96
Knowing the theory and experiencing it firsthand are different. That day, Arpel thoroughly realized this fact.
It was all because of this that he didn’t immediately notice someone’s surprised gaze moving away or the quickly disappearing presence.
He fell into thought while touching his slightly swollen lips. It was his own effort to vaguely recall what had happened then, but he couldn’t catch the thoughts that kept jumping elsewhere. The memory of the dim dawn where hot breaths intermingled kept invading his mind.
‘Still, the feeling was…’
Not bad. No, it was good.
At some point, the reason for starting this reverie had disappeared without a trace, but Arpel didn’t mind. To be precise, he didn’t even realize it. The more he recalled the events of last night, the more the fluffy emotions rising up prevented him from feeling even a shred of doubt.
“Arpel.”
A gentle voice, and a careful touch on the tip of his ear. If it weren’t for these two things, his busy train of thought wouldn’t have been interrupted, and his mechanical footsteps following the person ahead wouldn’t have stopped. Arpel’s gaze immediately turned to the side.
The gently curved eyes seemed to ask what he was thinking. Looking at the smile that seemed particularly brighter than usual, he felt as if heat was rushing to where Rohan’s touch landed.
When faced with eyes brimming with happiness, his chest tingled. There was a time when he found this feeling strange, but as time passed, Arpel grew accustomed to it. It wasn’t the first or second time he had felt this way when facing Rohan.
“Ahem, hem. Sh-shall we take a short break?”
The strange atmosphere flowing between the two was broken by that single sentence. Maisen, who had gone ahead, was standing awkwardly, seemingly noticing the absence of those following behind. His face was full of awkwardness.
His constantly glancing eyes and small, added coughs clearly showed his desire to change the atmosphere.
“I’m sorry. We were just talking for a moment…”
“Haha, no. There’s no need to apologize. Good marital harmony is something to celebrate.”
At the mention of marital harmony, Arpel’s gaze slanted towards the ground. It felt as if the beating of his heart had transferred to their still-joined hands.
Meanwhile, he raised his head due to a subtle sense of dissonance. Though only one night had passed, as if most suspicions had been resolved, the wariness Maisen showed was considerably diminished compared to the previous days. This bothered him.
The attitude from the day before, subtly displeased about them getting a separate house, the clear gaze of someone felt in the early dawn, and the wariness that had faded like a lie the next day. Reviewing each point, the situation quickly fell into place.
Whatever the purpose, the one who wanted to monitor them was this man in front of them. A faint irritation clouded his eyes as he stared blankly at Maisen’s back leading the way.
The halted steps began to move again. With each step forward, the leaves underfoot made rustling noises.
“Just a bit more walking and we’ll be there. The air is quite nice, isn’t it?”
“…Yes, I suppose.”
The forest on the outskirts of the village was deeper and more lush than expected. Its appearance seemed suitably mysterious and detached from the secular world, fitting for a place where an altar to worship a deity might be built, but that was only on the surface.
As they moved deeper, the air clearly felt heavier. The dense negative energy in the air they breathed, the foul smell lingering at the tip of their noses… The forest interior was full of things that ordinary people couldn’t perceive.
The wraith energy faintly felt throughout the village now vibrated from all directions. Rohan’s slightly raised eyebrows clearly showed that he too had noticed the strange signs in the forest.
“This is the place.”
With Maisen’s words, the seemingly endless path came to an end. The narrow path they had been following widened, revealing a large space surrounded by dense trees. The first thing that caught the eye was a white marble structure in the center.
A unnecessarily white and sacred-looking fox statue stood proudly on a square pillar. Some might look at it with admiration, but Arpel just examined it with indifferent eyes. It was an emotionless reaction that made it hard to believe he was someone who had personally come to a remote village to make a wish.
“It’s impressive.”
Rohan smoothly covered up this disconnected reaction as he pulled out a pouch of gold coins from his chest. Maisen’s face, which had been looking at Arpel with strange eyes, brightened at the sight of the visibly heavy pouch.
“Surely the deity will be pleased.”
If words could drool, they would have done so already. Although he tried to hide it, his excited voice and sparkling eyes betrayed the greed filling his insides.
Leaving Maisen, who said he would step back, behind, they stood in front of the altar. As Rohan scattered several gold coins on the altar, Arpel, standing beside him, added briefly. It was a voice that wouldn’t reach someone far away.
“It’s not here.”
“…Is that so?”
The hand that had paused for a moment smoothly continued its action. With hands clasped together and eyes closed, it was the perfect image of someone praying to a deity. How devout it must look to someone watching from behind.
Of course, they couldn’t even dream that while just clasping hands and closing eyes, instead of praying to a deity, they were actually conversing with each other. A satisfied smile settled on Maisen’s face.
“We’ll have to come back at night.”
Unaware that the two were planning for later.
***
“No, I shouldn’t doubt…”
In a dark room without a single light on, an emaciated woman was biting her fingernails, unable to hide her anxiety. The way she mumbled “I shouldn’t” with slurred pronunciation was quite eerie.
A hand like a dry twig touched a small bed, or more precisely, the child lying on it. Tightly closed eyes, sunken cheeks, and dry lips indirectly showed that the child had been asleep for a long time.
Her heart beat anxiously, feeling like the raspy noises might stop at any moment. There was desperation in the way she repeatedly cradled the small cheek, trying to keep the warmth from escaping her fingertips.
“You… what did you do wrong?”
A curse that suddenly started in the village one day.
Her child was one of the victims of that curse. Although she had been consistently feeding the child mashed potatoes mixed with water and lightly seasoned, even that was reaching its limit now. As the days of watching her child wither away piled up, her heart felt like it was being torn apart.
They said it was punishment for committing a sin. That it was natural, so they should beg for forgiveness… Everyone in the village said so. Until recently, she too had thought the same.
For nearly decades, she had lived believing only in the Fox God. She shouldn’t doubt, but every time she saw her sleeping child, as each day passed bringing them closer to death, her unwavering faith that had never known doubt was shaken to its core and cracked.
“Oh God…”
A word resembling a sigh leaked out. She prayed earnestly, clasping her hands together over and over. That her child would wake up as she had acted according to the revelation received in her dream, that they must live, like that…
As an eerie sensation brushed her spine, the woman’s eyes opened slowly. Perhaps due to the darkness settled all around, it took quite a while just to become aware of her surroundings. Her face, habitually checking on her child first, was filled with puzzlement.
‘I thought I had left the light on.’
She immediately realized she had dozed off seeing the clearly darkened sky, but she couldn’t understand the pitch-black darkness settled in the house without a single point of light. Before coming to the bed to see the child, she had lit the lamp outside.
Until then, she had no sense of crisis. She just thought, “Oh well,” and tried to get up.
But the moment she put strength in her knees to rise, she felt a presence behind her back.
“…!”
Her body froze abruptly. It wasn’t an illusion. The sensation on her back was someone’s hand. Her limbs weren’t restrained, and there wasn’t even any pain, but she couldn’t move an inch from the force gently pressing down on her body. A feeling of her throat being choked followed, cutting off her breath.
“Shh.”
She hadn’t even thought of screaming, but the moment she heard that word, her mouth clamped shut. Only her frightened, panting breaths repeatedly escaped her lips. Her eyes had long since filled with tears from the unfamiliar emotion of fear.
“I have one thing I’d like to ask.”
The quietly murmuring voice was surprisingly gentle. There was a strangely soothing quality to it, as if trying to lure a child with candy, but the woman just trembled silently.
The voice, which didn’t match the oppressive force holding her down, rather exuded an inhuman eeriness.
Her head, half-buried in the bed, nodded vigorously. It was an action that clearly showed her willingness to say anything.
“I heard you received a revelation from the deity. Could you tell me in detail about the method and content of the revelation?”
“I, I had a dream!”
“A dream?”
The words that followed were no different from incoherent rambling. She said she heard instructions to feed someone a certain medicine, and sent it to the Marquis’s mansion through her husband. That she had no choice for the sake of saving her child. The man, who had been listening silently to her excuses, asked after a beat.
“This medicine, where did it come from?”
“That, I’m not sure… When I woke up, it was placed by my pillow.”
“And there were no signs of anyone entering the house?”
“I don’t know… Hic! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. But really, truly, I don’t know anything about it. I thought the deity had bestowed it directly…!”
A brief question and answer session followed, but there was nothing she could answer properly. As the other’s silence grew longer, a thought began to form in a corner of her mind, wondering if she was really going to die now.
“Hmm.”
“Pl-please spare me…”
The faint sigh felt like a death sentence. Her lips, bitten repeatedly in fear, were already in tatters. Her plea for her life couldn’t even finish due to her trembling voice. As her body shook uncontrollably with fear, the woman felt an intense pain in her neck.
‘Is this how I die…?’
Even as her vision faded to black, such thoughts crossed her mind. If she had known it would come to this, she should have run away with her child. Now, it was all futile regret.
