Lee Wooshin took in all the old, pent-up sobbing she let burst out and kept sweeping her wet nape again and again.

It’s okay, there’s nothing scary anymore.

Pressing his forehead to her trembling shoulder, the man drew ragged breaths. From their chests, sealed tight together, their hearts pounded in desperate unison.

Face blued with cold, Wooshin kept shifting his hold on Seoryeong, hugging her over and over. Roped tight around her like a lifeline, his forearms bulged with rebar-like tendons.

“Cough, cough...!”

Then Seoryeong, hacking up water, began ripping off Natalia’s leather without rhyme or reason. The overhead mask that had been submerged in the water crushed soft under her fingers, and at last the real face it had covered met the cold air.

Even with one eye unsteady, he stared like he meant to devour Seoryeong’s true face. With every inch of bare skin she revealed, thick, white breaths thudded out from Wooshin’s lips in clumps.

For a moment he wore a vacant look, then clenched his jaw and turned his head, as if something surged up in him. Seeing his fist gone bone-white at the knuckles, Seoryeong grabbed him and turned him back.

“Why... didn’t you tell me?”

Her reddened eye met his gaze. Seoryeong searched Wooshin’s features for traces of that boy from back then. She especially stared through him at those beautiful irises—it had to have been love at first sight.

“We met when we were little. Instructor, you... you...”

Choking up, she paused to catch her breath.

“You... held me—in your arms, against your stomach, like this....”

Her eyelids trembled. You held me like this. But unable to get her emotions under control, Seoryeong crumpled like a child and burst into tears again.

“Back then I was... so exhausted I wanted to die...”

At that, Wooshin’s face went ashen.

“I’d run off to the cliff to die....”

She had left behind even Kiya, who had been stuck to her all through childhood, left the other siblings too, and alone pushed her way out of the Winter Castle. Not to survive, but to die.

But then... you appeared.

“Why didn’t you say anything!”

As Seoryeong gasped and hiccuped, Wooshin seemed to snap back to himself; he hugged the agitated girl again and patted her back. Cough, cough...! She hacked so hard her nape flushed scarlet, mucus running. Just like then, absurdly gentle hands kneaded her feet and patted her spine. Then as now, her throat felt like it would close and kill her.

Had he been a trainee operative? If she had lived a little longer in the Winter Castle, would she have had to fight that boy too? Seoryeong had wished instead that the boy would open the door and come in. She wanted to feel that ticklish smack of his palm again, and so she lived one more day.

Suddenly her appetite returned, strength filled her. Her pupils, bewitched, lost focus as they chased snowflakes. Not bracing herself out of spite—she only wanted to check once more on that boy who had seemed like soft snow.

“Even before I met you, something shapeless kept tugging at me—longing, wanting, needing to see it. From when I was very small, the hole in my heart I didn’t even know about—it was you, Instructor.... Why didn’t you tell me!”

At her aggrieved cry, those calm gray eyes slowly twisted.

“I’m sorry. I was looking for you too, but I didn’t know.”

He said he had been searching for the Winter Castle’s files. Only after they parted in Azerbaijan did he finally learn she had been a mouse of the Winter Castle.

If so, we’ve been right in front of each other and still never known. A dry laugh slipped out. There seemed to be far too much to talk about.

“And my mission is to protect ‘Han Seoryeong,’ not to dig up Sonya.”

Still, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you then. He whispered it like penance.

“Truth is, that was my first regret.”

It wasn’t an apology she needed from him. Even so, the iron in her chest seemed to loosen a little. No wonder he kept babbling about babies in the middle of that rough sex.

Feeling heat climb suddenly, Seoryeong wordlessly clutched at her wet clothes. It was all meant for me....

The Winter Castle’s grandson and the mouse were an undeniable ill-fated tie, and yet the two of them had gone and tied a marital bond. Seoryeong thought she might know the name of this thread that could be tougher than ill fate.

If the first to teach warmth at birth are parents—

She looked up fervently at the man before her.

“You’ll collapse at this rate. Stop crying.”

With his thumb red from the cold, Wooshin wiped her eyes. Even in the moment he eased her off him to peel off his clothes for her, the swell of sorrow surged and she clung back like a cicada.

The moment I met you, I must have connected to the world for the first time. The hand you held out was my umbilical cord, and now... She glanced sidelong at her still-flat belly.

Startled by her stubborn embrace, the man brushed a kiss to her crown and shrugged out of his shirt. He wrapped it over her head like a kerchief and warned:

“Keep this on properly. If it’s not Natalia’s face, it’s a headache.”

“Yes...”

Like a child, she answered between little hitching sobs. Wooshin scooped her up—spent to the point of collapse—and strode off the ice lake.

Even though it was a mansion at two in the morning when no one would be around, Wooshin pressed her small nape tighter to his shoulder, as if even showing a strand of her hair was too much.

She burrowed into his arms at once, winding her arms around his solid neck. The heat pouring off his body seemed to soak into her all the way inside.

By the time they retraced, in reverse, the stairs she’d fled down in a panic and reached Wooshin’s bedroom, their mouths were already locked without sense. Before either could tell who moved first, their breath tangled. Tongues snagged, teeth knocked.

From the long, long bout of sex, her lips were frayed to threads, and Wooshin licked them softly as he pushed inside. Her lips, opening easier than ever, quickly drank in heat and sucked at flesh.

For someone who had plunged into a subzero lake, Seoryeong heated in an instant. Wooshin pressed his tongue between her faintly chattering molars and headed straight for the bathroom. He pried her off just long enough to run warm water over her insteps, her hands, and the line of her spine.

“Nn...!”

The spray pricked like thorns and drew a moan. Whining, she still tugged at him insistently from a step away. The dress shirt, already indecently clinging to her, soaked again, her body’s lines going near transparent.

Pointless fabric plastered to her, her rosy nipples and the dark thatch between her legs grew ever more distinct. The bathroom grew humid in hot ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) steam almost at once.

“......”

“......”

As a subtle stillness ran between them, Wooshin shut off the shower and turned the valve.

A thick rush of water flooded over their feet, and the body that had been shaking began to slowly uncoil.

Anxious, Adam’s apple bobbing, Wooshin peeled the last scraps of leather from her cheek.

In the bright light, she saw his hand-back mottled red—wounds from smashing the ice, maybe. The steam stuffed up her nose, and the inside of her mouth felt parched.

“What happened to your eye? What’s with the shrapnel, and the concussion?”

“Where were you and what were you doing all this time? How did you make Natalia’s face? Why were you wearing it?”

“Your eye—whose work is it?”

He stepped into the tub with a long stride, and water sluiced away by the tubful to make room for his bulk. He sat down like collapsing, hugging Seoryeong from behind with those wide shoulders.

She stiffened for a second at the distinctive presence pressing at her ass, but he did nothing more than bury his mouth against her. Already the tub brimmed, water running steadily over the lip to the floor. Washing her face, Seoryeong pressed again:

“Tell me. Whose doing is it?”

“You didn’t answer my question either.”

His hot palm slid under her clothes and carefully soothed her ice-cold skin. At first she hunched against the sting, then slowly let out a low, sick-sounding sigh and relaxed against him.

Gentle but roughened hands kept roaming—lower belly, thighs, ass—without pause. Even though they had just finished a bout that seemed to know no fatigue, Seoryeong’s eyes only flicked about in embarrassment.

“Natalia... I ran into her by chance, and I cracked her head a bit and locked her up.”

The hand rubbing her rigid back paused.

“Kiya made the face.... I approached you to pass you the operation details...”

“That son of a bitch wouldn’t send you along obediently.”

A cold, derisive breath brushed her ear. It should have been an easy question, yet strangely her mouth wouldn’t open. It felt like Wooshin could see straight through to every interest at play behind it.

“What were the terms.”

There was a chilly feeling in the oddly tensed voice. His hand crept, stroking her lower belly, grazing the point that jutted under her wet shirt.

When Seoryeong flinched, he played dumb and slid back up along her ribs. She squirmed, swallowing down the strange sensation.

“How did you get out of that Winter Castle, Instruc—”

“Seoryeong, what did you give.”

“......!”

“I’m asking what you recklessly put on the table.”

Fingers laced at her waist, Wooshin sank deeper against the back of the tub. With each shift he made, the water sloshed and spilled over.

Water rose to her chin and she gulped a little, unable to say anything. The man tightened his legs around her, closing her in between them.