Prologue — The Law of Conservation of Madmen
Do you know the Law of Conservation of Madmen? The law that says every group on earth, no matter where you go, is guaranteed to have at least one madman wedged inside it.
Seoul Taemun Hospital was no exception. In a place teeming with extraordinary geniuses, the one out in front, leading the pack, was a certifiable Crazy Doctor.
That man was none other than Kang Dae-han, an orthopedic surgery fellow. As grand and unyielding as his name sounded, this was the man who had sent a bloody gale howling through a lax, complacent orthopedics department — and recently, he had gone and done something truly insane.
The very thing men dread even in their dreams — going back to the army a second time!
You're asking whether a man past thirty like Kang Dae-han ever skipped the army? Not for a second. He had joined up in his twenties as a military physician and, as a career soldier, completed no fewer than four overseas deployments. His body — rough and pitiless, forged on the battlefield in a way no hundred days of pumping iron could ever buy — was proof enough.
Kang Dae-han resembled nothing so much as a Rocky Mountain gray wolf in a man's skin, the sort of beast you'd expect to have you pinned in a single move if it decided to throw down. And yet —
Ong So-yul.
It was for this woman — a mere chick of a thing, for all anyone knew how she'd rolled in off the street — that he was actually contemplating a return to the military.
"Dr. Kang Dae-han."
And now the star of the show stood right in front of him.
"...Dr. Kang, are you really going?"
Her voice, small but crystalline, cleaved through the night air — then pricked the back of Kang Dae-han's neck like a needle. It was a voice far too clear and lovely for the desolate outskirts of a GOP frontline border post.
"Dr. Ong, do you have any idea where this is? Feeling sorry for me now, are you?"
So-yul tilted her head back to watch the mountain of a man walking toward her. He was so tall that with every step closer, her chin lifted higher of its own accord. Her mouth kept going dry and her hands kept clenching, but she fought to hold on to why she'd come all this way.
"No — I came for your compassion, Dr. Kang!"
What she'd meant to say was companionship — companionship, not compassion! But she must have wound herself too tight on the drive here, because the wrong word slipped out.
Like a man who never missed an opening, he cut in.
"You already ripped my compassion out by the roots, remember, Dr. Ong?"
"Ah..."
Countless nights they'd shared came flooding back like a bolt of lightning. Before she knew it, he was standing right in front of her, and one hand closed around her small cheek — a hand big enough to swallow her jaw, her ear, the whole side of her head in a single grip.
"But there is a saying, you know. Get in plenty of cock work before gun work, and you'll never have to use the gun."
"Is that really a saying?"
Her own older brother had been a soldier and swore like a delinquent, but even she had never heard that one.
"And here I thought I'd come because I heard it."
The man's thumb brushed lazily across her soft cheek, then drifted up to toy with her lips.
"Didn't you come here to save my life? As in — use something else first, instead of the gun?"
At his unhesitating words, So-yul blinked her rabbit-round eyes. Whenever she held this man's gaze, her eyes fell shut despite herself — and the instant her lashes lowered, his head was already tilting in. It took only a heartbeat.
Click.
With her lips still captured, the man reached past her with his free hand and popped open the door of the jeep she'd driven here.
"Ah, wait— ahn!"
Her body went with his hands as he laid her back across the rear seat. True to his reputation for the fastest hands in the operating room, Kang Dae-han had her skirt up and her panties off in one motion. He pulled the door shut, then settled in, pinning her hips beneath his knees.
So-yul's vision was nothing but Kang Dae-han. In his razor-crisp uniform he looked like an actor out of some war film — devastatingly handsome, and sexy as hell. His raw, unpolished features seemed careless at a glance, yet there was something in them that seized your focus like a harpoon through the chest.
When the man drew down the zipper of his jacket, the uniform parted like the Red Sea. Muscles revealed themselves beneath, like a great stone wall shaped with painstaking devotion, and veins like the gnarled stems of tenacious plants stood proud from wrist to shoulder.
So-yul's eyes fixed on his forearm — and she discovered a tattoo she'd never seen before. It was two overlapping circles, like a Möbius band, and strangely, the roundness of them felt familiar. Small and round, plump and springy-looking, about the size of a single knuckle of a finger...
An ongsimi?
Ong So-yul, youngest daughter of Ong's Ongsimi House, gaped at the shape she had grown up watching her whole life. Why were those two adorable ongsimi inked onto Kang Dae-han's forearm?
"Dr. Kang — don't tell me that's an ongsimi?"
So-yul dragged her gaze from the devastatingly handsome man currently sinking his teeth into her Achilles tendon, and opened her mouth.
"It is."
"No — why on earth would you tattoo an ongsimi on your body!"
"I didn't have a single photo of you, Ong So-yul. How was I supposed to get off in the army? Think of it as a substitute."
"Still — of all things, on your arm!"
"What, should I have gotten your face instead? Want me to get it inked now?"
As the corner of his mouth curved, the scar on his cheek dented in like an Indian dimple.
"Never mind. Should've put it on my cock. It was our unforgettable memory, after all. Wasn't it?"
He smiled wryly, dredging up the past. But before So-yul could answer, the man came down on her like a collapsing mountain and covered her lips once more. His thick, heavy tongue hunted her down at last and wound around her tight, leaving her nowhere to run — the ferocity of his advance made it less a kiss than the stealing of a soul. Making no effort to hide his impatience, he bit and sucked without mercy, sliding his slick lips against hers.
The moment their relentlessly interlocked lips broke apart, her legs folded up in half.
"Ahn—!"
With both legs pressed against the swell of her chest, her barest parts lay fully exposed.
"My cock's about to burst, and this little thing's so tight I can't even get in."
The man checked her viscosity with his fingers. She was already as wet as she could get, yet she knew better than anyone that taking something his size would still be a stretch.
"I'll suck and lick you until you're ready, so you don't tear. I'll even chew on the spot that drives Ong So-yul out of her mind. I intend to keep going until you've come again and again — think you can handle that?"
"W-why are you saying that out loud!"
"You think I'd charge in without your permission?"
He looked like a man who could act as savage as any street thug, yet before So-yul he behaved like a perfect gentleman. A mad gentleman who would never, ever do a single thing she hated.
"Hahh— I-I like it rougher than... than I thought. So just put it in."
The gentleman had asked out of consideration, but the audacious Ong So-yul — begrudging every second of this stolen time — had no intention of getting there alone.
"Ha... fuck. You really do pick the prettiest words."
Whether he was pleased or not, she couldn't tell; the man raked a hand through his close-cropped hair and laughed.
"Then let's try it my way."
He dipped his head and pressed his lips tenderly to her forehead, then drew them away. His eyes turned fierce in a flash, as though a button had been pressed, and looked down at her. Gripping the soft flesh of her rear hard enough to bruise, he issued his command with lethal calm.
"Face down. Hips up."
She meekly assumed the position, and heard the rasp of a zipper sliding down. A moment later, the blunt crown of him pressed hard against her entrance.
"I'll move however you want me to, Dr. Ong So-yul — since you like it rough. I'm at your complete service tonight, aren't I? Hmm?"
With those words, he drove into her, splitting her open. Outside, it was midnight at the edge of the GOP — deserted and pitch-black, with no soul around to guess what the two of them were doing. But then, the man was Kang Dae-han: a man with the strength to rock the entire jeep with a few rolls of his hips.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
With every piston-driven thrust that seemed to shake her life loose at the root, her mouth fell open and her mind went hazy. His forearm swam back into her blurring vision.
How on earth did the two of us ever end up here?
The history sealed inside that round ongsimi tattoo kicked up within her — funny and aching all at once.
