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Blurred vision. Ears feeling muffled, as if his head were submerged in water. Breathing that was anything but comfortable.

Yiyeon wondered if he was being water-tortured and was about to drown. Or was he actually sinking into the ocean? His body felt heavy and suffocating, as if something were pressing down on him. Breathing was so difficult that Yiyeon deliberately tried to take a deep breath by expanding his chest.

He could feel his bony ribs swelling out, filling the space beneath his skin tightly. Even after taking that deep breath, the tightness in his chest didn’t lessen. But since air was clearly entering his nostrils, it was certain that he wasn’t underwater.

Yiyeon managed to open his eyes with difficulty. His eyelids felt so heavy and painful that even the simple act of opening them was no easy feat.

The ceiling he saw the moment he opened his eyes wasn’t one he’d seen often enough to be familiar, but it was a ceiling he recognized. It was a place he knew. He had even promised with his own mouth that he would return here.

He tried to sit up as he had back then, but it was as if his mind and body were determined to go their own way; he couldn’t move a single part of his body as he wished, and he felt dazed, as if he were drunk. No matter how hard he tried, he could only open one eye, though Yiyeon didn’t even fully realize this. His field of vision, narrowed by half in all directions – up, down, left, and right – traced a path from the ceiling and the corner of the room toward the door through which light was seeping in.

The blinding light made it impossible to see anything clearly. Yet, as if driven by instinct, as if chasing the light to escape a long tunnel, Yiyeon reflexively gazed at it. Though he couldn’t tell whether the door was actually closed, the warm air made the cool breeze seeping in feel refreshing.

Feeling the breeze brush against his face, he looked at the human figure visible through the door. It was blurry, but it was a person. It wasn’t just one person, two figures were standing with their backs to the light, conversing about something.

A murmur drifted into his muffled ears, but it wasn’t enough ​visit our site​for him to understand the conversation. Occasionally, words pierced through the muffled sound and caught his ear, but his dazed mind struggled to form coherent thoughts.

However, the familiar ceiling brought Yiyeon a sense of relief. He knew this place. Hyunhak’s house, standing all alone in a spot he’d never imagined a home could exist. Deep within these layered mountains. Yiyeon felt relieved that this was the very place he’d hoped to return to if he ever had the chance.

“Zao!”

At the loud voice coming from outside the door, Yiyeon struggled to gather his scattered thoughts and assess the situation. Would it be awkward if some kind of altercation had broken out?

He had heard the name “Zao” called out before. He blinked his eyes several times to clear the dryness; though the image still blurred, he could now make out a somewhat complete human form. The surroundings were blindingly white and bright, and the two men standing face-to-face were silhouetted against the light, appearing pitch-black.

Yiyeon, seemingly accustomed to this stark contrast, naturally thought, “It must have snowed heavily again.”

The two men appeared to be in the midst of a heated argument. Their gestures and the occasional loud outburst suggested as much. Upon closer inspection, he realized the man shouting was Hyunhak.

He seemed to have developed an even more profound aura than when he had last seen him. He had shed his youthful appearance, and though not much time had passed, his sturdy shoulders and back seemed to have grown even broader. Hyunhak was engaged in a minor argument with the person standing directly across from him, and the man on the opposite side was just as tall as Hyunhak.

However, while Hyunhak was sturdy, well-built, and imposing, the man standing opposite him gave off a relatively slender impression.

The two exchanged words for some time, and soon, the man called Zao threw something at Hyunhak. The object the man threw covered [stolen content]Hyunhak’s face. The way it fluttered in the wind suggested it was roughly a piece of cloth.

Even though he had only focused his gaze on the two men for a moment, Yiyeon felt exhausted. He slowly closed and opened his eyelids, which felt slightly feverish. When he did, one of the black silhouettes had vanished without a trace, and only the man presumed to be Hyunhak was standing there.

Wondering what was going on – or if Hyunhak might be in an awkward situation because of him – Yiyeon wanted to look at his face, but he couldn’t manage it. It was literally a struggle to swallow, blink, and even breathe.

What was wrong with his body that simply breathing felt so difficult?

Yiyeon suddenly began to question his own condition. It was strange that his ears felt stuffed up, and that his eyelids felt as if something were stuck to them, making it hard to open his eyes. He wondered if his face was even attached properly; he wanted to feel his face to check, but how could he use his hands when even breathing was a struggle? 

Exhausted from trying to move, Yiyeon took a deep breath. Setting aside his current condition, he felt something was wrong.

Why was he lying here? He was certain he’d left this place and returned to the village, but then there was the incident with Dusoe, and then… and then…

He couldn’t remember anything after that. His memory was clear up until the point where he’d decided he had to come here, but he couldn’t recall what happened afterward. Had he crawled here on his own?

When he realized there was a huge gap in his memory, Yiyeon felt confused. He remembered that after an irreconcilable argument with Dusoe, he had barely managed to pull himself together and decided to flee here on his own. But that was the limit of his memory.

The intermediate steps – the route he took, when, and how he had reached Hyunhak’s house stolen content deep in these rugged mountains – remained a blank in Yiyeon’s memory. It made no sense that he wouldn’t remember something he had done himself. Even if he had been kidnapped, shouldn’t he remember what happened right before the abduction?

Yiyeon’s last memory stopped at the moment he had decided to find this place and secretly set out on his journey.

He tried to calm his confused mind as he racked his brain for memories. Was it because his body was so exhausted, or had he just regained consciousness, causing a momentary lapse? He rummaged through his memories, clinging to such absurd rationalizations.

But the more he tried to remember, the bigger the empty void in his memory grew, feeling as if it were gnawing at his brain. The more he tried to think, the less he could recall.

Although he hadn’t studied literature, Yiyeon wasn’t a complete fool. He clearly remembered the situation he had been in and what he had feared in his last memory, and he knew what kind of danger he had been willing to face at the time.

His body felt unwell even without looking, his mind felt completely empty as if his memories had vanished, and when he opened his eyes, he found himself at Hyunhak’s house.

Ultimately, there were two possibilities. Either he had truly displayed superhuman strength and luck to escape safely to Hyunhak’s house in this body, or – as he had feared – after suffering all manner of torment at the hands of Young Master Seo and that Byeon scoundrel, Hyunhak had once again shown him mercy. It was an obvious conclusion.

He had to see for himself what had happened. Yiyeon clenched his teeth and forced himself to sit up. Even though he had only managed to raise his upper body, it felt as if every muscle in his body was tearing apart, making him want to scream. But Yiyeon gritted his teeth and pushed himself forward.

True to his reputation as the man the villagers had so harshly pointed fingers at, Yiyeon barely managed to sit down. Feeling a dizzying sensation as if the cramped room were spinning, he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

Once he raised his right arm instead of his left – which was tightly bound and immobilized – Yiyeon realized there was no need to confirm the facts any further. On his white wrist, where the bones protruded, there were clear handprints, ​visit our site​and his jacket – torn to shreds, so ragged it was embarrassing to even call it clothing – was in tatters. The handprints on his wrist were much bigger than his own; they were unmistakably those of another person.

With trembling hands, Yiyeon felt his way across his own body. His jacket was completely unbuttoned, and his lower body, torn here and there, revealed bare skin. It was an unfamiliar sensation.

Yiyeon felt his way along his body and let his gaze follow his fingers downward. He felt a burning sensation; his face seemed swollen and misshapen. Though marks remained on his neck because he had strangled himself, Yiyeon could not see it. Instead, his eyes fell upon an unusual bruise on his chest, which was covered in deep, black bruises and bite marks.

He had seen something similar to this before. The kind of marks that men who’d been having an affair behind their wives’ backs would bring back around their necks when they returned from a late-night tryst. It was the bruising caused by someone’s lips sucking on his skin.

As he looked at those marks lining the pale pink areolas on his flat, gaunt chest, Yiyeon hurriedly pulled down his pants. His pants, already torn in several places, ripped further under his panicked movements.

Forgetting the pain, Yiyeon searched his body thoroughly, looking for traces of others left behind. A handprint on his thigh, a scrape he couldn’t recall how he’d gotten, and the explicit bite marks.

A muffled sound, eyes that wouldn’t open, and a face that felt the violence through his fingertips. Lost consciousness. A body with not a single spot that didn’t ache, and a fever enveloping his entire being.

Just as all evidence points to the culprit, every trace left on Yiyeon’s body was filling in for his lost memories.

“Ah…….”

In the end, it was bound to turn out this way. Before it came to this, did he fight back? Or had Read onhe resigned himself to reality? Though he couldn’t remember, the mere guess made Yiyeon scream out loud.

“Ah! Aaah!! Aaah!!”

Not being able to remember was even more terrifying. Curled up like a child on the floor, which Hyunhak had kept warm all night by tending the embers, Yiyeon screamed in agony.

Startled by the sudden, heart-wrenching scream, Hyunhak – who had been bickering with Zao over something trivial – hurriedly kicked open the door and rushed into the room.

“Yeon-ah!!”

Although he had told him his name, he had never given Hyunhak permission to call him by it so familiarly, yet he shouted it loudly as he rushed in. But Yiyeon was in no state to care about such things. He screamed as if he had forgotten how to speak and could do nothing but scream as he scratched his body as though he wanted to tear it apart.