The sky was already beginning to darken over the fields as Hakyeon made his way in, his farming tools carried in one hand and his back aching from the work. It had been a long day, but not something he wasn't used to; his parents had been farmers before their early deaths, his grandparents before them, and so forth. His friend Wonshik walked beside him, equally tired from hoeing the rows upon rows of vegetables that they cultivated for the village, but with a cheerful lilt to his voice as they neared the homes gathered at the edge of the wood.

"So then she threw the pitcher at me," he was saying, motioning wildly with the hand holding his hoe, nearly smacking Hakyeon with it as he did so and never even noticing because he was too caught up in his own story. "I was able to dodge it, but only just, and before I could make it to the door she had sicced her dogs on me!"

Hakyeon had to laugh at the mental image, and shook his head ruefully at his best friend. "You ought to know better than to try to talk old Hyerin down on her eggs," he admonished, with only brought a scowl to Wonshik's face.

"No, I wasn't trying to talk her down, she knew full well that my cabbages were worth more," he began to argue, but Hakyeon cut him off with an arm across his chest. Wonshik glanced at his face before following the line of Hakyeon's eyes to the edge of the woods.

Everyone knew the wood was haunted, the ghastly sounds that came screaming out of it nearly once a week being enough to keep even the bravest of men from entering that cursed place. As a child Hakyeon had gone into the woods on a dare, but less than ten paces in he could no longer see any traces of sunlight around him. The dense foliage kept it out, and Hakyeon had panicked and run back to his friends, to their howls of laughter at his fear. Until he had challenged them, that is. Not a one had taken up the challenge, and that was the last time Hakyeon had gone near the place.

There was game to be had, sure, but only if one were desperate enough to go hunt in the near blackness that the strange, twisted trees loomed in. It was much easier, safer, to buy goat or sheep to butcher from the two local farms that raised the animals than to risk ones own neck by entering the wood.

Yet tonight there was a figure exiting the woods, with what looked to be a young deer slung over one shoulder. Hakyeon's eyes had caught sight of him even before he'd fully stepped out of the dark trees, and that was when he'd thrown his arm across Wonshik's chest to stop him. His best friend looked up and gave a snort of derision, followed by a shake of his head.

"He's a fool to hunt in there," he grumbled, and Hakyeon had to silently agree with the sentiment. He remembered Taekwoon as a child, always surly and quiet, ignoring others even when they spoke to him. There were only two others his and Hakyeon's age and yet while those had banded together, Hakyeon had been on the outskirts of their friendship for talking too much and being annoying while Taekwoon was on the outskirts for the opposite reason. He'd thought that maybe they could have been friends, but Taekwoon had resolutely resisted any friendships.

As he'd grown older Hakyeon had made other friendships, like the one he now cultivated with Wonshik despite being several years older, but Taekwoon only seemed to draw further and further apart from the rest of the boys of their village. They were a close-knit community, with less than a hundred people in the entire town, all who knew one another and relied on each other to get them through hard times, but Taekwoon's family was an oddity among them. Instead of living in the village itself, they lived several miles down the southern road, bordered on both sides by the dead woods; instead of farming or raising livestock, they had always been hunters who traded the fresh meat for commodities from the village proper.

Taekwoon's father had died when Hakyeon was barely a teen, and Taekwoon stopped coming to the small school taught by the mayor's wife. Rumor had it that he picked up caring for his mother and younger sister, though since neither mother nor sister ever came to town no one was sure if that was true or not. All Hakyeon knew for sure was that Taekwoon disappeared and he couldn't have cared less.

Of course, now was a different story. The hunched, slender teen that he'd known back then had grown into a tall an