#4

I wasn’t about to take that kind of insult from a reckless lunatic who floors the gas at a yellow light!

Rage burned so hot it felt like my skull might split open.

I let out a furious shriek, lunging at him.

For the first time, he actually looked slightly out of breath.

But still—still, he had the audacity to smirk and say—

“Oh? Now that’s more like it.”

He was toying with me.

Mocking me.

I wasn’t going to let him keep dodging forever.

With a powerful flap of my wings, I sent a violent gust of wind whipping through the room—kicking up the shattered glass littering the floor.

The swirling shards spun like tiny daggers, flying straight for him.

Finally—

One tore through the hem of his Berluti suit, slicing clean through fabric and into flesh.

A thin line of red bloomed against his skin.

His breathing grew heavier.

I launched myself into the air, talons gleaming as I aimed to end him—

But he dodged at the last second, narrowly slipping away.

The smirk was gone from his face.

CRACK!

My claws slammed into the marble floor, embedding deep into the stone.

I wrenched, trying to free them—

Just one more attack.

The next hit would kill him.

I braced, ready to rip my talons free—

But then—

Thuk.

A sharp, stinging pain bloomed at the nape of my neck.

What…?

Before I could even process it, the burning red haze clouding my vision began to fade.

The nausea that had twisted my stomach settled.

The suffocating fury, the overwhelming bloodlust—

Gone.

“Haa… ha…”

The feathers that had sprouted from my skin rapidly retracted.

My massive, transformed body shrank back to its original size, my hair whipping in the air as it fell around me.

“Gotcha.”

As my knees gave out, the man caught me, pulling me against his chest.

I slumped forward, breath coming in shallow gasps.

What… just happened?

Slowly, I blinked, my heavy eyelids struggling to stay open.

His arm, marked with a thin, red cut.

The lingering sting at the back of my neck.

The absolute disaster I had turned his house into.

Memories of the chaos flashed through my mind, each one hitting like a freight train.

“I… What did I…?”

I barely recognized my own voice as I whispered in disbelief.

“Shocked?”

His low voice drifted over my forehead as I stood there, paralyzed.

I turned my head slightly, just enough to look up at him.

Reflected in his eyes—

Was me.

Pale. Wide-eyed. Absolutely terrified.

“I told you—you were fucked.”

He smiled as he said it.

“…Ah.”

My mind had gone completely blank.

Nothing made sense.

Everything felt surreal.

“Put the gun down.”

His sudden words were a warning—

But not for me.

Crunch.

The sharp sound of glass shards being stepped on.

Someone was entering the wreckage of the house.

With great effort, I lifted my head—

And saw a woman.

Deep, tired shadows clung beneath her eyes.

Her face, bare of makeup, looked worn.

And yet—

She was beautiful. The kind of beauty that was impossible to ignore.

“Wei Chen.”

She spoke his name.

…Wei Chen?

Not a Korean name.

Not a Korean person?

“What the fuck did you do, you insane bastard?”

“A minor accident,” he said casually.

“How the hell is this a minor accident?!”

The woman stormed forward, raising her gun once more.

Just as the cold muzzle was about to press against my head—

Clack.

With a casual flick of his wrist, the man knocked her hand aside, sending the weapon flying out of reach.

“Don’t leave a scratch on her.”

The woman ran a frustrated hand through her hair, glaring daggers at him.

<你畀嗰啲人食咗神蜜呀？>
“Did you let those people eat the divine nectar?”

<唔係我畀佢食㗎喎。係意外嚟㗎嘛。>
“I didn’t give it to them. It was an accident.”

<你嘅任務係將佢安全帶返嚟㗎嘛!!>
“Your mission was to bring them back safely!!”

<但係而家變咗咁樣囉。>
“But now they’ve ended up like this.”

Their conversation—sharp, heated—was completely unintelligible to me.

They weren’t Korean.

That much was obvious.

I took a shaky step back, finally slipping free from his hold.

“…Excuse me, sorry to interrupt, but—”

“…”

“…”

Silence.

Two pairs of eyes snapped toward me.

“W-what’s going to happen to me now? Hhk… hic…”

Big, fat tears rolled down my cheeks, dripping from my chin.

“I… khhng… I’m so scared right now.”

The woman gave me a look of pure disbelief before snapping her gaze back to Wei Chen.

“You did this to a kid?”

“She ate it herself, not me.”

The woman spat out something in Chinese, her frustration practically vibrating off her. Then, she stepped toward me.

I flinched.

Before she could get any closer, Wei Chen wrapped a firm arm around my shoulders and pulled me back against him.

“Listen carefully, foolish little thing,” she said coldly. “You just consumed the experimental drug our organization has been desperately searching for. That means you’re either going to die, be dissected, or end up as a—Ugh!”

Wei Chen leaned in and blew gently into her eyes.

She recoiled, staggering backward.

“Don’t scare her.”

The two of them immediately launched into another heated argument.

But their words barely registered.

Organization. Experimental drug. Dissection. Human experiments…

These weren’t words that belonged in normal life.

They rattled inside my skull, swirling in a mess of incomprehensible information.

My brain felt like it was overloading, like it might burst from the sheer impossibility of it all—

And then—

Like a power switch being flipped off—

Everything went dark.

My body gave out.

* * *

I desperately hoped it was just a nightmare.

The sickening sensation of my bones and muscles breaking, twisting into something entirely inhuman.

The uncontrollable terror. The seething rage.

And the bloodthirst—the sheer, undeniable urge to kill.

I could remember everything. Every horrifying second. Every shred of destruction I had caused.

It was impossible to believe that I—that a human—had done something so monstrous.

Where had it all gone wrong?

Was it when I couldn’t resist the impulse to steal Seon-ah’s ring?

When I swallowed it instead of confessing?

Every single mistake I had made came back to haunt me, clawing through my mind and heart with relentless regret.

I begged for this to be nothing more than a terrible dream.

But God had never been on the side of the wicked.

Because when I opened my eyes—

I was still there.

In his house.

Flash.

Before my mind could even fully wake, my eyelids snapped open, like I had been dragged up from drowning.

The first thing I registered was the warmth of a thick blanket cocooning my body.

The second was the monotonous sight of gray walls filling my vision.

…What the hell happened?

As memories rushed back like a flood, a cold wave of dread washed over me.

I tried to sit up—

But then, from behind me, a familiar voice cut through the silence.

<你痴線㗎?!>
“Are you crazy?!”

A sharp, furious voice rang out—

The woman.

The same one who had once aimed a gun at my head.

She was firing off an endless stream of words in a language I couldn’t understand, her tone dripping with anger.

And I was almost certain her target was none other than the man who had dragged me here—Wei Chen.

It was easy to tell their emotional states were worlds apart.

While she spat out a hundred words in heated frustration, he barely responded with a single lazy remark.

No wonder she sounded like she was about to explode.

But honestly?

I didn’t care whether they were fighting or if she was just yelling at him.

I had bigger problems.

My mind was still drowning in confusion, trying desperately to grasp onto any sense of reality.

I need to get home.

Somehow, this irrational belief rooted itself in my mind—

That everything would be okay if I could just get back home.

I could look up cases like mine online. If it was a medical issue, I could find a specialist.

Everything would be fine.

It’s fine. It’s fine.

I pressed a hand against my rapidly beating heart, trying to calm myself down.

I just needed to find a way out of here.

And if Wei Chen had gone through the trouble of dragging me all the way to this isolated place, there was no way he would just let me leave so easily.

Especially not when he clearly wasn’t the talk-it-out type.

Even now, as the woman raged at him, he barely acknowledged her.

Was he actually a sociopath?

At this point, I almost hoped so—at least then, there’d be a clear way to predict his behavior.

Still—know your enemy, and you’ll win every battle. Even in the tiger’s den, a sharp mind could be the difference between survival and death.

Stay calm.

Stay in control.

I needed to think carefully. Plan smart.

The fact that he knew which university I attended was concerning, but that was a problem for later.

Right now, my best bet was to keep pretending to be asleep—wait for an opportunity.

But lying here doing nothing wouldn’t get me anywhere either.

I needed information. Even the smallest bit would help.

Slowly—very slowly—I slid my hand into my pocket.

Fingers wrapping around my phone, I carefully pulled it out and tapped open a translation app.

Just then, the woman shouted again.