Sarka’s face contorted. He instinctively tried to shake off Baigarten.
When Baigarten’s hardened face applied force to Sarka’s wrist that was trying to shake him off, Sarka’s teeth clenched.
Ruslan saw Sarka’s face twist as his breathing became ragged in an instant. As his body was restrained, Sarka seemed to unconsciously recall the time when the tube had been forcibly pushed into his airway.
Sarka’s lips trembled as he remembered the agony of his eyes rolling back and losing consciousness, his breathing becoming unstable.
Soon Sarka began to thrash violently like a wild beast. It was such rough struggling that it was surprising he had any strength left at all.
Ruslan saw Sarka’s teeth clench as his brow and eyelids trembled finely.
At first, Baigarten tried to release the force from his hands, even briefly, so Sarka wouldn’t feel pressured.
However, when he saw that Sarka was hurriedly applying force to pull out his already bound right hand, causing the wounds on his arm to burst open and bleed, Baigarten’s face hardened too.
Soon Baigarten grabbed both of Sarka’s wrists and pressed them down onto the bed with a stern motion.
Violent breaths flowed through Sarka’s teeth as his rampage became more fierce. His struggling legs pushed wildly at the sheets, his heels striking the floor. There was the sound of grinding teeth and labored swallowing.
Sarka didn’t open his mouth. Baigarten also kept his mouth firmly shut and climbed on top of Sarka entirely, pressing down with his weight.
Sarka thrashed his shoulders back and forth with a violent, screaming momentum, but Baigarten’s body only bobbed slightly and wasn’t pushed away.
Baigarten persistently suppressed Sarka’s long-limbed, tall body with weight alone. Though the difference in their heights wasn’t great, Sarka, who had grown gaunt over several days, and Baigarten, who had always had a thick build, now had a clear difference in weight class. If sixteen-year-old Sarka was a young stag not yet fully grown, nineteen-year-old Baigarten was a well-trained warhorse.
If Sarka could use his supernatural powers as usual, such weight class would be nothing but a meaningless number—without moving a single finger, he could have sent Baigarten flying to the ceiling. Without using even a breath’s worth of power, Sarka would have crumpled Baigarten’s thick body like a sheet of paper.
However, with his supernatural powers paralyzed and having barely eaten for days, Sarka was no match for Baigarten in physical strength alone. Sarka seemed to have fallen into a panic at his own condition.
As thick arms and thighs pressed down with solid weight and composure, Sarka’s gaunt body gradually stiffened like a deer with broken legs. His chest heaved laboriously from rough breathing, and his Adam’s apple could be seen writhing.
Sarka rapidly lost strength before long.
He desperately tried to apply force, but Ruslan soon realized that a blow more intense than the restraints or Baigarten’s strength had struck Sarka.
“……!!”
Sarka, who had been clenching his teeth as if squeezing out his last remaining strength, suddenly froze with a sharp intake of breath, like someone who had been struck on the head.
Ruslan saw Sarka’s unfocused green eyes stiffen as his entire body went rigid, then trembled with a shudder.
“Huk…….”
Sarka’s face contorted, then he quickly opened his mouth and threw his head back, convulsing as if shrinking tightly.
From the backlash of struggling, a terribly violent headache seemed to have struck his head.
“……!! ……!!”
Sarka’s mouth twisted and opened as if to scream, but no sound came out.
Saliva stretched thinly between his teeth before soon dripping down. The dark blue veins that had been visible on Sarka’s nape became more vivid against his pale skin. As his pulse quickened from fear and agitation, the poison seemed to spread through his body faster, pain coursing throughout. Cold sweat that broke out in an instant made Sarka’s entire body glisten.
The increasingly vivid pain drained the strength from Sarka’s body, and before long, even his eyes completely unfocused. Sarka’s wrists were no longer pushing away Baigarten’s hands but hanging caught in them.
“……Huk……, kuk……”
Baigarten watched the scene of Sarka’s once-rigid body losing strength and gradually going limp like a puppet with its strings cut, still gripping Sarka’s wrists.
Sarka’s lips parted weakly. His eyes unfocused murkily like someone who had completely lost their sight. Even the muscles of Sarka’s face could be seen relaxing. In the headache, he went limp like someone half-losing consciousness. Ruslan saw that even amid this, the muscles around his stiff neck and brow trembled finely from the pain.
Sarka had to expend more energy enduring the headache than pushing Baigarten away.
A faint groan flowed out. His eyes spun dizzily in circles, unable to find focus and blurring. Ruslan blankly watched the scene of Sarka pushing at the sheets with his heels a few times before soon going limp, tilting his head and sinking down.
Baigarten flinched when he saw a thin stream of blood flowing through Sarka’s teeth, as if he had unconsciously bitten his tongue unable to bear the pain.
“……Sarka?”
Baigarten called with a rigidly hardened face, but Sarka didn’t answer.
Sarka only lay limp with unfocused green eyes like a broken porcelain doll.
Baigarten anxiously raised his palm to grab Sarka’s chin and peer into his mouth.
While pressing down his tongue to examine the wound, Sarka didn’t react. Though Baigarten gripped his cheek with a hardened face and lightly tapped it, Sarka didn’t move at all.
Baigarten silently looked down at the unconscious Sarka’s face.
Silence flowed.
Though Ruslan was still frozen, unable to even breathe, Baigarten soon made a devastated expression before making a heavy decision.
After finishing securing Sarka’s left wrist to the bed, Baigarten slowly descended below the bed. Seeing Baigarten rummage through his bag and pull out a gag, Ruslan contorted his face and unconsciously took a half-step back.
Baigarten silently placed the gag in unconscious Sarka’s mouth and fastened the strap behind his head. Sarka’s head rolled this way and that like a ball as Baigarten handled it.
Baigarten stood and fell silent with a complex expression. Ruslan looked down vacantly at the bloodied boy bound like a beast.
“…….”
No one could open their mouth.
Baigarten tried to say something to Ruslan but ultimately couldn’t open his mouth, silently turning Ruslan’s shoulders around. Pushed by Baigarten, who kept his mouth firmly shut and jerked his chin toward the door, Ruslan walked haltingly.
Until they completely left the room, Ruslan couldn’t tear his gaze away and looked back at Sarka’s bedroom several times. Baigarten was looking down at Sarka with an expression completely submerged in disillusionment.
All day long, Ruslan couldn’t hear the lessons. Forget lessons—Ruslan was frozen in a daze, unable to even recognize where he was sitting.
Sarka’s crushed face stuck to his retina as if it wouldn’t come off. Ruslan felt his hands trembling violently.
That boy who was always neat, tidy, and strongly self-controlled—what degree of pain must it be, pain to the point of losing reason and tearing at his entire face?
He couldn’t even imagine it. Just imagining it felt like his heart was collapsing.
What did Sarka think while banging his head against the wall like a beast?
Suddenly, Ruslan’s face twisted.
Ruslan realized he knew. Without even needing to imagine, Ruslan had known that feeling for a long time.
Because he had experienced it directly.
It was the summer when he was eight years old.
Ruslan was tied to a tree stump.
Village men surrounded Ruslan holding torches. There was a fishy smell from the blood and flesh scattered on the ground. The priest was kneeling beside Ruslan, persuading him.
That day was the first day Ruslan had ever punched someone. The day Kanya died, and Ruslan couldn’t bear it and rushed at the children who insulted Kanya for the first time.
The villagers said they should kill Ruslan. That they should burn that impudent brat who dared to take the vampire’s side, just like they did his grandmother. The people who gathered in a rage with torches in front of the temple courtyard were ready to burn down the temple too if they didn’t hand over Ruslan.
The priest persuaded and persuaded the people, finally presenting a compromise.
Ruslan was still young, he said, at an age where he couldn’t distinguish good from evil. For eight years, the wicked vampire had taught him and he’d been tainted, but if they guided him on the right path from now on, he could become a good child again. So the adults needed to discipline and re-teach Ruslan.
The village men dragged Ruslan below Mossy Mountain and tied him to a tree stump. The priest told Ruslan to swear that he would never attack people again, that he wouldn’t take the side of the vampire grandmother. If Ruslan admitted his wrongdoing and apologized, they would release him right away.
Ruslan held out through the night until the sun rose the next day.
Blood soaked into the tree stump, and though he lost consciousness several times and woke to being doused with cold water, he didn’t open his mouth.
Though the priest gripped the back of Ruslan’s neck and said in a tone half-mixed with threats and pleading that he would die at this rate, Ruslan didn’t answer.
Even as the whip broke and he saw flesh being torn away, Ruslan desperately clenched his teeth.
He thought he’d rather die.
He thought he’d die and go meet Kanya.
Ruslan unconsciously clenched his teeth while crumpling his notebook. His fingertips trembled violently.
Sarka must have thought that way too.
Rather than submit to humans who insult his mother, he’d rather smash his own head, break his body, and cut off his breath.
Ruslan had no doubt that Sarka had thought that way.
Sarka must have wanted to die instead.
In the classroom where lessons proceeded calmly, Ruslan trembled finely with his fist clenched over his crumpled notebook, body curled up.
As if he were tied to that tree stump again, eight years ago.
As if blood still flowed from those vivid whip marks.
The headmaster, who entered Sarka’s room after receiving Baigarten’s report, didn’t come out until nightfall.
Ruslan guessed that they intended to persuade Sarka even if it took all night.
But Ruslan knew how that night would end.
The next morning, Baigarten’s face was dark when he came down for breakfast.
Their eyes met.
Though Ruslan didn’t ask, Baigarten briefly shook his head as if answering his gaze.
Sarka hadn’t opened his mouth.
