Hwayoung was abruptly woken the next morning by her father shaking her shoulder. Rolling over and squinting her eyes in the thin morning light, she groaned in confusion. The birds were not yet chirping and the sun was only just a thought over the horizon. Her father’s grim expression, however, rattled her from her morning haze.

              “Father, what is it?” Hwayoung sat up, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm. “What’s happened?”

              “No time. Get dressed,” Her father offered little explanation, but the tightness in his voice gave away that something was most definitely wrong. “We have to go.”

              Frowning, Hwayoung threw on her heavy dress and cloak as quickly as she was able and hurried outside of their hut. Her father stood in the doorway downstairs with her mother. Her mother’s eyes were bloodshot, and her brow was drawn taught over pursed lips. Both of her parents’ body languages alarmed Hwayoung further.

              “The hunters found someone outside the gates last night. They are saying that she’s one of them,” her mother whispered frantically to Hwayoung as they walked briskly through the mist.

              The morning was cold, and Hwayoung drew her cloak closer about her body to fight off the chill. The mist swirled low on the ground and dew still clung fast to the leaves of the weeds that grew along the dirt path. Hwayoung felt her stomach drop and stopped dead in her tracks. Images of Jongin lying still in the early snowfall, shaking and cold the way he had been the last time she had found him in the woods, flashed through her mind one after the other, each more gut wrenching than the last. The dew on her legs suddenly felt like ice.

              “Who?” Hwayoung’s voice shook, and she seized her mother’s arm. “Who did they find?”

              “We do not know yet,” her mother gently pulled her daughter forward. “But whoever it is they arrested, it is not good.”

              Hwayoung walked next to her mother in the loudest silence she had ever experienced. Although the damp morning was tranquil, to Hwayoung it felt as though she was humming with fear, who sang with a menacing and metallic sea of beatles in her ears. The shroud of stillness, however, was broken by a woman’s agonized wails that only grew louder as the group grew closer to the village square. The sound made Hwayoung balk in her steps. closed around itself.

              What if this person was Jongin? What would she do? Her thoughts raced through her mind so fast that Hwayoung felt like she was going to throw up.

              Passing the final few houses to give away to the gathering space of the villagers, it became very clear to Hwayoung what was going on. Mrs. Seo lay on her knees to the side of the wooden scaffold. Her face was turned upwards to the sky, her cheeks wet with tears. The unearthly wails were drawn from her lips. Other villagers with their cloaks pulled tight about their cold bodies were gathering around the outskirts of the square, as though they wanted to give Mrs. Seo as much space as possible. Their faces were turned downwards or away from the commotion as though it were shameful.

              Hwayoung glanced at her mother in confusion, but her mother’s eyes were drawn to figures emerging from the crowd. It was Jinki and two burlier men whose faces were shrouded behind thick beards. Jinki was dragging a girl by the hair. Hwayoung recognized her to be Hye Kyo, Mrs. Seo’s youngest daughter,and not a year younger than Hwayoung, herself. Hwayoung felt both intense relief and a horrible pit of dread. 

               Hye Kyo's face was a puce shade from a combination of screaming and the strain of Jinki's fists on her scalp. As Hye Kyo was roughly pulled into a crouching position, Hwayoung noticed how Hye Kyo shivered so in the cold: the men had not given her a chance to put on her furs. The soles of the poor girl's feet bloody and coated with a slick layer of grime from the muddy dirt roads. Hwayoung felt her stomach roil and turn, and it waas all she could do not to be sick.

              Jinki’s face registered cruel triumph as he struck a wide stance upon