By Zephyria 
“Lord Dae-gam!”
“Whoa!”
Startled by the sudden obstacle, Lord Dae-gam instinctively pulled the reins. The horse let out a piercing shriek, sounding like a Devouring Ghoul, and reared up on its hind legs. Its shod front hooves flailed in the air, looking as if they would strike Mother across the face.
Even so, Mother did not move, her eyes wide and fixed.
The horse eventually came to a halt, and Lord Dae-gam, his face twisted in shock, screamed at Mother with a voice that seemed to shake the world.
“Hey! You crazy bitch, get out of the way!”
But Mother did not move. Instead, she pressed closer to the horse, thrusting her face forward.
“Lord Dae-gam! Lord Dae-gam! It’s me, it’s me. You know me, don’t you?”
“Hey! I said move!”
“Please… just take our Mugi, just take Tae-muk with you.”
Lord Dae-gam didn’t even look at Mother or Tae-muk. He immediately pulled the reins, attempting to turn the horse away. At that, Mother quickly reached out and grabbed the reins. With eyes flashing intensely, she cried out.
“We—my husband and I—have worked for your household our entire lives! We worked until our bodies broke. We did everything we were told. You know this, don’t you? So, please, just take our Tae-muk. I beg you!”
Mother stood on her tiptoes while clutching Tae-muk. She held him up as if to say, look at this small, pitiful child; please have mercy on him.
Tae-muk, not knowing what to do, simply stood still. Even in the midst of this, the Young Master caught his eye. The Young Master seemed to be in a state of shock, his soul gone. His usually fair face was streaked with tear stains, and he was drenched in blood from one shoulder down to his thigh.
“Let go, you crazy bitch! Do you want to die?”
Lord Dae-gam’s face turned beet-red, as if it might burst, as he struggled to pry Mother’s hand off. However, it was not easy to shake off the desperate woman. She wasn’t just holding onto the reins; she was clutching the last chance to save her son. She clung to him, smiling so hard her cheeks trembled.
“Our… our Tae-muk doesn’t eat much, and he works hard. You’ll need a servant on the road while fleeing, won’t you? You need a house-slave to attend to the precious Young Master. Our… our Mugi will do a great job. So please, take hi—”
A slicing sound cut through Mother’s desperate voice. Then, the hand that had been gripping the reins fell away.
It wasn’t that she had let go of the reins; her wrist had literally been severed. Lord Dae-gam had sliced through Mother’s wrist with his sword. Her hand, severed like a plucked fruit, rolled across the ground. Looking down, the sight was similar to Father’s body rolling in the courtyard.
“Filthy… how dare you…”
Even after cutting off Mother’s wrist, Lord Dae-gam’s anger remained; he growled, grinding his teeth. Yet, with his other hand, he held the Young Master firmly by the chest.
“Hwaaaa…”
Mother collapsed backward, clutching her severed wrist. From the impact, Tae-muk was knocked to the ground.
“M-Mother! Mother!”
Tae-muk immediately crawled toward her. Mother looked at her wrist, where blood was spurting out, and suddenly buried it deep within the folds of her skirt. Even then, she seemed to think the child should not see such a sight. Her skirt, so old that its color had faded, began to be stained red, looking like a fine crimson skirt.
Swallowing hard, she pointed toward Lord Dae-gam with her remaining hand.
“Tae-muk, follow them. Follow Lord Dae-gam. Do you hear me?”
“What?”
Tae-muk turned his head following her finger. But Lord Dae-gam was already galloping away. The horse’s tail shook violently, and the gat hat Lord Dae-gam wore trembled and swayed.
Tae-muk understood easily. No matter how hard he ran, he could never catch up to them.
Even if he did, he didn’t think he would survive. Lord Dae-gam had used Father, who tried to protect them, as bait. He had severed the wrist of a mother begging for mercy. And judging by the fact that only Lord Dae-gam and the Young Master were on the horse, Madam must have lost her life in a similar fashion.
Tae-muk crawled slowly toward Mother’s skirt.
“I… I don’t want to go. I want to stay with Mother. I don’t want to be separated from you.”
It was then. A Devouring Ghoul, holding someone’s leg in one hand, approached Mother with heavy, thumping steps. Its gaze was fixed on Mother’s blood-soaked skirt.
Seeing this, Mother shoved Tae-muk away and screamed.
“Go!”
“M-Mother…”
“I said go! Go-aaaaagh!”
She ended with a shriek. Hearing a voice from Mother that he had never heard before, Tae-muk felt the hair on his neck stand on end. At the same time, he felt an unbearable sorrow. Sobbing, he clung to the hem of her skirt.
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to go, Mother. Huhu, I don’t want to go… I want to stay with you. Please…”
Tears, thick as chicken eggs, tumbled down Tae-muk’s cheeks. He was terrified. He was more afraid of being separated from his mother than he was of dying. With Father gone, he couldn’t possibly live without Mother. To an eight-year-old, parents were the world. If they were gone, the world ceased to exist.
Despite Mother’s desperate struggles, Tae-muk would not let go. Eventually, Mother even used her severed hand to push Tae-muk’s shoulder, but he clung to her tenaciously.
Meanwhile, the Devouring Ghoul drew near. Realizing it was already too late to flee, Mother hid the Tae-muk she had been pushing behind her back.
“N-no, no. No… don’t come…”
She looked up at the Devouring Ghoul and scrambled backward on her backside. But in the end, the shadow of the ghoul fell over both of them.
“Tae-muk…”
Mother hugged Tae-muk with her whole body, curling herself up as much as possible. Pressed beneath her, Tae-muk could do nothing but pour out tears. However, through the gap in Mother’s arms, he saw the retreating back of Lord Dae-gam.
Lord Dae-gam galloping on horseback. And peeking out from beside him, a set of braided hair. The Young Master’s beautiful silk hair tie, fluttering gracefully like a butterfly. Hair tie. Hair tie. Hair tie.
Even in this chaos, Tae-muk envied that hair tie, which didn’t have a single speck of dust or a drop of blood on it. Perhaps he felt spite, or perhaps he felt resentment.
“…”
While Tae-muk stared blankly at the hair tie.
“Ugh, uk, no, no… not Tae-muk… not him…”
Mother was torn apart alive by the Devouring Ghoul. Her blood splashed into Tae-muk’s eyes, his nostrils, and his mouth.
The taste of Mother’s blood… tasted like fodder. The taste of the fodder he had been forced to eat by the Young Master’s order in the stables earlier—that taste came from Mother’s blood.
Ah, were we truly beasts?
The moment that thought crossed his mind, the ghoul’s teeth pierced through Tae-muk’s chest.
* * *
When Tae-muk opened his eyes, his vision was entirely white. As if the world had just begun, there was no sky and no earth, only a vast whiteness. After staring at it for a long time, Tae-muk realized that the world wasn’t white, but that he was buried in snow.
He slowly pushed himself up. However, he felt a strange sensation. How to describe it—his senses were dull, as if lead were clinging to his skin. Truly, the snow did not feel cold. He also felt a peculiar heat. Yet, there was nothing attached to his body. He was wearing only clothes that had been torn into rags.
Tae-muk shook his head to clear the snow. Then, with a blank expression, he looked around.
“…”
He was still in that place. The town where Tae-muk had lived. But it was now a broken town, or perhaps a stolen one. A town where neither Father nor Mother remained.
The town, covered in a thick blanket of snow, was silent and clean. Until he lost consciousness, it had been stained dark with ghouls, blood, and corpses, but now it was purely white. It felt as if that tragedy had never existed in the first place.
But that event had certainly happened.
“…”
Tae-muk looked at Mother’s wrist lying not far away. It was hard to see because it was covered in snow, but he knew it was Mother’s wrist. Because he was her son, he knew.
Tae-muk exhaled a deep, slow breath. A cloud of white breath puffed out and vanished, then puffed out and vanished again.
He had no idea what had happened. Hadn’t he died? He felt as though he had been eaten by a Devouring Ghoul, so why was he still alive?
It was as Tae-muk was groping his chest, where the ghoul’s teeth had pierced through.
Clop, clop. Clop, clop.
The sound of horse hooves echoed. At the sudden noise, Tae-muk’s shoulders twitched. Then, he grimaced in pain and covered his ears.
“Ugh… uuu…”
The sound of the hooves was as loud as thunder. It felt as if someone were hammering directly into his ear canals. As he shook his head as if struggling, the sound of the hooves stopped nearby.
“What is this? Is that brat alive?”
“How is he alive?”
“Maybe the ghoul didn’t see him because he’s so small?”
Men in military uniforms exchanged words in low tones. However, their voices also echoed loudly and coarsely, like the beating of drums. He wanted them all to stop talking. Tae-muk groaned and struggled, eventually burying his face deep into the snow. He wanted to sink into the ground. He thought it would be quiet there.
“What should we do?”
“Let’s take him.”
Following that conversation, someone stepped down onto the ground where Tae-muk lay. Then, he was grabbed by the scruff of his neck and hauled up like an animal. Even then, Tae-muk continued to moan, his ears clamped shut.