeondu’s eyes were cloudy.

“Huh?”

Snakes have no eyelids; instead a scale covers the eye to protect it.

You can think of it like a lens; when it turns cloudy, it’s sloughing off.

Which meant Yeondu was about to shed.

So that was why she was tired—she was preparing to shed.

“Ah, Yeondu, you’re shedding?”

It was sudden. I quickly doused the fire and threw the doors open.

If a snake is short on moisture when shedding, it can go poorly.

Ideally, it peels off clean like a sausage casing; if too dry, the skin crumbles and clings.

She’s a spirit beast, so it probably wouldn’t affect her much—but just in case, I raised the humidity indoors.

Unlike Cho, Hyang, and Bini—the centipedes—Yeondu’s shedding took longer than expected.

The next day, and the day after, she still hadn’t shed.

The scales were looser than on day one, but she hadn’t slipped the skin.

“What is this? Did she spit her neidan once and come up short on nutrients? No, Cheong-yu Sojeo breathed qi into her and she grew again, so nutrition shouldn’t be lacking.”

The search was urgent, but Yeondu’s delayed shed had my heart burning up—on the third day, at last, she shed completely.

When I woke in the morning, the skin lay neatly beside her.

A rolled sleeve of a skin, like a sock, set down next to her.

“Ohhh. It’s done!”

“Shaaa. “I’m sorry, So-ryong.””

Yeondu apologized for delaying our schedule.

Her body was much larger; the still-damp scales felt very moist.

“It’s fine. It’s natural. No need to apologize. You shed safely; that’s enough. You need to dry your scales too. Rest well.”

She wasn’t an insect like a centipede, so it wouldn’t take long, but the scales still needed drying. I left her and went out.

By tomorrow, we could finally move. I went to find food; returning with two pheasants, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Kwaaa! “So-ryong! Get inside, quick. That kid’s been screaming for a while.””

At Hongbi’s words I ran into the hall.

Yeondu...

Was brooding five eggs the size of melons.

They gleamed like lustrous jade.

“Shaaaa. “S-sorryyy, So-ryong. I went and laid them.””

“Gyaaaaaa!”

Some snakes shed before laying; this must have been a pre-parturition shed for Yeondu.