One restless night, Seoul City Hospital.
The sound of the clock ticking on the wall had been the only thing Hyerin could hear until the doctor finally looked up from the file in his hands. His face was serious—too serious.
"Miss Nam, I already have your test results and unfortunately it's not looking good," he said slowly. "We found a cyst in your ovary track."
At the sudden news, Minjae's hand, which had been resting lightly on Hyerin's knee, went stiff.
A cyst? In her ovary? Minjae's form shattered. How could his future wife incur such a disease before their wedding?
"D-Doctor Zhang, please tell me, this kind of ailment is... It can still be cured, right?"
"I'm sorry but the lump this time had become very big," the doctor shook his head as he replied, with each word falling like stone. "And very aggressive. It's already pressing against major vessels. We… can't operate."
Hyerin could feel her breath growing shallow. The cold from the examination table was already seeping into her bones.
"No surgery?" Minjae asked, voice rising with panic. "But there's always something, isn't there? Some other method? What about medication?"
The doctor's expression didn't change.
"Originally, Miss Nam still had a fifty percent chance of surviving but after giving your mother one of her kidneys, her body had become too weak," he explained.
"At this point, if we proceed with surgery or heavy drugs, her chances of survival are extremely low. The cyst is intertwined with tissues we can't reach without risking hemorrhage. Anesthesia alone could stop her heart."
"H-How could this be... H-Hyerin..."
Minjae turned to Hyerin and became weak on his knees. He looked stricken, like he had just watched someone draw a curtain over the future. While she could only shut her eyes, trying to muster all the courage she had to stop herself from breaking down.
She was already dying inside but the doctor wasn't finished.
"Even if, by some miracle, we removed the cyst, the damage to her reproductive system had become irreversible. Miss Nam Hyerin, she... I'm afraid to say this but she will never be able to conceive."
That was when Hyerin felt her chest go hollow.
She hadn't cried. Not then. But she felt the weight of the world slowly crushing to her soul.
She had only nodded slowly, as if her head were no longer connected to the rest of her body.
---
That night, Minjae had not spoken much.
The days that followed were worse. His hands stopped reaching for hers. His smile became forced, thin, like it belonged to someone pretending to love her. He began avoiding home, giving excuses that sounded more like apologies.
So when he finally stood before her in the living room, rain dripping from his coat, his face twisted with guilt, she wasn't surprised.
Nam Hyerin knew. She had already known this was coming and that just made her feel more miserable than she already was.
"Honey, I'm sorry. I-I'm really sorry, Hyerin," he said, kneeling down her wet marbled floor, wasted in his tears.
"G-God knows how much I tried. I really tried and I thought I could stay. I wanted to..."
"But every time I look at you now, I see that hospital room. I see a future where we're always afraid. You leaving me all alone and me losing you. I-I can't... I feel like going crazy just thinking about it..."
"I understand." Her voice was steady. Too steady and sounded rehearsed.
"No… you don't. Hyerin, I want children. A family. To be grow old with someone and experience many things together. I know we plan this together, everything together but... What should I do if you can't be in that future? I'm not strong enough to let go of that dream."
"... I understand," she repeated.
No, she doesn't understand at all. She gave up university because his mom needed an immediate kidney donor. He told her, he would take care of her in the future. To see that same devastated look he had wore on that day he begged him to save his mom...
Hyerin felt so wronged and betrayed.
But how could she selfishly ask him to stay, looking at how he was desperately begging to walk away?
Hyerin was shaking tremendously behind that disgusting fake smile. Her fingers secretly tightened around the hem of her dress, as she tried to be numb from showing her pain.
"You did the right thing. If it were me I'd do it too," she smiled. The kind of smile that was tearing her up inside. Inside, something was already collapsing.
She was the one broken. But he was a damn traitor and a hypocrite.
That night, she watched him walk out the door. He didn't even glance back. Minjae was determined to leave her. To forever leave the home they spend three years filled with their memories together.
"Bas... tard! Minjae, you lying bastard!"
As soon as he left her door, her knees gave out and she collapsed to the cold floor. Hyerin clutched her chest. There, alone, she screamed in bitterness and pain as her repressed tears quickly began to pour and drown her.
"Aghh!"
---
The sky had darkened for many days, as if the heavens had mourned with her.
She had been left alone.
No family. No friends close enough to call. Just silence. Just the echo of the doctor's words and the memory of Minjae's back as he walked away.
Rain began to fall. It was slow at first, then suddenly pouring down as though the sky itself had broken open.
During the past days, Hyerin became a headless chicken. Haggard, depressed and skinny. Today, she stepped outside without an umbrella, letting the cold soak her to the skin.
She walked.
She didn't know where she was going.
Her bright eyes looked dead and her soul resembled the desolate streets.
Each step felt heavier than the last. Her shoes were soaked through. Her long, midnight hair clung to her cheeks. She could taste salt, but she wasn't sure if it came from the rain or from her own tears.
What had she done to deserve this?
Why her?
Why did her body choose this betrayal?
She had tried to be good. Tried to love. Tried to live. Was that not enough?
Her legs moved on their own, taking her past silent cars, puddles that swallowed her steps, faces that didn't see her.
She felt invisible. Forgettable. Defective.
She was walking aimlessly like her bleak future when suddenly, the ground rumbled.
A deep vibration pulsed through the earth. Streetlights flickered. Alarms shrieked. The tremor surged like a living thing. Glass shattered in a building nearby.
The girl who had been weak and depressed wobbled and lost her stability. Her breath caught.
She instinctively turned to grabbed on something to steady herself but just in time, a streetlamp swayed and fell on her direction.
There was no time to run and evade.
Tears escaped her eyelids. Hyerin saw her life ending in a flash along with unbearable pain.
And darkness.
---
Hyerin woke with a dull ache in her body, but it was the burning pain between her thighs that made her gasp.
Before she could understand what was happening, she felt her bare skin pressed against something cold and smooth, thick and firm, coiled tightly around her lower body.
She froze, her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes widened in fear and her sleepiness vanished at once.
Inside the dimly lit cave, a massive black tail covered in scales was wrapped around her from the waist down like a living shackle.
And beneath her, another figure lay still with eyes close.
It was a man. A beautiful... No, wait... More specifically, a creature having a face of a devilishly handsome young man but with a body of a giant serpent.
Suddenly, she saw the man stirred and slowly opened his eyelids revealing a pair of exquisite crimson red jewels that glowered at her like a meek prey.
Hyerin's body tembled, drowning her admiration with raw fear.
"Woman, stop moving on top of me," the man grumbled sleepily. "You've ridden me night after night until dawn… how are you still not done?"
This damn female. She had sucked all his beast energy that now he was no better than a withered tree root. Just how big is her appetite behind that small frame?
"Did I still not satisfy you?"
Seol gritted and turned to her. His half-open eyes shone fiercely it looked like stars, slowly closing the space between their faces. Seol lowered his head to her shoulder blades.
Hyerin felt his hot breath against her bare skin that made her shuddered with strange familiarity. The blazing sensation of his lips brushing lightly on her fair neck and his teeth nibbling on her flustered skin.
She winced and let out a stifled gasp that she immediately regretted.
How could she act so promiscuous infront of this... this dangerously alluring beast person?!
"Ashta," he whispered, that which sounded like an invitation. For a moment Hyerin's troubled mind went blank. She wanted to say she wasn't the person he was calling but the man continued to assault her neck, down to her collarbone and chest, making her synapses unable to function.
"Mmn..."
Seol retracted his squelching forked tongue and spoke. "Don't test my patience just because I'm weak at my current state otherwise you will be sorry once I recover my strength and successfully give birth to our children."