I couldn’t move my body at all.
Is it because this is a dream?
[Stay still!]
[If you make any more noise, I won’t let you off easily.]
[They say she’s a useful girl, so don’t treat her carelessly for now.]
When I had nightmares, it was almost always the same recurring memory.
Memories of being captured by Krianet knights, being dragged away by royal soldiers.
“If you don’t want to die, stay still.”
“……!”
Sharti’s eyes flew open at the clear voice, different from the hazy voices in her dream.
Soon, she felt the cold sensation of a blade against her nape.
The moment she met the gleaming eyes, Sharti felt her drowsiness completely vanish.
Someone, a man she had never seen before, was straddling her body, gripping her hair, and threatening her.
“…….”
Sharti bit the inside of her cheek and gathered her wits.
As her crimson eyes moved to assess the situation, Dodindt’s eyes curved.
“Keehi, hik, finally coming to your senses, are you?”
“……!”
Only after seeing Dodindt moving along with her gaze did Sharti’s face turn deathly pale.
Her hood had been removed.
‘My face!’
When Sharti urgently tried to move to cover her face, he thrust his face close to hers.
“I told you not to, kik, move.”
Because Dodindt was straddling her body with a blade pointed at her, it wasn’t easy to even struggle.
When Sharti’s lips trembled finely, Dodindt’s lewd smile deepened.
“You’re the village doctor, kik, right? Hm?”
Dodindt, grinning, carelessly pressed the blade diagonally against Sharti’s neck.
Sharti’s eyes quivered narrowly.
“I saw you going down to the village to, keheh, treat those men I used as bait and discarded, hik. Did you save them all?”
“…….”
“Beasts go crazy at the smell of blood and attack, kik, thanks to them I survived.”
He was the culprit behind the injured soldiers’ suffering.
He was the one who threw his own subordinates as bait to avoid the mother bear that had charged at them to protect her injured cub.
[Aaargh!! Squad leader!!]
[Eek! How dare you grab me! I said create a diversion!]
[Aaaaargh!!]
To lure with the smell of blood, Dodindt had no hesitation in swinging his sword and slashing his subordinates. If he thought he might get caught by the mother bear while fleeing, he cut down more of his men.
By slashing and slashing again, he survived.
“Tristan seems to be, kik, kek, quite skilled judging by how kindly he saw me off?”
Recalling the gruesome state of the injured soldiers, Sharti glared at him.
When her crimson eyes revealed clear anger, Dodindt sneered as if she were pathetic.
“Treat me now. Kuk, kik, and hand over what you have. And, kek, you’ll have to be my guide.”
The soldiers’ speculation at the inn had been wrong.
Dodindt hadn’t rashly descended the mountain.
Instead, he had been hiding in the mountains all along, planning to recover through Sharti’s treatment and then drag her along to safely escape.
‘This person doesn’t know about Ren yet.’
Fortunately or unfortunately, Dodindt hadn’t noticed Ren’s existence.
At least it was a relief that Ren was safe.
‘I need to attract his attention first.’
Despite her rapidly beating heart, Sharti’s mind had grown calm.
Sharti desperately racked her brain.
Right now, Dodindt desperately needed her treatment.
Though her hood had been removed and her face exposed, her identity hadn’t been revealed.
‘It’s okay. This is a situation I’ve prepared for dozens, hundreds of times.’
Sharti squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists.
Having mentally prepared herself, Sharti looked Dodindt straight in the eye and opened her mouth.
“……Get your hands, off.”
A terrible croaking sound.
For a moment, Dodindt looked down at Sharti with a startled expression.
Everyone reacted the same way when they heard her dreadful voice.
Ignoring the familiar pain in her chest, Sharti spoke deliberately with strength in her eyes.
“I don’t accept patients like you.”
In an instant, the threatening blade wavered.
‘Now!’
Just as she moved her arm to grab the scissors hidden under her pillow.
Pa-!! Dodindt mercilessly struck her cheek.
“So you, hikhit, weren’t mute after all?”
Dodindt’s mouth corners rose to a tearing point as he thrust his face close to hers.
The feeling of all her body hair standing on end at his strange and repulsive face was overwhelming.
When Sharti swallowed dryly, she tasted something acrid.
“Right. Hik, I thought it was strange. I heard you had burn scars, but your face is fine. Hm? Hik, kikik, you lied? You hid it? I wonder why?”
Dodindt’s eerie, manic eyes were scrutinizing every part of Sharti’s face.
It was a different kind of terror than five years ago.
“I’ve seen quite a few like you. Hiding your face, hihihik, making false excuses and avoiding people’s eyes to hide? Kehehek, showing your face would cause trouble for both parties, wouldn’t it?”
Thud. The sensation of a stone dropping in her chest spread throughout her body.
Dodindt’s mouth corners rose endlessly as he gazed at Sharti, who couldn’t even breathe.
“That’s a definite weakness, that’s what I’m saying. I saw it? I saw it! That weakness of yours!”
Kik, kikikikikik, kikik, kigikik, kik…….
The laughter escaping through Dodindt’s yellowed teeth was grotesque and hideous.
Above all, Dodindt’s sincere threat toward Sharti was the most terrifying.
But her hand steadily searched for her pocket.
“……What if my face is a weakness?”
Dodindt’s laughter stopped.
Sharti, with a terrified face, looked up at him and barely managed to raise the corners of her mouth.
“Did you think I wouldn’t take any precautions?”
Shwaak-! The protective powder Sharti took out from her clothes pocket scattered in the air.
The protective powder instantly engulfed Dodindt, carried by the strong wind coming through the half-open window.
“Aaaaargh!!! Aaargh!! My, my eyes!!!”
True to its effect of making eyes sting and burn, Dodindt clutched his eyes and howled in pain.
‘Now!’
Not missing the opportunity, Sharti rose and tried to leave the bed, but Dodindt immediately reached out, grabbed her clothes strongly, and flung her down.
Thud! The impact caused Sharti’s shoulders and back to hit the bed board.
“……ugh…….”
Due to the impact that traveled to her head, Sharti couldn’t immediately get up.
“You! You b*tch!!!”
Dodindt, unable to open his eyes, panted and fumbled around the bed.
Unable to let herself be caught by him again, Sharti was barely trying to curl up her body when—
Bang bang!! Bang!!
“-Sha!”
Ren’s voice was heard amidst the sound of pounding on the door as if trying to break it down.
Sharti tried to mouth for him not to come, but before that, Dodindt found her.
“Face, face! That face!! I will, remember it.”
Dodindt threatened Sharti with bloodshot eyes.
“I’ll remember it and definitely kill you. No, before that, I’ll somehow find someone who knows your face and sell you out!! So just quietly……!”
Kwang-!!
Just as Dodindt was trying to grab Sharti’s hair to drag her away, Ren appeared as the bedroom door shattered.
The back of Ren’s hand was soaked in blood as he breathed heavily.
“Sha!!”
When Ren rushed forward after discovering the woman cowering in the darkness, Dodindt cursed and threw the knife he was holding.
Ugh. With a narrow miss, Ren’s forearm was cut, and in that brief hesitation, Dodindt hastily escaped through the window.
“Damn it, Sha! Sha, are you okay? Sha!”
Ren immediately checked on Sharti’s condition, ignoring Dodindt’s retreating figure.
Her slender body was soaked in rain and trembling. Ren gathered the blanket and wrapped it around Sharti’s body.
“Wait, why is there blood……..Don’t tell me you’re hurt?!”
“…….”
Surprised by the blood on the pillow, Ren tried to examine Sharti, but she was only letting out small moans that sounded like sobs while covering her face.
Though Sharti’s crying was partially drowned out by the wind, Ren could vaguely understand the situation.
Someone had attacked Sharti. Sharti had shown her face to that someone, and that someone who had seen Sharti’s face had instilled fear in her before running away.
Cold anger boiled up, erasing all expression from Ren’s face.
Quietly standing up, Ren picked up the broken blade that Dodindt had thrown.
“I will catch him, Sha.”
“……!”
A large hand wrapped the blanket more tightly around her, then disappeared without hesitation.
Sharti raised her head belatedly, but Ren was nowhere to be seen.
Whoooosh-. Ren disappeared into the typhoon that would erase both sound and trace.
****
Splash splash. Having fled the log cabin in a panic, Dodindt began to wander the mountain frantically.
As time passed, the rain gradually weakened and the intensity of the wind also began to change, causing Dodindt’s face to distort.
‘Damn it! Who was that guy just now!’
Things had gone awry starting with the unexpected appearance of a man.
His plan to easily coerce cooperation by using Sharti’s face as leverage had gone up in smoke.
Moreover, because he had fled in a panic, he had ended up deep in the mountain.
“Huwik, huuuk, hu…….”
Thinking he had fled far from the old log cabin, Dodindt stopped walking.
At least the rain hadn’t completely stopped yet, so some of the protective powder Sharti had sprinkled was washed away.
‘I’ll hide for a while, no, I should just escape the mountain and report that doctor woman. If I say she’s the wanted criminal they were looking for in this search, they’ll investigate her identity and surely find something.’
If he said she was a cunning wanted criminal and that he deliberately deceived his subordinates to break through her vigilance, his superiors might understand and let it pass.
“Or, kihit, she looked pretty decent and useful, so I could sell her too.”
It was then, as the still-dazed Dodindt began to wear a lewd smile again.
Whiizz-! Along with a light footstep behind him, a cold blade flew by, grazing Dodindt’s cheek.
“……wh-who’s there!!”
“Did you dirty her ears with such words?”
Simultaneously with a sharp, low voice, Dodindt’s face was buried in the ground.
“……he, heaek, huok, heuk……!”
As Dodindt’s rough breathing grew closer, Ren’s reason became thinner and finer.
Hadn’t Sharti been so terrified that she couldn’t even breathe properly?
The image of Sharti curled up and trembling in the devastated bedroom kept flashing before his eyes.
That was why.
A strange murderous intent was boiling.
“Sell her? You dare–who?”
Before being Ren’s benefactor, Sharti was a fragile woman.
It was unbearable that this kind of scum had made such vile remarks about Sharti.
Above all, Dodindt had forcefully seen the face that she had wanted to hide so desperately.
That’s why Ren couldn’t stay by Sharti’s side when she was terrified.
He had to chase Dodindt right away.
Just as Sharti had kept Ren’s secret, this time he had to protect Sharti’s secret.
“Aaargh!! St-stop!! Stop……!!”
Though the pig-like screaming echoed through the mountain, Ren ignored it.
Thud. Thud thud. Thud! Thud!! While gripping Dodindt’s collar and slamming him into the ground, Ren continued to swing his fists.
Dodindt’s face, already a mess from the mushroom side effects, gradually swelled up to the point where its shape was hard to recognize.
But Ren’s anger showed no sign of subsiding.
“So you can speak. Trash like you know how to speak.”
