Flash, flash! The thunder burst as if shattering the earth. In the whitening light, a massive body shone like a savior.
Managing Director Gi—he moved his cunning tongue.
“I’m going to thoroughly exclude the first two people who ran out.”
Woonghee couldn’t close his jaw. Through his slightly parted lips, the rain and wind violently rushed in. Gulp, he barely swallowed the saliva mixed with rainwater.
“…Then what about those people’s food?”
It wasn’t just about food. Setting aside the surging hunger, what about the loneliness and solitude? This was a prison without bars where even cell phones didn’t work.
“Well.”
The man slowly closed and opened his eyes.
“It’s not right to treat prisoners too well, is it?”
He was like someone trying to implement a just society. When in reality he was thoroughly trying to abandon them. He was terrible. And at this point, Woonghee had to entrust his fate to such a man.
“The line I drew for Woonghee-ssi was up to here.”
The man’s index finger scraped across the top of the cliff.
“But Woonghee-ssi crossed the line I drew.”
And then, he pointed to the bottom of the precipice.
“What should I do with you?”
The man asked. Unable to find an answer, Woonghee bit his lips shut.
“Should I abandon you?”
Rainwater flowed stickily down his skin. He couldn’t even open his mouth. Even though his body wasn’t hardened with wax.
The fear of possibly being alone forever was like a beast with its maw open wide, aiming for Woonghee with keen eyes. It was truly immense. It felt exactly like being sucked into a pitch-black black hole.
…How long had it been since he fell here? His vision grew distant and he couldn’t gauge the time.
His hands trembled. The strength drained from his grip and he dropped his phone. Mechanical sounds flowed from the phone that fell to the ground.
“…And I heard funeral costs are fucking expensive, so just don’t hold one if possible. No one will come anyway.”
Burn the bones to ashes and scatter them in the sea… No, just bury them in the mountains. Scatter them from somewhere high.
He believed he hadn’t shown even a bit of emotion… But listening again like this, desperate fear was revealed between the short, chopped-up words.
Fear, terror, sorrow—all of it was positioned there intact.
Fuck, look how desperate it is. Anyone would think he’d been kidnapped. When he just stupidly missed his step. He was really stupid to try to send something like that to Woongju.
Sending that voice trembling with fear as his last words? Was he planning to plant trauma?
Right, she shouldn’t have had to hear this. Woongju had no reason to hear it. As expected. As expected, I can’t just die here like this.
“No, don’t abandon me.”
Did he hear, or not? Because shadows pooled deeply on his face, he couldn’t see well.
“Hmm?”
Soon the man raised his elegantly wet eyebrows. His rain-soaked lips seemed to curl up ominously.
He had drawn his interest, his attention.
“You’ll need me, won’t you?”
That the great Managing Director Gi had something to gain from a bug like me? If others heard, they would surely have laughed.
But there was one thing. Woonghee had a sharp weapon in his hands. Because both that man and he were beast bastards who were less evolved.
“Without me, how are you planning to handle your rut?”
Soon the man’s eyes widened greatly. Then he tilted his sharp jaw back and burst into thick laughter.
Haha, ha, hahaha… The laughter echoed eerily.
Soon something wriggled down from above and entered Woonghee’s view. The thing that grew larger was a rescue rope.
It looked incomparably sturdier than thick grass stems. Knots were tied at intervals, seeming like they would support his injured body well.
“If you don’t want to be abandoned by me, try crawling up.”
As soon as the words ended, Woonghee grabbed the rope with both arms. If it had been a grass stem, he would have been anxious not knowing when it might break, but with this rope, it seemed he could climb without necessarily stepping on the rock wall.
Whoooosh. Amid the pouring rain and wind, Woonghee alternately grabbed the rope with both hands and climbed upward.
“Hoo, hoo.”
While regulating his breath, he put strength into his jaw. From above, the man looked down. At the one desperately clinging to the cliff.
…Is this, does this really mean he’s forgiving me? Is he really trying to save me? Could it be he’s planning to deceive me and then punish me? Like how he pretended to protect the others while confining them in that narrow bungalow.
Huk, haaa… The rain attacked his entire body. His hands gradually lost strength due to friction. Woonghee tied his hands to a knot and breathed roughly.
Now, now I’m really almost there…!
He reached a point where if he stretched his neck, he could see the top of the cliff. It was the moment when a smile was about to catch on the corners of Woonghee’s mouth.
One more time. Just one more time forward and he’d make it. He reached out his last grasp filled with joy, but his palm slipped on the rainwater.
“Uh, uhh…!”
Swoosh, Woonghee’s body slipped down in an instant. Really, after coming all the way here, was he slipping? Every scene unfolding before his eyes appeared in slow motion.
“N-no…!”
Woonghee unconsciously reached his hand upward. His spread fingers rippled toward the empty air.
His heart sank with a thud. Was he going to die like this, smashing his head into that precipice? After coming all the way to the end, after making him harbor hope! At the moment he shut his eyes tight in despair, from above, there was a force that firmly gripped his hand.
The one who saved Woonghee was the man again this time. Managing Director Gi pulled Woonghee up the cliff without showing any sign of difficulty. As if chosen by a messiah, he was lifted up by the strength extended from above.
“Woonghee-ssi.”
Huk, gasp… I’m alive, I’m alive. Prostrated as if kneeling before the man, Woonghee breathed fiercely.
“Our Woonghee-ssi is pretty and good, right?”
“Hm?” the man asked. Before he knew it, he was sitting beside him with one knee bent. No, he was monitoring the inside of his pupils.
Fuck…, fuck.
Woonghee didn’t want to die. He wanted to live. Desperately, madly.
Death. Especially death faced alone on a deserted island was an unfamiliar terror that was suffocating just to imagine. Worse than a living monster.
“That’s why I like you. So, I’ll tell you one last time.”
“……”
“Don’t betray me.”
Though his tone was generous, it wasn’t a kind suggestion that left room for freedom. Rather, it was closer to a command reeking of rot. If there was betrayal, it meant he would mercilessly punish him as well.
A man who drove someone who had just returned from the threshold of death to a cliff without giving them a chance to breathe. That man said he was giving him a chance.
“If you don’t want to be confined too.”
Woonghee panted breathlessly without a word. Barely hiding his wavering gaze through his hair that hung down like water parsley, all soaked. Hoping the life raft he hid from him would never, ever be discovered…
“Answer.”
The man was as domineering and oppressive as always. Woonghee bit the tip of his tongue once firmly before answering.
“…Yes.”
The man who had been kneeling before him slowly rose. Woonghee’s head slowly rose upward following him. It was similar to when he and the man were at the top and bottom of the cliff.
…What on earth is he trying to do again?
He suddenly took off his shoes. He was a man who always maintained perfect attire, so seeing him standing barefoot on the ground was extremely unfamiliar.
“What are you doing?”
The shoes he removed were handed to Woonghee. Woonghee just stared blankly down at the shoes in front of him. Why on earth was he giving these to him?
Following that, the man’s chiseled jaw pointed to those shoes.
“Put them on.”
“No. It’s okay, this kind of thing…”
Woonghee refused while waving his hands, but the man stared coldly at those waving hands.
“Or stay abandoned like that.”
Swish, the back of the man who turned his body grew more distant. The back covered in a black shirt disappeared through the viciously pouring rain.
Ah, he shouldn’t be doing this.
Woonghee hurriedly picked up and clutched the shoes. Sticky mud got on his chest, but that didn’t matter at all. Limping hard on one ankle, he chased after the man. In case he would leave him behind like this, he chased wildly.
Please, please, please, please…
His ankle throbbed and ached terribly but he gritted his teeth and walked. Because being left alone was worse. He didn’t want to be left alone in this quiet and scary mountain.
Yet the distance with Managing Director Gi wasn’t narrowing at all.
