Chapter Sixteen: The Hedgehog

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Master Shen waved his hand, cutting off my question.

“It’s nothing! Just the cry of a bird!”

“A bird’s cry?” I froze.

I did not agree that what we had heard was a bird. I had seen countless birds in the hunting grounds and heard every manner of birdsong, but never had I heard such a sinister, grotesque cackle.

After thinking it over carefully, however, I realized that there was one possible exception.

An owl.

That was right.

And yet, something still felt wrong. I knew what an owl sounded like. Back in the hunting grounds, the owls I had heard called out with a drawn-out “hoo… hoo…”

Not with this hideous, cackling laughter.

But no matter how puzzled I was, Master Shen had no intention of explaining. He simply turned and silently walked back in the direction we had come from.

I sighed. Since it seemed pointless to ask again, I followed him through the forest. We struggled onward for nearly an hour before I caught sight of the cabin’s shadow beneath the moonlight.

Master Shen spoke first.

“Three-Seven! Let’s check the snares and see whether we caught anything.”

“All right!”

We followed him deeper into the woods.

I discovered that Master Shen had set a great many snares around the forest—some for rabbits, some for roe deer, and others for different animals. Each kind of prey required a different kind of snare.

Strangely enough, in the Greater Khingan Mountains, wire snares normally caught something nine times out of ten. The region was overflowing with wild animals.

Wolves, jackals, roe deer, elk, yellow weasels, lynxes… They were everywhere, crawling over every mountain and filling the depths of the old forest. That was what the mountains had in greatest abundance.

And yet, as I followed Master Shen through the woods, we inspected four or five of the snares he had set earlier.

Every one of them was empty.

At first, Master Shen’s expression was perfectly calm. But as we continued finding no prey in any of the snares, his face gradually became strange.

By the end, his expression had turned downright grim, and fine beads of sweat had appeared along his temples.

Then, all at once, the scene began to feel familiar.

I quickly remembered.

When I had first stayed with Master Shen in that shrine cabin, I had gone alone to collect the animals caught in the snares. The same thing had happened then.

At the final snare, I had encountered that eerie rabbit.

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“Master Shen!”

I reached up and pulled away the sticky cobwebs clinging to my forehead, intending to warn him.

But the moment I opened my mouth, Master Shen said coldly, “Shut up! Three-Seven, don’t speak!”

The furious shout left me completely stunned.

Something was wrong with Master Shen’s mood.

Under the moonlight, I could clearly see the veins bulging on the back of the hand gripping his hunting rifle.

Before I could figure out what was happening, Master Shen and I reached the final snare.

The moment we saw it, we both instinctively let out a sigh of relief.

Because inside the snare lay a dead hedgehog.

“Whew!”

Master Shen exhaled deeply, as though he wanted to empty his chest of every last bit of pent-up air.

Looking at him, I asked instinctively, “Master Shen!”

“Hm?”

“What was wrong with you just now?”

Master Shen gave a quiet, distant sigh.

“Take the hedgehog back first. I’ll tell you later.”

“All right!”

I nodded quickly.

Master Shen then walked toward the cabin. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but as I watched his back, I could not shake the feeling that he looked utterly lost.

After thinking it over, I paid him no further attention. I picked up the snare, lifted the hedgehog by it, and followed him toward the cabin.

When handling a hedgehog, never grab it by the spines. They may not look particularly threatening, but once they pierce your skin, the pain can leave an ordinary person numb and helpless for a long time.

By the time I reached the cabin, Master Shen had already lit the campfire and was sitting beside it.

I was not hungry, so I tossed the hedgehog aside and sat down opposite him.

After walking through the forest for so long, my entire body felt sticky with sweat. I removed my coat while watching Master Shen.

“Three-Seven,” he called.

“Yes?”

“Do you remember what I told you at the very beginning, when I first taught you how to hunt?”

I paused briefly, then answered without hesitation.

“I remember. The first thing you told me was this: We hunters owe every successful hunt to the protection of the Lord of the Five Mountains. Only because the Lord of the Five Mountains protects us can we obtain any prey. If he is willing to let us hunters take animals, then we will find prey and all manner of other things. But if he does not want us to obtain anything, then we will encounter bears, tigers—in short, whatever danger exists, we will meet it!”

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After hearing me repeat those words, Master Shen nodded.

“That’s right.”

When he finished speaking, he fell silent and looked at me thoughtfully.

I suddenly seemed to understand.

The first time, Master Shen had set six snares and ultimately caught an eerie rabbit. Now he had set six snares again, yet the first five were completely empty.

That was why his expression had become so grim.

If all six snares had contained nothing…

Then we could understand it to mean that the Lord of the Five Mountains did not want us to obtain any prey. And if that was the case, our journey into the Greater Khingan Mountains would surely end in disaster.

The moment I understood this, my expression stiffened and my heart began pounding wildly.

Master Shen nodded silently. Then the icy look on his face softened somewhat.

“It’s all right, Three-Seven. The fact that the final snare caught a hedgehog shows that the Lord of the Five Mountains may not be particularly fond of us, but he doesn’t intend to put us in serious danger.”

Even after hearing Master Shen say that, my pounding heart refused to calm down.

I held the cigarette he handed me between my lips and leaned toward the fire to light it.

After taking a deep drag, I felt light-headed. My gaze drifted toward the hedgehog I had tossed aside.

And then I saw it.

The hedgehog had been bound tightly in the snare and had clearly been dead for quite some time.

Yet—

Yet, just like the rabbit in the shrine cabin before it, the hedgehog began to convulse.

Then—

It stood up.

It stood upright like a human being.

Its eyes glowed with a sickly green light, and the corners of its mouth curved upward just as the rabbit’s had.

It stared straight at me.

And smiled.