Wandering Through Vol. 1 Chapter 12 - Simple, First Night🔞

It was spring after winter, and on the floor was a thick golden silk thread.

 

On the silken golden stitches, which he had used in his wedding ten years ago, he swallowed the nape of his wife’s neck in one bite. 

 

The delicate flesh swelled red with just a few bites. 

 

He tasted her neck with his tongue, sucking the life out of her, as she showed no sign of waking up. Her skinny shoulders and hipbones were exposed.

 

Nothing but bone was visible, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her skinny body. He groped at her chest, which was covered by the skirt’s straps, but it was bare.

 

‘She must have eaten something to gain weight,’ he thought.

 

Thin bones that looked as if they would break with the slightest effort, and a barely-there hide over them.

 

The only white thing was the skin, but it was as pale as a corpse rather than a pleasingly white flesh. 

 

As I held her limp body, I occasionally checked her breathing to make sure she wasn’t dead.

 

“Hmph.”

 

He suckled frantically at the pale flesh. From the nape of her neck, past her collarbone, up to her upper chest, biting the strap of her skirt until there was nowhere to go but down.

 

‘If she opens her eyes, if she wakes up, I’ll rip her apart.’

 

My lips, unable to go any lower, nibbled angrily at her collarbone. He had held back too long. 

 

He wanted to strip this body bare, to suck it all in. Too long, but he’d held on, night after night, groping his way through the hours of sleep, not knowing what to do.

 

Until the day when sharing her body with him would be the most miserable thing she had ever known.

 

💫

 

It was the day my husband, who had abandoned me, took a new wife.

 

I couldn’t sleep, even though it didn’t matter anymore. Instead of lying in bed and tossing and turning, I transcribed until late at night.

 

Trying to think about how much money I would get for this book, what I would do with it, and whether Young-sun would buy her son a new slipper since he was just starting to walk.

 

Eventually, my weak body couldn’t take it anymore, and I dozed off.

 

I’ve gotten used to falling asleep at night without being able to keep myself awake. I thought it was because I changed the medicine I was taking after my humble treatment to a cheaper one. 

 

It was not uncommon for me to fall asleep with my face stained from my writing, and I couldn’t hold on for a moment while changing my clothes and fell asleep.

 

Once I fell asleep, I didn’t wake up until the sun came up….

 

‘Why did I wake up?’

 

Yiseo blinked slowly, staring up at the ceiling, which was pitch black even in the dim light of the lantern, proving that it was still the middle of the night.

 

A strange chill ran down her spine, and her heart raced.

 

Suddenly, I realized I was lying on the futon. I must have fallen asleep at the table.

 

“Are you awake?”

 

A voice I shouldn’t have heard in this place made me sit up, startled. There, sitting between my wide-open legs, was the former husband. 

 

‘Is this a dream or reality?’

 

For a moment, she stared at him, unable to think, until the man who had been staring down at her mangled right ankle raised his head.

 

His blue eyes glazed over.

 

Instinctively, fear rushed through her, like a ravenous beast in the mountains, and she pushed herself up on her elbows, trying to pull herself back, only to be stopped by her ankle, which was caught like a hook.

 

“Why are you here…?”

 

After I spat out the words, the situation didn’t seem any more real. I imagined that there would be a day in my life when he would suddenly come to visit me on a whim. 

 

Wondering how his old wife, whom he had abandoned, was doing, but at least it could not be today.

 

Today was the day of his new marriage.

 

A healthy, fair woman took the place of the crippled one.

 

What the hell he was doing here, instead of going to the pretty new bride on the first night, made more sense if this was all her dream.

 

Though there was nothing dreamlike about the hand that gripped her ankle.

 

Yiseo squeezed her eyes shut tight.

 

‘It’s a dream. It must be a dream. If I open my eyes, there will be no one in front of me, and maybe Young-sun will wake me up to ask if I slept on the table again.’

 

Or maybe there’s food on my face again, and she would bring warm water to wash it off…

 

“If you close your eyes, will you dream of the living?”

 

A low whisper slipped into my ear, followed by a nibble on my earlobe. 

 

The sensation of flesh being nipped made her nerves tingle, but she didn’t open her eyes and muttered under her breath, 

 

“No, this is all a dream. Just a dream.”

 

But her denial ended the moment the man’s hand slid up her inner thigh.

 

“…!”

 

When she finally opened her eyes, she found herself in the face of a man who was all too close to her. He was laughing soundlessly, and his eyes looked down at her with eyes that were dark with lust, red and raw, devoid of the blue that sometimes seemed so clear and sometimes so precious.

 

So those eyes, they couldn’t be a dream.

 

“Let go, release me. Please.”

 

With a crashing sense of reality, Yiseo shoved the man’s chest away. She flailed as hard as her weak legs would allow.

 

A shudder of belated shame ran through her body. The gaping collar, the skirt rising to her knees, the man’s hand groping between her legs.

 

He grabbed her ankles and pulled them apart, ignoring her struggles. 

 

No matter how hard she fought, the man’s legs refused to budge, and she screamed.

 

“Why are you doing this!”

 

The man froze. In a trembling voice, Yi stuttered and fumbled to stop him.

 

“What are you doing touching this raggedy body? You should be back in the palace.”

 

“You want me to do that?”

 

Yiseo nodded urgently and answered, “Yes. See, you mustn’t do this. No, not now.”

 

He laughed.

 

“That’s why I’m doing this, because you’re nothing to me anymore. You’re not my wife anymore, and I’m not your husband either…”

 

The man whose face was so close that their foreheads bumped together asked.

 

“How does it feel to be violated by a man who turns out to be nothing?”

 

It was chilling. She knew she couldn’t stop him, no matter what she said. 

 

But her useless legs were captured, and her protests were powerless.

 

A large hand slipped into her skirt and suddenly moved up to her breast. 

 

Pushing away was pointless. The man’s touch playfully squirmed through her clothes like a snake.

 

The harshness of his breathing and the heavy mass of flesh rubbing against her bottom finally forced her to close her eyes.

 

“Why are you doing this to me?”

 

The corners of her eyes burned, and she cried.

 

“Just kill me, please, don’t do this. If you hate me, I’d rather…!”

 

All the days I’d spent pretending I didn’t care came flooding back. I had never wanted anything great in my life, so why did I deserve this?

 

For living so long in a body that should have died years ago.

 

Better to have died when my leg was ruined.

 

“You shouldn’t be crying yet…”

 

He whispered, licking her cheek as she choked back a sob. 

 

The fingers that had been tracing her lips slipped into her mouth, just two fingers, filling her tiny mouth.

 

She bit down on the finger that was still in her mouth, hard enough to make it bleed.

 

The taste of blood was in her mouth. The man paused, staring down at her, and then roughly rammed his fingers into her mouth.

 

No, not poking, but as if he were writing something on her tongue…

 

“Argh.”

 

As soon as her struggling stopped, the man withdrew his finger from her mouth. She stared at him, dumbfounded.

 

He pressed his lips against her bloodied lips. 

 

She parted her lips obediently for the man’s tongue, which licked the blood from the corner of her mouth and pushed her mouth open.

 

And because…

 

“Of course you are. There’s no way you’re going to push me away.”

 

This guy was okay with it, because the guy who was kissing me was…

 

“Spread your legs wider.”

 

‘Who was he?’

 

Yiseo blinked in confusion. Strange memories flooded her mind. 

 

Things that had never happened to her in her twenty-two years of life popped up as if they were her memories. It made her dizzy.

 

“Ah…!”

 

Her body stiffened reflexively at the fingers probing her lower slit.

 

Never having been open to a man before, her body stiffened and spat back the man’s fingers, and she thought how strange it was.

 

This man was my husband, and it wouldn’t be the first time I’d shared a body with him.

 

Tilting her head in question, she wrapped her arms around his neck. She felt him laugh. 

 

He kissed her cheek, flooded with memories of his past life, and whispered, 

 

— “…My queen.”

 

She remembered the king’s question she had evaded at their wedding ten years ago.

 

— “Was that young bride my brother’s lover?”

 

— “That young bride in the room was my queen.”

 

The woman was his lover, his Queen. 

 

A woman who had once promised him life after death.

 

He lusted after her body, possessed by the memory of those days. She smiled at him, spread her legs, and kissed him.

 

Yet she wept constantly. She didn’t realize she was crying.

 

He stuck his tongue in her sobbing mouth and plunged his fingers into her constricted bottom opening, one by one, to stretch it. The body beneath him shuddered.