She was a suspicious woman.
Not even her hair, let alone her face, was visible.
Huh. The man was overcome with a slightly deflated feeling.
-‘Full of incomprehensible things.’
The man closed his eyes again before the woman turned around. Though he wanted to reveal that he was awake and express his stifling feelings, the man held back.
A woman in suspicious attire.
His unavoidable instinct belatedly raised his guard.
-‘…What now?’
Soon, as something tickled his palm, the man was inwardly flustered.
-‘Letters?’
He belatedly realized that the woman was writing letters on his palm.
Why bother? Before puzzlement could appear on his face, something hard touched his mouth. Thinking she was giving him water again, he opened his mouth, and a warm, savory taste flowed in.
It was soup that required no chewing.
-‘…Did she bring it separately?’
Just when he was trying to be wary because she was suspicious, he quickly became relaxed.
-‘It doesn’t taste good though.’
But the man didn’t show it and diligently ate the soup with his eyes closed. Since he needed to appear asleep, he didn’t forget to chew and swallow as slowly as possible.
After that, the woman consistently provided meals and always fed him personally.
The woman’s occasional awkward consideration and her attentive care toward him made guilt grow abundantly.
As he felt his body gradually recovering, the man also began to hesitate.
-Should I let her know I’m awake?
The diligent woman persistently checked his consciousness every time.
Sometimes it felt like she was waving her hand in front of his face, and she regularly checked his pulse and heartbeat. He felt her gaze fixed intently on his face at all hours.
-I don’t know how long I can hide it.
Although the woman was wiping his sweat, it wasn’t enough.
He would sometimes go out of the cave alone in the dark night, find a stream in the valley, and wash himself.
Meals were the same. After confirming what animals ate outside the cave, he would pick small tree fruits to eat.
-It’s better not to deceive her.
With his rapid recovery rate, he couldn’t delay any longer.
He was reluctant to let the woman later discover that he had been deliberately hiding it.
-‘If even that woman doesn’t come looking for me, then I…’
When left alone in the cave, the man felt lonely and afraid in the solitude that came to him.
The comfort he had felt from the woman’s presence could not be felt in the darkness.
He grew increasingly impatient.
And on the other hand, he wanted to have a conversation with the woman.
-Whether she knows about me. How she came to treat me. Whether she can help me find my memories.
He hoped to resolve some of his frustrating curiosities.
-‘And…’
He wanted to say thank you.
The man rubbed the nape of his neck with an awkward feeling and tried to sleep. His empty mind was filled with only her.
Waiting for the daytime to meet her was quite, not bad.
From time to time, the man self-deprecatingly thought.
-‘I feel like a house dog.’
Having no memories gave a sense of emptiness throughout the body. Anxiety, worry, fear, and terror filled that space with every breath.
Even if he had to live like a dog, he didn’t want to feel that unpleasant emptiness again.
However, his resolve faltered at the visit of a stranger.
-[Doctor!]
As it turned out, there was another person besides the woman who treated him.
-[Doctor. Is this wound a trace of attack magic? The way it digs into the skin is different from ordinary magic wounds.]
It was a chattering little child who had many questions and much to explain.
-[Doctor, the patient mister is very tall. The blanket seems too short. I’ll take off my clothes to cover the patient mister’s feet!]
The woman was too quiet, and the child talked too much.
Yet the contrast oddly blended together, making it not uncomfortable.
-[Doctor, I don’t understand how the patient mister found your cave. Your cave is very far from the village. This patient mister is the first person I’ve seen around here!]
Thanks to the child, the man was able to resolve some of his curiosities.
-[Doctor, my grandmother said so. You shouldn’t help strangers carelessly. But sister Virena said so. Doctor is a good person. Even though the patient mister snuck into your cave, you’re not getting angry and are treating him.]
The man was a bit surprised.
The woman and the child were strangers to him, people he had never met before. Yet the two of them willingly provided a place for him and had been taking care of his treatment until now.
-‘…I should reveal it.’
Though he had no ‘memories,’ he did have a ‘conscience.’
Deceiving these two people felt unsettling.
-[Doctor, if the patient mister turns out to be a scary patient mister, I will definitely take you and run away.]
After hearing the conversation between the woman and the child, he was about to open his eyes without delay.
Until he heard what came next.
-[If you inhale a lot of Nurain mushroom herb powder, even a large bear can be anesthetized for more than 10 minutes. We have many powder pouches that you and I made. There’s no need to worry.]
The clever child’s words sounded quite brutal.
For a moment, the man felt as if he had become the prey of the small hunter.
-‘Come to think of it… I think I met eyes with the woman at some point.’
At the word “powder pouch,” a vague scene flashed through his mind.
Beyond his hazy vision, heated with fever, there was a person. He had risen when he discovered someone who seemed frightened and huddled.
‘…Clearly, I felt dizzy from the sudden pain, and when I raised my head again…’
A small pouch burst, and the powder inside engulfed his face.
-‘…’
As the first memory of being suddenly attacked came back to him, the man reflexively gritted his teeth. It was a memory he had forgotten until now, perhaps because of the bewildering and embarrassing situation he encountered in an abnormal state.
-[Oh? Doctor! The patient mister is groaning! He seems to be having another nightmare.]
The man exhaled softly with a deflated feeling.
Nearby, the child, thinking he was having a nightmare, patted the man’s arm with his small hand.
Because of that, the man had to keep pretending to be asleep all this time.
-‘No wonder. I wanted to hide that I was awake.’
It was a bitter truth.
It was absurd that the woman who had cared for the patient with such devotion had sprayed anesthetic herb on him and the child was prepared to run away with her, but on the other hand, it was perfectly understandable.
To a powerless woman and child, his presence could appear threatening.
-‘I should delay as much as possible.’
As he kept putting it off day after day, his pretense of sleeping became expert level.
-[Doctor. The patient mister looks uncomfortable. I think we should lift his head a bit! No! The patient mister is heavy. Hmm…]
Suddenly, his neck was lifted, and his posture became awkwardly uncomfortable, followed by a strong herbal scent.
-[Doctor, you should do it like sister Virena did for me. It’s called a lap pillow!]
The man belatedly understood the situation from the child’s words.
He continued to receive food while remaining stiffly frozen.
The strong herbal scent from the woman was very pleasant. It was the owner of the faint fragrance that lingered in the cave like the only sanctuary whenever he was left alone.
Was it because he had been living too complacently? Or was it the price for deceiving these innocent two people under the excuse of being afraid of the anesthetic herb?
-[The patient mister is like a baby!]
“How does this body look like a baby in any way?”
The voice that flowed from his rough throat was quite disgruntled.
Despite the darkness, his firm muscles and large physique were sensual enough to be seen at a glance.
The man pushed back his cumbersome bangs.
“I guess I’ll have to reveal it tomorrow.”
Though he might not be able to hold his head high, he didn’t want to be treated like a baby forever.
Moreover, the two people had certainly discussed his family status.
Since the woman didn’t take the initiative to find out his identity, now he had to step forward himself.
‘If I really have a family, they might be worried.’
His chest felt a bit tight.
The man left the bed of silence and stretched his stiff muscles. Then he calmly walked out into the dark cave.
“She seemed oblivious, so she might spray the anesthetic powder first tomorrow, just like before.”
As he pondered how to startle the woman less, the night deepened.
But there was something he overlooked.
Sharti was quite perceptive.
****
The difference in human muscles when asleep versus awake, conscious versus unconscious, was quite significant.
Even the sound of the heart beating through the skin had subtle differences.
‘I think he was conscious after all.’
Of course, it was just suspicion at first. There was no particularly suspicious change visible in the man who slept without the slightest movement.
But the subtleties felt from the man deepened her suspicion.
‘There are too many strange points.’
The position of the screen blocking the cave entrance, the direction in which the beast-repellent herbs sprinkled around were brushed away, the scent of forest wind that could be smelled from the man’s body in addition to the herbal scent.
Moreover, she had honed her hearing in place of her injured voice.
Even the sound of the heart beating when she occasionally touched the man’s skin showed subtle differences.
‘Until now…yes. I was being careless.’
Even when noticing the man’s suspicious and subtle gaps, Sharti foolishly dismissed them as her imagination.
More precisely, she didn’t expect that the man would be acting.
It was her first time having a long-term patient, and there was a great burden knowing that she was treating the man based on her judgment as a doctor without any guardian.
She was also inevitably anxious about the fact that she was protecting a stranger.
‘Come to think of it, I might have been hoping that the man wouldn’t wake up all along.’
She had ignored the signals sent by her eyes and ears because she didn’t want to get entangled in complicated realities.
She was afraid that she might once again encounter the man who had threatened her with the smell of blood when they first met in the cave.
‘Could it be that he remembers me attacking him with the pouch containing the anesthetic powder?’
She could guess why the man was pretending and not moving rashly.
Sharti swallowed a sigh. Since they had never had a proper conversation, there must be misunderstandings on both sides.
‘Continuing to pretend not to know wouldn’t help at all.’
Sharti tried to think as positively as possible.
‘He lost consciousness and woke up to find a stranger treating him in a cave, so he must have a lot of questions for me. And surely he wouldn’t attack me out of nowhere. After all, I’ve been taking care of him all this time.’
Early in the morning, as she left the old log cabin, Sharti let out a long sigh.
There was no answer to be found by putting it off.
‘Normally, I wouldn’t have gone to the cave from around this point.’
She had planned to leave a week’s worth of medicine in the cave, stock up some food, and then cut off her visits. Thinking that her job was done since he had recovered.
But when she thought of Tein, she simply couldn’t do that.
[Doctor! I am proud of you.]
Sharti recalled Tein’s unexpected confession as he held her hand tightly while coming down from the mountain.
[Doctor, you didn’t ignore the dangerous patient mister. You didn’t run away but treated the patient mister. Doctor, you are the doctor I respect!]
How could she disappoint the child who blinked his clear eyes purely and said she was a doctor he respected?
It wouldn’t be right to abandon the patient without proper closure.
With complicated feelings, Sharti went down to the village early this morning as well.
‘I hope there aren’t many people at the store today.’
