Chapter 171 - 27 YEARS AGO - Sacrifice

Jeong Geun violently braked the truck the moment he recognized that he was going to run over something alive. Human or animal, he did not see well.

When the car stopped, he recognized the silhouette of his wife. He got out of the car, coming to her and grabbing by her arm. She was looking dishevelled and distressed, breathing heavily, and her skin was cold and sweaty. She seemed like she was going to faint at anytime.

"Nam Joo! What is going on?"

"No! We can't... We gotta go back!" Nam Joo, taken by a wave of adrenaline, get rid of his grip and almost threw herself into the truck when she saw the opportunity to come back and try to save the woman she left behind. "We need to save someone! Hurry up!"

Jeong Geun just blinked, but his brain processed that his wife's heavy breathing and panic, the flashes and his wife's agitated state were interconnected, and got into the car in a hurry, and soon he was driving faster than before in the empty branch road.

But he still turned to Nam Joo, realizing she seemed to be in extreme suffering in the passenger seat:

"You? What happened? Are you hurt? What 's wrong?"

"I'm fine."

Nam Joo knew Jeong Geun enough to know that he would not put the safety of anyone else in front of his family's safety. If she said she was in labor, he would not save Myung Hee and her baby. But on the other side, she knew that she had no time left: she, too, was giving birth to her baby right now! 'But what to do? Leave that woman to die?' Her husband's interruption made things easier to decide, though:

"Who needs to be saved?" he asked, moving on to the next urgent thing quickly.

"The house's mistress! They are attacking her! Things! They're going to kill her."

Not sure what she meant, but believing in her sense of urgency, the young man made his best to drive his old truck into the orchard to the spot Nam Joo was leading him to. It was dizzying, and the shadows and forms seemed to pop up before his eyes, as he dodged trees and whatnot. Her hysteric behavior by his side wasn't helping him either, but he tried to concentrate on getting there as soon as he could, without having any idea of what he would find next.

"There! Over there!" while Nam Joo could clearly see through the trees the towering monster and the supernatural sparks and gloom, Jeong Geun, saw only the sparse flashes that could be caused by an electricity wire, for example.

Nam Joo spotted the amalgam shadow monster with its back to them, and shouted, pointing:

"Come on over!"

Immediately after saying this, she covered her eyes with her hands in anguish.

Her husband, however, braked abruptly. The scene was nothing like he imagined. Nam Joo pictured to him an apocalyptic scenario just by the scared grim in her face and her urgent tone. This and the lighting thing he saw when driving to the ranch, made him to imagine some sort of huge accident. Though the jumbled words of his wife seemed to imply that animals of some sort were attacking a person in the orchard But what about the flashes?

But when they finally came up to the place Nam Joo was guiding him, Jeong Geun only saw a woman lying on the ground, trying to get up but having no forces left to do it. He saw anything about the undulating mass of shadows that together created a frightening 4-meter-high nightmare creature, though he was feeling all the hairs in his body up, a chill in his stomach, and his instinct of preservation screaming to him to go away right now.

Their arrival, crossing the monster with the high beams of the truck, seemed to culminate with the moment the creature began to dissipate upwards. The car stopped and Nam Joo slowly opened her eyes.

Jeong Geun got out of the car, amidst the rags of shadows that seemed to seek hiding places away from the light. Nam Joo shouted:

"What are you doing?! Jeong Geun!"

Her husband still looked over his shoulder, worried, but turning to the fallen and wounded woman in the middle of the orchard:

"My goodness ... What happened here?" he picked up the woman from the floor, who seemed to be on the lowest point of one's stamina, and weighing as same as a feather. He noticed the blood stain on the front, and something sharp impaled in her chest. Jeong Geun could tell for sure that she did not have much life left, so he just wanted to get her to the hospital soon.

Nam Joo just watched from the seat of the car in terror, the creatures dancing around Jeong Geun, and disappearing, leaving the place as if there was nothing else they wanted left, by now.

Nam Joo gave space on the truck seat, m.o.a.ning quietly, and trying to accommodate the unconscious woman by her side while she tried to deal with her own pain, breathing in rhythmically as she was taught:

"My Gosh, woman, what happened here? This woman is on the verge of death, she has to go to the hos... "Jeong Geun sounded strained, mainly for figuring out the shocked look on his wife's face, but he recognized the technique:

"What... are you doing breathing like that?"

Nam Joo shut her mouth up, trying to muffle out her attempts to control her breathing just as taught in the birthing classes she had be on in the last months. She also got worried because Jeong Heun was staring at her, waiting a reply, instead of looking ahead while driving.

"Eun Ha."

Before she could respond, their attention was called by the voice of Myung Hee, who was staring at the nightly sky that changed abruptly from cloudy to bright, letting the stars be seen from the once darkened property. Nam Joo grabbed her husband's arm, wide-eyed, realizing several things at once, including that he had no time to lose.

And that he had to choose between life and death.