Chapter 14
It was wide and long enough to be called a cliff rather than a pit, with no visible bottom. Around the pit, fragments of trees and concrete were scattered chaotically, like something had been chewed up and spat out.
If it had been a majestic trace cultivated by nature, I would have felt amazement and emotion, but I could express nothing but shock. This was because until recently, this had been the ground we were walking on.
After watching the stone Kim Doyun threw as an experiment leave only a faint sound after a long while, any thought of crossing this place disappeared completely.
“What do we do now?”
“I’m not sure. What should we do?”
This time, even Kim Doyun seemed unable to decide easily. He rubbed his chin while looking down at the cliff. I was anxious that he might fall, but somehow felt embarrassed to show it. I wasn’t a six or seven-year-old child worried that their mother might disappear. I had to make a tremendous effort not to reveal my expression.
While silently praying he wouldn’t fall, I examined the pit that hadn’t been there when we came. I didn’t think we had taken the wrong path because the route indicated by the clouds and sun was so clear, and most importantly, I judged that a vibration strong enough to overturn trees could reasonably cause this kind of ground splitting.
“Making a path with trees would take too long and be impossible. If there were several people, we might try something else, but with just the two of us… It will delay us, but let’s take the long way around.”
We started walking again. Though the devastated forest had no intact trees, the trees were so large and the still-green leaves were blocking the scorching sun, making the heat somewhat bearable. However, the continuous heat was damaging the leaves of the dying trees and making us like withered plants too. No, it was just making me that way. Kim Doyun was walking briskly, unaffected by the sun.
Why is he fine under the same conditions? Just as I was getting irritable from the heat, the sky left dark marks on the ground. I wiped the sweat forming on the bridge of my nose and looked at the sky.
“Doyun, that…”
Kim Doyun’s face turned in the direction of my pointing finger. And his eyebrows rose as much as my head moved. My eyebrows were in a similar state.
The gloomy rain clouds were growing larger. At first, I trembled thinking the meteor shower clouds had expanded again, but they weren’t pitch-black clouds but ordinary gray storm clouds.
As I saw the clouds beginning to gather solidly behind the low, heavy black clouds, various thoughts came to mind. Drinkable water, a place to shelter from the rain, and the shadows that would expand as the sun disappeared.
While the water was welcome and the shelter was a matter of finding any place, the last point couldn’t be easily dismissed.
The monsters avoided sunlight.
* * *
The wind, which had previously stopped even our steps, began to strike our backs. Kim Doyun and I hurriedly looked for a place to hide. But with all the trees collapsed, finding a place to climb was extremely difficult. We couldn’t find a hiding place, and the impatient raindrops began to fall mercilessly like ropes connecting the sky and earth.
I shook my dampening clothes and looked around. I saw Kim Doyun walking towards me with a frown. I was about to speak, biting my lips, but closed my mouth after looking beside him.
I walked, almost running, towards Kim Doyun. Surprised by my momentum, Kim Doyun stopped, but I paid no attention. My target wasn’t Kim Doyun but the tree right beside him.
The unusually bushy tree maintained its lush appearance despite the murderous heat. I lifted the outer branches and pushed my body inside. Branches from all sides pricked my body and leaves covered my eyes, but I moved my arms and legs energetically. Kim Doyun, who had been watching me from outside, suddenly entered the branches, broke some of them, and stepped on the ground.
“Be careful there. There’s a stump.”
I said to Kim Doyun while gathering leaves and spreading them over the trampled branches. Kim Doyun pressed the stump firmly with his heel and broke off protruding branches to reinforce the weak spots.
“Shh.”
Suddenly, Kim Doyun covered my mouth and pulled me inside, hiding our bodies. I swallowed a groan when my hand was scratched on a branch I was breaking, but suppressed the sound. There was only one reason why Kim Doyun would react like this.
The loud rain sound made my ears feel numb, as if the world had been swallowed. But even within that, there was a sound that could be heard clearly. Plash, plash. A heavy, slow water sound was circling around the tree. I clutched Kim Doyun’s hand and glanced outside.
There was a creature with its head raised. Its body, glistening with rainwater, heaved up and down, making its protruding bone ribcage rise and fall. The creature swung its head back and forth, showing its teeth, and each time it did, a strong wind sound was made.
Sniff, sniff. The creature was straining to smell scents blurred by the rainwater. Though it had a form similar to a human, seeing it up close revealed how different it was. Its entire body was pitch black, as if covered with black leather. The body connecting its legs was bulbous like a spider’s abdomen. Its fingers and toes, which were swinging in all directions, were sharply split as if embedded with blades. Its elongated fingernails and toenails seemed like extensions of those blades.
Hup.
I trembled. Trying not to make a sound in an uncomfortable position made cold sweat break out all over my body. Even when twigs dug into my palm, I bit my tongue and endured. Since our bodies were pressed together, Kim Doyun, who quickly grasped the situation, grabbed my waist and swiftly turned my body. I ended up sitting face-to-face on Kim Doyun’s legs, but there was no time to shudder. The creature raised its head again, having heard the rustling sound. I gasped.
I embraced Kim Doyun’s shoulders, which were pressed against mine, and squeezed my eyes shut. The creature hissed as it moved around. Plash, plash, the sound of it walking penetrated my ears like an awl, irritatingly. Pushing away the desire to dig into my ears, I focused on the warmth pressed against my chest. Due to the rain-soaked clothes clinging to our bodies, we could feel each other’s body heat more clearly. Kim Doyun slowly stroked my trembling back. Though I couldn’t hear his voice, he was saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” My breath, which had risen to my throat, went down.
Rustle, rustle.
The leaves the creature bumped into as it passed made a loud noise. Kim Doyun held me for a while, patting me, and then turned his head towards the outside. His breath tickled my ear as he looked around, examining various places. My body involuntarily jerked and my waist pulled back. It was due to the belated realization of embarrassment more than the tickling.
I carefully loosened my arms and tried to move my body backward to avoid clinging to him like a child. But Kim Doyun held me firmly and wouldn’t let go. Kim Doyun’s arms stuck to my body and didn’t budge an inch. As I was trying to escape somehow, Kim Doyun put his lips to my ear.
“Don’t move.”
My ear became hot. Not just my ear, but my face also flushed warmly. If not for the wind sound from outside, I might have screamed in surprise.
I covered my mouth and tilted my head. I wanted to rub my ticklish earlobe vigorously with my fingers. But Kim Doyun’s face, as if not satisfied with our bodies pressed together, wouldn’t leave my nape. I wanted to push him away with my arms and separate, but the horror lurking outside was too vivid for such a bold action. In the end, unable to do either, I hung my head with a reddened face and remained in his embrace for a long time.
Hiss, hiss.
The creature, which had been searching for us until it became quite dark, shook its neck back and forth irritably. Branches of other trees were torn off and soil was dug up. The creature, throwing a tantrum and rioting, couldn’t easily calm its anger. When I stiffened my body, Kim Doyun whispered.
“Calm down and look at me.”
Kim Doyun whispered and tapped my cheek with one hand. Startled, I looked at him and found myself face to face with dark eyes and a nose. The black eyes held a faint smile. Before I could react to that smile, Kim Doyun’s arms wrapped around my waist even more tightly. My waist jerked.
Meanwhile, the creature stomped hard enough to dig up the soil, then moved away, roughly scratching the trees. Its strength was so great that even the branches of the tree we were hiding in shook.
“Huk…”
I had known its strength was extraordinary when I saw it turning over saplings on the tree… Though I called them saplings in comparison to the large trees, they were comparable in size to street trees. When I let out a groan, Kim Doyun slowly stroked my back. When his hand lowered to my waist, my body stiffened for a different reason.
“Heok.”
After the creature disappeared, dragging water sounds, I fell off Kim Doyun’s legs as if collapsing. Actually, I had tried to push Kim Doyun away and get up, but instead of him being pushed, my body, unable to support itself, was pushed back. Kim Doyun blinked and looked down at me.
I covered my face with one hand and stood up. My hand stuck to my face and wouldn’t come down. The yet-to-be-trimmed branches dug into my head, stabbing my scalp, but I had no time to pay attention to that.
I had a lot to say to Kim Doyun. This was the first time I had so desperately wanted to speak to someone. Neither the gratitude that had settled heavily nor the curiosity that had subtly risen had ever given me such an impulse before.
“Th, that…”
Brushing off branches, shaking my head, and wringing out my wet clothes. After that, gathering my composure, I opened my mouth, but all that came out were vaguely blurred sounds. I cleared my throat and stuttered out my words.
“Doyun, I’m really grateful… This is, um… beyond words. I’m so, so grateful that I want to repay you, but given the situation, it’s impossible. …To be honest, I don’t have much money, so I can’t properly repay you.”
Kim Doyun’s eyelids, which had been moving slowly, moved a bit faster. He seemed to be pondering, perhaps not understanding why I was bringing this up. But ignoring his confusion, I spoke more fervently.
“So I’m just saying thank you that much.”
“It’s fine. I haven’t helped you enough to deserve thanks…”
“No, that’s not right! I’ve received so much help from you. All I have now is my body… I’m good at manual labor and not much else, but I can do odd jobs well if you just ask. Um, since I’m a man too, I have good strength! Just ask me anytime!”
But there was one major problem: I had no way with words, so while I might be confident in writing, I had no confidence in tasks that required verbal communication. Long conversations requiring explanations often became chaotic, with unnecessary tangents overshadowing the original meaning. Even now, I had babbled nonsense, so I doubted if my message had been conveyed.
Still, I emphasized “I’m a man too,” so wouldn’t he get the hint? I stared intently at his mouth, like someone waiting for a verdict. Kim Doyun moved his lips, muttering inaudibly to himself, then looked at me and smiled gently.
“So you were uncomfortable earlier.”
“…That’s not it, I mean…”
I hesitated, stuttering, then finally nodded.
“Yes.”
I cleared my throat to hide my embarrassment, but Kim Doyun showed no such signs. Well, from his perspective, he was protecting a person, so he had no reason to be embarrassed. It was just me feeling awkward and embarrassed.
Kim Doyun, without saying anything, crossed his arms and looked outside the branches. The sound of raindrops hitting leaves and ground was loud. Rainwater penetrating the leaves seeped inside and fell drop by drop. After a while, he spoke.
“I’m sorry. It felt good to rub against a body after so long.”
“…What?”
“Smelling human flesh made me not want to let go.”
“What?”
I was so taken aback that I blurted out stupidly. I had thought he was a proper gentleman, but his words were unexpectedly explicit. At the mention of “flesh smell,” I stiffened my face, then secretly lifted my arm to sniff. But being completely soaked in rainwater, I couldn’t smell anything except the scent of wet water.
Perhaps he meant human body heat, not smell? I understood that his thoughts might be reasonable. The entire situation was terrifying, and though there was a dependable person beside me, the loneliness hadn’t diminished. I desperately craved human presence and even missed the crowded subway that had felt like hell.
“To be honest…”
I stopped lifting my clothes to smell them and looked at Kim Doyun. He rubbed his chin, pondered, then spoke as if finding it really strange.
“I got a bit hard.”
What got hard? The question quickly bounced around in my head, but my eyes, which had already caught the answer, traveled down Kim Doyun’s body. I didn’t want to, but my gaze fixed on one spot and wouldn’t leave. Kim Doyun had crossed his long legs, so it wasn’t properly visible.
But even in the dim surroundings, I felt that invisible thing clearly revealing its existence, boring into my eyes. My thoughts about loneliness took a nosedive into the mud. Then I recalled our previous conversation. He had said he had no girlfriend, only casual relationships…
I covered my face with my hands, crouched down, and asked in despair:
“…Do you like men, by any chance?”
Kim Doyun burst into loud laughter.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
