Under the Oak Tree

She sobbed and took a deep breath. The smell of horses and the steely scent of his iron armor entered her lungs. Riftan placed both his hands on the windowsill and stared at the crescent moon floating on the sky. A tense flowing aura that could cut emitted from his back; he was still cladded in armor. Max had no idea what to say. She stared at his tense back with a hazy vision and as she lowered her gaze down to her knees, she heard a light knock on the door.

“Sir Calypse, the hot water is ready.”

Ruth announced from the other side of the door. Riftan slowly turned and opened the door. Max scooted to the edge of the bed to avoid the light that creeped in from the hallway. Ruth was shooting a worried glance over Riftan’s shoulder.

“Here, I brought some clean towels and a set of clothes to change into. As for the food…”

“Bring the food up an hour from now.”

Riftan blocked the door with his broad shoulders as if preventing Ruth from entering. He then grabbed the basin, towel, and clothes from him, shutting the door before the wizard could say anything more. Max gazed nervously at Riftan as he approached the bed with the basin in his hands. He placed the basin filled with steaming hot water by the bedside table and dipped a towel into it, then wringed the towel and brought it close to her face. Max reflexively flinched, her throat tightening at his move. Riftan’s lips hardened and he spoke in a strangely tight voice.

“I’ll wipe off the blood.”

“Ah…”

After Riftan had wiped her face clean, he then carefully removed her robe, wiping off the bloodstains from her bare shoulders and back. Max felt miserable and helpless as she wordlessly accepted his care. Every time the warm towel would glide down her back, she felt shameful, she felt an overwhelming urge to run and hide away somewhere, but Riftan diligently wiped away the dried blood and scabs off her bare back, not paying attention to her uneasy expression. Max bit her lips anxiously as she felt his trembling fingertips graze her skin. After a while of wiping down her back, and rinsing the towel several times, he spoke with his mouth barely opening.

“… How often did this happen?”

Max’s shoulders tensed; she avoided his gaze and averted her eyes from side to side, like a trapped animal looking for an escape. She forced a stiff smile.

“Wh-what… Do you mean?”

She heard his breathing grow heavier. Max looked away, fiddling with her tangled, messy hair with trembling hands. Despite being silent, Riftan’s aura probed for an answer. She tried to ignore it but being unable to withstand the heavy tension, she eventually murmured in an awkward tone.

“It di-didn’t happen… that o-often. It’s ju-just… that he was extremely f-furious at me… today. U-usually, it’s not this… bad…”

He stared at her with an undecipherable expression as she struggled to protect the last ounces of her remaining pride. His gaze felt like he was looking through her, and Max’s face turned red in embarrassment.

“Fa-father is… e-exceptionally s-strict… at times, when he gets f-furious…”

“Since when was he doing this to you?”

Riftan brushed off her pathetic effort of trying to cover up the incident like it was no big deal and probed her relentlessly. Max held her breath like she was a cornered person, back pressed helplessly against a wall. She needed a shield, something to wrap her protectively and somehow save her remaining pride. She felt so insecure, like a weak, defenseless, bare infant defending herself from a man clad in armor. Max pulled the blanket nearer to her like it was a shield and looked at him fiercely. That hostility was triggered by the cruelty of being prodded to reveal everything.

“W-what do you want to know? How often I-I… get hit… since wh-when did he start hitting me… d-do you really want to know that?”

The knuckles that were holding the towel turned white as her grip tightened. Her heart trembled: it was laughable that even up to that point, she was still trying to save her pride.

“If you’re th-that curious… then I’ll give you an a-answer. It began when I was e-eight years old. Wh-when it became clear… that I was a s-stutterer. My fa-father would make me… recite a po-poem in front of him t-twice a week. If I-I… st-stuttered… he will punish me… in that room.”

Hearing her words that were spoken so helplessly, Riftan lowered his head with a bewildered look on his face. It was the first time that she saw him that disappointed. He muttered in a rugged voice, holding his forehead.

“Today… I wasn’t thinking of taking you back to Anatol.”

At that moment, Max instantly lost all of her will. Whether or not Riftan knew that she was looking at him with a face so pale as if all the blood was drained from her body, he continued to speak like a puppet, his eyes stuck on the hardwood floor on the fluttering shadow of the fire in the furnace.

“I thought that it could have been better for you to stay in your father’s estate. If you had said that was what you wanted, I would’ve let you… the whole time I was there, I kept telling myself that over and over again. I’d leave once I saw that your health was recovering, I just wanted to see your face and then I’d leave. This time, I wouldn’t force you and drag you with me like I did before…” Riftan’s voice cracked as his voice grew lower and softer. He breathed heavily as he swept the hair away from his forehead. “I begged for the duke to see your face even just once. That man told me you didn’t want to see my face. It felt like the ground under me crumbled apart.”

“I-I d-didn’t…!”

Max’s voice suddenly surged reflexively, but her lips were immediately brought to close. Riftan’s piercing gaze flew towards her again. She fiddled anxiously with the sheets, her eyes averting from side to side.

“I-I never said that. I never said I didn’t want to s-see…”

“Then why did you go back to that place with him? Why?”

He abruptly rose to his feet and Max curled up even more, her back pressed against the cold wall as a cornered mouse. Riftan placed one hand against the wall, next to her face, as if blocking her escape.

“Was it better for you to suffer like that than to wait for me? Rather than being with me, was… was it better to be with that kind of person?!”

“I, I…” Max’s mouth trembled as she attempted to speak. “I thought Ri-Riftan… would never want to s-see me again…”

As Max barely blurted those words out, Riftan’s tanned face grew unnaturally pale. Max was hardly able to continue her words as her voice trembled.

“I-I lost… the ch-child…”

“And so… you thought I no longer wanted to see you?”

Riftan murmured in disbelief. Max clamped her lips, her eyes brimming with tears as she glared at him.

“What e-else could I… think? Y-you told me to l-leave. You didn’t tell me a-anything…but to leave…”

“I didn’t want to see you get hurt anymore!” Riftan exclaimed furiously as if he was blurting out blood with his words. “Ever since I brought you to Anatol with me, you’ve been subjected to danger for so many times. When I saw you covered in blood, all I could think of was that it was all my fault. Why did you have to suffer through that? Why you got pregnant, why you went and followed all the way to that damned place! It was all because of me!”

Max became speechless, her jaw dropping at his desperate shouts. Riftan continued to bitterly speak out the anguish that had accumulated in his chest.

“I should have left you alone. I shouldn’t have even taken you to Anatol! I knew from the start that you didn’t want to marry me! If it was really for your sake, I should have let you go when I came back. I even thought it might have been better if I didn’t come back alive! While you were unconscious, that was all I could think of…” His voice cracked at the end. Riftan trembled violently as if he was suppressing something, then grabbed her shoulders. “If it wasn’t for your sister, I would have left you there! Why didn’t you tell me? What he has done to you… Why didn’t you tell me? If you had only spoken to me, I would not have allowed him to come anywhere near you. I would have protected you, no matter what! Why didn’t you tell me before? Why!”

“I, I, I…”

Max turned away from him, but Riftan did not allow her to escape. He held her by the face and made her turn towards him. She felt the last remaining shield collapse before his fiery gaze. There was no more pride or energy left to cover her.

“You…You like to t-think of m-me as someone special…” The tears that were brimming around her eyes ran down her cheeks. Without even thinking about wiping her tears away, she licked her dry lips and spoke again. “However… I’m-I’m merely nothing… I really a-am nothing…I was a-afraid…that y-you would discover that…”

Riftan’s expression looked as if he had been hit hard on the head. Max closed her eyes tight, and tears came streaming endlessly down her face.

“Even if I died… I didn’t want to tell y-you the truth. I, I… I-I didn’t want you to know. That I-I’m… l-like this… s-someone so pathetic…” She tried to put a smile on her trembling lips, but she failed, and her face crumpled miserably. An unshakeable sob broke out. “I… I… I am so embarrassed…”

Riftan’s hands that were holding her shoulders slid and dropped. Max huddled her body closer and covered her tear-stained face with her fists. Another suppressed sob escaped her lips. She felt more embarrassed than being subjected naked in the middle of a town square. In front of his eyes, she wanted to see herself as the noblest lady in the world. It was better for him to see her as if she were dazzling. She didn’t want to look so miserable, wretched, and pathetic.

She cried uncontrollably, trembling, and gasping as if something hot was lodged in her throat. Her crumpled face was soaked in hot tears, she couldn’t get a hold of herself at all. As she gripped the sheets tightly and clamped her lips shut, she heard an empty voice above her head.

“You… you’ve been in my mind ever since.” Max paused and raised her head. Riftan had a bewildered look on his face and his arms were drooping helplessly. He muttered his words as if he were confessing to her. “There wasn’t a single moment that I didn’t think of you. Even back when you didn’t know that I existed in this world, you were the only one I had.”

“Ah…”

She couldn’t understand what he was saying, and her lips shook. Bitter, salty tears seeped into her mouth. Her wretched appearance reflected in his desolate eyes.

“The more that I yearned for you, the more pointless it became, even though I became miserable… I couldn’t stop.” Riftan’s lips twitched slightly. “Many times, many times I thought about giving up. I thought to myself, I should stop now. The more that I thought about you, the lonelier I felt. I was alone, no matter who I was with. Many days, I tried to get rid of my thoughts of you. I told myself to stop wishing for someone I couldn’t reach. Over and over again, I decided to stop… but every time I came back to my senses, I would always be chasing after you.”

He pressed his fist to his forehead and closed his eyes tightly. “I don’t think my heart is mine. From the moment I first saw you, it was no longer mine. And yet… how could you be nothing. How could you be nothing…”

Max stared blankly at his shoulders, thick as iron walls, trembling slightly. Riftan’s head hung so weakly, like a man who had given up the thing he had been protecting all the while to the enemy. She, looking at the precarious figure from a distance, reached out slowly and hugged his head to her chest. She did not know what to say. Max just called his name again and again. How can he be so fragile, so heartbroken, so sorrowful? As she shattered in front of him, Riftan also broke into pieces in front of her. His body leaned helplessly against her. Their shadows against the light couldn’t seem more pitiful.

Their bodies fell onto the bed like rubble from a crumbling wall. Max buried her face against his cold shoulder. Now she didn’t even know why she was crying, she simply rubbed her damp cheek against his dark hair, spilling out the old anguish piled in her chest. In the dark, they lay and embraced each other motionless.