Chapter 46
“Father arrives from the capital at dawn tomorrow. When that happens… you know there’s no going back. So before his anger reaches you…”
Tina had sunk so deep into the darkening spiral of her thoughts that she couldn’t hear the rest of Sophianne’s words. Despair simply pulled her deeper, and deeper still.
All Tina wanted, in that moment, was to vanish from this unbearable situation.
“Sister… your eyes…”
Lost in her own anguish, Tina did not realize, but her once-cold gray irises were slowly bleeding red, like blood spilled across snow-covered ground.[1]
‘How do I disappear? But if I disappear, Rus will be so sad. He’ll be so lonely. I’m supposed to protect him. I promised.’
She pressed a hand to her chest against the suffocating tightness. Her thoughts refused to move in a straight line, veering off course again and again.
“Sister! Are you all right?”
Sophianne seized Tina’s shoulders firmly. Only then did Tina realize she’d been on the verge of collapsing and had been caught.
“…I’m sorry.”
Seeing the hands that held her, Tina spoke in a sunken voice. Then she carefully pushed Sophianne’s hands from her shoulders.
“I’m just… I really can’t do this today. You can look through the room, take your time. I… I need to step outside for a while.”
After those words, Tina wrenched the door open and stumbled out of the annex. Behind her, Sophianne’s voice called out, trying to stop her, but aside from that voice, nothing held her back.
Once outside, Tina ran like a madwoman. She ran and ran, like someone being chased by something.
Even when her foot caught on a rock and her shoe came off, even when the bare, sharp branches of leafless winter trees clawed at her arms, Tina could not stop running.
She moved her legs frantically, not even knowing what she was fleeing from.
‘Something’s wrong. I’m scared.’
Dark emotions were gnawing at the edges of her mind.
Her mother had told her to love her family, and yet here Tina was, daring to doubt them, wanting to hate them, without any right to do so. She mustn’t. Her mother had always whispered that to her, ever since she was small.
As the confusion deepened, tears forced their way out. They met the frigid air and froze on her cheeks, and her lungs, filled with nothing but icy air, constricted as though they too might freeze solid.
By the time her breath had grown ragged and her vision had blurred completely…
“What do you think you’re doing!”
A rough shout, and then thick arms caught her waist with fierce strength, pulling her to a halt.
“…Cain.”
A familiar voice, a familiar touch, a familiar presence stood before her.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous the winter mountain is? Coming out here dressed like this, all alone!”
Cain’s voice was sharp. His fierce gaze traveled back and forth between Tina’s arms, covered in scratches, and her bleeding feet. His expression was dark with fury.
“……”
Tina said nothing, but she knew now that this could no longer remain mere suspicion.
While Cain roughly inspected her injuries, Tina’s gaze drifted to the ground behind him.
Behind Cain, stretching across the pristine white snow, was a trail of footprints. Not human ones.
Large. Deep. Heavy. The prints of a beast.
How could she possibly go on pretending she didn’t see?
“You… no — who are you, really?”
The gaze with which she posed the question was clearer than it had ever been.
Translation Notes
[1] ↩
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