Chapter 13
‘N, no!’
She never wanted to see such a sight again.
Ella ran with her lips pressed tightly together.
She wanted to scream at him not to follow her.
But Missus Anani’s words from earlier choked the cry in Ella’s throat.
If someone saw this scene, she felt certain they would blame Ella for it.
But with her limping leg, it was difficult to keep a man behind her for long.
“Ah!”
In her panic, Ella failed to watch the ground properly, stepped into a depression, and staggered.
Even in his maddened state, Beres did not miss the opportunity.
“Ellaaa.”
In contrast to his vacant voice, a rough hand reached toward Ella’s head.
‘Is this… the end?’
Ella squeezed her eyes shut. In an instant, all the dreadful things that might happen to her from this point on flashed behind her eyelids.
But that was not the future awaiting Ella.
“Duck.”
It was the arrogant voice that had somehow already become familiar to her ears.
‘It’s him.’
There was no time to weigh anything or think it through. Ella instinctively hunched down.
A powerful gust of wind swept over her lowered head.
At the same time, there was the sound of leather striking flesh, and the presence she had felt behind her vanished.
She knew instinctively.
She was safe now.
“Hah, haah…”
Ella lowered the trembling hand from her mouth and struggled to catch her breath.
The man’s expression hardened when he looked down at the moisture gathered around her eyes. He kicked the fallen Beres hard in the jaw.
“Th, thank you.”
Ella spoke in a trembling voice.
She might have felt uncomfortable around this man, but she could not deny that he had helped her.
“So you do know how to say things like that.”
“Of course I do. I’m human.”
“You’re always looking at me as if you want to shoot me.”
“…It wasn’t that bad.”
The man gave a small laugh and lowered one knee beside the unconscious Beres.
Ella glanced at Beres without thinking and nearly retched. Of his entire fallen body, only his p***s remained rigidly upright.
The man clicked his tongue as well.
“Filthy.”
Even as he said that, the man searched Beres’s clothes.
“As expected… You managed to get quite a lot of it, even in a backwater like this.”
Several vials emerged in the man’s gloved hand.
Inside the small, slender glass bottles was a cloudy liquid that looked like milk diluted with water. When the man held one up to the last faint remnants of sunlight, the liquid slowly turned blue.
Ella stared blankly at the mysterious, beautiful phenomenon before belatedly asking,
“What is that? Did that make Mister Beres like this?”
“Beres is this idiot’s name?”
“Beres Mincheva.”
“Right. Beres the idiot. You remember useless things like this so well…”
The man’s mocking words suddenly stopped.
He had sensed someone approaching.
The man immediately seized Ella and lifted her into one arm.
“What are you doing all of a sudden!”
“Quiet.”
Now Ella could hear voices too, saying, ‘Isn’t someone lying over there?’
The man was already moving. He did not speak again until he had hidden them in a suitable place.
“You really know nothing about that d**g?”
The man asked. His brilliant violet eyes remained fixed on the people bustling around in the distance as they tried to move Beres.
Ella answered in a low voice, keeping her breath quiet. Despite working at the church hospital, she had never seen a d**g like that before.
“…No. What is it?”
“It’s a d**g called ‘Granada.’”
“That tiny amount can drive a person mad? Mister Beres isn’t the kind of person who would do something like that.”
Once her startled heart had begun to settle, the strangeness of it finally struck her.
The Beres Ella knew had simply been a guileless, extremely shy man.
He had been the same when Missus Basti had strongly urged them to have tea together. Ella remembered worrying about his bladder because he had fidgeted nervously while drinking several pots of tea.
‘The only time he smiled was when he showed me a lamb.’
But the man merely scoffed at Ella’s concern.
“You still seem to trust the people of this village.”
Just as she was about to say that of course she did, what had happened with Missus Anani flashed through her mind.
Ella bit her lip. The man’s gaze dropped to the flesh where red blood began to bead.
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