The moon hung high, and full - and entirely indifferent - above the tangled forest canopy. Casting fractured slivers of silver through the skeletal limbs of forgotten trees.
Thick clouds roamed the sky like bruised thoughts, drifting just slow enough to let occasional fragments of moonlight pierce through in hesitant glimmers.
When the wind stirred them, the lunar glow spilled out in shards, casting eerie spotlights across the twisted canopy and the glint of a chainsaw blade.
Yi-Yeon stood alone beneath them, her silhouette a fierce contrast to the softness of the mist that crept along the ground like breath. She wore a thick, olive-green forestry overall, dusted with sap and blood-orange lichen, its sleeves pushed to her elbows - safety gloves choked her wrists. Her light brown hair, soaked from an earlier drizzle, clung to her cheeks in ragged strands, plastered like tree branches across a porcelain face set in grim concentration.
The chainsaw roared, slicing through the hush like an unholy incantation.
Metal teeth biting into diseased oak, and her arms jerked with the power of the machine. Bark splintered.
Dust flew.
Every slice felt like punishment and mercy at once. Her breath was steady, her gaze wild and glassy - not from fear, but from the electric pulse of obsession.
She wasn't just cutting - she was performing midnight surgery with the grace of a zealot and the fury of a woman betrayed.
Yi-Yeon's breath came in shallow clouds, her chest rising with exertion, her spine aching in that way only fulfillment brings. She knelt beside the newly pruned trunk, hands deft but tender as she drilled a hole into its clean wound.
The forest was quiet now, save for the rhythmic hum of her portable pump.
She fastened the nutrient bottle with practiced grace, slipping the tube into the stem like a nurse tending to an old patient. Her fingers lingered there a moment longer than necessary.
»All done! You did well,« she murmured to the tree, brushing a speck of bark off its scarred surface. »You must have been really hungry, right? Drink up~!«
Her face fell - a little, but still, »Seriously, why did the owner of this mountain just leave you all like this? They really don't understand the value of life.«
Then, slowly, she rose.
Her shadow stretched behind her, folding into the thicket like a memory.
She lifted the chainsaw, still warm from its frenzy, and grabbed her case.
Her toolbox clanked as she latched it shut, the sound unnervingly sharp in the hush that had returned.
The clouds overhead curled tighter around the moon, obscuring it completely now.
No stars.Just the void and the hint of breath between leaves.
»Alright, now I just need to check on the other trees deeper down and wrap up. I'll be back tomorrow!« Yi-Yeon turned toward the deeper woods - that part of the forest where the trees grew old and the stories even older.
Twisting roots reached out like arms, fog pooled like secrets.
Her boots crunched leaves, her silhouette swallowed by the thick.
Until then, the day had been wholly normal and uneventful.
So Yi-Yeon had gone to the hospital.
Went through the overdue bills, inspected trees that had undergone surgery, and argued with a client who had not paid their treatment fee for over a month now.
It was really just an old habit for the tree doctor to go up to the mountains at night and inspect the neglected trees. This mountain was private property, but it wasn't managed at all, so the overgrown trees and bushes gave the illusion of ghosts and creatures.
Just like most of the trees usually found in abandoned areas, the trees here had suffered malnutrition and neglect, so she took extra care of them. Always.
It was just an ordinary day-
»HELP! Please, help!"«
Yi-Yeon's whole body went rigid; despite having the chainsaw in her hand, she froze in terror.
The man, stuck ribcage-deep in a hole barely fitting him at all, shouted in a muffled voice. »Pl-please...« said the voice. An arm protruded from the fresh soil, desperately scratching the ground for a handhold. » Save me! I'll tell you everything...!«
He didn't seem impressed- no.
He seemed like all of this didn't concern him at all. As if he weren't even part of this. »It's too late.«, his voice was rough, sounding bored even, »You should be begging to be killed here.« said the man, pushing the hand on the ground with his boots, before stomping on it repeatedly, smashing them.
The fingers seemed to be broken, bones twisted and skin bloody.
The silence stretched. Until the voice resounded, weak and broke, »Help…«
The man's face was stony, but he kicked like a madman.
»The show is only just beginning.«, with that the tall man, looming over him, brought his foot down, connecting with a sickening crack to the struggling man's face, and the screams abruptly stopped.
The soil groaned softly beneath the man's shovel, damp and dense as if the forest itself wanted no part of the man's business. His tailored black coat brushed his boots, pristine despite the filth of the job. Each motion of the shovel was deliberate, methodical - almost ceremonial. He hummed a tune under his breath, the melody lilting and eerily gentle, a lullaby for the forest to forget what it saw.
The body next to the pit twitched once.
The man with the shovel didn't flinch.
He kept digging.
As though he were familiar with this.
As though he had done this many times before
»Keep screaming,« the man murmured - not with rage, but with amusement. »It just makes it more fun.« His voice was smooth, silk soaked in something rotten.
Another grunt followed, low and guttural, as he leaned into the shovel like a priest finishing a wicked prayer. He didn't need to yell; the forest was already listening.
Her thoughts whirled around in her mind, like a siren repeating one word over and over again.
Murderer.
Murderer.
Murderer.
The man resembled the pale bark of a birch in moonlight - white, sleek, almost luminescent where shadows didn't swallow him whole. But Yi-Yeon felt it instantly: there was no warmth in his hue, no life behind that glassy complexion. He was carved, not born.
"Aaaah- please!" came the cry from beneath the soil, half-muffled and trembling. Dirt danced with each heave, and a head emerged - slick with earth and agony - only to be pushed back down with the heel of a skillful boot.
He snuffed it out like a dying ember, his raincoat hood obscuring most of his face.
But Yi-Yeon saw the lips: long, curved like a secret being kept.
Her pulse was chaos.
Her body refused to move, yet her mind burned with clarity.
This wasn't a misunderstanding.
It wasn't surreal.
It was murder.
She was witnessing a murder. She was the only eyewitness to a crime scene.
That one word that she had only ever seen in news headlines shook her out of her stupor. Her body broke out in a cold sweat and goosebumps.
The figure in the grave writhed weaker now - movements reduced to whimpers, then nothing. Just silence and damp breath between trees.
Yi-Yeon inhaled sharply, a noise that felt far too loud in the hush.
Her breath hitched in ragged gasps as her gloved fingers clawed at the phone, desperate for any lifeline.
She took a step back...
*Snap*
A single branch, snapped beneath her boot.
On any other night, it would've meant nothing.
But here, beneath this starless sky, it sounded like a gunshot carved out of silence.
The man halted.
The humming ceased.
»Damn it...« The shovel froze mid-air, »What is it now?«
The shovel slipped from his hand and fell with a thud, sending up a puff of damp soil.
Lee-Yeon's gaze tracked it in slow motion. She didn't realize she'd stopped breathing.
Not until the coppery scent invaded her nose, thick and unmistakable.
Blood. So much of it.
There was another corpse lying by his feet, and the shovel fell right next to it.
He turned, slowly. Like an animal. A predator.
The forest held its breath, every branch and leaf paralyzed in the stillness.
The clouds, like drifting curtains, peeled slowly from the moon's face, letting silvery-blue light cascade into the clearing like liquid glass.
Shadows stretched and shrank, turning each bush into a beast and each tree into a witness.
She stood motionless - dirt streaked across her gloves, backpack heavy with blades and bandages meant for healing.
But this moment required none of it.
Yi-Yeon's mind went into a frenzy.
What the hell?!
Doesn't that make him a serial killer??!
Did he just notice me?!
What do I do?!
If I move, he might find out where I am!
What do I do? What do I do?
What should I do?What do I do?
What should I do?What should I do?
What should I- Her eyes locked with his.
His gaze was nothing short of primal -
Not rage, not madness, but the glint of someone who had lived in the dark far too long.
It radiated hunger for something deeper than blood.
The way wolves watched fire.
The way silence stalked sound.
»Are you sure you don't want to start running?« his voice pierced the silence.
It wasn't a threat.
It was an invitation.
Her feet responded before her thoughts caught up, legs surging forward with desperation, phone clenched like a lifeline, thumbs flailing against the screen.
Branches clawed at her jacket. The forest swallowed her scream.
Rain had turned the earth into sludge, and her shoes got sucked into the muck with each panicked stride.
But hesitation wasn't a luxury.
To pause was to die.
Heart pounding at the roof of her mouth, breath gasping in jagged sobs, she sprinted into the dark, chased by the echo of violence.
And behind her, a new sound began - the thud of pursuit.
Then - finally- the call connected.
»Yeah, Hwayang Police Station,« said a voice, flat and disinterested, like the speaker had just woken from a nap or was halfway through a cigarette.
»H-hello,« Yi-Yeon stammered, her voice taut with fear. »I'm near the mountain behind Spruce Tree Hospital - someone's burying a person alive!«
A pause. Then, with a sigh, »Are you sure it's a person they're burying?«
She burst into tears.
She was so afraid.
»Yes- y... YES, I'm sure!! There are even two dead people!!« She fumbled with the words, her breath hitching.
»Okay, okay,« the officer muttered, as if checking a box. »Please stay calm. What's your name, ma'am?«
»I'm So Yi-Yeon,« she said, fumbling. »I...- I got caught. I a...am in danger. Please, I might die here, Sir~!«
»Alright. Please calm down, ma'am.«, he said, voice still bored. »We'll dispatch officers immediately. But if this is a false report, you'll be fined!«
»Please...«, the whispered plea, »Please just come...« barely reached her ears.
Something caught her attention: a glint of silver, shimmering in the pale moonshine directly in front of her eyes.
Her voice, thin and reedy as dry grass rustling in the wind, trailed off, »quickly...«
The wire - thin as a thread - wrapped around her neck, and she was yanked back.
Crashing into a broad, hard frame.
The phone slipped from her hand.
The forest swallowed the sound.