# Chapter 27
Rite was in a space surrounded by trees like a fortress. I met him again in the Winter Forest. He was quietly gazing at the mobile—the only thing he’d taken from home—hanging on a tree, touching the suspended pieces with his fingertips. Wooden pieces and pine cones collided with each other, making sounds like small bells hanging under a door or roof.
A gentle breeze tousled Rite’s pitch-black hair. The line connecting his straight forehead to his prominent nose was smooth. The cold left red traces on his cheeks, which were as white as moonlight. His purple eyes followed the hanging pieces. Rite’s gaze, which had been following a yellow butterfly made of wood, fell on me. His movement as he turned toward me seemed slow, as if someone had stretched time.
“Rite.”
At my call, Rite’s expression was exactly like someone waking from a dream. The entire dreamlike scenery shattered. Rite bit his lower lip. His eyes were full of wariness as he looked at me.
“…Let’s go home for now. We can talk there.”
This wasn’t a place where we could have a leisurely conversation. Without hesitation, I approached and grabbed Rite’s wrist.
“No.”
Rite twisted his wrist and pulled it away. The child was rejecting me. I stared at Rite’s wrist that had slipped from my grasp in disappointment before lifting my gaze.
“Don’t you know how dangerous it is here? I told you so many times. Never go to a place crawling with monsters…”
“I’m a monster too anyway.”
The voice that cut off my words hurt so much it felt cruel.
He shouldn’t have said that. Not because I pitied Rite. He shouldn’t have said such things in front of me, who had raised him all this time. How hard I had tried not to raise Rite to think that way.
The subject of my efforts was trying to treat our time together as meaningless.
“I’m just someone who makes Arden troubled and anxious.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know you’re anxious about me. Because I have horns on my head and purple eyes. That’s why you don’t tell me my eyes are pretty anymore.”
My mind went blank. This was the reason Rite had been avoiding people’s eyes. All because of me.
Since when had I made Rite anxious? Was it when I smiled awkwardly at people saying his eye color was pretty? Or when I pulled his hat down deeply over and over?
‘After observing humans for more than 20 years, I found that there’s no action without reason.’
Belatedly, I understood Pini’s words. Before I could sink deeper into self-blame, Rite spoke.
“My place is here. I shouldn’t be in that house. So, Arden should go back alone.”
How could he not understand my feelings? I wanted to shout at him, asking how he could say such things to me. I wanted to use force if necessary to drag the child home.
“You probably don’t remember anything.”
“…”
“The day we first met, the day you were in too much pain to even cry, the day you first opened your eyes. All of it.”
But I couldn’t do that. He was a child I had raised with such care. I didn’t want to shout at or overpower such a child into submission. That would truly be treating Rite as a monster, not a person.
“But I remember everything, Rite.”
“…”
“I remember the day you first walked on two feet, and I vividly recall the day you called my name.”
“…”
“Who knows you better than I do?”
I couldn’t even properly remember my life in the forest before meeting Rite. I had lived like a machine moving according to an engineer’s intentions. I breathed because I was alive, and I continued my daily life because I couldn’t die. There were no special days, no worst days.
But everything changed after meeting Rite. There was the day when the child first put on his shoes by himself. We laughed for a long time because he had switched the left and right. After he started walking, he would get into trouble if I took my eyes off him for even a moment, so not a single day was quiet.
The day I unknowingly shouted when he tried to touch a hot pot, the day the child learned letters, his first crooked writing, the face smiling at me while showing his clumsy writing, the awkwardly written word “Arden.” I remembered all these small things.
“This is not where you should be.”
Not yet. Even though I had made Rite’s room and called it independence, it was only self-reliance under the same roof. Rite was still young and immature. He still needed my help, and I was still helpful to him.
“So, let’s go home.”
I still needed Rite. I wasn’t ready to let him go from my arms.
Independence is like a bird leaving its nest. The one who suffers more than the baby bird that leaves to find a new nest is the parent bird guarding the empty nest. Independence requires preparation for both people.
A passage I had read in a book came to mind. I didn’t have the confidence to guard an empty nest yet.
Rite, who had been looking at me with wavering eyes, opened his mouth. White breath flowed out between his pale blue lips.
“Arden. I want to ask you something.”
“…”
“Do you love me?”
It was an easy question. I was about to nod naturally when tears burst out. Unable to cry aloud, I bit my lips hard. The tears flowing down my cold cheeks felt hot. I nodded several times.
“Yes. I love you.”
My locked voice broke pathetically. Nevertheless, Rite hugged me tightly. It was time to go home now.
* * *
After ending the runaway episode, Rite and I stayed inside the house for a while. The days were ordinary yet, looking back, no day was the same—they were extraordinary days.
Rite became quieter afterward, but that didn’t mean he stopped causing trouble.
Having gained various experiences in relationships with people, Rite began to think more diversely and learned to express his position more logically than before, making it only more difficult for me as his teacher.
One day, Rite caught a cotton butterfly. It was a butterfly found only in the northern regions, an insect that looks similar to a snowball at first glance despite being called a butterfly.
I thought Rite was just playing, crushing twigs, when I saw him pounding something with a small stone. Until I saw the red blood on Rite’s hand.
Of course, I scolded Rite sharply, telling him he shouldn’t do that, but Rite didn’t understand me at all.
‘Why? It’s not a person anyway. It can’t even talk.’
At those words, I envisioned a distant future—a future where Rite, in an irrational state, mercilessly kills humans and devours the country.
‘Anyway, they’re different from me. They’re just weak humans. They don’t have horns or scales.’
A huge monster saying such things while smashing a small human with a stone.
Of course, that was all my unfounded anxiety. No matter what words I used to persuade him, Rite couldn’t understand, and in the end, he only accepted it after hearing that the goddess would never forgive killing life merely for amusement.
For Rite, fairy tales with goddesses or fairies worked better than logic.
Another noteworthy incident was Rite’s last baby tooth.
On the day I first told him that a loose tooth should be pulled out, Rite, who had cried saying he would never pull it out, was persuaded by the story of the tooth fairy.
But on the day his last baby tooth fell out, Rite was calm. He was no longer afraid, nor was he excited about the possibility of meeting the tooth fairy. Rather, I was the one caught in a strange mood, fidgeting with the extracted tooth for a long time.
Nevertheless, Rite dutifully placed his baby tooth by his pillow before going to sleep, and I secretly headed to Rite’s room to replace the tooth with a coin.
I moved carefully in the darkness so as not to wake Rite. I opened the door cautiously and looked around the dark room. Though furnished with simple furniture, the room had a cute feel due to the mobile hanging by the bed and toys from childhood.
It was now an age when those toys should be thrown away, but Rite cherished them so much that I couldn’t clear them out. Especially the mobile, which he seemed to regard particularly fondly, even taking it with him when he ran away.
If I still imagine Rite falling asleep while looking at the mobile, I think it’s cute rather than creepy, so there must be something wrong with me too.
After waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, I slowly moved forward. As I felt around Rite’s pillow with the hand holding the coin, I found the tooth. After swapping the coin and the tooth, I turned my eyes to check on the sleeping Rite.
“…”
The eyelids I thought would be closed were open. The purple eyes were distinct even in the darkness.
“…Ah, well. I…”
What excuse should I make? Should I say I came to your room after hearing the fairy’s voice while sleeping? Had he seen the tooth in my hand?
“Arden…”
Startled by the sudden call, my shoulders flinched. Rite blinked slowly.
“…Pretty.”
“…”
Leaving these unexpected words, whether sleep-talking or not, Rite slowly closed his eyes. Unable to grasp the situation, I stood dumbfounded for a moment before coming to my senses belatedly and quickly left the room.
Returning to my room, I opened the window and threw the tooth far away. Rite’s last baby tooth disappeared as if sucked into the darkness.
After closing the window, I turned my head to the bookshelf and noticed a small tooth preserved in a transparent case. It was the first front tooth he had lost.
It was a baby tooth I had barely managed to pull out after calming down the crying and screaming Rite. Somehow, I felt it would be a waste to throw it away, so I disinfected it thoroughly and kept it in a suitable place.
The small tooth I had discovered while feeding the child cooked fruit with my finger when I first brought him home. Thinking that time had passed and it had fallen out made it feel special.
“It’s just a fallen baby tooth.”
When I tapped the transparent container with my fingertip, the small tooth rolled once. For some reason, that made me smile.
It was a repetition of trivial yet unforgettable incidents like this.
It wasn’t just because of the timid Rite that we didn’t go outside. Even I, living at the edge of the forest, could sense the ominous atmosphere of the country.
Last month, the Knights were dispatched to the village twice. They were searching through the forest again, so neither Rite nor I could leave the house for a while. Only after the black uniforms disappeared from the forest and we had monitored the situation for a long time could we go down to the village.
The young people in the village were pleased, saying that they were now paying attention to our village too, but the older residents showed displeasure. I couldn’t join the young people in their delight either. I could be certain that I was the person in this area who welcomed this fact the least.
Since we might have to stay cooped up again, whenever I went down to the village, I had to spend a long time there.
I would shop generously and also receive and deliver commissions all at once. I usually gathered firewood myself, but lately, I had been buying it more often. When the Knights were dispatched, even wandering near the house felt burdensome.
“Rite. Can you carry all this?”
I wasn’t sure how much firewood would be manageable to carry. If I carried the firewood, Rite would have to carry the groceries we bought today. Rite picked up the basket and nodded. Seeing how effortlessly he lifted it, I thought we could buy a bit more firewood.
“I’ll take one more bundle.”
“Thank you.”
The young man, who was both the store clerk and the owner’s son, smiled and handed me one more bundle of firewood. He was the brown-haired man I had met before at Lucy’s store. He placed it on top of the firewood and tied it securely with a rope. It was quite heavy, but having it stocked up like this would ease my mind for a while.
“Father.”
While I was checking whether the tied ropes showed any signs of breaking, I turned around at the clerk’s cheerful call to see the gray-haired store owner. The owner smiled and greeted me as soon as he saw me.
“You’re coming often these days.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Actually, I was just talking about you.”
I was about to gather my things and leave after confirming there were no issues, but the owner’s words stopped me. Not understanding what he meant, I looked at the man, who explained nonchalantly.
“I just met the Knights. And they were asking about Arden, so I spoke well of you.”
