# Chapter 40
It was blood stains. My legs, which had been heading home, stopped abruptly.
Red drops that had fallen onto the pristine white snow were leading toward the cabin. Droplets of blood that started from deep within the forest dotted the path all the way to the cabin entrance. Things whiter than snow permeated my mind and filled it completely.
By the time I came to my senses, I had thrown down my basket and was running toward the cabin. I didn’t think about forming a plan or finding weapons. I threw the door open immediately. Inside the cabin, which was tightly sealed with windows closed and no ventilation, there was a faint smell of blood.
“Rite, Rite…”
In over ten years of living here, monsters had never once approached the house. Not only was it at the edge of the forest, but after raising Rite, I had obsessively installed magical tools and mechanical devices to block monsters from approaching.
Nothing was more important than the child’s safety. And yet, had it still not been enough?
When I frantically passed through the entrance and stepped into the living room, my eyes met Rite’s as he turned to look at me.
“You’re late. I thought you’d arrive home before me.”
“…You, that…”
Rite wiped the blood that had splattered on his cheek with the back of his left hand. The dark red blood on his moon-white cheek looked alien. Child and blood. Rite and blood. Those two words filled my mind completely, preventing normal thought. It felt like all my circuits were tangled.
“Jack again?”
Rite smiled, pulling up one corner of his mouth. Yet his eyes remained unchanged. His features creating disharmony, giving an eerie feeling.
“You, the blood…”
Only then did my gaze turn to Rite’s hands. His left hand was relatively clean compared to his right. His right hand, covered in hard scales, was something unfamiliar even to me since it was the first time seeing it since that day. Blood that had seeped between the black scales was dripping onto the floor. And in that hand was the head of an Achris.
“You said you needed it, didn’t you?”
The head looked less like it had been cut and more like it had been torn off. The cross-section was a mess, as if the skin had been forcibly ripped away. Snow piled lightly on the horns proved that this monster had been in the forest until just recently.
The characteristically long upper lip, the feature most different from ordinary deer, swayed in the air, almost touching the floor. There was no black pupil in its eyes, as if it had died struggling in pain with the whites showing. Marks from sharp claws were scattered all over its face, but the horns alone were clean without a single scratch.
That point troubled me the most.
‘Is it difficult?’
‘No, it’s just that the materials are a bit tricky. It would be easier with an Achris horn… but that’s hard to obtain. Combining substitutes is cumbersome.’
“I only brought one for now.”
“Ha…”
“Do you need more?”
Should I say there are two horns? Rite muttered in a nonchalant voice. I recalled our conversation that I had casually mentioned during breakfast. A bitter laugh escaped me from the absurdity. When the tension in my body released at the thought that this wasn’t the worst situation, my legs wobbled. Rite flinched and took a step forward, but I was quicker to steady myself against the wall.
“So you went into the forest and caught an Achris.”
“It wasn’t that difficult. They sleep standing against trees. If you saw halfway through the trees where Achris live and wait, when an Achris leans against the tree, it falls with the tree, and that’s when…”
“Are you out of your mind?”
Had I ever raised my voice this much in my life? I can decisively say never in my memory. Not when I stood in court being told to testify, not when I opposed the unethical experiments conducted in the imperial palace, not even when I stood before people arguing I should be executed immediately—never once had I shouted my opinions.
“Do you have any idea why I spend so much money every month to have Pini buy magical tools? Don’t you understand?”
Words poured out like water breaking through a dam. I was out of breath. I couldn’t tell if it was from speaking without pause or from heightened emotions. Perhaps it was both.
My chest heaved greatly, exhaling rough breaths. I felt congested inside and dizzy. It felt exactly like jumping off a cliff. This fall had no end.
“What’s the problem, Arden?”
There was no sign of irritation on Rite’s face. Even though I was so angry and pressing him, he didn’t even furrow his brow.
“The blood on me isn’t mine, it’s the Achris’s.”
“…”
“Besides.”
Rite paused briefly. His purple eyes, which hadn’t blinked once, observed every movement of my facial muscles.
“This isn’t a human. I didn’t kill it for fun.”
Scenes from the past immediately came to mind. A middle-aged man collapsed on the street, a cotton butterfly crushed in Rite’s hand.
“Monsters, unlike humans, don’t even see my horns or arms as weaknesses. Oh, would the Goddess not forgive this either?”
“…That’s not what I’m talking about right now.”
“Then what do you want to talk about?”
“Are you really completely unhurt?”
The Achris itself wasn’t a particularly dangerous monster. Although its large, curved horns that resembled walking sticks were threatening, they were basically herbivores, so they didn’t attack humans first. There was even debate about whether Achris should be considered monsters or animals.
But the current situation was different. He voluntarily entered the forest and attacked one of the Achris herd. Other members of the herd must have charged at Rite, and the commotion could have attracted other monsters.
“They were too busy running away from me.”
Rite smiled, holding up his right arm. I didn’t want to know what that gesture meant. So I pretended not to understand and continued speaking.
“What were you planning to do if they hadn’t run away? What if there had been other monsters hunting Achris nearby?”
Just the hypothetical scenario made my mind go blank, but Rite acted as if he had no fear at all. It was too serious a matter to dismiss as just the bravado of an immature adolescent.
“I’ve told you countless times since you started walking and understanding words. Don’t go deep into the forest. Yet you couldn’t keep that one rule…”
“That’s not the end of it.”
Rite cut me off. As if he had been waiting for me to say that. This time, his expression definitely contained negative emotions.
“You also said don’t go to the village, don’t go into your room.”
“…”
“So where am I supposed to go?”
It was a question I couldn’t answer either. Where would be most suitable for a child abandoned by the palace, born with the fate of treason? There were no answers to such situations in books, and no one to ask.
If I had asked Plin, what would he have answered? No matter how much I tried to predict the answer, it would only be my thoughts. Plin was no longer in this world, and I only had Rite. The same was true for Rite.
I hated this feeling of helplessness.
“…You can stay here.”
“But you’re not here.”
“I said I’d be back soon.”
“How long is ‘soon’? After you go shopping, have a pleasant conversation with Jack, and enjoy your date with him?”
Rite’s face twisted crookedly. It was clearly mockery.
“When you left earlier, you were wearing perfume.”
My pulse quickened like someone caught doing something wrong. It was just perfume, but I felt as if I had betrayed Rite.
“That’s why I went to the forest and caught an Achris.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“I couldn’t go down to the village and tear out Jack’s throat, could I? Right?”
I closed my mouth at Rite’s statement. I couldn’t believe what Rite had just said. This isn’t the Rite I knew.
He seemed like a completely different person from the Rite who enjoyed crafts and who empathized with poems he didn’t even understand, reading them over and over again.
This was on a completely different level from when he innocently crushed cotton butterflies as a child.
“Rite. You’re being scolded right now.”
“I know. Arden, do you know this? Right now, I’m angry.”
His voice was extremely calm for someone claiming to be angry. It was a completely different expression and voice from his previous behavior of shouting, throwing tantrums, and being unreasonable.
“I want Arden to always be by my side. But.”
“…”
“I can’t go to the village. So I went to the forest.”
I can’t go near people. So I went to the monsters.
It was a subtle threat. If you don’t want me to go to the forest, then you shouldn’t go to the village either. Don’t leave my side even for a moment. A threat premised on my affection and protective instinct. A threat that could only be made by someone who knew it would absolutely work.
I couldn’t win this way. Rite was no longer a baby crawling on the floor or toddling about. He was slightly taller than me and had become a boy, or rather a young man, who could ignore my words and enter the forest alone to cut off an Achris’s head.
I truly. Despised this feeling of helplessness. Beyond helplessness, I felt betrayed by Rite. How could you say such things, using my affection as hostage? Even if it was a childish emotion of wanting to monopolize my affection, it couldn’t eliminate the hurt.
“…I understand what you mean.”
“…”
“What should I do? What would make you stay out of the forest?”
It was all my fault. My fault for isolating the child from the world. A poor child who couldn’t comfort his loneliness and had to be satisfied with just me.
“Arden, I told you. What I want is just one thing.”
“…”
“Stay by my side. Just like before.”
It was strange. Both Rite and I were looking for our previous selves in each other, but neither was satisfied.
As if one of us was longing for an illusion.
