What a poor little girl, Eunbi thought. When she saw Chaeyeon crawling her way to the well Eunbi got frightened. In her mind, she was debating whether to get away from her and call the townspeople or to stay and satiate her curiosity. Someone is crawling!

Eunbi was so ready to carry one of her jars to her donkey and gallop away from the horrific person, but when she heard the raspy painful voice, she knew then that she has to do something to soothe it away. Eunbi did not waste a moment and grabbed the stranger by the arm and drag her beside the well.  She scooped a handful of water from the jar and watched the stranger weakly lapped the cool and clear water as she placed it near . Not long, she noticed that the stranger stopped moving, slumped to the cool bricks. That's when panic struck her. Is she dead? 

Eunbi waited for other people to fetch water from the well and ask for their help, but as time passed by, still no one is around, her anxiety is starting to eat her whole. She has to do something. So she decided to leave her Jars of water behind and load the stranger in her donkey instead. It'll be a long ride.

They arrived in Eunbi's clay hut. Eunbi, a woman of average height, and lean arms carried the stranger on her back to get her off the donkey and into her abode. Just as she expected the girl is featherweight. Just by the look of her thin frame. She looks so famished and worn out. She laid her to her wooden setl positioned just after the tea table in the cool receiving area, the ceiling is high up and the room doesn't have much furniture, the reason why Eunbi's footsteps echo as she hurriedly ran to her kitchen to get a bucket of water. Now she remembers her jars left beside the well. She'll worry about it later.

She brought with her a bucket of clean water and a clean cloth, placed them on the clean red and brown carpet that covered her clay floor. She also pulled a small wooden chair underneath the tea table. She looked at the strange girl. Oh a poor thing, she thought. The face of the girl is dark and blisters are formed in some parts near her eyebrows and lips. It made her worry that this girl might be carrying some kind of disease, but as she continues to examine the girl's face she sees the cracked lips and dry skin. She must've been burnt by the glare of the sun. The idea prompts her to wake up from her reverie and started what she must have done in the very first place: Clean her up and let her sip some cool water. She soaks the clean dry cloth with the cool waters that filled the bucket and started wiping the dirt and dust off from the girl's face.

To her horror, the dust she wiped and peeled off is not what she thought it is.

sticking to the cloth is a piece of the girl's face. A shrivelled dark skin! a hand covers . She stops herself from shrieking. The part where a skin got peeled starts to turn pink. Close to the color of a meat cooked rare. Such hardship and heat brought this upon the fragile body in front of her. Because of the little incident, she wipes as gentle as possible. She cleans her face, then her neck. Her heart aches as she saw traces of blisters that must have burst in her days out in the open. Despite her touching the cuts and small wounds, the girl just lies there peacefully sleeping. Eunbi examines the girl. Her clothes are ragged, soiled, and some parts are torn. When she looks closely, there are some parts of her clothes covered by leather materials. Her eyes shoot a look of surprise. She peeks underneath it, in the girl's back part, near her armpit, where the leather is used to cover her, like what she expected, the leather started to integrate with her burnt skin. The skin started to lace itself to the leather. The biological mind, if there is such a word, of the skin must have thought that it is naturally a part of the body. The leather sticks to the skin due to constant moisture and heat causing a blister. As it recovers it pulled and fixed the leather in it, thinking it is a part of the body.

Although she knows it will hurt, Eunbi ever so gently pulls the leather off the girl's skin.

At first, it's ok. Although she saw pink pulsing flesh as she tears the leather away, the girl did not budge, until halfway in the process the girl let out a deep groan, then she felt her breathes-in air in heavy gasps. Eunbi closes her eyes and prays to her god to forgive her in what she is about to do and prays for the girl in front of her to have peace. Then swiftly, she pulls the leather off from being mended into the girl's skin. *Psshht!* the sound of the skin when she swiftly pulled the eight inches of leather off. 

She stirred. Her eyes are still close but she can hear chirps from horned larks perching on some branches outside. "It must be morning."

Last night she had a dream. Dreamt of riding a horse then got drowned by a woman. She remembers how she drunk too much water as she struggled to reach the surface and breathe. Suddenly her recollection gets heckled by the noise of fallen plates. Startled, she drew open her eyes and sits up, yet failed miserably. "Oh good lord, my body is killing me!"

An intense pain surges throughout her whole body which travels from her stomach to her head, and from there, her brain whispers pain to all the corners of her muscles and bones. She tries to contain herself from screaming, but the pain is unbearable. "AHHH!" She shouted. 

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Huffing, annoyed of the mess she made, Eunbi starts to squat down to pick up shards of porcelain strewn on the floor. But when she heard the scream from her room she sprung up and hurriedly ran to the voice's direction.

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Face is in immense pain, Eunbi went close and held the girl's hand. She felt it. The pain. She felt it by just looking at her face and the by the tight grip of the girl in her hand. 

"Oh no. Please calm down." Eunbi said trying to comfort the girl by patting her head with her free hand. 

From shouting to silenced whimpering, Chaeyeon gradually stopped screaming. The bout lasted for a couple of minutes which really brought Eunbi to edge. She even thought of running away; it sounded so painful. She can't bear to listen to her cries for another minute.

The room is totally quiet now and she strikes a little chat with the girl. She gets to know the girl's name. It is Chaeyeon. She wants to know more about Chaeyeon but decides to think about it later when the latter said that her stomach is hurting yet she feels hungry. Quickly, Eunbi cooks a pot of chicken rice porridge. She is glad she killed one of her hens yesterday, she thought, as she stirs the smoking hot content in the pot.

From then on, every day she sits beside Chaeyeon's bed, sitting in a wooden stool,