THWCS 33

Chapter 33

Lee Shin picked up a potato that Youngwon had already peeled and placed in a basket, popped it straight into his mouth, and chewed crunchily.

Whether Lee Shin himself was aware of it or not, as he ate the potato he would occasionally smile soundlessly.

Seeing such a side of Lee Shin—one rarely witnessed—Unjeong thought he would have to take another look at the young lady named Ha Youngwon.

But night fell, and while Unjeong was out patrolling the area around the market, Lee Shin had fallen into a deep sleep.

While trapped in the Curse of Honmong that he had worried about so much.

Unjeong tried to wake Lee Shin, but it was beyond his ability.

At that moment, the person who came to his mind was none other than Youngwon.

The woman who had exchanged betrothal jade tokens with Lee Shin.

The woman who had received the Curse of Honmong together with him.

The “ridiculously eccentric” woman who, for a fleeting moment, had made Lee Shin resemble the carefree boy of ten years ago.

Unjeong headed straight for the guest quarters’ plum garden where Youngwon was staying, and realizing that Youngwon, too, was about to fall under the Curse of Honmong, he woke her and brought her to Yeongyeongdang.

“What am I supposed to do? Hitting him, calling him—he won’t wake up at all.”

“I don’t know.”

That was all Unjeong could say.

Lee Shin’s mother and sister had vanished from this world ten years ago on that day, and Lee Shin had disappeared from Gaeumul Village just like that.

Unjeong, too, after losing Lee Shin’s family—no different from family he himself cherished and relied upon—left Gaeumul Village.

At the time, Unjeong had been a scholar studying with dreams of passing the state examination, but after that day’s tragedy, such thoughts disappeared.

Instead, he traveled the world and entered the tutelage of an old man deeply versed in medicine, learning the medical arts.

But his lifespan was painfully short.

Afflicted with an illness that no medicine could cure, Unjeong did not last long before dying away from home, and for whatever lingering attachment he had, he could not even go on to the afterlife.

Like a ghost who died away from home, Unjeong wandered for several months before hearing about the annual ghost roll call held on the last day of the year at Jeokbyeoksan of Hamcheong.

Hearing rumors that those who failed to attend the roll call would be seized by grim wardens and dragged into the afterlife, Unjeong went early to a place called Jeokbyeoksan.

But to think that the one conducting the roll call of ghosts atop the cliffs of Jeokbyeoksan would be Lee Shin, whom he had parted from in Gaeumul Village.

Thus Unjeong and Lee Shin were reunited, and Unjeong voluntarily became a ghost warden belonging to the Register of the Dead.

And so six years passed.

“Master! Sword Master! Please open your eyes! At this rate you’re really going to die!”

At a loss, Unjeong watched Youngwon, who kept shaking and hitting Lee Shin incessantly.

Lee Shin had called Youngwon a fox trying to take advantage of his ability to command ghosts, but to Unjeong, the worry reflected in Youngwon’s eyes was sincere.

“Geom Yishin! Open your eyes!”

Suddenly shouting, Youngwon painfully grabbed and twisted both of Lee Shin’s ears.

The skin visible outside Lee Shin’s clothes was already dotted with red spots where blood vessels had burst, making him look like someone stricken with a high fever.

“Ha—miss!”

Lee Shin once again tensed his entire body tightly, and his bulging temples looked as though they might burst at any moment.

Growing desperate, Youngwon released her hands from pinching his arms and face and bit down hard on her lower lip.

Her face clearly showed that she was thinking something over, though the deliberation did not last long.

Suddenly, Youngwon knelt beside Lee Shin’s bed, leaned in, grabbed her cumbersome hair with one hand, and lowered her face.

Unjeong, stunned by the incomprehensible action, soon flushed red and turned his body away.

Youngwon fiercely bit down on Lee Shin’s lips with her teeth.

“Geom Yishin! Please open your eyes!”

This time, Youngwon clamped down hard on Lee Shin’s upper lip and tore at it.

Lee Shin’s lip split, and the blood that seeped out smeared directly onto Youngwon’s lips.

Anxious, Youngwon hovered over Lee Shin’s face, searching for another place to bite.

She had thought that biting like this would stimulate pain more than pinching or hitting—was she wrong?

Just as Youngwon, thinking this was her last chance, bit down fiercely on Lee Shin’s lower lip once more—

“Ah…!”

At the low voice that emerged between their touching lips—different from the growl of an enraged beast—Youngwon rolled her eyes to look at Lee Shin.

Lee Shin’s tightly closed eyes had lazily opened, and his deep, black pupils, still hazy as if not fully awake, looked at her.

“Aah…!”

Lee Shin let out another pained groan.

Only then did Youngwon, who had still been biting his lips, hurriedly release them and pull her face back.

Lee Shin, stroking his lips with his hand as if in pain, slowly blinked several times.

Frowning, he licked his lips—torn here and there—in confusion, then turned his gaze.

Youngwon, having run all the way from Yeongyeongdang, was utterly exhausted, and her taut nerves—strained by Lee Shin’s condition, which had been far worse than she had imagined—finally slackened, leaving her momentarily dazed.

Lee Shin had opened his eyes.

It was a relief.

He had escaped the nightmare.

The red spots still visible on his pale skin were frightening reminders of how urgent the situation had been, but in any case, he had woken up.

“Ts—ah….”

As his heart, which had been pounding wildly, slowly began to calm, Youngwon belatedly reacted to Lee Shin’s groan and turned her eyes toward him.

Their gazes met.

At the same time, she noticed Lee Shin’s swollen lips, bitten and bleeding by her doing.

Youngwon, too, suddenly became acutely aware of the metallic, fishy taste rising from her own lips, more vividly than ever before.

Simultaneously, her face flushed red as if it might burst.

“Th-that, your, lips… I mean, there was really no other way….”

Lee Shin lightly touched his lips, which throbbed with a stinging, burning pain, and looked at Youngwon, whose lips were smeared with his blood.

His gaze lingered on Youngwon’s full lips.

At that, the fair skin of Youngwon’s face, framed by the lamplight, flushed a peachy red.

“I mean, this was an unavoidable situation. You were dreaming, Master, and it looked like you were going to die, so I had to wake you somehow. I hit you and pinched you and scratched you, but you just wouldn’t wake up….”

Youngwon pulled her hands away from the bed and shuffled backward on her knees, urgently glancing around.

Lee Shin followed her gaze and looked around the room as well.

Whatever she was searching for, there was no one in the room but the two of them.

“I’ve read it in a book. That among the parts of the human body, the lips are sensitive and weak to stimulation… so I thought….”

Watching the rambling Youngwon quietly, Lee Shin once again licked his lips with his tongue, where the burning pain still lingered.

“Does it… hurt a lot?”

Having expended so much energy in the dream that his entire body felt limp and tattered, like tightly wrung laundry, Lee Shin let out a small laugh at Youngwon’s question.

“Want me to do the same to you?”

At his languid words, spoken without even lifting his eyes, Youngwon widened hers and quickly shook her head.

“No, that’s not it… right now… how are you? Are you okay?”

Lee Shin lowered his head to look at his own body.

The hand visible beneath his black undergarments was covered in red spots where blood vessels had burst, and judging by Youngwon’s reaction, his face was likely not much different.

“…How did you get here?”

Each time Lee Shin spoke, his lips hurt, and he furrowed his brow.

Just how much had she bitten them?

When he raised his sharp, cold eyes, Youngwon, feeling guilty, once again glanced nervously around the room.

“U-Unjeong… that scholar named Unjeong came to the guest quarters. He said you had to be woken from your dream.”

“Unjeong?”

Unable to even lift a hand, Lee Shin leaned his back with difficulty against the wall beside the bed and spoke as if exhaling a sigh.

And seeing his weakened state, Youngwon asked carefully.