TRHK Chapter 6

"Are you all right?"

I'd rested just long enough that some strength had come back to my legs, and I hobbled over to Kahron and asked.

He stood leaning against a tree, one hand covering his forehead.

"……Get out."

His voice was sharper than before. The eye visible between his fingers was squeezed shut, his breathing unsteady.

Is his head hurting?

He seemed unable to keep standing, and soon he slid down without resistance, and stayed there. His hand, pressed to his forehead, tightened in bursts, like he was in real pain. The man who'd stayed so composed even while monsters and knights screamed and traded blows all around him had turned fragile in an instant.

This is……

It could simply be a headache. But having read The Sword God's Adventure, I couldn't help but think of something else. The reason I'd come into this forest in the first place.

I hurried to search the pouch at my waist. It had probably taken some damage while I was chased and falling, but most of the herbs, luckily, had survived intact. I pulled one out and brushed the dirt off with a cloth.

"Your head hurts, doesn't it? Chew this and swallow it, it'll help some."

THAK!

The hand I'd held out to give him the herb was slapped away at once. He gritted his teeth and warned me,

"If you don't want things getting ugly, get lost—agh."

I'd already seen plenty ugly, I thought. Running back through everything that had happened today made my head spin.

His face was growing paler, his breath coming out ragged. Even so, he didn't seem to have the slightest intention of quietly taking the herb I'd offered.

Probably part of it was that he didn't trust me. But there wasn't time, in a moment this urgent, to build trust the slow way. I wasn't even sure how I'd go about doing that.

I simply recalled the actions one was supposed to take, in an urgent situation, to save a person's life. It wasn't as though leaving him alone would kill him, of course, but he'd suffer greatly.

I put the herb he'd refused into my own mouth and chewed hard. The bitterness spread through my whole mouth. It would have been so much easier to feed him if I'd had time to make it into a tincture or squeeze out the juice, but there was no time for that now.

"Move your hand for a second."

I tried carefully to pull away the hand covering his forehead.

"I said get out—"

He pulled his hand away for a moment to snap at me. I didn't let the opening slip and pressed my lips against his. He froze, brow furrowed. His mouth was warm against mine—I hadn't expected that.

"……."

I needed his mouth open to pass the herb through, but Kahron's lips, shut tight, wouldn't budge. It had to be swallowed for the effect to work quickly. What little had gotten onto his lips wasn't nearly enough. Growing impatient, I pressed my lips to his and urged him on.

"Open. Your mouth."

His lips against mine seemed to flinch. I pressed my tongue against the seam. Slowly, the gap widened, and the tip of my tongue, tasting of the herb, shoved its way in and brushed against his.

This herb was one I'd seen often in my past life too. Here they called it Cheveurn, I recalled—I'd seen the name and picture of it while reading through a herbalism book in the Count's library. In my past life it had been called Turat.

Eating this herb eased headaches somewhat. But it was only a stopgap, not something that could cure this man's chronic condition.

To cure that, I'd need to find other herbs, but I hadn't found any today.

As I passed the crushed-up herb over with my tongue, he seemed resistant at first, not moving, but eventually took it slowly and swallowed. Since I'd already chewed it for him, it would be easy enough to swallow.

……It's all down.

Busy the entire time with feeding him the herb, I finally relaxed and tried to pull my body back. But my waist was suddenly seized and yanked forward instead.

"Hh—!"

Unlike before, when the contact had been kept to the bare minimum needed to pass the herb along, his body pressed flush against mine now. At the same time, his tongue wound around mine, hot. Startled, I tried to pull away, but the arm around my waist wouldn't budge an inch.

"Nn, stop—!"

His tongue pressed relentlessly against mine, catching my fleeing tongue tip and pinning it in place. Where our mouths met felt like it had caught fire. Hot, breathless.

"Hff, huh!"

I pushed and struck at his chest, his shoulders, with both hands. But he didn't move an inch, immovable as the hardest boulder I'd seen anywhere in that forest.

Through my blurring vision, his dark red eyes bored into me, fixed on my face. Eyes that seemed to hold no emotion at all. But his tongue pressed and twisted against mine with something close to aggression.

Every time a wet sound leaked out between our lips, my mind grew hazier. I'd only pressed my mouth to his to give him the herb. Even I knew, at least, that this had gone somewhere strange.

Holding my breath as long as I could, unable to breathe, I bit down lightly on his tongue. I only meant it as a light bite, careful not to do real harm, but his eyes curved unexpectedly, and he shoved me flat on the ground and mounted me instead.

"Nn, mmh!"

Someone's body between my parted legs felt deeply strange. Even stranger, when that someone was sealing my mouth with his own while one hand crept slowly down along my thigh.

Whether from not being able to breathe, or from the situation itself, tears came without my meaning them to, spilling freely. The moment they did, he—who had been moving in a kind of a rush—stopped, all at once.

"Hh—ah, ah, ah."

The instant he pulled back, I gulped down air like I was starving for it. My tongue trembled, my lips still wet.

"……."

Eyes still unreadable, still impossible to tell what he was thinking, watched quietly as I gasped for breath. As his gaze traced over my ruined, tear-streaked face, something seemed to flicker there for a moment. Though it might have just been my imagination.

"Well. Why'd you do it."

Kahron finally spoke. Still kneeling between my legs, he sat up and looked down at me, indifferent.

"Popping off at me without even being scared."

Hearing that, I understood at once. So it had been punishment after all. My raw tongue, my aching lips—the result of it.

I'd only meant to help him. In my head I felt wrongly used, but what actually came out of my throat was something else entirely.

"Does your head—still hurt?"

His expression, as cold as ever, seemed a shade improved in color, at least. Of course, I couldn't be sure of that myself, so I asked to check.

At my question, his eyebrow twitched, and he scowled again. Mismatched to the moment as it was, I thought even that sour-tempered expression of his was beautiful. Until I met him, I never realized a man's looks could be this extraordinary.

Kahron got up without answering. Once that threatening body had fully pulled back from me, a breath of relief slipped out between my teeth.

"Get up."

"What?"

"I have to take you back to the castle, so don't dawdle."

He meant to bring me back after all, then.

Surprised, I hauled myself up off the ground, unsteady. My skirt was covered in dirt and orc blood. While I was tidying myself as best I could, he'd already gotten that far ahead of me again.

"Wa—wait a moment……"

I'd said I was hurrying, but unfortunately my pace was still slow. This was, at the moment, the fastest I could manage.

Kahron shot a brief, displeased look at me, dragging myself along at a hopeless pace, then clicked his tongue and came back to scoop me up in his arms.

"Ah!"

Both arms hooked under my knees and around my back, and I ended up in the exact pose of a princess carried by a prince.

"I—I, I can walk on my own—"

"You'll take all day if I wait for you."

I had nothing left to say, and my mouth shut tight. From then on, I stayed obediently in his arms until we were out of the forest.

The problem started once we'd left the forest.

"I can walk from here on my own……"

I made my case in a fading voice, insisting I could walk by myself, but he seemed to know it was nonsense and simply ignored me entirely.

Every passer-by's gaze turned toward us at once.

Even back in my past life, when I'd been driven out into the forest with my mother, the villagers had stared at us—but not with the interest they were showing now. This was the first time I'd ever been an object of curiosity without contempt or disgust mixed in.

"What are you."

"……What?"

"A physician? A healer?"

Him asking this must have meant the herb from earlier had actually worked. Though that had already been proven, really, by the simple fact that he was walking around perfectly fine.

"I know a little about herbs."

In truth I was neither a physician nor anything of the sort. I'd simply studied herbalism for a long time, and the knowledge and experience from my past life happened to be a lucky fit for this world.

"A knight… and a maid from the castle, then. I'll open the gate."

The gatekeepers recognized the red-haired knight and, showing proper courtesy, opened the gate for us. Even seeing a knight carrying a maid in his arms, they asked no questions, assuming there must be some reason. Or perhaps they simply knew his temperament and knew better than to ask.

"Ah!"

The moment we were through the gate, Kahron dropped me to the ground. Like discarding some troublesome parcel.

Having just landed on my backside, I privately cursed him for not being able to set a person down gently.

Abruptly—

A hand extended in front of me. I looked up to find Kahron smiling. For some reason, this time it was his crimson lips that caught my eye first. The lips that had just been pressed against mine—

I snapped back to my senses and looked at the palm held out to me. He meant to help me up? If he'd meant to do that, wouldn't it have made more sense to set me down carefully in the first place?

Even thinking that, I moved to obediently place my hand in his—and he yanked his hand back at once.

"What you fed earlier. Give it."

"……."

Ah. He'd wanted the herbs. How had he even known I still had more?

I fished a few more herbs out of my pouch and handed them over. I wasn't obligated to do exactly as Kahron said, but the memory of him earlier, suffering with the headache, tugged at something in me. That face, which had already scrambled my thinking more than once, was part of the problem too.

"You have to chew it well and swallow it. Or crush it up and eat it that way—"

Listening to my explanation, he stared down at the herb for a moment, then asked,

"What's it called?"

"Turat—no, Cheveurn. I dug it up in that forest, earlier."

At that, the man who'd been smiling prettily scowled again. Hadn't he asked for the herb's name?

"Forget it. Rat bastard."

He turned his back, looking too weary even to say more.

Whether because of his striking red hair or his face, beautiful as some divine handiwork, every gaze followed him wherever he walked. I watched his retreating back too, dazed, before belatedly coming back to myself.

I didn't get back to my room in the Count's castle until well after the sun had gone down. Eifel was startled at the state of me and asked what had happened, but I didn't have the strength left even to answer properly.