Chapter 09

“Uncle Jang!”

Uncle Jang, who had been shivering from the cold as he looked at me, suddenly snatched the quilt away.

Hit by a sudden wave of chilling air, I flailed around and stretched my hand out to pull the quilt back over me.

“No! Don’t cover yourself with the quilt.”

“B-But…….”

“No means no!”

“Hee-ing….”

Pouting my lips, I glared at Uncle Jang because I was mad at him.

The uncle had completely tossed the quilt far away so my hands couldn’t reach it.

I curled my entire body up tight. Even so, the air was so freezing that my body trembled uncontrollably.

“Oh dear, this is a big problem. Just stay right here for a second, okay?”

I gave a very tiny nod.

And how long had I been like that?

Slam! The door flew open, and a cold gust of wind rushed in.

At the exact moment when I was on the verge of crying from being so cold:

“It’s cold, c— Huh?!”

Startled as my body was lifted up into the air, I opened my eyes and, through my hazy vision, saw a pair of eyes looking down at me.

It was the lord. It was the lord.

‘A look that makes me think of the Moon God…….’

The lord’s expression was one I was seeing for the very first time. For some reason, I felt unfairly sad.

“Sob.”

Enough to make tears instantly well up.

When the startled lord pulled me tightly into his embrace, I felt even more aggrieved.

“M-My lord……. Sob……. I’m so, so cold…! And the uncle…!”

I waved my strengthless arms around and snitched on Uncle Jang. I heard the uncle’s flustered voice from beside us, but I pretended not to hear.

Right now, I was just way, way too cold.

“Hee-uuh, sob-uuaah……!”

“To-, Tori? I only did it for your—”

“Is there any medicine in the house fit for a child?”

“No, we need to hurry to the physician’s…….”

At that moment, the lord gritted his teeth. I was scared, but I buried my head deep into the lord’s chest.

I didn’t want to let go of the lord, my only source of warmth.

After that, I don’t remember much.

Because I was so cold that neither the sounds around me nor the situation registered at all.

All I could remember was just… the thought of wanting to escape from this coldness and this unexplainable pain.

‘My lord, you must be so cold…….’

And just the sight of the lord’s bare, sockless feet visible through my half-opened eyes.

“Where is the physician, physician! Come out right now!”

Beom Hyeon, who had sprinted across the snowfield without even putting on his shoes, shouted desperately the moment he arrived at the physician’s clinic.

It was loud enough to startle the physician out of a sound sleep in his warm ondol room.

“Get out here quickly, right now!”

“Ugh…, why is he rushing so much?”

Even though the man sounded out of breath, his powerful voice showed no signs of fading. Grumbling, the physician stepped outside.

“I’ve been practicing medicine for some thirty odd years. Out of all the bastards who come barging in demanding I step out like this, not a single one of them hasn’t been a total pain in the—”

However, those complaints vanished the moment he laid eyes on Beom Hyeon holding a child in his arms.

Once a grand general, but after turning into a recluse, surrounded only by vicious rumors—the villain of the Jangsan Tiger Household.

That very person was today’s troublesome customer.

The physician immediately clasped his hands together respectfully and bowed his head.

Please, please! I hope this villain didn’t hear what I just muttered!

“Oh my, my lord! Wh-What brings you, h-here…?”

Meanwhile, that exact moment brought back flashes of the past for Beom Hyeon. He suddenly remembered who this physician was.

Even before the remains of Beom Hyeon’s wife and son in the past… this physician had similarly clasped his hands together and bowed his head just like this.

“…….”

“Ugh….”

A moan from within his arms pulled Beom Hyeon back to reality.

Yet when he lowered his head, the lingering image of his dead son overlapped onto Tori this time.

The child writhing in a fever so high nothing could be done for him. The sight of those limbs gradually growing limp and powerless… pierced straight through his heart.

The delicate strands of hair matted everywhere by cold sweat, flushed cheeks, tightly closed eyes….

How could they possibly look so identical?

Yet precisely because of that, Beom Hyeon forcefully pulled himself together.

He couldn’t lose a child to helplessness all over again like back then.

“The child is sick. You need to examine her immediately.”

“Y-Yes, of course! Please lay her down this way.”

There had only been one time in the past when Beom Hyeon had sought out this physician. Of course, it hadn’t been because he himself was sick.

“Could it be smallpox?”

At Beom Hyeon’s urgent question, the physician checked the child’s forehead, examined her hands and feet, and inspected her body.

“The child has a very high fever. She keeps shaking and—”

“There haven’t been any rumors of smallpox going around recently, and the child’s fever isn’t that severe. There are no rashes either.”

“Then you mean it isn’t smallpox?”

“Yes, thankfully it doesn’t seem to be.”

Thanks to the sudden release of tension, Beom Hyeon’s knees wobbled.

As he quickly regained his balance, the physician asked him:

“Wait, is this child… a rabbit-type beastkin?”

“That’s right. She’s been saying she’s cold since earlier and has a high fever. A child who hardly ever cries kept whimpering.”

“Since when has she been like this?”

“She was fine until last night. I only found out she had a fever this morning.”

Beom Hyeon examined the child with an anxious expression.

A child who was usually too busy flashing bright smiles was now breathing shallowly with her face heavily creased in pain…. He could barely tell that she was seriously ill.

“…Hmm, was there anything unusual compared to yesterday?”

“She went out and played.”

At that, snap, the physician turned his head back to glare at Beom Hyeon with a furrowed brow.

“With this much snow outside… she went out and played?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my, my lord. She is a rabbit-type beastkin, so she shouldn’t be exposed to too much chilly wind. If she really had to go out, you should have dressed her in fur clothing, and thick ones at that….”

“…….”

“…Don’t tell me you dressed her in cotton-stuffed clothes and sent her outside?”

Beom Hyeon’s head nodded heavily.

Feeling her pulse, the physician muttered in a low voice:

“Well… I suppose you didn’t know, coming from a household consisting solely of tiger beastkins, who are naturally built like iron. Rabbit-type beastkins are vulnerable to the cold……. Hm, it looks like a severe cold and flu. She simply played way too much.”

The physician busily moved about to feed medicine to the child and wiped her sweat-drenched forehead with a cold wet towel.

And Beom Hyeon could do nothing but quietly watch the scene.

To think he made the child sick simply because he didn’t know such a basic fact.

He resented himself for it.

Yet, just as the physician had said—that she would get better soon now that she had taken the medicine—Tori thankfully lifted her eyelids before long.

“Uuh… where…?”

“This is the physician’s place, little one.”

“The physician’s? I… I need to go feed the chickies…….”

With a body completely devoid of strength, Tori hurriedly tried to push herself up.

Overwhelmed with emotion, Beom Hyeon pressed her firmly back down.

“What food, just lie still! How foolish!”

“M-My lord…?”

Because it was the first time Beom Hyeon had ever raised his voice like that toward her, Tori looked up at him with a bewildered and frightened expression.

“…….”

However, no answer came back from Beom Hyeon.

That was because, after glaring down at Tori, he abruptly turned around and walked straight out.

“My lord…? My lord-!”

Stretching my hand toward the slamming door, I raised my voice desperately, but the lord did not come back.

“Little one, it’s alright. Just lie down.”

“B-But, the lord seemed very angry, the lord….”

“It’s alright. He wasn’t angry because of you.”

“Then why?”

I looked up at the old physician with a glum face.

Placing a cold wet towel on my forehead, the old physician clicked his tongue.

“Well… tsk tsk, he’s mad at himself, that’s why.”

“Wh-Why? Why is he mad at himself…?”

“Because that man sent his own child and wife away first due to an epidemic.”

“What…?!’

My eyes rounded in shock.

At that, the old physician let out a dry cough.

“Ahem, didn’t you know?”

“No….”

“Well, I suppose this happened several years ago now……. That man was originally a remarkably successful gentleman. Though he was scolded in his youth for holding a sword despite coming from a family of civil officials, he passed the military service examination in first place, too. He became a general at a young age. Once he reached young adulthood, he had nothing left to envy in the world. He met a beautiful bride and even had a son.”

“…….”

“And then… a fever swept through. The master’s wife and young master couldn’t seem to escape the epidemic either; by the time the man returned, his wife had already passed away…. Ah, come to think of it, that exactly lines up with this time of year. I remember the young master of that household burning up with fever yet smiling happily while watching the snow falling outside.”

While listening to the story, tears welled up in my eyes before I even realized it. My heart ached so much.

To think that I had dredged up the lord’s painful memories….

“So, so… because I got a fever, it reminded him of his family, sob…”

“Little one, being sick is not your fault. That man’s burdens belong to that man. Tsk, why take it out on a child, really…”

The grandfather gently patted my heaving chest as I sobbed. Every time he did, my eyelids grew heavier and heavier.

‘I must… treat the lord much better.’

I made up my mind beyond my fading vision.

However, seeing the lord again was not an easy task.

The next day, and the day after that, and the day after that.

Every single time the lord came by, I had been fast asleep without knowing a thing!

Moreover, according to the old physician, this very morning, when the lord brought yet another new quilt, he even scolded him, saying, “You should have just bought fur clothes instead!”

Even so, I simply couldn’t force my eyes open.

‘Tomorrow, I’ll definitely go out and thank him properly. Since my fever has gone down a lot now, I’ll really be able to wake up early tomorrow.’

…That’s what I thought.

Even though I promised myself that……!

“Hing…….”

Ironically, starting precisely on the fourth day, the lord stopped stepping foot into the physician’s clinic altogether.

A week had already passed since I started staying at the physician’s place.

Having fully recovered, I returned to the Jangsan Tiger Household, carried alternately in the arms of Uncle Jang and Uncle Baek.

Yet even then, I couldn’t see the lord…!

“Where is the lord?”

“The lord? The lord is probably up on the mountain right now?”

“The mountain? In this winter weather?”

“What… they say he went to catch a bear.”

“A beee-ar?!”

Just hearing that he went to the mountain was absurd enough, but he went to catch a bear? I couldn’t believe it.

However, that evening….

“A-A bear!”

“Goodness me, what kind of bear is that?!”

Wasn’t a bear with its head bowed low heavy-footedly walking right through the front gates of the Jangsan Tiger Household!

Uncle Jang, who hurriedly grabbed a stick to try and block the bear, and me, clinging tightly right behind Uncle Jang’s body.

Both of us froze completely solid.

“Wait, that’s not a bear, that’s the lord!”

Because the one carrying that bear on his back was none other than the master of the Jangsan Tiger Household, the lord!

“A bear… to make Tori fur clothes out of…….”

Thud!

The bear collapsed onto the courtyard, and—

“Eek!”

The lord’s thunderbolt-like words were directed straight at me.

“Tori, you. I’m going to make you fur clothes right away, so until they’re finished, don’t step outside your room.”

It didn’t take long for me to realize that the lord’s words were entirely serious.