TFOA Chapter 15

It was a fever that had visited him after a long time. His body, burning with fever, was dizzy enough to make his mind hazy, but strangely his body was terribly cold.

Benjamin opened his eyes with difficulty.

Through his dizzy vision, he could see himself lying in the middle of the floor, soaked and damp.

'What's this situation right now?'

He thought while staring blankly at the lit campfire.

'I think I met someone.'

Cough.

A bitter medicinal taste came from his throat. Benjamin coughed and spat out the bitter medicine he hadn't been able to swallow.

'What is this? I definitely...'

Outside the window, the rain had stopped. Dark green earth. Pale clouds mixed with ash gray. The wind was still blowing strongly, as the grass swayed wildly.

'I definitely was at the bridge...'

"Ugh..."

His head throbbed. A faint headache at his temples. One of the side effects of the sleeping pills he often took.

When it rained, his palms ached at every joint that had been torn and healed. It was bearable for a day, but the unexpected spring rain had fallen for three straight days without rest.

Because of that, Benjamin had been suffering from neuralgia without being able to paint a single picture.

A body that wouldn't fall asleep even when it was time to close his eyes. Hands that trembled as if fire had been lit in every joint.

Unable to endure it any longer at dawn when he absolutely couldn't fall asleep, he took sleeping pills and lay down on the floor. He lay on the cool floor that smelled of rain's fishy scent, waiting for sleep to come like a fish waiting to die.

That was the last memory he could clearly remember among his clear memories.

He vaguely remembered briefly opening his eyes because it was too hot and tossing and turning. Had he been caught in the rain?

No, it seemed like he had sat down on a bridge and looked at the sky. Was being buried in the small creek under the bridge a dream, or an old memory? What was it?

'Wasn't it a dream?'

Benjamin sat blankly in front of the fireplace where the fire was dying down, staring at the flames.

His hand pain had subsided, but he had woken up at an awkward time when dawn hadn't even broken. He'd probably spend the night in a daze. Should he take one more pill and sleep?

He fumbled on the floor looking for pills with cute fairy pictures drawn on them. But rolling around on the floor were only unidentifiable cups and pots.

The medicine that sent him into deep slumber was nowhere to be found.

'Where did all those pills go?'

It was a sleeping pill that was hard to find substitutes for easily. A strong sleep-inducing agent that had been supplied to soldiers during wartime. A chemical sleep inducer with a picture of a sleep demon fairy, said to make even elephants fall asleep in 5 minutes.

He had deserted from the military that supplied it, and the war was over, so he didn't even know if the medicine was still being manufactured. Auvers didn't sell it either, so he'd have to go near the city.

For Benjamin, who wasn't French, buying sleeping pills near French cities was close to involuntary suicide. Even though the war was over, the hostile relationship between Germany and France hadn't ended yet.

'I didn't want to go to the city if possible, so I bought a large quantity at once.'

It had been less than a month since he bought the medicine, but it had disappeared without a trace. How frustrating.

'There's no way I took all of that while medicated. Then I probably wouldn't exist in this world.'

Benjamin turned his cupboard upside down and concluded that there were no pills in the house.

Could he sleep? Setting aside how he lost the medicine, he had arrived at the most fundamental question.

'Can I... sleep?'

He couldn't even remember when he had last slept comfortably, as he had been suffering from long insomnia for so long.

An incurable disease that wouldn't easily heal. A terrible disease where he spent every night with his eyes open but sleep wouldn't come, making his mind deteriorate.

Even when he managed to fall asleep, he would wake up startled immediately.

In the end, he decided to go to the city this week.

He was a painter, but he was among those who could barely make money as a painter. That made sense. He had never completed any painting to the end.

Instead, he earned just enough not to die by translating English books. It was thanks to the English he had learned for his younger brother who wanted to become a clergyman.

'...I'll have to endure with alcohol for now.'

Fortunately, there was a book he had agreed to translate by the end of the month.

To translate this by the middle of next week, he wouldn't have enough time to sleep, but since sleep wouldn't come without medicine anyway, it didn't matter.

Benjamin staggered as he got up from his seat.

According to the original schedule, today he should have finished applying the base colors of the sketch and started matching the shadow colors that would go into the direction of light. But...

'In this state, I'll only ruin the painting...'

Anyway, that customer no longer comes to find that spot in the field. ...So there was no need to wait. He was certain of this fact when he visited Raul's bar.

Benjamin didn't care about the terrible silence surrounding him. It was the same when he encountered her familiar face outside, seeming both long-unseen and somehow familiar.

He just mindlessly passed by those red eyes that observed him quietly.

Ever since he told her not to act like she knew him, she hadn't spoken to him once outside. It was somewhat amusing, and also left a bitter aftertaste like eating bitter mint candy.

"Welcome, Benjamin."

"Absinthe."

He chose the cheapest liquor that could get him drunk quickly. The green one with the scent of wormwood and strong herbs for a grass. It had no taste but could get him drunk quickly.

"I should probably go now. Niksi. You're going home too, right?"

Just ordering alcohol, but chickpeas came with it.

Looking at Raul, who showed an awkward smile. He could tell. It meant he was sorry for not being able to stop the hostility that poured out as soon as he entered the bar.

Benjamin hated beans, but he couldn't ignore Raul's kindness, so he picked at a few with his fork.

"Oh, yes."

Benjamin scribbled with his pen while reading through the phrases he needed to translate. Once, twice. Even after reading it three times, the content wouldn't enter his head.

"Yes, I should."

He took a sip of alcohol. Now she'd really know. Since she seemed close to that woman.

Helen. The first time he saw her was on the second day after he came to Auvers, dragging his dying body. She came looking for him with a frying pan. She probably intended to kill him.

Someone from the category that hated him. She was someone who had lost someone she loved because of the war.

She woke him up as he was crouched and sleeping in a collapsing shack, then pointed her finger at him.

The villagers who followed stopped her. At that time, he couldn't remember exactly how she cursed because his abdominal wound hadn't healed and he had a fever.

However, she was a woman who had lost her beloved husband to German soldiers like himself, and in front of her, he was the perpetrator. That alone hadn't changed.

He knelt at her feet and apologized. Sorry. I was wrong. He muttered endlessly as if confessing before God.

Eventually, she dropped the frying pan and cried severely. The booming crying sound that made his head ring wouldn't stop.

After that, Helen never came looking for him again. However, if there was a day when they happened to encounter each other, she would make a horrified expression.

He knew that too. To her, he was a nightmare and a murderer. That's why, even when he inevitably had to go down to the village, he had avoided meetings with her or people like her as much as possible.

Today too, he had stopped by thinking Helen would be busy organizing her store in the late evening and wouldn't be at the bar. It was unexpected that Helen was there, along with the noisy neighbors.

He hadn't come to Auvers to have trivial exchanges with people in the first place. So he was unaffected.

Clang.

Even when Helen, who had been looking at him with contempt since he entered the store, noisily went outside, he was unaffected.

He was used to hearing the whispering sounds and rural curses like 'dirty Germanic people' amidst the laughing and chattering. It was possible because his emotions had been dulled for a very long time. From the sunflower field, from the burning old cathedral, from in front of his younger brother.

So he was numb. Whether he could say that was 'unaffected,' he wasn't sure.

That painting client probably really knew now too. That there was nothing good about pretending to know him. So now they probably wouldn't pretend to know him ever again. Unless they were crazy.

'How did you end up coming here?'

Suddenly Benjamin recalled a question from his yellow sunflower neighbor that he had heard at some point.

He hadn't come because he missed people or because he ran away not wanting to die in war.

'The reason I came to Auvers is...'

"Painter."

Benjamin looked up at the shadow cast in front of him. The person who had been noisily stirring up his mind for a while was standing there.

Benjamin slowly closed and opened his eyes. The alcohol was finally starting to take effect.

Unless she was really crazy...

"Want to be friends with me?"

Haha. Benjamin showed a laugh somewhere between emptiness and futility. Her single statement had dropped a bomb on Raul's bar.

The newcomer farmer had casually crossed a line that no one dared to think of crossing. The lively atmosphere of the bar became cold in an instant.

Normally it wouldn't have been that severe, but today was different. Because just a few minutes ago, Helen had been in this very spot.

Benjamin, who received her unexpected question, also looked at her with a dumbfounded face as if he hadn't expected it at all.

Setting aside the fact that the surroundings had become chilly, he couldn't understand why this crazy neighbor was suddenly acting like this.

He had definitely warned her not to act like she knew him. She had faithfully followed that warning until now.

If she approached him like the first day's drunken behavior without knowing, he could just quietly leave and pretend not to notice. But now her red eyes were gazing straight at him. It was an upright gaze that couldn't be ignored.

It wasn't the smiling face that usually chattered sitting by his house window, but the calm face in the quiet silence clearly showed that she hadn't approached him for some trivial prank.

Benjamin grabbed her wrist and hurriedly escaped the bar. No one in Raul's bar spoke to them, but everyone was watching them.