43 . The ripple effect of the beating
The bitterness in the chest was short-lived, and soon a tremendous pain began in the calf.
‘Ah, it hurts!’
Just saying that it hurts wasn’t enough. It hurts so bad Wasn’t the flesh ripped off? Such an illusion-like pain spread throughout his body.
It was so painful that I forgot all the promises I had made, the sense of betrayal and anger I felt towards the children, and the most solemn atmosphere.
Olivia didn’t know how fast I was, and she took the cane again.
She hadn’t felt any emotions before seeing that, but now it’s different. The feelings of anger he felt towards the children turned into fear before he knew it.
Olivia had the momentum to consume all the twigs assigned to her.
I hate myself in the past. Now, it is too out of shape to reverse her words, and the admonitions she gave to her children are meaningless.
If I don’t calmly accept the mistakes I’ve made….
Apart from burning my insides, Olivia slapped my calf repeatedly while saying she was sorry.
If I could, I wanted to avoid it by jumping awkwardly.
Only the whimpering of Olivia eating her nose and the ghastly sound of the cane coiling around my calf like a whip.
Olivia, who had been beating me for a while, noticed belatedly that all the branches beside her had disappeared, and she cried and hugged me.
I asked the rest of her children, stroking Olivia’s hair, putting on the most generous face.
“How is it? Is it painful?”
Olivia buried her face in my chest, only nodding her head.
Her weeping on her shoulder spoke for her sorrow. I patted her on the shoulder and decided to wait a moment for her Olivia to calm down.
It seemed that he had unexpectedly shouldered a lot of burden.
I looked at the children and said in a tone that this is enough.
“You understand now, right? What you do….”
Stella cut me off on rare occasions.
“No, Dad… I think we know what Daddy means.”
The crying voice gave me goosebumps.
“Huh?”
“How easy it is to hurt others and how painful it is… Are you telling Dad to feel right?”
Clearly, the initial intention was, as Stella said, to want them to feel the pain of others, even a little bit, but after being beaten by Olivia, her thoughts changed.
Unaware of my feelings, Stella held the branch next to her body, and she sat down next to me.
Stella looked at my red and swollen calves and wiped away her tears.
“Dad, sorry… But this is also what Dad meant… I will accept it.”
No, you don’t have to accept it.
Isn’t that enough? It seems that she is fully reflecting on not only Stella, but also the children behind her, but is it necessary to go this far?
I let out a long sigh and changed my mind.
Yes, let’s accept it.
Is it possible for me to evade this on the subject of hitting the children first?
I had to deal with the disaster I brought.
Stella held her cane high like Olivia.
The sight gave a terrifying feeling, like the blade of a guillotine rising to cut off a criminal’s head.
Right now, at this moment, I was a sinner. A sinner who gave up his life for a single mistake.
“I’m sorry… !”
When Stella’s hand pointed at my calf, I even had the illusion that time was passing slowly.
The sound I heard clearly in my ears was a vicious sound that was incomparable to what I was swinging, and the blow that cut through the wind and touched my skin came as more pain than a whip made of tough leather.
“Big… !”
A helpless moan of pain flows through tightly clenched teeth.
She desperately pretended to be calm because she didn’t want to appear unsightly in front of her daughter, but in her honest feelings, she wanted to roll on the floor and scream.
Like Olivia, a tree branch shattered with a single swing, Stella immediately grabbed another cane beside her and struck me in the calf.
I could clearly see the pain running up my calf.
It’s different.
It was different from other children.
This is dangerous.
Olivia’s beatings were also very painful, but the tree branch wielded by Stella’s power was comparable to the gold chain wielded by an ogre.
It feels like my calves are being smashed. Bones turned to powder, and a cracking sound could be heard in the skin.
Stella didn’t say anything, hit my calf with 10 sticks, and didn’t move from the spot for a while.
I was also unable to move. After remaining silent for a while, Stella eventually ran out of the room in tears.
After Stella left, Noah and Elia looked at each other and then secretly took her branch in their hands.
Compared to the eldest daughter and the second daughter, the third daughter and the youngest daughter lacked strength, but the calves that had already suffered from the bitter scars that the two of them had gone through indiscriminately reached the point of accepting even a gentle caressing hand as pain.
Noah and Elia slapped my calves with their delicate forearms, and my already battered body was reacting sensitively to even the slightest pain.
Before I knew it, a moan was about to come out of my slightly open mouth.
You just have to endure for now.
You have to endure it somehow.
This is the corporal punishment I chose.
With evil, with bullying.
After all, I clenched my teeth and endured the beatings of Noah and Elia. I clenched her fists and spoke with a trembling voice to the three children left in the room.
“Now everyone, go out.”
At my trembling voice, the children noticed, then left my room, rubbing their shoulders together.
A room where the children have disappeared and only the remnants of tree branches remain. I laid down on the futon as if collapsing, buried my face in the pillow, and let out a silent scream.
My screams disappeared under the covers, my calf seemed to have just disappeared, the pain I couldn’t tell anyone.
Wouldn’t it be this kind of pain if you pour oil on your calf and set it on fire?
Because of the burning wound, I couldn’t close my eyes.
Blood began to ooze out and stained the blanket, and my heart was filled with tears.
Clenching my fists and burying my face in the pillow, I somehow closed my eyes with a painful moan.
The feeling of digging through my mind with a dagger without mercy. I’m dying to force myself to sleep because I can’t sleep, but I had to force myself to sleep in order to forget the pain in my calves.
Because I don’t think I’ll be able to survive otherwise.
The night was especially long today.
●
After smashing Ain’s calf, the children returned to the room and whispered while rubbing medicine on each other’s slightly scarred calves.
Elia, still crying, opened her mouth first.
“Dad, don’t you think you’re very angry?”
They didn’t say a word about the scars on their calves.
Since I had never been hit by other people, I couldn’t know in detail about their toughness, so I didn’t know if it hurt or not.
Rather, it was not the physical pain that made them suffer, but the guilt of hitting the child they loved with their own hands.
Stella tilted her head, pressed her temples, and spoke in a troubled tone.
“Yes…. Even if he was a person who bullied his father, it must have been a serious thing to make him do that. Is it because you’ve been together for a while? After all, the human heart is difficult to understand. We just wanted to hear compliments from Dad.”
Leaning his back against the wall, Noah, who normally did not participate in conversation, asked insinuatingly.
“Revenge, are you going to stop like this?”
The children stopped their mouths at the same time and looked at Noah.
There was burning hostility in her red eyes.
Silent Rage had a clear target: Cassandra.
Stella answered with embarrassment at Noah’s unusual appearance.
“If Dad tells me to stop, he has to stop. She doesn’t want to be found out and hated by her father.”
Noah shook her head and she opened her mouth again.
“Stella, think carefully. Isn’t it all because of her that we got scolded? She’s beaten by her daddy because of that girl, and we hurt her daddy. Do you think this is right?”
Instead of Stella and Olivia, who couldn’t even speak properly in embarrassment, Elia, who had just nodded quietly, opened her mouth.
“Come to think of it…. We didn’t do anything to her, did we? I just changed her constitution a bit. The wizard killed me for living happily with men and blamed us. So that we will be hated by Daddy.”
With the opinions of the two youngest members, the older sisters’ thoughts gradually began to change.
The hatred with a clear goal was slowly growing in size.
Once the flow started to change, one individual could not stop it.
Noah’s opinion, which usually doesn’t reflect his intentions, had a greater ripple effect than usual.
Noah muttered in her voice that contained her murderous spirit.
“Hero? A saint? You can deal with those guys later. It’s not her daddy’s revenge, at least for this girl.”
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Finally Noah hooked the dagger to her floor! Inserted deep enough to make a sound, she said in a sharp voice that sent chills down her spine.
“… It is our individual revenge.”