Be the Sacrifice Chapter 8

“I need to take these clothes off and change. Even if I put something on over them, they’ll just get wet again anyway.”

 

He was sensitive to both cold and heat, but that didn’t mean he would die from it. 

 

Still, since this person, who clearly minded that he was wearing wet clothes, had given him new ones out of kindness, he wanted to repay that consideration.

 

‘I should act more like a human.’

 

For some reason, Hong Yeomrang treated him like a person, so he felt he should behave accordingly.

 

Heessa quickly took off her durumagi and laid it on the cleanest mat in the cave. Then she roughly yanked at the strings of her worn jeogori, practically tearing them open.

 

“…That…”

 

Hong Yeomrang, seeing her casually untie the goreum strings of her jeogori right in front of him, a grown man, without the slightest hesitation, lost his words and immediately turned his back to her. 

 

Every single one of his senses rushed to his ears.

 

The sound of the jeogori being untied and tossed to the floor.

 

The heavier thud of the chima skirt dropping after it.

 

Even though he didn’t want to hear them, the sounds kept reaching him and stirring him up. Hong Yeomrang glared fixedly at the entrance of the cave.

 

He couldn’t just act on impulse.

 

If he did, he’d probably end up staring openly and maybe even tearing up, and then he wouldn’t be able to say what he actually wanted to say.

 

He pressed his heated forehead with the palm of his hand.

 

“Yeomrang, look at me for a second.”

 

Heesa, now wearing the new clothes, the vivid red silk durumagi that suited Yeomrang so perfectly—called out to him sweetly, clearly delighted.

 

The moment Hong Yeomrang heard that, the hand pressed to his forehead dropped, and his eyes turned icy.

 

“How do you know my name?”

 

He turned around and asked her in a chillingly cold voice.

 

But what he saw—

 

The long red durumagi dragging on the floor, tied with a man’s knot at the chest, so that no matter how much she tried to adjust it, nearly half of her pale-white chest remained exposed, was so utterly defenseless and, at the same time, so strangely captivating that it was impossible to look away.

 

He was entranced.

 

“Who in the village doesn’t know your name?”

 

“Then who told you to call me that? I never gave permission.”

 

The red durumagi covered even the tips of Hee-sa’s ugly, reddened fingers. When she shrugged, one side of the durumagi slipped down to her shoulder. 

 

Water still dripped from the ends of her wet hair.

 

The brief moment when she had bitten her fingertips until blood stained her lips had been fleeting, but the contrast now was unmistakable.

 

Heesa, already extremely pale, looked even closer to a yōkai once dressed in red.

 

It was as if she were wearing nothing but the long robe that a bride would wear at a wedding ceremony.

 

“You’re still saying you’re not a yōkai when you look like this?”

 

She stared straight at the man with nearly half of her pale chest exposed. 

 

Through the parted front of the durumagi, her calves came into view, then her knees, and the white expanse of her thighs above them.

 

There had to be a reason why every young man was inevitably drawn in.

 

Surely it was because she spent a hundred days playing with that so-called “mountain tiger’s lioness,” or whatever they called her.

 

That was exactly what Hong Yeomrang had realized the moment he himself became the offering.

 

How could anyone claim that something like this didn’t harm people?

 

Hong Yeomrang reached out and gripped the scabbard. Then his hand moved to the hilt.

 

“…Are you the one demanding a young man be offered as a sacrifice every year?”

 

There was no way lust wouldn’t rise. Heat bloomed low in his abdomen. 

 

A bizarre, molten desire surged like lava, he wanted to seize the woman on that mat right this instant.

 

From the beginning, there had never been anything he desired that he failed to obtain.

 

He could cut her down.

 

That was why he had come here in the first place.

 

No matter how fragile and womanly she appeared, no matter if she cried, he had no choice.

 

“One hundred days a year. I send down wealth to them, and they become happy.”

 

“Too bad. I don’t need any wealth.”

 

“Yeah. That’s why I never call for yangban young masters either.”

 

Heesa shrugged her shoulders as if bothered by the slipping durumagi. But instead of rising back up, it slid down even further, now enough to reveal the round, dark points of her chest. 

Everything about her was deathly pale, yet that spot stood out starkly pigmented. She noticed that his gaze wasn’t on her face but somewhere else, and lowered her head.

 

 Almost her entire chest was exposed.

 

“Ah…”

 

A faint breath escaped Heesa.

 

She had never really minded things like this before, but this was the first time a man had stared so openly and shamelessly. 

 

To begin with, Heesa had rarely caught the eye of any of the offerings.

 

Calmly, she pulled the slipped side of the durumagi back up over her shoulder. Even so, the deep line between her breasts remained clearly visible.

 

“Weren’t you the one who called me here to drain my yang energy in the first place? Then you should let it fall even lower. If you’re going to bewitch someone, do it properly.”

 

He was clearly laboring under a serious misunderstanding.

 

“Do you actually know how to drain a man’s yang energy?”

 

Pretending to be human when she wasn’t one was exhausting. 

 

Hong Yeomrang had given her food and clothes, and because of that, she had wanted to act like a person, but there was no helping it now.

 

And right now, all of Heesa’s attention was locked on Hong Yeomrang; she was starving.

 

She walked toward him.

 

If the blade cut her, of course, the flesh would part, and it would hurt.

 

If the one cutting her was Hong Yeomrang, the one who had treated her kindly, it might hurt even more.

 

Even so, Heesa did not stop.

 

“Yeomrang.”

 

Hong Yeomrang simply let her, much smaller than him, approach until the hem of the dragging durumagi brushed his feet, until she was looking up at him.

 

Her pale, still-damp face gazed at him. 

 

The tips of her eyelashes were wet. As though she had been crying the whole time.

 

Heesa’s ugly, rough fingers came right up to the tip of his nose.

 

No matter what trick she tried, he had more than enough strength to stop her.

 

She had no strength at all; even a mere push, not even a sword, would send her staggering backward.

 

Since she was no longer hiding the fact that she was a yōkai, Hong Yeomrang calmly waited for the moment she would finally reveal that bewitching, demonic energy.

 

“I…”

 

Her hand brushed past the corner of his eye. Then it rose even higher.

 

Because Hong Yeomrang wouldn’t lower his head, Heesa had to stand on tiptoe and stretch her arm as far as it would go. 

 

What she grasped in her hand was his hair accessory.

 

The moment she pulled out the donggot pin, the long hair he had grown and tied up came cascading down all at once, rustling over his shoulders and flowing all the way to his waist.

 

Heesa gathered a handful of the now-wavy locks and gave a sly grin.

 

For the first time, hunger and desire flickered openly in her eyes.

 

Reflexively, he drew his sword halfway from its sheath.

 

But before he could react further, Heesa had already seized another thick handful of the hair that now trailed down to his waist.

 

“Ow!”

 

She pulled with just the right amount of force, enough to rip it out cleanly.

 

Normally, one would cut it, but there was no time for that now, so she simply yanked a fistful free by the roots. Then, light as a shadow and completely soundless, she slipped past him.

 

Her movements were so swift he couldn’t even grab her. 

 

Above all, it happened in an instant—completely unexpected.

 

He had assumed that when she reached toward his face and wrapped her arms around his neck, she was trying to seduce him, or perhaps do something even more lewd.

 

The only one harboring filthy thoughts and bracing for them had been Hong Yeomrang himself.

 

He never imagined she would rip out his hair.

 

So quickly. So deftly.

 

Heesa, clutching the long strands in her hand, dashed toward the cave entrance.

 

Hong Yeomrang chased after her a beat too late.

 

“Yeomrang, I’ll eat well!”

 

She brought the handful of his long hair to her mouth and bit down on it.

 

Right before plunging into the rain, she even tossed him a cheerful farewell and fled at full speed.

 

The vivid red durumagi, impossible to miss, vanished once again into the black forest in the blink of an eye, swallowed up like smoke.

 

In an awkward half-drawn, half-sheathed stance, Hong Yeomrang shouted toward the forest.

 

“Hey!!! Aren’t you coming out? You crazy fucking yōkai bitch… Hey!!!”

 

His hair had been ripped out. Then she’d taken it straight to her mouth, bitten down on it, and vanished like the wind. 

 

He yelled into the forest, but aside from the sound of rain, nothing came back.

 

“Crazy, fucking, shit, insane, that goddamn… fuck…”

 

Every filthy curse he knew exploded out of him.

 

Then it suddenly hit him how Heesa had tickled his hair to wake him up earlier. Her goal from the very beginning had been his hair.

 

Not the body of a man brimming and overflowing with yang energy.

 

Just his hair.

 

Hong Yeomrang had no idea how he was supposed to kill her the next time they met.

 

“She doesn’t harm people.”

 

And yet she eats people’s hair.

 

Was that harmful or not?

 

The spot where his side hair had been torn out throbbed painfully. 

 

And the instant realization that he’d been toyed with sent rage roaring straight to the top of his head.

 

Never in his life had he been humiliated like this.

 

And worse, fuck, really, truly worse, he had actually thought she was going to fill herself with yang energy using his body.

 

And that exact filthy thought had been completely transparent to her.

 

That was why she’d ripped out his hair and taken it instead.

 

The great Hong Yeomrang had become a laughingstock to the world. Not only had his thoughts been read, he’d been mocked for them.

 

Thud—

 

In the end, unable to hold back his fury, he slammed his fist into the cave wall even though he knew it would only hurt himself.

 

“Crazy, fucking lunatic of a girl. Ha… shit…”

 

His lower half was still half-hard.