Chapter 47

Prologue, The Feeding God

There's nothing to talk about.

It wouldn't do you any good to listen to the ramblings of an old man like me anyway. Old folks are superstitious, and their memories can't be trusted.

Still want to hear it, huh? Can't be helped.

My family, you see, has raised silkworms for generations.

You know silk, right? We raised silkworms from cocoons to harvest that.

It wasn't just us. Back in the day, every household raised silkworms. This village thrived on sericulture. There were literally mountains of mulberry trees.

Then came synthetic fibers and all that, and people gradually gave up. By the time I was born, only our house and a few others were still doing it.

My old man was stubborn. Said it wasn't about profit—sericulture was a matter of pride.

So we had a huge barn for raising silkworms. When all the silkworms started munching on mulberry leaves at once, it sounded like rain even on sunny days. I loved that sound.

But you can't get silk thread without killing the silkworms. Those fat, adorable little bugs would end up dead inside cold cocoons. I felt bad for them, so I tried not to get too attached.

My old man kept up the sericulture, but even then, you can't live if you can't eat.

One year, there was a terrible cold summer, and all our precious mulberry trees withered. We were on the brink.

That same year, my mother had a stillbirth with my younger brother. She lost her mind a bit after that, and the house turned terribly gloomy.

Even when we humans were cutting back on food just to survive, the silkworms kept munching away without a care. I remember how the sound I used to like started to irritate me unbearably.

I told my old man we should just give up on sericulture. Any normal father would've smacked a brat like me, but he never raised his hand.

He just flatly refused to nod.

You know how 'silkworm' is written with the characters for 'heaven' and 'insect'? He said they were truly the gods of this village, and we had to treat them with care. The look in his eyes was terrifying—I would've preferred getting punched.

My old man was bad, but my mother was worse.

She'd dig up my dead brother's grave night after night.

She'd wrap his body in silk made by my father, take it to the barn, and say, 'Look, this is your dad's workplace. When you grow up, you'll help your big brother here too.'

My brother's corpse looked like a dried-up silkworm inside a cocoon.

My old man often left to help out in other villages' fields to make ends meet, so he wasn't home much. But whenever he came back, he always told me, 'Stay away from the barn.'

Not that I needed to be told. There was nothing there but my deranged mother and half-starved silkworms that we couldn't even feed properly.

Then, I started hearing strange sounds near the barn at night. Wet squishing, dragging noises, like long hair and flesh being slammed into the dirt.

My mother was probably doing something. I curled up in my futon like a cocoon and waited for morning.

One night, I woke up to the sound of heavy rain.

The rain echoed through the dark house. There hadn't been a single cloud during the day, so I was surprised it was pouring.

But when I opened the shutters, not a single drop was falling.

That's when I realized—it was the sound of silkworms eating mulberry leaves.

The sound was coming from the barn.

But it wasn't the usual dry rustling, like rain soaking into dry soil. It was intense and damp, like a sudden summer downpour.

I had no choice but to go into the barn, even though I was told not to.

In the pitch black, I saw a huge shadow on the silkworm platform in the back. A cocoon. A massive one, big enough to fit a person. I remembered how my mother had wrapped my brother's corpse in silk.

The cocoon was trembling slightly.

It wasn't the silkworms moving inside—it was something else. Something with thin, gauzy white wings was rolling the cocoon, making it grow little by little.

Whatever was inside the cocoon was shaking it, like it was resisting...

I don't remember anything after that.

By the next morning, the cocoon in the barn was gone, and only the silkworms remained.

My mother was gone too. Without a trace.

You think she was abandoned? Who knows. It's a common story. When my old man came back, he was oddly calm, like he already knew everything before I even spoke.

He just said one thing: 'The god protected us.'

Sure enough, after that, our sericulture recovered, and everything went smoothly.

Doesn't make any sense, huh?

That's why I said it's not worth listening to. Just forget it—think of it as the ramblings of a senile old man.

I don't expect you to understand.

Just like how the sun watches over us even if no one else knows, it's enough that we understand—just us.