Ep.8 - The Sisters' Tale (1)
Ep.8 - The Sisters' Tale (1)
***
Another sorrowful day drew to a close,
and the three began walking once more.
"Heo-eok, heok..."
But today, Neva's breathing came in ragged gasps.
Strangely, a pack of fairly formidable magic beasts had attacked them today, and although Neva had successfully fended them off while carrying Delin and Eva on her back...
"Hoo... I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine."
Having already repelled a third attack, her exhaustion was plainly evident.
"It seems the magic beasts driven away by the Dragon are returning. Quite strong ones have been coming at us in packs, so I've expended some strength, but this much is nothing..."
Delin stared wide-eyed at the countless corpses strewn behind Neva.
He knew it, too. Neva could fend off the terrifying creatures that approached them even while carrying him and Eva all day long. She was that strong.
But human stamina had its limits.
Even for her, fighting while protecting the two of them, those limits existed. For all that she was the kingdom's Knight Commander, she was still only human.
So she would eventually tire out,
and if that happened, everything would likely end.
It would end,
and... everything would return to the way things were before...
"..."
...Suddenly, as Neva, who had been murmuring old stories, fell silent, Delin felt a strange sense of foreboding.
Though she kept walking as usual, it somehow felt as though she was no longer picking up speed. The corpses were slow to disappear from view.
"..."
And then, at last, Neva's footsteps halted.
She walked no further.
Delin, bound tightly, struggled to turn his head to check the back of her head, but all he could see was her beautiful silver hair.
"..."
Neva swallowed her words and began walking in a different direction from the one they had been heading.
He couldn't quite understand why she had turned her steps, but Delin found it terribly ominous, so he squirmed and called out to Neva.
"Eup! Eueup!"
"..."
Still, Neva offered no reply and walked on in silence. She no longer headed south but began moving toward the mountains.
Since there was no reason whatsoever to climb and cross the mountains, that choice was truly foolish and idiotic. A strange choice with no reason to be made.
Yet Neva headed for the mountains, carrying the two on her back.
"Heueup, eup..."
What that action meant was simple.
Neva had given up on heading south.
She was no longer going to seek out something like God's Garden.
Though he could not know where Neva was heading,
Delin could neither scream nor flee, so he could only be carried along by her, bound up tight.
———————————————
Neva, who had seemed to climb the mountain aimlessly like a madwoman, found a small cave that looked hard to come by.
"Eueup! Heueup..."
"Hieup! Heup..."
The narrow cave hidden by trees showed no sign of humans or dwarves whatsoever,
and since it was not a deep, long tunnel, it was only large enough for a bear or wolf to rest for a night,
but to Neva it was a hiding place beyond compare.
"..."
Neva set the two down on the cave floor, biting her lip tight. A few bugs were hiding, but they soon fled, perhaps sensing Neva's mana, and so only the three of them remained inside the cave.
"Hoo..."
She cast off her armor piece by piece. At her manner, which felt quite neurotic, Delin and Eva trembled and watched Neva nervously.
A dark cloud fell over Neva's face. She stared blankly at the discarded armor, mulling something over, but there was no sign at all of what she was thinking.
"...We can't go on like this. That's why."
Neva muttered as if making an excuse. Those words were directed at Delin, but they were also an excuse aimed at the God watching over her.
"There's no helping it. This is for the best."
Kkwadeuk-
The left-hand gauntlet that had clung to her body until the very end was flung to the ground.
The sound echoed in the small cave. Eva flinched as if startled by the sudden burst of noise, but Delin was so shocked by what Neva was saying that he didn't have the luxury of being startled.
"Eueup! Eueup!"
Delin fumed angrily, as if demanding an explanation from her. But what came back was not an answer, only Neva's gaze.
"Didn't I say there's no helping it?"
Neva seemed angry. For the first time, the blood rose to her lovely face. In that state of agitation, she strode over to Delin and barked at him as if pouring out her fury.
"I said there's no helping it! Give it up! We can't go! Fuck, fuckfuckfuck...! I said we can't go! We can't!"
Delin and Eva both
were quite taken aback by the knight's unprecedented behavior and backed away. Though backing away was nothing more than squirming backward a little using their hips and legs.
"There's no need to go to a place like that! The three of us can survive just fine on our own!"
Neva hoisted Delin, who was trying to put distance between them, and screamed right into his face.
"You were planning to Load, weren't you?! I know everything! Yes, if I got exhausted and collapsed, you were going to Load and go back to those bitches. I'm certain of it!"
The small cave rang out loudly.
For a while afterward, silence was maintained, but the cave kept resonating endlessly with all sorts of unsettling sounds that stood in for her angry voice.
The sound of grinding teeth, the sound of trembling in fear, and even the sound of resonating terror...
"..."
And then the silence that settled in afterward.
Even though no one opened their mouths,
it was a time when more was exchanged than words.
Neva looked into Delin's eyes with her blue eyes. He was terrified, on the verge of tears...
"Heup, keuheup..."
"..."
At the same time, he was sending her a doleful look that was hard to describe. As if pitying her, yet also seeming deeply disappointed, and looking as though he was trying to resign himself...
"..."
Neva glared at him for a moment, then plopped him back down onto the cave floor with a thud.
"We'll live here. Even if you don't Save, we'll live here together forever. We don't need God's Garden. I can feed and take care of everyone. For the three of us, we don't need anything else."
Calm returned to Neva's voice once again. But the words she spoke with that calmness were all ones that tormented Delin and Eva.
"Hieup, heup... Hikkeuup..."
In the end, Eva burst into tears. It must have been the strange things her own sister was spouting, and the stress accumulated over the journey thus far, all exploding at once.
But the little sister's crying only provoked Neva once more, making her yell passionately at the two of them.
"Shut up shut up shut uuup! Why are you crying, why! I said I'll do everything for you! I said I'll do everything! I'll protect you, okay? Look at your eonni. Eva, look at your eonni. Look at me! Look!"
"Hieup...! Heup!"
"I said I'll protect you! What on earth are you both dissatisfied with, huh? I...! I said I'll protect you!"
Condensed fury burst from Neva's eyes as if they'd caught fire. Her neuroticism—bordering on desperation—drove Delin and Eva against the cave wall and hounded them without pause.
"What the hell is the problem! Why is it always me who has to suffer like this every single time! What on earth are you two dissatisfied with, what! Why are you all looking at me with those eyes aaaagh!"
The elegant, refined face of the female knight contorted. She shrieked at the two of them, screaming so fiercely that one wondered if she had ever been that angry in her life.
But humans never display only one facet. They are always changing while being tossed this way and that...
"Heuk, heu-euk... keuk..."
Neva's anger also subsided, and this time Sorrow came. Her face, reddened from her fury, finally shed tears.
A spray of Sorrow,
a spray of solitude streamed down.
One hand wiped away the Sorrow and solitude,
the other hand soothed her own heated face.
"Why only me..."
Neva wanted to collapse on the spot and sob like a child, but the legs she had trained to become a knight never gave way.
Standing straight on her own two feet, she planted herself on the ground, stood tall like that, looked at the mouths of Delin and Eva that she had silenced, and shed one last tear.
She slowly approached them and embraced them both.
"God, God... Ahh, God... Please have mercy on me too. Please... for me who cannot go to the Garden where You dwell, please have mercy..."
From her opened lips, a prayer toward God flowed out. That prayer to Penola, the God of light and mercy, turned into weeping, and that weeping turned back into prayer.
"Please, please... Eva, don't abandon your eonni... Delin, Delin...? Please, why do you look at me with those eyes, why..."
The more she tried to protect them, the more they drifted away,
the more she tried to hold on, the more they left.
Neva resented the path she had walked. She who possessed honor, power, and beauty all together could not hold onto the only two things she desired.
"Hikkeuk, hieuyuk..."
She heard crying in her ears. Not the crying she herself was letting out, but crying from a slightly smaller, younger existence.
"Stop iiit... Eonniii... I'm scaaared..."
Eva, whose cloth gag had popped out from her mouth due to Neva's rampage, spoke with difficulty through her red, wounded lips, hurt from being tied too tightly.
"Eonniii, eonniiiit..."
Neva tried to cover her sister's mouth again, but seeing the wound at the corner of her lips, she eventually withdrew her hand.
At last, the mouths of both sisters had opened...