DM Chapter 47
After plunging her face into the cold water again and seeing that her limbs were at least moving, Sarin swam downward.
Initially, she swallowed too much water due to the sudden situation. She hadn’t even imagined she would fall into the water.
In the countryside, there weren’t many ways to play. Even though no one taught her, she dove into the water of a deep ravine without the adults knowing and learned how to swim on her own. Sarin grew up playing like that.
It was nothing.
Although the water was so cold that it felt like it would freeze her internal organs, she tried to think of it as similar to the cool stream water in the middle of summer. Her heart pounded like crazy.
‘I can find him. I can find him.’
She was the best at holding her breath, even among her friends. Submerged in the water, she relied on the faint light of the headlights to frantically search for Owen.
Since she didn’t have the strength or energy to go up and down again, she had to desperately find him. That’s when it happened. In the area touched by the light, she saw a black silhouette sinking deep into the water.
Sarin quickly swam in that direction.
There wasn’t much air left in her lungs. Fearing that she might drown here with him, she desperately grabbed his hand, floating in the water.
When Owen opened his eyes, his golden eyes reflected in the light. Unconsciously, Sarin opened her mouth and wasted her breath. Her breathing quickly became ragged, but she didn’t have time to consider whether she could make it out with this man. She urged him to get out of the water.
At that moment, Owen pulled her back. He held her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe, as if he were about to take her down to the bottom.
In a moment of panic, Sarin struggled to free herself from his embrace. When Owen loosened his grip for a moment, Sarin, holding his neck, vigorously started swimming upwards again.
They came up with such ease that she wondered if he knew how to swim.
“Hak… Hahk.”
Cold air touched her face. The stinging sensation of all the air in the world entering her lungs reminded her that she was alive, but she couldn’t bring herself to go up onto the ice. Almost exhausted, she clung to the edge of the ice.
“Owen!”
Yuri reached out to Owen beside Sarin. Instead of responding, he, with slightly rough breaths, swiftly lifted her waist into the water.
In a blink of an eye, Yuri pulled Sarin out of the water onto the still-unbroken ice. Shortly after Sarin ascended, Owen also emerged onto the ice.
Both of them breathed heavily, overwhelmed with the relief of having come out safely.
As Sarin’s breath, which had been gasping uncontrollably, gradually stabilized, she suddenly felt the cold. She shivered, wondering if she was going to die of hypothermia. Owen looked at her coldly as she lay on the ground.
“Haah… Ha…”
Tatata, Tang. Taang..
The sound of gunfire was something she had never heard before. His gaze shot upward.
“Don’t die. I won’t leave you alone.”
Wouldn’t it be better to die then?
Sarin vaguely thought, in response to his words, that he wouldn’t leave her alone. It was so, so cold, but the temperature of his words was colder than this, piercing her ears.
The gunfire gradually subsided. Yuri stood beside Sarin, embracing her trembling figure. There was nothing nearby to cover her body. Clinging to Yuri’s body heat, Sarin passed out.
As Owen climbed up from the lake to the surface, he witnessed a situation where gunfire was intense. The cars following had come to a halt, taking cover behind the cars and engaging in a gunfight. It was a familiar scene.
He chewed on his lips, which turned bluish. The path leading down was completely blocked, and there seemed to be no way down except to jump, given the intense exchange of gunfire.
The truck blocked the entire bridge.
“Did you check under the bridge? He must be dead by now, huh?”
A scream was heard, not far away. It was one of our enemies, ducking under a truck.
“He’s sunk beneath the surface; he’s probably dead.”
“Check again!”
“He’s dead!”
One of the enemies glanced down at the water below. In the deep shadow, apart from the large hole pierced through the ice, nothing else seemed visible. Owen quietly approached from behind.
“Who’s dead?”
Pweok!
Coldly uttering those words, Owen swept the man’s waist from behind and pushed him under the bridge.
“Aaaah!”
A long scream echoed. Unfortunately, it seemed he hadn’t fallen into the water, as a dull sound followed, indicating he had hit the ice. Owen effortlessly retrieved the machine gun the man had dropped.
“What’s happening? Max! Max!”
Owen’s bodyguards and the guys who were fighting turned around, as if they realized that something dangerous had happened to their ally.
Tuddddddd.
The machine gun’s muzzle spewed fire. Without hesitation, Owen sprayed bullets at everything alive within sight. It was different from his usual approach. Normally, he would keep them alive to track down the mastermind until the end, but this time, he decided to eliminate them all first.
As Owen suddenly appeared from what they thought was a secure rear position, the men were overwhelmed and fell helplessly.
Firing indiscriminately from both sides, Owen threw the gun aside when it ran out of bullets and stepped forward.
There were only a few of them to begin with. They had set up cover with the truck, making it difficult for the bodyguards to penetrate the defense line on the opposite side.
“Ugh…. Ugh….”
Owen approached the man, clutching his abdomen and groaning, seemingly not fatally hit by the gunfire.
When the gunfire suddenly ceased from this side, the bodyguards on the opposite side cautiously scanned the surroundings. Shortly after realizing that the gunfire they had just heard was not aimed at them but rather from this side, they emerged from behind the car and cautiously advanced.
“Who are you?”
Stepping firmly on the fallen man’s stomach with wet boots, Owen inquired.
He slowly bent down as he found a cigarette inside the man’s untucked jumper. As the weight shifted onto his foot, the man began to cough up blood. He pulled the cigarette and lighter out of the jumper, ignoring the hot wetness on his face, and held it to his mouth before speaking again.
“You have a Moscow accent. I know you have a grudge.”
When he pointed out the men’s accents, the man who’d been spitting up blood gulped, and his mouth twitched as if to say something. Owen’s cold breath was expelled with smoke, and he soon turned around the truck and said, looking at the bodyguards who aimed their guns at him.
“You’re slow. Get down there and bring her back. Without a scratch.”
As he gestured, a few of them immediately went back down to where he had climbed up.
“What should we do?”
“Well.”
As a bodyguard, I hastily draped a jacket over Owen’s shoulders. In contrast to his brief responses, Owen’s foot slowly swept up from the man’s abdomen, rising gradually to his neck before crushing it.
Thunk.
The man’s neck snapped.
No one said a word about his actions.
It had been a long time since an attack like this. Since Owen established himself as the king of Eden, incidents like these have been almost unheard of. He leisurely finished his cigarette and immediately turned his gaze to Sarin, who was coming up unconscious in the arms of a bodyguard.
At his gesture, the bodyguard quickly approached Owen and stood in front of him.
Tossing his cigarette in the blood that soaked the soles of his shoes, Owen’s fingers felt around Sarin’s neck to check her pulse.
“They say good people tend to receive punishment.”
Afterward, he personally lifted Sarin. Her cold, wet body clung to him. Owen quickened his pace, and the footsteps of the trailing bodyguards followed suit. Carrying Sarin into the back seat of the open car, he held her close and roughly brushed his face against her forehead.
The moment he fell into the water, everything turned pitch black. Instinctively, his body stiffened.
The rain was falling hard and torrential, and his mother, in a failed attempt to extort money from his father, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and led him to a dirty pool that had been left unchanged for months. He was grabbed by the nape of the neck and shoved in. Unable to swim, he floundered.
The water rushing into his nose and mouth reminded him of that time and brought his thoughts to a halt.
“Miss Lee Sarin.”
He quietly called her name. There was a boiling point in the temperature of that name.
In the oppressive darkness, Owen closed his eyes. The moment he saw the pale hand reaching for him, he pulled it towards him.His body, which had been still for a moment, floated up.
“…You’ll regret this moment for the rest of your life.”
‘I’ll make sure of that.’
Owen gritted his teeth, saying the words he should never say to his benefactor.
“Go to the hospital.”
With his words, the destination was determined. Feeling the car speed up, Owen pulled the limp body in his arms closer.
Even with the heater cranked to the limit, the cold body was not warming up. As Owen forcibly removed Sarin’s coat and dress, exposing her cold, bare skin, the marks he had bitten and sucked on throughout the night were still there.
Owen ripped his shirt off in one swift motion. The buttons burst open, exposing his bare chest, skin against skin. He attempted to melt Sarin’s frozen body with his body temperature.
She’s a fearless woman.
He recognized it from the moment she carried a child, not her own, around. He remembered how she’d told him she couldn’t die yet. Owen’s lips turned up coldly.
“It’s not that you shouldn’t die, but that you’re always on the brink of going insane and wanting to die.”
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have waded through the water to save him. She was so fxcking big-hearted.
There’s no one by his side. When struggling in the swimming pool, when thrown into the basement, he was alone. He knew from a young age that dying is ultimately a journey one takes alone. Someone extending a hand to save Owen from his death was an impossibility.
It was an absolute impossibility.
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