He pulled her into him, and leaned toward her neck. She could feel his breath getting closer and closer, and even though it was a short moment, in her mind, these three years of clips and images, however, surfaced up one by one. She thought of how from the beginning, she took staying by his side as a gamble, and between time passing, she had already forgotten what she had determined to use as a gamble in the beginning. Now, she would finally see the ending of the gamble in the next moment. Closing her eyes, she didn't struggle, didn't resist. Once again, she thought, If it's bound to happen, after all, it will happen.

"No! Unnie! Unnie!" The placid air was torn by a piercing scream.

He hissed. Afterwards, he moaned lowly. Feeling a pain in his leg, he released Hye Ryeong, and looked down. It was actually that little girl who ran up to him and bit onto his leg harshly!

"Scram!" and he kicked that little girl away. Her tears and the blood stain on the corner of her lips that she got from just biting him moments ago, mixed together, which made him inexplicably feel somewhat nervous.

*** 

While Hye Ryeong was looking at the little girl who was kicked aside, emotional touch and sorrow gathered together. At first, she thought she would save this little girl, however, she was saved by her. At that moment, all her emotions merged into a difficult-to-implicitly-explain-kind-of suffering, making her heart suffer a heavy blow. She kneeled beside the little girl, and hugged her head securely. Tears fell like rain, as she wept without a sound. She didn't know whether it was emotional touch, or sorrow that made her cry. She also didn't know that she was crying for her own unluckiness or the child's, or if she was crying for that snatched-from-the-jaws-of-death kind of joy.

She only knew that, only by crying, could she releae all these years of accumulated anger, pain, and sorrow!

***

He really was impotent. Even if that little girl didn't bite him, when he got closer to Hye Ryeong, he felt an intense sense of restlessness. He didn't know if he indeed bit down, if he would regret. It wasn't that he never experienced the taste of his most beloved before, because after Han Seong Yeon said, "Damned to perdition," he destroyed Han Seong Yeon's everything, including herself, but at that time he hated her to his core. However, now, facing this woman who he has hurt time and time again, he could not bring his heart to do it. 

***

Afterwards, there was another girl in this dark and sunless underground palace, and her name was Shin Hae Ryeong. She wasn't the only one to undergo changes in this underground palace, Hye Ryeong's ever more cold heart was also changing. Since then, Hye Ryeong made an important decision, and that was not to see him. She locked herself in her room, and did not step o