Be the Sacrifice Chapter 2

“Aaagh!”

 

In the blink of an eye, Hong Yeomrang’s hand shot forward like a striking hawk. He seized the crimson flag that pointed at him and yanked it hard—hard enough to snap the shaman’s delicate finger with a sharp, wet crack.

 

The baksu mudang, slender and fragile as a girl, crumpled to the ground right there, a raw scream ripping from her throat. 

 

Tears burst forth in helpless, heaving sobs that shook his painted face.

 

“I thought you were being so careful, watching me all this time… Why speak words you couldn’t handle the consequences of?”

 

Their eyes meeting had been no accident.

 

Yeomrang stood over the collapsed, weeping shaman and spoke with calm, cutting indifference. 

 

This shaman had already decided on him as the offering long ago—only waiting, watching, gauging the perfect moment to name him.

 

The bells fell silent. 

 

The drums ceased. 

 

Nothing remained but the shaman’s broken crying, echoing in a hush so complete it felt as though the entire village held its breath in terror.

 

Even the outsiders,travelers and merchants, stood speechless at the sudden violence.

 

“…Are we cursed now?”

 

Someone whispered it, barely audible, yet the words rang like a thunderclap in the stillness.

 

Every gaze now turned openly, unashamedly, to Hong Yeomrang. 

 

Irritation flared hot behind his eyes. It was only a finger, hardly fatal, yet the shaman wept like a child, and Yeomrang’s brows drew together in cold displeasure.

 

Once a year, just before the harvest, one hundred days of devotion.

 

A rite no different from a prayer for abundance, an ancient tradition the village clung to with unshakable faith. 

 

No one had ever died or been truly harmed; offer one person for one hundred days of service, and the year would be peaceful and plentiful. 

 

Everyone believed it.

 

And Hong Yeomrang had just hurled a stone straight into the heart of that belief.

 

“No more nonsense. Come with me.”

 

Hong General’s face was carved from granite as he spoke to the son who now towered over him.

 

The clinging stares, his father’s icy authority, the endless sobbing at his feet—everything grated against Yeomrang’s nerves. With a sharp exhale, he followed his father’s retreating back.

 

The stunned crowd began hastily clearing the ritual ground in near silence.

 

Whispers darted like frightened birds, Had they angered the Mountain Lord? Would the tiger return—this time to punish the villagers themselves? 

 

Fearful glances slid toward the Hong estate, its walls the tallest and strongest in the village, as though the sturdy stone might shield them from divine wrath.

 

But inside Yeomrang’s chest, something entirely different burned.

 

He could still feel the tremor that had run through the shaman’s hand when their fingers brushed during that brutal yank of the flag—a tremor not just of pain, but of something raw and electric. 

 

He could still see those kohl-lined eyes, wide with shock and tears, yet refusing to look away from him even as they spilled over.

 

Hee-sa had tried to protect him.

 

Had chosen to break her own bone rather than let the gods take Yeomrang.

 

And Yeomrang—furious, thrilled, dangerously alive—knew with sudden, searing certainty that the Mountain Lord was not the only one who had claimed him tonight.

 

As he walked away, the echo of those broken sobs followed him like a lover’s plea.

 

He didn’t look back.

 

But every step felt heavier, pulled by an invisible thread that stretched taut between him and the weeping figure left kneeling in the dust—thin, trembling, and impossibly beautiful beneath the ruined paint and tears.

 

One hundred days, the rite demanded.

 

Yeomrang’s lips curved into a slow, dark smile his father could not see.

 

He wondered, with a hunger that frightened even him, what the mountain—and the shaman who served it—would do with him once they had him alone.

 

The ritual ground was swiftly dismantled as twilight bled into full darkness. 

 

Muttering that they had surely invited misfortune, the villagers abandoned the weeping shaman beneath the ancient Dang tree and hurried home, lanterns bobbing like frightened fireflies.

 

The broken finger throbbed with vicious heat, but the pain was nothing compared to the sudden, crushing sorrow that flooded Hee-sa’s chest. 

 

Even after everyone left, she remained huddled there, shoulders shaking with hiccupping sobs that refused to quiet.

 

Beneath the spreading branches, as shadows thickened and strange winds began to moan through the leaves, the narrow shoulders drew in tighter. Hee-sa sniffed hard, trying to swallow the grief.

 

“I-I told you, hic, it couldn’t be you… hngh…”

 

She choked out the words between sobs.

 

“…He’s… been like that since we were children… Hmph…”

 

Hong Yeomrang had been her first love.

 

Back then he had been so heartbreakingly beautiful that one childish afternoon she had gathered every scrap of courage and confessed. He had smiled—bright, dazzling, merciless—and the very next rainy day he had chased her down with a wooden practice sword, beating her until she cried. 

 

She had truly believed her to be a girl. 

 

If he had already been permitted to carry a real blade at that age, she was certain he would have torn her apart limb from limb.

 

Even now, years later, the mere sight of him still sent her heart crashing against her ribs.

 

Not because he was her first love.

 

Because of the sword hilt glinting at his left hip.

 

This was no longer a childhood thrashing that would end in bruises and tears. 

 

Yet the grown Yeomrang—now past twenty—had changed, or at least appeared more restrained. He had not drawn the blade tonight.

 

For that small mercy alone, she was endlessly grateful.

 

“If he had drawn the sword… I really would have died…”

 

“Who are you telling this now?”

 

“Aaah!”

 

Heesa shrieked, body jerking violently as a low voice whispered directly against her ear.

 

“Seeing ghosts every day and you still jump at voices?”

 

“My skirt—my skirt flipped up! My skirt!”

 

The faded yellow skirt—worn thin and colorless from years of ritual use—had somehow ended up draped over her face like a shroud. 

 

A thin branch, the closest one to where she sat, had caught only her calves; her body had gone limp in exhaustion and grief, tipping backward until skirt, hair, and limbs all inverted together in a ridiculous, horrifying tangle.

 

She screamed again at the sheer absurdity of it, more terrifying than any mountain spirit.

 

Then a pale, bloodless hand slipped out from beneath the crumpled fabric. Long fingers calmly drew the skirt back down, smoothing it over trembling legs. Waist-length hair—already loosened from the night’s frenzy—trailed across the dirt like spilled ink.

 

And those eyes.

 

Even in the swallowing dark they gleamed—polished river stones catching stray moonlight, unblinking, luminous.

 

The face beneath was ghostly pale, lips equally devoid of color, yet they curved slowly upward in a smile that was equal parts tender and predatory.

 

Hong Yeomrang crouched before her, balanced effortlessly on the balls of his feet, azure jeogori straining across the breadth of his shoulders. 

 

Torchlight from the distant village caught the sharp line of his jaw, the long sweep of lashes, the dangerous glitter in those upturned eyes.

 

He had come back.

 

Alone.

 

Without his father. Without the crowd.

 

Just him—and the sword still sheathed at his side.

 

Heesa’s breath caught on a fresh sob. She stared up at him through tear-clumped lashes, heart hammering so fiercely she thought it might shatter her ribs.

 

“You… you shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, voice cracking, “The Mountain Lord—he chose you. You can’t just—”

 

“Shh…”

 

One long finger pressed gently—but unyieldingly—against her painted lips, silencing her.

 

The touch burned like fever.

 

His gaze dropped to her broken finger, still cradled uselessly in her lap, swollen and already darkening. 

 

Something flickered across his features—regret? Anger? Hunger?—too fast to name.

 

“You broke it for me,” he said quietly.

 

Not a question. A realization that seemed to carve itself into his voice, low and rough.

 

Heesa’s tears spilled faster. She shook her head, frantic.

 

“I couldn’t—I couldn’t let him take you—”

 

His hand slid from her lips to cup the side of her face, thumb brushing away a tear that carved a clean path through the white lead and rouge. 

 

The gentleness of it was so at odds with the man who had once beaten her bloody that her mind reeled.

 

“Then don’t let him.”

 

His voice dropped to a velvet murmur, so close she felt the warmth of his breath against her cheek.

 

“Keep me for yourself instead.”

 

The world narrowed to the space between their mouths—barely a breath apart—charged with years of buried longing, childhood violence, and the terrifying, exquisite possibility of something more.

 

Heesa’s shattered sob caught in her throat.

 

And Yeomrang—beautiful, ruthless, claimed by gods and now refusing to be taken, leaned in the final fraction of distance, waiting.

 

Not for permission.

 

For surrender.

 

Facing that bright, teasing smile, the she felt goosebumps ripple across her skin. 

 

It dragged her back to Hong Yeomrang’s childhood grin—the same devastating, sunlit curve that had once stolen his breath and left only bruises behind. 

 

People who smiled like that had never done anything but ruin him.

 

“It’s okay. I didn’t die.”

 

“What if you had?!”

 

“Then who would be the next baksu?”

 

The words carried no trace of attachment, no lingering concern, and the sting of them made the baksu forget the white-hot agony in her broken finger. She thrust her lower lip out in a childish pout.

 

Still hanging upside down, skirt clutched tightly in one pale hand, Heesa extended her other hand, cool, bloodless fingers pinching his protruding lip and tugging it downward with slow, deliberate pressure.

 

“Hmpphh!”

 

“If there had been killing intent, I would have untied that yellow cloth myself.”

 

She released his lip, voice soft as night wind through sacred branches.

 

“But you broke my finger!”

 

“Quite the temper.”

 

“I told you. you can’t be the offering.”

 

“I thought it was because it’s your first love.”

 

Heesa replied with sly, effortless mischief, her upturned lips still curved in that haunting smile. 

 

The baksu—who had never once won a verbal spar against her—clenched his teeth, then forced them apart on a shaky exhale. He had known her since childhood, watching her follow her mother through the village like a shadow. 

 

After his mother’s death, when he inherited the shaman’s duties, their acquaintance deepened.

 

She rarely chose the offerings herself—the souls bound for the mountain. Yet today she had singled out Hong Yeomrang.

 

“It’s not like that. Not a first love.”

 

“You begged so heartbreakingly, sobbing as you pleaded with me.”

 

“I’m sobbing just as pitifully right now!”

 

“Shall I give our little baksu a root of wild ginseng? Eat it and heal quickly.”

 

He had long wondered if she was a ghost—her beauty untouched by time, flawless and ageless. 

 

But villagers saw her too, not only his eyes, so she was no ordinary spirit. 

 

No malice clung to her aura. His mother had taught him to treat Heesa with reverence, the Mountain Lord’s messenger. His mother had heard it from her grandmother; the words had been passed down generations. 

 

That meant Heesa had walked these mountains for at least a hundred years.

 

“Do you still think I’m a child?”

 

The night air thickened around them, heavy with the scent of pine resin and distant incense. 

 

Heesa’s pale face, framed by hair that brushed the earth like spilled silk, glowed faintly in the darkness. Her eyes, deep, luminous, held the quiet, ancient knowing of the peaks themselves.

 

And yet, even as she teased him, the baksu’s heart clenched with fresh, aching memory, Yeomrang’s smile, Yeomrang’s blade, Yeomrang’s untamed fire. 

 

That same dangerous allure now flickered in Heesa’s timeless gaze, stirring something deeper—an electric current that promised the Mountain Lord’s chosen one would soon face more than duty.

 

Far more.

 

The pull between fate and forbidden longing tightened like a bowstring, humming with unspoken heat.

 

At Baksu’s words, Heesa—still dangling upside down, suspended like a ripe fruit from the branch—let out a soft, bell-like laugh.

 

Even after hanging inverted for so long, not a trace of blood had drained from her face. 

 

Sometimes she would gaze down from the top of this ancient tree, the village guardian tree, at the people who came to whisper their desperate prayers. 

 

Most begged for the same things, a parent’s health, a family’s fortunes turned kinder. 

 

Those were wishes she could easily grant.

 

A hundred days of devoted chiseong—ceaseless prayer and offering.

 

She had wanted exactly that. A simple exchange, their longing fulfilled in return for hers. 

 

Nothing difficult about it.

 

That was true… until the moment she abruptly pointed her pale finger at Hong Yeomrang.

 

“You cried so much,” she murmured.

 

“If you’ve lived this long, you should have grown a little colder by now.”

 

Baksu spat the words, sullen and sharp. 

 

The real problem was that the man in question had been none other than Hong Yeomrang.

 

On a moonless night, beneath this secluded, shadowed dangsan-namu where no one else would come, the eldest son—Hong In-nam—had reportedly collapsed in sobs and frantic pleading. 

 

He had gone to the annual flower-viewing festival in the capital by chance, caught sight of the princess, and fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in love at first glance. 

 

He, the firstborn of a distinguished military family who once sneered that praying to mountain spirits was mere superstition, had raced here in the dark, begging beneath this very tree.

 

“Please… please… take my younger brother away. Leave even one single, unbearable stain of disgrace on his perfect life.”

 

By cruel coincidence, that wish reached Hee-sa where she rested in the tree’s high, leafy shadow.

 

Hong Innam had first prayed for some humiliating flaw to mar his brother’s path to marrying the princess. Then, weeping, he poured out years of living in Hong Yeomrang’s shadow. 

 

In the end he begged only one thing before the palace could summon the younger brother home, make him vanish from sight forever, right before his eyes.

 

For so long the younger one had never once defied the elder’s will. 

 

Hearing a tear-choked plea to “make him suffer greatly, just once” was something even Hee-sa hadn’t encountered in years.

 

“The problem,” she said softly, “is that it didn’t taste bad at all.”

 

A flash of red tongue slipped between her bloodless lips. 

 

Slowly, deliberately, it traced the plump curve of her lower lip before disappearing again—leaving behind a faint, glistening trail that caught the faint starlight.

 

The gesture was intimate, almost obscene in its laziness. Her dark eyes lifted to meet Hong Yeomrang’s, unblinking, as though she were tasting not just memory, but him.

 

The night air between them thickened, heavy with unspoken hunger.

 

She smiled again—small, dangerous, and unbearably sweet.

 

Baksu realized—with a sudden, uneasy chill—that she was starving right now. 

 

Very, very hungry.

 

He quietly averted his gaze.

 

“…When exactly did you get another taste of Hong Yeomrang?”

 

“He was hot from climbing the mountain path, so he stripped down and bathed in the stream without a second thought. I simply… picked up what drifted downstream and tried it.”

 

“You actually ate that filthy thing?”

 

“If I grant that wish,” Hee-sa replied, voice low and velvety, “at least one person ends up happy.”

 

“You’re overflowing with ulterior motives.”

 

When Park-su grimaced in disgust, she smoothly changed the subject. 

 

Whatever she had tasted must have been exquisite—her eyes had gone soft and hazy at the corners, half-lidded in remembered pleasure. She was clearly savoring it again right now, rolling the flavor over her tongue in secret. 

 

Neither of them needed to name it aloud. 

 

They both knew exactly what it was. How could they not?

 

Those chosen as offerings… in exchange for wealth, they all ended up…

 

Baksu let out a long, weary sigh.

 

“This is exactly why those bizarre rumors keep spreading.”

 

“What rumors?”

 

“That… the reason only men brimming with yang energy become offerings is because you…”

 

“Because I feed on men’s vital essence? Ahhh.” 

 

A slow, wicked smile curved her lips. 

 

“So that’s why he begged me to leave one humiliating scar on his younger brother’s life.”

 

The words hung between them like smoke—thick, intimate, forbidden.

 

Hee-sa’s gaze drifted lazily toward the darkness where Hong Yeomrang stood silent, just beyond the tree’s reach. 

 

The night wind stirred the leaves above, but it could not cool the sudden heat that bloomed low in the air between them. Her pale tongue slipped out once more, tracing the edge of her lip as though chasing the ghost of that stolen taste. 

 

This time the gesture felt deliberate, aimed straight at him—like an invitation wrapped in threat.

 

Her voice dropped to the barest whisper, husky and dark with hunger.

 

“It was… intoxicating. Thick. Hot. So alive it burned going down.”

 

Park-su flinched, but Hee-sa only tilted her head, eyes gleaming like moonlit water.

 

“Don’t look so scandalized,” she murmured. 

 

“You know I’ve always had peculiar appetites.”

 

And then—soft, almost tender—she added, 

 

“But his… his was different. It lingered. It clings even now.”

 

Her gaze locked on Hong Yeomrang again, unwavering, ravenous.

 

The space between them crackled. 

 

Silent. Electric. 

 

As though the ancient tree itself held its breath, waiting for one of them to break—and devour the other whole.