TCGAD 20

“I’ll be right back, just wait here for a little bit, okay?”

I couldn’t tell if he understood or not. Haengbok just twitched his ears.

I approached the man I didn’t want to call father at all. I crept closer, wondering how I could wake this person up. I looked around, and seeing some wooden planks scattered about, I carefully picked one up. Gripping it tightly with tension, I swallowed dryly. Gulp. I nudged my father with it. Flinch, flinch. The lying body trembled.

“Who is it!”

My father’s eyes opened slightly. Then, he squinted, trying to make out who was standing in front of him. Soon, as if he recognized me, his eyes flashed open wide. His bloodshot eyes grew so large it looked as if they would pop out at any moment.

“You, you b**t**d!”

He sprang to his feet. Although he staggered like a zombie from the aftereffects of his hangover, the moment he stood up, the oppressive aura was no joke, and my breath caught in my throat. My father was still a man of large build.

“So it was true you didn’t croak and were still alive, you b**t**d!”

As his shadow grew larger, a chill settled in my heart. Even so, having come this far, it was a do or die situation. Convinced that I must not back down, I glared and puffed out my chest.

“Why, why on earth did you come to our house that day?”

I deliberately raised my voice, putting on a brave front. He was a piece of trash who acted stronger in front of the weak, so I had to pretend to be strong. My eyes kept darting to Haengbok behind me.

“You crawled back alive after all, you ghost-like b**t**d!”

My father staggered towards me. He stumbled so badly it wouldn’t have been strange if he had fallen right then and there. He almost collapsed in front of me but managed to stay upright by grabbing me by the collar.

I almost fell backward myself, so I flinched, my body trembling.

“That day, why on earth…!”

As I raised my voice against the repulsive smell wafting from him, his harsh words cut me off.

“You son of a b**ch, if only you had died!”

As if he had truly lost his mind, the whites of my father’s eyes flashed. He threw me to the ground, and I went tumbling into a corner with a loud clatter. Had died, had died, had died…. An echo, just as empty as the vacant lot, resounded, slapping me across the cheek. My body trembled uncontrollably. Was this b**t**d really my father? This person who looked at me with such cold eyes, as if I were less than a stray dog, was he really the father who gave birth to me? When I was young, I had often been lost in regret.

Other dads would come to the talent shows, hold their children’s hands on the way home, and chat cheerfully about what to have for lunch. ‘Should we have sweet and sour pork? Or chicken? I like chicken!’

I would watch their happy figures from a distance, filled with envy. The sunset would stretch long over my shoes, but no one ever came to pick me up. In the end, that day, I had to walk home lonely, holding my teacher’s hand.

“I told you to die, but you stubbornly crawled back to life, your fate is just like your mother’s, isn’t it?”

“Shut your mouth. Do you even call yourself a human? Just answer my question! That day, why, on earth, did you come to our house!”

“You should have done your last filial duty and left.”

Cough, hack, hack, ptooey! After clearing his throat disgustingly for a long time, he gathered a glob of phlegm and spat it right in my face. The sticky saliva landed on my eye, blurring my vision.

“I gave you something delicious so you could at least fill your belly on your way out, but you son of a b**ch, you couldn’t even find it and eat it properly.”

His next words felt like a cold wind blowing into my chest.

No way, I had thought, no way. Even though all the scattered pieces were pointing to only one picture. Even though I had calmly put everything together in my head.

In my heart, I couldn’t accept the truth and kept denying it. That’s why I had gone to the trouble of coming all the way here…!

“Did you really put sleeping pills in that beef rib soup back then?”

If he had really intended to set the fire, my grandmother and I had to be asleep first. I had thought it was strange how he insisted we eat it several times and even watched us with his own two eyes until we did…. I voiced the question with an anxious heart, half-hoping, half-fearing, but there was no denial in response. He just muttered curses.

“S**t, what a d**n unlucky b**t**d.”

“Grandmother, my grandmother, because of a b**t**d like you.”

My body shook with rage. The wooden plank in my hand danced back and forth with it. I was really reaching my limit now. The anger that surged like a flame inside me was a longing for my grandmother and stemmed from the indignation of being born from the bloodline of such a person.

“A b**t**d like you is the one who should have died!”

I swung the wooden plank in my hand with all my might.

It was a single blow, but the problem was that I was naturally weak. The plank was caught with pathetic ease. The yellow plank broke powerlessly and fell backward with a crack.

“Baaastard? You son of a b**ch, where did you learn to talk to your father like that!”

My father picked up a nearby soju bottle by its neck. Smash! He shattered it against the ground and thrust it at me.

“Alright, you need to be beaten like a dog to learn not to talk back to your father!”

The mercilessly shattered green bottle bared its teeth at me menacingly, like an alligator. I started to back away slowly.

“Yeeeeelp!”

I heard a sorrowful cry from behind me. Haengbok was frantically pawing the ground, trying to run to me. He was biting and tearing at his leash with his mouth, and a wave of dread washed over my heart. No, what if it breaks…. But my anxiety soon became reality, and as soon as the leash snapped, Haengbok charged at my father in an instant. The small body slammed—thud!—against my father’s elbow, and the soju bottle shattered with a crash!

“Yelp yelp!”

My father swatted Haengbok away like a bee. The frail Haengbok let out a high-pitched scream and rolled on the ground.

“What’s this animal b**t**d now?”

My father lifted his foot high. It looked like he was about to brutally kick Haengbok’s body, so I cried out, “Haengbok!” and quickly crawled on all fours to pull the poor white body into a tight embrace.

“You’ve always been shielding those animal b**t**ds since you were little, and now you can’t even recognize your own father?”

My father came closer and closer. I scooted backward on my bottom until I felt a hard wall against my back and could go no further.

“Don’t come any closer.”

“Oh my, what are you going to do if I do? Huh? This little rat-sized b**t**d is really getting out of line, isn’t he?”

Soon, a vicious hand grabbed a fistful of my hair. With my eyes wide open, I tensed my knees, ready to spring up at any moment, and tightened my arm around Haengbok’s body. In my head, I was quickly running a simulation of my next move. I had just resolved to hit his chin with the top of my head, run like h**l, and report him to the police when…

At that moment, a vast fog, its origin unknown, coiled around my ankles. It was so hot it felt like I would get burned, and I flinched.

“What, what is this?”

Then, I heard a footstep from behind me. Thud. My father’s eyes, looking over my head, widened. He looked as if he had seen a ghost. Thinking that someone had come to help, I hastily turned around.

The figure that appeared truly looked like a beast that had come down after meditating in the wild mountains for over a thousand years.

His jet-black hair was disheveled, covering his neck, and the eyes visible through the strands of hair that hung down like seaweed stalks had such a distinct gleam that my knees trembled. There was a saying that if you see a tiger, your heart freezes in shock at its frightening eyes. This was exactly that. I truly thought he was a ghost.

A man like a monster who had walked through a pillar of fire. Thud, thud. His back, which looked as if it were carved from a cement wall, approached my father.

“What, what are you…”

My father tumbled to the ground in the yard.

“You, you, who are you.”

Even my father, who had no divine sense or intuition whatsoever, was stunned into bewilderment by his presence.

“I am a dog that has crawled out of h**l.”

Those familiar, exotic-sounding words flowed out.

“Wh-what is this, you crazy b**t**d?”

My father was suddenly terrified. He randomly picked up a wooden plank nearby and swung it at Bulkan.

Crack! A loud crash erupted. But the plank that struck Bulkan’s shoulder broke powerlessly.

“Don’t come here, I said don’t come here, you b**t**d.”

Bulkan was merely walking towards my father, but the terrified man swung whatever he could get his hands on at him. He picked up a soju bottle and brought it down on Bulkan’s head—smash! The green bottle shattered miserably, but not a single scratch appeared on Bulkan’s body.

“Y-you monster!”

A foul smell wafted from my father, who had fallen on his back in shock.

“People, people! Someone’s getting killed here, someone’s dying!”

No matter how much he shouted, no one came to the vast, empty lot.

To me, my father had wielded such absolute power. But now, he looked like nothing more and nothing less than a human begging for his life. He soon hoisted the now-insignificant father onto his shoulder.

“Let go of me, let go, you b**t**d!”

Then, with a crack, crack, he twisted his neck and shifted his gaze to me.

“…Hah, huff!”

And I understood in an instant why my father had been so terrified.

It was surely the gleam of a tiger’s eyes. The very gaze they say could crush you with its immense pressure if you encountered it in the wild mountains, making you fall ill for days before dying.

I held Haengbok tightly in my arms. Thud, thud. The approaching footsteps sounded just like those of a grim reaper.

“Don’t come any closer.”

My body trembled violently. I could feel my stomach hardening. I couldn’t tell if it was a reflection of my own anxiety, or if the baby, foreseeing its own unhappy future, was curling up inside me.

“I said don’t come any closer!”

Closer, closer…. I couldn’t believe the hysterical voice echoing in the yard was my own.

Creak, creak. He kept his neck still but turned only his head at a grotesque angle to look at me.

All the blood vessels in the whites of his eyes had burst. It must have been incredibly dry, but he stared at me without blinking once. As if I were a mist that would disappear if he blinked even a single time.

“……”

A deathly silence separated us. I couldn’t easily form any words.

“How dare you run away?”

The beast’s eyes mercilessly condemned and tore me to shreds.

“Fugitive.”

If eyes had a temperature, his gaze was one that would surely burn me to death.

“Traitor, hypocrite, you must be punished……!”

My whole body was thrown into a fiery pit. I was so creeped out that my chest felt like it was tightening.

‘…Ah.’

The demonic hand reached for me. As a palm covered my vision in an instant, the light of the whole world seemed to go out, and my sight turned pitch black.

☀️

I kept fainting and waking up. Even in that state, worried that I might lose Haengbok in my arms, I squeezed my arms tight several times. A tingling muscle ache pierced through both arms.

I felt a continuous descent. When I cautiously opened my eyes, I immediately met the beast’s eyes.

“Hah!”

I thought my heart was going to seize for a moment. I had no idea how many hours I had been unconscious.

In the meantime, we had been sliding down the cliff without rest. Bulkan was controlling the speed of the descent, digging his hard nails firmly into the cliffside. My father was unconscious, slung over his shoulder, and I was held in his arms. And yet, Bulkan’s face didn’t show a single trace of exertion.

I was never one to enjoy the thrill of speed or heights. Being pregnant, I felt incredibly nauseous.

‘I, I think I’m going to throw up.’

I pounded on his shoulder indiscriminately, wanting him to let me go. Since I couldn’t use my arms because I was holding Haengbok, I banged my forehead against his chest—thump, thump—and kicked Bulkan’s thigh repeatedly with my knee. I was making the biggest scene I possibly could.

Then, finally, I retched, throwing up all over Bulkan’s back. A foul smell arose. It must have been disgusting. It smelled so foul even to me, so for Bulkan, who was a dog, it must have been even worse.

“I told you to let go.”

A raw sob burst out. Tremble, tremble. My eyes swelled up. And yet, Bulkan stubbornly tried to kiss me. I couldn’t breathe. I hated the bad smell spreading from me, and therefore, the discomfort Bulkan was enduring, with a passion. I bared my teeth sharply and bit down on the tongue that was winding its way down my throat. The smell of blood instantly filled my mouth, and it was unbearably painful.

“Hmph, don’t!”

No matter how much I resisted, Bulkan kept trying to rub against my tongue and s**k on the roof of my mouth.

“I told you not to do as you please, you dog b**t**d!”

Through my messy, blurred vision, the dark forest unfolded like a cruel fairy tale. And as soon as I spotted a pitch-black entrance in the distance, a shock as if I was being thrown into a tomb-like cave was felt throughout my entire body.

In the end, I had returned. The place that was the beginning and the embodiment of my misfortune. The source of all my bad luck, and at the same time, the origin.

I had been dragged back into the cave guarded by the dog.

“Bulkan, you dog b**t**d!”

Bulkan locked me on the bed in the room. Iron bars shot up around me—clang, clang, clang—and it became a complete cage.

Bulkan didn’t let anyone invade the space where I was. He stood guard in front of me, just like a dog guarding a house. I had no idea where my father had been dragged off to; there was not a single sign of him.

“Undo this, undo this right now!”

I slammed my fists against the iron bars. But he just stared at me from a distance. His eyes seemed empty. They were deep, but like an empty well that held nothing inside.

Occasionally, he would push food in front of the iron bars. It had a store name written on it, so he must have stolen it from some shop again. It was kimchi stew, but I completely ignored it. In my heart, I wanted to reach out and devour it greedily, but I wanted to protest, as if to show him for all to see, that I would not even touch anything he gave me.

“Why haven’t you touched the food?”

Bulkan’s face came right up to the space between the iron bars. The darkness settled in his eye sockets grew deeper. The first thing Bulkan always did upon returning to the room was to check the food he had pushed in for me. I pretended not to hear, staring at the window where dusk had already settled. Just as Bulkan had done to me when I screamed my head off, begging him to let me out. I treated him with complete disregard.

“I asked why you haven’t eaten?”

A hysterical roar like a lion’s struck my ears. It was already the second day I hadn’t eaten anything. Since I was carrying a child inside me, my vision was already blurring. The skin of my stomach felt like it was truly stuck to my ribs. I hadn’t drunk any water either, so my lips were parched, and it felt like my insides were burning hot.

“Just why!”

Bulkan began to tear at his own chest with a hand that had sharp claws extended. As if that wasn’t enough, he even bit his own fist and started banging his head against the wall, showing signs of self-harm. The cave wall shook violently, rattling like the lid of a cauldron.

“I asked why you are doing this to me!”

He seemed to be in great agony. It looked as if the stress caused by me was so immense that he couldn’t bear it.

“If you let me out of here, I’ll eat.”

I staggered over and grabbed the iron bars with my hands. My clenched fists trembled. Because I hadn’t eaten anything, even speaking was difficult and brought on a great sense of fatigue.

“You plan to trick me and run away again, don’t you?”

Bright red blood trickled down Bulkan’s forehead and flowed down his strong-looking jaw. Our gazes locked in a tense standoff. With the iron bars between us, we were glaring at each other as if we were aiming guns.

To be honest, I was scared to death of him. He was a man with enough brute strength to pull out these iron bars in an instant and pierce my stomach with them. And yet, even knowing all that, I absolutely did not want to back down.

“Heh.”

But then, Bulkan suddenly stretched his lips into a wide grin. I recoiled at the grotesque smile, but a hand immediately shot out from in front of me and pulled me forward.

“I will rip your deer to shreds and throw it to the pups as meat.”

“…What?”

A shock, as if my head had been slammed into the cave wall, hit me. He was chuckling with his mouth, but his eyes were black and dead, the very picture of complete madness. It seemed Bulkan knew precisely how to inflict mental shock on me without having to resort to physical violence.

“Absolutely not!”

I quickly clung to the iron bars.

“Don’t touch Haengbok.”

I could feel his massive body tense up, but soon he started to laugh, his body trembling. His voice was just like a flickering light bulb about to go out. Like a streetlight on a gloomy road, with very low brightness.

“Why should I do that?”

A reason? There was no reason I could give him. If Haengbok were to disappear miserably from this world, I would not be able to bear the pain. That was the entire reason. Of course, it would not serve as any reason at all for the Bulkan in front of me.

“Please, don’t do it.”

Tears streamed down my face. I had no strength left to stand, so I rubbed my eyes hard against the cold iron bars. Tears flowed into my mouth, and a troublesome salty taste touched the tip of my tongue.

“It was my fault. Just beat me up instead!”

Even though I shouted until my throat was raw, Bulkan just stared at me. In the end, all I could do was… beg and plead.

“Promise me right now that you won’t touch him.”

I cried pathetically, endlessly asking him to promise, but in the end, no vow was made.

“Just promise you’ll leave him alone! Better yet, let him go into the forest, Lemon, …Lemon!”

I yelled and screamed until my voice was completely hoarse. Then, I realized a sound had brushed past my ears and flinched.

It was because I suddenly heard a howling sound from somewhere, wooooo. It was still an immature cry, but it was quite powerful, and it felt like the cave walls were trembling slightly.

In that instant, thump, my heart began to pound. It felt like my esophagus was completely blocked, as if Bulkan had choked me. I managed to force my voice out of my tightened throat.

“Who on earth is that?”

I barely managed to utter the question. It was closer to a scream than a question. Heh, one side of Bulkan’s lips curled up into a long sneer.

“Who do you think it is.”

His face drew very close. I could see one of his glaring eyes through the iron bars. It seemed as if my face was reflected in his jet-black pupil.

“It’s the sound of the pups you abandoned, crying out as they search for you.”

Once again, from not too far away, I heard a howling sound, awoooo. I had heard a sound like that before. I had seen on television how pets, feeling separation anxiety when their owners leave home, make that sound and circle around the house.

“Awoooo!”

The mournful and sorrowful voice was so hard to believe it was coming from the babies I had seen before.

They were babies who only knew how to eat, sleep, and poop. They were babies who loved to drink their fill of milk and sleep with their noses buried in the blanket. I thought that at first, they would search for me, but by now they would have forgotten me and been living happily. I prayed that they would.

I would miss the babies when I saw passing dogs, and on nice days, I would see the white clouds in the clear sky and think of the fluffy babies. Every time, I would bite the tip of my tongue painfully and endure the longing. Still, I thought I’d rather they had forgotten me. I thought it was enough for me to be the only one who missed them.

But.

In the cave I had left, misfortune had taken my place. I let out a gasp, ugh, as if I had been punched in the stomach. I covered my mouth with my palm. Tears streamed down over the back of my hand.

“Hic, huh.”

I knew I had no shame, I thought I had no right, but I wanted to ask him to let me see the babies. If I could, I would have even gotten on my knees.

“Human, you rip my insides to shreds over and over again and leave.”

After uttering those incomprehensible words, Bulkan mercilessly turned his back on me. I reached out to him, begging him not to go.

“D-don’t, hic, don’t go.”

But all that came back was a cold rebuke and a curse.

“I will come back to life from h**l over and over, hundreds of times over, to steal your life and kidnap you!”

Left alone, I slid down with my back against the iron bars. The moonlight seeping in from the window pooled between my toes. It was piercingly and incomparably cold. Sob, sob. Wanting to receive even a little warmth from that moonlight, I used the pale light as a blanket and sobbed alone.

“……”

And then, at some point, I must have fallen asleep. Flinch, a toe spasmed. My second toe was incredibly tight from having tensed up all night while sleeping. The hot sunlight was lolling its tongue lazily over the top of my foot.

Moreover, I was definitely just sitting on the floor before I fell asleep. But when I opened my eyes, I was on the bed. It was obvious who had moved me, even without seeing.

I could feel a gaze on me from somewhere again, so it seemed Bulkan had returned in the meantime. I didn’t even want to look in his direction, but along with it—whiff!—there was a savory smell from somewhere. A stew was placed in front of the bars. Unusually, it was a soft tofu stew with enoki mushrooms on top. That was definitely the signature menu of Yeoni’s Snack Bar. It seemed he had broken in there and stolen it again.

“If you do not eat, I will cut open the baby deer alive and offer it to you.”

The executioner’s cold declaration came from beyond the iron bars. I moved listlessly, reached out with both hands, and quickly pulled the stew into my arms to eat. The space between my ribs was empty, and my stomach was filled with hunger. I devoured it in a hurry, as if hiding from a crab’s eyes. If any broth got on my fingers, I was too busy l**king it off.

I filled my stomach like a madman. I dry-heaved from overloading myself while eating, and saliva dribbled down my chin, but I had to eat so that the life inside me would get nutrients. Thinking of the child inside my belly, my thoughts naturally shifted to Kkakka and Bono. Ugh, my stomach churned with guilt.

“Ugh, ugh.”

I held onto the ground and threw it all up. The sour fluid rose up and mercilessly scraped my throat. It felt just like being scraped with a knife blade. I composed my ragged breath and then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“I want to see the babies.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. My vision became completely blurry, and I couldn’t see Bulkan’s face beyond it. It was all stained with tears. He approached, thud, thud.

My retinas filled with a foot as large as a warship. He slowly knelt in front of me. Only then did our eyes meet.

“Babies?”

A question as if he didn’t know what I was talking about was heard. Then, as if he had realized something, he let out an exclamation, ah.

“Are you talking about those lumps of flesh you threw away like inedible intestines to save your own life?”

My jaw, not yet closed, trembled. I wanted to shake my head and deny it, saying no, it wasn’t like that.

But the reason I couldn’t was that I wasn’t entirely blameless myself. A lump of lead, formed from guilt, pressed down heavily on my heart. My intentions were definitely not that, but in the end, that’s what happened, wasn’t it?

Still, despite all that.

“Please let me see them.”

I missed them so much I felt like I would stop breathing. The moist nose that touched my cheek, the soft baby fur, the paws that grew chubbier day by day, I wanted to see them so badly. I hoped and prayed every night that they weren’t looking for me too desperately, that they were growing up healthy and well.

Even with the blue sky I had longed for above my head, even while basking in the warm sunlight with my whole body, because of the constantly rising longing and guilt, I would beat my chest several times a day.

His following voice had a somewhat gloomy corner to it, as usual.

“Then what will you give me?”

“I will.”

I opened my mouth slightly, then stopped and swallowed dryly. Gulp. His eyes stared at my lips with a rough texture, as if he would tear them off. I knew that look. Bulkan especially liked to debone and eat the flesh of a wild boar that had been freshly hunted and was still firm, and he would make that exact expression while watching it gasp for breath, its life not yet completely severed.

An ambitious gaze where instinctual desires took precedence over anything else. It was an expression that said he wanted to shove me into his maw right this instant.

“What do you want?”

I asked what on earth I had to do for him to let me see the babies. But Bulkan kept his mouth shut tight and only rolled his eyes. The eyes that were fixed on me next landed on the nape of my neck. Gulp, his throat bobbed. His pupils were blatant. The one thing Bulkan had desired most from me, and the one thing I could give him, was in fact, only one thing. I slowly took off my clothes. Would he still get aroused seeing my body? As I undressed, I honestly didn’t have high hopes. My body was grotesquely misshapen, after all.

“Will this be enough…?”

Still stick-thin, but only my belly protruded. My chest, too, had formed a strange ridge due to the pregnancy.

Would he really still get aroused seeing this body? Does… this dog still want me? Once the thought took root, it branched out uncontrollably.

“Ha, ah….”

My breath hitched for no reason. It was only natural to feel a sense of self-loathing.

I stuck out my tongue, so far it felt like it was being uprooted. I l**ked up his neck. I hastily pulled down my elastic pants. As the bottoms drooped limply, my underwear came down with them.

And the p**is that popped out was so pathetic. And yet, Bulkan gasped for breath as if he had witnessed something incredibly stimulating.

“Keo, heok….”

Like a dog in heat, he panted heavily with his mouth slightly open. His drum-like chest heaved with consecutive ragged breaths. The air around us instantly became gloomy and damp.

“Hah, heok.”

A large hand reached out to me through the bars. The hand, which had been threatening to choke me at any moment, now had only one purpose. To savagely grip my skin. It kneaded my chest messily, then touched the soft flesh of my inner thigh as if kneading dough, stroking and caressing my p**ic hair as if it were strands of hair.

The space between Bulkan’s legs grew at a frightening speed. I could feel a heavy energy even through his armor.

“O, Odeu….”

The breath flowing onto my neck was hot. It felt like it was making all my skin flush, or perhaps making it melt away completely.

Odeu, Odeu…, my heart dropped with a thud at the ceaseless calling of my name. I was horrified, and a chill ran down my spine.

For a moment, my vision went dizzy, and I trembled at the knees. It felt vaguely similar to an o**asm, but no fluid trickled down my thigh. Which meant I hadn’t c** at all. Then what on earth was that just now?

“I want to see your c**tch, I need to smell all of you with my nose.”

Bulkan fumbled with his pants with an eager hand. Then, he pushed his fully e**ct p**is, dripping with pre-c**, through the iron bars. It v**garly stabbed the air with its head, as if it wanted to tear into me right this instant.

Just watching the l**d scene made my face feel flushed. I, too, felt my heart racing impatiently. As if responding to his call, I quickly turned around, grabbed my b**tocks, and spread them open.

“Ha, haah, hmph, ah, aaht!”

The forceful movement that pushed through my tightly closed folds was so strong my body lifted completely off the ground. My back arched into a curve, as if I would be flung forward at any moment. I balanced precariously on tiptoe and let out random m**ns.

It had been an excessively long time since the last insertion, but the sensation was deeply engraved in my body. As the force pried open the entrance, I collapsed forward a little.

“Ah, aha. Hu, heuk.”

Every time Bulkan thrusted at a fast pace, I could feel my hole gripping him tightly, refusing to let go. Clang, clang, clang! The sharp, metallic sound unique to iron continuously echoed from the bars.

Bulkan was not wearing off his armor. Perhaps it was uncomfortable to move, as a rumbling growl came from his throat.

“Ah, aha, too deep.”

He grabbed my waist and pulled me towards him with great force, but unlike usual, his rough p**ic hair did not touch my highly sensitized skin. His hard p**ic bone should have been hitting my b**tocks as if beating them black and blue, but because of the iron bars, it was impossible.

“F**k, f**k, g**d**mit!”

I could feel the body pressed against my back trembling. I turned around, wondering what was happening.

“Huh, heok.”

Bulkan was grabbing the iron bars with both hands and mercilessly prying them apart. The veins on his arms, as thick as tree stumps, bulged tautly, and the iron bars bent pathetically, collapsing to the side like broken reeds.

Without delay, I rushed towards him. Bulkan pulled my body in and pressed it tightly against his own, leaving no gap.

My nose and mouth were immediately smothered. We tangled, s**ked, and rubbed our tongues together. I couldn’t even close my mouth, and saliva dribbled down my chin. Schlick, slurp, schlick. Utterly l**d sounds were heard. He touched, s**ked, and breathed on every visible part of me indiscriminately.

My chest, which had originally been completely flat, had swelled slightly along with my belly, and he seemed to like that very much. He grabbed both sides with his large hands and fondled them as if to make them burst.

“Ah, eu, don’t do that.”

My n**ples, which had become so sensitive that even brushing against clothes felt strange, were now swollen to the size of buttons, and he enjoyed fondling them and s**king on them with a pop. I felt a sensation of swelling larger from within. My stomach rumbled.

“Gently, gently….”

A tingling sensation ran all the way to my toes. Unable to withstand the o**asm that felt like it would melt my body, I gripped Bulkan’s arm tightly with my hands and trembled.

“Huh? There’s a baby, you know.”

My body, which hadn’t experienced this in a long time, screamed with pleasure. Bulkan and I tumbled on the bed, mixed together as one. S**en was shot mercilessly onto my chest, inside my hole, by my ear. We mixed our breaths, shared our body heat, and rubbed our tongues together.

How much time passed after that didn’t matter. It was as if only the two of us existed in that world.

My arms and legs hung limp like over-boiled kimchi, and I could only manage to breathe faintly. I was completely exhausted. I rested my cheek on the blanket and tried to even out my breathing. I opened my blurry eyes and looked up at the ceiling.

“Haah.”

As if it was uncomfortable for him to move, Bulkan began to take off his armor. Clang, clang, the nerve-grating metallic sound scraped the delicate skin inside my ear. Are we doing it again? The thought slowly crossed my mind. I could feel my hole naturally parting, and my cheeks grew hot. My flesh, welcoming the entry after such a long time, was rejoicing without restraint.

But suddenly, something strongly caught my gaze. I let out an “Uh,” and then clamped my hand over my open mouth. It was so horrific that I almost bit my tongue clean off. I slowly reached out my hand towards Bulkan’s abdomen, now exposed after he took off his armor.

“You…. What on earth is this?”

But his instinct, developed like a promontory jutting out into the world of beasts, was faster.

“Don’t touch it!”

Bulkan quickly pulled his large body back, letting out a scream unlike himself. And the face he showed me was that of a stray dog whose shame had been completely exposed.

I kept my mouth covered as I stared at the place where his scar was. It was already covered by the back of Bulkan’s large hand, but the scar there was already deeply etched into my retinas.

On his abdomen, which was tightly packed with muscle, there was a horrific wound that looked as if lightning had pierced through it. It looked as if it had been seared with fire, sizzled and burned.

“You, that spot, what happened?”

I spat out the words, almost vomiting them. But Bulkan turned his body away from me coldly, as if to pretend he hadn’t heard. As if he was really treating me like a bird he had caged, he let my cries go in one ear and out the other, and pounded on the iron bars with his fists. The sound of banging—thump, thump—reverberated.

“Bulkan, your stomach, your stomach… what on earth happened to it.”

I felt like my throat was completely blocked. How on earth did he get subjected to such a terrible thing again? My vision felt like it was burning to a crisp.

“Did the gods do it again?”

Those fucking b**t**ds, they don’t do a d**n thing for you, so why do they keep beating you like a dog?

I felt this situation was so unfair. Bulkan was a troublemaker who spread problems like a bad smell, and deep down, I had fully suspected that he might have been punished for doing something bad.

But whatever the situation had been, that scar was clearly intended to kill. Moreover, I had no idea why it hadn’t regenerated. The surface of the scar was rough and dry, brown like the bark of a dead tree. It looked like it had been made quite a long time ago.

He definitely hadn’t received proper treatment either. Not only did he have almost no interest in his own pain, but no one would have been able to help him easily, fearing retaliation if it was a wound inflicted by a god.

“Let’s apply some herbs now. They were really effective.”

I spoke urgently, but my words bounced off him powerlessly, like a ball thrown against a wall. It felt as if I was all alone in a vacuum. I muttered as if to myself.

“…Doesn’t it hurt?”

It was at that moment that Bulkan’s feet, which had been walking away, stopped dead in front of the door. An image of a beast, which must have been hiding in this dark cave, came to mind.

“It looks painful.”

A sense of sorrow I couldn’t explain welled up inside me, and tears seemed to sting my eyes. A dual emotion dug into my heart. I felt so disgusted by my own hypocrisy that I could die.

If you were so worried about Bulkan suffering alone, then you shouldn’t have left like that. Why did you leave on your own terms and now speak as if you’re worried about him?

“Why do you ask that?”

Creak, creak. Like a rusted robot, his head turned towards me. His eyes were wide and white, like a fish that had been speared and met a violent death.

“Why do you ask that!”

It was a roar mighty enough to shake the cave, but I had a feeling that the reason it sounded somewhat desperate was not just my misunderstanding.

A gloomy voice followed.

“Are you trying to shake me up again, then betray me and leave?”

In his sunken eye sockets, the mask of expressionlessness had been peeled back to reveal the core underneath. It was a very dense melancholy. Like a bead made by concentrating the emotion of anxiety, it was incomparably gloomy.

“Why are you.”

I saw a tongue redder and larger than a human’s. He, who was about to say something, clamped his jaw shut for a moment. A lump in his throat, like a half-swallowed apple, bobbed conspicuously.

“Why do you only give your touch to small and weak things?”

And the whispering voice had a color even gloomier than the dreary rain that falls in the dead of winter.

“Why do you cherish something that hasn’t even been born yet?”

Bulkan, the strict and stern ruler who governed this land, had a face that resembled mine. No, the texture was similar, but his looked far more painful and concentrated.

“And yet, you at the same time.”

The fangs, which could pierce even the steel-like skin of a predator, trembled.

“Ripped my belly to shreds with a knife and ran away.”

And then, completely unexpected words flowed out. It was so unexpected that, despite being a simple sentence, it took time for my brain to process it. What, what did I just hear?

“What, what on earth does that mean…”

I asked hastily, but Bulkan seemed to be in a state where no other words could register in his ears, as if he had plugged them with a screen.

“You stabbed me, you set me on fire!”

The eyes glaring at me were brimming with madness. The escalating emotions were in his highly agitated voice.

“My intestines spilled out. My body constantly tried to regenerate. I wanted to chase after you right away, but I couldn’t move.”

From Bulkan, who was erupting with emotions like a volcano, anger filled with sorrow flowed out like lava. It was an insanely melancholic light. As if all the gloomy and sad things in the world started there and gushed out. It was a lump of grief.

“What on earth does that mean.”

I took a couple of steps towards him, but then stopped in my tracks. It felt as if an invisible wall was blocking us, and I couldn’t go any further. It felt like my tongue was rolled up like a blanket, completely blocking my throat.

“Bulkan, I have never stabbed you.”

I didn’t know where this misunderstanding stemmed from, but I had definitely never stabbed him. I couldn’t possibly stab him. Even though I thought he would recover in due time even if I stabbed him with the knife Empusa gave me, I just couldn’t bring myself to inflict the pain of being stabbed with a knife on Bulkan.

“I couldn’t stab you.”

I spat out the words as if vomiting emotion, but the beast’s eyes looking down at me grew cold. I could feel an emotion as hard and solidified as volcanic rock. As I looked at him quietly, one thought after another passed through my mind.

“Then why did you chase after me? To get revenge?”

“……”

“You said you are the executor who judges. Weren’t you trying to punish me too?”

I asked if he was trying to repay me for the pain I caused him, but there was no answer. He was just pouring that gaze onto me. He looked as tormented and lonely as if he still had a knife stuck in his abdomen. His eyes were endlessly gloomy.

If I could, I felt like I wanted to pull out the knife stuck in his belly for him.

“I couldn’t smell you.”

The answer that finally came to me was an utterly empty one. Just the smell, was it because of the smell I had erased to stop Bulkan from chasing me?

“You’re a human who only lives for 80 years at most, so I thought you had relaxed your neck and died!”

His anger piled up layer by layer.

“I searched the bottom of h**l like a madman.”

Without realizing it, my tongue moved inside my mouth. The word my subconscious wanted to spit out without my knowledge was why. Just why?

“Because I wanted to smell you.”

The reason he had searched for me so frantically was just because he wanted to smell me.

But my opponent was Bulkan. He is a dog. To a dog, the nose is everything. It is their hands, their feet, their eyes, their nose, and their mouth. It was also a phrase that opened up a world with a completely different meaning. I held the key to opening the door to the world.

“Why.”

The shadow cast alone on the wide ground looked transiently lonely.

“Why did you miss me?”

Bulkan, with his jaw clenched tight, trembled. I could feel him putting excessive force into his body. His nails grew progressively sharper. Bulkan dug those nails into his thick chest.

“I hate this thing. It’s useless for anything. It can’t even fill my stomach.”

The nails, which had transformed into a beast’s sharp claws, dug deep into his steel-like skin like an awl. Soon, with a squelch, bright red blood began to gush out from the crushed skin. As if he couldn’t feel any pain, Bulkan didn’t even flinch a single eyebrow.

“Is it the mockery of the gods that it keeps regenerating even when I try to tear it out and rip it to shreds? …If not that.”

If sentences had a smell, the words coming from Bulkan’s mouth would reek of decay. A foul odor from a wound that had been so twisted and torn that it had eventually rotted and festered.

“Is it the roar of my intestines that you have butchered?”

I had definitely asked him if he loved me. Bulkan had laughed at me and mocked me for asking. But now, what he was crying out and confessing was clearly the bitterness that love brings.

The dog who had learned human emotions looked terribly unhappy. Bulkan was a foolish dog, unaware that the emotion planted in his large chest had finally sprouted and borne the fruit of love.

He was just throwing his whole heart at me according to his instincts, confessing that he loved me. He was conveying his sorrow to me with his entire body. I was a well that had to fully receive and endure that emotion. All sorts of emotional impurities poured out of my whole body, gushing and gushing.

I felt like I had fallen into a deep quagmire. I couldn’t even entertain the thought of escaping in a corner of my mind. It was irresistible. Even if I tried to struggle, the sticky water of emotion pooled at my feet kept grabbing my ankles. Telling me not to go, that it had missed me so deeply all this time.