BWLHF 09

Chapter 9

Thud.

With a dull, heavy sound, Young-in’s head rang sharply. His vision blurred and warped.

Ah… I must have hit my head on the bed…

Lying with his head against the slanted floor, Young-in slowly blinked as he listened to the pounding ringing in his ears.

A bitter laugh escaped him at the faint heartbeat he could hear—less than half as lively as the heartbeat he’d heard against the chest of the baby rabbit.

I managed to avoid a wild bear in the forest, only to end up dying of a concussion in a cabin.

Life is seriously ridiculous… If I’d known this was going to happen, I should’ve written a will beforehand…

Blood began flowing from his nose and mouth, eventually forming a small pool that soaked his cheek. Just as Young-in was about to surrender to his drooping eyelids and fall into a deep sleep—

Creak.

Suddenly, the cabin door opened.

Thump. Thud. Thud…

After irregular vibrations—too uneven to be a heartbeat—shook the floor, an icy chill settled over his forehead, which had been burning as though scalded.

“Oh my. You’ve got quite a high fever.”

“…….”

The low, languid voice he’d heard only a few hours ago tickled his ears.

Young-in barely managed to lift his eyelids through his fading consciousness. He couldn’t make out the man’s entire face through his blurred vision, but strangely, just knowing that the man was standing in front of him eased his fear somewhat.

Young-in raised his trembling fingers and slowly pointed toward the drawer.

“……The medicine… is over there…”

“Medicine?”

“The blood-stopping… kind… I… need to take it…”

At Young-in’s words, the man turned and pulled open the drawer.

“Just… give me the medicine… and you can leave… Hah… The sooner you get out… the better…”

He was a strange person—asking for help while simultaneously ordering his would-be rescuer to leave. The man’s gaze fell upon the medicine packets inside the drawer.

Is he a drug addict?

Inside a badly crumpled paper bag were several small syringe kits and dozens of bright-red pills. On the outside, instructions for taking them had been carefully written in neat handwriting.

<Inject the shot perpendicular to the chest. In case of severe bleeding, take two high-dose hemostatic agents and one anticoagulant. Severe thirst may occur after taking them. Side effects: may cause high fever, abdominal pain, headaches, and muscle aches.>

“Hmm.”

The man stared at the pills in his hand for a long while before slowly turning his head. He looked down at Young-in, sprawled helplessly on the floor, with an expression that suggested he couldn’t understand.

“Medicine like this wouldn’t be of any use anyway.”

His questions continued, one after another, in a tone completely devoid of malice.

“Did you choose to become like this? Or were you born with a body like this from the beginning? Why are you still alive when an ordinary person’s body would have rotted away long ago?”

Young-in had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Gathering every last bit of strength he had, he forced out a sound.

“Please… save me…”

His illness caused excessive coagulation internally at the same time as external bleeding.

Even as blood poured out of his body, it was rapidly clotting inside his blood vessels. That was why he had to take both medication to stop the bleeding and medication to slow down blood clots.

“I need to… take that medicine… Hh… so the blood… will stop… Please…”

Above all, what good was it to worry about the cause now? If nothing was done immediately, he would simply bleed out and die right there.

Yet the man continued opening the medicines one by one and smelling them, muttering something else to Young-in.

It was as though he were explaining the nature of water to a drowning person while showing no particular concern for Young-in, who was bleeding profusely right in front of him.

“……”

Help me. Please.

Young-in moved his lips as he let out increasingly weaker breaths. The blood, which had begun clotting into lumps, was sticking thickly around his nose and lips, obstructing his breathing.

Unfortunately, that meant it was already too late to take the anticoagulant.

The blood that had once gushed from Young-in’s body as though someone had turned on a faucet would eventually harden after enough time passed.

Was it some kind of unusual constitution?

No.

It was simply a body that was dying in real time.

My thoughts are getting sluggish…

As time passed, even the blood pooling at the tip of his tongue seemed to become increasingly sticky, giving him a strange sensation.

His shallow breaths, rising and falling slowly beneath his chest, turned into coughs that couldn’t quite escape and instead weighed down his body like rocks.

The man’s eyebrow, which had been watching him the entire time, tilted crookedly.

“My, you’re already falling asleep. We haven’t even had much of a conversation.”

When Young-in gradually stopped responding, the man gave up on questioning him. He crumpled the now-useless syringe and medicines and tossed them aside before bending down.

“For now, I’ll cool you down. That’ll probably be faster.”

With those words, the man suddenly gently grasped Young-in’s chin and lifted it, then immediately pressed his lips against his.

“……!”

The unexpected sensation against his lips was shockingly cold.

Mmgh, mmm.

More than the fact that he had kissed a stranger, it was the unfamiliar sensation—as though he had touched frost in the middle of winter—that sent chills down Young-in’s body.

His eyes flew wide, and he tightly shut his lips.

“Tsk. Open your mouth.”

But the man growled the words and pushed a firm finger into Young-in’s mouth, which was filled with sticky blood.

Pressing firmly against the slippery root of his tongue, the man forced his jaw open and pushed his thick tongue between the small lips.

“Ghk…”

“That’s it.”

When a tightly suppressed moan escaped from deep within his throat, the man firmly held Young-in’s small jaw and pressed his lips against him again, covering his parted mouth.

The scene looked almost as though Young-in were being devoured. His fingertips twitched as he struggled weakly.

Something is coming in.

“Mmgh, mmm, ngh…!”

The rabbit hunter who had suddenly invaded the cabin—or rather, the rabbit’s owner—spouted a string of incomprehensible words and pushed his way into Young-in’s mouth as he pleased.

The kiss felt as though it were stitching together a body that had been torn to shreds and left in tatters. Young-in stiffened, hunching his shoulders.

The man’s tongue, slipping into his mouth like a massive snake, scraped against the rough inner walls of his throat and dragged out the thick clots of blood as though raking them away with claws.

It was strangely relieving despite the pain that was almost unbearable.

Young-in’s vision flashed white.

It was a strange sensation.

The inside of his body, which had felt as though it were burning in the fires of hell, noticeably cooled every time the man’s saliva slipped down his throat.

The clotted blood that had accumulated throughout his body began to flow away, melting like snow beneath warm sunlight.

The man lightly grasped Young-in’s shoulder.

Startled by the sudden touch, Young-in bit down on the man’s tongue with all the strength he had and turned his head away.

Like a doll with its strings cut, Young-in collapsed face-first onto the floor and began coughing violently.

“Cough…! Cough…! Hh, haa, hack…”

His throat, which had been filled with blood and slowly hardening, had suddenly been cleared by that single kiss.

A dark-red clot tore loose from deep inside Young-in’s throat. It crawled across the floor like a giant leech before eventually liquefying and melting away.

“Let’s have a look.”

Ptui.

After sucking at the tongue Young-in had bitten, the man immediately grabbed his chin and pulled open his reddened eyelids.

“Mm…”

Young-in raised his head with a low moan. The traces of the kiss glistened around his lips.

“Hah… haa… ha…”

“……”

Despite all the effort he’d put into sucking out the blood, Young-in’s light brown eyes still couldn’t quite focus, trembling faintly.

His muddled consciousness had partially returned, but his arms and legs still felt utterly powerless, as though heavy weights had been attached to them.

Even if the blood had stopped thickening, his body was still a complete mess.

“This isn’t easy.”

After examining his condition for a long while, the man clicked his tongue and immediately lifted Young-in’s thin body, carrying him over to the bed.

“What are you doing… Hh…!”

Thud.

A low moan escaped Young-in as he was tossed onto the old mattress.

The man sat down beside the bed and tilted his head.

“You seem to endure pain better than you look.”

With an oddly intrigued expression, the man looked down at Young-in’s body.