#52
During the three days he spent searching for the coexistence stone, Ruhak went back and forth between life and death, fighting pain and eventually accepting the nature of evil into his body.
I never meant to hurt you. He deserved to die if ignorance was a mistake, and it was true that it was a selfish choice, but I had no intention of twisting him this much.
I didn’t want to have to experience this kind of pain.
“and… The medicine I made… There were originally two.”
Jureuk-
As soon as he finished speaking, blood flowed from between Sehyun’s lips.
Distorted eyes followed the body that was quickly falling apart. The hand holding his neck was trembling, as if he was having trouble even breathing.
A tight breath came out.
“Sigh… .”
Images of vassals persecuted by other races passed through my blurred vision. Among them was Ruhak, who was frustrated and heartbroken every time he was accused of being the weakest and invaded. Sehyun just didn’t want to see that.
So, this was atonement. It was an atonement for Ruhak, and a request for forgiveness from his vassals.
My vision flipped when I saw a hand reaching out to me. As soon as my arm was grabbed, my stomach started to twist. My vision felt like it was burning, and the pain came as if all my blood vessels were colliding and melting. It felt like I had swallowed lava.
A few screams escaped. The pain that felt like being cut with a knife spread from my spine down my back to my wings. Everything was just trembling pain.
“Is this what was taken from the treasury? “What about co-existence?”
that day. ‘Elixir’ wasn’t the only thing that Sehyun took after infiltrating the empire. ‘Elixir’ and ‘Coexistence Stone’. And there was only one remaining ‘property fusion medicine’. These were things I had prepared just for this day. Of course, Sehyun never planned to use the co-existence seat.
The owner of the coexistence stone was different. The breathtaking energy of Ruhak I saw today. I only found out after turning around and opening his stat window to check. The fact that his promotion is not far away.
So, I couldn’t write this right now.
“Use the coexistence stone immediately.”
“You… Ha, hope… That’s right… ah… .”
“It’s not a pain you can bear.”
“that… Leave it… Must see… Ugh… .”
A strong force grabbed and supported my falling shoulder. His cough broke out, and the regurgitated blood splattered on Ruhak’s clothes. Perhaps because his vision was flickering, he couldn’t focus properly. Sehyeon leaned his head on Ruhak’s chest and let out a sigh of his breath.
It was a pain where the thoughts of needing to overcome it and the thoughts of wanting to feel comfortable were tangled together.
Can I bear it? Suddenly, a feeling of weakness came out. Of course, I had no intention of dying.
“Well… .”
A scream came out between my teeth. Sehyun fought the pain while holding on to Ruhak’s clothes like a lifeline. Still, I guess this is bearable. It seemed like he had thought about that for a while. Until the pain that pierced my body came.
It was a sizzling pain. I didn’t even notice tears wet my cheeks. Previously, you had to tremble and crouch down and wait for the pain to subside. When the pain that had been flowing in and out like an ebb tide turned into a wave and overtook her again, Sehyeon was unable to overcome it and was buried in the pain.
Silence fell into the room along with the limp body. A tilted body was held in Ruhak’s arms. The blood-soaked skin looked like a dead corpse.
Nevertheless, the body struggled to survive and dropped its feathers to show that it would endure. The heat from my body was so hot that it felt like it was burning even the air.
Ruhak, who was rubbing the skin with his firm fingertips, eventually stood up, holding the shivering body.
Changgang-
The leather loop around the thin ankle broke, and the door with a magic stone opened with a clatter. Eleven retainers were waiting outside the door, standing in two rows with dark expressions. Among them was a silver-colored man wearing silver armor.
Ruhak passed them by and gave a brief command.
“Get the opium ready.”
The eyes of all the retainers who were standing upright were closed in despair. The white wings, drooping and shaking, stabbed into everyone’s hearts like daggers. The retainers were unable to relax their stern expressions for a long time.
No one could even make a small breathing sound. That gasp they heard. That was the only thing that lingered in their heads like a tinnitus.
***
The pain that came from moment to moment was like a wave. It was bearable, but when it swept over me like a wave and swallowed my whole body, I felt like I wanted to die. The pain felt as if my skin had been peeled off and had been pickled in salt, and I felt it all over me from head to toe.
It felt like every cell in my body was bursting and reattaching itself. When the pain hit my spine, I even felt the urge to tear my wings off. As I struggled in pain, I fainted again when I couldn’t breathe, and when I woke up again, the whole situation repeated endlessly.
Then, at some point, a sharp-smelling stick of water was placed in my mouth. I sucked it several times in a pain-ridden stupor, and only later did I realize that it was her opium-laced porridge.
Still, I couldn’t push it away. When she finally came to her senses, all she could do was blink her eyes. Her body drooping from the drug and the dull pain piercing her brain made her mind foggy. The thick smoke and strong scent wandering around made even the pain drowsy. It felt like I was slowly being eaten away.
Sehyun just had to helplessly bite the beak that was placed on her mouth with open eyes as if possessed.
“Deeper.”
Sehyeon’s eyes fluttered as he heard a firm voice piercing through his drowsiness. I tried to pull his head away, but the strong hand that grabbed his chin and placed the beak in my mouth forced me to put the beak back in my mouth.
“Once more. okay… .”
My brain melted. Only after drinking as much as he wanted, was Sehyeon able to escape from his strong hands. The water beak that Sehyun asked was moved to his man’s mouth. After taking a deep breath of her opium, the man closed his eyes languidly and let out a long breath. His chest puffed up a lot and then fell again.
The man’s hand traced Sehyun’s spine and moved up. Every time his hard hand brushed past me, I felt the crushing pain subside little by little.
Ruhak, who was smoking opium with a distressed expression, came into Sehyeon’s dark, blurred vision. The moment he put the beak to his mouth again, Sehyeon let out a soft breath and touched his mouth. Now he couldn’t even open his mouth to water. The moment he felt a hand pressing down on the back of his neck, his vision went black again.
During that time while under the influence of opium, Se-hyeon faced numerous afterimages going back and forth between the past and the present. Sometimes he faced his childhood, which he had no memory of, and sometimes he faced a boyhood that was difficult to endure. Among them, what bothered Sehyeon the most was the time when he was being overlooked.
‘f*ck that bastard, why are we raising him!’
‘Ah, then what! Is this because I want to take responsibility for my parents abandoning me? Your sister did it! Why are you questioning me about that!’
‘Ah, anyway, send me to another house.’
‘They say it won’t work. You said you got money from your sister? But are you going to wipe your mouth? Oh, I don’t know, so it’s up to you to send the money to someone else’s house.’
A child abandoned by his or her parents. Maybe it’s because it’s something I’ve always followed, but now I’m able to endure it quite a bit. A time when I had to move from place to place as if I was being pushed around and getting beaten for doing nothing wrong. Memories of being the target of anger, being beaten, being kicked out, and living outside for several days.
Rather than not knowing because I was young, it was an environment where I had no choice but to live more.
My vision blurred and what appeared again was my own image looking down at a small box abandoned in the cold rain. She wore an umbrella with an iron core sticking out, and she couldn’t quite remember how old she was at the time. She’s 17, no. Was she 18?
I wrapped my school bag and stared at the abandoned box in the rain. Inside, three whimpering puppies were curled up and shivering.
Still, there was nothing I could do. The moment I touched the box, I couldn’t even move because I felt like there was no turning back. Because it was a quiet alley, there were no people coming and going, so there was no one to look after them.
That was scary. I was scared of the little lives that seemed like they would die if I left here. Still, I couldn’t reach out. At a time when I had nothing and didn’t even have a place to sleep, I didn’t think I would be able to live with my children even if I took them with me.
And yet.
Jureuk-
I don’t know why I was so desperate. I don’t know why I wanted to be so helpful. I wanted to become someone someone needed. So it was like that.
Even though I knew I would be kicked out, I ended up grabbing the box and running into the house. She went in and gave her a beating and asked him to take care of her until she could be adopted. She begged to the point where she wondered if she had ever asked so much, but in the end all she got back was a cold expulsion.
I shivered with my children outside in the rain all night. I think I laughed as I looked at the little squirrels squealing as they burrowed into each other’s body heat, but when I woke up that morning and opened the box, the snails had turned into stars.
What was so sad about that morning, all I could remember was crying. She just wanted to be helpful. Even though she was a small puppy that couldn’t even talk back then.
My vision became blurry again. As his tears flowed, what he faced again was the image of himself curled up and crying all night long in the shabby house he had left on his own in the winter of his 20th year.
