I Picked Up an Abandoned Villain in the Polar Region

Episode 54

 

Kyle’s face, which had been laughing like a lost soul, slowly began to crack.

Everything was tiring and difficult.

His body that looked like it would collapse at any moment, the pouring rain, Brody’s cries next to him urging him to pitch the tent, and even Ron’s crying in the rain.

All of this was driving him crazy.

So Kyle couldn’t hold it in any longer and screamed into the air.

It was the behavior of a person who was completely fed up by the situation. Everything he had held back until now had burst out.

Brody looked at him with a pale face, startled by the sound.

She was surprised to see him yelling like he was out of his mind, and at the same time, she was dumbfounded and angry at his sudden outburst.

“What did you just do?”

Kyle turned around with a shameless face even after hearing Brody’s angry voice.

He then walked towards her with an angry gait and shouted at her.

“Can’t you see? I think I am going crazy at the sound of this baby crying!”

It was raining heavily, making it impossible to open her eyes properly.

But Brody could clearly hear him shouting at her through it all.

Then she too, frustrated with his temper, couldn’t stand it any longer and shouted.

“Do you think it’s just you? I feel like I’m going crazy too! So stop acting like you’re the only one having a hard time!”

But Kyle, hearing Brody’s words, became so angry that he couldn’t hold it back and started spewing out his resentment.

“Then why did you bring the kid all the way here and make such a mess? We couldn’t sleep for days because of the crying, you wasted energy and time packing useless stuff, and now we have to deal with the aftermath!”

“So, you’re saying this is all my fault?”

Brody laughed in disbelief at Kyle’s words.

“I wouldn’t have even thought of bringing Ron if it weren’t for you. You always take the shortcut, so I brought Ron with me so we could get through Volcan more easily! You always came first to me, before anyone else!”

It was true.

No matter how much Brody felt sorry for Ron, she wouldn’t have brought him along if Ron hadn’t been helpful to their journey.

Because Kyle’s circumstances always came first for her.

That’s why it was unfair for Kyle to hold such grudges against her, and Brody couldn’t stand the anger.

“It’s all your fault. Look at what you’ve been doing these past few days. You’ve been completely selfish. You act like you’re the only one having a hard time, and you’re the only one tired. How long do I have to put up with this? Why do I have to be the only one putting up with this?”

They both thought that their own hardships and the suffering they had experienced, were greater.

So Kyle also didn’t understand Brody and shouted at her.

“You’re the only one putting up with this? Don’t make me laugh. I’ve been putting up with it all this time, while you were crying and abandoning your work, without saying a word!”

“You didn’t say anything! You just sighed, didn’t say a word, ignored everything I said, and kept going ahead of me!”

Brody screamed at Kyle, her frustration building up until she burst into tears.

She roughly wiped away the tears, but they still didn’t stop.

Eventually, Brody, tired of everything, ended up saying things she shouldn’t have said.

“If I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have offered to be your guide. I should have just left you alone in Asgard, whether you died or not.”

Her tone was full of regret. Kyle’s eyes widened in surprise at hearing that, and his body froze.

It was the first time Brody said she regretted her actions.

No matter how difficult it was, she never regretted becoming his guide.

Kyle realized something as he looked at Brody, who was shedding tears of regret.

They couldn’t be together anymore.

“Then let’s just give up everything.”

Kyle threw the heavy loads he was carrying onto the ground.

He threw down the tent, the belongings he was carrying, as well as the goat’s collar.

Then, he turned around and pointed at the baby, speaking harshly to Brody, who was looking up at him with a dumbfounded expression.

“You clean up your own ****.”

Brody was heartbroken to see Kyle leave the luggage and the goat behind and run off into the rain.

She kicked the luggage he had left and cried.

“You’re almost home now, right? Who doesn’t know that you are just leaving me behind?”

But Kyle didn’t even look back once and just kept walking away even though Brody was yelling at him.

Brody, who was left alone with the baby in an empty field, cried in agony both physically and mentally because of the situation.

The rain kept pouring down, but Kyle didn’t come back.

Where he had been, there was only a goat standing there, soaking wet with rain.

When Brody realized that Kyle was really gone, everything became a mess.

He brought her to a place where she couldn’t even go home and then just left her like this.

A feeling of overwhelming despair and resentment surged through her all at once.

But in the midst of all this, Ron cried so much that it was almost painful to hear, and her patience eventually reached its limit.

“Stop crying, please!”

Brody yelled at Ron. She hated Ron so much for being the one who made things like this.

It was the first time she hated hearing a baby cry as much as she did today.

She wanted to get away. She really wanted to get away from this noise for just ten minutes and rest comfortably.

Brody, driven mad by exhaustion, placed the baby under the luggage, out of reach.

And then she turned around and walked forward, looking like a crazy person, running away and leaving the baby behind.

She wondered how she ended up here. Why did she came here and suffer like this? She regretted it all.

Everything was ruined, and she had no will to put it back together.

She just wanted to rest. She wanted to catch up on the sleep she hadn’t had in days. So she wandered around looking for a place where she could rest.

But her steps stopped shortly after.

“…”

She ran away to avoid the crying, but when she actually did, her heart sank when she didn’t hear Ron’s cries.

‘Where am I going now?’

Suddenly, that question occurred to her, as if someone had hit her on the head to bring her to her senses.

In the end, she was the one who chose all of this.

It was all her fault for choosing this difficult journey, for following Kyle, and for offering to bring the baby.

Was it okay to run away?

Even after she ran away, would she be able to find peace of mind?

“…”

No.

She wouldn’t.

She wasn’t the type of person to do that.

Brody realized this and turned around again, running back to where she had left Ron.

But as she headed towards the place where the baby and luggage were left, no crying was heard.

Then she ran there in surprise and faced Ron again, he was gasping for breath.

For a moment, she remembered how she had yelled at Ron earlier to stop crying.

She wonder if he even understood what she said.

Seeing that the baby had been crying silently since she left, Brody’s heart broke.

“…Sorry.”

Actually, there was nothing wrong with the baby.

He was already taken away from his mother’s arms because of the adults’ mistake, and now he was still suffering like this.

Knowing that, she felt guilty about what she did in anger.

She came to her senses, got up from her seat and unwrapped the tent from the luggage that Kyle had left behind.

First, she had to get out of the pouring rain with Ron. It wasn’t too late to think about what would happen after that.

Brody began to pitch the tent alone, leaving Ron under her coat to avoid the rain.

But no matter how small the tent was, it was quite difficult for Brody to pitch it alone.

If she drove a stake here, the other side would collapse, if she finish that side, this side will collapse… Nothing really worked.

Still, Brody gritted her teeth and pitched the tent in the pouring rain.

Kyle was right. She had to take full responsibility for her choices.

 

***

 

Kyle left everything behind and walked south without a plan.

In order not to regret anything, he didn’t look back and just kept going forward into the pouring rain.

The rain continued to pour down with no sign of stopping until the sun went down.

Because of this, the floor became completely muddy and slippery, and his feet sank deep into it.

Kyle walked along this muddy ground for a while before stopping when he came across an unexpected terrain.

What spread out before him was a valley with rocks.

The moss-covered rocky valley was so foggy that he couldn’t see even an inch ahead of him.

If it were the usual Kyle, he would have doubted whether it was right to go this way.

But now he was not in his right mind.

Kyle climbed up the rocks and into the valley with only one blind goal: to go south.

The rocks were slippery, covered with moss wet from the rain, so he slipped and fell several times, hurting his arms and legs.

Still, he did not give in and continued climbing up the rock.

It was as if he was desperately running away from someone.

In fact, maybe Kyle really was running away.

From the person he had left behind, and also from the painful memories of the past that kept coming back to his mind.

‘If I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have offered to be your guide. I should have just left you alone in Asgard, whether you died or not.’

Brody’s words lingered in his ears.

This was the first time since they started this journey that she had shown any sign of regret.

No matter how hard and tired she was, she had never once resented or regretted anything about him.

So Kyle was even more shocked, but instead of holding onto her, he let his pride take control.

‘Then let’s just give up everything.’

It would be good if he reflected on his actions now, but his pride was so strong that he still showed no signs of reflecting.

He rather thought it was good.

Since they weren’t going to be together for long anyway, he tried to calm his wavering heart by thinking that he was just getting rid of an annoying presence.

‘Now that I have reached the Southern Continent, I can just go south without that **** rabbit, and her map.’

But Kyle, who had been walking absentmindedly with that determination, stopped for a moment and looked around.

Did I walk too absentmindedly?

He looked around, but there was only fog and he couldn’t see anything.

And in this fog that obscured his vision, Kyle lost his sense of direction.

Where is the south?

Where do I have to go to get to the south?

The moment he felt lost, he wondered why he had to go south. Even the reason had become unclear.

‘Why am I going south with such effort in the first place?’

I will leave you with this cliffhanger for some time 🤭