Chapter 1

Chapter 1

1. A Strange Place After The Accident

A deserted place.

Except for the occasional chirping of mountain birds, a loud roar resounded in the otherwise quiet mountain. A car rolled over an empty road several times before flipping over. The loud noise that did not suit the quiet and peaceful mountain road finally stopped.

Gray smoke billowed from the crumpled car body. It was a gruesome sight that would make anyone wonder if the one inside would still be alive.

After a while, a woman covered in blood crawled out from under the crushed car.

“Huh… uhh…”

The shards of glass scattered across the grass brushed her arm. Her whole body was screaming. Even though the pain was terribly sharp, she crawled on the grass with all her might as she couldn’t feel her legs.

After barely getting out of the crushed car, Shin Hana lay down on the grass.

This was a mountain trail that was not often traveled by people. She hadn’t been here a lot of times, but she knew the odds of being discovered by chance were slim. That was why she came here in the first place.

Hana groaned briefly.

No one would come to rescue her, so she had to call for rescue herself. However, no matter how much she searched, her phone was nowhere to be found. It seemed to have flown away when the car rolled.

As she felt the cool breeze, her tingling arm and her numb leg, she could hear a voice.

At first, Hana thought it was her hallucinations.

Where did the sound come from? Who was it? What was it talking about? Was it so painful that she could hear hallucinations…?

Thinking that far, she laughed unknowingly.

She had the nickname of ‘drug addict.’ She was called so because she lived with painkillers in her mouth. Although she had been called by that title more than her own name, she had never had a hallucination.

At least, it was until now.

There was nothing strange about hearing hallucinations now. Since it hurt so much, it shouldn’t be too strange.

Hana let out a short sigh. Was it because the pain was so intense that she couldn’t even grunt, let alone cry, or was it because the painkiller she habitually took relieved the pain? Or was it because she felt that they were all going to die?

She didn’t have the mental power to sort everything, about what the voice was or how it happened, but at least she knew one thing.

As her body was getting cold now, Hana stared nonchalantly at her companion in the distance before shutting her eyes.

It was finally time to die. She thought calmly.

When it came time to die, she became afraid of dying, but strangely, there was no such thing. It was a trip to die anyway.

After she was done with her personal affairs, she was thinking of taking a trip to a place with good mountains and good water for the last time. Hana was not afraid or sad because, in essence, she had come prepared to die… she just didn’t know she would die like this in a place like this.

The voice asked once more.

Perhaps for the last time, Hana looked around with all her might. She wondered where the voice came from though there was only her dying self and a broken car with blood flowing from inside her. It must have been hallucinations.

‘…Yes. Take it. Take me.’

And so, she gladly answered the voice. Of course, it wasn’t out of her mouth. If she had the energy to answer something, Hana had already used it all up when crawling out of the car or looking for her phone.

Even though she didn’t know where the voice was taking her, if she had the strength to ask that kind of thing, she’d say it hurts.

No matter how much she was used to pain, this one was too painful.

She had much money that she hadn’t spent yet, but who cares? She was fully prepared for the day she would die, anyway. Because it was such a sudden accident, it was a little earlier than planned, but it wasn’t so fast that she couldn’t accept it.

She almost wanted to tell the voice to take her quickly if the voice wanted to take her to heaven or hell.

‘Still, it’s a bit disappointing…’

A little bit of regret left. That was her last thought before she closed her eyes.

“…For the safety of—!”

A voice came from quite a distance.

“Please proceed with the ceremony as scheduled!”

It was also incredibly noisy.

Hana lightly furrowed her brow. It wasn’t even the sound of just one or two people. Each and every one of them was speaking in an overly loud voice, and even several people were speaking at once. Because of that, her head thumped.

“Please, listen!”

“It is absolutely necessary. We still…”

A muffled sound that is difficult to understand. Listening to it over and over again seemed to give her a headache that she hadn’t had before. Hana habitually reached out to her bedside, trying trying to find a bottle of painkillers that were always there.

“The ceremony wouldn’t proceed! Go back!”

Just then, a man answered towards the mutterings. In fact, she didn’t even know if he was really answering them. All she could tell was that the man’s voice was very clear. It was a clear and charming voice that she had never heard anywhere else.

Thankfully, after the man answered them, the noise disappeared.

Hana inadvertently thought of thanking the man. Now that the surroundings had become quiet, she felt like she could bear it a little longer.

It was difficult to understand the situation because she was still half-awake, but after the noise died down, her head began to move, albeit slowly. What they say, why they shout so loudly by her side, why the painkillers that should be at her bedside were nowhere to be found—so the questions awoke one by one.

Hana, who had been groping the bedside, opened her eyes. A sense of reality suddenly hit her.

‘Wait, where am I…?’

Flash. Flash.

Blinking her eyes on the bed, she immediately got up.

“Ugh!”

Because she woke up suddenly after lying down for a long time, she felt dizzy. Pressing her temples hard, Hana glanced around and met the stranger’s eyes.

“Ah.”

The man seemed to be the owner of the voice she had just heard… A foreigner she had never seen before was staring at her with surprised eyes. She didn’t even think it was rude for the first meeting, and she raised and lowered her gaze.

Unconsciously she stared at him blatantly from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

The man’s hair was surprisingly long. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen a man grow his hair long in her life though it was the first time she had seen jade hair that looked so good even though it was clear that it was dyed.

The man’s eyes that met hers were also unusually amber. This was also the first time she saw it in real life, not a picture. In reality, while she thought it wouldn’t be much different from light brown, it was like gold with the sun in it.

It was a really strange color combination….

Jade green, with his hair resembling a tender blade of grass and golden eyes. She could never have imagined that there would be someone who would look good with such an unfamiliar combination.

Hana put everything else aside and appreciated it in one word.

‘He’s a very… handsome man.’

Was there anyone who was this tall and had clear features?

She didn’t know if it was a bit of a cliché, but she had only seen handsome sculptural men like this in movies. He seemed to be wearing strange clothes as if he had just been filming a movie… No, it wasn’t a common appearance, even in movies.

‘He’s really cool. What kind of people are here?’

Although she wanted to leave it as it was and appreciate it for a while, the situation did not make sense. First of all, this place was an unknown place, and this person was also unknown. Besides, the man just stood still in the center of the room like a fool, as though he was stunned when his eyes met hers.

They exchanged glances with each other for a while, not saying a word. It was the woman who came to her senses first.

“Excuse me.”

Aside from being handsome, she couldn’t tell what nationality he was from just by looking at him. So, Hana started talking in English, which would be familiar in any country.

However, this handsome man, far from answering, was visibly taken aback upon hearing her. He couldn’t even come close and stayed there for a while, not knowing what to do.

Then, as if he had made up his mind soon, he took one step at a time.

Hana gazed up at the approaching man from a close distance. She deserved to stand up as a courtesy though she couldn’t get herself out of bed because her body didn’t feel good. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to care about such politeness.

The man hesitated before uttering.

“Sorry. I cannot understand your words.”

Another surprise came this time.

The language spoken by the man was something she had never heard anywhere. While living abroad, she encountered people from many countries and many languages, yet this was the first time she had heard of this.

It was so unfamiliar, so she felt that the language itself was different.

Interestingly, she understood what he was saying, even though it was clearly something she had never learned before.

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