Cursed Bunny(38)

He knew, of course, that in the last moment, hard scales would sprout from the scars that It had left on him and protect his body from harm. But because he could not think straight, those defenses were slow to come into effect, and with the flagging of his strength and the battering his body was receiving, he could not fight back as hard as he could before.

The day he faced a pale giant with an almost geometrically perfect smile, completely white skin, and red eyes, he thought he would finally die. The red-eyed giant, like a cat playing with a mouse, struck a blow on every part of the youth’s body and whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Sometimes the giant would make an aggressive move and the youth would feebly try to counterattack, only to have the giant sidestep out of the way in the last second and bow to the applauding audience, the white giant’s red eyes beaming with mirth and confidence. Just as the fight was beginning to seem endless, the giant attempted to strike the final blow on the teetering youth, who was near fainting.

The youth would later remember that just then, he sprouted black wing-like limbs from his back and whacked away the giant that had been lunging for the youth’s throat. The giant’s body flew out of the arena, and the audience roared with appreciation at this unexpected turn. The wing-like limbs disappeared in the next moment, and the youth felt the blood drain from his face as he began to keel over.

Immediately, the bald man ran up to him and snatched his arm with one hand and propped up his back with the other so that he wouldn’t fall. Holding the youth’s arm up, the bald man bowed to the audience and gathered the coins that the audience was showering them with as the youth tried not to vomit or fall. The world was spinning, and his insides hurt like they were being twisted.

In the carriage as they pulled out of the village, the bald man counted his coins and cackled.

“Yes, that’s the spirit! Keep doing exactly what you did today! Look like you’ve reached the end and then, bam! Those wings! How did you do that? What’s your secret? Oh, who cares, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

The youth had no idea what the bald man was saying. He did not have the energy for comprehension or concentration. Whenever the carriage shook, his guts felt like they did a flip, and every beat of his heart gave him a pain that felt like something was swelling inside his head.

That night, the youth stared at his right wrist, which was chained to the carriage’s luggage compartment, and thought that he needed to escape once more.

XI

It wasn’t easy waiting for an opportunity.

From morning until evening, the youth was surrounded by the bald man and his gang, and in the night they all slept together in the carriage. On days when he earned a lot of money, he was left alone in the carriage while the others went drinking, but his right wrist remained chained to the luggage compartment.

More than anything else, however, he was getting weaker and weaker. He no longer had to drink the suspicious liquid in order to feel nauseous; whenever he stood up after sitting for some time or emerged from a dark place into an even slightly brighter one, the world would spin around him. During fights, he had now reached a point where he simply teetered for a while as his opponent landed blow after blow, before he fainted dead away to the boos of the crowd. This prompted the bald man to stop giving him the medicine. But his body had already been damaged, and even as he struggled and tried to choke down his vomit, he was continuously sent out to fight.

It was when the youth could no longer stand up properly on his own that the bald man was finally finished with him. No matter how much the man hit or kicked him or pressed down on his neck, the youth could no longer rise. The bald man spat on him and had one of his underlings carry him over his shoulder into the hills. Once the underling had hacked through quite a bit of forest, he abandoned the youth under a tree and disappeared.

The youth lay on the ground and stared up at the sky. A fragment of blue peeping through the dense covering of the trees.

As he lay there and stared up at the unmoving blue fragment, inhaling the scent of fallen leaves, his endlessly rumbling nausea seemed to ease. A dreamy, relaxed feeling overcame him where he lay completely still.

The blue above him started to gray. It then turned ashen and rain began to fall. The leaves that covered the ground and his body were mercilessly pelted with fat raindrops.

The rainwater was chilly against his skin. With the rain thickening and the smell of damp earth and leaves growing stronger, he was starting to feel nauseous again. He trembled and almost bounced off the ground as he suddenly sat up and violently vomited what felt like his entire insides. Mustering what little strength that was left in his battered body, he vomited for a long time until there was nothing inside him anymore.

When he was done, he lifted his head and stared up at the sky where the rain was falling from. The raindrops hit his face and slid into his mouth. He drank them in; they were sweet and refreshing.

He got to his feet. It was cold. But the shivers and the pain that had been strangling his guts were dissipating, and were soon gone entirely.

Heading in the opposite direction of where the underling who had brought him here disappeared to, he started to walk.

XII

The youth wandered the mountain forest for four days. Aside from rainwater and some grasses, he ate nothing and continued to walk for a long time.

When he emerged from the forest on the evening of the fourth day and discovered a village, the first thought in his mind was not joy that he had survived but that the village was somehow familiar to him. A rock near the village’s entrance, the green-brown earth and gray-barked trees, and the row of houses all came together in an uncanny sense that he had been here before.