The First Old Man’s Tale p.570
“Fiend and King f the demon kings, if I tell you what happened to me and that deer, and you find it strange and amazing, indeed stranger and more amazing than what happened to you and the merchant, will you grant me a third of your claim on him for his crime and guilt?” The demon replied, “I will” The old man said:
This deer was a woman I was about to marry. Before I met her, I was just a poor man with homeless begging some money to people. When winter came, the cold weather put me to starve to death. I had no food, or place to stay to make myself warm. I lost my focus because of hunger. I walked down the street and fell down in front of a house. I thought I was dying like this, but when I opened my eyes, I was in the house where I fell down. It was a big house where one woman lives alone. That woman lit a stove and served me a warm soup. After I finished eating soup, I realized that I had no place to go. I asked the woman “I do not have a place to go, can I stay here for few days?” Then the woman said, “If you become a companion to talk with me, you can stay at my home.” Women, who’ve been living a lonely life, became energetic since I became a person to talk with her. Living there I also could eat and sleep comfortably. Later on, I eventually fell in love with her because I was so touched that she treated this poor man as an ordinary man and even though she had a wealth, she was humble.
I proposed to her and she accepted. We were about to get married. However one day, a stranger opened the door and entered home. That stranger was a sister of my woman. She lived in the mountain to receive a magic training to make her dead husband come alive for ten years and returned home. My woman got red in the face as soon as she saw her sister. I asked what happened, and she replied: “She left this house and made me stay here alone for ten years just to save her dead husband.” That night, while I was sleeping, her sister woke me up and took me to her room. She talked to me about her husband and she told me that she could not make him alive with her power. I consoled her, but right after, she looked towards me and said that she wants to sleep with a man just one night to console her feelings. I told her that I would go back to my room and I faced towards the door. She then stopped me and asked me to sleep with her just once. She kneeled down in front of me and started weeping and said “I promise you. I will never to ask you again.” I inevitably accepted. However, she forgot to lock the door. Next day, eventually my woman saw us sleeping. She grasped a sword in one hand and looked at her sister with anger filled face. Her sister’s face turned deadly pale. My woman could not control her temper and put her knife to her sister’s neck on the spot. She wrapped her neck and said, “Are you really killing the part of your bloodline because of that one man? Yes, I am going to be dead soon, but I still can make you not to love forever.” She died and black smoke came out from her body, and it enveloped my woman. When the smoke disappeared, my woman was gone, and there was a deer.
Ten years has gone by, still I was overcome with grief, with the fact that I was a cause of my woman’s lost and her body transform to a deer. With this deer, I was wandering all over the places finding whom who can release my woman back to a human form. There was a castle I found, a witch was living inside, and I was begging her to help me out. Turned out, her magic and soothsaying couldn’t help. But with her saying that if I traveled to the North, I would find my destiny. Another woman would show up, and I would fall in love with her. Once it came to the time I left my woman under this deer form, she would finally transform back to a human body. But every woman whom I marry would become a deer instead, until I could prove my weak heart that I never overcome, a curse of weak heart yearning to sleep with other women on a night before marriage. But if I travel to the South, I would find a demon whose heart obsessed by sorrow that he lost his son. If I could stop the demon from killing people, my woman would change back to a human form. I couldn’t believe the witch with the fact that she could not even help me with her magic but telling me to wandering to the North and to the South. I did not even think of the demon and another woman I would marry again but stick with my old plan going to the South. By the time I met one merchant and heard his story of his return on the New Year’s Day, I stun by the story of a lost son Demon. With a hope that I could release my woman back to her normal human form, when the demon appeared, I begged the demon if my story of a deer could amaze and entertain him, he would grant the merchant’s life. The Demon replied that he would. I was start telling my deer story. While listening to my woman story, the Demon was crying. He impressed by the fact that more than losing one life, I was living to see my woman gone under an animal form. The demon felt sorry to have a merchant and everyone who got into his land killed as his son died. By the time he said he would not kill the merchant, I saw black smoke came out from my deer like the day, ten years back then. It reminded me and frightened me, I closed my eyes and promised to myself and the God that if the deer transformed back to a normal human body, I would never sleep with other women again. Suddenly, I opened my eyes I saw my woman standing in front of me. And I saw a grateful smile of the demon and again the most beautiful smile of my woman.