Chapter 17

TL: pineapples

ED: sid

***

Two years have passed since then.

Aku Ryun went into secluded training as if nothing had happened. I stopped insisting on visiting him too. It wasn’t because I was afraid of his death threat.

It was because his voice sounded so painful when he said that. He returned everything I gave him except the ice flowers.

I had no idea why he didn’t return the ice flowers. He wasn’t going to escape either way.

“Heung!”

Pouting, I gave up thinking about that. I can make as many ice flowers as I want. Since then, I have been cultivating strenuously, the amount of flowers I could make in one go significantly increased.

In the past, it was difficult to make more than twenty no matter how hard I tried. But recently, it was easy to make fifty.

“Young Miss, you know today is the day I need to go to the village, right? Never go out at night. You got it, right?”

About a year ago, Seoyoung started to go to the village once a week and then came back in the morning.

It was obvious. She was going to meet her boyfriend.

So I told her to have a good time with her boyfriend and that she could stay there for a few days. But Seoyoung jumped and denied everything.

What do you mean you don’t have a boyfriend?

I politely answered, hiding a wicked smile

“If you go out on this dark night, you’ll get lost. Don’t worry about me and have a good time.”

Seoyoung blushed.

“Well, it’s not like that. I’ll just go see h… oh, no, I’m just going to do some business. I’ll be back early tomorrow, so get some rest.”

“Got it.”

I closed my eyes. I had to go to bed early and get up early tomorrow morning to do my morning cultivation.

Baekha increased its consumption of qi. Its body hadn’t grown even a centimeter, but the amount of energy it consumed increased. I had no choice but to build up my internal qi like crazy. If my qi was even a little weaker, Baekha would stop listening to me.

Though I am five years old now and have owned Baekha for a long time, it still hasn’t completely submitted to me.

Thanks to Baekha, I slept less. It was because I knew that my powers would increase the most at dawn.

I wasn’t tired though. The more I cultivated, the more I felt that I had slept well and I was not very hungry. Instead, I tend to fall asleep quickly and deeply at night. For the most part, I didn’t even wake up in the middle of the night anymore.

Well it would be like that if Baekha didn’t exist.

“…if you keep doing that, I’ll throw you in the furnace again.”

Baekha kept waking me up when I was sleeping.

If blowing ice cold air on me didn’t work, it would poke me. I didn’t even know how it managed to learn how to move when it didn’t have arms and legs.

Once I put it in the furnace for a few hours, and it calmed down for a while.  However, waking me up seemed to have become a habit.

I opened my eyes to Baekha who kept poking me while giving off a chill.

“You’re dead.”

I’ll stick you in the furnace until the sap pours out from your branches. I was about to stand up with Baekha but then I suddenly felt something strange.

I shivered as goosebumps erupted over my entire body. It felt like my skin had contracted and my blood chilled.

Subsequently, the smell of blood wafted over to my nose.

I lowered my posture without realizing it. I crawled to the door without a sound and opened the door very slightly.

“Huh!”

The smell of blood overwhelmed me as soon as I opened the door. It was so terrible that it looked like more than one or two people had been brutally murdered.

How did I notice this just now?

I ran to the treasure chest and took out my pouch. It was the pouch that contained the gifts that the funny old men gave me.

Tiptoeing, I went out into the hallway.

The corridor, which was intertwined like a spider’s web, was so dark that it was hard to walk even though I memorized the path.

Leaning on one wall, I walked as carefully as I could.

Around the third or fourth corner, I heard a groan.

“Ugh!”

It wasn’t the sound I heard in the room. There seemed to be someone out in the hallway.

I clung to the wall and poked my head out over the corner.

“…….!”

I saw a man dressed in black and a woman kneeling in front of him. I couldn’t see the woman from my side, but I could see the man well.

He was hiding his face in a mask, but it was also the first time I’ve seen him in my life.

The man raised the woman’s chin with the tip of the sword and asked.

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that so?”

The man answered in a slight way and pushed the sword very gently into the woman’s shoulder.

All of a sudden, I could hear teeth grinding in the woman’s mouth.

The man slowly pulled out the sword and wiped it on the woman’s clothes.

“Now, do you remember?”

“No matter what you do to me… You won’t get the answer you want.”

“Is that so?”

The man pushed a sword into a woman’s thigh this time without any hesitation.

The woman’s saliva quickly turned red. Nevertheless, she gritted her teeth and endured the scream. As soon as the sword was pulled out, the woman fell sideways. At that moment, I saw her face stained with cold sweat and blood.

“…….!”

I covered my mouth with my hands. That unni was an acquaintance of mine.

When I talked to them, they never said more than one word. It was clear it was one of those silent servant unnis.

Why is he torturing her?

“D…die.”

The servant unni replied weakly. Her voice showed that she was ready to die.

The man spoke soothingly and softly.

“If you tell me where the child is, I’ll kill you without pain.”

Me? He was looking for me? This palace was a maze of corridors with more than 100 rooms.

Among them, my room was in the innermost part. It was a place where I had to pass through a complicated hallway that even to this day I sometimes got lost.

He needed someone’s guidance to find out where I was. That’s why he was torturing innocent servant unni.

‘I need to call for help!’

As soon as I tried to go out toward the entrance, something invisible pulled my hand back.

It was Baekha.

‘Let go! She’s in danger! We need to get someone over here! Let go of me!’

I was dragged helplessly. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t let go of Baekha that stuck to my palm. I was almost dragged to the end of the hall, struggling, but one point I stopped hearing their voices.

Did he hear us?

Baekha and I stopped in our tracks. Heavy silence weighed down on my shoulders. Standing like a statue, I turned my head slowly.

A man who was sticking out his face at the corner smiled broadly when his eyes met with me.

“Hey there, kid.”

“……!”

“I didn’t even know the kid was here, so I wasted my time. What a shame.”

A man spoke calmly and took off his mask.

His lips were torn on both sides. It was a terrible scar like someone had cut it with a knife.

When I opened my eyes wide in fear, the man smiled satisfactorily.

But the reason why I was scared was not because of his scar. I’ve seen someone with those eyes. Both the head of the orphanage and Bing Eun-seo had the same eyes. The eyes of madness when they abused me. I shouldn’t fight against people like that. I need to buy time!

I gulped down.

“Mister… Who are you?”

“I’m a monster that kills people. You’re scared, aren’t you?”

“Like a monster… I don’t see it though?”

“Look at my face. What would I be if I wasn’t a monster?”

“……how did you get hurt?”

“My teacher ripped open my mouth. Because I was crying so loudly.”

“Oh, when?”

“When you were two years old. Both at once.”

A man opened his mouth wide. There was a cold sweat on my back.

“It must have hurt.”

“Well, did it? It’s been so long that I don’t really remember.”

The man tilted his head slightly. Looking into the air, he smirked at the past. His lips twisted strangely.

“You’re a very good talker. I’m sure you have a lot of friends. Right? This Mister doesn’t have any friends. Every time I whined about wanting a friend, my teacher pulled one of my nails out.”

A man told his terrible story casually. Far from being angry, there was just no sign of excitement.

I tried my best to clear up my trembling voice.

“H- have you ever played with a friend?”

“Nope. You can’t play by yourself, right?”

“Well, do you want to play with me?”

The man’s calm expression changed. Only then did he shine his eyes a little excitedly.

“Play with you? What are we doing?”

“H… h..ide-and-seek.”

“Are you talking about a tagger looking for a hidden child?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Oh, I remember. Yeah, I wanted to try that. Can I cut off your wrist first? I’ll cut your ankle after I’m done playing.”

I flinched without realizing it. I clenched my fist instead of covering my wrist.

“Why my wrist?”

“Because the client wants it. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth… well, is it too hard for a kid to understand?”

The North Sea Ice Palace! He must have been hired by the king of the North Sea Ice Palace.

I changed my words as if I didn’t understand anything.

“Then I can’t play because I’m hurt. Can’t you do it all at once?”