In the Abyss of Winter, Seamstress of the Giant Nest
A vast artificial cavern where every trace of surface light and warmth had been utterly sealed away. The underground food warehouse of the powerless hypermarket swallowed the turning of the seasons without any shield or mercy. The crisp chill of late autumn that had once ruled the world above had vanished, replaced by the brutal midwinter cold that crept upward through the concrete floor, freezing marrow in the bones.
Ssssssh. Whiiiing. The gale pouring down through the ventilation shafts felt like a thousand razor blades scattered across the air. “Haaa… It’s cold… So, so cold…”
Eunha huddled in the pitch-black darkness, her arms trembling as she clutched her own shoulders. She had zipped the thick black fleece hoodie all the way to her throat, yet it was useless against the absolute zero that gripped the underground storage. Far worse was the completely exposed state of her lower body. Only hours earlier those delicate membranes had been savagely torn and stretched around the ferocious lust of a ninety-kilogram beast. The slick inner thighs and buttocks, still coated in the creature’s scorching forty-degree body heat and more than three hundred milliliters of sticky semen, now met the freezing air and began to harden at terrifying speed. The sensation of foreign matter congealing against her skin was grotesquely unpleasant and only accelerated the loss of body heat.
Clack, clack-clack. Clack. Her upper and lower teeth collided on their own, producing a horrifying rasp. White puffs of breath leaked endlessly between her pale lips. The nerves in her lower half had already crossed into the numb threshold just before frostbite, firing only the agonizing pain of a thousand needles stabbing her skin.
She had lit a small fire to survive, but one modest flame could never raise the temperature of an entire underground logistics warehouse. That was when it happened.
Bang! The heavy iron door leading into the basement storage burst open with a violent crash. Eunha flinched and lifted her head. The keen nose of a blind woman sliced through the cold air and swallowed the thick, suffocating male pheromones that rolled toward her. The one and only absolute predator in this world who could tear her apart yet still allow her to breathe—Taeo.
Thud. Thud. Heavy footsteps approached, accompanied by the wet scrape of something massive and bulky being dragged across the floor. Taeo’s breathing was rougher and deeper than usual. He had clearly torn apart the hypermarket’s upper floors—most likely the bedding and camping sections—like a beast possessed.
Thump. Flutter. Taeo dropped the enormous bundle clenched in his jaws at Eunha’s feet. A soft, heavy mass of fabric spilled over her bare legs and collapsed onto the cold floor.
“Taeo…? What is all this…?”
With shaking hands she reached out and carefully explored the huge mound blocking her path. The textures that met her frozen fingertips were astonishingly soft and warm: thick winter sleeping bags of smooth nylon, luxuriously quilted premium goose-down comforters, and microfleece blankets as plush as animal fur, all tangled together. The giant mutated wolf had ripped every insulation material he could find from the surface and carried it down in his mouth to save his fragile mate from freezing to death.
Low growl. Huff. Taeo made a soft nasal sound and nudged the pile of blankets toward her body with his massive snout—an instinctive command to climb inside and warm herself. Swallowing the emotion that surged in her throat, Eunha began spreading the comforters and blankets across the floor. She layered several thick camping mats over the freezing concrete to create a basic insulating foundation, then covered them with microfleece. But it still wasn’t enough.
She did not need a blanket that would only cover her own fifty-kilogram body. The only truly powerful heater she could rely on in this hellish cold was the forty-degree biological warmth radiating from the ninety-kilogram beast. She needed a gigantic tent-like “super-sized shared comforter” large enough to envelop both his massive frame and her own, trapping every degree of heat inside.
I have to sew them. All of them, connected into one.
Eunha desperately felt around the pile of odds and ends Taeo had dropped alongside the blankets. Her fingers found the sharp corners of a plastic sewing kit—the kind commonly sold in the household section. She took a deep breath and opened it. For a blind woman, threading a thin needle and stitching the edges of thick winter comforters was torture beyond imagination.
“Haa… Haaa…”
Her trembling fingers gripped the cold needle while her other hand searched for the end of the thick nylon thread. She moistened the tip with her lips to stiffen it, then relied solely on the microscopic sensitivity of her fingertips to find the needle’s eye and push the thread through. After dozens of failed attempts, she finally succeeded. She overlapped the edges of two goose-down comforters and drove the needle in.
Rip. Tug. Forcing the needle through fabric packed tight with insulation demanded tremendous strength. Her frozen finger joints screamed with every motion. Push the needle through, pull it from the other side, repeat. But in her sightless state she misjudged the thickness; when she forced the next stitch, disaster struck.
Thud!
“Aaaah! Ow, ow, ow…”
The sharp needle that had pierced the fabric drove mercilessly into the first joint of her slender index finger. The sickening sensation of skin splitting and blood vessels bursting exploded up her spine and slammed into her brain. Eunha cried out, dropped the needle, and clutched her hand. Hot droplets of blood welled up and scattered the thick metallic scent into the cold air.
In that instant—
Grrrrr! Sniff, sniff!
The huge body that had been quietly watching from the darkness sprang up like a steel trap. The smell of his female’s blood was the single most powerful trigger for a predator’s nervous system. Taeo closed the distance in a heartbeat and lowered his head to her knees.
Slide. Thud. The heat of the giant furred mass washed over her face. His damp, heavy nose found the bleeding finger with perfect accuracy and rubbed against it roughly.
“Ah, ngh… Taeo, it’s okay. The needle just—”
Before she could finish, the beast’s enormous jaws opened.
Slurp. Lick. Sluuuurp.
A rough, thick tongue sliced through the air and enveloped her injured finger completely. The horrifying yet gentle scrape of hundreds of tiny papillae across torn flesh. At the same time, the dense, viscous saliva flowing from his mouth coated the wound perfectly. The moment the beast’s saliva touched her bloodstream, the burning pain vanished like a lie. Powerful anti-inflammatory agents and unknown sedative compounds that induced endorphins swiftly paralyzed her nerves, replacing agony with a drug-like, euphoric haze.
“Haa… Aah…”
Instead of a cry of pain, a strangely sweet moan slipped from Eunha’s lips. In the electric sensation of her wound healing, she felt with bone-deep clarity just how perfectly she had been tamed by this beast. When she bled, the beast licked her. The pain disappeared, and in its place his bodily fluids seeped in, repainting her flesh as his. The only salvation permitted in this hellish world. Eunha did not resist the feeling of his coarse tongue lovingly stroking her finger. Instead she willingly offered her trembling fingertip deeper into his hot mouth, drowning in the bizarre comfort it brought.
Slurp. Lick. Smack.
Once he confirmed the bleeding had stopped and regeneration had begun, Taeo withdrew his tongue and stepped back. Eunha flexed her fingers, now slick and glistening with saliva. The pain was gone; the wound had healed without a trace.
“Thank you… I’ll try again.”
The blind female offered a submissive smile and once more groped across the floor for the cold needle. The sewing continued all night. Overlapping thick comforters, stitching them with tough nylon thread to create a single enormous surface. A blind woman working only by touch inevitably lost direction.
Thud! “Nngh!”
The needle sank into the pad of her thumb.
Slurp. Sluuurp. Lick. Without fail the beast approached and drank the red blood.
Thud! “Hngh…”
Lick. Slurp.
Pricked by the needle, blood welled, the beast licked and healed. Dozens of punctures, dozens of lickings. By the end, all ten of Eunha’s fingers were completely coated in Taeo’s sticky saliva, reeking of dense male pheromones. In the endless cycle of pain and healing, she forgot her fear of the needle. Instead, every time she was wounded she felt a spine-tingling, sweetly addictive dependence on the beast’s blind possessiveness and protective instinct, willingly falling further into corruption.
---
How many days had she repeated that brutal labor? At last the long, long work was finished.
“Haa… It’s done. Taeo, I finished it…”
Eunha murmured in an exhausted voice and dropped the needle to the floor. Before her lay three thick goose-down comforters and several blankets stitched together with ridiculous durability, reborn as a gigantic three-meter-wide “monster’s nest” or “shared comforter.” With trembling arms she barely managed to lift the dozens-of-kilograms mass and drape it like a tent over the mats she had laid earlier.
With the last of her strength she announced, “Ta-da! Taeo, our winter home is complete! Let’s go inside.”
Low growl. Recognizing the task was finished, Taeo approached with heavy steps and thrust his massive head without hesitation into the gap beneath the enormous comforter she held open.
Slide. Flutter. Thump. The sound of ninety kilograms of solid mass burrowing inside and curling up on the floor. In moments the interior of the giant nest began to fill with the beast’s scorching body heat.
Eunha crawled after him without delay, pushing her body into the mouth of the enormous comforter he had created. Another darkness within darkness. The nest inside the light-blocking blanket was a perfect tropical night, a world apart from the murderous cold outside.
“Haa… It’s warm…”
She burrowed toward his belly, shoving her frozen bare legs and toes deep into the dense, soft undercoat between his legs. The mutated wolf’s forty-degree body heat slowly melted her skin and made it fluffy again. Her blood vessels dilated and hot blood began circulating once more. Drunk on the relief of her thawing body, Eunha unconsciously reached out and wrapped her arms around the huge torso that enclosed her.
But the texture that met her fingertips felt strangely different.
Huh…?
The muscles she had felt when he pinned her to the floor and took her by force days earlier had already surpassed human common sense. Yet now the broad back too wide for her slender arms to embrace, the trapezius muscles rising like hundreds of steel cables twisted together, were unmistakably alien. Startled, she ran her palms carefully over his ribcage and chest. It was not merely thicker fur. The density and volume of the muscle beneath the skin had exploded beyond anything she remembered. Rock-hard pectorals, joints as thick as tree trunks in his forelegs, all of it heavily repelled her fragile touch.
“Taeo…”
With her nose buried against the beast’s scruff, she murmured in a dazed voice. “Is it because it’s winter and your coat is thicker…? Or have you gained weight? You… seem so much bigger.”
To the blind female’s innocent question, the beast in the darkness answered only by exhaling a deep, heavy breath across the crown of her head.
Huuuuff.
Her intuition was correct. This was no simple shedding or weight gain. In the ruined ecosystem, in the merciless midwinter of an apocalypse ruled by unimaginably mutated insects and vanishing food, the mutated predator’s genes were evolving at insane speed. All to perfectly protect and possess his fragile, blind mate. The body that had weighed ninety kilograms had already surpassed one hundred, endlessly tearing and expanding its muscle fibers. Bones widened, fascia ruptured and regenerated, mercilessly increasing the physical size of the apex predator.
Without realizing how much more horrifically huge the massive bone pillar she would have to accept every day might become, or how it would crush her insides, Eunha buried her face against the living fortress of muscle that surrounded her. Her thin arms tightened around the beast’s thick waist.
“It’s cold… Keep holding me. Protect me, Taeo…”
The larger the monster grew, the greater the pain of being crushed and torn would become. Yet at the same time it was perfect proof of survival: this fortress had become so absolutely solid that no horrific insect from the outside world would dare threaten the nest. Eunha rubbed her face into the thick fur of his chest and offered the deepest, warmest smile at her grotesque fate—having fallen completely as the mate of this terrible yet perfect predator. In the center of the freezing warehouse, inside the giant beast’s burning nest, her last remnants of reason slowly melted away, submitting perfectly to him.