By Zephyria 
Something huge was pressing down on me. My limbs were tightly bound, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see anything in front of me. I tried to breathe in and out with difficulty, but all I felt was water filling my lungs.
I was falling endlessly, endlessly into the deep water, and my palm was tickling.
“……”
I opened my eyes with a start and saw an unfamiliar ceiling. Before I could grasp the situation, my palm tickled again. It felt like a damp snail crawling around.
I moved my head slightly, and something moved from below.
“You’re awake?”
“……”
Aska’s face was close to mine.
No wonder I felt so suffocated; Aska was lying on top of me. He was slumped over me with his face against my chest, holding my hand, and I had no idea how long he had been like this.
My whole body ached as if I had been beaten for hours. Did he not realize I was a patient?
“It’s been an hour, but you wouldn’t wake up, so I just left you alone. Your heart was still beating.”
Was he listening to my heartbeat with his ear against my chest? More than that, I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore, so I raised my arm and patted Aska’s back.
“I can’t breathe.”
At my words, Aska scrambled up and let go of my hand. I looked at the spot that had been tickling earlier and saw that the skin on my palm was peeled off, though I didn’t know when it had happened.
I took a few deep breaths and tried to get up, but my head spun. My arms and legs were still weak, and I was worried.
“You’re still so pale.”
Aska muttered to himself, studying my face intently. Then, he suddenly held out his hand.
“Give me some money.”
“What?”
“You haven’t eaten anything. I’m fine, but you need to eat. Give me some money so I can buy you something to eat.”
It would be much better to return to the castle than to have Aska go out and buy food. Just as I was about to shake my head, I noticed that Aska’s eyes were red.
I asked, puzzled, “Did you cry again while I was sleeping?”
“No?”
Aska shook his head with a bewildered expression.
“……”
“……”
But after a few seconds of silent staring, his lips began to tremble, and tears welled up in his eyes. Aska turned away and sniffled a few steps away.
I watched his shaking back and asked as I raised my upper body, “Why are you crying?”
He didn’t answer. All I could hear was his sobbing, which made my head throb. I was already exhausted, and Aska’s crying made me feel like the little energy I had recovered was draining away.
“Come over here.”
At my words, Aska glanced back at me. His eyes were bloodshot, and his cheeks were wet with tears. Aska glared at me for a while, even though I wasn’t the one who made him cry, and then dragged his feet to my side.
As soon as he was within reach, I grabbed his wrist and pulled him closer.
“Why are you crying?”
“Earlier……”
“Earlier?”
“I…… killed someone……”
Aska, who was pulled onto the bed by me, mumbled and finally burst into tears. Water flowed endlessly from his tightly closed eyes.
I figured he would just get wet again if I wiped them now, so I just let him cry.
Was he crying in advance because he was afraid of getting scolded for leaving me alone without a word? I briefly wondered, but he was crying too sorrowfully for that.
Tears streamed down his chin and neck, soaking his collar and dripping onto the blanket. It didn’t seem to be subsiding, so I touched his wet chin with my fingertip, and Aska opened his mouth.
“I, someone… I killed someone……”
“……”
At his difficult words, punctuated by sobs, I remembered something I had forgotten. Come to think of it, Aska had killed someone by popping them like a balloon. And somehow, he had drained all the blood from their bodies and turned them to dust…
I wondered how that was even possible, but for now, comforting Aska was the priority.
“He was the one who did wrong first.”
“People just… exploded……”
“You didn’t know that would happen, did you? And you saw him holding a knife. If you hadn’t struck first, you would have been the one to die.”
I tried to comfort him as gently as possible, but Aska continued to cry.
“I was just going to knock him out……”
Judging from Aska’s words about imprisoning and beating children, they were likely involved in human trafficking. Mahir, as Crown Prince, had first addressed laws related to slavery and illegal human trafficking.
Now, getting caught doing either would result in at least a death sentence, so those guys were doomed to die even if they were captured alive. I was about to tell him that crying wouldn’t bring the dead back and that they were going to die anyway, so he shouldn’t be sad, but I just closed my mouth and hugged him.
“Hic……”
I was afraid that saying the wrong thing would make him cry even more. I wasn’t very good at comforting people, so I thought it was best to just pat him quietly.
Sure enough, Aska wrapped his arms around my neck and rubbed his eyes against my shoulder. I quietly patted Aska’s back and turned my head to look out the window.
The sun had set, so I felt like I should go back soon, but my condition was terrible. But come to think of it, I’m seventeen now, so isn’t it okay to stay out overnight? Mahir said he wouldn’t worry about trivial things anymore, so it should be fine to spend the night here.
Asella might worry a little, though…
“But I don’t think it’s the first time I’ve killed someone.”
Aska said quietly in a nasal voice, as if he had calmed down a bit.
“Not the first time?”
“I had forgotten, but I suddenly remembered. Back then, Pie……”
His mumbling voice began to tremble, and Aska started crying again.
“Hwaaa……”
“……”
Sensing something was wrong, I pulled Aska away from me, grabbed his arms tightly, and examined his face.
“Are you in your right mind right now?”
“I am… No, that’s not it… Pie… Those bastards, Pie…”
“Pie?”
What’s Pie? Is he talking about food?
I tilted my head and then it occurred to me. I seemed to recall Aska once saying that Pie was the name of a dog he had when he was young.
“That dog who was your friend? The one you said you could run faster than?”
Aska nodded at my question.
“What about Pie? Didn’t you say he just disappeared?”
“He didn’t disappear… Why did I forget this? I definitely… I was so angry back then…Aska, his lips drooping into a shape, couldn’t even speak properly because he was crying. I hugged Aska even tighter than before.
“You don’t have to talk about it now. Just calm down.”
“No… I, hic! I really don’t know why I forgot…”
“It’s okay. It’s normal to forget things as you live.”
As I said that, I thought of the scene where Aska had drawn people’s blood into the air. The Sealing Magic suddenly breaking, and him seeming skilled at using his abilities despite being flustered… Was it related to that?
His strength increasing, or being regained… Anyway, I had a feeling that it had something to do with his memories returning.
Aska’s crying, which had soaked my neck and shoulders with tears, gradually subsided. The hiccups stopped, and his shaking body calmed down.
Aska, who had been silently hugging me without any sound or movement, suddenly began to speak.
“The place where I lived was hot in the summer and very cold in the winter… There was no food in the winter. If it wasn’t cold, I could go anywhere, to the mountains or fields, and find something to eat, but in the winter, it was almost impossible. The grass and animals were all frozen to death.”
“……”
Was that why he was so sensitive to heat? The desert nights were cold too, but I had a feeling that the cold Aska was talking about was on a different level.
“A lot of people died back then. Some people got frostbite and their flesh rotted, and because the ground was frozen and slippery, many people fell and broke their bones. There was no medicine and no one to treat the wounds, so if you got hurt or sick, you almost always just had to die.”
“……”
“Everyone was hungry, so they would steal from others… The old man next door raised chickens. He slept with them, shared bread with them, and they were practically family… The old man caught a cold, and he was coughing badly and had a high fever.”
Aska’s voice was getting wet again.
“He couldn’t do anything because he was sick. Someone broke in at night and stole the chicken, but the old man just kept crying. He couldn’t hit them because he was sick, he couldn’t curse them, and he couldn’t come to me for help…”
“……”
“He told me that, and the next day the old man died. I don’t know if he died from being sick or from crying because he was sad…”
I wondered why he was suddenly talking about the old man next door… A bad feeling suddenly came over me. I frowned and hugged Aska, who was starting to cry again.
What would starving people, shivering in the cold, have done with the chicken they stole? Why was Aska suddenly talking about the chicken the old man next door raised?
Chicken and dog were just meat anyway.