Was it all worth it?
That question followed my every step, seeping deeper into my skull with every breath.
A second chance, a new reality to start all over. It wasn't easy, but there must have been an alternative.
Yet.
'...'
The freezing cold hung on my shoulders, as I trudged along the backstreets' gulley.
There were people sprawling on the ground, their bodies reeked of disease and neglect. Imperfects or so they said.
If I didn't have a place to return, I would have been one of those men tonight.
Now that I thought about it, I might have already been one.
An imperfect. The scars on my face tingled when that word came to mind.
Treated just a tad better than the slaves, people with physical imperfections like Roland are considered third-class citizens. In other words, people who are better dead than alive.
A group of scrawny children clung to their mother who had a stump for an arm. They looked away as I passed, perhaps terrified of my current appearance.
Misery is always in season.
'At this point, why not?'
I turned around and strode towards the small family.
They are a family of four, a mother and her three toddlers. They were setting up a shabby tent on the side of the road, their only resting place.
Startled by my sudden action, the mother pulled her children behind as she stood guard against me.
"Wh..What do you want!" her stature shaken slightly as she covered the children.
Fear crept into her eyes the longer I stayed silent.
"Hey hey, calm down. I'm not going to eat you'all, you know?"
My right hand reached into my pocket as I approached.
"S…St…Stay the hell back you bloody bastard!!"
The woman threw some junk in my direction. An empty bottle flew through and almost cracked on my head.
"Aye now! CALM DOWN!" I forced a burst of air from my lungs, but the command came out as a gravelly, pressurized rattle.
Raising both arms showing I wasn't a threat.
The woman stopped.
Four pairs of eyes now sit in a single line, towards my right palm.
" Tha-THAT'S A PLAT-" one of the scrawny boys shouted in surprise before his mother hastily covered his mouth.
But she was just as mesmerized by the shine of this round piece of metal.
I smirked.
"Do you want it?" The coin reflected the moonlight between my fingers.
"..."
Silence lingered in the air.
I thought of just leaving the coin there and walking away.
That was before the woman started coming closer.
She let go of her children, still turning her head back and forth as she got to my spot.
"...Are you interested in me, mister ?"
The mother gestured, her hesitant fingers undoing the first two buttons on her ragged dress.
sigh…
So she thought I wanted that kind of service. Such rotten desires are common here after all.
It only made me want to vomit, though.
"No."
The word was short, but it cost me. I had to bypass my shredded tongue entirely, pushing the sound straight from the back of my throat.
Her coarsened hand stops on the third button.
"I..I can tell the kids to go away!" She glanced back at them briefly.
"They won't see anything."
Those words can barely be registered as a whisper, more like a whimper of a wounded animal.
"G–Get away from ma' you savage!" The oldest kid shouted as he jumped in between me and the woman.
Before I could even act. My punctured left shoulder blunted weakly to the wall, the pain almost made me tear up.
"Kenny!"
smack.
The slap resounded back and forth in the gully.
"Bu…but ma'! He's going to hurt you!"
The words flew from his mouth through the tears and snots.
"Enough! We have been scraping garbage for weeks. Weeks! Kenny."
"Do you want your siblings to keep munching rotted muck on the ground!?".
The woman scolded him harshly, yet her hand were already soothing his reddened cheeks.
She sent him back to the other kids, who were cowering on the ground
"Please forgive him…the boy's still young and stupid"
She glanced briefly at them, before turning to face me.
"S-shall we get back, mister?"
The woman closed her eyes, while sheepishly lifting up the skirt of her dress. Tears puddling on her eyelids.
Ignoring the messed up shoulder, I dashed and stopped her hand before the skirt could go any higher.
"You don't have to do that."
My fingers closed on hers, drawing it away from the dress's skirt.
At that moment, I slid the coin into her palm. Its texture was akin to sandpaper, the mark of someone who is used to harsh labor until their fingers crack.
She looked at me, perplexed. Her lips shaken, trying to form words.
"Take this and buy some actual clothes. Winter is near, you lot can't weather through it with rags now can you?"
I removed my hand, retrieving it into my pants' pocket.
"Bu…but I haven-"
My foot turned back towards the way home.
"Ah right, buy some bread first. Your boys and gals look like they've been through a war, they'll look like easy bites for the traffickers at this point."
Leaving the scene behind, I began walking home.
"Mister!"
The call didn't halt my steps, it only slowed down for a moment, however.
"Please marry me when I grow up!" A pompous young girl, probably a toddler, shouted my way.
Through the bundle of noises, a quiet cry entered my ear. The mother who had been trying to form words had stopped entirely. I could hear words of thanks muddled with inaudible cries.
"I'm so sorry for pushing you mister!" Those words echoed along with a bang.
Startled by the sudden noise, I twitched my neck to the aching shoulder, just enough to catch a glimpse behind.
The oldest kid that shoved me now kneeling, his forehead kissing the greasy ground.
He kept banging his head against the pavement, tears streaming down endlessly.
His other siblings were surrounding their mother, embracing her. They smiled at the sight of the platinum coin shining inside the clamped fist.
"Hey stop banging it boy! Go back to your mother."
'Dignity, won't buy you shit. Kid.'
Not letting those words slip, I resumed walking.
Soon, my steps lead to a dilapidated wooden hut. My home
Facing the wooden door just big enough for one man, I couldn't bring myself to turn the knob.
The night is old, I hope Yenica's doing alright. I've already fed her some wheat congee before I left, just in case.
'...'
I do wonder. Why do I care so much about this person?
I'm not even her real husband. Just a corpse thief whose life ended hilariously.
'What did I even try so hard for.'
As my palm lingered on the door, it suddenly, yet so slowly swung inward.
It was Yenica, though even paler than a few days before, she looked more lively than I've ever seen.
"Roland?"
Ah that's right, I'm Roland now. At least in the flesh.
"Do you know how late it is–" She paused, scanning me top to bottom.
"...Are those…burns? Gosh! which beast did you strangle today, get inside right now dear!"
Despite her state, Yenica weakly pulled me inside with her scrawny arms.
She didn't question why all the beast skins are gone, or why the house is so empty it's straight up eerie. Yenica gently set me down the bed, the only thing I couldn't bring myself to sell.
I sat in silence as Yenica struggled to try and bandage me.
"I remembered putting the cloth there…" She kept mumbling as she searched under the bed.
The cloth…I sold it to a merchant for three gold coins.
"Maybe there's still some healing tonic left?"
…I fed her the last drops before selling the bottle to a neighbour.
"Why aren't there even a single beast skin? I remembered skinning a lunaris last week?"
"Um…Yenica, I think I'm alright. Please sit down for a moment, you're sweating buckets y'know?"
That particularly pretty fur coat was from a rare wolvekin, it heals you passively if worn. I pawned it to a backstreet tailor.
"This won't do…My husband is in so much pain that he's speaking gibberish."
My "wife" sighed, and plopped down on the bed beside me.
"The house's pretty spacious tonight huh?, haha…"
"Yeah I uh well…, It needed a little renovation. Afterall, proper ventilation helps you recover faster''
I forced a chuckle, my teeth screeched as they bit down on the shame.
"Hmm."
Yenica studied me, her silver hair swayed lightly as a gust of wind swept us by.
Her gold-tinted irises — so like her daughter's — flickered slightly
"Your tongue…Why is it full of cuts and prickled with glass shards?"
"..."
I could feel cold sweats dripping down my back.
There was no way I could have prepared for this. Not that I can answer her truthfully anyways.
Perhaps I should say something like: "Oh I gambled our entire livelihood away, almost cleared our debts but got played and almost got killed by a one-eyed psychopath".
[TELL HER THE TRUTH?]
[YES / NO]
The pitch black window showed itself again. Asking the same question.
Ignoring the annoying bastard, I resolved myself to answer.
"I–"
Before I could even spill another word. A strange something, invaded my mouth.
A foreign sensation, something I never thought to experience.
My eyes closed as the wave of bliss slowly carried my body away.
Yenica embraced me tight, her pale figure tangled my roughened body, as her tongue intertwined mine. Her saliva mixed with mine, it tasted faintly sweet — like the congee I'd made her this morning. My own mouth was a wreck of copper and glass, and still she didn't pull away.
The world seemed to fade whilst our tongues waltz under the moonlight.
We stayed like so, until the moon had drifted noticeably westward through the cracked window.
I was the one to pull back.
The wounds.
My messed up shoulder, the hole in my chest and even my shredded tongue. They all healed up like they've not even been torn through.
"Yenica?"
There was no answer. I tried nudging her tenderly.
"Hey Yenica? Are you there?"
Her eyes didn't open, not even a twitch.
My heart started beating louder. My trembling arms set her down the bed, with every touch I could feel her getting colder.
Her already pale face is now completely lacking life, almost as if it had been sucked out. Even the scales on her wrist and neck looked withered.
I rushed to check her breathing. It's getting weaker, like a candle under a storm.
But it's not gone, she can still be saved!
Immediately performing CPR, I tried my hardest not to let my tears fall down her face.
Fuck! It's not improving at all!
Her body is going pale, at this rate it won't even be five minutes.
Helplessness rushed over me, it trampled me with every compression.
"Yenica! why would you do something so stupid!"
I pushed down.
"Sacrificing yourself til the bitter end! Why, just why!?"
My arms gave out, my body crumbled on hers.
It was silent all around. My lifeless body on hers, until the sun finally rose in the gloomy sky.
The withered scales on her wrist caught the first grey light of dawn. One of them, just one, held the faintest shimmer.