Don't Ask for an Encore

In a mountain town in late Joseon, a deaf instrument maker builds a twelve-string zither whose vibrations let her push stone with her bare hands, becoming the town’s defender when a quarry beast begins swallowing houses into the hillside. She performs barefoot on a wooden platform, reading the music through her soles while a quarrelsome children’s ensemble follows the colored ribbons tied to her wrists. Each rescue warps another part of the zither, and the replacement wood must come from the town’s buildings; after surrendering her own workshop, she asks the wealthy innkeeper to let her dismantle his empty banquet hall. He barricades the doors instead, just as the beast’s granite snout breaks through the performance platform beneath her feet.