Chapter 15
The man entered, dragging behind him what looked like a doll soaked in blood.
“Awake, Hill?”
The familiar tone made her shudder, like the breath of a demon. Hill didn’t answer. She stared at the thing in his hand. Dragged along like a sack, it was about the size of a curled-up boy.
No— It was a boy.
“Just a moment.”
After dipping his head as if asking pardon, the man tossed the boy aside. The boy collapsed onto the floor, unable to even groan properly. His face was a ruin, caked with dried blood, and his left eye was gone. Hill clenched the bedsheet without realizing it.
“I considered handling him alone. But since he committed an outrage against you, I thought you deserved the right to witness his end.”
He forced the boy upright against a small wooden post nearby and bound him there, brushing his hands together afterward. The boy, unable to even hold his head up, sagged in his restraints and breathed weakly.
“What do you think, Hill?”
The man stepped closer, asking as though seeking approval. Hill swallowed back a wave of nausea and barely managed to answer.
“Let him… go.”
“I shouldn’t have destroyed his left eye so early. But a wound like that can be healed with my blood, so there’s no need to be disappointed.”
“Please… stop this madness…”
“Where shall I begin, then? The right eye that dared to spy on you? The tongue that spat filthy curses? Or perhaps the hands or fingers that laid themselves on you. Shall I start by cutting off his manhood?”
Hill knew there was no point in saying anything more. A sob rose in her throat. The man watched her strained expression for a moment, then smiled faintly and nodded, as if understanding.
“Ah. I see what you mean.”
He gently reached out and wiped at the moisture gathering in her eyes.
“You’re saying we should extract the one behind him first, then punish him properly. Truly, my Hill is wise. I almost forgot.”
Hill shook her head, biting her lip, but it was useless. He kissed the corner of her eye, straightened, and walked toward the boy.
Gripping the blade, the man lifted the boy’s chin with the hilt and asked,
“Who sent you?”
“…Bastard… go to hell… I’ll—”
The boy, barely able to open his remaining eye, convulsed before finishing his sentence. The blood-smeared hilt was yanked free from his shoulder.
“Ugh… khh…”
“If you want to die with even a shred of dignity, you’d better confess quickly.”
“A-anyway… you won’t kill me nicely— kagh!“
The man’s index finger drove into the empty socket where the left eye had been. As he casually worked his finger into the ruined cavity, he spoke in a quiet, even tone.
“As you people like to say, I carry the blood of a mad giant.”
If one heard only his voice, without seeing the scene, it might have sounded almost gentle.
As the boy could do no more than emit hoarse, rattling sounds, the man continued,
“And giant blood carries a miraculous power to heal wounds.”
Some knew this. Some didn’t. The boy certainly did. The man let his threat seep into the boy’s ear.
“If I so desire, you could writhe for years, unable to die, suffering pain worse than death.”
And not just you. Everyone who so much as exchanged a word with you would share that fate.
“If you doubt I’d truly go that far, feel free to keep your mouth shut. I’m happy to put in the effort.”
“A… ahh…”
The boy let out a hollow sound. When the man withdrew his finger indifferently, bloody tears poured from the socket.
After coldly surveying the boy’s ruined state, the man raised his blood-smeared finger to his lips and sucked at it, as if tasting the blood.
Once he had licked even the blood from his lips, he turned with a bright smile and spoke cheerfully to the trembling Hill.
“Perhaps it’s because it came from an eye that once held you, even briefly. It almost tastes sweet.”
“…You’re crazy.”
“A strange thing to say now, Hill. I’ve always been crazy for you.”
Smiling softly, the man turned back again and met the boy’s blood-shot gaze.
“I’m looking forward to the moment you beg for death and finally spill what you know.”
Soon after, a wet tearing sound was followed by a muffled scream. Hill closed her eyes, despising her own cowardice and helplessness, and prayed—
That the boy would die quickly.
It took less than a day for him to give up everything he knew.
Tortured until it seemed all the blood and fluid had been wrung from his body, the boy finally moved his nearly toothless mouth and rasped out the truth in a breathy whisper.
“The one…”
A name already expected crawled out, broken and barely audible. The man listened quietly, then said,
“You should have confessed sooner. I knew it all anyway.”
He glanced behind him. Hill, who had taken nothing and done nothing but retch throughout the torture, had long since collapsed into exhaustion. Looking at her sleeping as if dead, he muttered,
“Then my Hill wouldn’t have had to see such ugliness.”
“Bas…th..”
Even with his body utterly destroyed, the boy’s lingering defiance was almost admirable. The man acknowledged that malice.
Of course, that did not mean mercy.
Coldly, he shoved the severed organ that had been lying on the floor into the boy’s mouth.
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