NOVEL NEXT chapter 50
50 – Aftermath (5)
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Sylvia’s footsteps, covered in blood all over, made a clicking sound with every step she took.
It felt like the smelly, gooey monster’s blood was grabbing my ankle.
But, it didn’t matter now.
Because we arrived at the entrance of Millwood Village.
Suddenly, the sky became completely dark midnight.
Sylvia first moved to the graveyard instead of the cabin.
I asked Ash before leaving the cabin, so there must be a pit to bury the body.
Of course, I had no intention of burying the body in the middle of the night.
I couldn’t bring the people Ash killed into the cabin, so I thought I’d just put them in the pit.
However, no newly dug pit was to be seen anywhere in the graveyard.
“… Ash forgot.”
Sylvia murmured as she set the corpse carefully wrapped in a bearskin on the floor.
Sincere Ash rarely procrastinates on what he has to do.
Perhaps it was the first time he had killed a person, so he must have been very surprised and distracted.
Sylvia thought so for a moment.
But soon, an ominous feeling passed through her head.
“…ash!”
Sylvia started running toward the cabin, calling Ash’s name.
Ash is not Sylvia.
It’s easy to think that the two share the same curse, but in fact, if you look carefully, it’s a different curse.
If you look closely, there are obviously several differences.
The biggest difference among them was whether or not they were protected.
The curse does not protect Ash.
In other words, Ash can end his own life at any time.
“Damn, damn, damn! What an asshole! I should have expected it!”
Ash’s condition this morning showed a clear difference from usual.
The figure that suddenly showed anger and tore Sylvia’s chest apart.
If it was the usual Ash, he would never burst into uncontrollable anger, and even if he did get angry, he would never show violence towards Sylvia.
Is that all
Didn’t Ash suddenly sob again when his anger was restrained?
His inability to control his emotions was a clear sign of abnormality.
Shall I hug Ash so he doesn’t suffer?
Would you be okay if you didn’t know anything?
Ha, it was easy.
Ash’s mind had already collapsed like a sandcastle being swept away by the waves.
“ash!”
As Sylvia got closer to the cabin, she could clearly sense the sense of incongruity creeping up on her.
There is no fire.
Not even the slightest light can be seen through the windows or through the cracks in the door.
Two hypotheses came to my mind.
I’m already asleep, or I can’t light a candle.
Sylvia’s eyes began to shake like crazy, unable to hide their nervousness.
Sylvia threw herself toward the door.
bang!
Sylvia, unable to afford to open the door leisurely, kicked the door open and broke it.
The broken door fell into the cabin, leaving a slanted crack along the grain of the wood.
No answer came.
There was no popularity either.
Sylvia made a fire in the palm of her hand and started searching the cabin.
“ash! Where are you! Please answer me!”
under the table. does not exist.
In the cupboard, no.
bed, no
Under the bed, no.
There wasn’t much furniture in the first place, so there were few places to look.
Sylvia ran straight to her room.
The visit was open.
“baby…!”
Sylvia ran to her room and found Ash hiding under her bed, trembling and holding her breath.
Am I sick somewhere?
He didn’t look normal, but luckily he was alive.
Sylvia sighed and sat down on the floor.
Taking a slow breath, she threw the fireball from her hand toward the candlestick and lay down on her side, resting her hand on her hand.
“…ash. Are you okay?”
Ash’s eyes slowly moved towards Sylvia, probably thanks to the fact that they were glued to the floor and aligned at eye level.
Sylvia said with the kindest possible smile.
“I’m here.”
“…”
“Have you been well? won’t you say the same thing? I was honestly looking forward to it.”
“…”
Ash crouched down, clutching his knees and head, blinking his eyes slowly.
Sylvia, just as she was lying down, slowly pulled the floor with her arms and approached Ash.
“What happened? Where are you sick?”
“…”
“…Can I approach you?”
Ash nodded without answering.
Sylvia cautiously approached Ash without urging or accelerating.
Ash was quietly looking at Sylvia.
Ash’s eyes, shaking as much as his trembling body, were full of water, and when he looked closer, the area around his eyes was red and swollen.
It seemed clear that Sylvia must have been crying all day today, when she was out.
Sylvia asked slowly.
“You must be lonely without me.”
“…yes,”
Sylvia was startled when she heard Ash’s voice.
The sound of a wind leak, like a cracked ocarina.
It was because a small, muddy, cracked voice emanated from him.
Sylvia’s voice was also hoarse, but it wasn’t comparable to Ash.
Sylvia approached little by little, and before she knew it, she was facing Ash’s face right in front of her.
Curled up in the darkness under the bed, Ash looked like an abused little animal.
Ash licked his lips slowly in a pitiful voice like a rabbit’s scream.
“Poetry… Sylvia… Mr.”
“Yeah, Ash. I’m here. I am listening.”
“…I can’t go out.”
“hmm?”
“Outside… it’s scary. I think it will kill me. i think i will kill I am too scared to leave the cabin.”
Tears had already flowed all day long, but thick tears rolled down again from his eyes.
Sylvia was not unfamiliar with Ash’s appearance.
Those days when I was raised as a private in an aristocratic family.
As she found out later, it was no mere enlisted men’s training camp.
Aside from the rigors that cannot be compared with ordinary training,
It was also strange that the trainees were brainwashed to kill people without hesitation from a very young age.
Of course, Sylvia, who grew up there, didn’t find it strange at the time, but other trainees didn’t.
At the training center, sparring was held every Sunday against a randomly selected opponent to the death.
If you are over twelve years old, you must participate in the sparring, and you don’t know whether your opponent will take a colleague, a senior, or a junior, but one thing is certain: it will end only if the opponent dies or doesn’t rise again.
If they hesitated or fought back, both of them were executed, and if one of them gave up the match and died, the opponent was automatically matched with the other opponent.
Everyone tried to make the opponent incapacitated as much as possible without taking the life of the opponent, but accidents that killed the opponent unintentionally occurred frequently.
Sylvia remembered that the traumatized trainee who killed her best friend looked exactly like Ash now.
‘Sorry, I… I…’
‘It’s scary… next week… the week after that… you have to keep killing… no, next week… I might die!’
True to his word, the trainee died in Dalian the following week.
I can’t even remember his face now, but he seems to have been kind to others and had his own sense of humor even in that desolate training center.
“…ash.”
“I’m sorry… I couldn’t… do what you asked me to do…”
“Did you stay here after I left?”
“…yes,”
Like the trainee in the past, Ash seemed deeply traumatized.
The bear that almost killed him or the people he killed flickered in front of him, so he couldn’t get out.
In fact, Ash’s mind had already been pushed to the limit since he was chased by a bear.
I was getting over it little by little with training.
The fatal incident of murder that happened at that timing left a huge aftereffect on the weak Ash.
Sylvia’s mind was complicated.
It was hard to see Ash, whose heart was broken, to the extent that it made my heart ache just by looking at it.
At the same time, Sylvia’s mind was filled with such complicated feelings that she was a little happy that she had succeeded in confining Ash to this cabin without cutting off her leg.
Sylvia not too long ago might have welcomed Ash like this.
But now she wasn’t like that.
Because he came to know how much wrong he had done to the siblings of the staff family.
He hides the truth from Ash, doesn’t ask for forgiveness, and can’t let him go.
In return, Sylvia had promised that she would make Ash happy.
Ash quietly stuck in the cabin is very special, but that won’t make Ash happy.
Sylvia slowly tried to reach out to Ash.
Suddenly, Sylvia realized that her hands were all sticky with the blood of the monsters, and she flinched and withdrew her hands.
Sylvia opened her mouth slowly.
“ash.”
“…yes”
“Do you think it will be difficult to go out with me?”
“I do not know.”
Sylvia slowly put her hand on the bed frame.
She didn’t even apply much force, but Sylvia lifted the bed so lightly.
Ash curled up like a ball bug to avoid the light that suddenly hit him, then slowly got up and walked on his knees toward Sylvia.
Sylvia said in a firm voice to Ash who was trying to hug her.
“no.”
“…yes?”
“Don’t sleep.”
“…Ah, ah… that,”
In an instant, Ash’s face was covered with despair and anxiety.
Sylvia opened her mouth without hesitation to avoid provoking Ash.
“Ash, look at my body. It bleeds all over.”
“…Ahhh! Sylvia, are you hurt?”
Ash’s face was stained with even greater despair.
It was an expression that looked like it would be sobbing at any moment.
Sylvia quickly shook her head and answered.
“It’s not my blood.”
“…That, then,”
“There were a lot of monsters nearby… don’t worry too much,”
“Eh… monsters.”
“Yeah, anyway, that’s what I mean, Ash. I want to go to the river to take a bath.”
“… yes,”
Sylvia smiled slightly and asked as she put down the bed to avoid Ash.
“Would you like to take a bath together?”
.