Sunlight filtered through the forest overhead.
Pale.
Scattered.
Beneath a ridge, a large bush spread wide—dark green and light green leaves moving slowly in the wind, dancing without urgency, indifferent to everything beneath them.
Inside the bush, they had folded themselves like paper.
Small.
Tight.
Invisible.
Small twigs broke under their weight.
Ha Joon's eyes moved slowly.
Widening.
Scanning everything within reach of his vision.
His ears followed.
Searching.
Reaching into the forest for any sound that didn't belong.
Anything.
Something.
Eun Byol's wound ran from her left shoulder vertically downward, moving all the way through, reaching her stomach, cutting left to right across it.
The white shirt absorbed it slowly.
Red.
Warm.
Thick.
The wound opened with each breath she took, a flash of fire and pain vibrating through it every time her chest rose.
The black suit beneath had taken a clean cut.
Not enough to ruin it completely.
Just enough.
Small damage that added to everything else.
It was heating up now.
Slowly.
Pulsing.
Ha Joon had both of them folded close together.
Bodies pressed tight.
He could feel the change in her temperature against his skin.
Warm where she shouldn't be warm.
Her eyes spoke to him.
And his to her.
No words.
Just eyes.
His skin felt numb.
His body felt numb.
Everything beyond the bush felt like another world entirely—the war, the creature, the smoke, the screaming—all of it existing somewhere outside this small dark green space where two people breathed together and listened.
They both listened.
Felt the sound of the forest around them.
The wind in the leaves above.
The distant vibration of something massive moving somewhere they couldn't see.
Time faded away.
Became irrelevant.
There was only the bush.
Only the breathing.
Only the wound pulsing heat between them.
Only the forest.
And the silence they held together.
Still.
Careful.
Alive.