Chapter 19

Chapter 19

[ T/W: This chapter mentions child loss, so please proceed with caution. ]

Enya pleaded with a trembling voice.

“Release them quickly. Those guys, they were just unlucky enough to run into me last night. Nothing really happened. So…”

At those words, Tarhan took a step closer to her, wrinkling his face at once. His voice, as if unbearable, suddenly became intense.

“How can I believe you? You’re lying, as it’s okay to bleed from your body. You don’t even worry about your safety in the slightest, not even the slightest bit!”

“It was because I was really fine…!”

“Don’t lie! Then, why did you cry so much yesterday!”

As he shouted, Enya felt like her eyes were dyed red. Tarhan approached her and looked down at her with a look like a beast on the verge of biting his opponent before swinging his head towards the men tied to the tree.

A smirk ran across his lips.

“It doesn’t matter if those bastards were out of luck or happened to be there. All that matters is that they touched your body and that I saw it. Those who touched you eventually touched me, Enya. And I never leave anyone who touches me.”

Anger flowed from his wide-open eyes. Enya stared at him, speechless.

“It is a felony to try and embrace a woman who doesn’t want it on the Day of Repose. They will be expelled from the tribe for a month as soon as the trial is over.”

Tarhan added, tightening his neck.

“So, now this is my problem. It is not your concern.”

At the word trial, Enya blinked in the distance.

The trial in Aquilea was nothing more than a means used to expel or properly kill tribal people outside the eyes of those in power. The elders were only empowering them to control the irrational anger of those who had them. She knew from experience how subdued the elders were.

Since becoming the deputy chieftain, they have had no qualms about Tarhan wielding such power and doing things that others would fear him.

Enya recalled when did her man become so irrational about her. Was it from when he accepted the position of deputy chieftain? If not…

Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.

“Please don’t do that, Tarhan…”

Enya whispered.

“You can stop. Stop it now…”

In front of his man, who was clamoring to expel other men he claimed to have touched her, Enya forced her closed mouth to open. She wanted to die of shame for Tarhan to know about this… All of this seemed to prove her weakness.

“In Cartantina, the elders took the initiative to protect the disabled, women, and the young and weak. It is a place that cannot be compared to Aquilea, who is exalted infinitely when revered, and then immediately thrown into an abandoned field when it becomes useless.”

As a boy, she remembered the words Tarhan once murmured with distant eyes as if his hometown was glimmering in front of his eyes. It must have been a dreamlike story for him, who lost his hometown.

Laying next to him and gazing at Tarhan’s face with watery eyes, Enya made a rare expression.

How did that boy become like this? It seemed like it was all because of her powerlessness. She tried to touch his cheek with her hand, but Tarhan, with a crumpled face, turned his head to avoid it.

“I warned you clearly, both in the past and now. Those who insult you are the same as insulting me. The bastards who bullied you bullied me. Even so, the people who committed such cute things are like saying they want to fight me openly. I will never avoid a fight like that.”

The man growled as if his reason had left him as a whole.

Enya froze in front of the man, pouring out his anger with his eyes turned over.

She had no idea when this man became such a monster. When did a person who was insensitive and rational in the world start acting like a crazy dog ​​that rushes at people with bubbles in his mouth without looking back and forth like that when it came to her…?

As she completely closed her eyes, Enya was conscious of the red-haired woman who gave a strange look to them.

The sensation of being stabbed in the stomach from a while ago was now unbearably amplified. At that moment, her eyes turned whitish, and Enya slumped forward again. Even Rigata, who was standing behind them, looked at the woman who had fallen in surprise.

Reddish blood dripped from Enya’s thigh.

Upon discovering it, Tarhan’s expression turned pale like white porridge in an instant. He immediately picked up the woman and held her.

Tarhan’s urgent voice resounded in the place.

“Piache, call Piache…!”

“It’s just moon blood. It’s not a miscarriage.”

Old Lady Piache, who had to come to the deputy chieftain’s house, far away from her private house from the morning wind, murmured in an uncomfortable voice. The Old Lady’s hands were full of small wrinkles and dark marks as she mumbled and made the medicine.

“Are you sure?”

The man who had been fidgeting for a long time and had been going back and forth between the bed and the entrance of the house aggressively raised an eyebrow and pressed Piache.

She could not even grunt at the man as tall as the chieftain but reacted bluntly to his usual temper.

“You know that better, Tarhan. Wasn’t I able to see through Enya’s moon cycle, thanks to you? You were the one who told me to bring Ihita to Enya in the morning, saying that her moon cycle was about to start.”

Tarhan, who was looking down at the woman with a pale, tired face next to Piache, gritted his teeth.

“Piache, you know very well. Don’t forget that the condition of being delegated as the deputy chieftain includes that I can call you at any time.”

“I am old now. My strength is running, my sensitivity is getting worse, and my eyes are dim now. Why do you keep calling an old woman who has passed on all the medicine to Ihita and is now resting?”

Taking a deep breath, Piache closed her eyes tightly, as if her head was aching. Hearing those words, Tarhan opened his eyes, that was like burning fire, and responded harshly.

“If you’re an Old Lady, wander around like an Old Lady. You should be grateful that I just closed my eyes to the fact that you were still walking around the medicinal field and caring for the sick in the abandoned fields.”

“That’s why I said that black-headed beasts should not have been taken in… If I had known that you would stick your noses here and there, I wouldn’t have saved you, who was lying down covered in blood that day…”

“Shut up and take care of the patient in front of you.”

“Can you treat me as kindly as you do to your woman, just half of it.”

“Don’t even dream.”

Although Tarhan growled, Piache didn’t budge and ground the medicinal herbs in her hand.

Even though his words were always fluttering like a mad dog, Piache was the one who knew how terrible his hands could do things. All the manpower in the field that she managed at the moment came from the man’s wealth.

Even before he ascended to the position of de[uty chieftain. The reason she was able to focus on her medicinal research without worrying about her livelihood was that more than half of the hunts he had earned as a boy were distributed to Piache and the unspecified number of people she cared for.

In the end, Piache, unable to resist the urging of the greatest patron she had in her lifetime, ground the medicine.

She made a careless remark.

“…A baby won’t stay well. Even if it enters, the baby can’t stand it and would come out again mixed with blood.”

“I never asked that.”

Although Tarhan responded with an eyebrow raised ferociously, Piache ignored it and continued.

“You admit it now. Enya is too weak… No, I can’t describe it in words weak.”

Grit, grit.

The sound of grinding the mortar was deafening.

“Enya’s body itself has a different energy from ordinary Aquilean women. The moon cycle is also not regular. It’s different from a female body. Miscarriages, however common, are too common for your woman. She has been pregnant since you were very young, right?”

“…We were both too young back then. I didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

“I know. Just by looking at it, you can’t just leave this woman alone, can you? Unless the two of you slept holding hands, I can only guess that it would not have been the only pregnancy.”

At those words, the man could not respond, swallowing a gulp and rubbing his eyes with his hand.

Old Lady Piache remembered the first time the child in front of her had collapsed from a miscarriage and was carried on Tarhan’s back. As dark blood gushed out from underneath Enya for more than half a day, he acted almost as if he had lost his mind.

At that time, Tarhan, not the deputy chieftain, but merely a lowly porter left all his work behind and stayed in her hut to take care of Enya.

Old Lady Piache said that Enya’s body was not fully matured as a woman, and it was only because she was young. She seemed to have given him some useless advice, telling him to do his best to comfort his young woman.

Piache thought it was something an ordinary woman would go through.

Even now, Tarhan was not very old, but he wasn’t much older than at that time so Enya was unquestionably not much older. The two of them were still very young, so he consoled them, saying that they would have another child soon.

But, even as many years have passed since then, a child has never taken root in Enya’s womb.

“…Moreover, after the stillbirth at that time.”

She muttered indifferently. Piache tried to glance up at the man but stopped. It was rare at her age to see a man who never seemed to fall, even over the edge of a cliff, being restless and heartbroken. Of course, she had no desire to see it again.

Piache carefully said her opinion.

“I think it would be better not to expect a child in the future.”

After being silent for a while, Tarhan opened his lips.

“I know.”

The man, who had taken a spacious seat with his knees crossed, gazed down at the woman lying down with deep sunken eyes.

—

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