I Became A Married Man in Another World
Chapter 32
032 Dorothy’s Shattered Dream
It was a reassuring scent. Like being submerged in pleasantly warm water, a scent that made the heart feel strong filled the air around Dorothy.
‘Daddy.’
She was safe as long as she was within this scent. Her very, very strong daddy was protecting her. No one could touch Mommy Lij or Dorothy. It felt good, so good.
The scent moved with a swaying motion. Her body bobbed up and down. Her head wobbled too. For some reason, it was fun.
But suddenly, a strange thought occurred to her. When they left the village, the wind had been blowing cold, but now there wasn’t any at all. The wind had completely vanished. It was strange. Where did all the wind go?
’Oh, right. Dorothy is inside Daddy’s clothes right now.’
Dorothy thought as she drifted in sleep, then her eyes snapped open. She remembered.
Dorothy had an important mission.
“Rabbit!”
When she shouted, she heard laughter from beside her. As she squirmed and poked her head out, she saw Mommy Lij smiling.
She could see their house a little distance away. She had only closed her eyes for a moment, and they were already home.
“So fast!”
As Dorothy cheered, Daddy also laughed and leaned forward slightly. Daddy moved the arm that had been supporting her bottom. Dorothy slid right out from under his clothes.
Sliding out was fun and she wanted to do it again, but she was busy right now.
She had to go feed the rabbits.
“I’m going to feed the rabbits!”
She said as she ran toward the house, but then a realization hit her. She shouldn’t have said “I’m going.” Since they were all going home together, Mommy and Daddy had to come to Dorothy.
Dorothy turned her face back while running and shouted.
“Mommy, Daddy, hurry up!”
“Dorothy, look ahead! Look where you’re going. You’ll fall.”
Mommy called out in a panic. Mommy Lij was such a worrywart. She spent the whole day saying worrying things. Dorothy wasn’t going to fall—
Thud!
She fell. It hurt. She hit her nose. Her knees hurt too. What if there was a hole in her new clothes? She checked herself all over in worry, but she seemed to be okay.
Dorothy scrambled up. It hurt, but she was fine. Because Dorothy was brave.
When they went to the merchant wagon, she had met a boy much bigger than her. Thinking of him, Dorothy put strength into her eyes. That boy had a mean mouth. He was a bad boy. He said Dorothy wasn’t brave because she was a girl.
Furthermore, when she told him that baby rabbits had horns, he called her a liar. He said rabbits with horns on their heads were Magical Beasts, and they would eat a little kid like her if she got close.
She tried to tell him it wasn’t a lie, but that boy’s mouth moved so well. It moved constantly without resting for a second. There was no gap for Dorothy to speak.
When he finally stopped and Dorothy opened her mouth, the boy immediately started saying something else. He said such smart things that, though it was frustrating, Dorothy couldn’t say a word.
Really, that boy was incredibly smart. He knew so many things that he seemed much more like a teacher than Dorothy. Dorothy was teaching Daddy words, but that boy knew even more. She didn’t know what it was, but he was a formidable fellow.
Getting angry again belatedly, Dorothy stopped running and stomped her feet.
Even if that boy knew more than Dorothy, Dorothy wasn’t a liar! She would have to go back with a baby rabbit. She would show that bad boy that they really had horns.
She would crush him completely, just like how her father, who had gone to the mountains and died, used to scream at Dorothy and her second mother long ago.
“But first, rabbit food!”
Dorothy gathered the scattered bamboo leaves with both hands. When she tried to pick up more leaves to gather a larger pile, the ones she was holding kept falling back to the ground.
Left with no choice, she ran to the rabbit hutch with only what she was holding.
She unwound the rope tied tightly around the protruding wood and pushed the door open. The leaves she was holding fell again. Ugh, she would have to pick them up later.
Dorothy shouted loudly as she went inside.
“Rabbits! Time to eat!”
Her eyes grew wide as she stood still inside. The bamboo leaves in her hands all fell to the ground with a rustle.
They were gone. The rabbits were gone. Not even one was left. They had all disappeared.
“Uh, where did they go?”
Maybe they were hiding. Were they trying to play hide-and-seek? Dorothy ran around the desolate rabbit hutch looking for them, but it remained empty.
“Uuu…” Her lips began to pout. She didn’t mean to, but her lips moved on their own, trembling. The rabbits, her rabbits, were gone. No matter how much she looked, they weren’t there.
“Uu, uwaaa…”
Sobs leaked through her trembling lips. The faces of the rabbits swirled in her head. The rabbits having babies, and those babies having babies, and then again…
“Waaaaah!”
The Rabbit Kingdom was gone. It was going to be a massive Rabbit Kingdom, but it had vanished—her rabbits.
‘I didn’t even get to eat a single piece of meat.’
The thought made her even sadder.
She was so sad and sorrowful that Dorothy plopped down on the ground and began to wail at the top of her lungs.
Suddenly, he heard a child crying. He could hear Dorothy’s voice wailing from inside the rabbit hutch.
Juhwan was startled and hurried his pace, even with the jige on his back. It wasn’t a cry of urgent distress. She wasn’t injured or facing a desperate situation. Even in his panic, he could gauge that much.
However, it was different from just falling down and crying. Not knowing why she was crying made his heart throb with an ominous beat.
Being careful not to let the load collapse, he set the jige down in front of the storehouse and propped it up with the stick. It felt a bit precarious because there were so many items.
The volume of the straw bundles he had received from the villagers was enormous. He didn’t know how they did it without machinery, but they were packed tightly and were still very large. More than half of the load piled high on the jige consisted of straw.
After adjusting the stick to ensure it wouldn’t lose its balance, Juhwan turned around.
Lij was already inside the rabbit hutch.
But for some reason, a moment later, he could hear her soft sobbing as well.
What’s going on? Why are they both crying? He felt a sense of urgency.
As he hurried toward the rabbit hutch, his gaze fell upon the ground where the bamboo was driven in.
‘Ah!’
Looking at the exterior of the rabbit hutch made of bamboo stakes, Juhwan realized what had happened immediately.
The once-firm ground had become soft and loose, and the area near the bamboo had sunken slightly.
He thought he had driven them in deep enough, but it seemed the rabbits had dug underneath them and escaped.
‘But even so, why is Lij crying too?’
When he stepped inside the rabbit hutch, Dorothy was facedown on the bare ground, wailing, while Lij stood blankly beside her with tears streaming down her face.
It seemed she felt sorry for the collapse of the Rabbit Kingdom. Between her wails, Dorothy was crying out her grand plans.
He didn’t know why Lij was crying. Perhaps she, too, had intended to become incredibly wealthy through the rabbits.
Regardless, he picked up the child who was sprawled out like a frog and pulled Lij, whose eyes had turned red in an instant, to his chest, patting her back.
The two of them clung to his chest and began to cry even more sorrowfully.
They say joy doubled when shared, but apparently, the same applied to sorrow.
Seeing his wife and child weeping so mournfully, as if no tragedy in the world could be sadder than this, Juhwan couldn’t help but let out a laugh.
Perhaps angry that Juhwan was laughing, Dorothy shouted through her tears.
“Daddy, # #!”
She probably meant “I hate you.”
Dorothy jumped down to the ground and ran off toward the house.
Lij also seemed a bit hurt by Juhwan’s reaction. She quietly wiped her tears and followed Dorothy inside.
No, Juhwan was also upset that the rabbits had escaped. But the two of them were just too funny. To think they would wail and cry to this extent.
“…”
While waiting for the fire to be revived inside and for the acrid smoke to clear, Dorothy was crying as she lectured the baby rabbit, telling it that it must never run away.
The basket containing the baby rabbit was filled with straw taken from the bed. Dorothy had put it in so the rabbit wouldn’t be cold while the family was away in the village.
The baby rabbit had been sleeping soundly, nestled in the middle, but it seemed to have woken up because of Dorothy’s constant talking. It was now staring quietly at Dorothy with its black eyes.
While Juhwan put the items he had bought into the storehouse, Lij finished preparing dinner and came outside.
Lij decided where the food items would be placed.
While the two worked side by side in the storehouse, Lij didn’t meet Juhwan’s eyes, perhaps because she was still upset.
She was feeling gloomy. When men get angry, they communicate with their fists. If it’s nothing major, they might forget it entirely and let it fade away. In any case, if they’re angry, they’re clearly angry; if it’s resolved, it’s resolved; and if they can’t ever forget it, they become enemies for life. It’s simple.
But for women, it’s difficult. They seem angry but don’t say so clearly, and you can’t just leave them be, thinking they’ll get over it. For some reason, they want to express that they are angry. If you leave them alone thinking it’ll resolve itself, they get even angrier. There’s a saying that men and women are from different planets, and it might be true.
Recalling the reactions of women he had dated in the past, Juhwan quietly stepped up behind Lij. He didn’t want to argue with Lij like that.
“Lij.”
When he called her name softly and pressed a light kiss to her slender neck, Lij flinched. Her ears were bright red.
‘Huh? That’s strange.’ Her reaction was a bit different from the women of his past. The girlfriends he used to date would get even angrier if he did this. Only after gradually soothing them and eventually taking them to bed would they finally recover. Juhwan lacked the eloquence to soothe a woman’s anger with words, so that had been his best effort.
“…Lij.”
For some reason, he wanted to see her face. He was curious about what kind of expression she was making right now.
Inside the storehouse piled with goods to be organized, Juhwan reached his arms around Lij from behind and leaned down.
As his face turned toward her profile, Lij shifted her eyes slightly to look at him. With a flushed face, she spoke as if whispering.
“I’m sorry.”
“…?”
For what? Wasn’t Lij the one who was angry just now?
Juhwan must have had a bewildered expression. Lij took a small breath as if relieved and smiled.
She was cute. He didn’t know how or why she was sorry to him, but as long as she wasn’t angry, it was fine.
Juhwan turned Lij around and pulled her into his arms.
“Lij, I’m sorry.”
“…No, I’m the one who’s sorry.”
It was somehow funny. Both of them saying they were sorry without even knowing why. Without either of them starting it, they both laughed softly.
Even after preparing meals, doing laundry, and fetching water, no one had ever thanked her. She had tried her best in her own way, but she had been the most incompetent and useless daughter and woman.
But when she was with Juhwan, he would tell her she was appreciated, cute, and doing a good job at every turn. When they ate, he told her it was delicious, and if she exerted herself even slightly, he would ask if she was tired. When she sewed, he would massage her shoulders. Even though fetching water was a woman’s job, Juhwan insisted on doing it from early dawn, saying it was too hard for her.
Since living with him, there wasn’t a single thing that wasn’t happy. She was always joyful, glad, and blessed. So she had become spoiled. Without realizing it, her actions had preceded her thoughts. She had gotten angry because Juhwan laughed when she was so sad.
“….”
One rabbit was worth as much as the load they had brought today. When she thought about how much they would have once those rabbits had babies, her heart felt like it was soaring to the sky.
She was so happy thinking she could buy several sets of clothes for Juhwan and new shoes for the child. She wanted to feed them both plenty of meat.
But thinking that all of it had vanished felt as if the sky had come crashing down.
That was why she was angry at Juhwan for not understanding her feelings. Thinking that he was laughing without knowing how big of a deal this was brought tears to her eyes.
But as soon as she got angry, she regretted it. If she had acted like this where her father or brothers were, she would have been struck several times on the spot.
She wanted to say she was sorry immediately, but somehow the words didn’t come out, and the moment just passed. She had to say it quickly, but she didn’t know how to bring it up. That was why she was worrying about how to start her apology when they were left alone in the storehouse.
That was when Juhwan called her name. He hugged her from behind, showing his intent to make up. She thought once again what a truly kind person he was.
Only, the fact that a hard part of the man touched her back then… Why, when the sun was still up and the child hadn’t even fallen asleep yet? Even when Juhwan turned her around to hug her from the front, a certain part of the man’s body was still hard.
So a laugh escaped her involuntarily, though Juhwan probably didn’t think it was because of that. While hugging the waist of a deeply relieved Juhwan with both arms, Lij giggled.
It had been a very tiring day, but it seemed it would be a long night.
Do you know? I’m happy. I’m probably the happiest person in the world. I truly love you, Juhwan.
Finally, they found the goblin village.
Gus glared at the distant sight of the goblins with a grim expression.
