TRHK Chapter 6

"Are you all right?"

Having rested briefly, my legs had recovered a little—so I walked over to Kahron on creaking, unsteady steps.

He was leaning against a tree, one hand pressed over his forehead.

"......Get lost."

His voice was sharper than it had been. The eyes visible between his fingers were squeezed shut, and his breathing had gone uneven.

'Is it a headache?'

He seemed unable to keep walking any further; he slid slowly down the trunk and crumpled to the ground. Whatever it was, it was clearly severe—the hand pressed over his forehead tightened and released in uneven spasms. The man who had been so utterly composed even while monsters and knights were screaming and exchanging blows had, in the space of moments, gone fragile.

'This is...'

It could simply be a headache. But I had read The Sword God's Adventure, and I couldn't help landing on a different thought. It was the reason I'd entered this forest in the first place.

I quickly searched the pouch at my waist. It had been through enough—running from a monster, falling, being jostled about—but mercifully most of the herbs were intact. I took one out and brushed the earth from it with my cloth.

"Your head hurts, doesn't it? If you chew this and swallow it, you should feel a little better."

Smack.

The hand I'd extended with the herb was immediately knocked away. He ground out his warning through clenched teeth:

"If you don't want to see something ugly, get lo—ngh."

I thought I had already seen quite a lot of ugly things today. Running through the incidents in order made my thoughts go faintly distant.

His face was going pale by degrees, his breathing shallow and rapid. And yet he had absolutely no intention of quietly accepting the herb I'd offered.

Partly a matter of trust—or the absence of it. But I had no time to build goodwill through careful increments when things were this urgent. Honestly, I wasn't sure I knew how to do that even under better circumstances.

I simply thought about what you do when someone is suffering and you have the means to help them. It wasn't that leaving him alone would kill Kahron—but he was clearly in pain, and I found I minded that.

I put the herb he'd refused into my own mouth and chewed it thoroughly. The characteristic bitterness spread across my tongue and filled my whole mouth. It would have been simpler to administer as a prepared medicine or pressed extract, but there was no time for that now.

"Move your hand for a moment."

I tried to carefully pull away the hand he was holding over his forehead.

"I told you to get—!"

He pulled his hand aside to snarl at me.

I didn't waste the opening. I pressed my lips to Kahron's.

He went very still, a crease forming between his brows. The lips beneath mine were, unexpectedly, warm and soft.

"......"

I needed him to open his mouth to pass the medicine across, but the firmly sealed line of Kahron's lips did not move. Swallowing it would make the effect work faster—what little contact we had now wasn't going to be sufficient. Growing anxious, I spoke against his lips:

"Open. Your mouth."

The lips against mine twitched.

I pressed my tongue gently against the seam. Slowly, a gap opened; the very tip of my tongue—carrying the herb's taste—slipped through and grazed his.

This herb had been familiar to me in my previous life as well. Here it was called cheveurn, I thought. I had read the name and illustration in a herbology book in the count's study. In my previous life, it had been called turat.

Taking it eased headaches somewhat. But it was only a temporary measure, and it couldn't cure what was apparently this man's recurring condition.

To address that, other herbs would be needed—none of which I'd managed to find today.

Once I pressed the chewed herb across with my tongue, Kahron—who had initially resisted as if by reflex—eventually accepted it, slowly. Having already been chewed, it would be easy to swallow.

'...It's all down.'

I had been entirely occupied with getting the medicine into him, and now finally allowed myself to relax and begin pulling back.

Then his arm locked around my waist and dragged me forward.

"Hnn—!"

Unlike the careful minimal contact of a moment ago, his body pressed flush against mine. At the same time, his tongue wound around mine—hot, unhurried, deliberate. I tried to pull away in startled reflex, but the arm around my waist was immovable.

"Stop—!"

His tongue moved against mine with thoroughgoing persistence, catching the tip of mine each time it tried to retreat. The pressed membranes felt like they were catching fire. Hot, and airless.

"Hff—ha!"

I struck his chest with both hands, shoved at his shoulders. He might as well have been the most solid rock in the entire forest—nothing moved.

Through my blurring vision, dark-red eyes observing me were all I could see. Eyes that appeared to hold nothing. But his tongue was something else entirely—pressing against mine, tilting it, working it without stopping.

Every time a wet sound escaped from between our lips, my thoughts went distant and scattered. I had pressed my lips to his for the sole purpose of administering medicine. Even I understood that this had become something different.

I bore it as long as I could, then bit his tongue when the air ran out. Lightly—a real bite would have been disastrous, so just barely enough to register.

Unexpectedly, it made the corners of his eyes curve.

He pressed me flat onto the ground and settled over me.

"Mnk—mmph!"

Having someone else's body between my legs was a sufficiently strange sensation on its own. Having that same person seal their lips over mine while one hand moved—slow, deliberate—along the outside of my thigh made it considerably worse.

Whether from being unable to breathe, or from the fear of the situation itself, tears ran down my face without my permission.

The moment they did, the force driving him stopped all at once.

"Ha... hah, hah."

I pulled in air greedily the instant he withdrew. My tongue was trembling; my lips were wet.

"......"

Eyes that still gave nothing away watched what I was doing. As they moved across my tear-ruined face, something crossed them—a brief flicker of something. It may have been my imagination.

"That's why."

Kahron finally spoke. Still kneeling between my legs, he straightened and looked down at me without inflection.

"Don't go provoking trouble when you don't have the nerve to handle it."

Hearing that, I could be certain. He had been punishing me. The numb, buzzing feeling on my tongue and lips was the result.

I had only been trying to help him. Inside, I felt the injustice of it clearly. But the words that made it through my throat were something else entirely.

"Is your head feeling better now?"

His color had improved noticeably. His expression had been cold throughout—that wasn't a useful measure—but I asked to confirm it, since only he would know for certain.

At my question, his brow twitched, and he frowned again. In a manner entirely unsuited to the circumstances, I registered: even that expression—the one that makes him look genuinely difficult—is beautiful. Before meeting him, I hadn't known that a man's face could be this kind of force.

Kahron rose without answering. When that formidable body fully withdrew from mine, a small breath of relief slipped out through my teeth.

"Get up."

"Pardon?"

"I'm taking you back to the castle. Stop dawdling."

He'd been intending to take me back after all.

I got up in surprise and began brushing myself off awkwardly. My skirt had both mud and orc blood worked into it. While I was tending to that, he had already moved ahead again.

"W-wait, just a moment..."

I tried to hurry, but my pace was still painfully slow. It was the fastest I could manage in my current state.

Kahron watched me trudging after him with visible displeasure, clicked his tongue, walked back, and scooped me up entirely.

"Oh!"

Firm arms slid under my knees and across my back, and I was arranged in the exact configuration of a princess being carried by a prince.

"I-I-I can walk on my own—"

"At your pace, we'd be here all day."

I had nothing to say to that and shut my mouth. From that point, I was carried out of the forest in silence.

The difficulty came after we left the forest.

"From here I can walk on my own..."

I offered this in a small voice, asserting that I could manage unassisted—but he had apparently judged it for the fiction it was, and ignored it entirely.

The gaze of every person we passed landed on us at once.

When my mother and I had been driven out to the forest in my previous life, the villagers had watched us then too—but not like this. Not with interest. Being looked at without contempt or revulsion was new to me.

"What are you?"

"...Pardon?"

"Medic? Healer?"

Was this because of the herb's effect after all? That had already been demonstrated clearly enough by the fact that he was walking normally.

"I know a little about herbs."

I wasn't actually a medic or anything resembling one. I had simply studied herbology for a long time, and the knowledge from my previous life had, by some fortune, been useful here.

"Knight... and the castle's maid, I see. I'll open the gate."

The sentries recognized the red-haired knight and inclined their heads respectfully as they opened the castle gate. That he was carrying a maid, they apparently attributed to some sufficient reason without needing to ask. Or perhaps they knew his temperament well enough not to risk asking.

"Ow!"

The moment we passed through the gate, Kahron dropped me onto the ground. Like shaking off an inconvenient piece of luggage.

I landed hard on my backside and cursed him silently—he could simply have set me down.

A hand appeared in front of me.

I looked up. Kahron was smiling. For some reason, what caught my eye first this time was his lips—that deep crimson. The same lips that had been pressed against mine...

I snapped back to myself and looked at the open palm in front of me. Was he offering to help me up? If that had been the plan, it would have been simpler to just set me down gently in the first place.

Thinking this, I was reaching my own hand toward his—and he pulled it sharply back.

"What you gave me earlier. Hand it over."

"......"

Ah. He wanted the herb. How had he known I had more?

I rummaged through my pouch and selected a few, then passed them over. I didn't strictly have to do as he said—but I remembered the pain that had been plain on his face when the headache had taken him, and that softened my judgment somewhat. The fact that this face had made my thoughts incoherent more than once was also, admittedly, a factor.

"You have to chew them thoroughly before swallowing. Or grind them down first, and—"

He had been looking down at the herbs, listening to my explanation, when he asked:

"What's your name?"

"Turat... no, cheveurn. I gathered it in the forest earlier."

At that, the easy smile folded back into a frown. He hadn't been asking about the herb.

"Never mind. Little rat."

Too disinterested to continue, he turned his back on me.

Whether it was the vivid force of that red hair, or the beauty of a face that looked like something gods had gotten carried away making—attention followed him with every step. I watched that retreating figure blankly for a moment, and then, belatedly, gathered myself.