Six months after his birth, the villagers began to talk about the child who never cried.
Winter gave way to spring, and then summer arrived with its sticky heat and flies plastered against open windows. Six months. One hundred and eighty-three days spent in a tiny body that refused to cooperate. One hundred and eighty-three days of watching the world through eyes that saw far too clearly for a baby—but not clearly enough for someone who had already lived once.
That was the true hell.
Not the pain. Not the helplessness.
But a clear, fully conscious mind trapped inside a body that had no idea how to translate thought into action. I understood the concept of walking, but my legs were gelatinous sticks incapable of supporting my weight. I knew how to speak—words formed perfectly in my head—but my tongue was a useless slab of flesh that produced only guttural sounds and involuntary babbling.
And I did not cry.
Ever.
At first, it wasn't a conscious decision. It was simply… an absence. As if the neural wiring responsible for that primal response had short-circuited somewhere between my death and my rebirth. Babies cried when they were hungry. When they were cold. When they were afraid. It was their only means of communication—their survival weapon in a hostile world.
Me?
I stayed silent. Even when hunger twisted my stomach. Even when the night air made me shiver. I just watched. Waited. Stared at the ceiling or at the faces that leaned over me with an intensity I now understood was anything but normal.
Eunbi worried. I could see it in the way she touched me—too often, too carefully, as if she were checking whether I was still real. She wore her hair in a tight bun, but loose strands always escaped, framing a face marked by sleepless nights and an anxiety she tried to hide behind tired smiles.
"Are you hungry?" she asked for the tenth time that day, lifting me to check for signs of distress.
I looked at her. Blinked.
That was all I could do.
She sighed. Breastfed me anyway. And as she did, her fingers traced distracted circles on my back—a repetitive motion that soothed her more than me. I drank because my body required fuel, even if my mind found the whole process deeply humiliating.
Mansoo minimized it.
"He's just a calm child. That's a good thing, isn't it? You wanted a kid who screams all night?"
"This isn't normal, Mansoo." Eunbi's voice carried that sharp edge that preceded marital arguments. "He never cries. Ever. Not even when I bathe him in cold water. Not when he falls and bumps his head. Nothing."
"Maybe he's just… stoic."
"Babies aren't stoic!" Her voice rose—rare for her. "They're bundles of needs and screams. That's how they survive. But him…"
She stopped. Looked down at me.
And in her eyes, I saw something like fear. Not fear that I was sick or impaired. No. Something deeper.
Fear that her son might not be… her son.
I couldn't reassure her.
Because honestly?
She was right.
The morning ritual became sacred.
Not to me—I didn't care about rituals—but to Eunbi, it was an anchor. Something solid in a daily life that must have felt increasingly unreal.
She woke before dawn. I heard her bare feet on the wooden floor, the familiar creak of the third plank near the door that always complained under her weight. She lit the fire in the small clay brazier. Set water to boil in a dented kettle that whistled like a wounded animal.
Then she prepared tea.
Not the refined tea of nobles. Not the precious leaves that cost more than Mansoo earned in a month. No. Local herbs. Wild mint from the hills. Dried roots whose names I didn't know but which released an earthy, faintly sweet scent when touched by hot water.
She sat by the window. Gray dawn light outlined her tired profile. She drank slowly, eyes lost somewhere between the village rooftops and the mountains rising to the north like stone sentinels.
And I, in my small woven basket beside her, watched.
Because that was all I could do.
Observe. Memorize. Try to understand this woman who had brought me into the world and now wondered whether she had given birth to a child—or something else.
Sometimes she spoke to me. Not really to me. Through me. As if I were a vessel for her morning thoughts.
"The Chens had trouble with their roof again yesterday. The wind tore half the thatch away. Park Daeho says he can fix it, but it'll cost money. They don't have it." She blew on her tea—out of habit, even when it wasn't hot anymore. "Your father says we should help them. But we don't have much either."
Pause. Sip. The amber liquid vanished between her chapped lips.
"Kim Soyeon is pregnant again. Her fourth. I wonder how she does it. Four children and she always smiles. Me, I only have one and I…" She stopped. Looked at me. "You're a good baby, Hyeon. You don't give me trouble. So why am I so worried?"
Because your instincts are screaming that something is wrong, I thought. Because you feel that the child you rock at night isn't really a child. He's a squatter. An impostor. A ghost pretending to be alive.
But I couldn't say any of that.
So I just blinked.
And she looked away, as if staring at me too long hurt.
This ritual was repeated every morning. Boiling water. Bitter tea. Thoughts spoken aloud. And me—a silent witness to a one-sided intimacy that felt less like maternal tenderness and more like a confession before a mute priest.
The bowl incident happened on a summer afternoon when the heat turned the air into thick syrup. Mansoo had returned from the fields, his shirt plastered to his back with sweat. Eunbi prepared a simple meal—rice, pickled vegetables, and a clear broth with pieces of dried fish floating like miniature corpses.
They ate in silence. Not a comfortable silence. The kind that settled in when two people had too much to say and too little energy to begin.
I lay in my basket near the table. At eight months, my body had reached the stage where it vaguely resembled something functional. I could sit. Not for long—but long enough that Eunbi stopped carrying me everywhere like a fragile sack of rice.
I watched them. Noted the details. The way Mansoo held his chopsticks—efficient, precise, almost military. The way Eunbi ate without really eating, pushing food from one side of her bowl to the other as if searching for something that wasn't there.
And then—
The bowl tipped.
Not Mansoo's. Not Eunbi's.
A third bowl, filled with soy sauce, placed too close to the table's edge. A fly landed on it. Struggled. Created just enough vibration—
The bowl slid.
Fell.
And my body moved.
Not consciously. Not as a reasoned decision—I should catch that bowl. No. It was instinctive. As if my hands already knew the trajectory. As if my muscles had already calculated angle, speed, and timing.
My right hand shot out.
My fingers closed around the ceramic inches above the floor.
The bowl did not shatter.
The silence afterward was deafening.
Mansoo froze, chopsticks suspended halfway to his mouth. Eunbi dropped hers. They clattered against the table, echoing like thunder.
They stared at me.
Both of them.
With that expression I had come to recognize well—shock mixed with something darker. Something more unsettling.
Because an eight-month-old didn't do that.
An eight-month-old barely had the coordination to hold a toy. He didn't calculate ballistic trajectories. He didn't snatch falling objects with the precision of a trained warrior.
Shit.
Mansoo recovered first. He laughed—too loud, too forced.
"Ha! Did you see that? His father's reflexes!"
He stood and took the bowl from my hand. I let go without resistance. My fingers were too weak to maintain a grip anyway. The movement had been… what? Muscle memory? A past life's survival instinct bleeding into new flesh?
"Mansoo." Eunbi's voice was low. Tense. "That's not normal."
"Of course it is." He set the bowl back on the table and patted my head with exaggerated casualness. "Just luck. The bowl fell near him. He reached out. Coincidence."
"He calculated the distance. I saw his eyes. He followed the bowl the whole way down."
"Babies track moving objects. That's normal development."
"Not like that!" She stood abruptly, her chair scraping the floor. "Not with that… that precision! Mansoo, look at him. Really look at your son. Do you see what I see?"
Mansoo looked at me.
Really looked.
And in his eyes, I saw the internal battle. The part of him that wanted to believe everything was fine—that his son was just precocious, a little strange but nothing serious.
And the other part.
The part that had seen too much in his previous life to ignore the obvious.
"I see a baby who got lucky," he said at last.
But his voice lacked conviction.
Eunbi sat back down slowly. Her hands trembled slightly; she hid them under the table.
"Alright," she murmured. "Alright. Luck."
They resumed eating.
In silence.
A heavier silence than before.
And I stared at my own hands—those tiny baby hands that had just betrayed how deeply abnormal I truly was.
Fantastic.
The rumors spread through the village like a disease.
Slowly at first. Whispers at the communal well. Sideways glances when Eunbi went shopping at the weekly market. Conversations that abruptly stopped when Mansoo approached.
I didn't hear them directly. Obviously. I was a damn baby. I wasn't invited on gossip rounds.
But I still heard.
Fragments of conversations spoken in front of me, assuming I was too young to understand. Nighttime discussions between Eunbi and Mansoo, when they thought I was asleep.
"Park Mina says her son is afraid to play near our house."
"That's ridiculous."
"She says Hyeon looks at him strangely. That it gives him chills."
"He's a baby, Eunbi. How can he look 'strange'?"
"You know exactly how."
Silence.
Then:
"People always talk. It'll pass."
But it didn't pass.
It worsened—like an avalanche that starts with a snowflake and ends by burying entire villages.
"The Choi child never cries."
"He doesn't smile either."
"My sister-in-law says he has an old man's eyes."
"Blessed or cursed?"
"Who can say? The Guardians work in mysterious ways."
"Or he's just strange. It happens."
"Remember Lee's son? The one who never spoke? They found him drowned in the lake at seven."
"That's not the same thing."
"How do you know?"
I collected these fragments. Assembled them into a macabre puzzle.
The conclusion was obvious.
The village had decided I was either a divine blessing or a walking curse.
And frankly, they seemed to be leaning toward the second.
Eunbi suffered for it. I saw it in her slumped shoulders when she returned from the market. In the way she avoided other women's eyes. In the apologies she murmured for things that weren't her fault.
"He's just calm. There's nothing wrong with that."
But she didn't truly believe it.
Mansoo reacted differently.
He closed himself off. Became more taciturn. His answers to neighbors who asked overly personal questions were short. Harsh.
"My son is fine. That's all you need to know."
And people stopped asking.
Because Mansoo had that aura. That presence clearly said, "Don't push me." Even the village men—those who'd spent their lives working the land, hauling loads that would break oxen—didn't seek confrontation with him.
Which, ironically, only fueled the rumors.
"Choi Mansoo is hiding something."
"Of course he is. Have you seen his scars?"
"He's a deserter, I'm telling you. Or a criminal."
"And the child? What does that make him?"
"Nothing good."
I hated them.
All of them.
These petty villagers with their tiny lives and even tinier fears. People who found comfort in mediocrity and a threat in anything out of the ordinary.
But I could do nothing.
Except watch.
Memorize their faces. Their voices. Their names whispered in conversations.
Park Mina.
Lee Dongmin.
Kim Soyeon.
Chen Jisoo.
One day, perhaps—when this body functioned properly—I'd pay them a visit.
Just to remind those pieces of shit that judging a child barely months old was exactly the kind of behavior that deserved—
No.
No. Calm down.
You're a baby. You can't do anything.
And anyway, they're just words. They can't hurt me.
Except they did hurt Eunbi.
And that, I couldn't ignore.
My first word came on an autumn evening, when the cold began to bite.
Eleven months.
Long enough that even the most inattentive parents began worrying about verbal development. Eunbi talked to me constantly, trying to coax anything out of me.
"Say 'mama.' Mama. Maaaama."
Silence.
"Or 'papa'? Papa? Can you say papa"?
Nothing.
Mansoo was less alarmed. "He'll talk when he's ready. My father said I didn't say a word until I was two."
"Two?" Eunbi went pale. "Oh my god…"
That evening, I watched them from my usual corner. They sat near the fire. Mansoo repaired a farm tool—a chipped sickle. Eunbi sewed, her fingers moving with mechanical precision, piercing fabric, pulling thread, and repeating the motion over and over.
And in my head, a pressure.
Not a thought.
An obsession.
A pull that had been building for weeks. A need for… direction? Purpose?
South.
The word existed in my mind like an arrow pointing toward something I couldn't see. The capital. Yongsong. The Dragon City.
It was there.
Somewhere in that direction.
She was there.
Serin.
The woman with amber eyes whose face haunted me whenever I closed my eyelids.
I didn't know why.
I didn't know how I knew.
But the certainty was absolute—etched into something deeper than memory, older than reason.
"South."
The word escaped.
My voice—or what passed for it. Hi. Childish. But clear.
Undeniably clear.
Eunbi's thread slipped. The needle pierced her finger. A bead of blood welled up. She didn't notice.
She was staring at me, mouth open.
Mansoo dropped the sickle. It hit the floor with a metallic clatter.
"What did he say?"
"He… I think he said 'south.'" Eunbi's voice trembled between disbelief and something that sounded dangerously like hope. "Hyeon? Baby? Can you say it again?"
I looked at her.
Then at Mansoo.
Their faces held that expression I had learned to dread—that fragile hope, that desperate need to believe that maybe, just maybe, everything would be alright.
I knew I should say something else.
"Mama."
"Papa."
Any normal word an eleven-month-old was supposed to say first.
Instead—
"South."
Stronger this time. Clearer.
The color drained from Eunbi's face. She turned to Mansoo. "Why… why would he say that?"
Mansoo didn't answer immediately. His eyes were locked on me with an intensity that could have melted steel. He was thinking. I saw it in the way his jaw tightened. In the twitch of the muscle near his right eye.
"It's just… babbling," he said at last.
But even he didn't believe it.
"That didn't sound like babbling."
"What else do you want it to be? An order? A prophecy?" He laughed. The sound was as hollow as an empty coffin. "He's a baby, Eunbi. He heard the word somewhere and repeated it. That's all."
"We never talk about the South."
"Maybe a merchant said it. Or someone in the village. Sounds travel."
She nodded slowly. Unconvinced—but accepting.
Because what was the alternative?
Accepting that her son spoke words pointing toward a distant destination, as if guided by an internal compass?
She stood. Came toward me. Knelt. Took my small hands in hers.
"You're a mystery, Hyeon," she said softly. "A mystery I don't understand."
Her eyes shone—not with tears. Not yet. But the threat was there, hanging over us like a blade.
"But you're my son. My baby. And I love you. Even if you scare me sometimes."
She held me close.
And in her arms, I felt the weight of that lie.
Because I wasn't her son.
Not really.
I was an intruder. A stowaway in a body meant for someone else.
But I let her hold me.
Because it was all I could do.
And because a part of me—a part I didn't want to acknowledge—was beginning to understand that this woman, Eunbi, with her black hair and calloused hands, deserved better than the son she had been given.
That night, lying in my cradle, I stared at the dark ceiling and thought about that word.
South.
So simple.
So heavy.
A direction.
A promise.
A reminder that somewhere, far away, in a city I couldn't yet reach, someone was waiting.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it was all an illusion. A corrupted remnant of memory. A sick obsession of a mind that had survived death but was not intact.
But the image remained.
The amber eyes.
The face that had looked at me in the darkness of my rebirth.
Serin.
I would find a way.
One way or another.
When this body worked.
When I could walk. Speak. Act.
I would find her.
"South," I whispered one last time into the night.
And the word hung in the air—like a promise.
Or a threat.