“Fuck...! You...!”

Seong Wookchan finally faltered, staggering like a lunatic mid-charge.

But it was clear he still couldn’t quite grasp the reality of a knife buried in his thigh — his dazed eyes shifted slowly between the blood pouring from his leg and Seoryeong standing in front of him.

“What the hell did you just do to me...?”

“Did you forget the protocol for responding to sexual harassment from a fellow recruit?”

“Ugh, fuck, are you out of your mind?”

“No — the one who's lost his mind is you. I made sure to avoid any major nerves.”

“What...?”

“But that’s not quite enough.”

As she moved to pull the knife out, Wookchan immediately shifted tactics, his face twisting in panic. “Don’t—don’t pull it out, don’t...!”

Seoryeong gave a generous nod, as if humoring him, but without hesitation, she yanked the blade free. Then, she drove it deep into the back of his opposite knee.

“――!”

Wookchan’s mouth opened wide in a silent scream, his hands trembling as he gripped at his torn leg, veins bulging in his neck. Blood flowed freely from the shredded muscle, front and back.

“People are said to fear what’s unpredictable and irrational. We covered that during the second recovery phase, remember?”

“......”

“You were the type to destroy what others built. But I’m not. I’ll use you as a prop — and I’ll win this game.”

Seoryeong scanned the area before picking up a rock that had been holding down the corner of her waterproof sheet.

Knocking him out would make it easier to move him. As she contemplated the best way, Wookchan — his face contorted in rage — let out a strangled growl: “You fucking bitch!” and lunged like a wounded animal.

But his legs were useless. He could only thrash his arms like whips, trying to drag her closer.

Seoryeong reacted instantly, slamming the rock into his forehead.

“Fuck... you...”

Even in the final moment before his eyes rolled back, he kept cursing.

She caught him as he collapsed forward, briefly pressing her fingers beneath his nose just to make sure he was still breathing.

Something about the moment made her feel lighter. She calmly smeared the blood from his split forehead across his face, then stepped on his half-erect, grotesque groin with all her weight.

It was a refreshing morning.

Scrape—scrape—

With each step, a long red streak dragged behind her across the snow.

Seoryeong moved steadily forward, dragging Seong Wookchan behind her like a sled, his body bound tightly in rope. A grown man was heavy, sure — but not too heavy for her to haul alone.

“Hmmm... mmm-mmm... mmm...”

She hummed softly, adjusting the rope and continuing through the deep snow that swallowed her boots with every step.

In her pockets, she had packed snare wire and a matchbox she had modified herself.

The instructors had given them survival kits — but Seoryeong had turned hers into a kill kit.

Back in elementary school, didn’t everyone do stuff like this at least once?

Turning mechanical pencils into launchers with rubber bands, using clothespins as slingshots for erasers, firing marbles with coat hanger catapults — Seoryeong had grown up tricking and fighting the older kids at the orphanage just like that, as naturally as breathing.

Eventually, she arrived at a suitable clearing. Rotating her aching shoulder, she scanned her surroundings — not a soul in sight.

She tied Wookchan’s unconscious body to a tree trunk and stuffed a tightly-wrapped bundle of branches between his teeth as a gag.

Already, the snow around the base of the tree was stained with his spreading blood.

Then—bang!

Seoryeong fired a flare gun high into the air, her arm extended skyward. The sound was so sharp it startled a flock of birds into a panicked flight.

The reddish flare shot through the sky, but with snow still falling thick, there was no telling how many people would actually see it.

***

"Hey...! This guy’s been stabbed!"

“Seong Wookchan...! Seong Wookchan, stay with us! Who the hell—who the fuck did this?!”

A small group of recruits, stationed nearby, came running at the sound that should never have echoed across the mountain—gunfire.

They froze for a moment at the sight of their blood-drenched comrade, seemingly at a loss for words, but quickly sprang into action and began emergency treatment.

“Jesus, who the hell did this to him?!”

They started applying pressure to the wounds to stop the bleeding and yanked the makeshift gag from his mouth.

Then, one of the recruits, scanning their surroundings with a tense expression, suddenly spoke in a wary voice.

“Hey... what if we’re not alone here?”

“What?”

“I mean, come on. He’s tied up, hands and feet—who the hell fired the flare?”

“.......”

An icy silence colder than the mountain air swept over the group.

Quick to grasp the situation.

Crouched behind a fallen tree, Seoryeong ran her fingers across the edge of the matchbox in her pocket, utterly still in her position.

Victory doesn’t go to whoever causes the most casualties—it goes to whoever spreads the most fear. That’s why terror is such a powerful weapon.

The snowstorm thickened, cloaking the world in a strange and biting stillness.

“Shit, man! Don’t say creepy shit like that!”

“Fuck’s sake, have you got no spine?”

“That kind of bravado only works when you’re holding a gun!”

“I’m telling you, something else is out here with us... psycho or not...!”

Jingle—jingle—

In that instant, both the recruits administering first aid and Seoryeong, still hidden, went rigid at once.

A figure emerged, slowly cutting through the wall of snow.

Her breath caught in her throat. Every inch of her spine screamed with warning.

Crunch, crunch.

Slow and arrogant footsteps. Whoever it was, they already sounded annoyed, as if this whole situation was a pain in the ass.

Seoryeong instinctively knew—he’d come.

She’d been waiting.

But seeing him appear for real made her mouth go dry. Her fingers twitched with a strange, sharp tension.

“Who... called out an instructor first thing in the morning?”

Lee Wooshin looked every bit as pissed off as his words suggested.

No one knew where he’d been hiding, but he wore a camouflage-patterned jacket perfect for blending into the rocky mountain terrain, with a thick covering of twigs and straw draped around his shoulders like a blanket.

The layers added bulk to his already large frame—he looked like a fucking yeti.

A white balaclava covered his face from neck to scalp, and with his pale complexion, he didn’t even seem human—more like a statue come to life.

When he spotted Seong Wookchan, Wooshin removed his sunglasses.

He scanned from the unconscious man’s face to the blood-soaked snow, his brows furrowing sharply.

Any trace of sleepiness vanished from his expression.

“Who did this? Who thought they could pull this kind of garbage on a fucking instructor?”

“Instructor...!”

The recruits cried out in desperation.

And at that exact moment, Seoryeong rose from her hiding place, her hair now wild and tangled, her appearance fully prepared.

Wookchan’s blood had dried across her face, just as planned. She stumbled out from the snow, breath hitching, shoulders trembling.

“P-please... help me...”

“Shit! What now—what the hell is that...!”

“Over... over there...”

“Wait. No way. Are you... Han... Seoryeong?”

Cold wind swept through as silence descended again. The recruits stared at her mangled, blood-smeared face with horror.

You always said, Instructor—victory depends on how well you lower your opponent’s guard.

Tears streamed freely down Seoryeong’s cheeks as she raised a shaking hand to point behind her, indicating the direction she’d come from. Her wrist trembled visibly, and the hand she held up was soaked, fingertip to palm, in red.

“There was someone... bleeding... I-I think the culprit ran that way...”

She collapsed into the snow.

Recruits rushed to support her and bolted toward the area she had pointed out. They’d likely keep searching along the trail of blood for a while.

Left alone in the settling quiet, Seoryeong turned her eyes on the one figure who hadn’t moved.

Snow fell gently on Wooshin’s shoulders, shaken loose from the branch-covered camouflage he wore.

Back when he’d swaggered in, that covering hadn’t moved a bit. Now, snow was falling from him in soft handfuls.

“You...”

He finally reached up and pulled back his balaclava, as if his limbs had just now started working again. His black hair sprang out, disheveled from being pressed beneath the knit.

“That blood...”

His brow furrowed as he stepped toward her.

Surrounded by pure white snow, that figure—draped in dark tones and ash-gray silence—was impossible to look away from.

Everyone had the same hair color under their hoods, but only he stood out so sharply, as if he belonged to another world.

With the man standing there like a painting carved into the landscape, her heart skipped and her breath caught.

Just like that boy... the boy who had once looked like the master of some distant winter castle—

“I... I barely made it here alive...”

But no. There was no time for sentiment.

Seoryeong reached into ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) her pocket.

Do it right. Do it fast. Do it with joy.

Wiping her expression clean, she suddenly lunged at him.

“You have any idea how fucking hard it was to drag that bastard here?!”

With all her strength, she hurled the matchbox bomb straight at his shoulder.

It was just a matchbox—but once thrown, it exploded with a sharp crack loud enough to split eardrums.

“――!”

She had wedged a strike pad into the box with the match heads, securing it tightly with medical tape.

When thrown against a hard surface, the impact would ignite the matches against the striker, creating a flame and a mini explosion fueled by the pressurized gas inside.

It looked ridiculous—like a toy. But it made an almighty racket.

BOOM—!

Just as expected, flames burst from the dried twigs on Wooshin’s shoulder.