Chapter 7
Bang!
A pleasantly languid afternoon.
A stone suddenly came through the window and struck the basket on the desk.
The bread in the basket tumbled across the desk.
“Hey, you bastards!”
The villagers had frequently harassed me ever since Father became an executioner, and they still did so even after I became an adult.
Perhaps that was why my speech had grown as rough as it had been when I was a soldier in my previous life.
I flung the bloodstained laundry aside and kicked the door open.
“Ha, just let me catch you. I’ll break every bone in your body.”
But perhaps they had fled the moment they threw the stone, because the area around the house was quiet except for my panting.
“Ella, um… Mother told me to bring this to your house… she…”
As I took a few deep breaths to calm myself, I heard a halting voice behind me.
“Noah!”
“…Sorry.”
Noah nervously traced circles with one toe.
“I’m always telling you. Speak up, clearly!”
“O-okay.”
He still held a basket, unable to finish his sentences properly.
It was the same kind of basket the stone had wrecked today.
My anger surged again, and I snatched the basket from his hands.
“Ow!”
Then, as though venting my frustration, I kicked him in the calf, and he fell with a scream.
The feel of his calf beneath my foot and his failure to resist made the kick feel good, but left a foul taste in my mouth.
Guilt welled up inside me.
“V-violence isn’t good… So, Ella, s-stop.”
He wrapped his arms around his leg, looked straight at me, and continued.
Noah.
He was one of the few people in the village I could call a friend.
He was the first person to approach me, the daughter of an executioner.
Seeing the small scar beside his eye suddenly brought back the memory of when we first met.
“…Pretty.”
After Father began working as an executioner, I trained my body to protect myself.
How long had I been swinging a wooden stick in the empty lot in front of our house, heedless of the people around me?
At a sudden sound beside me, I reflexively swung the wooden stick sideways.
When I came to my senses, a boy had fallen backward beside me, clutching his face.
“S-sorry. Are you all right?”
“Hng… mmph…”
The boy’s shoulders hitched slightly, and his wet breaths came in strangled, broken gasps.
My remorse swelled when he couldn’t answer because he was holding back tears.
He was so small that I thought I could carry him by myself, so I slipped my hands beneath his armpits and began dragging him across the ground.
I propped his slightly trembling body against the wall, then ran into the house.
When I came back out with herbs and a clean cloth, he was clutching himself with both arms like a small animal, staring at me with one trembling eye.
His other eye was closed, and blood was running right beside it.
“Wait a moment! I’ll treat you.”
When I reached out to wipe away the blood, I saw Alex superimposed over him as he curled in on himself.
I felt a single tear run hot down my cheek.
To hide my trembling hands, I hurriedly crushed the herbs with a nearby stone, placed them beside his eye, and wrapped it with the cloth.
“Um… what’s your name…?”
As soon as I finished wrapping the cloth, he buried his face in his knees and asked me.
“I’m Ella. And you?”
“Noah… I’m Noah…”
“I’m really sorry. I didn’t think anyone else was there. No one usually came near me.”
“I know that feeling too… My father is the gravedigger.”
After that, he no longer spoke to me.
“Should I take you home?”
He gave a faint shake of his head from side to side.
“Then are you going to stay here?”
He watched me swing the stick until sunset.
The next day, and the day after that, too.
Was it because I saw Alex reflected in him?
Perhaps it was merely my lingering attachment to Alex, but I couldn’t help treating him kindly.
‘But now…’
I looked at Noah with ice-cold eyes.
He had been small since childhood, and even now that he was grown, he was shorter than me.
“Tell Aunt Marie I said I’d enjoy the food.”
“You tell her yourself.”
The faint flush on his cheeks made me deeply uncomfortable.
My reflection was always present in his eyes.
Not me, but me as a woman.
The more he showed affection for me, the more something nauseating welled up inside me.
In my previous life, I had been a man.
Women had been nothing more than one-night comforts bought with money.
The fact that I was receiving someone’s affection and attention as a woman felt unbearably uncomfortable, like being forced into clothes that didn’t fit.
Because of that, I treated him more and more harshly, but he never left my side.
Once, I asked him:
‘Why do you keep coming to me even though I keep hitting you?’
Instead of answering, Noah gently touched the scar near his eye.
‘…At first, I was drawn to your looks. Then… because you were the first person to see me as a human being. It hurts when you hit me. But it hurt more when you treated me while fighting back tears.
’
‘…..’
Back then, I couldn’t answer him and had no choice but to turn around and leave.
“Don’t come again.”
Noah neither nodded nor shook his head.
Ignoring my firm command, he placed the basket on the table.
“I don’t want to.”
His resolute voice, which I had never heard before, came from behind me.
When I picked up the laundry I had thrown aside and went outside, Noah had already disappeared.
I arrived at the stream to do the laundry.
Unlike my tangled feelings, the stream flowed briskly.
My thoughts were so tangled that I couldn’t focus on my work.
Before I knew it, I had become a woman of marriageable age.
Father never said anything in particular, but the atmosphere suggested that he was gradually hoping I would start a family.
“You seemed to look favorably on Noah… What’s so great about that ridiculously nice guy?”
Irritation at Noah suddenly welled up, and I brought the laundry beater down hard.
Perhaps because I had been too busy surviving in my previous life, I had never liked anyone; I had only bought women and indulged my urges alongside my comrades.
On top of that, I had no confidence that I could love someone as a romantic partner, much less love a child born of us.
I kept bringing the laundry beater down to drive away my idle thoughts, and before long my thoughts of Noah faded, allowing me to finish the laundry without incident.
The basket of wet laundry was unusually heavy.
On the way home, I watched the evening glow turn red and reconsidered the anger I had felt moments before.
My irritation toward Noah had merely been an excuse.
It was anger at myself—at being expected to live as a woman under the label of an executioner’s daughter.
Marriage, love, and children were words utterly ill-suited to me, who had spent my life on battlefields.
Naturally, my thoughts turned to the person who mattered most to me now: Father.
“Father should be home soon… That Noah bastard, I haven’t even made dinner because of him!”
I had only just finished the laundry after getting caught up in all sorts of thoughts, yet the sun was already setting.
When I hurried home, a large axe stood beside the door, indicating that Father had already arrived.
At the sight of the bloodstained axe, even my lingering irritation toward Noah and my anxiety about the future melted away like snow.
The one man who shouldered the weight of that axe and went back and forth to hell every day.
The only person who made up my world.
“Huff… Hoo.”
I set down the laundry in front of the door, straightened my clothes, and caught my breath for a moment.
When I opened the door and entered, Father was changing his clothes.
“Dad!”
I threw the laundry onto the floor and ran into Father’s arms.
An embrace that was impossibly strong and warm.
And a faint smell of blood, different from before.
I felt as though I no longer knew how to live without this embrace.
When I raised my head, I saw the corners of his mouth, hanging low, tremble.
A large hand settled on top of my head and began stroking my hair.
Father’s touch was more familiar than anything.
So much around me had changed, yet that touch remained unchanged, still supporting me.
I savored it for a moment, then remembered what I hadn’t done and hurriedly pulled away.
“Gee… You were so quiet I didn’t even realize you’d arrived. Noah suddenly came by at noon, and I was so distracted that dinner’s a little late. I’ll have it ready in a moment, Dad!”
“It’s… okay.”
The end of his words trembled faintly.
His voice was low and rough, as though he hadn’t spoken in a long time.
It had been the same that day, too.
The terrible night when Father first came home from work.
I had lain there pretending to be asleep, but I could never forget Father opening the door and coming in.
The strong smell of alcohol and his unsteady footsteps, as though he were trying to erase the smell of blood clinging to his body.
Who could truly understand the fear, guilt, and revulsion he had felt when he first stood on the execution platform holding an axe?
He repeatedly buried his head in a basin, dry-heaved, and screamed.
The room was filled with the agony of murder and the fear of death.
That night, Father—the man who had tried to show me his strongest side—had his first nightmare and cried out for the first time, and I could do nothing but watch him.
Then, after Father grew quiet, I crawled into his arms and cried as I listened to his groans throughout the night.
After that day, Father gradually lost the expressions on his face.
He was always cold when dealing with others, and he began speaking less and less.
The days when he drank or suffered from nightmares grew fewer, but that was by no means a good sign.
The corners of his mouth had stiffened.
Less and less communication.
All of this had happened because of me.
Father, who had thrown himself into hell to keep me fed and support me.
The only way I could repay him was to show him even more affection.
Just then, a heavy knock came from the door.
“Mr. Ethan, are you home? I have something to deliver.”