Chapter 76
Without waiting for a reply, he dragged Arzeletta out of the slaughterhouse.
“Ah, Sir Knight….”
Yoseph’s voice calling from behind was quickly drowned out. From the start, Exion seemed like someone who had entirely forgotten that Yoseph even existed in this space.
Thud. In the blink of an eye, Arzeletta was taken away, and Yoseph was left alone behind the closed door. He stared blankly at the door through which the two had disappeared.
“Ah, it hurts.”
Arzeletta spoke as she was nearly dragged along by Exion’s hand.
The wrist caught in his grip hurt terribly. It truly felt like it might break. Such overwhelming strength—it was hard to believe even as she experienced it.
She recalled the man from the village who had tried to touch her curled-up body the night before. She remembered the countless hands that had tried to violate her. But Exion was fundamentally different from those lowly, threatening men.
To Arzeletta, Exion was like a warrior sculpted from bronze or a giant like Gollum. If he really gripped her once with all his strength, something might truly break.
A body as hard as a weapon, unyielding as if no spear could pierce it.
As her thoughts reached that point, Arzeletta suddenly remembered the tall, solid shoulders she had clung to the night before.
Yes. Just like Lord Ragnar…
“Ah!”
At the small cry that burst out from the pain she couldn’t endure, Exion finally looked at the wrist he was gripping.
The thin wrist, emaciated from lack of proper nourishment, was already marked with red.
“What is this.”
“……”
“If I apply even a little more pressure, it looks like it’ll shatter.”
Exion grumbled as he released her hand. By then, he had already dragged Arzeletta to where he wanted.
“Hey.”
Exion growled.
They were at the back of the slaughterhouse, where no light reached—the damp area used for disposing sewage and waste from the castle. It was not a place anyone would intentionally pass by.
There was a stench, but Exion, burning with anger, seemed entirely unaffected by it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Arzeletta blinked. It was a question she wanted to ask. Yet Exion, with a look that seemed to insist he was the one more wronged, was demanding an explanation from her.
“The laundry room wasn’t enough, and now—ha.”
Instead of continuing, he banged his hand against the wall of the slaughterhouse. Only then did Arzeletta understand what Exion meant.
“Ah…”
“How far are you planning to fall, huh?”
He was criticizing Arzeletta for having walked into the slaughterhouse of her own will. In other words, this was beyond absurd.
Being assigned to the laundry room in the infirmary was the last step for those pushed out from everywhere else in the castle. But there was a level even lower than that. Choosing to work with livestock—killing animals—in the territory of Impellias no less, was equivalent to throwing away one’s status for good.
Just like selling one’s body, killing livestock was something that decided the rest of your life. In the way it turned the living into meat, the two acts were eerily alike. Yet those who scorned them never thought about that. They simply enjoyed the meat they were served and turned away to sneer.
“They say the hunchback and the monster are getting married!”
“They say Arzeletta can’t sleep at night because hunchback Yoseph has three things!”
Children’s voices came from beyond the wall. Arzeletta let the song drift past her indifferently.
Those who passed by the slaughterhouse casually flung such words over the wall. It was a tune she heard all day long, like the wind or footsteps, and she had already heard such things thousands of times even before arriving here.
Instead, the one whose face turned bright red was Exion.
“They say you were almost dragged outside the castle to be forced to marry the hunchback?”
“……”
“Is that what you want, huh?”
Exion fumed. Arzeletta looked up at him calmly. She couldn’t understand why he was angry with her.
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