Episode 4
“Alright, let’s begin the lecture.”
Joon-wan placed the plastic cup filled with soil on the podium, took attendance, and started his lecture while displaying materials on the screen.
「The Tale of the Night Visitor」
“Today, we will be exploring the definition and history of the ‘Ya-rae-ja’ folktale, which is prevalent throughout Korea, and its implications for understanding ancient socio-political structures.”
The students were more intrigued by the plastic cup that had suddenly appeared on the podium and the unidentified creature inside than by the lecture itself.
“The Ya-rae-ja tale typically unfolds with a ‘mysterious man’ visiting a woman at night, impregnating her through intercourse. Later, through family interrogation, the woman discovers that the Ya-rae-ja is not human.”
Joon-wan continued his lecture, seemingly oblivious to their distraction.
“This can be considered a branch of the ‘heterosexual intercourse with non-human beings’ folktale, where a human conceives a child through interaction with a sacred plant or animal…”
“Professor?”
“Yes?”
The most inquisitive student in the class cautiously raised her hand.
Joon-wan frowned. The student hesitated at his reaction but persisted.
“What’s with the earthworm?”
Indeed, the unidentified creature in the cup was… an earthworm. It was wriggling, its moist body clinging to the surface of the cup.
Joon-wan lifted the cup.
“It’s an earthworm.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s an earthworm. I caught it in the mountains recently.”
It wasn’t the kind of joke one would expect from him, known for his aloof demeanor and maintaining distance from his students. In fact, he seemed quite serious.
“One of the most well-known Ya-rae-ja tales in Korea is the story of the union between an earthworm and a human.”
He decided to use the earthworm as a teaching aid.
Clank, clank, clank!
He shook the cup, his long, slender fingers wrapped around it.
Shake, shake.
Naturally, the earthworm inside was also shaken.
“Gyeon Hwon, the founding monarch of Later Baekje, is a mythical figure, much like other founding monarchs.”
The shaking cup.
“Most mythical figures have birth myths, and in his case, there’s a legend that he was born from his mother’s union with a Ya-rae-ja.”
The students stared at the plastic cup in Joon-wan’s hand.
“Gyeon Hwon’s mother, a wealthy unmarried woman at the time, was visited every night by a man dressed in purple. To uncover his identity, her father devised a plan, instructing his daughter to thread a needle with a long string and pierce the man’s clothing with it.”
The earthworm inside was helplessly tossed and turned by Joon-wan’s hand.
“The next morning, they followed the string and found a large earthworm dead with the needle still stuck in its side. Soon after, the daughter became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was none other than Gyeon Hwon.”
Joon-wan stopped shaking the cup and looked at his students, posing a question.
“But why was the Ya-rae-ja identified as an earthworm? Scholars speculate that it’s related to the historical context where only the victor’s narratives become history.”
The earthworm in the cup appeared weak and limp.
“The word ‘earthworm’ originally derives from ‘Toryong’ (土龍), meaning ‘earth dragon.’ This leads us to believe that Gyeon Hwon’s birth myth, where his father was originally a dragon, might have been later distorted by Goryeo historians…”
‘I don’t see why he had to bring it from the mountains…’
That was the thought on most of the students’ minds. Who doesn’t know what an earthworm looks like?
‘Why did he bring it?’
The students attended the lecture, consumed by the question, ‘Why did the professor bring that earthworm here?’
***
Of course, Joon-wan’s real reason for bringing the earthworm to work wasn’t to pique his students’ interest.
After the lecture, he headed to the faculty room with the cup in hand. However, he wasn’t heading to the folklore department. He was going to the life sciences department in the science building.
Knock, knock, knock.
“It’s me. I’m coming in.”
Joon-wan announced himself as he knocked, and a voice responded from inside.
“Yeah, come in.”
He entered to find a friendly-looking man practically buried under a mountain of books and papers at his desk.
“Hey, but why…”
Before getting to the point, Joon-wan looked around the office in disgust.
“Clean up your act. How can you even live like this?”
“I did clean up! What? It’s clean, isn’t it?”
The man asked, genuinely perplexed. Joon-wan frowned, grabbed a tissue from the box on the desk, dusted the opposite chair, and sat down.
Thud!
He placed the cup on top of a stack of books. Choi Young-shin, a professor of life sciences at Yongwon University, stared blankly at the cup.
“This is an earthworm, right?”
Joon-wan asked.
“What?”
“It’s an earthworm… right?”
At his words, Young-shin furrowed his brows and peered into the cup.
“Yeah, it’s an earthworm. Why? What about it?”
Indeed, it was undeniably an earthworm. It didn’t even look like a rare subspecies or variant, just an ordinary earthworm. However, it did seem a bit withered.
“…Sigh.”
At his reaction and answer, Joon-wan crossed his arms. He then ran a hand through his hair and sighed.
“I’m thinking of raising it. What should I do?”
Young-shin stared at him in disbelief.
“Why would you raise an earthworm?”
His face clearly expressed, ‘You hate these things, don’t you?’ Joon-wan put on a nonchalant expression.
“People are raising all sorts of pets these days. I live alone, and it gets lonely.”
Well… an earthworm is technically an animal.
At his words, Young-shin nodded with a ‘You’re a strange one’ look on his face. He seemed to have decided to attribute it to his friend’s eccentricity.
“You’re only raising one? Hey, we have plenty of these. We’re raising a lot in the lab for microplastic research anyway. I’ll give you about 1kg. You can put this one in too and maybe they’ll breed. Just give them back to me when you’re bored.”
Clank, clank, clank!
At that moment, the plastic cup containing the earthworm shook violently.
Young-shin looked around and said,
“What was that? An aftershock?”
Joon-wan stared intently at the cup.
“Anyway, teach me how to raise this thing. And give me a book on earthworm care if you have one.”
That day, Joon-wan left with an opaque plastic container filled with vermicast, which he carefully placed in the trunk of his car.
“What do earthworms eat?”
“Well, they mostly eat watermelon rinds, soft vegetable scraps, and things like that. They don’t have teeth, so they need something that decomposes easily.”
“…”
“You don’t compost at home, do you? I can give you some if you need it.”
He also received a plastic bag filled with food waste.
Back home, Joon-wan put on gloves and followed the instructions, mixing the food waste into a designated area of the vermicast in the container, creating a suitable habitat for the earthworm.
“You must have had a hard time in that cramped space, without any food.”
He muttered to himself as he dropped the earthworm from the cup into the larger container.
“You picked it up in the mountains? Then the best thing for this earthworm would be soil from that mountain.”
The earthworm landed on the vermicast mixed with food waste and wiggled.
He recalled Young-shin’s advice.
“Anyway, it’s probably under a lot of stress. You said it hasn’t eaten anything… It won’t starve to death immediately, but it could die from stress. So, create a suitable environment for it, transfer it, and then leave it in a cool, dark place for a while. It’s nocturnal, so don’t expose it to sunlight unnecessarily.”
Following the advice, Joon-wan closed the container with a lid that had ventilation holes.
And then it happened.
‘Oh, I’m dying!’
Joon-wan thought he heard a faint voice.
‘You scoundrel! How dare you treat me like this! Heaven will not forgive you! You scoundrel!’
Joon-wan frowned and looked around, removing his gloves. But looking around wouldn’t help him locate the source of the auditory hallucination.
‘Could it be you again?’
He briefly suspected the earthworm.
‘…Sigh, that’s impossible.’
Joon-wan threw the soiled black latex gloves in the trash and washed his hands thoroughly.
And then he fell asleep in his sterile apartment, devoid of any dust, food waste, or even food, except for the plastic container where the earthworm resided.
He was quite a clean freak.
“You scoundrel…!”
But that night…
“Do you think you can live a long life after treating me like this, you scoundrel!”
Joon-wan was awakened by another auditory hallucination.
“You will be punished by heaven!”
…But it wasn’t a hallucination.
***
There’s a saying, “Deung Yong Mun,” which refers to the “Dragon Gate,” a treacherous gorge known for its strong currents. It symbolizes the idea that a carp that successfully climbs the Dragon Gate proves its strength and talent, thus transforming into a dragon.
In the human world, “Deung Yong Mun” represents the gateway to success and fame, often associated with passing the state examination and becoming a high-ranking official. The saying “A dragon rises from a small stream” also stems from this concept.
However, this is not just a metaphor; it’s the reality. Why else would an Imugi strive to become a dragon?
They are like aspiring civil servants, hidden away in the countryside, studying diligently. Dragons residing in various locations, such as the earth, sea, mountains, and wells, are like government officials dispatched from the heavens, or the “headquarters,” to oversee their respective domains.
‘Oh dear, heaven will not forgive this transgression, oh dear…!’
Dragons have a powerful backing, beyond their own divine powers. If a dragon were to become malevolent, or fall prey to the deception of a malicious shaman and be captured, tormented, or exploited, the headquarters, the heavens, would dispatch officials to intervene and rectify the situation.
In any case, I trembled as my situation grew increasingly dire.
‘To think he would abandon me in this foul-smelling soil, filled with food scraps…’
Although my origins lie in the humble earthworm, I have long transcended that lowly existence.
I sobbed in despair, burying my head in the soil.
‘Sob, sob!’
Munch, munch, munch.
However, that cramped, transparent prison was undeniably uncomfortable.
‘Sob! I need to survive this ordeal.’
Munch, munch, munch, munch.
And I was undeniably hungry.
‘Just wait until I regain my strength. I may not kill you, but I will not let you go unpunished.’
With tears streaming down my face and my body trembling with rage, I etched this humiliation into my heart.
‘You will pay dearly for harming a dragon…!’
Munch, munch, munch, munch, munch, munch.
Amidst my misery, I found solace in the deliciousness of the watermelon rind.