“Seo Tae-joon! I don’t need a husband who won’t even listen to me!”
While Ji-woo pounded her chest in frustration, he stepped directly into the path of the approaching beast. The moment the boar caught sight of him, its snarls deepened, and it charged.
Powerless to do anything but watch the disaster unfold, Ji-woo clamped both hands over her mouth.
Just as the boar’s tusks were about to rip into him, Seo Tae-joon pivoted, driving the sharpened stake he held deep into the animal’s neck. Blood sprayed in a hot jet.
The wound should have been fatal, but the boar only faltered for a second before ramming into Seo Tae-joon again.
He was driven back, step by step, until his back was nearly against the very tree Ji-woo had climbed.
You can’t die! Clasping her phone in trembling hands, Ji-woo found herself, for the first time, praying for the man’s safety.
Seo Tae-joon, however, clearly didn’t see this as a predicament. He was… smiling.
With the agility of a seasoned hunter, he aimed the stake at the crosshatch of axe marks he’d made earlier. The beast’s own momentum carried it forward, impaling it on the sharp point.
A piercing, agonized squeal tore through the forest, sending birds scattering from the trees.
Clinging to the vibrating tree, Ji-woo couldn’t tear her eyes from him.
What truly unnerved her was the smile on his face, as if this were all some exhilarating game. Then he hefted the axe.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
Blood flew with every swing. He grabbed one of the boar’s protruding tusks for leverage and used the axe to sever the artery in its throat. In moments, he was drenched in crimson from head to toe, the blood even seeping between his clenched teeth.
“Ugh…!”
With a final, gurgling cry, the great beast staggered, its strength finally spent.
“You can come down now, Ji-woo.”
Her mouth was dust-dry, her heart hammering against her ribs. Some primal instinct screamed at her not to go down. She felt like a character in a grim fairytale, the sister saved from a tiger only to be trapped with the monstrous man who’d killed it—a man who forced her to choose, again and again, between “Don’t die” and “Don’t kill.”
“Want me to come up and get you?”
“No!” she snapped.
“My legs… they’re shaking. Just give me a second to catch my breath. And you… you need to calm down too, Seo Tae-joon.”
“You think I’m excited?”
She risked a glance down. Except for the slight rise and fall of his chest as he caught his breath, Seo Tae-joon seemed no different than usual. In fact, he was unnervingly still, as quiet as the forest around them.
“Oh, I see.” He twisted her words, a cruel glint in his eye. Rolling his shoulder as if to stretch, he continued, “You wanted to see me get excited, all covered in blood like this. If that’s what you want, just say so. Do you want to see my pnis get excited?”
“What the f—, no!”
“I told you. I’ll do anything you want.”
“I’m not a pervert!” Ji-woo shot back. But even as she said it, the doctor’s grave words echoed in her mind. Behavioral abnormalities, aggression, hypersexuality. The three terms perfectly described the man standing below her.
Noticing the way she held her breath, he wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. “Were you scared?” he asked.
“Right now, I’m more scared of you.”
At that, he threw his head back and laughed.
“Don’t laugh when you’re holding an axe!”
He looked like a madman, a killer gloating beneath a gallows. Ji-woo’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the tree. She bitterly regretted ever doubting the doctor’s diagnosis. I have to get my head on straight, she thought. I need to become a much better liar.
Just then, a low moan drifted up from below. Seo Tae-joon was bent over, one hand pressed to his side.
“Seo Tae-joon? Are you all right?”
She peeked through the branches. He’d seemed so completely unaffected that she had forgotten he’d just fought a massive wild boar. “Are you badly hurt?”
When he didn’t move, a real sense of alarm shot through her. Just as she shifted her weight to climb down a branch, to get closer, the axe fell from his grasp and hit the dirt with a thud.
“See? I put down the axe, just like you asked.” He straightened up, completely unharmed, and gave her a small, triumphant wave. “Now it’s your turn to come down.”