Pungjin's Tears
Before Pungjin could say a word or stop her...
In the blink of an eye, the wooden horse shot past the house and soared into the sky! No—the flying horse!!
Everything he had been worrying about seemed ridiculous. Nothing happened at all.
The moment he let himself relax, the thing he hadn't noticed until now suddenly became impossible to ignore.
Hyerim's enormous breasts, pressed against his back from where she sat behind him, were impossible to miss.
The wooden horse was tiny to begin with. (It was originally a one-person mount, after all.)
Pungjin clung to the front, gripping the horse's neck and practically lying flat against it, while Hyerim had to stretch her arms around him to reach the controls.
That left her no choice but to mash those full, heavy breasts tightly against his back.
Aaaah... ugh...
His cock surged upward instantly.
Wait... is the estrus magic still active?!
He wasn't sure if he was simply reacting to Hyerim's breasts, but Pungjin convinced himself the spell just hadn't worn off yet. Admitting he got hard this easily was too humiliating.
So, keenly aware of Hyerim's firm body and plush breasts against his back, the two of them and the flying horse soared through the air for a long time.
The mount carrying them finally descended with a smooth whoosh, landing in a village.
It was the first time since arriving in this world that Pungjin had seen a real human settlement. He found it utterly fascinating.
"This way! Over here!"
Completely unaware of his excitement, the impatient Hyerim grabbed his arm and dragged him straight toward her house before he could even look around.
Aah... a beautiful girl is holding my arm like this...
The warmth of her hand on his skin moved him deeply. As he stared at her pure white fingers wrapped around his arm, he marveled again and again while she pulled him along.
"Father! Father! I... I brought a wizard!"
"Sob... sob... Please, please wake up a little... just a little...!!"
Hyerim burst into loud tears as she practically hauled Pungjin inside. Her father's condition looked dire.
He had clearly been brutalized by forest monsters. Scratches, bruises, sprains, ruptures, and dislocations covered his body.
He was already unconscious, breathing in shallow, ragged gasps.
In truth, it wouldn't have been surprising if he died at any moment.
Hmm... this wouldn't happen to be the work of those goblins I chased off the other day, would it?
Pungjin entertained the innocent suspicion as he treated the man with the medicines he had brought. They were homemade folk remedies he had concocted himself.
The medicines had worked wonders on him, but he had no idea whether they would be equally effective on Hyerim's father.
Feeling that wasn't enough, he cast a basic healing spell he had learned secondhand from a book. It was nothing fancy—just the standard natural recovery techniques described in ordinary texts.
Of course, this was the first time he had ever actually used them on someone else.
Every healing trick Pungjin knew had been stolen from books during the endless beatings he took from Miwol, desperately studying in secret just to survive.
They were far from proper techniques, but this was hardly the time to be picky.
Finally, he brought out the precious recovery potion and poured it into the man's mouth.
It was the tonic Miwol prepared in bulk and drank whenever she felt tired. Pungjin had carefully collected the small amounts she left behind in the bottles.
Fortunately, Miwol had a habit of gulping it down sloppily without finishing every drop, allowing him to slowly amass quite a collection over time.
It pained him to use such a precious, heartfelt remedy on someone else, but he still had several bottles left at home. Besides, this was a celebration of his transformation from wolf to human...
And a token of gratitude for the way Hyerim had pressed those soft, bouncy, full breasts against his arm and back.
He poured the potion into her father's mouth.
"I've done everything I can for now. Even if he doesn't recover, I hope you won't blame me too harshly. As I told Hyerim before we arrived, I'm neither a professional healer nor a proper mage. I'm just someone who knows a bit about folk remedies..."
"Ugh... ugh... uhh..."
Pungjin had barely finished giving his disclaimer to Hyerim's gathered relatives when the man suddenly cracked his eyes open.
"F-Father... Waaaaah..."
"Darling!!"
"Uncle!!!"
"Father-in-law!!"
"Brother-in-law!!"
"Big brother!!"
The sheer number of titles they called Hyerim's father was staggering. No matter how he thought about it, the absurdly complicated web of family honorifics from Confucian Korea seemed to exist in this world too. It was almost unbelievable.
Normally people would just use names, but maybe magic had twisted things to suit their preferences?
While Pungjin pondered this pointless question, everyone else crowded around the father, offering prayers of gratitude and singing hymns in a chaotic outpouring of joy.
Wait, did that actually work? Was my medicine that good? No... it must have been because of the tonic Lady Miwol drinks...
Hyerim and her family soon turned to Pungjin with tears of thanks.
"Ah... Jinjin, thank you so much for saving my father... sob... sob..."
"Goodness, how can we ever repay this kindness... sob..."
"Where did you find such a brilliant healer?! Sob... sob..."
"Quickly, bring out some alcohol—no, tea! Bring tea!"
"No, no, we still don't know for sure. We should keep watching him a little longer."
Fearing they might suddenly blame him if the father's condition worsened again, Pungjin grew increasingly nervous and kept declining their offers.
He added, "Since I need to continue monitoring his condition, would it be all right if I stayed here for a while?"
"Ohhh, if you would really do that, we would be endlessly grateful... But we don't want to impose too much... Still, his condition is so serious... Please, we beg you. We will find some way to repay this debt as a family..."
The desperate hope in their eyes mirrored Pungjin's own urgent desire not to return to Miwol's house and risk being captured by her again. He needed to stay here.
That night, in the lodging Hyerim's family had prepared for him, Pungjin prayed to the Sun and Moon Gods before falling asleep.
Just like when he had been a wolf—a dog—he begged that the mysterious sleepwalking brainwashing magic cast by that insane perverted woman with the blue eyes wouldn't drag him back to Miwol's house while he slept. He prayed he wouldn't open his eyes to that familiar ceiling again.
Please...
The next morning, Pungjin woke up in the small storage-like room Hyerim's family had given him.
Aah...
Had the crazy woman's magic and brainwashing finally been completely broken?
An unfamiliar ceiling. The distant murmur of Hyerim's family members. No longer waking up alone. No longer anyone's slave. No longer a dog.
He... was a liberated people.
He was a free man... not even a dog anymore.
The freedom he had reclaimed. The humanity he had reclaimed.
All the oppression and violence he had endured, the humiliation of being reduced to a dog—it all came rushing back.
Overwhelmed by emotion, Pungjin quietly shed tears of joy.
And of course, by pure coincidence, he also felt grateful to Hyerim for forcibly dragging him out of that den of demons.
Anyone could see that Hyerim's father's injuries were severe. In modern Korea, he would have been in the ICU. Thanks to Miwol's tonic, he had regained some consciousness, but he still couldn't speak properly.
As a result, the other medicinal ingredients Pungjin had hastily brought were used up in no time. There were so many wounds that even applying small amounts quickly depleted the supply.
"Um... the medicine has run out. I'll need to gather more ingredients..."
Pungjin told Hyerim.
"Oh... I see. Shall we go together to your house in the forest to get more?"
"Ah, no... I think we'll need to gather them from the forest nearby. There aren't any prepared herbs back at the house."
The thought of returning home only to find Miwol waiting there made Pungjin panic, so he made up an excuse.
"B-But... as you know, there might be monsters in the forest..."
"Ah, that's true..."
"Still, the medicinal herbs aren't only found deep in the forest. We should start by searching around the village outskirts..."
"I see. Then I'll come with you and help."
And so Hyerim and Pungjin left the house together.
"We're looking for plants that look like this."
Soon after they reached a field a short distance from the village, Pungjin found the herbs he needed.
"Huh? This grass is medicinal?"
Hyerim's eyes widened in surprise. It was a common-looking plant you could find anywhere in a field, yet Pungjin was calling it an herb.
"To be precise, it's not the leaves—it's the root that's important."
Pungjin dug into the soil with his hands, carefully lifting out the root.
"The fine root hairs are the key part, so you have to dig it up very gently so they don't break off."
The root he pulled out was about the size of a finger.
"Where I used to live, we called this wild ginseng. It's considered an incredibly precious medicinal ingredient... but it seems pretty common here. Hehe..."
Indeed.
It was a plant that looked exactly like the wild ginseng sold for enormous sums in modern Korea.
Whether it was true wild ginseng, bellflower root, or something else entirely, he couldn't be sure. But after being beaten and rolling around because of Miwol, he had spotted a plant that looked identical to the ones he had seen on YouTube. When he dug it up experimentally, the root that came out was identical—or at least extremely similar.
His stomach had been empty and Miwol had been beating him daily, so he had washed the suspected wild ginseng and nibbled on it bit by bit.
Pungjin had been a rather strange hikikomori who spent all his time indoors, absorbing endless amounts of useless trivia from YouTube and the internet instead of playing games. As he ate the wild ginseng, he felt grateful that he had at least seen the real thing before.
Anyway, eating it warmed his stomach, eased his hunger, and seemed to help his wounds heal faster. So he had frequently dug up and consumed the wild ginseng.
