Chapter 13
Doyeong suddenly stared intently at Gamal and said,
"Salt."
Gamal handed him the salt container. Doyeong gazed blankly at it. When he didn’t move, Gamal asked,
"Why?"
"Nothing."
Doyeong shook the container to sprinkle salt.
After finishing the meal, Gamal began crafting a pump drill (a friction fire-starting tool using pump principles). At least they didn’t have to rub sticks together for fire—though it still felt like living in the Stone Age.
A fire piston (a pressure-based ignition tool) would’ve been more convenient, but Gamal didn’t even own a proper carving knife. She used stone tools like a prehistoric human. Hadn’t the Egyptians finished building pyramids three thousand years ago?
At this point, it seemed more like they were deliberately choosing primitive methods like survival enthusiasts.
"Come to think of it, where’s my knife?"
Though late to ask, the knife he’d used to attack Gamal initially had also been stolen from Spetsnaz. He’d been furious upon realizing it belonged to that bastard.
"Dangerous. Shouldn’t play with that," Gamal said like a scolding mother. Doyeong bristled but reached out anyway.
"Hand it over."
He began making a pump drill instead.
As Gamal retrieved flowers, she watched Doyeong skillfully assemble the tool and asked,
"How do you know all this, Lieutenant?"
Those who’d come to the island before Doyeong—the older they were, the more adept at handcrafts—still floundered in wilderness survival. Yet Doyeong worked with the proficiency of a tribal warrior.
Without pausing, Doyeong answered absently,
"My father took me to forests and mountains often as a child."
It wasn’t entirely false—he just couldn’t mention his father’s special forces background. Fortunately, Gamal didn’t seem to recognize his military uniform.
"Your mother?" Gamal suddenly found herself curious about his family.
"An ordinary office worker," he replied.
It was technically true—though "ordinary" meant working for a famous French cosmetics company, compared to his father’s former career. But how had a special forces operative married such a woman?
"How did they meet?" Gamal pressed.
"They grew up in the same neighborhood. The age gap kept them from being close, but one day my mother—then a college student—started working at the McDonald’s my father frequented."
The French generally scorned American fast food, but...
"My father had irregular hours. He often visited 24-hour restaurants when other shops closed."
He’d already frequented the place, but started going more after learning a neighborhood kid worked there.
"Then one day he wondered: Why did my mother insist on exhausting herself with graveyard shifts? So he asked her during a visit."
Behind the counter, his mother had answered with utterly disinterested eyes...
"Why do you think?"
Doyeong shrugged.
"That’s how it was."
Gamal sighed softly in understanding.
"Impressive. So..."
She clenched and unclenched her fist, struggling for words.
"Romantic?" Doyeong supplied.
Gamal nodded vigorously.
"Yeah."
He chuckled.
"My uncle mocked Dad when he heard—‘You figured that out just now?’"
"You have an uncle?"
Doyeong looked at her. After a beat of strange tension, he said offhandedly,
"Had one. He died."
By a vampire’s hand.
When Doyeong was ten, his father had tried to save his brother and been confined to a wheelchair for life. No longer able to run, the man who’d once taken pride in GIGN (France’s counterterrorism unit) had resigned. Their family endured harsh years afterward.
Yet they persevered. His mother stayed by her disabled husband’s side. His father refused to surrender to despair over losing his brother, legs, and dreams. Thus Doyeong never had room to drown in hatred for what took his uncle.
Noticing Gamal, he saw she’d forgotten to eat her flowers while engrossed in the story.
Vampires once brought flowers as peace offerings.
He’d hated them once, but time gave him vampire friends, comrades...
Doyeong suddenly lay down.
"Sleepy. Bedtime."
Gamal’s eyes widened.
"Now?"
"Sleep always comes suddenly."
He closed his eyes.
True to his word, he soon drifted off, breathing evenly.
Gamal chewed her forgotten flower while studying him. Pale lashes fanned neatly over closed eyes—like an Athenian sculpture.
By the standards of her era, where rugged masculinity defined true men, Doyeong’s delicate features bordered on feminine. Yet his masculine presence remained undiminished—broad shoulders, the hard abdomen she’d once touched, large hands...
She suddenly wanted to trace his nose bridge.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The vigorous pulse within his ribs—life’s rhythm—drew her closer. His slightly parted lips exhaled warmth.
This sensation felt unfamiliar.
Doyeong’s mother had chosen undesirable shifts just to see the man she liked.
Was this how she’d felt?
‘This feeling?’
Gamal mentally punctuated the thought.
Did she like Doyeong as his mother had liked his father? But despite their initial rivalry, he remained merely human—albeit different from others who’d come to the island...
Doyeong’s eyes snapped open.
Gamal flinched. Expecting a scowl, she found only storm-gray eyes, calm yet intense as pre-tempest seas.
‘I’m too close.’
She tried to rise.
"Sorry—"
Doyeong yanked her down beside him.
"Sleep," he said, patting her shoulder like soothing a child. Though he withdrew quickly, warmth lingered where he’d touched. Gamal rubbed the spot, smiling faintly.
Morning revealed Gamal’s empty spot. The neatly folded bedding suggested a purposeful departure.
A note lay atop:
I’m just going out for bit!!
Her effort was evident, though the spelling was fantastically terrible.
"What a mess," Doyeong muttered, reluctantly charmed by the crooked handwriting.
She’d stacked breakfast provisions by the hearth like a mother leaving pasta for a journey. After eating, Doyeong limped outside. The deserted beach prompted no concern—she wasn’t a child needing supervision.
He washed up and settled under his usual tree with a book retrieved indoors:
Found among multilingual tomes left by visitors, it felt familiar yet new. While reading, he discovered an aged envelope tucked between the back cover and pages.
The letter inside combined archaic French with another Germanic language—Dutch, he realized. Johannes, he intuited. An educated man from the Dutch East India Company era, fluent when French ruled as the lingua franca.
Doyeong deciphered the French text:
The antiquated phrasing challenged him, but his familiarity with Molière helped.
<I lived here exactly 22 years.>
He paused.
Twenty-two years?
A dark impulse surged—had Johannes spent that long with Gamal? Something akin to jealousy...
No. He and Gamal were nothing. Would be nothing.
Doyeong read on:
<I missed my wife and children. Begged Gamal for help, raged—she claimed escape was impossible. Our relationship deteriorated, then healed. I grew to love her. She was beautiful, strong, devoted.>
He forced himself to turn the page.
