Let me tell you a tale.

They say a Gumiho, that mystical nine-tailed fox, stores the essence drawn from humans inside a fox bead, don't they?

Yes, let's talk about a Gumiho today.

Once upon a time, in an age so long ago that goblins roamed and tigers smoked pipes, there lived a white Gumiho who had survived for a thousand years.

The Gumiho was a creature masterfully skilled in the art of bewitching humans, but one day, she suddenly vanished without a trace.

Why, you ask? Because that Gumiho made a grave mistake.

One day, while scouting for prey, she chose a scholar living in Dongrae Village at the foot of a distant mountain as her meal for the day.

The scholar was famous in the village for his virtue, and to the Gumiho's eyes, he looked so innocent and easy that she took quite a liking to him. After all, the innocent are the easiest to seduce.

And so, that night, the Gumiho succeeded in enchanting the scholar and drawing him into her bed.

However...

This scholar was no ordinary man.

While pretending to kiss her, he snatched the fox bead from the Gumiho and swallowed it whole.

Startled, the Gumiho begged and pleaded for him to return the bead, but alas, the scholar had already taken it, and there was no easy way to retrieve something that had already dissolved into his body.

Without her fox bead, a Gumiho is nothing more than a beautiful woman with nine tails, unable to perform divine sorcery or exquisite transformations.

Thus, as a last resort, this Gumiho chose—

To become the scholar's wife. She had to stay by his side and absorb even the faint energy leaking from the fox bead he swallowed just to preserve her own life.

And so, the legend says the Gumiho still lives with the scholar to this day.

Yes, that is today's story.

The details? You'll have to find those out for yourself.

🦊