Levitation, and a World Raining Blood
Lee Eunha's world was perfect darkness.
The light had vanished not long ago. Just a few months earlier, the campus of her pharmacy college had been filled with a spring green so vivid it stung the eyes. But a rare optic nerve disease had stolen her sight without warning. A condition in which the retinal nerve cells died slowly, yet irrevocably. Trapped in a tunnel of despair that even modern medicine could not touch, Eunha's world had shifted from hazy fog to thick, inky blackness.
Once her vision was cut off, her remaining senses sharpened to a violent degree. Inside a private room at a large hospital in the heart of Seoul, what crushed her in that narrow, controlled space was not the darkness itself. It was the nauseating hypocrisy and sticky desire of the people filling the hospital room.
"Our Eunha, what are we going to do? What are we going to do…"
The sound of sniffling. It was her mother's voice. Yet at the end of that sob reaching Eunha's ears lingered a strange sense of relief. A bizarre comfort mixed with a grotesque superiority—the feeling that her once-brilliant, dazzling daughter had now completely collapsed.
Her mother's hand patted Eunha's shoulder. The smell of sweat seeping from her palm and the artificial floral scent of cheap hand cream stabbed at Eunha's nose. Eunha swallowed dryly and stiffened her body.
"The upperclassmen will look into everything. Whether there are good hospitals abroad or any new drugs in clinical trials. Don't worry too much, Eunha."
The voice of her department senior. The man who had always hovered around her, trying to win her favor. His hot, damp palm covered the back of Eunha's pale hand.
—Slide.
The sensation of fingers stroking the back of her hand. It was blatant sexual harassment disguised as comfort. Eunha's skin, never touched by sunlight, was pale and translucent like porcelain. Her waist-length jet-black hair created an even colder atmosphere against her patient gown. Her unfocused, cloudy silver eyes radiated a mysterious yet sorrowful beauty.
People pretended to pity the blind Eunha while greedily licking their lips at the fragile body that could no longer resist. Her senior's fingers slid past her wrist, stealthily trying to slip into the sleeve of her gown.
"Ah, please let go…"
Eunha weakly pulled her hand away. But her senior only gripped her wrist harder. Over the delicate skin where her pulse beat, the sticky male body heat coiled like a snake.
"Eunha, I'm just worried about you. Your hands are so cold."
From one corner of the room came the faint sound of female classmates snorting.
—Hah. As if.
The unspoken mockery traveled through the air. Ever since entering the pharmacy department, Eunha had always been an object of jealousy. Her quiet, introverted personality kept her from mingling deeply with others, but that only made people envy her appearance and her family's wealth even more. Those who approached her for money, those who saw her as nothing but a pretty trophy. All the shells of their pretense had peeled away completely the moment Eunha lost her sight.
They chewed on her misfortune like a snack, inwardly cheering.
'It's divine punishment.'
Their breathing, their body odors, every tiny twitch of their muscles screamed that at her.
—Rustle.
Then she felt the hospital bed sheet sink. Near her right thigh. A familiar scent. It was her younger brother, now twenty years old.
"Noona, you're okay, right?"
His voice was gentle. But his large, crude hand crossed the bed sheet and pressed firmly onto Eunha's thigh over the thin patient pants.
—Press.
It was not a simple touch. His fingertips applied force, blatantly stroking the curve of her slender thigh. Eunha's breath caught in her throat. Her brother's rough breathing brushed against the nape of her neck. Even blood-related family treated their blind older sister as a helpless piece of meat and an object of lust.
Fear spread through her veins. She bit down hard on her trembling lips. She wanted to run. But there was nowhere for the sightless Eunha to go. The despair of having to live forever mocked and toyed with in this pit of terrible pretense and sticky desire tightened around her ankles like cold shackles.
That was the moment.
—Vrrrr.
A strange vibration. The air pressure inside the hospital room suddenly dropped with a whoosh. The pressure decrease was enough to make her ears feel stuffed. The hand gripping her shoulder vanished into thin air. The senior's damp palm that had been rubbing her hand, the grip kneading her thigh—everything was yanked away into empty space at once.
"Huh…?"
Someone's dazed voice.
—Sliiide.
Eunha's body lifted about a handspan off the mattress. Weightlessness. The friction of the bed sheet disappeared, and a bizarre floating sensation enveloped her entire body. Eunha panicked and flailed in the air. The only thing her fingertips caught was the cold air of the hospital room.
"Ack! What is this! Somebody help!"
"Mom! Noona!"
Screams erupted from all directions. But those screams were not coming from beside Eunha—they were coming from right below the ceiling of the room. Had the people been dragged up to the ceiling? Eunha flapped helplessly in the air, her face deathly pale, unable to understand what was happening.
And in the blink of an eye, the world whose gravity had twisted regained its original rules.
—Thud.
Eunha's light body settled back onto the soft hospital mattress. That was the end of it. For her, it was merely a brief, nauseating experience of floating a handspan before returning to place.
But not for the others.
—Kwaaaaaang!
A roar that shook the entire building. A rupturing sound loud enough to tear eardrums struck the hospital in the heart of Seoul—no, the entire world.
—Puuuuck!
—Kwajik!
—Jjeeeeooook!
Those were absolutely not sounds a person could make. They were the noises of enormous chunks of meat plummeting from dozens, hundreds of meters in the air onto asphalt and concrete roofs. A grotesque bursting sound like tens of thousands of water balloons exploding simultaneously hammered the eardrums in succession.
—Chulpu-deok.
—Pudeuk.
Inside the hospital room too, the sound of something heavy being flung to the floor rang out. From the window side came a —jjeeeeooook! as glass shattered into pieces, and immediately after, a sticky, viscous liquid poured into the room.
—Drip.
—Drip drip.
The sound of rain falling. But it was not water. An overwhelming smell of blood. The pungent metallic scent that pierced the lungs and the stench of filth bursting from torn intestines swallowed the hospital room's disinfectant smell in an instant.
Eunha tried to inhale and doubled over in dry heaves, curling into herself.
"M… Mom?"
Eunha opened her trembling lips toward the empty air. The mother who had just been touching her shoulder and shedding fake tears. The younger brother who had been kneading her thigh. The seniors rubbing their sticky palms together. Not a single one of them answered.
"Is anyone… there? Hello! Senior!"
Silence. A spine-chilling, absolute silence. The hundreds of footsteps, conversations, mechanical sounds that had filled the hospital just moments ago—even the sound of car engines racing on the road outside. Everything had vanished like a lie.
Only the sound of blood pooled on the floor—drip, drip—echoed in her ears.
Eunha reached out with her violently shaking hand and fumbled along the edge of the bed. She carefully lowered her toes to the floor.
—Squelch.
It was not the cold hospital floor. It was something hot, slippery, and sticky. Pulverized flesh like tofu and shattered bone fragments soaked her bare feet.
"Aaaaaack!"
A tearing scream burst from Eunha's throat. She staggered backward and collapsed onto the floor. Everything her palms touched was blood and flesh. From the ceiling, plop, blood droplets fell onto her face.
She could not comprehend where or how things had gone so wrong, what had happened in this hellish darkness. Crawling across the blood-soaked floor, she screamed desperately into the empty air. The blind girl's wail, left alone at the end of the world, echoed hollowly through the now-silent hospital corridors.
At the same time.
In a shabby studio apartment on the outskirts of Seoul.
—Grrrrr.
A low, thick beastly breathing shook the dusty floor. The room was filled with the smell of cheap soju and sour vomit. Taeo, who had been dumped by his girlfriend the night before and had drunk himself senseless with his friends, lifted his heavy eyelids while sprawled on the floor.
'Ugh… my head. Fuck, how much did I drink?'
Taeo tried to mutter out of habit. But the sound that slipped past his lips was not human language.
—Kweeeong!
A ferocious wolf's roar that scraped his vocal cords and seemed to tear through space. Even Taeo himself flinched at the enormous sound. The recoil caused his body, which had been trying to push off the floor, to tilt heavily to one side.
—Crash!
The dining table in the middle of the studio shattered like paper and flew away. The furniture in the room broke into pieces as if bombed. Taeo blinked, trying to gather his dazed mind. His vision was strange. All the colors of objects had died, but instead the outlines and movements appeared with spine-chilling clarity. Even the scent of microscopic mold spores living on the studio floor rushed in, broken down in minute detail. The sheer volume of olfactory information threatened to make his brain explode.
He lowered his head to look at his own body. What entered his field of vision was not a thick padded jacket or jeans. It was stiff, dense black fur that looked as if darkness itself had been condensed. What was planted on the floor was not a callused human hand, but a massive iron-like forepaw. At the tips protruded sharp hooked claws that could easily dig through concrete walls.
—Grrrr?
Taeo made the sound again in confusion. It was still a dog's bark. He lay flat on the floor, lifted his head, and looked at the full-length mirror in the corner of the studio.
What was reflected in the mirror was not the sturdy twenty-something young man named Taeo. It was a single giant, ferocious wolf straight out of myth—standing ninety centimeters at the shoulder and easily weighing over a hundred kilograms. Its fangs were threatening enough to pierce through its own jawbone, and the muscles across its body writhed as if ready to explode at any moment.
If Taeo still possessed human reason, he should have been screaming in terror right now. Why did I turn into a dog? Should I report to a hospital or the police? What was that banging noise outside just now?
But Taeo's brain had already perfectly synchronized with the beast's body. Complicated thoughts or philosophical worries were meaningless in the face of adrenaline and testosterone raging through beast blood.
Taeo stared quietly at himself in the mirror, then lowered his gaze. The most important part to check first upon becoming a beast. Between the hind legs. Inside a thick leather sheath covered in black fur, the beast's enormous reproductive organ displayed a heavy presence. The sheath itself looked thicker than an adult man's forearm.
'Wow, fuck! Beast pass!'
Inside, the os penis that served as the axis during mating was felt solidly, and at the base lurked a massive bulbus glandis—the bulb meant for knotting—that would dig into a female's vaginal walls and lock her perfectly in place. Even in its current flaccid state, its overwhelming mass and volume were beyond comparison with the pathetic organ from his human days.
All lingering attachment to the complicated human world evaporated from Taeo's mind in an instant.
'Fuck, it's insanely huge.'
An inner exclamation that could not be voiced in human language. Taeo's ferocious muzzle split into a pleased grin, revealing sharp fangs. Job-hunting stress, his girlfriend's breakup notice, the pathetic memories of yesterday—all of it felt cleanly healed by the overwhelming weight of malehood felt between his legs.
—Woof!
Grrrr.
Taeo wagged his tail roughly, kicked off the floor, and stood up. One scratch of his forepaw across the floor split the linoleum like torn paper and gouged the cement beneath. Overflowing strength. Muscles ready to burst. And the overwhelming superiority of being male.
Well, living as a dog doesn't seem so bad.
Taeo approached the thin iron door of the closed studio. Outside, heavy things had been exploding and shattering noisily just moments ago, but now it was eerily, deathly quiet. The scent of humans vibrated everywhere with the smell of blood, yet not a single trace of a living, moving human could be felt.
It didn't matter. Taeo lifted his heavy forepaw and lightly struck near the handle of the studio's iron door.
—Bang!
Creeeeak!
The lock shattered and the entire iron door was ripped off. Feeling the cool blood-scented wind rush in from outside, the giant mutated beast that had once been Taeo took his first step into the world beyond.
Human morality, law, and society had all burst apart into a perfect lawless wilderness. A hellish hunting ground wide open just for Taeo, with no shackles left to restrain a beast in heat.