Forest of Beasts

Yeonjun, who has been sickly since childhood, suddenly loses his hearing following a traumatic event. Eventually, he decides to go into seclusion to recover and heads alone to the “House in the Forest,” a place he had longed for since he was young.

However, the “House in the Forest,” surrounded by dense woods, feels strangely unfamiliar and uncomfortable compared to his memories. Pushing aside a wave of baseless anxiety, Yeonjun goes for a walk in the woods, only to encounter a strange man.

“Who… what are you?”

The man wears no clothes, does not speak, and doesn’t seem human at all. Appearing like an apex predator of the forest, his identity—whether beast or human—is so ambiguous that Yeonjun can’t help but feel terrified of him.

For some reason, the man was making an expression Yeonjun had never seen before. What does that face mean? As Yeon-jun stared intently, trying to read the face of a man who expressed almost all his intentions through facial expressions, the man burst into a giggle. Then, he reached out with the hand he had been hiding behind his back the whole time.

“…What is this?”

“….”

“Are you giving this to me?”

What the man held out to Yeonjun was a yellow wildflower—a wild chrysanthemum. Yeonjun wondered briefly if it wasn’t too early in the season for chrysanthemums to bloom, but he reached out and carefully took the gift from the man.