80 – Summer Vacation – 13
“Cool… , Are you okay?”
I put my arms on the ground, raised my upper body, and asked Cordelia, who was lying under me. My shoulder was terribly sore. A cough leaked out, probably from inhaling the ashes.
“What is it? What happened?”
She looked embarrassed as if she hadn’t grasped the situation yet. Like me, she also coughed repeatedly, as if she had drank ashes.
Cordelia choked a few more times and became completely contemplative when she saw my face.
“Gwa, are you okay?”
“The scarecrow must have collapsed.”
Contrary to Cordelia’s boasting that there was no problem, it seems my premonition was not wrong. Something went wrong. The scarecrow’s arms burned and crumbled, and in the end, unable to withstand its own weight, it fell off and attacked Cordelia.
Since the size of the scarecrow was large, the surroundings were also very upset. Fortunately or unfortunately, it just happened to fall on top of me and Cordelia, and even I threw myself to avoid a direct hit, so no one seems to be seriously injured.
Cordelia’s face was still pale after the rough assessment of the situation. I forced a grin to reassure her a bit. In fact, considering my physical abilities, I wasn’t seriously injured, and it hurt a little bit, but I was able to endure it enough.
“No injuries, right?”
“Mikhail, blood, blood… !”
“Blood? There is nowhere to bleed. Are you okay.”
Cordelia shouted her stretching blood into her whitened face. I looked at her condition again. What is it, it looks fine. She said there were no signs of bleeding on her. She said that in the first place she blew her body so that she wouldn’t get hurt like that. But she screamed at me with a look on her face asking what she was talking about.
“No, not me! You! My head is bleeding!”
I raised my hand and wiped her face. Her hands were oozing with dark red blood. It was only then that I noticed the blood running down my cheeks. It must have been a bit torn because he hit his head somewhere in the process of throwing his body. I roughly wiped the blood on my hands and wiped it off my clothes. It hurts, but it’s not a huge wound. Visually, it’s a bit too horror.
“This isn’t too bad. Slightly torn. You don’t have to worry too much.”
Even when I said it was okay, her pupils trembled non-stop.
“That can’t be!”
Cordelia screamed. While I was dumbfounded, she jumped up from under me and sat me down. She bit on the clothes she was wearing and she tore off the long sleeves.
“What are you doing?”
“Noisy, stay still.”
She wrapped the torn sleeve around my head with a skillful hand. The sleeves of the dress she was wearing were quite long, making me look like a mummy.
I was about to say something, but decided to just keep quiet and get her first aid. It’s because you’re worried about me, but isn’t it funny that you keep saying that you don’t have to do this?
“Are you finished?”
“Huh, it’s roughly over for now.”
Cordelia wiped the sweaty forehead with her forearm. Naturally, her forearms were covered in ash as well, as ash was flying everywhere, and her fine forehead was blackened with soot.
“Big.”
“What, did you put something on my face?”
“Yeah. Something’s very dirty.”
She thoughtlessly touched her cheek with her hand, then smeared soot all over her face. I reached out and tried to wipe her forehead, but then I realized that my hand would do the same, and I gave up. She too, realizing that her own hands were dirty too, took them away from her face, but it was too late.
“It’s better to just wash it clean after a while.”
“Sure.”
Cordelia just let go of her hands as if she had given up on her clean face. And she sat there blankly for a moment.
“What should I do now?”
“Sure.”
I almost wanted to lie down. What the hell did this happen again? People next to me were busily coming and going in confusion. In a rather chaotic atmosphere, the festival was ending the first day in a not-so-good way.
I felt like I wanted to lie down and take a deep breath. The tension was released, and the body lost strength. It hurts and it hurts, and if you close your eyes like this and open them, everything will be sorted out on its own.
But my wish could not come true.
“Sniff.”
“Cordelia?”
“Mr. Lee…. It was going well. I’ve never had anything like this before….”
“Cordelia, are you crying?”
Cordelia, who had been sitting idly by, started whimpering. She whined in a voice that ate her nose. His voice is full of moisture, and it is as if a faucet will open as soon as he touches it. I cautiously approached Cordelia.
“Don’t cry! Eww…. No luck… Say Heung….”
She inhaled through her nose. Tears began to drip down the back of her hands.
“A Thing…. Why did an accident happen all of a sudden… ! Why are you doing this to me!”
Once the dam has burst, the tear glands do not think about stopping easily. She immediately let go of her neck and started crying loudly. I tried to calm her down somehow.
“Cordelia, calm down….”
“How to calm down! Whoa….”
But my attempts went in vain. In fact, when you’re venting your emotions like this, it’s best to just calmly wait until the core is resolved. However, if there is one problem, it is that this place is not just me and her.
-Oh, what happened?
-The lady is crying?
I’ve already started chatting around. It seems like I’m talking as inaudibly as possible considering things like me and her position, but unfortunately I can hear everything. Cordelia and I were literally in the middle of the scene, so it was as if we were surrounded by other people. Surrounded by people you don’t know, in front of you is a woman crying profusely.
It was a situation I didn’t really want to go through. The eyes around me were very burdensome.
“Cordelia, please. Stop crying for a moment.”
“Huhhhhh!”
The more I tried to calm her down, the more Cordelia couldn’t control her emotions. Even the soldiers who rushed to the scene belatedly couldn’t help but feel restless when they saw the Duke’s golden jade leaf crying for the world to collapse. In the end we had to wait until Cordelia had stopped all her groans.
After a while, Cordelia barely managed to catch her heart and repeated her inhalation and exhalation.
“Are you calm?”
“Heung….”
She ate her nose once again. If I look good, I’ll go and wipe my nose, but I look worse. Cordelia cried so much in that moment that her face was speechless. Her eyes were red and swollen, and she couldn’t even wipe her runny nose. She looked more stupid because of the soot she buried earlier.
I patted her on the shoulder and asked.
“What made you so sad?”
“It’s embarrassing….”
Cordelia looked at my face, saw the crowd surrounding us, then lowered her head and muttered in a low voice.
“Once you wake up. Everyone is doing nothing because we are here.”
I jumped up from my seat. To be honest, I wanted to disappear from this place right away. I could still feel the eyes of those who were looking at me. But Cordelia did not stand up. I couldn’t really stand up.
“What are you doing?”
She held out her hand in silence at my question.
“What is wrong with your hand?”
“Catch me. My leg is broken.”
She said in a hoarse voice as if her runny nose was still running. I sighed and held her hand. Her legs trembled like a newborn calf. My legs were shaking so much that the shaking was transmitted to my hands.
“Can you really not walk?”
“Yes.”
She nodded her head. I gently bent her legs and showed her her back. What did you do to loosen your legs?
“What?”
“What is it? It means to get up.”
Cordelia expressed disapproval at my words.
“You are hurt too. Besides, there are a lot of people around.”
“Then are you going to stay like this?”
She glanced around, still looking at us, then she no longer grumbled, but quietly climbed onto my back.
Cordelia buried her face in her back as if she was ashamed. She asked me cautiously.
“Is it heavy?”
“I am satisfied with the business.”
She can’t remember, but she carried her on her back once before her in the first place.
I decided to avoid the seat for now. We should go in the direction of Duke Deneb’s castle. I don’t know where Hestia and Seol-A are doing. I think you’d be very surprised.
Her legs, held tightly with both hands, were still a little wobbly. Even when her scarecrow was crushed on her arm and almost hurt, she was fine, but she cried a little and her legs loosened.
“What did you do to loosen your legs?”
“Sorry….”
“No, I didn’t mean that.”
It’s no wonder I became trashy. I switched to another topic to ease the awkward atmosphere.
“Then why did you cry?”
“… It’s unfair.”
“Unfair? What is wrong with you?”
It can be embarrassing and sad, but is there anything to be regretful about? Why does this only happen to me?
At my reaction, she muttered in a voice I couldn’t quite hear.
“You won’t laugh after hearing it, will you?”
“I don’t laugh.”
“That, should I say a legend? There is a story that has been handed down.”
Cordelia probably didn’t like my promise not to laugh, so she asked me not to smile again and she insisted.
“You really don’t laugh, do you?”
“Because he doesn’t laugh.”
“On the first day of the festival, there is a legend that a man and a woman who dance right under a scarecrow fall in love….”
“Then was it because of this that she kept insisting on the position?”
“Yes….”
Should I say it’s a more trivial reason than I thought? In the first place, if we danced together on a festival day, we would have liked each other quite a bit, so even with a trivial occasion, we would have developed into a couple right away. There was no such thing as a legend.
“Then did you cry because it was unfair that you couldn’t dance there to the end?”
“Actually, that’s not the only reason, I prepared really hard to have fun today, but at the end it seemed like it was completely messed up….”
She couldn’t speak anymore and buried her face in my back again. This isn’t a real kid. I want to grab it by the cheekbones and pull it all the way. It’s not that I did some kind of infantile regression, but where did the image I showed when I was dancing just a moment ago go?
“Her clothes get runny nose.”
“The bad guy.”
At my words, Cordelia removed her face from her back and patted her back with her fist instead. I told her her honest feelings about her today.
“I don’t know how Cordelia felt, but I had fun today. Did you have an accident at the end? No one was seriously injured anyway, and this one will be more memorable. I will probably remember this day for the rest of my life.”
This was sincere. It’s not that she said it to appease her, it’s true that she had a lot of fun going out with her today, and it’s true that she won’t forget today. How can I forget the day when a giant scarecrow attacked me with a broken arm.
“But, in the end, you couldn’t dance to the end.”
“No way, did you really believe in such an absurd story?”
“This is not an absurd story! In fact, there were a lot of people dancing and dating there.”
I decided to tell her the cold truth.
“Cordelia, the legend about her falling in love is quite famous, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then knowing the story, what does it mean to see a man and a woman dancing alone over there? You don’t fall in love by dancing there, people who have already fallen in love dance there.”
“Ugh….”
Cordelia suffered as she grunted like a child hearing for the first time that there is no Santa. I decided to comfort her a bit.
“Are you so sorry you didn’t finish properly?”
“Yes.”
She replied in her sullen voice.
“Then later, the day before we leave here would be good. We light a small bonfire among ourselves and dance. Until exhausted.”
Cordelia said nothing and buried her face in my back again.