I Can’t Run Away From the Girl Who Saved Me

2 – Cabin in the Woods (1)

*

Squeaking ankles, knees jolting.

Each time I somehow took a step, a scream mixed with a hiss escaped my lips.

After walking some distance, I finally realized my left foot was twisted nearly backward.

It wasn’t just my leg that was mangled.

One arm was also bent in an indescribable direction, and my abdomen by my navel was unnaturally distended, as if organs were dislocated.

Plus, at every footprint I left behind, blood was deeply pooled, though I didn’t know where it was coming from.

In another person’s eyes, I probably looked closer to undead than human.

If I didn’t have the wooden rod pried from the carriage frame, I couldn’t have made it this far.

Though the dizzying pain each time my twisted left leg dragged made it difficult, I headed toward the faint light flickering ahead, one step at a time.

If I wasn’t seeing things, that light surely had to be a house or campfire.

If I was really lucky, smart Laila may have taken refuge there first.

Even if not, if I could just encounter someone, I could request aid.

Wait,

It couldn’t be our pursuers, right?

I shook my head, shaking off that ominous thought I just had.

No need to stomp on the barely sprouted bud of hope prematurely.

If that light turned out to be the camp of the assassins targeting me and Laila, then my life would end cleanly right there.

Having tried this hard, I wouldn’t regret giving up then.

It’s not like things could get any worse.

I already looked like a corpse, after all.

“Ugh, move…!”

The urge to tear off my foot from the awful pain surged up, so I psyched myself up, biting my lip and cursing.

When my mind grew hazy, my body would slow and the pain also dulled slightly, but clearing my mind and moving made agonizing pain that made me feel on the verge of fainting assault me immediately.

The one silver lining was that at some point, the ground had changed from rough dirt to a slightly soft layer of fallen leaves.

Damn, it looked so soft I desperately wanted to crumple down on it.

Like when you have something to finish all night, and a huge freshly dried blanket laid out on the soft bed beckons you to rest a bit.

But like how lying in bed would make you sleep the day away, if I surrendered my body here, I would surely die.

I grit my teeth at the awful pain that made me feel my head would burst, using it to rouse me as I took a step.

It was pain so bad that dying felt preferable, but I endured, spitting curses.

I could die anytime.

But if I missed this chance, I might never have an opportunity to save Laila again.

The light gradually drew nearer.

“Hah, ugh,”

I didn’t understand myself.

How could I walk like this?

How could I even think of enduring such awful pain?

I’d never experienced anything remotely intense in my life.

Of course, I’d never hiked such a rugged mountain path in these terrible conditions before.

Yet my feet certainly didn’t stop, just moved slower.

Strangely, it felt like that light was making my inner will surge forth.

And at last, I reached that light.

The place was an old ruin.

I couldn’t see clearly since it was night, but traces of small log houses here and there indicated this used to be a small village long ago.

An image of the quaint but cozy little mountain village flashed through my fading consciousness.

I clenched my teeth and glared at the light ahead.

Most of the log houses here had collapsed, leaving only the foundations, and even the relatively intact ones had broken doors and roofs caved in.

However, in one corner of this village, just one single house stood perfectly preserved.

The cottage was so small it was closer to a hut than a house, but unlike the other crumbling homes, it was well maintained. Fresh vegetables were growing prettily in the garden that looked like a small field.

Most of all, smoke was rising from the chimney and light was coming through the windows.

Signs of people.

I had finally made it here, dragging my twisted body.

Ah, was it because the tension was released? My mind grew hazier.

In my hurry, I limped heavily on my left foot that I had been dragging, and charged at the door.

Bang!

Of course, the door was locked.

I banged my head on the door and shouted.

The pain that wrung my abdomen, the creaking in my chest, the feeling that my throat would tear – but now I had to yell.

“Help… Hel… Help me!”

No response.

Without the strength to raise my arms anymore, I leaned my head on the door and cried out.

“Please! Please help us… ugh…”

A lump of blood surged up my throat.

I collapsed at the door, vomiting blood on it.

Could it be no one’s here?

Seeing the light, it doesn’t seem to be an empty house. Could they have just stepped out for a bit?

After coming all this way, it would be so absurd to die here just because the person stepped out for a moment.

To dispel my anxiety, I raised my voice louder.

“I… I was in a carriage accident… Please, my younger sister is missing… And I’m also badly hurt…”

Suddenly, my heart dropped down with a thud.

My faint, irregular heartbeat – I could feel it slowly stopping at this moment.

I stopped talking.

I had to be careful.

Maybe these could be my last words.

“Please… save me…”

Ah, no.

I’m losing consciousness.

An overwhelming sense of exhaustion unlike before swept over my body.

The feeling of all strength rapidly draining from my body.

No,

no…

I leaned my whole body against the door.

With my legs no longer able to support my weight, they buckled and my cheeks and forehead began scraping the door.

The door hadn’t been properly finished, leaving splinters that were sharp.

Splinters dug into and scraped my face, forehead, and cheeks, beads of blood forming.

But I didn’t care.

Slumped at the door, I mumbled in my fading voice.

“…Save me… Please, save my younger sister… Please…”

It was barely more than a whisper now, inaudible to even my own ears.

My body won’t move.

With my neck frozen, my head and eyes faced down.

Naturally, the light leaking from under the door came into view.

Strangely, only the middle of the door was shadowed.

Shadow.

Silhouette.

That meant someone was standing behind this door.

I tried to make a sound.

I had to plead so the person could hear.

But it was too late for me.

Ah, this is the end.

This is it.

Please, please,

at least Lila…

My body stopped moving.

Unable to close my eyelids, my eyes will remain open as I die.

The sounds fade away.

My vision gradually grows farther.

At that moment, the door I was leaning on opened.

“…”

The door opened inward.

Since I was slumped against the door, my body fell straight from my head like a wind-up toy with a snapped spring.

My fading vision shook towards the wooden floor.

“I shouldn’t have opened it…”

That voice was the last thing I heard before the world disappeared into darkness.

*

I was born a commoner with nothing special about me.

It was natural, since my father and mother were commoners too.

I had no complaints.

We weren’t well-off, but we lacked nothing.

My father worked in the kitchens of a noble estate, and my mother was a maid there.

Thanks to the lady of the estate looking kindly on my mother, my siblings and I were able to grow up on the grounds of the noble’s home.

Gratefully, the lord treated our family warmly.

He even allowed my sister to receive lessons with his daughter Alice, saying she needed a friend to study with.

My silly sister who was always so cheerfully simple-minded would whine and complain that she didn’t want to study, even though she had an opportunity that normal commoners could not even dream of.

But who could have known?

That my foolish sister would turn out to be a once-in-a-hundred-years genius magician.

Magic was fundamentally academic.

For ordinary people to learn magic, they had to go through many steps – sensing mana, studying theory, memorizing formulas, mastering incantations.

But my sister was different.

She could use magic while skipping over all those steps.

Like the difference between humans who have to learn to swim to avoid drowning and fish who naturally know how to swim from birth, my sister had a talent that was on a different level.

Even though she was below average in every other subject, my sister would grasp magic after just one lesson and proudly show me and Lila the new magic she learned every day.

The lord had me receive the same education just in case, but unfortunately I didn’t have my sister’s talent.

My sister was clearly a genius.

Not just my parents, but the lord and Lady Alice were also proud of my talented sister.

With the lord’s investment and recommendation, my sister entered a prestigious academy along with the lady.

Even at that academy full of outstanding prodigies and children of famed households, my sister’s talent did not diminish at all.

A few years later, before even graduating the academy, my sister had already attained the title of Archmage.

Our family, who had not seen my sister for years because of the boarding school system and terribly short breaks, could not attend her graduation ceremony for fear that our commoner status might hinder her. We could only wait for her to return home.

But all that came back to us were the kingdom’s envoys and a letter from my sister.

The letter said that upon graduating, she had embarked on a journey with Sir Knight and other powerful comrades gathered from all over to capture the Demon Lord.

And the envoys from the kingdom read out a royal decree appointing our family the title of Viscount.

My sister had supposedly requested a noble title in return for joining the Demon Lord subjugation party, to compensate for the indignities she had suffered at the academy for being a commoner.

That was how my sister’s feats made our family noble.

Of course it was an honorary title without any territory, but it was still too great a gift.

I would have preferred to see her face after so many years apart, but still, I was overjoyed.

More than becoming a noble, I was happy to have such a great and admirable sister.

My parents must have felt the same.

Our family happily awaited my sister’s return.

We studied our duties as nobles, worked to repay the lord who had helped us so much, and prepared a place for when my sister returned home. That was how we waited for her.

Until we heard the news that the hero had fallen and my sister had died too.

*

“…Sis.”

Before I could even open my eyes, the longing word slipped from my mouth.

And then tremendous pain and chill assaulted my entire body.

It was pain so awful it felt like my bones were breaking, and chill so extreme it felt like my skin would split open.

“Ugh!”

When the avalanche of that overwhelmingly violent sensation came crashing into my brain, I snapped my eyes open as if my collar had been grabbed and I’d been forcibly dragged up.

It hurt so much and was so cold.

I couldn’t even tell where the pain and cold were coming from, but the agony boastfully flaunting its overwhelming presence completely wrapped around and pierced through my body.

My brain frozen by the massive pain surging in, I squeezed a groan from my crushed lungs and slowly fluttered my eyelids.

As I slowly closed and opened my eyes, counting the patterns on the roughly hewn log ceiling to painfully endure the agony, it took me a while before I started thinking something was off.

Wait…

Am I alive?

How am I alive?

And… where is this?

Then.

I heard something rustling near my arm, and a woman’s voice came from beside me.

It was a delicate, soft young woman’s voice.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

Since the pain was too intense for me to even consider turning my head, I hadn’t noticed until now, but the owner of the voice had been at my side the whole time.

I rolled my eyes in the direction of the voice.

But before I could see her, her hand covered my eyes, then gently pushed my eyelids down.

“Don’t overexert yourself. You probably can’t even twitch a finger yet.”

Saying that, she softly removed the hand covering my eyes, then got up from her seat.

From the brief glimpse I caught of her before she covered my face, her appearance seemed rather peculiar.

She wore a long, thick robe, completely covering herself as if she had on a blanket. Her face was entirely wrapped in bandages. As if that wasn’t enough, she had on a huge mask over the bandages, obscuring her whole face.

“You suffered. Rest some more.”

Her voice was extremely soft, almost like a lullaby.

Even though it had been a very short time, my body that had been tortured by awful pain was already exhausted.

I could not resist the fatigue and slipped into sleep before I even realized it.