Recollection, Fear, and Grotesque Calm
The air in the underground warehouse was cool and heavy. In the space enclosed by towering metal shelves and cardboard boxes, a new scent flooded Eunha’s sensitive nose. Beneath the dry smell of grain and the metallic tang of canned goods lay the faint chemical odor of plastic packaging and dampness.
Thud. Scrape. Eunha moved forward on bare feet across the cold floor. She swept her fingertips through the air until they met a massive, smooth bulk of plastic. She ran her whole palm over the surface. The texture of tightly packed cylindrical plastic bottles. Drinking water. Six two-liter PET bottles bundled together, stacked in layers on wooden pallets until they rose well above the height of a grown man.
Eunha’s trembling hands traced sideways along the pallets as she counted them. One, two, three, four… There seemed to be no end. The sheer volume of water was so vast that even a blind person’s senses struggled to comprehend it.
“Taeo… is that more water up ahead? Can you check how much there is?” Eunha whispered cautiously into the empty air.
A low huff. Sniffing. The hot breath of a giant beast brushed past her calves. The sound of Taeo’s enormous body shifting across the floor echoed through the warehouse.
Tap. Tap-tap. Thump! The footsteps were lighter and more playful than his usual heavy, threatening tread. The click of claws scraping across the linoleum as the beast bounded excitedly back and forth. Taeo was clearly thrilled. After the cataclysm, he had survived on nothing but the dripping raw flesh of mutated insects and foul water from contaminated puddles. Discovering this clean, near-infinite supply of water must have been pure bliss.
Eunha stood still, listening to the beast race around. The heavy thump of his tail slapping cheerfully against the metal shelves. The sharp teeth tearing through the plastic wrapping, the rush of cold water, and the frantic lapping of his rough tongue.
Slurp. Lick-lick. Gulp. Gulp.
As she listened to the sound of the beast quenching his thirst, a faint smile spread across Eunha’s dry lips.
If only I could see. If I could see what Taeo looks like.
A cold regret stirred in the corner of her heart.
If my vision had been even a little clearer, if I could have seen this wide world with my own eyes… I would have traveled more, experienced more, before becoming trapped like this.
But the shallow remorse did not last. The memories that flickered through Eunha’s mind had never been painted in beautiful colors.
The rare disease that slowly stole her sight. The desperate, teeth-gritting effort that had gotten her into the college of pharmacy despite it. Yet what she gained there was not a sense of accomplishment. Only the bitter jealousy and envy of classmates who resented a half-blind girl outperforming them. And above all… the hideous selfishness and disgust that hid behind the word “family.”
Eunha’s breathing began to quicken. Even though the cool warehouse air filled her lungs, an oppressive weight crushed her chest. Especially her younger brother.
He had been in high school when she had just entered university. Back then her vision had almost completely failed; she could barely distinguish light from darkness. Her other senses had become violently, painfully sharp.
Creak… In the middle of the night, the slow, stealthy sound of her bedroom door opening. If she pretended to be asleep in bed, the cautious footsteps would stop right beside her pillow.
Inhale… Exhale… The sticky, irregular breathing in the dark. The smell of an adolescent boy’s unwashed sweat and the strangely fishy scent of bodily fluids stabbing at her nose.
Her brother never spoke. He simply stood there, staring at her face, her chest, the curves beneath the blanket. The persistent, insidious gaze of sexual desire crawled across her skin like something physical, something alive. The days when her underwear kept disappearing from the laundry basket. Eunha had known everything yet pretended she didn’t, pretended she couldn’t see, pretended she was asleep, clutching the blanket like a lifeline.
The nightmare of enduring, night after night, the horrifying aura of her younger brother secretly lusting after his blind older sister within the cage of family.
“Ha… ha… ah…!”
Strength left Eunha’s legs. She collapsed to the floor, clawing at her own throat. Her mind, submerged in the past, was spiraling into panic. Her heart hammered wildly as if she could hear that sticky breathing right behind her at any moment.
If only everything had been destroyed.
Pressing her forehead to the cold linoleum, Eunha screamed inside her head.
If they all died crushed under the burden of supporting each other… if those disgusting bastards all died… thank god. This is better…!
KRAAAANG!
The beast’s roar shook the warehouse as he drank. Taeo’s keen senses had caught the extreme stress hormones—cortisol—pouring from Eunha’s skin and the abnormal speed of her heartbeat.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Ninety kilograms of weight charged forward as if ready to shatter the floor.
“Hic… haaa… don’t come…!”
The instant Eunha curled into a ball, a hot, heavy chest slammed against her back. It was Taeo. His massive forelegs wrapped around her fragile shoulders with crushing strength. Hot breath at forty degrees Celsius poured over the crown of her head.
A deep, rumbling whine. Inhale.
Taeo’s muzzle frantically rubbed against her nape and cheek. A thirty-centimeter-long, rough, thick tongue swept over her entire face. The cold sweat on her forehead, the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, her bloodless lips—everything was slathered in the beast’s sticky saliva.
“Hak… ngh… T-Taeo…”
The beast’s rough licking was not sexual. It was a fierce, instinctive grooming meant to detect and soothe distress in the female who belonged to his territory. The thick saliva soaked into her skin, spreading a strange warmth. The dense, primal scent of the overwhelming beast filled her nose, and ironically, it completely erased the memory of her brother’s fishy, revolting stench.
Eunha reached out with trembling arms and wrapped them around Taeo’s thick neck. She buried her face in the dense fur and listened to the beat of his heart.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Slower and larger than a human heart. That primitive rhythm gradually calmed her panic.
“Thank you… thank you, Taeo…”
Once Eunha’s breathing steadied, Taeo stopped his frantic licking and loosened the forelegs wrapped around her back. Instead he rested his massive jaw on her shoulder, warming her body with his own heat.
How much time passed?
Once her mind fully returned, Eunha’s senses registered the physical reality around her again. Her upper body was clothed in a fleece hoodie, but from the waist down she remained completely naked. Between her legs, across her sex, the insides of her thighs, and around her anus, a thick crust had formed from the enormous amount of Taeo’s semen, her own fluids, and the blood from her torn inner walls. Mixed with the saliva he had poured in to forcibly heal her, the entire lower half of her body felt coated in a stiff, mucous-like film. The grotesque sensation made her modern sense of hygiene rear up violently.
Staying in this bacterial nightmare would only make her sick. Especially while living with what felt like a giant dog or wolf—Taeo—hygiene was critical. Who knew what kind of disease might be transmitted?
Eunha carefully slipped from his embrace. She groped across the floor toward the bundle of water bottles the beast had torn open earlier, picked up an intact two-liter bottle, and twisted the cap with shaking hands.
Crack. Rip.
She sat with her legs spread wide and upended the bottle, pouring the cold water directly over her lower body.
Glug-glug. Splash—
“Ahh…! Hya…”
The ice-cold stream mercilessly struck her swollen cervical opening, the torn and crusted inner walls of her vagina, and the area around her anus. Clumps of dried semen and bloodstains melted and pattered onto the floor. The coolness brought sharp pain that made Eunha twist her waist.
That was the moment.
Grrrrrrrrr…!
A bone-rattling, murderous growl erupted from the beast’s chest—the same chest that had been sharing warmth by licking her cheek moments ago.
Wham!
The giant forepaw knocked the bottle from her hand, sending it flying. Eunha flinched, shoulders hunching. Taeo’s hot breath rushed between her freshly washed thighs. Drool dripped from his mouth onto her bare skin.
He was furious. The proof of ownership he had pumped deep into his female, the fluids he had carefully applied to heal her wounds—the perfect mark of himself was being washed away by tasteless plain water. His instincts would not tolerate it. Killing intent surged as though he might sink his fangs into her nape at any second.
But Eunha was already intimately familiar with this giant male wolf’s rage patterns, down to the marrow of her bones. The razor-thin line where his lust and possessiveness intersected.
“Nngh. Calm down…”
With both hands trembling, she reached out and gently cupped the large, wet nose of the snarling beast hovering threateningly in the air.
Grr…? A huff.
The threatening growl faltered.
“Let’s wash together, Taeo,” Eunha whispered in a pitiful voice, her tear-filled silver-white eyes staring into empty space. “It feels too dirty… I can still smell blood, and the insects… There must be blood caked all over your body too.”
Inhale. Sniff. The beast rubbed his nose against her palms.
Eunha’s lips quivered as she offered the fatal compromise.
“After we’re clean… after we’re all clean, you can cover me again. Fill me up with your scent once more.”
Not erasing his scent, but preparing to be filled with it again. The perfect submission and seduction in those words made the beast’s instincts respond instantly.
Thump.
The ninety-kilogram mass of fur that had been standing threateningly collapsed obediently at her knees. His tail swept slowly across the floor. Permission granted.
Eunha let out a deep breath and gathered the scattered bottles. She washed between her own legs first, carefully pushing her fingers inside her entrance to scrape out the sticky remnants of semen clinging to her inner walls and flush them away with cold water.
“Ahk… it stings…”
The cleaner the empty space inside her became, the more a mixture of fear and strange anticipation rose at the thought of that giant knot forcing its way in again. Goosebumps spread across her skin.
After cleaning her lower body, Eunha crawled on her knees toward Taeo’s massive frame. She poured water over his black fur.
Splash. Shhh—
The beast gave a small flinch at the cold stream. Eunha used both hands to scrub the wet fur vigorously. The acidic blood that had sprayed from the insects’ carapaces, the dirt, the metallic stench of blood—all of it washed away.
She cleaned his back, his nape, his chest where the solid intercostal muscles could be felt. Then her hands moved to his lower abdomen and groin.
There, the beast’s most violent instincts lay in wait.
Her slender fingertips touched the smooth, hairless skin of his groin.
Whine… Hah, hah. Taeo’s breathing turned rough in an instant.
What her hand found was the huge sheath of his reproductive organ, not yet fully retracted. Inside it waited a red shaft as thick as an adult man’s forearm and a hard penile bone. Touching carefully, she felt that the fur around the sheath was crusted with the dark blood and sticky mucus from her torn vagina.
Eunha swallowed dryly and poured water over it.
Trickle. Squish.
As the dried blood began to melt, she gripped the massive sheath with both hands and carefully scrubbed it clean.
“Hii… it’s so… big…”
The moan slipped out before she could stop it. The tactile memory of this enormous muscle piercing and tearing her narrow cervix flooded back in real time. She felt the organ twitch inside her palms, heating up, beginning to swell again. Veins bulged, filling the overwhelming girth between her fingers. Eunha recoiled in panic, quickly rinsed away the last of the blood, and pulled her hands back.
The warehouse floor was now soaked with the fluids she had washed away—her own arousal, blood, the insect fluids and filth rinsed from Taeo’s body. The scents and traces of two living beings mingled grotesquely in the water, dampening the cold floor of the underground warehouse.
It was a bizarre yet peaceful shared bath, a compromise between the beast’s killing intent and the female’s submission.
When the drenched, naked Eunha began to shiver, Taeo shook his now-clean fur vigorously and once again draped his massive body over hers.