The Barrier of Knowledge
The vast pharmacy section of the hypermarket lay shrouded in the silence of early dawn. A wall of knowledge stood before her, bringing only despair—and then, a miracle of connection.
The enormous ruins were a perfect vacuum of scent and chilling stillness. Eunha lay flattened like baggage across Taeo’s broad, solid back, her bare skin absorbing every primal pulse as the beast’s savage muscles relaxed and contracted. They moved through the darkness together.
Thud… Thud…
The heavy footsteps of the beast glided across the marble tiles. Outside, the city had been filled with the skin-crawling wingbeats of giant insects and the acrid stench of their acidic secretions. But those sounds were now muffled by the hypermarket’s thick concrete walls, reduced to a distant, buzzing echo. Inside this colossal indoor space, there was not a single trace of life. It was eerily clean and cold—an absolute vacuum utterly devoid of humanity. No bloodstains, no scraps of torn flesh. Eunha’s cloudy silver-white eyes, their optic nerves burned away, could only perceive the endless rows of shelves as long, dark silhouettes looming like enormous tombstones.
Every time the beast’s back rose and fell, a horrific phantom pain lashed up Eunha’s delicate pelvic bones and into her spine. Just hours earlier, on the cold bathroom floor of a motel, the beast’s twenty-five-centimeter monstrous cock had mercilessly torn through her. The anal sphincter and rectal wall had been shredded to the point of rupture. Every time those frayed muscle fibers screamed under the friction, a fragile, broken gasp slipped from between Eunha’s lips.
“Haa… hng… ugh……”
The extreme terror that her wounds would reopen and pour blood. Yet each time, deep inside her belly—between her pushed-up uterus and colon—the thick mixture of the beast’s saliva and semen exerted a bizarre viscosity, gripping the torn mucous membranes like hardened silicone. The pain and a drug-like analgesic effect tangled chaotically in her bloodstream, gnawing away at her sanity.
Grrruuuh.Sniff.
Taeo stopped walking. His nostrils flared as he began dissecting the faint chemical particles in the air. Eunha, who had buried her face in the thick fur of his nape, suddenly lifted her head at the familiar yet alien scent that stung her nose. Beneath the smell of old dust came the dry odor of cardboard boxes and plastic containers. And beneath that, the faint gelatin coating on pills and the distinctly inorganic, medicinal scent of disinfectants.
“H-here… It’s the over-the-counter medicine corner… on the first floor of the hypermarket……”
Eunha whispered, her trembling hand patting Taeo’s thick neck. Her sensitive nose—honed by years as a pharmacy student—had precisely identified the presence of countless medications here.
When Taeo slightly bent his forelegs to lower the angle of his back, Eunha struggled to undo the crude leather harness binding her waist and thighs, then slid down from the beast’s back onto the floor.
Tap.
The sound of bare feet touching tile. The icy chill of the floor raced up through her soles and spread across her entire body. With her pelvic floor muscles collapsed, her legs refused to support her properly. Eunha staggered as if she might collapse at any moment, reaching out toward the shelves. Her fingertips met the cold touch of a metal rack. Using it as a support, she barely held herself upright and began groping across the countless items stacked there with shaking fingers.
Clatter. Rattle. Rustle.
Her blind hands knocked over neatly arranged medicine bottles and cardboard boxes, sending them tumbling onto the tile floor in heaps. The rolling of plastic bottles and the dull thuds of ointment tubes echoed chaotically through the silent space. Eunha collapsed to the floor and frantically gathered the scattered medications with both hands.
Her rectum was torn, her muscles ruptured—a horrific internal injury. Though the beast’s bodily fluids were aiding emergency treatment and cellular regeneration, a human’s fragile immune system could not fully withstand the invasion of such unclean foreign matter or the resulting inflammation in her internal organs. Eunha’s skin was already burning red with signs of infection, and every breath produced a bubbling sound deep in her lungs. Unless she could get broad-spectrum antibiotics, powerful disinfectants, and strong antipyretic analgesics into her bloodstream immediately, her heart would stop from sepsis before she could even greet the morning in this hell.
But.
“Ah… aah……”
Eunha’s fingers frantically rubbed the surfaces of square cardboard boxes and desperately stroked the rounded curves of plastic bottles. Yet she could discern nothing. Absolutely nothing. The smoothly coated surfaces had no braille whatsoever. Only the flat printed letters that sighted people could read by the color of ink mocked her blind pharmacist’s fingertips, slipping away coldly.
Was the contents of this bottle an antibiotic, or just a vitamin? Was the box filled with fever medicine, or topical wound ointment? She might be able to make some guesses by opening the lids, smelling them, and feeling the size of the pills—but repeating that process among hundreds or thousands of mixed medications in this enormous section would surely lead to shock death from high fever long before she found what she needed.
Despair crashed over her like a massive tidal wave, crushing her thin ribcage. Sitting in the middle of a mountain of medicine, Eunha completely crumbled at the realization that even with the cure right in front of her, she could not see it.
“What do I do… I can’t read the writing… I don’t know which one is the antibiotic……”
Thick tears fell from Eunha’s cloudy silver-white eyes, wetting the cold tile floor.
“There are medicines everywhere… but I… I can’t read any of them……”
The enormous predator who had carried her on his back all the way here possessed overwhelming strength and scent, but she bitterly concluded he was not an intelligent being capable of deciphering human writing. Asking a monster who could not speak and only growled to read the ingredient names on those tiny medicine bottles was like hoping for an impossible miracle.
Eunha covered her face with both hands and sobbed miserably.
It was then.
Swish.
A huge black shadow silently approached the weeping woman crouched on the floor and settled heavily beside her. Ninety kilograms of giant wolf—Taeo. His red, bloodshot eyes quietly looked down at the despairing female.
Though wild instinct ruled his brain and the madness of rut burned through his entire body, deep within that massive skull, in the furthest recesses of his gray matter, the intellect and memories of a human man who had once lived in civilized society before the collapse remained perfectly preserved in fragments.
Taeo’s brilliant mind instantly understood why the female—who had lost her sight and relied only on smell and touch—was breaking down in tears. He saw that she felt her life was threatened because she could not decipher the symbols on those small cardboard boxes.
Rustle. Tap.
Taeo opened his massive jaws and carefully picked up one of the many medicine boxes scattered on the floor with his sharp fangs. The faint sound of paper crumpling. Then he gently dropped the box right in front of Eunha, close enough to touch her knees.
“T-Taeo…?”
Eunha lifted her tear-streaked face and called out in confusion. Instead of answering, Taeo exhaled a rough snort, then slowly lifted his heavy right forepaw. The ankle was thick enough to shatter an adult male’s skull in one blow. At its tip were sharp, curved beast claws. Taeo curled the deadly blades inward, perfectly hiding them, and extended only the thickest, bluntest part of the claw and the soft pad toward her.
Swish. Press.
The beast’s huge, hot forepaw carefully settled onto the center of Eunha’s pale, slender bare back.
“Hik…! Ah, ah……”
Eunha shuddered, shoulders trembling, mistaking the sudden touch for the prelude to mating. But the beast did not pin her to the floor. Instead—
Sliiide. Slide.
The blunt tip of Taeo’s claw gently pressed against the skin near her shoulder blade and began to glide slowly downward in a diagonal line. The overwhelming sensation of the beast’s boiling body heat tracing a line across her cold spine. Eunha’s breath caught in her throat.
A long diagonal from upper left to lower right. Then the claw lifted and drew the opposite diagonal from upper right to lower left, crossing the first. Finally, it drew a clear horizontal line through the center of both diagonals.
A lightning bolt of shock struck Eunha’s mind. Her heart began to pound wildly, as if it would shatter her ribs and burst out. This was no coincidence. The beast was not simply playing or scratching meaninglessly. These were human letters, drawn with perfect intent and meticulous calculation. The first letter of the alphabet.
Taeo’s claw moved across her back again. This time it drew a smooth curve downward from the top, then elegantly bent in the opposite direction at the midpoint. Then a long vertical line, followed by a rounded semicircle attached to the upper right of the pillar.
“A… S… P……”
The letters decoded by her brain from the sensations engraved on her back slipped one by one from Eunha’s trembling lips. The hypersensitive skin of a completely sightless blind woman had become an enormous canvas. A grotesque and miraculous ritual of communication in which a speechless, monstrous predator used his claw as a pen to inscribe letters upon it.
Eunha’s hands frantically clutched the paper box that had fallen in front of her knees.
“A, S, P… Aspirin! This is aspirin, the painkiller and fever reducer, right?!”
She cried out into the empty air, her voice a mixture of shock and joy.
Grrrl.Sniff.
Taeo’s rough snout lightly bumped Eunha’s slender nape, exhaling a warm breath that clearly meant yes.
“This can’t be… You… you can read writing? You understand human letters?”
Surprise, awe, and an inexplicable chill crawling up her spine swept through Eunha’s entire body. This enormous black wolf—the predator who had mercilessly torn her body apart and poured his beastly fluids into her, reducing her to livestock—was not merely a clever mutated animal. This was clear proof that he was a highly intelligent being who understood civilization and could read.
The realization made the violence and mating he inflicted on her even more horrific and profane. Yet paradoxically, for Eunha who was dying here and now, it was the only ray of salvation that could extend her life.
She roughly wiped away her falling tears with the back of her hand. There was no time to be overwhelmed by emotion. To survive, she had to use this miraculous method of communication to its absolute limit.
“Taeo, I need antibiotics. Something strong that will prevent my wounds from getting infected. Look for anything that says ‘cepha’ or ‘amoxicillin.’ Please.”
At Eunha’s desperate command, Taeo began rummaging through the medications scattered across the floor with heavy footsteps, sniffing loudly. His red eyes glowed like fluorescent material even in the darkness as they scanned countless letters.
Rustle. Tap.
Before long, Taeo returned to her side and dropped another plastic medicine bottle. When Eunha turned and offered her back again, he once more began delicately scratching across her damp skin with that blunt claw.
This time they were Korean consonants. A short horizontal stroke, a vertical line down, then another long horizontal.
ㄷ. Then a perfect circle. ㅇ. Then another ㅇ.
“D… o… o… Dong-A? Is that the pharmaceutical company name? What does it say below that?”
Taeo’s claw moved busily across her back again. ㅅ, ㅔ, ㅍ, ㅏ.
“Cepha… cephalosporin antibiotic! Yes, that’s it! Grab that one!”
Eunha let out a cheer and groped across the floor to clutch the bottle tightly to her chest.
It was a wondrous moment. The vast pharmaceutical knowledge of a blind pharmacist and the vision of a giant wolf who could read letters meshed together like perfectly interlocking gears. Sitting face to face on the cold, dark floor of the ruined hypermarket, they began selecting survival supplies in the most grotesque and beautiful way the world had ever seen.
When Taeo brought a bottle in his mouth, Eunha offered her back. The sensation of the beast’s claw tracing down her spine. The overwhelming contrast between that massive weight and the delicate handwriting sent electric thrills through her nervous system.
ㅁ, ㅏ, ㄷ, ㅔ, ㅅ, ㅗ, ㄹ.
“Madecassol… That’s an ointment. We need it for the surface of the skin. Put it in the bag.”
ㅍ, ㅗ, ㅂ, ㅣ, ㄷ, ㅗ, ㄴ.
“Povidone iodine! The red medicine! We have to take all of this. It’s the best for stopping bleeding and disinfecting.”
According to the identifications that poured from Eunha’s trembling lips, Taeo carefully picked up the necessary medications in his mouth and dropped them one by one into the backpack she carried. If she said, “This is for stomach issues, we don’t need it right now,” Taeo would indifferently swipe the bottle away with his huge forepaw and discard it.
A silent harvesting conducted without a single word of human language—only touch, the beast’s warm breath, and a blind woman’s knowledge intersecting. As more and more letters were engraved on Eunha’s back, the backpack grew heavier with precious over-the-counter medicines that would prolong her life.
And in equal measure, deep inside Eunha’s heart, an indelible, blind dependence on this monstrous male took root like a massive tree. The hot sensation of the beast’s claw writing letters across her back as if it were a canvas strangely overlapped with the terrible physical violence he inflicted when he violated her, making her lower abdomen burn with grotesque heat.
“Ung…”
The monster that destroys me. But also the only eyes that read the letters of the world for me and keep me alive.
The moment I leave this beast’s side, I will be nothing but a blind piece of meat.
Eunha zipped the backpack shut, then suddenly threw her arms around Taeo’s thick foreleg and buried her face deep into his coarse fur.
“Taeo… Thank you. For becoming… my eyes.”
Taeo rested his heavy jaw on top of her head and answered with a deep vibration that resonated in her bones.
Grrrrrrrr.
In a world ruled by selfish survival instincts after the collapse, the wild predator who had lost knowledge and the civilized survivor who had lost sight filled each other’s fatal deficiencies in the most perfect and grotesque way imaginable. Deep in their blood, they engraved an absolute symbiotic chain that no one could ever sever.