Chapter 33
Her flesh tore. Something large was forced out through the opening, stretched wide. The pain was so overwhelming that the sound itself cut out.
In a world where nothing could be heard, Hill let out a silent scream and summoned the last of her strength.
And then—
The moment the child slipped free was shockingly brief, almost anticlimactic compared to the long agony before it.
The feeling of everything she had carried inside being expelled all at once was close to release. Hill instinctively understood that the birth was over and began to gulp for air.
Her hearing still hadn’t returned. A sharp ringing buzzed incessantly in her ears. But none of that mattered. Weak arms barely obeying her will, she stretched them out and rasped hoarsely,
“My… my baby…”
She spoke words she couldn’t even hear herself say, arms trembling as she reached out. She begged for the baby to be placed in her arms. The wait felt endless, stretching on like an eternity.
Please. Please, hurry…
The old midwife, drenched in sweat, lifted her head. Her dull-colored lips moved as she said something. Reading her mouth, Hill thought she was asking if it was all right.
Hill shook her arms again, urging her to give her the baby. I’m fine. It doesn’t matter. Just the baby. My baby…
With a troubled expression, the old woman raised her hands. Resting in her cupped palms was a baby wrapped in swaddling cloth. Its eyes were still closed, as if it couldn’t open them yet.
Though born before full term, its wet hair was surprisingly thick. At the sight of its slender, pale fingers, emotion surged up violently.
Ah… my baby.
Hill reached out farther, asking for the child. The old woman hesitated, glancing at the father standing beside her—then finally nodded and handed the baby over.
The baby was very small. Small enough to hold entirely in one arm. Perhaps because of the contrast with the white cloth wrapped around it, its skin looked vividly red. Maybe because the labor had been so difficult, it was unusually quiet. It should have been screaming, crying.
But not even a strong breath passed between its slightly parted lips.
“Baby…”
Hill called softly, carefully, as though even her breath might harm it. She gently traced the tiny curled hand, delicately brushed the bloodstained cheek with her fingertips.
“You must be so tired, my baby. It was so hard coming out… You must have fallen asleep already, didn’t you?”
Cradling the limp child again and again, Hill smiled faintly at its listless face and asked the man holding her hand for confirmation. He gave no reply.
As Hill tilted her head, seeking an answer, her expression slowly turned pale. Her trembling fingers moved to the baby’s chest, searching. She pressed her ear urgently against the tiny torso and her face collapsed.
Slowly, but unmistakably, like wet sand crumbling under rain.
Her strengthless lips parted like a split pomegranate. Inside her open mouth was darkness, as deep as despair.
Then, from that hollow of despair, a horrific scream poured out.
Hill’s world, which had finally regained sound, filled completely with the wail of a mother who had lost her child.
8. Epilogue – The Black Thing in the Mouth
A day passed. Over that day, Hill fainted and regained consciousness again and again.
Her b*****s, unaware that the baby was gone, were swollen tight with milk. Yellowish b****t milk leaked steadily from n*****s with no mouth to feed. Each time it happened, the reality that there was no baby to nurse pierced her chest anew, and she cried again.
Clutching the empty swaddling cloth, Hill sobbed until her voice broke.
On the second day after the child’s death—
A long shadow fell over her where she lay collapsed like a corpse, exhausted from crying.
She weakly lifted her eyes and saw the man standing with the window behind him, looking down at her in silence. Thinking she should greet him, she tried to raise her drained body.
At that moment, he gently pressed her back down.
“You don’t need to get up, Hill.”
His low, gentle voice soothed her ears. The calm warmth pinning her down felt strangely comforting. Hill nodded obediently.
His rough fingertips brushed over her hollowed cheeks. The skin, marked with dried tear tracks, was stiff. When his lips drifted down and rubbed against her skin, Hill opened her parched throat, quietly accepting his warmth.
“Y-you…”
After a short, dry cough, she asked through tear-filled eyes,
“Are… are you all right?”
The dead child had been hers—but it had also been his. Even if he hadn’t loved the child as she had, she couldn’t believe he would be entirely unmoved by the death of a baby he’d felt stir beneath his hand.
Just yesterday, hadn’t he cut his own wrist and spilled his blood when she clung to him, sobbing and begging him to save the baby?
Even if the child, already gone, hadn’t returned to life, that had been the best he could do.
As her voice filled with tears, the man pulled her into his arms and kissed her wet eyelids. Then he whispered,
“To me, you are the most precious thing, Hill.”
He bit at his fingertip, then lifted the loose folds of her clothing. Pushing past layers of white cloth, he slid his fingers between her thighs.
Hill flinched reflexively, but then relaxed when she realized he was applying his blood to her ripped flesh below.
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