A/N: Spoilers for Episode 1 of Tale of the Nine-Tailed 1938

Basically, I'm reimagining the whole opening sequence because I needed to write Bandit Lee Rang/Chu Ga Eul to get it out of my system lol just let me live in my fantasy world…

If you haven't read my fic I'd Eat Your Heart (But It Might Kill Me), you can still read this one, but some of the references to my other fic might be lost on you as this is kind of a 'What if?' scenario branching off of that fic.

The human girl was coughing every five seconds, as if it wasn't annoying enough that she was clearly delusional. Rang wished the reward money wasn't so high for the person who had bombed Gyeongseong Station. The soldiers were taking forever to arrive, and he had a mind to get rid of her right now.

Meanwhile, the small, defenseless human was claiming that they knew each other; even more absurdly, she was claiming that they were lovers in another life. At this point, she wasn't even struggling to get out of the rope his subordinates had bound her in. No, she insisted on talking to him like they were old friends.

And the coughing...the coughing...

"Hey, shut up over there!" Rang commanded.

"Sorry, it's the smoke. I would tell you to quit for your health, but you'll probably say it doesn't affect foxes the way it does humans."

Affect foxes? That drew him up short. She knew he was a fox?

Rang stood and stalked over to where the human—she'd told him her name was Chu Ga Eul—was bent over on her knees, bound to a wooden post in the center of his cabin.

Squatting to her level, he asked, "Who are you? Really?"

"I told you, I'm—" Cough, cough. "Can you put that out?"

Rang glanced at the cigarette in his left hand, but instead of putting it out, he took a drag off of it and blew the smoke in her face.

She wrinkled her nose and muffled another cough. Up close, she didn't look like much at all. A tiny human, weaker than most, with chapped lips and a dirt-smudged face. She wore only a soiled white blouse and Western-style pants made out of rough blue fabric. Her hair caused him to pause, though; a striking, unearthly shade of copper, it gleamed in the shafts of light piercing through the walls, despite being dusted with dirt and tangled from the way she'd been thrown around. Dead grass clung to the back of her hair, and he had the strange urge to remove it.

He didn't.

"I take it I don't smoke in this imagined life you have with me," he noted.

"It's not imaginary." She narrowed her eyes at him. "And yes, you don't smoke."

"And I suppose in this fairy tale land, I also write love poems and behave like a perfect gentleman," he goaded, but she didn't take the bait.

"No. You're still an asshole," she said, looking him dead in the eyes. "You still hate humans, and you're still into stealing and killing and screwing people over."

Rang raised his eyebrows.

"Oh? You kill people too?" He looked her over with some amusement.

The human shook her head.

"I'm a schoolteacher."

"A schoolteacher?"

She nodded emphatically, and she looked so earnest that Rang laughed as he stood back up.

Him courting a human teacher? Someone was really playing a practical joke on him.

And for some reason, the crazy human was smiling.

"Your laugh is the same," she informed him, eyeing him so fondly it unnerved him.

He turned away and told her to shut up again.

Ga Eul would like to say that she'd been smart enough to find Rang on her own after accidentally crashing through the time portal along with Lee Yeon. But the truth was, she'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or the right time, as it were.

When the bomb had gone off at the station, she'd been caught up in the chaos, and one of the soldiers had mistakenly targeted her as the bomb suspect, perhaps due to her strange clothes. She'd managed to slip away from him but not before getting caught by one of Rang's lackeys, who'd bound her arms and legs and thrown her over the back of a horse. The gang had carried her off to Rang's hideout, and on the bumpy ride there, she'd been taunted by the prospect of meeting their boss.

By the time they'd arrived at the wood cabin deep in the countryside, she had gone through several different stages of terror remembering the heartless gang bosses she'd seen in dramas. Then Rang had appeared from behind a curtain like a dark knight—the sun glinting off the cloud of dust surrounding him—and she'd cried out his name in relief.

In answer, he'd wrenched her to her feet and pinned her in a chokehold against the cabin wall.

But when she'd looked into his eyes, she'd known it was him and not just someone who looked like him, so she couldn't be completely scared. Shaken, maybe. She was a little shaken still. But not completely scared.

This was Rang. She knew him. She just had to make him understand her. She just had to cut through all his layers of self-defense and get to his soft, caring center—those layers that had previously taken her months and months to chip away at—before the Japanese soldiers arrived.

She could do this.

Right?

Not that she knew when the soldiers would be arriving.

Or how long she'd even been there already.

Or where there was, exactly, in relation to anywhere else.

Presently, Rang had stubbed out his cigarette and was sharpening his axe on a circular stone, most of his hands protectively bound in leather and strips of material but his long fingers peeking through.

Pausing, he squinted at the edge of the blade, then turned it over. Dipping his fingers in the small bowl of water next to him, he moistened the stone's surface, then began sharpening the other side of the axe with practiced circular strokes. The gravelly sound of stone scratching metal filled the otherwise silent cabin, though beyond the walls she could hear Rang's underlings squabbling and making crude jokes.

For a while, she simply watched Rang while he worked, and that, oddly, calmed her. He had the same casually dangerous aura she had fallen in love with, like a predator ready to strike even when he was sleeping. Presently, he was sitting with his back to the wall, one leg folded inward and one leg extended but bent at an angle so he could rest his right arm on it as he held his axe. His long, wavy hair fell into his handsome face, partially obscuring it, but she could see the sharp nose and chin she often lined with kisses and the soft lips that formed a familiar scowl. The brown coat tails of his rustic leather coat fell around him, blackened in spots by dirt and wear, and she had to marvel that someone as concerned with fashion and cleanliness as Rang had once lived so humbly.

She could tell that Rang's edges hadn't softened yet; he was shaped by cruelty, like an arrow dipped in poison. Like an axe sharpened on a whetting stone. Sharpened and sharpened without relief. He hadn't made up with his brother. He didn't know what it meant to have a family, much less a girlfriend. He wasn't mostly bark; he was mostly bite. Truthfully, she didn't know how to appeal to him in his current state. How to make him trust her.

More pressingly, how could she get him to not hand her over to the army?

Her options for a trade were probably money, which she did not have; criminal services, which he'd laugh at her for offering; and sex, which...no, no. She couldn't even use sex as a very, very final resort. He didn't do that with humans. Not yet, at least.

Ga Eul felt like crying. Her knees and back ached from her awkward position on the hard wooden floor, and her wrists and arms burned where the rough rope had chafed against them. Her clothes clung to her, slick with sweat in the stifling air, and her dry mouth pleaded for water, but she knew modern-day Rang would tell her not to give up. To fight until her last breath. So, instead of crying, she looked around the room, searching for anything that would give her a clue as to what type of man she was dealing with at this point in Rang's life.

That was when she noticed a pile of her belongings scattered across a large black chest—her coat, her purse, her scarf, and her cellphone; they'd been thrown in with a bunch of miscellaneous items that looked pickpocketed.

Her cellphone! Of course! How could she have forgotten?! All the evidence of their relationship was on her cellphone!

"Ra—"

"I thought I told you to shut up." Rang's voice was soft and matter-of-fact, but he threw her a glare as cutting as the edge of his axe blade and as dirty as the wooden boards under her knees.

Ga Eul swallowed. She'd been on the receiving end of that glare plenty of times, but it had always been a joke. This time, he meant it. She could tell. If she annoyed him more, he'd probably snap her neck without thinking twice about it. Surely she was worth something to the Japanese, even dead.

Or not. They probably wanted her alive so they could question her.

All the same, Ga Eul chose her next words carefully.

"Rang—"

An axe whizzed past Ga Eul's face and landed in the wood right next to her ear.

She flinched away, her heart leaping into her throat.

So much for being careful.

"If you call me informally one more time"—Rang approached and wrenched the axe out of the wooden post—"I'm putting this axe through your skull. Reward money be damned." He held the cool metal of the axe menacingly to her throat, and she hesitated to swallow.

"Uh, yes, Mister Lee Rang. I apologize." Ga Eul cast her eyes down, genuinely contrite.

Rang said nothing for a moment, allowing the threat of the blade to linger, but eventually he pulled the axe away, and she could breathe freely again.

He turned on his heel, and she summoned all of her bravery to ask, "I challenge you to a fight. If I win, you hear what I have to say, and you let me go. And if you win, I'll be a totally compliant prisoner. You can get your reward money, and you never have to see me again."

Rang stopped in his tracks, but he kept his back to her.

"If I wanted you to be a compliant prisoner, I'd drug you, gag you, and bind you even more than you are now. What's in this offer for me?"

Ga Eul glanced aside, unsure how to answer him.

"It's just that...someone once told me I should always defend myself. If someone bites me, I should bite them back. But, of course, if you don't want to, I can't make you give me a chance."

Ga Eul held her breath as she waited on his answer; he stayed utterly still for a long time, but at least he didn't lash out at her again.

She bit her lip; it was cracked, and she tasted blood.

Rang liked blood.

Her blood...oh...she should have offered him her blood! Not all of it, certainly, but maybe...small amounts at a time?

Would he have liked that?

She really didn't know how to do this fox manipulation thing properly. No wonder modern-day Rang fretted over her all the time.

"If I win," Rang finally answered, "you will be a totally silent prisoner. Either way, I don't care about anything you have to say. But if you win...you can go free."

Flooded with relief, Ga Eul smiled.

"Thank you, Mister Lee Rang."

"Don't thank me." He turned back to her, a hint of a smirk playing on his lips. It wasn't a smile, but it was better than his scowl, and it nearly reached his eyes. Nearly.

Wetting his lips, he concluded, "You should have challenged me before I finished sharpening my blade."

Rang didn't know why he was indulging the small human; perhaps he was bored and weary of only having the wolves for company.

Whatever the reason, he untied her and allowed her a moment to stretch her limbs.

"Do I get to pick a weapon?" she asked.

Rang scoffed in disbelief.

"You're awfully demanding for someone who's being held for ransom."

"Well, why not? I have to defend myself, don't I? If I don't defend myself, who will?"

Rang raised his eyebrow at her boldness; secretly impressed, but outwardly indifferent, he nodded to her small pile of belongings.

"Your stuff's over there. Be quick."

"Thank you." The human gave a small bow and scurried over to where her belongings had been thrown. After a moment of watching her rummage through them with her back turned, he scolded her for taking too long.

At once, she swiveled around and thrust an object out at him. He flinched, but nothing came hurtling towards him. If there was a weapon, he couldn't see it. The unidentifiable object the human held was mostly made of metal, but in its glass surface he saw something incomprehensible.

"It's us. See?" The human drew nearer to him, and, indeed, he saw himself reflected in the object's surface.

But not him as he was.

Him, his hair cut short, wearing a Western-style black suit. The little human clung to his side, wearing her same outfit with a tan sweater.

What otherworldly object was this? What type of creature was she, if not human?

Rang decided he didn't care to find out.

"Nice trick with your magic mirror. My turn." Rang lifted his ax, and the human swiped her finger along the mirror's surface, revealing another still frame of the two of them. This time, they were dressed differently and appeared to be in a garden. She swiped her finger again, and another still frame appeared. Then another, then another. Rang watched, momentarily frozen, until suddenly she swiped and the image in the mirror exploded with movement.

The human's double was talking straight through the mirror, her eyes lit with excitement, and when she smiled it looked like she was smiling at Rang. But then Rang saw his own double appear in the glass, wearing a sour expression.

His double scolded the human's double, and she shot him a dirty look.

"This is us in the future," the human explained.

"Us? In the future?" Rang echoed doubtfully. He knew of the Tiger's Brow, which showed one's past. He supposed seeing the future was possible too, but… "I look miserable."

"You're not miserable. That's your normal expression. You're even doing it now." She pointed, and Rang's scowl deepened.

He scoffed and snatched the mirror away from her.

"Oh, look at that. I took your weapon. You know what that means. I won. Back in your bindings." Pocketing the mirror, Rang gripped her shoulder, but she shook him off.

"You can't win by only doing that," she reprimanded. "You...you...have to strike me." Her voice wavered over the last few words, and he could sense her fear. Could see it in her eyes. So why the hell would she tell him to strike her?

It could be a trick.

Nevertheless, he raised his arm, and she flinched and shut her eyes; she raised her arms in a feeble attempt to protect her face, and he noticed the rope burns on them. Truly, she looked human; he couldn't detect any powers in her aura, despite the mirror, and she didn't strike him as someone cunning or deceptive.

To be certain, Rang snatched her arm and nicked it with his axe; the surface cut trickled bright red blood down her arm. Eyes wide, she pressed her shirt to her arm to staunch the bleeding, staining the white fabric.

She bled easily enough.

Human, then.

In that case, she was either unreasonably brave, incredibly stupid, or wildly delusional.

The latter two he had no patience for, but the first…

She was still standing there, oddly calm. Holding her blood-smeared arm, she stared at his belt.

"You have two guns," she mentioned. "But I think you like your axe more. I'm right, aren't I?"

Rang frowned. Her voice wasn't shaking anymore, and she looked him right in the eyes like she knew him well. So well that she wasn't surprised he had sliced her arm but hadn't done any serious damage.

She unsettled him. It was time for her to go. He'd tell his employees to pick up someone else for the reward.

"Get out," he demanded.

"What?" She blinked.

"You heard me. You won, so go away."

To his surprise, the little human merely stood there, as though she didn't catch his meaning.

"Does that mean you're not going to let the army take me?" she asked.

"It means you better get the hell out of here right now!" Rang snapped.

"But...I didn't..."

Huffing, Rang set down his axe on the nearest table and guided her by her shoulders out the door.

"You wanted to go, so go." He gestured to the mountains. "Go on. Go away. I'm tired of listening to your bullshit." Rang turned to go back inside, but she caught him by the wrist.

"Well...can't I stay here until—"

Rang snatched his arm away from her.

"I didn't say I would take you in. I said I would let you go. Now go before I change my mind." He tried to make his tone threatening but was all too aware it didn't carry the same weight that it would have moments before. Why the hell hadn't he struck her?

Why the hell had she just...stood there?

Humans were idiots, and he had half of their foolish blood.

Irritated with himself, Rang slammed the door behind him. He kicked over a chest and flung a box at the wall. Its contents fluttered out—a stash of clothes from a stolen suitcase.

One of his subordinates rushed in and asked if they should do something.

He instructed them to get the hell out.

Ga Eul wasn't sure where Rang thought she should go. They were in the middle of the countryside, surrounded by nothing but hills and plains, and she doubted he would lend her a horse to get back to civilization.

Still, she didn't want to stick around outside the cabin where she was sure to get accosted by one of his gang members...or at long last picked up by the army.

Deciding she should find a place to wait until he'd calmed down, she headed off down the path that led from Rang's house up and over a green hill. She'd wait a few hours to go back, and while she waited, she'd come up with a plan.

Obviously, her plan wasn't to stay there forever, but...she was certain Lee Yeon would come for Rang eventually, and, in the meantime, though her injured arm begged to differ, she felt safer being with Rang than being on her own in this turbulent world.

She just hoped she wasn't spreading her hopes for bandit Rang too thin. Modern-day Rang would not approve; he'd say she was being too naive in her optimistic view of him.

Stretched out on his bed with a cigarette, Rang inspected the girl's mirror; he'd never seen an artifact like it before. At last, he noticed a few raised bars on the side of the smooth rectangle. He pressed down on one, then another. Suddenly, the mirror lit up, and he jolted upright in surprise.

There they were again—he and the little human—standing in front of some brightly lit trees with their arms around each other.

Rang held the mirror closer to his face, inspecting the image. Like in most of the images she'd shown him, he looked...well...happy.

Rang shook himself.

The whole thing was disconcerting. Her appearance was disturbing. He was glad she had gone. Only…

Maybe he should keep an eye on her. For all he knew, in the future, she'd trapped him inside this mirror, like a tiger trapped inside a painting. Or, if not her, someone had trapped both of them there.

Ga Eul bounded down the hill with surer steps now that she'd left the sight of the cabin. Coming out into an open plain, she even smiled at the lovely scenery.

She quickly sobered upon seeing what awaited her only a short distance away: an entire unit of Japanese soldiers, bearing rifles. Pivoting away, she ran back in the direction she'd come from, colliding promptly with a solid male body. Two layered shirts—one light, one dark. A gold necklace featuring a coin with a cross cut in the center. A brown leather jacket, its top lapels black. Wavy hair. A scowl. Rang.

Beneath his black cowboy hat, he glared down at her, as though she'd made him walk all the way out there. As though she'd offended him by running into him and touching his clothes.

In the distance, she heard a shout in Japanese, and in the next breath, Rang grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and yanked her behind him.

When he whipped out two guns from inside his coat, it registered that she hadn't run into him by chance. He'd come looking for her.

He'd come looking for her.

What followed next was an exchange in Japanese that she didn't understand, then a lot of gunfire directed at the two of them. Covering her ears, Ga Eul flinched behind Rang as bullet after bullet whizzed past them, and the scent and fog of gunpowder saturated the air. The rain of bullets rocked Rang's body, but he remained standing, and finally only the sound of his gun could be heard. A final pop close to Ga Eul's ear, then silence.

When she dared to peek around him, she saw the soldiers' bodies strewn on the ground, all of them in different stages of dying.

Rang glanced at her, barely moving his head, and though he cast a shadow with the sun shining behind him, to her, he was completely bathed in light.

Ga Eul's eyes welled up with tears. Her fox had saved her.

Her Lee Rang was in there. Even if he didn't know her in this time period, he was still the same: stubborn and distrustful and selfish and criminal, but deep down inside, fair and compassionate.

"Rang...you saved me!" She flung her arms around him, and for a wonderful second, he felt as warm and protective as ever, but he soon shoved her off.

"What did I say about the informal speech?" He pressed his gun to her temple, forcing her to keep her distance. She stumbled back, and when she looked at his eyes, he didn't know her again.

"Uh...Mister Lee Rang. Thank you, Mister Lee Rang." Ga Eul tried to bow, but it was hard with the gun in her face. "I apologize. I'll work on it."

"You better work on it." He tapped the barrel of the gun against her temple and stalked towards her. When he bent his sun-tanned face close to hers, she smelled the stale tobacco on his breath. He had dark circles under his eyes; did he ever sleep?

"You've ruined my clothes." He gestured to the countless holes in his outfit where the bullets had gone through. No blood, though. "From now on, you owe me a favor, little human. And I always collect." A familiar manic gleam surfaced in his eyes, and despite being held at gunpoint, Ga Eul's heart warmed at his words.

He'd called her 'little human' without knowing it was his endearment for her.

And if she owed him a favor, perhaps he'd keep her. At least long enough for her to figure out how to get back to modern-day Rang, who was probably pouting helplessly on the couch without her to cook for him.

Which gave her an idea.

"In that case, Mister Lee Rang, do you like naengmyeon?"

I grew up watching a ton of old American Westerns with my dad, and getting to see KB in cowboy attire is some type of top-tier fantasy I didn't know I had. Hope you enjoyed this totally self-indulgent one-shot ;)