Chapter 46
Chapter 46
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 46
Chapter Title: Chunni
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Really not human?"
Gamal nodded.
"No."
"Then what are you?"
"A vampire."
Gamal answered honestly, and Nika burst into laughter. Her tribe's myths featured beings similar to vampires, so she knew what they were.
"Things like that don't exist."
But when no one joined her in laughing, she slowly stopped. Then, in a faintly trembling voice, she asked,
"For real?"
Tora and Rato nodded.
Gamal had confessed to the twins that he was a vampire once they had grown a little more, and they had accepted the fact with remarkable nonchalance.
It was practically a given that their ageless Mati wasn't human. And by now, whether he was human or not hardly mattered.
If Gamal hadn't brought them along, the defenseless young twins would have been devoured by wild animals.
"Then their blood...?"
Nika muttered while pointing back and forth at Tora and Rato, then abruptly shot to her feet in a fury.
"Th-that's not allowed!"
Tora quickly thrust out a hand to stop her.
"Calm down. Mati eats flowers. This one."
He held up the flower that happened to be sitting on the bench.
"Apparently, eating these means he doesn't need blood."
"Flowers...?"
Nika took the flower and stared at it.
"I've never seen anything like this."
"It only grows on the other side of the mountain."
The side of the island opposite the forest was said to be the domain of the god of darkness, so the tribespeople shunned it and never went there.
Nika turned to look at that god of darkness, Gamal. The idea of him surviving on flowers suited him so perfectly that her lingering suspicion he might be sucking the two men's blood melted away on its own.
Gamal asked,
"But did you get lost, Nika? Why are you here?"
"She came to get some monster hair. To prove her bravery."
At Rato's words, Gamal pointed at himself.
"The monster would be me?"
Gamal was well aware he was treated like a monster. In fact, he had allowed it to continue.
That way, the tribespeople would stay out of the forest, preventing any human connections that might lead to someone getting killed by Kunis. And it kept Tora and Rato safe from the ill omens attached to twins.
When Gamal looked at Nika, her face filled with panic.
"Sorry, I didn't mean it like..."
Unexpectedly, Gamal plucked out a few strands of his hair and handed them over. Nika accepted them reflexively.
"You're... giving them to me?"
Gamal smiled.
"Nika's a good kid. You worried about Tora and Rato."
The smile seemed utterly devoid of ulterior motives, turning Nika's face bright red. She looked down at the hair, then spoke as if having made up her mind.
"Thank you."
She glanced around at the three of them and asked slyly,
"Could I... maybe come again sometime?"
Tora laughed.
"Of course."
Then he turned to Gamal and Rato.
"Of course, right?"
Rato, clearly displeased with the whole situation, shook his head and walked off. Nika stole a quick glance at his retreating back.
***
"In conclusion, we married Nika."
Tora said.
"Huh?"
But Zain felt like she'd just heard something she couldn't simply let slide.
"Us?"
Tora wiped his sweat-drenched face, as if he'd known that question was coming.
"Back in our tribe, there were way more men than women, so it was tradition for brothers to marry the same woman."
For a moment, Zain felt like she was staring into the abyss, but she tried to rationalize it as a different culture.
In an environment with too many men and too few women, funneling the same gene pool into one woman was its own kind of logic...
"That tradition faded over time, but that's how it was back then."
No, no matter how she thought about it, she couldn't wrap her head around it.
So one woman had monopolized two guys like these? What kind of absurd monopoly was that?
While Zain mulled this over with a blank expression, Tora kept talking.
"After we came to the forest, Nika grew so close to us that she started calling Mati by name. She worked to clear up the tribe's misunderstandings about us. She ran back and forth between the forest and village almost every day, spreading stories about us and convincing us to visit the village."
In the end, they couldn't resist her persistence and went to the village...
"Right in front of the tribe elders opposing our marriage, Nika practically threw herself on the ground. That's when I realized no one could beat Nika's stubbornness."
Back then, Nika had been their light, pulling them out of the dark forest.
Their devoted Mati made the forest livable, but with no social interactions, the quiet woods felt like a remote nursing home.
It was far too uneventful a place for two vibrant young men full of energy.
Gamal had wanted the twins to return to the village too. They promised to visit often and kept their word, so Gamal and the tribespeople gradually began mingling. Before long, Gamal was even welcome at the tribe's festivals.
What they'd once thought was a universe-sized island wasn't actually that big, and the severed connections started linking back up.
The island shifted from divided pocket universes into one shared universe.
"But there was one problem."
Of course there was. Every chapter of life comes with its problems.
"Rato wasn't in love with Nika."
From the look on Zain's face, she seemed to have already guessed who Rato truly loved.
Tora gave a wry smile.
"By then, Mati had become younger than us. We'd grown up, but... Still, Rato tried to suppress his feelings for Mati and accept him as just Mati."
Tora glanced down at the patterns on the prison floor.
"Back then, people often lumped us twins together as one unit. Even though we were so different. Nika must have sensed it too—that we were separate people. That's probably why she loved Rato more. I don't know the reason."
"......"
"It just happened that way. Just like how Mati, who never opened her heart to any man—including a vampire—ended up falling for a mere human major, the workings of the heart are unknowable."
Tora let out a smirk.
"And women are perceptive. Nika quickly figured out where Rato's affections lay. She flew into a rage."
Zain could understand—discovering your husband had feelings for another woman. But the more Nika raged, the further Rato's heart drifted.
"Nika would get angry and cry practically every night, falling asleep in my arms. I..."
He trailed off, as if lost in the memory.
"That situation wasn't so bad for me. The farther Rato pulled away, the closer Nika came to me. She told me everything, acted all cute saying things like, 'Tora wouldn't do that to me, right?'"
Tora glanced at Zain and chuckled.
"I know. Pretty awful."
Zain shook her head.
"I didn't think that. It just felt familiar, like something high school girls do all the time."
Tora laughed.
"Mentally and emotionally, we were probably no older than modern high schoolers back then. In the end, things between Nika and Rato got so bad they couldn't be fixed."
Tora let out a hollow laugh.
"But at the time, it really felt like Nika was all mine."
A deep pain shadowed Tora's eyes, as if his laughter had been ages ago.
"My hamartia was the arrogance of living for the moment without looking ahead."
It was odd for him to use Aristotle's term, but no word fit better.
"Looking back... that day, everything aligned perfectly for it to happen, inevitably."
That day, Gamal and Tora had gone out to the fields together. Meanwhile, Rato and Nika fought again. Bigger than usual.
***
"Why do you keep coming here? This isn't your home."
Nika snapped in a hysterical tone. Rato, already looking exhausted, replied,
"Mati's all alone."
It was a conversation they'd had countless times.
"Mati's always been alone anyway!"
Rato shot Nika a sharp look. She flinched at his gaze but pressed on, unwilling to back down.
"I'm your wife."
"Who doesn't know that?"
"Then why do you act like you don't?"
"Nika."
After so many repetitions, Rato was utterly worn out.
He'd tried soothing her, assuring her there were no misunderstandings. He'd tried being affectionate, tried getting angry. But Nika was unmoved, like wind blowing past an ear.
It was as if she'd resolved never to listen to him. She'd concluded he loved Gamal instead, and at the slightest thing that could spark doubt, she'd erupt in flames.
Rato admitted to himself that his feelings for Mati were slightly different in texture from Tora's feelings for Mati. But even that was starting to fade into the past.
He just wanted Mati to be happy, wanted her smile to last forever.
He liked Nika's quirky, cute charm and thought he could come to love her more than Mati. But right after marriage, Nika had changed strangely.
Rato didn't think it was because she loved him too much.
Rato swallowed a sigh and asked,
"What exactly do you want me to do?"
Nika clenched her teeth.
"Don't come here."
Rato fell silent. It was the first new reaction amid countless arguments, filling Nika with hope. But then Rato said,
"When we grow old and die, Mati will be alone again. You're saying you can't stand that and want to leave him alone right now?"
Nika was shocked by the unexpected angle. Rato felt relieved, thinking maybe they were finally getting through to each other. But the part that shocked Nika was entirely different from what he'd intended.
She muttered in a daze,
"You're right. Mati doesn't age."
Even if she grew old and withered into a wrinkled mess, Gamal would remain exactly as he was—youthful, vibrant, more beautiful than anyone—gazing at Rato.
"Stop it."
Rato, utterly exasperated, turned to leave. There was no more talking to be done.
The Nika left behind trembled faintly.
Nika was strong-willed and tough—the sort who would bravely venture alone into a forest said to house demons, quirky to the end.
But precisely because of that, when a corrupt seed took root inside her, it grew stubbornly. No persuasion could touch her delusions, suspicions, and jealousy.
"Rato!"
Suddenly, Nika threw herself at him. Rato sighed and wrapped his arms around her.
"Nika, I..."
There was a sickening *thunk*.
Rato looked down in disbelief. A knife was buried in his side.
"Nika."
Nika staggered back. Her face drained pale, she made a strangled sound like her throat was closing up.
"It's your fault."
Then, as if *she* were the one stabbed, she clutched her hair and let out a beastly shriek. Unbeknownst to them then, it was a textbook hysterical episode.
"It's your fault!"