Crown of Thorns

As I entered through the gates, I could see the poorly constructed buildings. Originally, this was not a place for villages. Because it was close to the Witch’s forest and it existed in the deep mountains. However, seeing the far outstretched walls which seemed no end to them, the residents who have settled in them, and the castle built in a high place. It seemed like a village newly built out of necessity.

I thought it might have needed a defense line because it was in the monster forest. I don’t know how long I’ve been stuck in the tower, but I already knew that humans don’t change easily. Passers-by were all in terrible shape, mostly women. Except for the soldiers I had seen on the wall, there was no man I encountered. But there were so many children. It was not an exaggeration to say that most of the people in this village were young children.

Where did the young men go? And whose children are in the wombs of the pregnant women? Also, who are the fathers of these young children?

This was the place where the country abandoned its excess of people. It was only made out of necessity, and it didn’t matter how the people inside it lived. It was only made in order for the people in the other places get to buy time when the monsters come across the forest to attack. To do so, many residents were needed. They needed to increase the number of residents in a confined place and with a limited number of people, yet there were almost no men around.

After all, this was a heaven for some and hell for others. I have seen a place like this before, so I could make a few guesses.

The thin and underfed village women were busy peeping at the boy. Some women ran away far away or even closed windows and even pulled their curtains down as if they saw a monster. It felt pretty much like looking at a kid with the plague, my heart ached for him.

“You’re back again. You’re really gross.”

“How can you come back alive from the Witch’s Forest? Is it true that monsters avoid you?”

“I’ve never heard that there’s something that the monster don’t eat…”

The women would think they were whispering inaudibly, but their voices were clearly transmitted by the wind. The whole village was buzzing as the murmurs were added from place to place. Too much talking made it difficult to understand whom was saying what.

But there were words that were particularly clear in the midst of it.

“Is he really a monster?”

“Did he really eat his mother and brother who took him in because he is a monster?”

“No, it was the lord who took his mother and the monsters who took his brother.”

“So he’s cursed, too.

“Yes, of course. That curse made us suffer like this. You shouldn’t have took him in from the beginning, either. Whether he got eaten by monsters or not, we should have thrown them out in the woods.”

“His mother, who has embraced him, must be heartbroken under the dirt in regret. I told her she shouldn’t have taken him in.”

The boy’s eyes darted to the women who was talking and ran away in panic. However, she did not forget to utter a pray.

“I’m really scared of that look. How could his eyes have such a color? He is most definitely cursed.”

“Don’t let the curse spread to me. I don’t want to die.”

The boy began to walk again. Contemptuous glances followed his trail throughout the village. But the boy didn’t change his expression at all. Women used abusive language, cursed, and advised their children to stay away from him.

And there were those who occasionally looked at him with sympathy and compassion.

“In the end, it’s because of the witch that only the innocent are dying.”

“So didn’t you say you kill the witch and it’s over? You went as if you were going to really end her life, so why did you just come back without doing it? That’s the only way for you to live.”

The only way to live was to dig a dagger deep into my heart. Pushing him to kill the witch by passing the dangerous forest full of monsters and sending him to the dreary tower where the witch was locked up, it was no different from telling the boy to go and die. Knowing that the witch would not die even if killed multiple times, they pretended that it was all for his sake and pushed him to his extremities.

And the young warrior who had nothing but hope has really run to answer their beckoning. To kill the witch. Because he knows he has to die if he doesn’t kill the witch. In the end, he would have turned all his arrows toward the witch. The main culprit of everything is the witch. It’s not because of him; it’s because of the witch. So all will be well once he kills her. That was the only way the boy could go on.

But in the end, he failed to kill. On the contrary, he was sympathetic to the witch and was eaten away by the witch’s darkness. The boy, who shouted “It’s because of you,” questioned whether it was really because of me. He tried to look at the truth, not the common belief that the witch deserved to die.

But from the villagers’ point of view, if the boy who was running to kill the witch always comes back with his body intact, then he is a monster.

So he shouldn’t have come to see the witch. Killing the witch was just an excuse to kick the boy out. It had to be either killing or dying. If the warrior who is pushed to kill a witch fails to kill her, then his presence is unnecessary.

They could have said that he had an affair with the witch and killed him.

Or they could’ve killed him saying he was actually the witch in disguise.

If they’re trying to kill him, it doesn’t matter which pretext they come up with. I already knew. I’ve been watching from the day the boy first came. The fate of a young warrior. The fact that it’s either kill or die. If he kills me and change the present, the future will change, and if he doesn’t, the boy will die.

So I kept telling him to run away. If you’re not going to kill me, if you can’t, don’t come, don’t think of me, live a life that has nothing to do with me. I told him to go hide out in a safe place.

I always shouted at him to run away.

But the young warrior didn’t understand me until he became a young man and eventually lost his light. He could have lived if he had run away far away as I said, but he couldn’t. Rather, he comforted me, who was feeling sorry for the young man who going to die because of me. It was not because of the witch, but because of his own choice.”

In fact, I was well aware of why the boy couldn’t get out of here. Because he’s scared. Because he’s not confident of getting out of here. And he can’t get out of the land where his loved ones are buried.

I recalled myself in the past when I couldn’t escape being driven into a witch.

The young warrior was much like the witch.

*

The sun was falling before I knew it. I looked, painting the sunset with colors remaining in my memory, though it only seemed to me as a mixture of dark and pale gray. I painted a deep sunset that was warm and sweet. The clouds hovering slowly looked very soft.

I thought I’d never see it again, but I ended up facing it like this. I only joined the world through my sight and hearing, but even though it looked blurred and achromatic, the subdued emotions and memories began to bubble up again.

I didn’t care much even though I didn’t know how much time it would spend to forget this time. My time will be over before the boy’s time ends anyway. The end that I’ve been hoping for. I’ll make it happen.

Oh, the bell is starting to ring. The bell that I heard in the tower was a sound from this village. But it wasn’t the village I imagined. There were no children running around with a clear laugh and then going back to dinner, and no friendly mothers preparing crispy baked bread, lukewarm heated milk and soft mashed potatoes for such children.

No one had a warm and pleasant time. Instead of what seemed like a scene in a fairy tale, there was only a desolate village like the gray sunset I was seeing now. Those who looked exhausted only took a breather, saying, “I barely gone through the day today.”

However, only merchants who seemed to have come from other places had light glinting in their eyes. They approached the boy with interest in the items he brought from the forest and bought them with money or food, although they looked scarce at a glance.

The villagers were fed up with the mere encounter with the boy and treated him as a nobody, but not merchants. They were at least treating him like a human being, ordering things that could be brought from the forest. They did not treat him worse than a monster or a cursed scum.

The boy sold the bones of the monster he was holding and the herbs in his pocket, took the food and money he had gained, and then moved on again. Merchants looking at his figure exchanged conversations, clicking their tongues.

“I’m so sorry to hear that you’re treated like a monster, only because you have white hair and red eyes.”

Although I could not see anything but gray at the moment, I felt the difference between the boy and the others, as the merchant said. No one had a gray as bright as the boy’s hair, and no one had a gray as dark as the boy’s eyes.

“But don’t you know? The fact that animals with white fur and red eyes have cursed blood. The animals that are born like that re abandoned in the wild and end up dying. There’s also a saying that they were born to die.”

There would be no animal to be born just to die. They were just born that way and died earlier than their peers. They were just different in appearance, I know they’re different from other animals but that was not something to be concerned with.

“Yes, wouldn’t it have been better if you had died before? It’s a pity that both your mother, Dea, who raised you, and Vonus threw away their lives to protect you. Maybe it is true that you are cursed.”

“Isn’t it the owner of this place who killed Dea and Vonus? He’s a real monster. Look at this town. Does this really seem like a place for people to live?”

“Hey, man you’ll get in trouble! What if someone hears that?”

“I didn’t say anything wrong, and who’s listening, so what’s the big deal? Anyway, that’s the only thing I feel sorry for. The next time, there’s a rumor that it was because of the boy, what kind of pain will he live in? Well, maybe that boy really brought it on himself. It’s not that I don’t understand the grudges of the others since she accepted the boy in.”

The merchant, who was looking at the boy’s back as he was moving away, clicked his tongue and continued.

“We’re the only ones going to lose. If that boy dies, we can’t get any more forest goods. If you’re going to kill him anyway, maybe you should have left Vonus alive and killed him.”

The merchant was not much different from the villagers. No, it was rather more awful. Wearing a mask of sympathy and compassion, it was more cruel to see him scrambling to calculate his own interests.

No one cared about the fading light of the young soldier.

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