Kyran was too stumped to react when the girl’s tears fell on her muddy cheeks.
Growl!
The girl’s tears suddenly stopped.
Silence.
Growl…
Another persistent growling sound came that made Kyran blink.
The girl’s cheeks slowly darkened.
“T-That wasn’t-!”
Growl…
Silence.
No longer able to keep up appearances, the girl crouched down and touched her stomach where the persistent growling came.
Kyran, on the other hand, kept a straight face, but when he saw how the girl struggled to keep her growling stomach under control while still clutching the stalactite defensively in front of her, a suppressed chuckle escaped his lips.
The scene made him think of a wriggling silkworm.
Upon hearing his suppressed laugh, the girl’s cheeks grew darker as she shrunk back as if wanting to blend herself on the wall.
Her reaction triggered a scene in Kyran’s memory.
It was a scene when his little sister first came into his home. Her parents had just died then, but she was barely two years old and was unaware of it. When his mother put her to sleep, she wouldn’t stop crying and called for her mother. However, wailing for more than an hour made her hungry. When her stomach loudly protested, she tried hiding her face in the crook of his mother’s arm in shame. Similar to how the girl in front of her was trying to hide on the wall. She even discarded her weapon as she wriggled uncontrollably on the wall.
Kyran slightly frowned when he felt a soft tug in his heart. This wasn’t good. If he started to pity the girl, who knew what crazy thing he would do.
He could not afford to get involved in another person’s matters when he had a bigger one he had to deal with.
However, looking at the girl who was about to die, still trying to fend for herself and satisfy her hunger by eating the dirt on the wall, somehow made him feel…
…
Wait, what?
Eating the dirt on the wall…
Kyran’s eyes grew wide as he snapped out of his thoughts.
The girl was not trying to blend herself on the wall but was clawing and eating dirt!
“Oi! What are you doing?”
The girl flinched from Kyran’s loud voice and was about to claw her way further into the wall.
But Kyran already moved and grabbed her wrist to pull her away.
The moment he grabbed the girl’s skinny wrist, the tug on his heart became heavy.
“N-No!” The girl struggled to break free.
With her other hand, she tried to find her weapon.
Seeing the girl about to reach for the stalactite, Kyran kicked it, and he deftly pinned the girl on the ground.
The girl groaned in pain.
Kyran was about to lay his left knee on the girl’s back but abruptly stopped after feeling how thin and frail the girl’s body was. He even had a feeling that he could break the girl’s spinal cord if he did pin her down with his knee.
“P-Please, l-let me go!” The girl pleaded as she still struggled under Kyran.
Her pleas fell on deaf ears because, at that moment, Kyran fell into contemplation.
He looked at the wall where the girl was clawing her meal and found more claw marks. It appeared that the girl had been living off eating the dirt on the wall.
Kyran looked at the girl’s back. His heart softened further as he imagined what she had gone through just to survive. He caught a glimpse of the stalactite and belatedly realized she could not have gotten that by herself.
Someone left that for her, whether to defend herself from danger or to… kill herself with it.
Kyran took a deep breath. The clues were all here, but he chose to ignore them.
This girl was abandoned.
As to why she was abandoned, Kyran could only guess that whoever left her here probably thought she was a burden because of her disability, especially if she came from a poor family.
But why left her here in the Valley of Morte? That was the only thing that Kyran could not understand.
“Stop moving or I might break your bones,” Kyran warned her, trying to keep his voice down to show he had no ill intentions.
Hearing Kyran’s words, the girl started to calm down. Her breath came in short gasps as she finally stopped struggling.
Feeling the girl calmed down, Kyran said, “I’ll release you. But don’t… don’t try to eat the dirt…”
Kyran’s voice trailed off. He felt a lump on his throat.
He was trained at a young age how to survive alone in the wild. But he was equipped with the knowledge and minimum materials to do so.
Unlike the girl.
Taking a deep breath, Kyran continued, “I have some food with me, I can give you something to eat but I need you to calm down.”
When the girl heard ‘food’, she almost drooled as she nodded her head vehemently in agreement.
“Y-Yes. Okay,” the girl replied.
Kyran let go of the girl’s wrist and stood up.
After confirming that Kyran had moved away, the girl got up slowly and sat obediently, hugging her knees.
‘What the hell am I doing,’ Kyran thought as he looked at the girl.
Nolan’s accusing voice suddenly surfaced in his head: “You are still too soft.”
Gritting his teeth, Kyran clenched his fists and turned toward the opening.
‘Walk away.’ Kyran told himself.
It was not too late. The girl was about to die anyway. If he showed her kindness or even gave her false hope of surviving, wouldn’t that be cruel?
‘Just walk away,’ Kyran repeated in his head, and without looking back, he jumped down from the opening.
…
The girl’s ears perked upon hearing a loud thud that resonated around her. She heard more of these dull sounds twice before her surroundings fell silent once more.
The girl strained her ears.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty.
A minute.
Two minutes.
Five.
No sound could be heard around her, apart from the soft thump of her heartbeat in her chest, her controlled breathing, and her growling stomach.
The girl took a shaky breath.
‘It happened again…’ She thought as she hugged herself.
Once again.
She was abandoned, in this place that was as still and quiet as death.
Tears welled up in her eyes, but she did her best to keep it in.
She took another deep breath and finally straightened her back. Using her hands, she groped around her, trying to find the weapon her uncle gave her.
This weapon made her feel a little safe. It was also a token of a promise. Because her uncle said, as long as she stayed alive, once he came back, they would return home. Before he left, he gave her this weapon and told her to use it wisely. But her uncle had been gone for a long time. Still, she waited patiently and counted even though she had slowly understood that no one was coming back.
After some time, the girl finally found the weapon. She retraced her steps and crawled back to a corner. Her stomach growled once more, and she reflexively touched the wall to her right. She was about to dig in again when the man’s voice repeated in her head.
“Don’t try to eat the dirt.”
She lowered her hand slowly and tightened her grip on the weapon. Then she buried her head on her knees.
‘Right… where was I?’ She suddenly thought.
‘That’s right, I am already at three hundred forty-seven thousand and…’
The tears she tried so hard to keep threatened to fall.
She bit her parched lips and swallowed the lump forming in her throat.
‘…and one hundred twenty-.’
Thud!
Her heart jumped painfully in her chest from the sudden sound. She jerked her head up and automatically lifted the weapon in front of her.
After the loud thud, cluttering sounds followed and filled her surroundings as if something solid but not quite heavy fell on the ground.
She stayed still and listened to the movements in front of her, trying to guess what was going on.
In a few minutes, the humid and cold surroundings slowly became warm.
“This…” The girl tried to speak, but only a soft sound escaped her somewhat parched lips.
“I only have preserved foods.”
A voice suddenly spoke.
It was the man!
He did not leave!
“You… It might upset your stomach if you eat it cold. It’s better to heat it first,” the man said. His voice quivered slightly as if he was feeling a little awkward.
He left to gather woods for a fire because he did not want her to upset her stomach.
The girl closed her eyes. The tears that had gathered fell on her cheeks like a silent river. But her tears were not of sadness. It was of gratitude.
Opening her eyes once again, she faced the direction where she heard the man speak. And with a little difficulty, she smiled.
“Thank you.” She said in an almost inaudible whisper.
…
To Kyran, however, he heard the girl.
He looked at her and saw her smiling as if she was really looking at him.
Kyran did not know why, but he felt that coming back was the right choice.