I Became A Married Man in Another World
Chapter 85
085 Warning, Warning, Warning: The Enemy Approaches
The twinkling starlight looked as if fine jewel dust had been scattered over a sheet of velvet. The winter night, so silent that even the sound of insects was absent, grew suffocatingly deep. It felt as though he were the only person left in the world.
“Piii.”
Oz, whom Juhwan thought had fallen asleep inside the carriage with Dorothy, poked his face out through the slightly ajar carriage door. His small body hopped down and wiggled toward him.
When Juhwan patted his lap, the rabbit gave a few light leaps and scurried over.
A rabbit’s body was surprisingly smaller than it looked. Stroking the fluffy fur, it felt as if he were half hair and half body.
“Oz, thank you for playing so well with Dorothy.”
“Piii.”
The small rabbit’s black eyes looked up at Juhwan quietly.
“….”
He knew the creature was smart. But was this child really Rudolph? And what did that girl mean when she called him Zentangle? No, for that matter, why was Rudolph a rabbit and not a reindeer? Wasn’t Rudolph simply the name of a reindeer? He had heard the stories, but honestly, he didn’t quite understand what kind of existence Rudolph was.
“Piii.”
Oz gently nudged Juhwan’s hand with his face. He was begging for mana.
“Right, you said you’d die without mana.”
When Juhwan held out his finger, the rabbit lunged and took it into his mouth. He sucked on it as earnestly as a baby nursing. Occasionally, as if he had taken in too much, his tongue would stop moving against the finger while he digested it. But soon enough, he went back to drawing mana.
“You’re eating a lot more than before.”
In the beginning, Juhwan couldn’t even feel the sensation of mana leaving him, but now he could feel the flow bit by bit. It might just be that his own senses had become more attuned to mana, but it was likely that the actual amount Oz absorbed had increased. Or perhaps it was both.
Oz’s horn began to blink with a red light, just like Rudolph’s nose. It was like a flashing traffic light. It felt like a signal for the gods set against the night sky.
Suddenly, Juhwan touched the fur around the horn. The white fur had grown a bit more. It seemed to radiate outward from the horn in a circular pattern.
“I think I understand why people keep animals.”
It was soft. Rabbit fur was naturally soft, but the white fur was even more so. It was so fine he could have mistaken it for being made of silk.
As he stroked the rabbit absentmindedly, his mind grew calm. The stains left by the villagers began to fade away.
“Oz, if you can understand my words, and if you really do possess some kind of power….”
Juhwan shifted his gaze to the sky. Long ago, when he was a child, his mother had told him something. She said that when people die, they become stars.
He must have been less than five years old when he heard it. He had almost no memories of his early childhood, but for some reason, those words remained vivid in his mind.
Maybe his mother and father had become stars. Who knew if the two of them were watching over him from the sky? If it were him, he would certainly be watching, whether from the heavens or from beneath the earth.
“Even if I die, make sure you protect Lij and Dorothy. Never leave those two alone.”
“Piii.”
Oz twitched his nose as if in reproach. It was as if he were telling Juhwan not to say such ominous things. Could the child really understand simple speech, or perhaps even comprehend its meaning? If he could do that, he was better than a human.
Juhwan chuckled and stroked Oz’s head.
Humans saw what they wanted to see. He had read somewhere that if you showed a meaningless drawing to ten people and asked what it looked like, all ten would give different answers.
Animals didn’t understand. If it seemed that way, it was merely because they felt human emotions. He knew that.
Still, thinking that the animal by his side was special and understood and comforted him—that was probably just because he was human.
“I have no intention of dying. There’s no way I’d die and leave my family behind. But I’m just saying, in case of the unthinkable. People die much more easily than you’d think.”
Oz widened his eyes and looked up at him silently.
“Every human dies eventually. When I become an old man someday, I’ll die before Lij and Dorothy. I want you to stay by their side even then.”
As Juhwan gently stroked the fur near his horn, Oz let out a soft “Piii.” It sounded so much like an answer telling him not to worry that Juhwan’s heart felt a little lighter.
Lij and Dorothy were sleeping inside the carriage. He had been lying down with them at first, but Juhwan had quietly slipped out once Lij fell asleep. He didn’t know when the magical beast might appear. He just didn’t want Lij to worry; it wasn’t the time to be lying around sleeping peacefully.
Leaning his back against the carriage wheel, he stared blankly at the sky before closing his eyes.
Oz was on his lap.
Whether it was because the scent of the Orthos lingered in the village, Oz wasn’t sleeping by Dorothy’s side today. It seemed Oz was keeping watch in his own way.
The warmth felt good. Juhwan began to drift in and out of sleep.
‘What should I do?’
Yeonhwa stared silently at the campfire burning in the darkness.
That boy—ah, was his name Juhwan? Anyway, that boy seemed to have fallen asleep. He was sitting with his back against the carriage, his eyes closed.
And the baby horned rabbit hadn’t noticed the intruder yet. It was likely because he was young and lacked experience. As expected, a lack of experience was a major weakness when facing a skilled hunter.
The Orthos had entered the village, but neither the baby horned rabbit nor Juhwan had noticed.
‘Hmm, what should I do?’
Killing the Orthos would be easy. There was nothing in this world easier than that. But she couldn’t do that.
‘She’ used to talk to herself sometimes. She would talk about her wishes one by one—how she wanted things to be, how she hoped they would turn out—while stroking Yeonhwa’s head. Most of her stories were about Juhwan.
‘She’ said that for a child to grow, one must watch over them.
If you do everything for them, they can never grow properly. You can help a little with things they can’t do on their own, but the basic rule is to watch over them. That’s the only way they can truly become adults.
Her husband had nodded and said that was absolutely true.
Since both of them said so, it had to be the truth.
Therefore, she must not kill that two-headed dog. If she did, Juhwan and the baby horned rabbit wouldn’t grow properly. She had to remain a bystander until the very end.
Yeonhwa sighed in frustration. There was an easy path, but she wasn’t allowed to take it. How could things be so foolish?
“….”
Protecting someone was difficult. It would be easier to just eliminate or kill everything in the vicinity, but the human world wasn’t that simple. There were too many rules to follow; thinking about this and that made her head ache.
Humans were weak and died easily, so she had to be even more careful. They would just fall over and die from a single poke.
At first, she thought they were playing dead like insects do, but they weren’t. Humans really did die easily. And all the blame for those deaths went not to Yeonhwa, but to ‘her’ and her husband.
Now, it would go to Juhwan. Probably. Regardless of whether he knew it or not, the current Yeonhwa belonged to Juhwan.
So she had to be careful. Humans couldn’t live completely apart from other humans. Since their food, clothing, and shelter were all tied to other humans, she must never break the rules of human society.
If Yeonhwa broke those rules, Juhwan wouldn’t be able to live among people. That was why ‘she’ and her husband had to live alone in a mountain cabin. Because of her own shortcomings.
But how long did one have to keep growing? How much did Juhwan have to grow before he became an adult?
“….”
The Orthos was slowly approaching Juhwan’s vicinity in the darkness, reading the airflow. It was using the wind to hide its scent. Though it was still a distance away from Juhwan, the two-headed dog would reach him in no time.
She couldn’t watch any longer. Growth is impossible if you’re dead. Yeonhwa released a bit of her mana. She sent a thread-like wisp of mana toward the baby horned rabbit. Being careful not to let the Orthos notice her mana, she laced the mana with just a hint of scent.
Warning, warning, warning, warning, warning… the enemy is approaching.
Yeonhwa had received ‘her’ mana for a long time. Because of that, it was similar to Juhwan’s mana.
A mother and her offspring were different individuals, so their scents and mana were different.
However, Juhwan’s and ‘her’ mana were very similar.
Furthermore, theirs were completely different from the mana or scents given off by the people of this world. It was alien.
The mana of ‘her,’ her husband, and Juhwan held an energy completely different from the things of this world—like water and air, fire and water, or earth and wind.
That was how she knew. She could tell immediately that Juhwan was her offspring. One would have to be a fool not to notice when his scent was that different from those around him.
Even the baby horned rabbit had recognized it instantly during their first meeting, just by her releasing a bit of mana.
So he would surely know that the mana she was sending now was hers. He would know it was being sent by an ally, not an enemy.
Yeonhwa narrowed her eyes and watched the baby horned rabbit.
He had been asleep for a moment. He had a dream. He couldn’t remember it exactly, but his mother and father appeared.
He felt as though the two of them were smiling. But as time passed, his parents seemed to be trying to warn him about something.
Whether they were mouthing words or waving their hands, he couldn’t recall such details. But they were radiating an air of urgency.
His chest felt tight, and a scratchy sensation rose in his throat from an unknown sense of dread. He knew he had to wake up, but he couldn’t open his eyes. His heart raced, and his breath grew short.
Just then, a sharp cry rang out.
“Piiiiiiiiii!”
He snapped out of it. His eyes flew open.
Oz, who had been sitting on his lap, had climbed onto Juhwan’s head and was letting out a warning cry toward the darkness.
Juhwan bolted upright.
There was something out there in the dark.
Though he couldn’t see it, something ominous was drawing near.
He picked up an unlit torch handle he had left by the campfire. At the same time, he released mana from his hand, and a large flame flared up from the torch.
As the light, like a giant matchstick, shot into the air, he could faintly see a black shadow approaching in the distance.
Even in the darkness, he could make out the two heads branching off from its body.
‘The Orthos!’
The beast had come.
It seemed the sound of Oz’s cry had woken Lij. He heard the carriage door opening. Without taking his eyes off the Orthos in the darkness, Juhwan spoke quietly.
“Lij, stay inside the carriage with Dorothy. Don’t come out. Lock the door tight. Oz will be nearby.”
“I understand, Juhwan. Please, please be careful.”
Worry was thick in Lij’s voice. But she seemed to be trying her best not to show it. Her answer came back more calmly than he expected.
“Don’t worry.”
It seemed Lij had gone back inside. The door closed, followed by the sound of the iron bar used as a lock being slid into place from within.
“Oz, don’t you ever leave this spot. Do you understand?”
“Piii.”
Taking Oz’s cry as an answer, Juhwan took a few steps forward.
The beast approached through the gloom. The Orthos was craftily avoiding the lines of resin he had drawn.
Perhaps deciding that approaching stealthily was no longer useful, the beast began to growl. An ominous sound, like that of a hound from hell, spread in all directions through the night air.
A smirk played on Juhwan’s lips.
The beast was avoiding the resin lines, but several of those lines were decoys meant to hide the real ones.
In addition to the spots lightly covered with dirt, he had buried resin deeper in several locations. And he had dripped a bit of his own blood over them to mask the scent.
He thought it would be effective against a magical beast. A magical beast couldn’t live without mana. If so, it was only natural that it would react strongly to blood containing mana. Seeing how Oz absorbed his mana, the beast would be so attracted to it that it wouldn’t even notice the smell of resin.
‘As I thought.’
The approaching Orthos suddenly halted. Its two heads moved restlessly.
‘There. I’ve got you.’
The torch in Juhwan’s hand flared even higher into the air.
But at that moment, someone burst out of the darkness.
“You monster!”
Screaming at the top of her lungs, a woman in shabby clothes went charging toward the Orthos. It was a villager.
