The sixth day.
Sarka self-harmed.
Baigarten’s face when they met at breakfast time had brightened a little. He said Sarka’s fever had gone down during the night.
Of course, the Controller’s poison continued to spread, but Sarka’s body had stopped resisting the poison with fever any longer.
As the swollen airway subsided, the ventilator was removed at dawn, and although he was still suffering from headaches, the nausea had stopped, so it would be easier to supply nutrients through the tube now.
Ruslan was confused about whether he should be happy about this news. While he felt relieved that the crisis of death seemed to have passed, the fact that Sarka could now feel pain with a clearer mind was chilling.
As if Baigarten had realized this fact too, he changed back to an expressionless face and let Ruslan into the classroom.
Since they had passed the critical point, Baigarten said he was planning to stop guarding Sarka’s room for a while today and attend classes.
“Now that his mind has returned, his pride must have returned too, because he can’t sleep at all when I’m beside him. It would be better for that guy if I step away for a bit.”
Baigarten added bitterly and returned to the upperclassman classroom.
However, at lunchtime, when they opened Sarka’s room door following Baigarten who had to change the IV, they both froze at the scene in the living room.
The bedroom door was wide open, and the Levin tube and IV needle had been pulled out and were rolling on the floor. The needle that had been forcibly yanked out had blood on it, and drops of blood continued from the living room to the open bathroom door.
Baigarten rushed into the open bathroom. Ruslan followed hurriedly and felt his heart sink at the scene inside the bathroom.
Sarka had collapsed with his upper body leaning against the bathtub. Cold water was pouring out from the faucet, filling the bathtub and overflowing below.
Sarka had roughly torn off only the left side of his wet nightshirt, and from his exposed arm, red streams of blood flowed down like snakes coiling around his white arm, seeping into the pooled water on the soaked floor.
Baigarten’s face turned pale when he discovered the blood-soaked paper knife, scissors, and cutter knife rolling on the floor.
Baigarten, who had rushed forward stepping in the water, grabbed Sarka’s shoulder with trembling hands and turned him around.
Unlike what they had momentarily suspected at first, Sarka had not slit his wrists or anything. It seemed Sarka had no intention of attempting suicide.
However… it seemed he simply couldn’t bear the terrible pain the Controller was giving him.
Their gazes stopped on Sarka’s left arm. Observing the roughly gouged wounds around the Controller, Ruslan realized that Sarka had tried to tear off the Controller by randomly slashing down with the knife.
It seemed that when Sarka’s fever went down, the headache felt even more severe. As his mind became clearer, he couldn’t bear the terrible pain at all, so it seemed he had tried desperately to numb the pain somehow by dunking his head in cold water and washing his face.
But when the pain only became clearer and clearer, Sarka, unable to endure it, roughly tore at his clothes and began to struggle to remove the Controller.
The metal lock was full of rough marks from the knife, and the missed traces were gouged into the flesh around the Controller, holding blood. The skin in contact with the Controller had been scratched and clawed at again with fingernails over the wounds, becoming ragged.
Ruslan was looking at the blood-soaked bits of flesh under the fingernails of Sarka’s limp right hand when he suddenly noticed the skin on his palm had been peeled off red and raw.
Baigarten, noticing Ruslan’s gaze, grabbed Sarka’s limp right hand and slowly turned it to check.
Seeing the state of the palm, both their bodies stiffened.
Sarka’s right hand was full of peeled and raw traces, as if he had been electrocuted.
Ruslan looked at the Controller with trembling eyes. Finding the blood-soaked handprints on the metal lock and belt, Ruslan realized that the Controller was designed to generate electric shocks if someone tried to forcibly tear it off.
Even knowing this, Sarka had tried to open the Controller until his entire right hand was raw. Even knowing that the knife and scissors were useless, he couldn’t give up, and even while getting burns from the electric shocks, he had randomly clawed and scratched at the Controller.
Seeing how the always neat fingernails were all broken and flipped back, with even the tender flesh under the nails all distorted by burns, Ruslan felt his heart sink.
But Sarka’s desperate attempts to reduce the pain didn’t end there.
Baigarten’s face hardened when he realized that blood had pooled on the upper part of the bathtub where Sarka had been lying face down with his forehead pressed against it. Baigarten slowly raised his hand and lifted up Sarka’s head that had been hanging down. The moment his head tilted back and Sarka’s face was revealed, they both closed their mouths.
On Sarka’s pale, water-soaked forehead, desperate fingernail marks were visible between his blood-soaked hair. It seemed Sarka had wanted to rather split his head open or tear off his face from the splitting headache. The fingernail marks scratching his brow and temples were swollen red with bits of flesh peeled off.
But Sarka knew he couldn’t reduce the pain at all with just that. So…
Ruslan slowly peeled back the hair stuck to Sarka’s forehead with trembling hands. Baigarten looked down at Sarka’s forehead with frozen eyes.
Between the dark red bruises, blood flowing from flesh torn as if ripped apart was drawing long bloodstains down his face and dripping below.
“……”
“……”
Baigarten slowly turned his head to look at the wall. Ruslan, following his gaze, looked at the bathroom wall and stopped breathing.
On the bathroom wall, the tile at the position where the slumped Sarka’s forehead touched was broken, with clear bloodstains on it. Ruslan nearly felt nauseous at the sight of several blood-soaked silver hairs tangled and caught on the edge of the broken tile.
This is what happens when you confine a highly intelligent beast in a narrow iron cage for a long time. This is also why cruel poultry farms sometimes cut off chickens’ beaks.
Beasts that can’t endure the pain and stress scratch and peck at their own bodies…
And then start banging their heads against the wall.
“……”
“……”
Silence flowed.
Ruslan’s arms trembled.
Sarka had banged his head against the wall until the skin on his forehead bruised and finally split open and bled.
The headache the Controller gave was worse than the pain of his head splitting open and blood flowing out. Perhaps he even felt refreshed when the blood flowed out.
In the end, Sarka had rammed the wall with his head until he was exhausted, and finally passed out completely drained.
Sarka’s face, limp in Baigarten’s arms, was pale. The face that had lost its reddish heat had turned white as paper again, and the veins were now turning dark blue. The dark blue blood vessels that began to cover Sarka’s temples and nape as the poison spread looked like scribbles drawn randomly by a child with a ballpoint pen.
The fingernail marks scratching over them were deep, and the forehead area where thin streams of blood still flowed down was miserably crushed as if struck repeatedly with a mortar. His eyelashes were closed weakly, and his lips were parted. The body that moved here and there as Baigarten touched it was like a puppet with cut strings.
“…For now… let’s move him… to the bedroom.”
Baigarten said in a tightly locked voice.
When Baigarten carefully slipped his hands under Sarka’s armpits and lifted his upper body, Ruslan also grabbed near Sarka’s legs with trembling hands.
His thin ankle fit satisfyingly in his hand. When Sarka lifted far too easily than he had braced for due to his tall build, Ruslan flinched.
Sarka, who hadn’t been able to properly ingest food for several days, was like an empty object.
Baigarten and Ruslan were able to simply move Sarka to the bedroom. Sarka didn’t move at all.
While Baigarten removed Sarka’s wet shirt and pulled out a bag from under the bed, Ruslan brought a towel and wiped Sarka’s wet upper body.
His skin was ice cold. The fever had certainly gone down. It had just gone down too much. Sarka’s body was like ice. He didn’t seem like a living person at all.
Ruslan unconsciously placed his finger under Sarka’s nose to check his breathing. Baigarten, who had opened the bag and picked up medicine and bandages and stood up, saw Ruslan’s action and muttered.
“I checked earlier. …He is breathing.”
Ruslan also felt the faint breath and barely removed his finger.
Ruslan carefully peeled away the hair stuck to Sarka’s forehead with trembling hands and began wiping the bloodstains. Even as the wet towel moved over the roughly scratched fingernail marks and burst wounds, Sarka didn’t wake up.
While Ruslan wiped Sarka’s face, Baigarten calmly treated the wounds near Sarka’s left arm and applied medicine to his right hand that had been peeled by burns.
Finally, Ruslan, who had wiped away all the blood, hesitantly withdrew his hand. Baigarten’s face was rigidly hardened as he carefully applied medicine on Sarka’s face.
Ruslan blankly watched the scene of murky-colored ointment being applied and bandages being placed over Sarka’s face that was always neat and clean, white without a single blemish, and sparkled like white snow.
Sarka’s face was like a trampled and burst leather bag. A leather bag trampled and burst carelessly by many people.
Finally, having treated all the wounds, Baigarten put a shirt on Sarka and looked down at him with a devastated expression for a long while.
After a moment, Baigarten, who had made a heavy decision, took something out of the bag and climbed onto Sarka’s bed.
Ruslan froze when he realized what was in his hand was a restraint lined inside with soft cloth.
Baigarten expressionlessly grabbed and lifted Sarka’s thin right wrist. As he hooked a ring on the bed headboard and began wrapping Sarka’s wrist with the cloth, Ruslan opened his mouth, but no words came out.
In his head, he could barely understand that if left like this, Sarka’s self-harm would continue, and perhaps it might even reach the point where he would try to take his own life, so it was better to tie him up.
However, when cloth was wrapped around the thin wrist of Sarka who was limp with a crushed doll-like appearance and tied like a prisoner, Ruslan absolutely could not accept that scene. His throat locked up tight and even his breathing seemed blocked.
Baigarten didn’t ask Ruslan for help and silently grabbed and lifted Sarka’s left wrist.
That’s when it happened.
Sarka’s eyelashes faintly twitched, and he curled his hand.
Sarka, who had made a motion that seemed to unconsciously pull and withdraw the caught wrist, frowned when his wrist didn’t move.
“……?”
Frozen, Ruslan watched as Sarka’s eyes opened and his hazy green pupils wavered.
Sarka couldn’t focus properly. Even opening his eyes seemed difficult because of the headache.
However, as he clumsily squirmed, he soon seemed to realize that his right hand was tied and his left hand was just about to be restrained.
“……!!”
