“Hic, hiiic…!”
Sob, sob…. Woonghee’s shallow belly heaved. Sticky tears streamed down his round cheeks. With his clenched fist, he wiped the surging tears, and wiped them again.
“Sniff….”
He tried so hard not to cry, not to feel wronged. But it was all useless. It was all for nothing. He tried so diligently not to loathe himself so miserably like this….
I’m just an ant after all. If you press down with your thumb and kill me, I’ll die without even a squeak. Even if I die here alone, nothing will happen to this world.
“…Sniff!”
Woonghee trembled at the surging self-loathing. But at least it’s a rainy day like this. At least he could hide and cry like this. Woonghee cried to his heart’s content. What tormented him most here wasn’t hunger, this damn cold, or the bugs biting between his sweaty thighs or the nape of his neck.
It was the dog-like loneliness.
When he lay alone in that shitty cave, Woonghee shuddered at the surging sense of isolation. The loneliness seated deep within. His hatred of humans kept pushing Paeng Hana away.
You’re the same kind of human anyway, you’ll stab me in the back too.
Like that, as if a defense mechanism, he raised his thorns and only tried to stab at her.
“I want to… go home…”
The words didn’t even come out properly. His throat choked up, and his heart twisted like wringing out dry laundry. He was worried about Woongju. How scared she must be without him. What if she thinks he died and is scraping together their meager savings to hold a funeral? Just thinking about it made him feel like he’d go crazy.
“Fuck, I want to go home…!”
This isn’t a place for people to live. It’s truly a living hell. When he sleeps, nightmares attack, and when his eyes are open, it’s an even more horrific reality.
And yet he endured. Desperately and miserably, stubbornly and abjectly, dragging his body, somehow enduring each day. Because he wanted to live. Just because he wanted to stay alive.
I… I just wanted to live well. It’s not like I wanted to live as grandly as someone else.
Was that such a big greed?
…Ha, really, I’m going crazy. Someone said this, didn’t they? That heaven only gives trials that humans can endure?
But why are my trials as mighty as natural disasters? I don’t know why it tests and punishes me at all hours.
“I’m fucking nothing. I’m so fucking weak I don’t have the confidence to endure.”
Rain viciously lashed at his bony, protruding feet. His body trembled violently. His whole body was soaked and damp with rainwater. The sandy beach dragged at Woonghee’s ankles like a swamp. He had to go, he had to escape quickly…!
But where on earth should he escape to? Behind him, the cries of beasts swarmed. It sounded like the screams of torn-apart beasts, or like a starving monster growling.
In front, the sea fiercely attacked. Dark blue waves opened a giant mouth and crashed down as if to swallow him down their throat at any moment.
Then once more, the sky tore apart. A deafening roar split the ears, and white lightning cleaved the darkness.
Right now, when everything seemed to stop for a moment. He was thoroughly alone. Before this enormous fear stripped stark naked, he could only cower fragilely.
…I have to run away.
He had to escape somewhere from this disaster attacking from all directions.
Who knows when a monster might open its eyes in that cave and chase after him. He has to go.
Woonghee kicked off his feet again. Raindrops and teardrops clumped on his long eyelashes scattered. Even having to shake off the sandy beach that had become sticky like a swamp from absorbing so much rainwater, he had to go.
“Haa…!”
Eventually Woonghee arrived somewhere. Haa, haa! Above his head as he gasped out rough breaths was a bungalow built in the trees.
“Ah….”
Woonghee looked up at it blankly. He stepped wildly, led by instinct, and it ended up being here. Unable to even knock. His soaking wet, pure white toes gripped the grains of sand tightly.
…You idiot. You moron. Coming all the way here. Why can’t you reach out your hand?
His petty pride.
What was seated in Woonghee like a spine was holding him back. Because it was as hard as iron, so solid even he himself couldn’t break it.
“…Excuse me.”
There.
He just burst that single small word like a bubble. Drip, drop, drop. Woonghee drooped both shoulders. Trembling, his body shook. The cold rain seemed to smash through his shoulder blades and settle in the bone spaces riddled with holes.
‘I’m cold….’
Woonghee, with nowhere to go, nowhere to return to, looked down at his feet.
It must have been just a brief moment. But anxiety, fear, loneliness stretched that short instant out. He was wandering as if trapped in eternity.
Creeeeak…!
Soon the wooden door let out a fierce scream. It was the sound of wet wood twisting. Darkness split between the crack of the door, and someone walked out from beyond.
“……”
“……”
In the midst of the still insanely pouring rain. Woonghee raised his drooped head to look up at that person. His vision was blurred because of the rain, and he couldn’t hear anything properly over the sound of rain pounding in his ears. A world of nothingness.
He approached very slowly and bent his knees in front of Woonghee.
“How pitiful.”
He lifted Woonghee’s chin with his index finger.
“Woonghee-ssi.”
He calls him.
“You knew I was here when you came, right?”
His thumb gently rubbed Woonghee’s cheek. He wondered what he was doing, but it seemed he was trying to wipe away tears.
“Hm? Not Director Hwang, not Paeng Hana, not Daehyung.”
You knew I was here. The man added those words. With both eyes, as if imprinting on his retinas the face of the one who came looking for him, taking it all in. Through the damp, pale-colored hair, Lee Woonghee’s crumpled eyes came into view.
His eyes, which had been so white, were cracked with fine lines. So this is the face you were crying with. With this complexion, you were hiding in the rainwater and crying.
“Ah, ah….”
His slender neck trembled. A neckline that knew elegance like a champagne flute. But as high-grade as it was, it was solid enough not to break easily. The man recognized this highest quality product.
“I, I knew. That you’re here.”
At the sobbing voice, the man generously added follow-up words.
“Then you know what you have to do.”
Lee Woonghee, whose whole body was soaked and trembling, shook anxiously. His red lips were dampened. Since his whole body was soaked in rain, that must be rainwater too. The man thought he hoped that at least that was tears.
“Give me….”
Soon the lips that the man’s desire clung to stirred. Pop, pock, pock. Plosive sounds burst and struck the man’s ears.
“Help me.”
Please.
I think I’m at my limit now, I don’t know how to take another step anymore, so help me.
“Come here.”
The man grabbed Woonghee’s wrist tightly. Woonghee’s body was immediately drawn and shoved beyond the door. When the man pushed the door closed with his palm, the sound of rain coming from outside, that hideous sound, was finally blocked beyond the wall. Being trapped in square walls was much less cold.
The log cabin where the man stayed, the bungalow. Woonghee had entered inside it. The man looked down at the white body that had entered his space.
“The medicine.”
He asked slowly. What Lee Woonghee carried around like his lifeline. The man asked how many pills remained now. Then Lee Woonghee’s eyelashes trembled. Beyond those lush eyelashes split delicately, he could feel the pupils shaking anxiously. As if the man was exposing some important weakness of his, he was defensive.
But the man had to find out.
“Hm?”
Because that way he’ll be completely absorbed into me. When he pressed gently, Lee Woonghee finally raised his eyes.
“N-now five pills….”
“Oh my.”
The man sighed long. Five pills. Was he enduring with pills that would barely fill one hand?
“Even though I took them, my body feels strange.”
I keep feeling cold, I can’t sleep, as if feverish…. With his deeply flushed cheeks, Woonghee pulled at his own clothes. He crossed both arms in an X shape and hugged his own body as if accustomed to it.
“Director Hwang, that son of a bitch Director Hwang barged into the cave.”
Woonghee’s body trembled. Like a swan whose wings got wet, he shook his limbs fragilely as if trying to shake off the moisture somehow.
“Me, me…. He pressed me down, stripped my clothes off.”
His eyelashes trembled pitifully, looking terribly pitiful and heartbreaking.
“I, I didn’t want to be violated so miserably.”
The man slowly approached him. Lee Woonghee’s clothes were torn to shreds. Like a rag, they drooped and exposed his white body.
Obviously Director Hwang, that bastard must have done this. Wanting to peel off the shell somehow to see the white flesh inside.
But you know.
Wasn’t it the man’s jacket draped over those clothes that were torn apart with such effort? What could this possibly mean?
Ahh, Managing Director Gi let out admiration inside.
“It’s because of me.”
The man brought his hand to that body.
“Because you’ve been continuously exposed to Alpha pheromones.”
He slowly undid the buttons.
“You’re broken.”
You couldn’t eat well or sleep well. With that sensitive and delicate personality, how anxious and nervous you must have been.
On top of that, you were exposed to Alpha pheromones you’d never been exposed to before. The man’s pheromones would burrow into Lee Woonghee’s broken rhythm and, like radiation, destroy each of those cells one by one and fill them with his own.
“In that kind of cave, with only five pills, what were you going to do?”
Lee Woonghee, who entered the space where he stayed and was trembling thinly, was like a white bird that walked into a birdcage.
“But you still don’t want to sleep with me.”
Right? Managing Director Gi asked gently. Then Lee Woonghee curled his shoulders inward even more. He curled up as if he were a mimosa touched lightly by a hand.
“Should I hide you?”
The man bent his waist slightly and brought his face close to him. Pop, pop, pop. With bursting pronunciation, he let words flow into that ear. The damp fine hairs stood up sensitively, embedding grain by grain into the man’s eyes.
“Should I hide you?”
Grip—Lee Woonghee’s hands grabbed the man’s waist.
