Five days, maybe more.
The first diagnosis was the day when I was sure I was going to die.
Vera smirked as I was still breathing.
I hate to admit it, but Renee’s care worked.
He even reduced his share of the meal, preventing death from hunger that had been fed to him, and the divinity that collected the remnants of the lost power and lit it up slowed the deterioration of the wound.
However, it was just there.
“The situation is improving. Let’s try a little harder.”
Renee’s words. Vera then turned his head to Renee and spat out an answer.
“gibberish. It’s just that the line has gotten a little longer.”
Yes, the name line is a bit long. It was just that.
The wound was still growing. The pain was getting worse day by day.
The injuries that got worse over the past week had taken away all the strength to wiggle your fingertips by now.
Vera let out a breath covered in pain and spoke to Renee.
“Now how about acknowledging it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been working in vain. I will die soon.”
As Vera spoke with all his might, sneering, Renee shook her head with a smile on her lips.
“You never know.”
Vera’s brow narrowed.
“If you say that, nothing will change.”
“You will never know unless you do your best.”
It was a repetition of the same answer.
Again, Vera felt a tightness in his stomach.
That persistence that made him so humble was what made him feel like that.
“You are a foolish person.”
“It’s full of love.”
“Are you a parrot?”
“Please. As you can see, I am human.”
“You don’t lose a single word.”
“The desire to win is a good fertilizer for development.”
Vera frowned.
I wanted to let out a sigh, but the pain throbbing through my whole body made me barely able to do so.
“If I had been fine, I would have crushed your cheek.”
“It’s a good attitude. I will remain where I am, so quickly recover and do so.”
Renee said so, leaning against the wall next to where Vera was lying, and pulled out Rosario.
A platinum-colored rosary that stands out as a precious commodity at first glance.
It was the mark of the high priests of the Holy Kingdom.
She always held her rosary and continued praying whenever she had time.
From https://noblemtl.com
One day, I asked him what he was praying for as he prayed without getting tired of it.
The answer that came back at that time was that I was praying for your recovery. It was a very funny wish, it was a wish I would not wish unless I was an asshole.
Vera, reminiscing about the past, involuntarily shed words as he saw Renee praying with the Rosario in his hand.
“… That rosary, if you don’t want to throw it away, it’s better to leave it here.”
“How could you do that?”
“You will die for that rosary.”
Vera said as he asserted as he looked at Renee, who still had his eyes closed.
It wasn’t just a nonsense.
The gutter was enough space for that to happen.
Shigung’s Scavenger.
They are so called because they rip off the organs of corpses if they could be money.
If they find that Rosario, Renee will be their target immediately.
Those evil servants pierced Renee’s neck with a knife to kill him, and after taking the Rosario, they would split the stomach to take out all the organs and sell them as well, and then they would only be satisfied.
“Scavengers are crazy people who live only for today. If they were to earn money for today, they would risk pursuing Seongguk and take that Rosario.”
After talking for a long time, my chest hurts again.
Vera frowned at the throbbing pain, then frowned.
The reason I brought this up was because I couldn’t understand myself for being rude.
Have you finally gone crazy when it’s time to die? I was thinking of such a thought.
“It’s unfortunate.”
That answer came back.
After saying that, Renee opened her eyes and continued speaking again with a small smile on her lips.
“You must be living such a harsh life that you have to do it.”
“Huh, if Kariak had heard it, I would have laughed and fell backwards.”
“Who is he?”
“The first scavenger.”
“Hey, you have a name.”
“Well, you could say that.”
He was the one who made the deepest darkness of the gutter, so it wasn’t really wrong.
“They are not worthy of sympathy.”
“Is there such a person in the world?”
“You live in a flower garden.”
“You can’t see it with your eyes, so you have to draw it in your head.”
“… Stop it.”
Vera closed his eyes.
I’ve never lost with eloquence all my life, but when I talk to her, I always feel like I’m being dragged around.
Seriously, she was a person more suited to a monster than a saint, just by looking at her cancer.
Since she brought herself here, she never once asked about herself.
Even the most basic names were not asked, aside from anything about the identity or the past.
If it was because I wasn’t interested, it wasn’t.
She devoted almost all of her time to caring for her, and never showed any fatigue or annoyance.
At the moment when he felt like he would lose his mind, he held hands and talked to each other, and he was taking care of his meals since he couldn’t eat even one meal a day.
Indeed, it could be said that it was a saintly nobility, but to Vera, it came closer to a bizarreness rather than a nobility.
‘… No.’
Vera felt a ‘puff-‘ from my mouth, a windy laugh.
To tell the truth, I didn’t want to think of it as nobility, so I judged it that way.
Even though they live so miserable, the unfading light is so dazzling that they feel like they are revealing themselves, covered in all sorts of filth.
Vera humbly acknowledged him.
He was ashamed to expose his past life as a villain among the bad guys under her light, so he was denigrating her.
She was so dazzling that she was able to do things that she couldn’t do in the past.
At the end of my life, I thought that no one would be by my side.
He lived a life too ugly to want anyone to remain, so he couldn’t dare wish for him.
So she swore that she would humbly accept dying alone, but her light was making even her oath blunt.
She was giving a kindness that such an ugly human would not have dared to receive.
‘… It’s funny.’
Vera laughed at myself for leaning on her warmth.
*
The eyes followed her.
… He followed the face with his eyes closed blankly.
A bizarre face that melts from burns and cannot be recognized.
Vera tried to paint the face she would have had on it, but it was not easy because it was crushed so badly.
“Did you make that face yourself?”
“What are you talking about?”
“… I’m talking about burns.”
“Yes, I did it myself.”
“Did you have any reason to do that?”
It was incomprehensible to Vera. If you simply wanted to hide your identity, you could use artifacts, and if that was not possible, you could use a mask.
As Vera waited for an answer with a face full of questions, Renee gave it a sly grin.
It was a tone with a slightly playful tone.
“You know? Until I made my face like this, I was a beauty that anyone would admire.”
The words came out of nowhere, but Vera could understand her intentions with those words alone.
Vera knew better than anyone that a beautiful appearance served as a fatal weakness in this gutter.
She must have wanted to say that it was a choice to protect herself.
“… How can a blind person be so sure of that? Don’t you think the people who saw you didn’t have the courage to call you ugly?”
For some reason he didn’t say that to himself, Vera spit it out.
What followed was also an answer with a smile on it.
“I am right.”
“How are you sure of that?”
“Do you know what it means to be blind?”
Renee said so and leaned towards Vera. Renee’s hand rested on Vera’s.
“It means being sensitive to other senses. I can understand better than others whether the words conveyed through him are false.”
Renee’s hand ran over the back of Vera’s.
“The human voice has a lot of tremors depending on the emotions it contains. When you tell a lie, there is a trembling that cuts off, and when you tell an emotion, there is a trembling that gets wet.”
Renee’s hand, which had been stroking the back of Vera’s hand in full swing, then on Vera’s wrist, began to press the pulse gently.
“Sometimes there is a pulsation. The more intense the emotion, the more evident it becomes.”
“… Why are you talking about it now?”
“It was because almost everyone who looked at me had a passionate voice when they looked at me.”
“Do you think there is an overabundance of self-consciousness?”
“Please. You can be sure. The trembling in the voices of those who told me they were beautiful, and the heat that came along with it, each contained a hazy light. There is only love, as far as I know, that has such a painful tone.”
“Everyone who saw you fell in love? Aren’t you ashamed to paint your face with gold?”
“I was telling the truth.”
Vera felt a smirk coming out of René’s face as he spoke those words without any shame.
“done. I asked you a stupid question.”
“It’s a pity that there is no way to prove it.”
Renee’s hand fluttered from his pulse, and the warmth that had permeated Vera’s wrist faded away.
Vera breathed out a short breath, feeling the condensed coat empty from the sensation, then shut his mouth tightly.
As the body weakens, does the mind also become weaker?
Vera felt his self-esteem hurt for nothing.
It must have been a life in which I had never asked anyone for help or felt sorry for the warmth of leaving. For some reason, when I dealt with her, this weakness came out.
Your shallow imagination keeps coming up with meaningless assumptions in your mind.
If I had met you at a different time, different place, and in a different position, would I be different than I am now? What if I had met you before it got so ugly Were you living a different life than you are now? If it had been before you crushed your face, I would have felt love as you said.
A home that never stops. Vera felt his stomach churn accordingly and brushed it off by biting his lips.
It was because of the growing misery in the rising families.
It took me a while to put silence in the space to shake off my thoughts like that.
“… Then I’ll go out for a while.”
Renee opened her mouth.
Vera faltered, stood up and looked at Renee as she staggered against the wall, then uttered it again.
“I like leaving Rosario behind.”
“How can I do that?”
Returning is also a word of refusal.
Vera felt choked up as he watched René slowly walk away with his back from me.
So, that kind of thing just came out of nowhere.
“… It must have been that the prayer I had been praying for the whole time was asking me to kill you.”
“Please. I’m not going to die until you get out of bed.”
With that said, Renee opened the door to the shack to make a ‘squeak’ and went outside.
“I will go.”
Words in a calm tone, as always.
That was Renee’s last voice Vera heard.