The gumiho, Woo Sung decided, wasn't so terrifying after all. Once he'd had a good rest, the headache and chills had left, and now he was able to think more clearly. The way the fox snarled and stalked throughout the house was more...annoying than anything. Yes, annoying—that was it.

As for the claw mark she had left in the wall?

Woo Sung's gaze drifted to the door frame.

Merely a scratch.

At the sound of another low growl from across the room, Woo Sung reverted his gaze to the gumiho and her current antics. He watched from his bedroll, legs tucked up so that he could rest his arms across his knees, and his chin on top of his arms, as she walked across the floor...and then back. Across, and back. The luxurious fabric of her hanbok made a shushing noise as it swept across the floor, calming enough that Woo Sung actually found himself nodding off to sleep again, and only just saved himself from sliding sideways and hitting the floor.

Giving a shake of his head, Woo Sung blinked away his drowsiness and tried to focus.

He would have started a conversation to pass the time, but when he had first woken up and asked where the two divers had gone, the fox had nearly bitten off his head in her reply.

So waiting in silence it was, then. He guessed that he had been unconscious for at least an hour, and then spent what was probably another hour regrettably conscious with the irritable fox spirit. How much longer would they have to wait?

And what were they even waiting for, exactly?

His legs were starting to fall asleep, so Woo Sung sat up fully with a sigh and got to his feet. The gumiho only spared him a morose glare that challenged the previous day's storm in temperament.

Woo Sung cleared his throat and looked towards the door—were those footsteps he heard outside? Either the divers were returning, or the soldiers had found him. He hoped it was the former, seeing as how his sword had been confiscated long ago, and the gumiho was still holding the only slightly-sharp fishing tool in the house. If it was the latter, he had absolutely nothing to fight off the soldiers with.

"About time," the fox-woman growled when the door began to open. Woo Sung let out a breath when he realized it was just the two divers.

The shorter diver gave out a gasp when she saw the gumiho. "You're still here?" she asked, her sentence tapering off into a frightened squeak.

The gumiho crossed her arms, tails twitching irritably. "What made you think I wouldn't be?" she snapped. "You went to get an answer to my question. Did you learn anything?"

The other diver—the one who had rescued him, Woo Sung realized—raised her chin defiantly. "We did, but we won't give you the information so easily," she answered, with only the slightest tremor in her voice to betray her anxiety. "You have to promise to leave after we tell you the answer."

The fox-woman scoffed. "I don't think you're in the best position to barter," she drawled. "One wrong move, and I tell everyone that you've been working with him." She pointed to her left, and Woo Sung suddenly found himself the center of unwanted attention.

He sucked in a breath that hissed between his teeth. Think. What could he say? He had nothing to convince them that he wasn't a murderous convict like the gumiho was making him out to be. It was Hong Pyo's men who had killed those soldiers—Woo Sung could still remember the sound as their swords sliced through the men's necks, cutting the life from their bodies in a strangled gurgle.

"I could say you were the one who helped me escape the fort instead," he said at last, directing his comment at the gumiho. Perhaps it was a bit foolish to threaten a centuries-old being who could tear off his limbs as easily as twigs from a tree branch, but he didn't have many other options at the moment.

All the fox-woman did, however, was raise a skeptical brow at his words. "And what makes you think the guards will believe the words of a convict?" she replied.

"Well, you do have an accent from the capital, like mine," Woo Sung began. "It would make more sense that you, a 'friend from my hometown', had gone out of your way to help me, rather than these two strangers who have obviously lived their entire lives on this island and therefore couldn't possibly have ever met me before."

It was a sound argument, and by the angry flash in the gumiho's eyes, Woo Sung could tell that she knew it. He took an intimida—no, a cautious—step backwards, just to be safely out of her sharp reach.

Across the room, Woo Sung noticed his rescuer's cold scrutiny shift to something only slightly less frigid. The diver tilted her head in thought, and was now looking him over with a calculating eye. Woo Sung could only hope that she was doubting his supposedly-murderous personality, at least.

Speaking of murderous...

"You won't live to see the sun set if you make that accusation," the gumiho finally said, and Woo Sung redirected his focus. "Either you all work with me—" she gave the two divers a pointed look "or I'll feast on your livers. The choice is yours."

Ultimately, the decision was made by only one of them—the small brown-haired friend of Woo Sung's rescuer.

"A mortal has to be put in danger!" she blurted, clinging to the other diver's arm. "If the dragon senses that a supernatural creature is interfering with mortals, he might go investigate."

"Solhee," her friend groaned, obviously unhappy that she had given away their only bartering chip.

"But it's extremely dangerous!" Solhee continued, giving the gumiho a pleading look. "There's no guarantee that the dragon will arrive in time, if at all. If anything, he should be the one to try it, since he started all this trouble to begin with!" She jerked her head in Woo Sung's direction.

"I didn't—" Woo Sung tried protesting, but it was no use.

"If anyone sees your freckle, they're going to immediately know who you are!" Solhee continued, glaring at him. Her hands were shaking, now, and her friend turned and tried to calm her down, talking too low for Woo Sung to hear what she was saying. In any case, it seemed to work, because Solhee finally took a deep breath and nodded.

"I'd better head home," Solhee announced. "My parents will be coming back from the fields soon." She turned to her friend again. "Are you sure you'll be okay here, alone with them?" Woo Sung noticed how her anxious glance at the gumiho had morphed into a vicious glower by the time it reached him.

"I won't be staying," the gumiho proclaimed with a careless wave of her hand—and the hooked golgakji in it. The two divers recoiled as the instrument swung their way. "I have other places to be. But you can be assured that I will come back."

"I'll be fine, Solhee," Woo Sung's rescuer assured her friend, not without a wary glance at the gumiho. "My family will be coming home soon too. Nothing will happen."

The fox-woman scoffed when Solhee stubbornly refused to move. With a careless toss of the golgakji to the floor, the gumiho stalked past the two divers and out the door.

"I'll stop by for another visit soon," she said over her shoulder. "Don't go anywhere."

Woo Sung and the two divers were quiet until enough time had passed to ensure that the gumiho was safely out of earshot.

"This is insane," the shorter diver, Solhee, said. "There's got to be someone we can tell, at least, to stop her and him and—"

Woo Sung's rescuer gave a sigh and turned to her friend. "Who would we tell?" she asked. "You heard her. She'd kill us all if we don't cooperate. I don't think she was bluffing."

"I agree, she sounded pretty convincing to me," Woo Sung said. He was only spared an annoyed glance from the two before they returned to their conversation.

"You should go, Solhee," the other diver continued.

"But Jin-n-n," Solhee protested, shooting a worried look at Woo Sung.

"I'll be fine. Go."

Finally, Solhee shuffled out the door, and Woo Sung found himself in the company of the diver named Jin and a very, very oppressive silence.

Slowly, Jin turned to face him. Woo Sung took a step forward, wanting to explain himself, but she held up a hand.

"Don't move," she ordered.

Woo Sung paused mid-step, wavering a bit as the sudden halt had put him off-balance. He shifted his weight to his back foot and warily kept his gaze on Jin as she slowly approached him.

"You're feeling better?" she finally asked, in a tone that was more cautious than concerned. Woo Sung was surprised at the question, but he gave a slow nod.

"Yes. Thank you."

"That's good to hear." Her words were stilted, and didn't sound all that sincere.

Woo Sung frowned. Should he continue with an apology? An explanation?

He opened his mouth to say something more, but Jin was faster. In the next moment, she pulled out a dagger from a sleeve of her hanbok and swung at him. Woo Sung felt his back hit the wall as he jumped back to avoid the weapon's sharp edge. The blade stopped just before his neck, and the diver glared up at him.

"Answer me truthfully," Jin demanded before Woo Sung could catch his breath. By the sounds of her own shallow breathing, she had hardly been able to catch hers as well. "Are you really a murderer?"

Her hand was trembling a bit, and Woo Sung was careful to stay out of the dagger's shaky path as he slowly shook his head. "I'm not." He kept his eyes locked on her own wide ones, willing her to believe him. He was not a liar who would look away in shame.

"How did those soldiers die, then?" she insisted, her free hand clenching into a fist at her side. "I heard you killed eight of them."

"The other prisoner exiled with me had men helping him," Woo Sung explained, watching for any signs that she might tire of the interrogation and decide to just stab him instead. "Those men were the ones who killed the guards—I only took the opportunity to escape."

Was that the end of it? But no—Jin only pressed forward, and Woo Sung sucked in a breath as the knife came a bit closer to his Adam's apple than he would have preferred. She was brave to confront him like this, but did she really have to be so aggressive about it?

"Why did you escape?" Jin asked, and her curiosity was almost strong enough to hide the nervous tremors in her voice. "Are you loyal to the Japanese?"

Since shaking his head might now result in a close shave, Woo Sung merely pressed his lips in a displeased line. "No. I was exiled because I opposed the king's orders to imprison Admiral Yi Soon Shin. They viewed my act as treason and sent me away with a criminal who actually is a traitor."

The dagger drew back a fraction at his words, and a frown crossed Jin's face. "Imprison the admiral? But he's led our Navy to so many victories..." she shook her head and her gaze sharpened back on Woo Sung. "How do I know you aren't just making all this up?" she demanded, suspicion leaking back into her tone. "Maybe you're just lying about all of this. If you weren't a traitor, why would you escape in the first place? How can I trust that you aren't really a murderer?"

Woo Sung had thought the interrogation had been going a bit too smoothly. But then, he would have been disappointed if the diver had immediately believed everything he said. She was smart—but that was going to make things more complicated, and he didn't have any more time for that. He was getting tired both of the questions and of standing pressed against the wall for so long.

Jin was tiring, too. Her hand was shaking even more now, and she kept shifting her weight from foot to foot. Woo Sung waited for the next time her balance shifted, and then made his move.

He went for the dagger at his neck first, reaching up to grab Jin's wrist and pull it away from him. Her grip loosened in surprise, and Woo Sung took the opportunity to snatch the weapon from her hand. His right foot, meanwhile, shot out to hook around Jin's ankle, and she began to pitch backwards as she was thrown off-kilter. Woo Sung shot out his free arm behind her shoulders to stop her fall, but the motion forced him to pivot to keep his balance.

Fluttering fabric was the only accompaniment to Jin's surprised squeak before they both finally came to a stop, with Jin leaning back against Woo Sung's shoulder as he pressed the dagger against her neck.

Jin sucked in a breath, jaw clenched as Woo Sung touched the blade to her skin.

"I escaped when the other prisoner did because I wanted to stop him," Woo Sung explained. "And I didn't kill those soldiers. You want to know how you can trust that I'm telling the truth?" He looked at the blade in his hand, then let go of Jin and tossed the weapon to the ground, where it clattered across the floor. "I'm not that kind of person."

Jin staggered back with a gasp, and Woo Sung worried for just a moment that she would fall, but she soon straightened up and raised her chin, trying to regain her composure.

"You know I won't believe you that easily," she said, her words trembling only slightly.

Woo Sung nodded. "I know. But I have to start somewhere."

Jin looked like she would have said something else, but a shout from outside the door interrupted her, and she looked to him in panic.

"Quick, get back in bed!" she hissed. "Make it look like you're still recovering. If my family sees you up and about like this,they'll toss you right back in the ocean."    

That was enough of an incentive for Woo Sung. He dove to the blanket on the floor where he had been resting earlier and pulled it up to his chin. The door opened a moment later, and Woo Sung instinctively closed his eyes as well.

"Jin!" he heard the voice of an older woman exclaim. "What is this?"

"Uh...Solhee and I found him on the beach, Eomoni," Jin's voice answered. "We think he fell off a ship during the storm yesterday and washed ashore. He doesn't look well, so we decided to bring him here until he gets better."

There was an uncomfortable silence after that, and Woo Sung barely dared to breathe as he strained his ears, trying to hear what was going on. Would Jin's mother believe the story?

Then a foot connected with his ribs, hard. Woo Sung curled to the side and moaned in pain. That had hurt. Had Jin done that? He would have opened his eyes if he hadn't been so concerned about playing ill.

But the groan seemed to have done the trick.

"Well, I suppose if he has nowhere else to go..." the voice of Jin's mother conceded. "It would be cruel to just let him lie on the ground outside after all he's been through. You'll help your sister care for him, won't you, Jung Min?"

Woo Sung was surprised to hear a young boy's voice answer, "Yes, Eomma!"

"Good. Jin, would you help me prepare dinner before your father gets home? And don't leave your diving knife on the floor like that."

"Yes, just a minute," Woo Sung heard Jin reply. He only opened his eyes after a nudge at his shoulder, to find Jin prodding him with her foot. He immediately glared up at her.

"That hurt," he hissed.

"You weren't being convincing enough," she whispered back, matching his look with a glare of her own. "You can pretend to wake up when we're halfway through dinner, and I'll give you something to eat," she continued. "But act like something hit your head during the storm and you forgot everything."

Woo Sung huffed and pulled the blanket up more before closing his eyes. He was hungry and in a desperate situation. Even though he wanted to disagree with the diver's orders, he didn't have much of a choice.

You think I wouldn't have done it--that I wouldn't have carried through on my threat to feast on their livers if they hadn't agreed to cooperate with me.

Well, you're wrong.  You forget that I was very far away from my mountain, and therefore needed to keep up my energy levels.  A good-sized liver would have done just the trick.  Then, while I feasted on one of them, the other two would have changed their minds and agreed to help me.  Simple logic.

Is that why you approached me for another story, earlier?  Because you don't take me seriously?  You do recall how I feasted on the livers of the highwaymen in my first story, don't you?  Sometimes, rabbit hearts just aren't satisfying enough.  So it would be in your best interests to not treat my warnings as mere bluffs.

Now, what else shall we eat?  The rain's let up a bit, so maybe we should venture outside and see if there's any street food vendors about.

Not to eat the food vendors, silly.  The food they're selling, obviously.  Have you had Korean blood sausage?  Never mind if you're not hungry--I'll eat your portion too.

Now, where were we?  Ah, yes.  Woo Sung is faking sick, and I was off to have a chat with some water ghosts...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Oy this chapter is in need of serious editing.  I feel like I dumped a whole lot of info in here.  What do you think of Solhee, Jin, and Woo Sung so far?  Please let me know!

Thanks for reading!