The Hand Lurking on the Island (8)
It was a weapon that flew in at a speed neither Chester, with all his keen instincts and intuition, nor the hero Urgo, nor even the People of the Summit could react to.
The moment a sharp bang rang out, Chester realized his body had toppled forward.
Huh?
A tiny iron ball, driven by the terrifying force of gunpowder, punched straight into a human belly.
“……!”
That was all it took. From the mouth of the fallen Chester, not even a scream could escape.
Objectively it was nothing more than a small iron pellet no larger than a fingernail lodged in his gut, yet the impact felt as if a giant’s fist had slammed into his entire body.
“Chester…?”
Right after the deafening noise, Chester collapsed. Monia, still unable to grasp what had happened, approached him with confused eyes.
Urgo, who knew what a gun was, turned his head and looked at Rotin.
Rotin’s face was twisted—utterly, completely twisted—as he stared at Chester.
Gone was the man who always moved with a bright, confident smile. In his place stood a man whose heart had been smashed into the dirt and broken.
In his eyes he saw Monia hurrying toward Chester, about to throw her arms around him.
Rotin’s lips parted as if he wanted to say something, but he clamped them shut without a word. His mouth trembled with rage as he began to walk toward Chester.
Urgo caught Rotin’s shoulder.
“Rotin. You’re making yourself ugly. Stop.”
Interfering the moment two men were settling their affairs and emotions in a duel was already as ugly as it got, yet Urgo still tried to hold him back.
Of course, not a shred of the concern in Urgo’s voice reached Rotin’s ears.
“Shut up. Just give me the sword.”
When Rotin glared at him, Urgo wordlessly handed over the cutlass he was holding. Then he stepped back and watched Rotin’s retreating figure as the man strode toward Chester.
The same feeling that had risen the night he first saw Chester and Monia welled up again. He had thought that by now the past could no longer shake him.
At the same time, he was not alone the way he had been then, and this was a decision made by his master, Rotin. He could not stop it.
No matter what Rotin was doing now, to Urgo he remained the benefactor who had helped him avenge his family. He could not simply overpower him by force.
“Haa.”
While Urgo let out a sigh heavy with unspoken feelings, Monia saw Rotin approaching. She bit her lip hard and planted herself in front of Chester, determined to protect him.
— What are we going to do?
One of the young warriors watching from behind asked Black Wind, face twisted with anger.
Black Wind himself was furious that the duel between Chester and Urgo had been interrupted, yet he still looked at the fallen Chester.
— Chester asked us to just watch this. So we watch.
— But Monia could get hurt.
— Mm. Understood. If that happens, we step in.
The People of the Summit kept small stones ready in their fists so they could intervene at any moment. They rolled the deadly little weapons in their palms—stones that could be thrown in an instant and were more than enough to kill someone like Rotin with ease.
“Ghhk…!”
Chester clutched his bleeding stomach and tried to rise, trembling. But he had already been pushed to his limit; the sudden, crushing shock that shattered every last shred of tension hammered through his whole body.
His shaking legs refused to let him stand properly. He slipped on the sand and collapsed again.
“Chester!”
The instant Monia instinctively turned toward him, Rotin thrust the cutlass forward until the blade hovered right beside her throat.
Those who had started to tense their arms froze again when the cutlass stopped near Monia, and they watched the situation once more.
“Hic!”
Startled by the sudden cold steel at her neck, Monia flinched and stepped back. Rotin advanced one more step, keeping the cutlass pressed against her nape, and spoke.
“Why?”
And then he asked it.
“Why, why! Why?! Why are you looking at a mere butler with those eyes? Why? You—you—you can’t do that. You can’t! That’s not you!”
“What? Suddenly what are you—wait, huh?”
Monia frowned, unable to understand Rotin’s abrupt words. Seeing that, Rotin ground his teeth.
“That night—that night you weren’t like this. You were beautiful, like a perfectly made doll. The one and only, beautiful and special woman in the whole world!”
“What are you…?”
“You were beautiful! Not the kind who smiles and flatters people, not the kind who pretends to be friendly just to stab someone in the back, not the kind who wags her tongue to tear others down and lift herself up! Not the kind who giggles at every cheap compliment flying around! Just pure! Beautiful! Clean!”
Rotin stared at Monia.
“So what is this now? Why, why? Why are you looking at a mere butler with those eyes? Why? Why? Why!”
Ridiculous nonsense, Rotin’s own heart told him. Wasn’t this Monia beautiful too—wasn’t he even more captivated by her?
In truth, that wasn’t what he wanted to say at all.
What Rotin truly wanted to ask was simple. Why not me? Why are you giving those feelings to another man instead of me?
But he could not bring himself to speak the words. He lacked the courage to face the wretched reality that he had fallen in one-sided love, been betrayed on his own terms, and been dumped on his own terms.
“Why have you become so ordinary!”
“…….”
Monia looked at Rotin with eyes full of sheer disbelief.
Who on earth was this madman who had suddenly appeared and started spouting incomprehensible garbage?
Meanwhile Rotin had to grind his teeth desperately to hold down the ugly emotions, the inferiority, the sense of defeat rising inside him.
Why? Why did Monia have to love someone else! Why! Why not me but someone else! Why!
Rotin had wandered the world and experienced many things.
He knew how many different forms love could take, how complex and bitter the stories it could create.
There was the man who juggled two or three lovers until the day he truly fell for someone and tried to cut the others off—only to be stabbed in the gut and die.
There was the prostitute who slept with a different man every night and whispered sweet words, only to be killed by the jealousy of a man who had genuinely fallen for her because of it.
There was the man who married a noble lady with nothing but love and completely turned his life around, and the noble lady who married a commoner and was ruined, left sitting in the gutter.
He even knew an old man who had been betrayed by love and lived out the rest of his lonely life alone until he died.
Love could make someone happy, and it could also drive someone into endless misery. That was love.
Yes.
He knew.
He knew it as “stories he had watched” or “stories he had heard from others.”
But Rotin had never imagined he would become the main character of such a love story himself.
The young lady he had loved for more than a decade was abandoned by her family after an unfortunate accident, cast away on an island, and within less than a year she had fallen deeply in love with a butler and become another man’s woman.
Urgo had been right.
Ugly.
Like this, wasn’t Rotin himself becoming far too ugly?
The little boy inside him who still clung to his unrequited first love screamed. That scream shook Rotin. Behind him, a terrible demon born from the mixture of every negative emotion whispered.
It felt like a child who had looked forward to playing in a pure, untouched field of snow, only to arrive and find that someone else had already left footprints everywhere and was standing there looking at him.
There were no words for it.
Thoughts no longer connected to thoughts, thoughts no longer became words, and reason and rationality had long since been trampled into nothing.
Emotions swirled. They felt ready to explode.
So this was what a trampled love felt like—what a love crushed before it could even begin felt like.
“Uwaaaaaaah!!”
Before he knew it, a beast-like roar of a cry tore from Rotin’s throat.
Monia recoiled in shock at the man who had suddenly approached, spouted nonsense all by himself, and then begun to howl.
While he was still out of his mind she wanted to get away from this place as fast as possible, so she grabbed the fallen Chester and started dragging him backward.
“Haa… haa…!”
Monia looked down at Chester as she pulled him along.
Clutching his stomach, Chester refused to simply lie still. He kept taking deep, deliberate breaths while staring at Rotin.
“Just—just lie down for a bit!”
Monia knew. That kind of deep breathing was the ritual Chester performed to steady his breath and force strength back into his body before he moved properly again.
But Chester ignored her words. He calmed the chaos in his body and the turmoil in his mind caused by the unknown attack, and wrung every last drop of strength from his drained limbs.
I have to stand up.
That madman was not going to back down like this. He would definitely swing that cutlass in his hand.
Chester had to be on his feet before that blade turned toward Monia.
He quietly whispered a request to Monia and, with her help, somehow tried to rise.
In the end Monia gave in to his stubbornness and helped him stand.
Stand up.
First he had to get on his two feet. If he couldn’t do that, nothing else mattered.
Every time he moved his legs the abdominal muscles moved with them, and the deep hole in his belly screamed with agony. It felt as if someone had shoved melting candle wax into the wound, a nauseating, crawling sensation—yet Chester kept moving his legs.
He slipped on the sand and sat down again. His knees gave out and he pitched forward. Even so, he tried to rise.
I can do it. I can do it. I’ve done it before. That’s right. I can. Remember. I fought a bear. Remember. Back then I just wanted to collapse too. But I stood up. And I won. I can do it.
He focused his mind and moved his body. He crushed the trembling by squeezing his thighs hard enough to hurt with his own hands.
He had no strength left. But that was fine.
Blood poured out. It didn’t matter.
He no longer had the strength to hold the machete and had dropped it. His weapon was gone, but so what.
Even if everything else disappeared, grit and sheer bloody-mindedness would still remain inside his chest.
One step, two steps, carefully… and at last Chester stood in place.
Once he was up, Chester drew the knife he had made from the island’s own ore.
It caught the sunlight and shone brilliantly—Chester’s claw. Chester’s horn. Chester’s fang.
The last weapon left to him, together with his grit and stubborn will.
His vision swam. The world looked warped. Breathing was hard, and every movement tore open the wounds all over his body with sharp, stinging pain.
Each step was an ordeal like walking a path thick with thorn vines, yet Chester moved.
Even when sand kicked up and drove into the wounds around his ankles, causing horrific pain, he endured it.
Still sobbing, Rotin looked at Chester coming toward him.
The moment he saw the insolent butler standing as if to protect Monia and walking straight at him, the demon whispering behind Rotin grew louder.
“Why.”
The jealousy of an ugly man who had expected everything on his own terms and been betrayed on his own terms goaded him on.
“Why you! Why not me!”
In the end Rotin spat out the words he had never wanted to say and charged at Chester.
“Haaah.”
Chester let out a low breath, watched Rotin rush in swinging the cutlass, and raised the knife in front of him.
His whole body hurt, his head spun, yet strangely his senses alone stood perfectly straight.
His vision heaved so badly he could not even tell if he was walking properly, but that single upright thread of sensation told him he was moving correctly.
So Chester lowered the sharpness of every other sense as far as it would go and focused only on that one thread blooming inside his heart.
He placed his life upon that single sense—the fusion of the hunter Chester’s hard-earned reason and the deep, innate instinct of a living creature—and met the oncoming blade.