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Lee Yeon drags himself off the bridge with a cry that is half defiance, half agony. He hurts. He hurts… everywhere. His body a mess of lacerations, his skin clammy with sweat and sticky, drying blood. His pulse is pounding in his ears, his breath rasping in his throat, and for a long moment it’s all he can do to lie there on the cold, hard rock and wait for the world to stop spinning.
When he manages to raise his head, Granny is there, looking down at him with an odd mixture of pride and pity. She purses her lips and gestures wordlessly – the portal opens up beside her, a doorway through the fabric of reality, the warm glow of the world of the living beckoning invitingly. All he has to do is cross the threshold. It’s no small task. His human form is dangerously frail, weakened by seven subjective years of fatigue and exposure in the mountain prison, by pain and blood loss from a hundred knife cuts.
But Ji Ah needs him. She is in danger and he did all this for her sake, to save her. He can’t give up now.
He pushes up on trembling arms and drags himself forward, the shard of metal in his shoulder grinding agonisingly, the deep wound on his leg spiking hot, fiery pain as he moves. He grits his teeth, a deep groan ripped from him as he pulls himself forward again. And again. And again. It hurts. But he can’t stop. He daren’t stop. His breath is coming short and fast, his head starting to spin. Nearly there. Nearly…
He slumps over the threshold and lets the portal pull him in, a swooping, falling sensation as his body interprets the transition from one reality to another, and then it spits him back out on the other side, tumbling him bonelessly onto the stone-flagged floor of the Afterlife Immigration Office.
There’s a disconcerting blurring, barely felt beneath the cacophony of pain, as he crosses the threshold into the living world and his body shifts back into his gumiho form. It takes him far longer than it should to reorient himself and make sense of his surroundings.
Pal Eui Pa is standing over him, her expression almost comically shocked. His arrival has taken her by surprise.
“What are you…? Why are you back so soon?”
He groans, tries to move. It hurts.
She looks him over. “What happened to you?!”
He’s vaguely aware that the portal has deposited him back in the Afterlife Immigration Office in the same state he left it, right down to his clothes. Only now his pristine white shirt is clinging to the lacerations on his torso and arms, red stains spreading wetly across the fabric.
“Dosan Hell…” he breathes raggedly.
“Dosan…? No! No, your sentence was commuted! You were to spend 7 days in Seolsan Prison as a…” Her angry words falter. “As a human…”
She glares down at him, her expression warring between anger and horror. “Did you cross Dosan Hell as a human?!!”
He grits his teeth and rolls painfully onto his side.
“Wh… why would you do something so foolish?!”
He shakes his head. “No time,” he says shortly.
With a moan of pain, he pushes to his hands and knees. It takes a ridiculous amount of effort and leaves him swaying and gasping for breath, his head hanging heavily. His shoulder burns hotly; the shards of metal peppering his body didn’t travel through the portal with him but the wound is deep, still bleeding sluggishly, and every movement of his arm makes it pulse angrily.
“What do you mean “no time”?”
He can’t spare the breath to answer. And it would make no difference if he did. She wouldn’t understand, would only chide him for his foolishness in risking his life for a mere human. Even if that human might be….
With a surge of effort he staggers to his feet, listing dangerously to one side as his head swims dizzily and his right leg tries to buckle under him. Pal Eui Pa jumps back as he lurches for the stone banister and hangs on for dear life.
“You’re a mess!” she tells him exasperatedly. He wants to laugh but it would take too much energy. “For goodness sake, sit down before you fall down!”
He lifts his head enough to grin at her. Beneath the lecturing tone of voice, one might almost think she cared. She narrows her eyes at him as though daring him to say it.
“Can’t,” he tells her roughly. “No time.”
She splutters angrily, “No time for what?!” but he’s sucking in a breath and pushing himself upright, testing out his weight on his right leg, and taking an uneven step. He can’t help the sob of pain the movement pulls from him… his leg feels like it’s on fire. He takes another step, and another, his jaw clenching so tightly he feels his teeth grinding.
“Lee Yeon!!”
He ignores her, ignores everything but the need to keep moving, his world narrowing to step after uneven, lurching step. It seems to take an age to reach the door, eons to fumble at the handle with shaking hands, an eternity to push open the main doors and stumble out into the fragrant night. He staggers to a halt, swaying on his feet as he tilts his head back and scents the air. Where is she… where…? There. The night breeze carries the scent of her, warm and soft and… sharp with fear. His heart jolts in his chest.
He tries to run, fear spiking adrenalin, but his leg is too damaged and it folds under him, tumbling him to the ground in a yelp of pain. His breath whistles through his teeth, his body shivering as he struggles to regain control. Gumiho are far stronger than humans, more impervious to damage, quicker to heal. But he’d been human when he’d been in the underworld, his body taking damage, feeling pain, as a human would. Even with his gumiho powers restored it was going to take time to heal from this. Time he doesn’t have.
He grits his teeth against the pain and clambers awkwardly to his feet. He wants nothing more than to race to her, flashing across the distance between them with the speed of a fox, but his body can’t take the strain of moving that fast and he’s limited to a human’s gait, and a lopsided, limping one at that. He pushes himself as hard as he can, not quite managing a run but a fast, stumbling hobble, staying upright mostly by momentum and sheer force of will. He’s shaking, his right leg trembling with every staggered step, the pain a constant angry burn… but he’s getting closer…. closer… He can smell the hot tang of her fear, so close now…
Hold on Ji Ah, I’m almost there…
And then the scent spikes sharply and he hears a terrified cry from above and sees a body falling…
He throws everything he has into a burst of fox speed, blurring across the distance between them, feeling his leg give way even as he snatches her out of the air. The impact sends them both tumbling to the ground; he barely registers the impact, his body rolling limply, the last of his energy expended. He’s only vaguely aware of her rolling out of his arms. Everything has gone fuzzy and dark. Even the pain is muted, his body feeling indescribably heavy, as if a weight were pinning him to the ground. He can’t fight the darkness any longer and it swallows him whole.