Chapter 4. “So, Am I Your Type?”
Did I hear that wrong?
Startled, A-gang crossed her arms tightly over her shoulders and stiffened.
Her lips, gradually turning pale, were pressed firmly together.
“Take it off. If you don’t want to freeze to death.”
“P-Pardon? Take what off?”
“What exactly are you imagining right now?”
Taehun frowned slightly.
“If you stay in wet clothes like that all night, you’ll get hypothermia.”
“……”
“It’s basic common sense.”
Finishing his sentence indifferently, Taehun turned his back.
For some reason, an image of the woman hesitating silently kept forming in his mind.
What? Haplogroup?
Taehun let out a disbelieving laugh.
Alaskans? Khakas DNA?
“Unusual skeletal structure for someone domestic…” The remark alone made him scoff.
Was she free of prejudice, or simply thoughtless?
She kept saying strange things. And yet, those strange words lingered in his mind more than they should have.
“Wrap it around yourself.”
He picked up a green blanket lying in the corner, folded it, and tossed it onto the table. The blanket slid toward the woman as if pulled by her hands.
“You can turn around now.”
After a while, her small voice came.
Taehun turned around in long strides.
The woman clutched the blanket awkwardly up to her chin, biting her lip.
His gaze, almost unconsciously, drifted down along the faint curves visible beneath the blanket before stopping at her white socks reaching her ankles.
Delicate, pale ankles with rounded bones.
How did someone with such fragile ankles climb a rough mountain path like this?
Thinking back to her light, almost floating footsteps made him exhale a faint laugh.
Taehun then tossed his damp coat over her shoulders.
“Take your socks off too. They’re wet.”
“Ah—yes… yes?”
An awkward silence followed.
It wasn’t like he had said anything meaningful, yet her shoulders kept flinching as though he had.
This unnecessary… stillness.
Hoo.
Taehun ran a hand through his hair out of habit. The rough ends scratched his palm.
Only then did he remember he had cut it short recently.
After becoming a fellow at the trauma center, it had become a habit to keep his hair as short as possible.
Even a few minutes spent on grooming felt like a luxury.
But now…
“What a slacker I’ve become.”
His eyes met hers midair.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you taking them off?”
“W-what?”
“Your wet socks.”
“Oh—right!”
Honestly.
It wasn’t as if “take them off” was some forbidden trigger word, yet she kept flinching like that.
The more he saw her, the more absurd she seemed.
“Why? Are you scared I’ll do something weird to you?”
“N-No… it’s not that…”
She answered quietly.
They weren’t undressing each other in a hotel room or anything, yet the atmosphere felt strangely off.
She was oddly distracting.
Every small movement of her body felt as if time had slowed.
Holding the blanket tightly with one hand, she carefully pulled off her socks with the other.
Her bare feet resting on her sneakers looked oddly beautiful.
There were people like that—hands and feet that looked as if joints didn’t exist, soft and flexible.
Skin so soft it looked like it would bruise if held too tightly.
Her ankles, hollowed slightly around the Achilles tendon, looked unnecessarily sensual.
Unnecessarily.
He shouldn’t be looking.
Taehun cleared his throat, slightly flustered at where his gaze kept landing.
“Give me your hand. I saw earlier that you were hurt.”
He unfolded a handkerchief from his pocket.
The woman hesitated, then slowly extended her hand.
Her fingertips were ice cold.
“Why are you wearing a broken watch?”
“Huh? When did it stop? I’ll fix it when I go back down tomorrow.”
“You should go to a hospital first. It’ll take a while to heal. Unfortunate if you work with your hands.”
“I do work with my hands. Ha… it’s cold.”
As he wrapped her injured hand with the handkerchief, Taehun spoke quietly.
“If you pull a snare straight like that, it tightens more. That’s what it’s designed to do.”
“Haa… that’s cruel.”
“So when you loosen it, you first wedge something into the gap, then pull the loop in the opposite direction of the wire tension—like this.”
“Agh! Gently!”
She let out a short yelp as he demonstrated slightly.
“Use a knife or a multitool if possible. Only an idiot pulls it barehanded like that.”
“…But how do you know all this?”
“Work experience.”
“Your job?”
Her eyes seemed to ask whether she would ever need to deal with snares again, but she nodded as if she understood.
The wind howled outside.
The old wooden frame of the shelter could not fully block the freezing drafts slipping through the gaps.
She rubbed her hands together and blew warm breath into them repeatedly.
“You’re that cold?”
“I think I might have a slight fever…”
“And yet you were rolling around in the snow like that? You’re not a child.”
“I just… liked it. I was excited. It’s my first time coming to a place like this alone.”
“First time? In the mountains?”
“Yes.”
She forced a faint smile, her pale lips trembling as she tightened the blanket around herself.
“I feel… sleepy too.”
“Sleepy?”
At that, Taehun withdrew the hand he had been about to place on her forehead.
“Whether you freeze to death or not is none of my concern, but—”
Drowsiness appearing first was a textbook symptom of hypothermia.
The most common—and most dangerous—warning sign.
If this continued, her body temperature would soon drop below 35°C, and then loss of consciousness would follow.
“If you die while I’m here, it’ll be a hassle for me too.”
After thinking for a moment, Taehun ran a hand over his brow and looked her over.
“Choose. Option one: endure until morning like this. Option two: share body heat.”
“…What? B-body what?”
He glanced around and tilted his head toward a small partitioned bunk enclosed on three sides by wooden walls.
Then, without hesitation, he began unbuttoning his shirt one by one.
“Let’s not misunderstand anything unnecessary.”
Body heat sharing…
A-gang was stunned to the point she thought she might have misheard.
But in the end, she had no choice but to accept the man’s sudden suggestion with a reluctant nod.
The February shelter was far colder than she had imagined.
Thanks to her grandfather’s strict suppression of the press, her name had never been revealed publicly, but even that could not prevent an article about her freezing to death in the mountains.
[O’nel Group Heiress Ju A-gang Found Dead—Frozen in the Mountains]
The thought of sensational headlines filling front pages sent a chill down her spine.
“Why would a chaebol’s daughter become a doctor? Was this all just a hobby to play hospital?”
She could already picture the whispers, the ridicule.
The words she hated most—now and forever.
No matter how well or poorly she performed, the label “chaebol daughter” always came first before her name.
She had hidden that identity from her colleagues and seniors so carefully… she couldn’t end her life like this.
After a long hesitation, A-gang slowly climbed onto the bunk bed.
The man was quietly watching her while unbuttoning his shirt.
He leaned against the wall, arms wrapped around his knees, observing her just as calmly.
As if nothing was unusual.
Was it the flickering candlelight?
The sight of him removing his shirt felt unreal, like a scene from a film.
His black hair contrasted sharply with his pale skin, emphasizing a cold, striking beauty.
A flawless upper body—broad shoulders, well-defined muscles like an anatomy textbook model.
But then…
Her gaze stopped at his abdominal area.
Burn scars scattered across his body.
And a black tattoo that extended irregularly from the 12th rib on his left side up to his chest, as if covering the wounds.
His body was too intense—too sharp, yet strangely delicate—to allow any simple judgment.
Overwhelmed, A-gang unconsciously pulled her knees closer.
Even her trembling eyes betrayed her.
He spoke.
“First time seeing a man undress?”
“……”
It was her first time seeing a man this close… not as a patient.
But she pretended otherwise.
“First time? That’s my everyday life!”
“…What?”
Taehun let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“Then what, am I your type?”
