A Gift Turned to Ashes
With those final words, Mu-ho’s eyes narrowed to slits. Yeo-won’s expression stiffened in response.
It was the kind of day that made a person want to clutch at straws.
Just as she was about to ask what he meant by the cryptic remark, the bell she held slipped from her fingers.
In the blink of an eye, Shin-wol had taken it. With an impassive gaze, he incinerated the bell in his palm.
As the flames subsided, ash trickled between his tightly clenched fingers. What had once been a bell lost all form and scattered forlornly into the air.
Shin-wol fixed Mu-ho with an icy stare, then spoke, each syllable chewed and swallowed like bitter fruit.
Yeo-won blinked, dazed. Her brown eyes, which had been tracking the floating dust, finally settled on him.
His sculpted profile brimmed with quiet fury. A razor-sharp tension crackled through the air.
“Meow! Meeeow! Waoong!”
What shattered the tension was none other than Nabi’s vigorous cry. Furious that her bell had been destroyed, the cat stood with her tail ramrod straight and wailed like a siren without pause.
Irritated by the noise, Shin-wol’s face twisted.
At that single frigid glance, Nabi’s cry cut off abruptly. She darted behind Mu-ho to hide.
“Kiing.”
By then Yeo-won had finally pieced together the situation. Her voice rang with disbelief.
“What did you just do?”
Shin-wol shifted only his pupils to look down at her. Even from his profile, his anger was unmistakable.
“Who are you to call it useless? Why would you burn something given to me without permission?”
Shin-wol spoke in the stern tone one might use with a child and gently wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
Even if she had accepted it on impulse, he had no right to dispose of a gift given to her.
When Yeo-won roughly knocked his hand from her shoulder, it fell away without resistance.
Despite the force of the blow, Shin-wol reacted as if bitten by a mere insect. The realization that his hand had not been pushed away but deliberately withdrawn only fueled her rage.
“I don’t need jewelry. I decide what use my own belongings have.”
At the clear irritation in her voice, Shin-wol’s eyes darkened like storm clouds.
The corner of his mouth twisted upward. Then he slowly raked his gaze over her with eyes as cold as ice.
That binding stare made her body stiffen of its own accord.
In the next instant, Shin-wol closed the distance and seized her arm.
The merciless grip on her wrist forced a groan through her teeth. Pain spread across her startled face, but Shin-wol paid it no heed.
Truthfully, he could not comprehend why she was angry.
This child could not possibly understand the meaning behind a gift from a beast, so he had merely destroyed the bell. In reality, he had wanted to burn the beast along with it.
The sight of her shaking off even his hand over something so trivial filled him with intolerable disgust.
“What kind of… nonsense is that?”
Even possessing his marble, Yeo-won was still a person with her own will and dignity.
His words made it sound as though he viewed her not as a human being but as nothing more than a container for the marble.
“Just because I hold the marble doesn’t mean I lose every right I have.”
He rolled the word on his tongue, thick with mockery. His lips curved in a displeasing arc.
Yeo-won’s breath caught. She doubted her own ears. The gulf between them felt impossibly wide.
If she had heard correctly, he sounded like a generous master assuring her that he could tolerate any amount of petulant behavior from his animal.
She had never expected him to understand every corner of her heart.
Yet she had believed he at least grasped something of her feelings—of human thought.
The man before her now felt so utterly alien that it seemed to erase all the time they had shared.
Yeo-won’s eyes trembled with unease.
“Why… why are you saying things like that?”
His gentle tone left her mind momentarily blank. Where did the wrongness even begin? If she had to choose, it would be this entire situation.
Meeting those coldly gleaming golden eyes turned her thoughts white, yet even then she could not possibly agree with him.
She wanted to demand answers boldly, but her shoulders, crushed beneath his overwhelming presence, shook. In the end, Shin-wol pulled the arm he still held and drew her firmly against his chest.
His languid yet piercing gaze slid over Mu-ho and the cat.
Mu-ho’s eyebrows twitched. Shin-wol was warning them with his entire being not to interfere with him or anything that was his.
With deliberate intent, Shin-wol stroked the nape of Yeo-won’s neck and whispered against her ear.
His soft, flowing voice and the sweet scent of apricot blossoms brushing her nose clouded her mind.
The more she spoke with him, the more she felt something inside her crumbling.
The claim that she had no right to decide, no rights at all, not even the need to think—it made her feel less than human.
At that realization, the sharp light in Yeo-won’s eyes gradually dulled, as though she were drunk.
Mu-ho, who had been watching silently, stiffened at once.
Ignoring Mu-ho’s stare, Shin-wol gently stroked Yeo-won’s trembling shoulders as if soothing a frightened animal.
“……”
Yeo-won nodded as though entranced. Shin-wol lifted her easily into his arms.
She collapsed against him like a broken doll. Her head bobbed once, then dropped limply.
Her low, even breathing revealed that she had fallen asleep.
Shin-wol gazed down at her sleeping face and smiled softly. Then, careful not to disturb her, he walked past Mu-ho in silence.
Treated as though he were less than the air itself, Mu-ho let out a short laugh before sighing.
No answer came. Watching the ancient fox’s retreating back, Mu-ho asked with concern.
“……”
The moment Mu-ho finished speaking, sparks erupted at his feet and surged upward into a pillar of flame. Mu-ho hastily raised a barrier, but it was not enough; black soot bloomed across his arm.
Had he been even a fraction slower, his entire body would have been consumed.
“Hey!!”
Regret threaded through the murmur, as though he were truly disappointed. His aim had been perfectly precise, underscoring the words.
“Have you actually lost your mind? Are you serious about that human? What is a mortal who cannot live even a hundred years to you? And she won’t even last a hundred years…!”
“Haa.”
A sigh heavy with cold air reverberated through the vast space. At the same time, cracks spiderwebbed across the ground beneath Mu-ho’s feet.
Shards rose from the broken floor and hurtled toward him all at once.
He lifted his palm to block them, but the stones pierced straight through his hand.
“Urgh!”
Grabbing his wrist, he looked down to find a gaping hole.
Before he could even examine the wound, the remaining fragments rained down like a hail of spears. They tore through his thighs, sides, and arms in rapid succession.
It was not the stones’ hardness that allowed them to pierce him.
It was Shin-wol’s sorcery, each fragment infused with lethal power.
Riddled with holes in an instant, Mu-ho finally coughed up blood.
Even as crimson stained the floor, Shin-wol regarded him with a look of contempt and continued walking.
Staring at the departing figure, Mu-ho ground his teeth and shouted.
“……”
Without a word, Shin-wol kept walking forward. Being so thoroughly ignored felt even worse than expected.
That son of a bitch.
Swallowing every curse that rose to his lips, Mu-ho focused his mind.
Hemostasis. Restoration. Recovery. Combining the three spells, the wounds across his body slowly began to close.
Realizing words alone would never reach him, Mu-ho dropped a massive boulder above Shin-wol’s head. Yet before it could touch him, the rock split with a sharp crack and disintegrated into ash.
Shin-wol continued forward as though nothing had happened.
The power he exerted without even drawing a breath was staggering. To him, shattering stone was easier than breathing.
At last Mu-ho decided to play his final card.