TCGAD 21

“My bride stabbed me in the gut and when my insides were spilling out, this fucking heart should have been thrown away with them!”

Bulkan, he shook his head in agony again. He clutched his head and began to wander aimlessly inside the cave. He staggered like a drunken man, let out dry, mirthless laughs, and muttered to himself.

“It doesn’t matter even if it is. I’m the one who picked it up anyway.”

He was walking a tightrope, constantly going back and forth between beast and human. Pointed ears sprouted through his rough hair, and his thick arms were covered with shaggy, jet-black fur that was enough to cover them completely. His back kept arching up and then subsiding again.

Then, he suddenly began to punch his abdomen.

“I am a dog, I like to chase!”

He was laughing maniacally, “Uhaha!” but there was not a single trace of laughter in his eyes. He looked like a frightened child staring into the darkness, shouting “Come out, I said come out!” bluffing.

Ha, haha. The laughter hit the cave walls emptily. In the empty laughter, I felt an incredibly hollow heart.

Ha, ha. Even the laughter that had been dripping like a broken faucet suddenly stopped, as if the water had been turned off.

He stood tall and alone in the darkness, looking like an abandoned dog. The wide scar embedded in his abdomen pierced my eyes painfully.

“But you will struggle to leave me again, won’t you?”

It was less of a question to me and more of a self-deprecating murmur to himself.

“If it was really about that paltry revenge, I could have just broken your neck. I could have taken your life, and clutched your sweet heart with my claws, right?”

The abdomen, deeply engraved with scars, heaved with each ragged breath.

“I…!”

It swelled up thickly like a tire inflated to its limit, then deflated with a large drop.

“What on earth do I have to do to keep you?”

He lifted his chin high towards the ceiling and howled from deep within his throat, awoooo. At that completely unbalanced sight, I was so speechless that my tongue felt like it would melt and disappear. He’s misunderstanding that I’m the one who stabbed him and ran away, and yet he’s begging me not to leave. It felt like a more perfect contradiction couldn’t exist in this world. The seam of emotion was completely twisted, and a corner that had been pushed out seemed to pierce me deeply.

He was so terribly unfamiliar. He seemed like the Bulkan I knew, and at the same time, like a completely new Bulkan.

“The one with the horns must have let you go on purpose, right? I wanted to take its life.”

I flinched. There were times when I thought of Lemon and became incredibly afraid. The anxious thought of what I would do if he harmed Lemon. In fact, Bulkan had said before that he would harm Lemon.

“But if I had, you, my bride…”

What did I say back then? I had trembled all over and screamed at him not to talk about Lemon like that. Then, like an idiot, I had coughed as if my breath would be cut off at any moment…. At that time, Bulkan definitely said to me.

‘I won’t talk like that.’

He had made that promise. Even after I left, Bulkan was stuffed and bound tightly by that promise.

“Don’t ever leave me again!”

The wounded heart rushed at me in a lump. I felt like I would be crushed to death by that immense emotion. I couldn’t breathe, and my heart felt like it would burst.

The image of a lonely dog hiding in the darkness, chewing on its pain alone, flashed before my eyes. It must have been very painful and agonizing. Bulkan had boasted that he was never lonely, but I knew that was all just a bluff.

Because I was someone who knew more about loneliness than anyone else. I didn’t want to leave him alone in that lonely land. Because that place was a very lonely and hungry territory.

I squeezed my throat with difficulty.

“Bulkan.”

His large back flinched. It was his name, which I hadn’t called in a very long time. As it happened, the pronunciation was the same as the word for ‘fire’ in my country’s language, so it stuck to the tip of my tongue even more tenaciously. The final sound, ‘kan’, also ended with a deep rumble in the throat, which was very reminiscent of him just by hearing his name. That’s why I don’t know how hard I tried not to even think of that name while we were apart.

…Of course, I didn’t succeed.

“I really didn’t stab you.”

Please believe me, I expressed my sincerity with all my might. Slowly, Bulkan’s pupils distorted, and confusion was mixed in like an impurity. He’s eyes glinted as if trying to grasp the truth of my words. Then, he shook his head wildly and let out a breath, phoo.

“Of course, I did have the knife.”

The knife that Empusa had given me was in my chest, but the tip of that knife had never been pointed at Bulkan.

“I couldn’t bring myself to stab you.”

I had neither the courage nor the strength to take someone’s life. It hurt like a knife was stuck in my heart every time Bulkan spewed dirty words, but I truly didn’t want to harm him.

Bulkan was the one who had completely uprooted the life my grandmother and I had planted and diligently cultivated. Although he wasn’t the one who set the fire, his appearance had made my life completely collapse, losing its support. For me, Bulkan’s appearance was literally nothing short of a fall.

And yet.

“Despite all the son of a b**ch things you did to me…”

When I was lost in the village, wandering in despair like an abandoned dog, it was also Bulkan who came to find me, who covered me with his body to shield me from the rain, who climbed up the cliff with his nails dug in to procure food. If only he had been a completely watertight son of a b**ch… then I might have felt even a little bit of a desire to stab him with a knife and run away for a perfect escape.

But the time I had built up with Bulkan was the problem. A strange emotion had begun to sprout in the time that had accumulated without my knowledge. A strange emotion began to mix with the feelings that had been tightly bound with hatred. It was irresistible.

“The reason I ran away was because I wanted the baby in my belly to live. But you, you…”

My voice trembled like an idiot who stutters.

“You kept trying to get rid of the life left in my belly. You criticized it, calling it a cripple, a half-wit. You d**n dog b**t**d…”

I couldn’t read any trace of my father in Bulkan’s appearance. At first glance, his words were no different from my father’s, but his actions had a different texture. However, I felt a sense of kinship in the appearance of a life being shunned. Because I often found comfort in things like abandonment, and leaned my tired body on them.

That feeling had now been transferred to the baby swimming in my small belly, who hadn’t even been born yet.

“Because my bride.”

“……”

“You, who lives for only 80 years at most.”

Bulkan’s lips twitched. His face, which had seemed as hard as cast iron, was now covered with a fog of fatigue.

“I was afraid you would die.”

His pupils were widely dilated. Like the eyes of a beast that has witnessed something truly terrifying. The predator that occupied the very top of this ecosystem’s pyramid was watching me with the eyes of prey.

I wondered if it was a very unfamiliar expression for him as well. The fear that he was clearly experiencing for the first time in his life. The one who was presenting him with such fierce terror was none other than me. He was experiencing a very deep longing for me.

The veins on Bulkan’s tanned brow stood out tautly. I could feel his artery throbbing.

“I am you.”

As I approached, Bulkan flinched and stepped back instead.

“I couldn’t harm you.”

He had never taken a step back before, so it was a very unfamiliar composition.

“Even though I knew you would chase me if I ran away, I thought it would be better to get caught.”

“No, that can’t be true. My bride is a vicious hypocrite who tells lies whenever she opens her mouth.”

Bulkan continued to doubt me until the end. He kept denying it, saying no, it couldn’t be, almost obsessively. It was a denial that was somewhat pitiful.

“It’s a trick to humiliate me, rip open my belly, and escape to the land where she was born.”

“It’s true.”

Please believe me now, I said, grabbing his heavy arm and shaking it. From the elbow down, it was half-covered in black fur from a partial transformation into a beast, so it was incredibly heavy, as if it were loaded with weights.

“You’re saying you didn’t stab me?”

I quietly nodded my head up and down.

And a strange silence crossed between us. The tension that had been running taut between us began to take on a different current.

“If I had stabbed you, I wouldn’t have been so surprised to see that scar, would I? I don’t know who on earth did such a thing, but… ah.”

I stopped talking abruptly.

His eyes slowly narrowed. If I didn’t stab Bulkan, it meant there was someone else who stabbed him and ran away. Who on earth, and why, stabbed Bulkan? For what reason did they have to burn him with fire?

The opponent clearly knew that Bulkan’s body could regenerate. And they knew beforehand that I would be leaving the cave that day…

My intuition kept pointing towards Empusa…. The fact that she came to me that day and helped me without any compensation kept bothering me. It was like a painful hangnail next to my fingernail.

“…Let’s treat it.”

I knew I had no right to say such things…. I knew it better than anyone else, but I couldn’t just let such a deep scar remain on his skin.

Bulkan just silently kept me in his pupils.

We still had a lot of homework to solve. Sticky emotions had pooled at my feet like I was in a swamp.

But for now, I decided not to ask anything. Because I didn’t want to break the clumsy peace that had come to us. I lifted my gaze and looked up at the Bulkan in front of me. Looking at his pupils, which were wide open towards me, I felt it once again.

I’m back.