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"Sometimes things have to go very wrong before they can be right." – Samantha Freber

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Chapter Six: Run & Chase

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Jiyong took a breath and stepped back from the shed, wiping his hands down the front of his pants in nervousness. There was a moment where he thought Seunghyun was going to leap out at him and rip him to shreds the moment his watch struck midnight, but nothing happened.

Well – if Jiyong ignored the muffled roar that erupted from within and pretended that he was not going to sprint back to Kongnamul cause there was actually a werewolf in the gym shed, then yeah, nothing happened.

Lock the doors, Seunghyun had said. Jiyong glanced out in the dark where he had kicked the now broken lock. He’d have to find a new one, and fast. Glancing back at the dark silhouette of the school, Jiyong started to cross the grass. There should be locks in any of the utility closets in the school. If Jiyong just broke the doorlock, he could get inside and grab one.

It took ten minutes to find one in the various hallways of the school, and a further two for Jiyong to call upon all the strength in his body to twist the knob and break it completely. Of course Kongnamul would put magical reinforcements on their doors. What a pain.

Eventually, the door swung open once Jiyong successfully ripped the door knob entirely and tossed it to the floor. The metal made a loud crack as it hit the ground but there was no one awake except Jiyong and – well – Seunghyun.

With that thought in mind, Jiyong started to pilfer through the various cleaning supplies, mops, various magical artefacts that he didn’t recognize and almost sobbed in relief when his hand connected with something that jangled. There were an assortment of keys and locks hanging on the left wall in the far corner. Quickly choosing the biggest one and its key, Jiyong slammed the door shut behind him and ran through the school to get back to Seunghyun.

There was a long, low howl that carried itself out of the shed and it made Jiyong shiver. He took a deep breath and tried to steady his racing heartbeat. This was gonna be fine. Everything was gonna be fine.

Except, nothing in the next five minutes was fine at all.

Placing his hands on the handles of the door, Jiyong couldn’t resist. He had to check to see if Seunghyun was alright, if that ash was keeping everything in place, if Seunghyun was going to be comfortable for the rest of the night, and Jiyong had never really seen a werewolf up close before.

Squaring his shoulders, he pulled open the doors a crack and peeked. The howling suddenly stopped at the peek of moonlight that slide through the between the doors. Jiyong held his breath, letting his eyes take in the limited slice of vision that he had – there was tufts of fur all along an arm and up a neck and Jiyong saw the glimmer of an eye: the same colour as Seunghyun’s.

Without a hint of hesitation, Jiyong opened the doors even wider to take the in the full sight of him. A real werewolf was right in front of Jiyong – nothing like books or movies or the internet had prepared him for this. He in the air, smelling the earthy pine scene that was both Seunghyun and the wolf, with the hint of something else underneath.

In hindsight, that was one of the worst mistakes of Jiyong’s life.

The shed doors flew open and the moonlight from the sky leaked through into the shed. The werewolf inside was illuminated. It was humanoid in form – with arms and legs and torso, except the head was all wolf with a snout and ears and fangs as it growled at Jiyong. There were tufts of fur on top of the werewolf’s hands and feet as well fur lining all over the arms and legs and back. The torso also had a thick pelt of hair, but Jiyong could still see how the muscles tightened as the werewolf basked in the moonlight.

Seunghyun-the-wolf – coloured a dark brown – snarled and snapped at Jiyong when the wind brought his scent over to him.

Jiyong couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think and that was his downfall. The wind kicked up, screaming through the trees, and the circle of ash around Seunghyun-the-wolf broke apart, much to Jiyong’s belated horror, his eyes flickering the ash that had been scattered away, leaving an obvious opening.

Seunghyun-the-wolf dropped his head and made a deep rumbling sound in his throat at the discovery. Without pause, he took a step forward, foot-paw sliding onto the cold concrete outside of the circle entirely.

Lightning fast, Jiyong backed out of there and tried to think. He should just close the doors now, maybe Seunghyun-the-wolf was too weak to break out of the lock, yeah, that’d be fine. Slamming the doors shut, Jiyong frantically tore the padlock from his pocket and hooked it around both handles together. When it shut together with a click, Jiyong took a few steps back and hoped it was all going to be fine. The wind had just been a little mess up – but Seunghyun was still inside and that’s what mattered. Right. Right?

Wrong, as Jiyong quickly figured out. Seunghyun-the-wolf was strong. Jiyong watched as the doors shuddered when the werewolf inside slammed up against it, trying to crash through. The padlock squeaked in disdain as the doors were threatening to rip off their hinges.

It took a minute of slow, creeping horror before the padlock broke and the doors sprung wide open for the air to come rushing into the shed. Seunghyun-the-wolf took a step outside onto the grass and Jiyong realized he was going to die.

Seunghyun-the-wolf took a long sniff of the air, eyes closed before stretching his shoulders and neck and looking at Jiyong, the young man standing on quivering knees.

He wasn’t ready to die, realized Jiyong vaguely. He had stuff to do and people to talk to and things to learn still. He was supposed to have his eighteenth birthday and win Kongnamul’s contest this year with Youngbae and Daesung and Seungri and he was supposed to find a way to get Seunghyun to like him and maybe even go on more dates and maybe even k –

The wind blew again – violent and from the forest in the distance – making Seunghyun-the-wolf’s nose perk up. The werewolf drew in another breath before a growl ripped its way out of his throat and he dropped into a crouch, attention diverted from Jiyong entirely.

Jiyong felt himself sigh out in relief when he saw the muscles bunch up in Seunghyun-the-wolf’s shoulders and watched the werewolf bound quickly in the exact opposite direction of JIyong. He saw the werewolf clear the field in a matter of seconds before diving into the thicket of trees before he realized what he just did.

-

“Youngbae, Youngbae, Bae,” snapped Jiyong, pounding on the door of his best friend’s room. He heard a shuffle and groans before Youngbae opened the door and stared down at Jiyong in exasperation.

“What – it’s, like, one in the morning, Ji, some of us have class tomorrow.” Youngbae wiped tiredly at his face. “You almost woke up my roommate too.”

“Seunghyun is a werewolf and tonight’s the full moon and – ” Jiyong took a deep breath, “and I accidentally let him loose in the night.”

There was a pause and Youngbae stared at him, eyes wide and expression disbelieving. “Ji.”

“He’s in the forest and we need to find him and – I don’t know – do something.”

Scratching at his head, Youngbae sighed and nodded. “I’ll get dressed and get some of my stuff. You get Daesung.”

Jiyong moved down the hall to another door and started to pound frantically on it too, but Seungri answered instead of Daesung. “Hey,” he greeted, dressed and fully awake despite the late hour of the night. Trust Seungri to completely ignore normal sleep schedules.

“Seunghyun’s a werewolf and he’s in the woods and Youngbae and I are going to – uh – catch him, I think. Before he hurts anyone. Or himself.”Jiyong paused. “We need Daesung.”

Seungri frowned. “So Seunghyun wasn’t normal at all. I guess I am the only human one.” Shrugging, he bounded away from the door and shook Daesung awake in the bunk, rambling on about Jiyong’s giant screw up in matters of relationships and how there was a werewolf out and about.

Ten minutes later, the four of them were striding out of their dorms and onto the grass of the outside. Daesung yawned, stretching his arms. “So, what’s our plan?”

Jiyong scrubbed at his face. “There was wolfsbane to, I think, weaken him, and there was ash around him. In a circle to keep him inside, but he escaped when the circle broke.”

“What – like dead people ash?” asked Youngbae, surprised.

“Nope!” piped up Seungri, hands in his pockets as they walked across the clearing. “Mountain ash is a tree that repel werewolves – called the rowan tree in some parts of the world – but I guess you can also literally burn it and set it as actual ash, since it’s hard making a circle out of a tree.”

Daesung tilted his head. “Not to burst your bubble, Jiyong, but shouldn’t we – ah…”

“Call the actual authority?” completed Youngbae smoothly, staring into Jiyong’s back as the young man kept up his quick pace ahead of the rest.

“That’s why we have Daesung,” said Jiyong, “you’re gonna call people once we find him and restrain him.”

“Okay. But why us, Ji?” pressed Youngbae.

“Because – !” Jiyong pressed his lips together in a thin line. “Because I don’t want to get Seunghyun in trouble. Because what if he gets expelled? What if people start hating him once they find out about him? I – I nee – want him to stay.”

The three were silent after that. Soon, they breached the thicket of woods, stepping into the forest with deep breaths and wary eyes. Jiyong didn’t need to adjust his vision to the darkness the way Youngbae and Seungri did, but they paused anyway.

Youngbae stepped up, “this is the plan. Find some mountain ash and burn it. There should be something like it in the Kongnamul preservation north of the school. Greenhouse is near the east side of the school, though – so one of us will have to get wolfsbane. We’ll make another circle around Seunghyun when we find him.”

Daesung proposed they split up. “I’ll go with Bae, you with Seungri, since you’re the strongest.”

Jiyong agreed. “We’ll whistle if we find him.” He saw Daesung throw something at him and he caught it. It was a lighter. “Right. Ash.”

Youngbae and Daesung waved, “good luck,” and started off to the east of the forest, while Jiyong grabbed Seungri’s arm and started to run in the opposite direction.

“Is this going to work?” asked Seungri, a little anxious. Jiyong gritted his teeth.

“Let’s hope so.”

In the distance, they heard a long, low howl.

-

The preservation was a fenced off area of the forest where the natural trees had been cleared to grow clusters of different ones. Using the lighter as a source of illumination for Seungri’s human eyes, they walked between the tall trunks, trying to identify the shape of the leaves and the smoothness of the bark.

“Sometimes they have red berries on them – and thin leaves. Lots of thin leaves.”

“Wonderful,” scowled Jiyong, “that really narrows it down.”

“Shut up, Ji,” sighed Seungri as he moved past the twisted boughs of the hawthorns. Following the other, Jiyong felt something on the back of his neck. He jerked his head up, alert, even though Seungri hadn’t reacted – the lighter still blazing in his hand.

Silently, Jiyong turned around, his eyes scouting through the darkness and felt his breath catch in his throat when a pair of dark eyes glimmered back. The wolf was here.

“Seungri,” whispered Jiyong, moving backwards, a hand outstretched behind him to grab the other. Seungri didn’t reply, only his footsteps kept moving on the soil, identifying different leaves and murmuring in disappointment.

“Seungri,” repeated Jiyong, when he glanced back. Seungri looked at Jiyong, eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“What – did you find it?”

“No, I – ” Quickly, Jiyong whipped his head back to the front where he saw the wolf, but the eyes weren’t there anymore. Panic settled into his body. “Ri, Seunghyun is here, so either hurry up or let’s run.”

Seungri froze, the hand holding the lighter now trembling. “Where? Where is he?”

“I don’t know – I lost him, let’s get out,” said Jiyong.

There was a pause before Seungri squared his shoulders, “okay, okay, just – we can’t run, okay, we need to find this tree.” Jiyong looked at him, startled.

“Ri, you don’t – “

“He’s our friend, your roommate, you like him, we’re gonna help him,” said Seungri hurriedly before he was fleeing forward, the lighter jerking around him as he dismissed each and every tree he passed. Jiyong was hoping the young man knew what he was doing, when he felt that same prickle on the back of his neck.

Quickly, he turned and almost screamed in terror when a wolf-like growl emerged between the branches of a redwood. The werewolf stepped out slowly, carefully, his head tilted and nose cocked upwards to breathe in the scents that the wind brought. Seungri gave a yelp of horror from behind him, and Jiyong remembered why the young man was with him. Jiyong was the strongest of the four. He’d have to protect the weakest.

“Yeah, wanna take a bite of me?” taunted Jiyong as he side-stepped. “Seungri, keep looking, just yell when you find it. I’ll keep him distracted.”

“Ji,” whined Seungri, clearly scared.

“Go!” Jiyong let himself smile in relief when he heard the footsteps flee from behind him. In front, the werewolf was deadly still, contemplating Jiyong. “Can you smell it on me? I’m not human either. Let’s do this.”

Seunghyun-the-wolf dropped to a crouch, muscles bunching up in its stomach and shoulders, preparing to launch himself. Jiyong swallowed down his fear – now was not the time to be terrified. He could take it. He could handle some seventeen year old werewolf.

The werewolf sprung forward and JIyong shoved his heels into the dirt, arms outstretched to slam his fingers into the sides of the torso as they rolled in a struggle. The hand-claw ripped his blazer’s sleeve and Jiyong bit his tongue as he kicked at the werewolf’s stomach, shoving him off. He might’ve been shorter and smaller, but he sure wasn’t human and that was going to be a huge help.

The werewolf dropped back into a crouch – re-valuating his prey – when Jiyong his heel and started to run. He heard a growl from behind him and grinned. If Jiyong was going to be hunted, he was gonna make sure he was hard to catch.

Weaving between the various woods and crunching the soil underneath his sneakers, he heard the crash of branches as the werewolf chased him. There were muffled growls and dirt being sprayed up from each slam of the werewolf’s wolf-paws, but Jiyong kept ahead of him through a series of zigzags and feints. He twisted his shoulders to the right, indicating he was going to turn, but spun to the left at the last minute and almost laughed at the frustrated snarl of the werewolf behind him.

Until he heard Seungri’s voice – “Ji! Over here!”

Unfortunately, the werewolf heard it too and if Jiyong was too hard to catch, then – well – a delicious human would do. They both stopped and started in the same direction – a chase to get to the prey and friend.

Jiyong was faster, ducking past the flora and fauna, skidding underneath branches and meandering between the tree trunks as he followed the sound of Seungri’s strained voice. He broke into a sprint when he saw the boy in his sweater and jeans, waving the lighter around him. Behind Seungri was a tall, flourishing roman with red berries at the ends of its branches and bunches of thin leaves. To his left burst out Seunghyun-the-wolf, brambles and leaves caught in his fur, but he didn’t seem to care.

Seungri squeaked and  dropped the lighter – thankfully extinguished before it hit the ground – and JIyong dived to get under the tree, arms around Seungri’s waist as he pressed the young man against the trunk and prayed this worked.

Seunghyun-the-wolf snapped his teeth once he was five steps away, eyes flicking upwards at the berries and leaves hanging from the rowan. Jiyong felt Seungri shaking in his arms and held him tighter. It was fine, this was going to work, the mountain ash sealed them inside from werewolves – at least, Jiyong hoped.

The moment was interrupted with a long howl that tore itself across the night. Jiyong’s eyes whipped towards Seunghyun-the-wolf but it hadn’t been him. There was another one out there. Another werewolf.

Jiyong sort of wanted to cry. Seunghyun-the-wolf knocked back his head and answered with his own howl before he turned around and bounded out of the preserve entirely, disappearing into the distance and the darkness of the trees.

“So, there’s two of them, huh?” laughed Seungri shakily, extracting himself from Jiyong’s arms. “Oh god.”

“How are we going to get this into ash and transport it?” asked Jiyong instead, focusing on their plan instead of the fact that there were two werewolves out on the loose.

Seungri grabbed a drooping branch and broke it. “We can burn it and put it in bag or bucket, then carry it.”

“And where are we supposed to find a bag?”

“Supply closet in the school,” grinned Seungri. “You’re faster. I’ll break branches and you sprint to the school over in the south side, grab a bag, and come back and we’ll start burning.”

It was as good of a plan as any.

-

With two rice bags of mountain ash on their shoulders, their clothes covered in soot, and probably a school suspension on the way for destroying school property, Seungri and Jiyong started their trek through the forest, heading east, close to where Daesung and Youngbae were going to be.

Howling swept over them in interspersed moments. Jiyong hoped that it would be alright – that Seunghyun-the-wolf hadn’t hurt anyone, that he was safe and sound, and that the second werewolf – was it even a werewolf when there were actual wolves too? – was not harming Seunghyun in any way.

“So…” started Seungri as they jogged through the forest. “You like him and he’s a werewolf and, well, you’re, sort of… y’know…”

Jiyong knew. Jiyong knew very well. “I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Okay,” replied the young man, “but it’s bound to come up. Are you going to tell him what you are after this is over?”

“What I am?” Jiyong thought about it and frowned. “No, I can’t. I – ”

A growl ripped its way through the forest – nearby and loud. It was a violent scream from a wolf and it sent shivers up both of their spines.

“Like him, I get it,” finished Seungri, looking at Jiyong with a face of worry but shrugging his thoughts away. They kept moving, the memory of the sound still echoing in their heads.

-

They stumbled into a small clearing in the woods, and Seungri placed his bag down in a huff, stretching his arms. Jiyong didn’t need to do such thing, but he followed Seungri’s example anyway – distracting himself from his own thoughts.

They breathed in the humid forest air and tried not to shiver when a long, lone howl reverberated through the sky. Seungri glanced at Jiyong, mouth pulled tight in worry.

Suddenly, they heard a voice in the distance – a muffled, “yo, Seungri! Seungri!” and a fluttering light in between the trees. Jiyong paused, trying to identify the light, but Seungri’s face perked up.

“That might be Youngbae and Daesung coming to meet us!” said Seungri excitedly. Something was off, thought Jiyong. Something didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t tell what.

Seungri pulled out his lighter and flickered it to a blaze, waving in turn, as he jogged forward. “Hey, we’re over here, how’d you find us!”

“Seungri, come here!” said the voice – still muffled, a bit low. It could’ve been Youngbae’s voice, but Jiyong knew Youngbae. Bae was Jiyong’s best friend – and so he should’ve known – he – he –

The young man cleared the short field and went into the woods up ahead. Jiyong slitted his eyes, trying to pierce through the dark, but he couldn’t. There was something blocking the way. He felt panic crawl up his throat – Seungri might’ve been heading towards danger and all he was doing was standing there.

“Wait, wait,” yelled Jiyong, stepping forward, but Seungri was moving quicker and quicker towards the other flickering light. There was something so very wrong what was it Ji what’s not right?

He saw Seungri’s silhouette get swallowed up by the dark. A beat later, he heard Seungri’s terrified scream. Out of the four of them, only Daesung carries a lighter and he gave it to Seungri.

Jiyong sprung forward, ripping through the branches, his inner self clawing its way to the surface, violence and bloodlust rearing their ugly heads in his stomach as he grew angrier and angrier. Someone had hurt Seungri while pretending to be Bae, someone was going to pay.

He burst through another thicket and found Seungri on the ground, pale and frozen with terror, and there was a gash in his side, bleeding out quickly into the dirt. Jiyong inhaled sharply, horror rising up his throat, and tried to find the thing that did this but there was nothing except rapid footsteps and yelling that were soon approaching.

Opposite Jiyong, Daesung and Youngbae burst out from between the trees, brandishing four sticks with wolfsbane coiled around them, turning them into makeshift werewolf-weakening swords.

“Seungri!” yelled Youngbae, dropping the sticks entirely as he fell to his knees and touched his friend’s face and arm delicately. “Jiyong, Ji, what happened!”

“I don’t know – I – there’s something here, I can smell it,” said Jiyong, still on alert, every part of him crawling with bloodlust, ready to tear the thing apart limb from limb – even if it was Seunghyun. No one got away with injuring his friends.

Daesung stood by his side, handing him a stick, and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Bae, can you help heal Seungri?”

Youngbae, still kneeling at the boy’s side, nodded swiftly. “Yeah, I have some stuff, I just – don’t interrupt me.”

“Ji, if it’s Seunghyun…” started Daesung, voice low and careful, but Jiyong shook his head.

“Take him down.”

The wind swept through the forest again and Jiyong took a deep breath of it, trying to identify the smell when his eyes flared open. Daesung was also staring at him. “That was blood,” he said. Jiyong nodded mutely.

“I think that’s Seunghyun’s blood,” he blurted, his anger dissipating as worry gnawed at his stomach. “Stay here, I’ll go find him.”

“Ji!” said Daesung, surprised, but Jiyong was already moving. He stopped suddenly, turning on his heel, telling Daesung, ”there’s mountain ash in some rice bags. I’ll bring one over and take the other one to Seunghyun. Stay safe!”

-

After leaving the three of his friends with one bag, Jiyong grabbed the neck of the other and started his sprint towards where he smelled the blood. It took a few minutes of wandering lost in the forest, his nose upturned towards the wind, until he stumbled onto the silhouette of another body lying on the ground comatose.

Jiyong swallowed, slowing his pace as he approached the body warily. Please don’t be dead, he pleaded in his head, and almost fell to his knees when he recognized Seunghyun’s pale face in the dirt.

Dropping the bag and stick of wolfsbane, Jiyong fell to his knees beside Seunghyun’s head, running a hand through the dark hair and inspecting the rest of him. He was dressed in oversized trousers and a loose long-sleeved shirt that dipped low at his neck, showing the pale skin of his clavicle.

Why are you human? Jiyong thought to himself as he continued inspecting the young man, not daring to touch any other part of him except his head, which was covered in a cold sweat. Then, on Seunghyun’s side, mashed into the dirt, Jiyong saw the giant gash, just like Seungri’s. He swallowed down his horror, reassured that Seunghyun was still breathing, and tried to think.

Need to protect him from the other wolf, he reminded himself. Grabbing the mountain ash, he quickly took a handful and carefully made a circle around them both, then stuck the stick of wolfsbane into the dirt like a pillar.

Then, Jiyong sat next to Seunghyun, inspecting the wound. The bleeding was sluggish, which was both a relief and terror. It meant either that Seunghyun had bled out or that his healing abilities during the full moon were more rapid. Jiyong prayed it was the latter and wondered if he should call the others over. No, they had their hands full with Seungri, adding Seunghyun to the mix would just be a distraction to healing Seungri. But he had to tell them that he was with Seunghyun – human and bleeding Seunghyun.

Quickly, he marked a path through the trees as he headed back to his friends, leaving Seunghyun behind him with the ash and wolfsbane, hoping for the best.

-

Daesung was singing when Jiyong reached them – his voice sweet and powerful, echoing through the forest, and there was no answering wolf’s howl to interrupt the melody. Quietly, he crouched down beside Youngbae, who was sliding a beige coloured paste down Seungri’s side.

“I found Seunghyun. He also has an injury like Ri,” said Jiyong, “he’s human again.”

Youngbae glanced up at the sky and the moon. “Why?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to stay with him through the night.”

“Do you need me to help him after Seungri is picked up?” asked Youngbae, his face open and worried. Jiyong sometimes couldn’t understand how open and generous his best friend was.

“No, I’ll be fine. Who is Daesung calling?”

“I don’t know – I trust he’s calling help, he started when you left.” There was a beat, when Jiyong began to stand up and Youngbae caught the hem of his pants, making him lean down and take a handful of beige paste. Jiyong shuddered and Youngbae shook his head, “I don’t have a bowl, alright, so rub that over Seunghyun’s wound – it should keep most of the bacteria away. Now go.”

-

Carefully lifting up the dark shirt, Jiyong rubbed his handful of paste onto the wound. The gashes could have been from claws, maybe teeth, it was hard to tell – and Jiyong tried his hardest to cover all of it. Seunghyun was still pale and his breathing shallow, but Jiyong hoped it was all going to be alright. The circle was unbroken and the wolfsbane would help ward away the other wolf. Jiyong hoped the wolfsbane didn’t stop Seunghyun from healing.

Curling up on his side beside the young man, Jiyong pulled down the shirt over Seunghyun and rubbed the rest of the paste onto the ground, trying to clean his hands. Trust Youngbae to make the grossest stuff – even if it was super helpful.

In the moonlight, Seunghyun looked washed out and sickly, but Jiyong still stared at him, enraptured. He reached forward with his clean hand and ran his fingers through the young man’s hair again, marveling at the softness and being able to touch him like this. With a hum, he tucked himself closer, almost touching the young man opposite him.

“Sorry,” blurted Jiyong, and he felt his eyes burn. “Oh god, I’m really sorry, I’m so sorry, I just – I was dumb and curious and I wanted to see you and you’re like this and Ri is – oh god – ” He started to sob, muffling his face in the remnants of his torn blazer, glad that Seunghyun was unconscious.

Eventually, he stopped crying, wiping at his face tiredly, and sat up, drawing his knees up to his chest. The least he could do now was to protect Seunghyun from the other wolf, though they hadn’t heard a howl from it in a long time.

And so Jiyong waited, hours upon hours passing, hearing muffled voices of other people and their cries of surprise as they shuffled Seungri and Daesung and Youngbae away in the distance. He hoped the right help had come.

Finally, sunrise broke in the horizon to the east and Daesung, Youngbae, and a tall woman appeared in the trees. Jiyong had smelt them coming from a distance away. He cringed at the sunlight, though it wasn’t strong enough to bother him too much, and let his friends and the woman cross into the mountain ash circle and pick up Seunghyun’s unconscious body delicately.

“Who’re you?” asked Jiyong, rude and loud, as the woman instructed Youngbae and Daesung to carry Seunghyun out of the forest. She turned to face Jiyong when she was done – all long, dark hair and bright eyes and heart-shaped face.

“I’m Dr. Lee Hyori,” she replied, “and I’m going to take care of your friend, so c’mon.”

It was 6:23 on Jiyong’s watch once they left the forest. It was one of the worst six hours of his life, and he sighed, knowing there was only more to come.

-

A/N: this chapter required a POV switch, and we get more scenes with the other three – I hope you don’t mind. Also, yes, terrible things are happening at Kongnamul, hang on. Thank you so, so much for the wonderful feedback you guys have been giving me – all your comments, subs, and votes are really precious to me and I hope this quick update is enough to show how thankful I am. :D