A warm wind brushed on Oin’s face as he stood by the back door of the blue Civic, staring at the road stretching long and vanishing in the tall trees.
Torn leaves and rubbers spun around him, floating and rolling on the dusty road as they got pulled by the wind.
Streams of laughter surged from behind Oin, forcing him to turn and look at the direction in which the won seated by tables were.
"Can’t they lower their voices?" Oin said, feeling dissatisfied by the manner in which the won talked and pointed their fingers at where he stood.
Seconds passed, turning into minutes, and finally an hour as he stood there, stretching his neck and looking in the only direction he could think of.
Moving his right arm toward the handle of the car and pulling it, he paused and stared at the direction once more. But at that mont, he saw a figure erupting from the right side of the three-way road, carrying a basket on her shoulder.
Oin sighed, closed the door which he had opened, and leaned on the car. He stared at the figure, tilted his gaze to the children running happily toward the won with green vegetables and back to the road.
Slow footsteps echoed from beside him as the figure he saw from the distance reached the car and moved in his direction, pulling his attention from the children to her.
Moving his gaze to her, Oin slowly glared at her thighs showing in the transparent sleeve and onto the two-colored belt wrapped around her waist. He blinked, swallowed as he imagined himself and the lady sleeping in a room on a rainy night, and under the sa blanket.
Hearing a throat-clearing sound, Oin’s fantasy building in his mind cracked and jolted him back to his senses. Even with that, he still kept the slow pace and continued tilting his gaze from her below, her huge breasts that seed to be struggling in the white shirt she wore.
As his gaze fell on her face, he squeezed his eyes, moved his gaze from her right eye, left eye, lips, and back to her right eye, then smiled.
Oin tore his gaze from her, stopped at the side mirror where he stood for a few seconds and back to the lady standing in front of him, unable to stop her eyes from smiling.
"It’s good you’ve co, we were about to leave and head back to the city," he said, tilting his gaze at the lady once in that triangular glare one more ti.
He opened the back seat of the car and gestured for her to get in, then joined her, calmly sitting by her and moving his hand around her shoulders.
"Feel free, we’re all ears," Oin said, tapping at the shoulders of Nich and Jinx, waking them up.
"Is she here?" Jinx asked the mont her eyes opened but shook her head and blinked three tis when she saw Elina sitting beside Oin at the back seat.
Nich, who yawned and yawned, opened the door and stood outside. He stretched himself for a couple of minutes then entered the car and started the engine and set off, driving in the direction of the won with green vegetables.
Fingers pointed at the car as it moved past them.
"See them, the mont they ca last week I knew they ca because of that monster, I heard he’s in the city doing his things there," one woman sitting by a table filled with tomatoes said, chuckling and rolling her eyes at the moving blue car.
Others joined in, saying all sorts of words as the car moved past them. The won who at first praised those in the car now hurled insults and curses at them as if they had stepped on their wounds.
At every junction they passed, they slowed as Nich’s glass window rolled down for a while and back up, seeing people watching them.
"It’s not safe to stop here," Elina said, shaking her head as the car stopped at a collapsed building with white markings drawn on the ground like a protective spell.
Oin, Jinx, and Nich, all three of them turned to her in shock, since they had thought it was the best place for them to stop and listen to her, their expressions changed.
From one place to another, the car moved. But when they stumbled closer to a billboard with the inscription, danger zone, Elina gestured to them to stop the car.
"Why here?" Oin said, turning swiftly to Elina, his eyes opening wide.
Elina didn’t say a word; she just opened the door and stepped out. All three of them exchanged glances with one statent running through their minds.
’Didn’t she see the sign on the billboard?’
With nothing left to do, they joined Elina, opening the door and exiting the car.
After all three walked out of the door, Elina pointed toward a large hole equipped with green water and surrounded by huge holes that promised instant death if soone mistakenly fell into it.
Oin smiled, shook his head and moved his legs as if he was walking on a paved road as he followed her. Jinx and Nich, who were behind Oin, carefully placed their steps and joined Oin and Elina, jumping at the last mont as Nich slipped and nearly fell into one of the holes.
"Did you see what your direction would’ve caused?" Jinx said, frowning and shouting at Elina who stood there staring at both Jinx and Nich, laughing.
"He wasn’t careful enough, that’s why. Did I slip or did you?" Oin said, defending Elina who kept on smiling as if she knew one of the three would mistakenly slip or fall into the hole.
The air flowing at where they now stood was thick with death, yet they had no other choice but to inhale it while covering their mouths and noses.
Elina stood there without covering her mouth or nose, inhaling the poisonous air as if it was just air-conditioned air.
She closed her eyes, spread her arms in the sa manner the priestess did when she first saw Oin, then turned to the three people, staring at them strangely.
"About what I told you yesterday," she said, moving a step forward and stopping at the very slippery edge of the green water, hurled so of the water up, and then slled it.
"These holes are the rits and derits of the clash between the monsters and Yung Chin, Fenlore."
Elina sprinkled the water in her arm onto the faces of Jinx and Nich, leaving Oin untouched. Then smiled and inhaled heavily once more as if holding the water in her palm took all her oxygen away.
"Yung Chin, the one you now know as Fenlore, carried out the fight with the monsters alone, letting the mbers of this village find shelter at the back of their wives the night Ayra, his wife, sensed she was pregnant."
Every angry face staring at her turned pale as Elina cracked her eyes open. Yet, she didn’t stop giving them the full disclosure of Fenlore.
"At that night, everyone followed the instruction of Yung Chin and stayed inside, not going out even if your house was burning. But the only dical practitioner went and never returned."
"Though we found corpses of the monsters spreading like bees the next morning as the sun shone bright on the roofs, Yung Chin’s or the dic’s body weren’t found."
Oin stepped forward, placed a heavy hand on Elina’s shoulder countering her. "How? Not even anything belonging to him?" he said, his voice echoing with shock, fear, and worry that seed to be higher than the one Elina was feeling deep down as she shared the long-sealed truth no one wanted to hear or talked about in the village.
"Yes! Not even a trace of his boot’s patterns. He vanished in the sa way as he entered the village. For the country he ca from, no one knew of it. Not even Elsa who stayed with them for years. For his origin, his dead wife was the very person to tell you, but unless you visit her in the spirit world."
Elina paused, clapped, and whispered words even her ears couldn’t hear into her palms, then hurled them into the air, as if calling onto sothing unseen or untouched by light.
Oin, who seed to be chard by the lady’s posture and structure, blinked and shook his head, then frowned. He turned his gaze at Jinx and Nich, who also seed to have the sa expression as his, and then turned back to Elina.
"About the baby his wife was carrying, what happened to it?" Nich said, his voice sounding in fear and longing.
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