Little Mushroom was always playing and often went into the forest to play out of sight of his parents. One day he arose especially early and started to run outside, without breakfast or cleaning up. His mother caught him and asked, “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

“To play at the foot of the mountains,” he answered and tried to rush out, but his father stopped him and said, “That is far, and you are so small. You have no one to play with, and that can be dangerous.”

“But I do have someone to play with, the little fat boy with the red vest. He is there, he is always there.”

“Is that true?” asked both parents and being assured, they let him go, but not before his mother gave him a needle and some red thread and whispered in his ear what he was to do.

Little Mushroom went to the forest at the foot of the mountains and played with the little fat boy with the red vest. They played all day, and as the sun began to set behind the mountains, they separated and the little fat boy with the red vest ran off trailing the red thread that Little Mushroom had sewn onto the back of the red vest, just as his mother had told him.

The parents had watched all this from behind a large tree, and they now followed the little fat boy through the forest and down to the river. There they found, as the sun set, not a little fat boy but a huge ginseng plant with a red thread neatly sewn onto it. The parents dug up the plant and took it home and cleaned it. Then they put it into their largest kettle and began to boil the ginseng root into soup.

“When we eat this ginseng, we will become immortals,” said the two to each other. But each one thought other, different thoughts. The father said to himself, “If I can eat this ginseng then I will become an immortal and I can have any spirit I want for a wife, and not be burdened with her for all eternity. But she must not eat any of it.”