Episode 17
Kyle turned around to avoid the bear, looking straight ahead, and started running back the way he had come, drawing a wide arc to the right.
The Polar Bear and Brody stopped and turned their gaze to follow Kyle as he suddenly changed path.
“No, Kyle! Come back!”
Brody called out to him in a voice that seemed to be breaking, but Kyle continued to run towards the baby bear that was chasing his mother.
When the mother bear discovered this, she roared so loudly that the floating ice plates seamed to be about to break, turned around and ran. Not to catch Kyle, but to save her cub.
The two animals ran at full speed on either side of the cub, who was in the center, stumbling towards his mother, not knowing what was going on.
Brody screamed and yelled, thinking Kyle was going to hurt the baby bear.
“Kyle! Please come back!”
But Kyle ran like crazy, and the moment he saw the mother bear getting closer to her cub, he immediately turned around.
Then he ran back to where Brody was.
The mother bear couldn’t chase after Kyle like before. She kept her eyes on the cub until he was out of sight, to ensure her cub safety and to keep an eye on the wolf.
Kyle, who returned after successfully completing this dangerous lure operation, carried Brody who was waiting for him on the ice rocks on his back.
And then he ran for a long time until they got out of the mother bear’s territory.
Only when Kyle reached a place where he could no longer smell the bear did he stop running and collapse to the ground.
He ran for so long without stopping that his heart was about to burst.
Still, he quickly recovered with his overflowing stamina and tried to poke the rabbit, who stretching out her pink tongue in front of him, with his nose.
But there was no response.
Brody was so shocked by this spectacular experience that she fell into a semi-dead state.
The stamina that she had been building up little by little over the past few days was completely discharged today.
***
Before heading out to sea, Brody suggested that they walk along the bay instead of going into the forest until they reached the port of Apen where they could board a ship.
The idea was that since Brody had been eating her fill and Kyle hadn’t in the Plains before, they would switch roles this time.
But this was Brody’s great arrogance.
She had always believed that she could do the same thing Kyle had done, going without food for days, but only recently did she realize that she had been thinking nonsense.
After the day she ran away from the polar bear, Brody was completely drained of energy and couldn’t eat enough to restore it.
As the dizziness grew more and more severe, it became difficult for her to move, and now the only food left was enough for one day.
There was still a long way to go to reach the port of Apen. Every time she looked at the map recently, she felt this fact and her eyes went black.
It was so hard that there were dozens of times when she thought to herself, “Why don’t we go back to the forest?”
But when she stood in front of Kyle, those words went straight into her throat.
How could she say such a thing when she saw him finally enjoying the meat after a successful hunt?
It was impossible. It was the first time Brody had seen Kyle come back to life and run around.
It was a sight that had not even been described in the novel, and she couldn’t describe in words the delight she felt every time she saw him flying around so excitedly.
She didn’t love him, but Kyle had always been a subject of pity for her since the first time she saw him.
In this journey that was originally set out to save him, Brody had to prioritize her pity for him over her own hardships.
Until the end of this long, long journey.
Today too, Kyle caught a seal with his dazzling hunting skills and ate it in an instant.
Now Brody was used to his hunting, and she smiled at him as if she couldn’t stop him.
“Is it that delicious?”
“It’s just food, you know.”
Although he spoke indifferently, his eating speed was no joke.
When Brody glared at him for his inconsistent words and actions, Kyle felt her gaze and bristled in annoyance.
“Don’t ask what other people’s food tastes like; go eat your own food.”
Brody turned around with a ‘Huh!,’ snorting, her face pouting in annoyance.
Then Kyle saw her walking somewhere with her backpack on and asked her, feeling a little uneasy.
“Where are you going?”
“You go and eat! I’ll go eat somewhere else!”
Kyle shook his head as he watched the rabbit run away, screaming loudly.
He was sick of the rabbit’s sensitivity over trivial things.
To be honest, even if he hadn’t told her to go and eat, the rabbit would have already gone somewhere else to eat.
Because she had been hiding and eating alone lately instead of eating with Kyle.
Perhaps she thought it was embarrassing for her, a herbivore, to see him eat seal meat.
Kyle noticed that the rabbit’s movements were slower than before, but he paid it no attention and continued eating.
***
But the incident, that made Kyle take an interest in the rabbit, happened a few days later.
At first, he thought it was really annoying to see the rabbit carrying her backpack and going somewhere else to eat at every mealtime.
Because she had a splendid record in these matters1Annoying matters, he means :-\, this case was also considered to be the same.
But at some point, Kyle began to feel that the weight of the rabbit on his back was lighter than usual.
At first, he thought it was because she was eating less, so he just ignored it.
Originally, the rabbit would eat leaves until her stomach burst without any sense of reason, so she must have lost weight because of her regular controlled meals.
Besides, the rabbit herself always said, even though she had less energy than before, it was okay, and she would wave her front paws, telling him not to worry about her since she was originally weak.
And Kyle never doubted that statement. She was the most honest rabbit when it came to expressing herself. He thought that when she was having a hard time, she would say it.
He had forgotten that the previous time something like this had happened, the rabbit had not said a word until she lost consciousness.
But as time went by, the rabbit, despite being a furry animal, became noticeably thinner, and only then did he become suspicious.
And once he started to doubt, things that he had previously ignored began to come into focus, one by one.
First of all, the rabbit stopped croaking. In the past, the person next to him would always be so noisy that his ears would itch, so he would always nag her to be quiet, but these days, he hadn’t really been able to hear her voice.
She didn’t even bother to ask him to sleep with her. Rather, she would just fall asleep first, saying she was tired after the trip, and Kyle would look at her strangely.
Come to think of it, the condition of the cave she had dug herself was also strange.
The depth was much shallower than before, so when he looked in every morning, he would notice her hind legs sticking out of the entrance, full of snow that had piled up overnight.
Of course, Kyle just clicked his tongue when he saw that and thought, ‘This rabbit must have been too lazy to even dig a hole so she just slept like this.’
Kyle, who was recalling and thinking about the memories he had passed by without a second thought, couldn’t sleep that night and came out of the cave.2Oh my god, how can he be this useless ತ_ತ
He poked his head into the rabbit hole, where she was sleeping and took out the backpack she was holding tightly to her chest like a doll.
The backpack was heavier than he thought. Kyle felt relieved the moment he felt its weight, and figured that she would naturally have enough food left according to that.
But the moment he opened her backpack, he blinked.
Inside, there were only fist-sized chunks of ice and other odds and ends that he had no idea why they were there.
No matter how much he turned it upside down and shook it, not even a single piece of conifer leaf came out.
A bewildered Kyle looked up into the rabbit’s burrow where she was sleeping.
There really wasn’t any rabbit food left.
“……..”
When on earth did she finish eating it all?
He had no idea at all.
Since when had she been starving, and since when had she started pretending to eat?3Useless ಠ,_｣ಠ
No matter how hard he searched through his head, he couldn’t find any memories that could give him a clue about that time period.
But other things came to mind precisely.
He had only seen the rabbit go to eat, but he had never actually seen her eat.
Looking at the heavy backpacks, he thought there was still plenty of food left, never suspecting that the leaves shouldn’t be that heavy.
He felt like her weight had gotten lighter, but he just thought it was a little bit of weight loss and passed it off as nothing serious.
Unfortunately, only those memories came to the surface and pierced his heart, making me feel sick.
Come to think of it, it was the same last time.
She used her power without saying that there would be a price to pay for turning back time, and now she was doing these things behind the scenes without saying anything.
Just for his sake.
Was she doing this on purpose to make him feel more sorry?
Kyle watched the already small rabbit sleep soundly, oblivious to the world, even though she had gotten smaller.
After looking at her for a while, he put the things he had spilled in front of his feet back into her backpack.
Then he carefully bit the rabbit’s head and pulled her out of the hole, waking her up.
“Hey, wake up.”
“Hmm……?”
The rabbit, which had been tossing and turning, groaned and got up, then looked up at the dark night sky and fell back down.
“It’s still night, why are you waking me up…….”
The rabbit clung to the floor and grumbled like melted cheese.
If this happened before, he would have been annoyed and would have said that she was really disobedient, but Kyle just spoke quietly.
“I’m not going to wake you up, so just climb on my back and sleep.”
“Huh?”
The rabbit, with half-open eyes, stared at Kyle sitting down in front of her.
As if she had read his darkened face, the rabbit no longer made a fuss and slowly approached him, crawling up onto his back.
“Where are you going……?”
Kyle got up from his seat without answering, put her backpack around his neck, and started walking down the road.
Normally, this time was when he would be sleeping soundly in preparation for the next day. This was his first time moving around at night.
But he just walked ahead quietly, and the rabbit that laid down on his back, fidgeted, and then asked him again.
“Kyle, where are you going…”
“To the forest.”
Kyle answered curtly.
The rabbit’s whining stopped. She seemed to have noticed too, why Kyle was going into the forest at this hour of the night.
After a while, a small voice was heard from the rabbit.
“…Sorry.”
The moment he heard those words, his chest felt as if it was on fire. Kyle felt the emotions he had been holding back welling up inside him and swallowed them with difficulty.
And then he muttered quietly.
“…..**** rabbit.”
***
TL Note:
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I love this historical, obrigada pela tradução 🥰🥰
Ty for the comment ❤️