When an Apology Alone Won't Earn Forgiveness
When Hoeyeon woke, she was buried in happiness. Soft, warm happiness.
"Mmh…."
She opened her eyes and realized the source of that happiness was Arang's chest, into which she had buried her face while sleeping.
"Hwaaaaah… up we go……."
She pushed herself upright, stretched, and yawned. Clothes lay scattered across the floor.
All four of them on the bed were bare of so much as a scrap of cloth, but they hadn't stripped everything off at once. Garments had been yanked free and flung aside as hands found them, or peeled off and tossed away, until tops and bottoms and underthings belonging to different owners lay tangled without order. On top of that, there had been more than a few occasions when a particular piece had been deliberately left on—or put back on after being removed—so the sequence was twisted even further out of shape.
"Ugh… Gayul is…."
Looking across the vast bed, she found Gayul collapsed as if dead.
"…."
Hoeyeon turned her head away.
"…She's the prettiest, so of course she got the most pampering. Can't be helped."
It was a forced excuse, but it wasn't entirely wrong either.
Setting herself aside for the moment, Arang and Yujeong were hardly the sort to lose a beauty contest to ordinary people. Gayul's beauty, though, rendered ordinary and everyday words meaningless—as if she alone occupied a higher dimension.
So it's Gayul's fault. Yeah. Yeah.
Hoeyeon armored her heart with that sophistry and looked at Gayul again.
Gayul was still face-down, sleeping like the dead. If her back and shoulders hadn't been rising and falling with her breath, it would have been cause for real concern.
Guilt shoved its way through the flimsy sophistry.
"…I'd better apologize when she wakes up."
She turned her gaze to Arang and found her in comparatively better shape.
All through the night, it had been Arang who held the reins, gently steering from behind how things would unfold. Near the end Yujeong had suddenly gone so wild that leadership and everything else became meaningless, and Arang had taken a serious hit trying to keep control—but compared to Gayul, she was fine.
Her tail, however, was a wreck.
Hoeyeon's own skin and hair were damp with fluids of uncertain ownership—or rather, almost certainly belonging to all four of them in various combinations. Arang's tail fur was the same, but since it sprang from her rear, it had gotten soaked far worse. The fur clung flat like a rain-drenched puppy's, and every trace of that luxuriant plume was gone.
"…Isn't this more embarrassing for Arang than being naked?"
She'd probably hate having her fur flattened by water alone—and of all things, what had soaked it was….
"Ahem. Maybe I should at least cover it with the blanket."
"Hwaaaahm… ughhhhh…."
As Hoeyeon reached for the covers, Yujeong was sitting up.
"Ah, eonni, you're awake?"
…Eonni.
Hoeyeon remembered that at some point last night Yujeong had started calling her eonni with desperate fervor, but she hadn't expected it to carry over past dawn.
She didn't dislike it—not at all—but it was still unfamiliar, and a little ticklish. And was "eonni" even a word you used for a lover in the first place?
"Yeah, I'm up…."
The finale of the night had been Yujeong's solo performance. No one had known there was something besides fighting that could set a Gwiin's blood ablaze.
"Up we—ah!"
Yujeong stretched long, then realized she wasn't wearing a thing and hastily covered her chest.
"What's with the sudden modesty."
"But it's morning."
The morning sun was streaming in quite nicely.
"So it's not really about the time—more the mood, I guess…."
"Ah… yeah, that's fair."
"What about the other two… aah… ah…."
Yujeong froze at the sight of Gayul sprawled out cold.
"…I-I'll go fetch some wash water."
"I'll come with you. We're going to need a lot."
"…Is this my underwear?"
"Just throw something on for now."
"Eonni."
"…Yeah?"
"We're not going to die when Gayul-ssi wakes up, are we?"
"…We'll have to beg."
By the time the four of them set out, the sun had already climbed past its zenith and then some.
Gayul walked at the very front in silence.
"…Gayul. About… last night, we…."
"…."
"This humble one got a bit… carried away with the excitement…."
"…."
"Gayul-ssi, autumn apples are delicious—would you like o…ne?"
"…."
Gayul glanced back once, then kept walking without a word. The chill in her eyes could have dropped a faint-hearted person on the spot.
They pressed on, skewered by silence the whole way, until they were nearly at their destination. Only then did Gayul finally stop.
"…All of you."
She opened her mouth, but her voice was hoarse from screaming too much the night before.
Gayul cleared her throat several times to find her voice, then turned. The other three had already assumed the meek posture of children awaiting punishment.
"It was I who first proposed a polygamous bond among us, and as people who have pledged our futures together, I had of course considered that we would share nights as well, but…."
Gayul drew a deep breath.
"Who on earth!!!!!!! spends their wedding night!!!!!!! as an orgy!!!!!!!!!!! Kgh, cough! Cough!!"
"Sorry!"
"I apologize!"
"I was wrong!"
Gayul mastered her coughing and shouted again.
"And!! How many times—how many times did I… p-please, let me, rest, I, I begged…."
Her face flushed crimson and her voice dwindled, but she sucked in another breath as if refusing to lose.
"If I ask you to let me rest! Then you should… you should… I b-begged you… i-it was so, hard…."
Her voice faded again. Another breath.
"Then! You ought to let me rest!!!!! Do you have any idea!! how hard it was!! for me to… f-feel… good!!!!"
"I'm so sorry!"
"I offer my deepest apologies!"
"I was completely in the wrong!!"
It was the first time Gayul had truly lost her temper. The three of them bowed their heads without so much as thinking of talking back.
"All of you… all of you…! I—I…!"
Gayul tried to continue, but there was only so long one could keep shouting at people who were already repenting.
"…However. I cannot simply accept an apology and forgive you."
"G-Gayul… I'm really sorr—"
"Hoeyeon!"
"Y-yes!"
"Do you remember the time you and I competed?"
They had competed only once. Within bounds that wouldn't cross any lines, the loser would grant the winner any single request.
"I shall claim what I had intended to take from you, had I won that day!"
"Eh…."
That's a pretty big—
"Have you any objection!?"
"No, none at all."
Under Gayul's glare, Hoeyeon bowed her head again.
"Haa…."
Gayul exhaled the last of the fury from her lungs.
Then she turned her back and started walking once more.
"Lest there be any misunderstanding, I shall tell Arang and Yujeong what I want from them separately, at a later time."
"Keh…."
"Hic…."
The two who had been heaving sighs of relief flinched hard.
It was a little while longer before Gayul's mood eased enough for the four of them to walk side by side, and from the moment they drew near their destination—the hidden village of the Fox-kin—Arang took the lead.
When Hoeyeon had first heard about the village, what came to mind was the hidden hot spring Arang had once taken her to. A spring of mysterious virtue, concealed among stone and trees so thoroughly that no one could ever find it alone.
"Here we are."
So when Arang stopped dead in the middle of an open grassland, Hoeyeon was baffled.
"What do you mean?"
The other two were just as confused. When Gayul asked, Arang gave the ground a light kick.
"Hoin's Godo lies hidden beneath this earth. The gatekeepers should be coming up about now."
A woman clad entirely in green had her hands clasped in prayer.
"Watch over this humble one again this day, deliver me from death, and lead me unto eternal life…."
She was the woman whose heart had been pierced by the otherworldly dagger in the hand of Hyeoneum, Gayul's own blood—and who had become an avatar.
The instant she became an avatar, a fragment of vast knowledge and authority had opened to her. Only a tiny fragment, of course. Anything beyond that was more than a human body could receive.
"Ah… guide this dull Sarye… this foolish Sarye upon the path…."
Yet more had been opened to her than to the previous avatar. Her body trembled at that profound grace.
Sarye. Repeating her new name to herself, she finished her prayer and rose.
"I shall go forth and find it… the remaining half of the sacred sword…."
The holy blade bestowed by the god, that the god might be summoned.
The other half of the paired fragments—she would claim it, without fail, with these hands, for her god.
—I shall go and return. Wait over there where you can neither be seen nor heard.
That was all she had told Hoeyeon, Gayul, and Yujeong, offering no further explanation. They were probably thinking the entrance wouldn't open if anyone was watching.
That was true enough—but if Arang were honest about her private reasons, the greatest one was that she did not want them to overhear the conversation about to take place.
A hidden door opened in the earth, and two figures carrying lanterns climbed up.
One man, one woman. Both were Hoin with fox ears and tails, and both held spears in one hand.
"Turn back."
The woman said it at once.
"I refuse."
Arang answered just as promptly.
"Please turn back, Arang. You know better than anyone that nothing good, nothing pleasant, will come of your arrival."
The man spoke.
"I did not come because I wished to. What sane person would want to crawl back into a fox den like this?"
"You are being rude."
"Yet this humble one has business that must be done. Stand aside."
"The stench of lust is enough to rot a nose. How many beasts have you been rolling around with, you wretch."
"Haha. I already know how hidebound the thinking of you den-dwellers is, without needing any further demonstration."
"Arang, we cannot step aside."
"I am not someone the likes of you can stop."
"Why are you doing this? You selfish creature who abandoned everything and ran."
"This humble one merely shattered the shackles that bound her. And."
Arang smiled. Ferociously.
"Insult those precious to me one more time, and before I pass, I shall first teach you a thoroughly painful lesson."