4. Magic of Dawn
Episode 22
“Rose, I don’t know if you’re awake, but… I’ll leave your meal in front of the door. Make sure you eat it later.”
Soft footsteps seemed to creep closer, and after a brief silence, Anna’s voice followed. It was clear she had hesitated over whether to knock. Soon, Anna left behind only the faintest trace of her presence and scurried away.
Rose opened her bleary eyes. She brushed back the hair obscuring her vision and listened toward the door. Outside had already gone quiet as death.
How many days had it been now?
“…The third day, perhaps.”
With no clear distinction between day and night, it was difficult to tell exactly, but since the kitchen had sent in meals six or seven times, about three days must have passed. Her head was foggy from sleep so shallow it was no different from merely closing and opening her eyes.
…I thought one night would be enough.
She had assumed that if they safely made it through that one night, she would unlock the door and go out. It was an optimism she could only have had because she truly knew nothing. Even by morning, his condition had not improved much. Rather, the hypothermia she had thought was the danger point had been nothing more than the prelude to all manner of withdrawal symptoms that would come crashing down on him.
She might have deceived Mrs. Serva for one night, but fooling her for days was impossible. As soon as day broke, when Mrs. Serva came again, Rose confessed the truth of the previous night through the door. Then she volunteered to remain confined in the room with him until his symptoms showed signs of improvement. It was a decision made to minimize external stimulation.
Under Mrs. Serva’s instructions, the servants brought the water, towels, food, and ointment for external wounds Rose requested to the door. Rose frequently wiped Ezekail’s body and applied medicine to his injuries for emergency treatment, while also tidying the disordered room whenever she had a chance.
She tried to feed him, but every attempt failed. It was impossible in itself to feed someone who was not simply lying still and ill, but veering between pruritus and the agony of violent thrashing. Even so, just in case, she accepted the food each time it was brought. Since food would not go down her throat beside a suffering person either, Rose ended up practically starving along with him.
Truly, he was tormented by withdrawal symptoms without a moment’s rest. When pain as if his whole body were being crushed came over him, even Rose could not recklessly touch him then. At those times, Ezekail was like a beast with no reason left, only instinct. To Rose, it seemed as though his body itself was creating pain that did not exist.
Perhaps intending to overcome pain with another pain, Ezekail would pound the floor with his fists or hurl his body against the wall. Rose chased after him with a blanket, guarding him so he would not be injured, or desperately clung to him with her arms around his body. If only she had been a man as large and strong as him, she could somehow have held him down on the bed and endured it, but since she was not, no matter how careful she tried to be, accidents still happened now and then.
“Agh…”
She had been slammed into the wall three times. No matter how hard she tried, there was no way for her to overcome Ezekail’s strength. She also realized that when something hurt too much, no scream came out.
“Move, Rose!”
Even so, she did not let him go.
“Are you trying to get hurt too?”
Even when he shouted at her, she held firm without budging.
“…I am in the same boat as you, Major. If you keep hurting yourself like this, I will be hurt too, and if you endure it well, I won’t be hurt either.”
She meant every word. And she also thought it was fortunate. As expected, sharing even a little of his pain was easier on the heart, even if it was hard on the body.
Moreover, there was another suffering that drove the mind to its limits.
“You will not be able to sleep.”
When she had heard Dr. Briman’s warning, she had not known it meant this. This was on an entirely different level from ordinary insomnia, where one lay neatly in bed and tossed and turned. It was sleeplessness in which consciousness remained awakened by pain, forcing him to suffer endlessly while bearing every kind of ache. Though he was exhausted to the point of becoming a pulp, he had not slept for a full two or three days.
Rose had stayed up the entire first night with her eyes open too. Now that she had run up against the limits of her stamina, she would lose consciousness for a moment whenever Ezekail’s symptoms seemed to weaken a little. Even then, it was only a shallow doze of twenty or thirty minutes at most.
Her head felt heavy and her eyelids were dry and stiff. If she looked in a mirror, red blood vessels would probably be burst around her irises. At times, her eyes stung so badly that tears fell on their own. The bruises she had taken all over while trying to stop him hurt as well. Still, after Rose declared that they were in the same boat, his ferocious momentum subsided a little.
In truth, Rose had not even been able to look over what injuries had appeared on her own body. She was too busy watching over him to spare any time for herself.
Instead, she whispered again and again. To him, and to herself.
“It’s all right. Truly, it will be all right soon. All of this will one day become a memory that has passed.”
Like a spell, with a wish placed within it.
This place was a new battlefield. The way they could not sleep day or night, could not eat, and someone was suffering in pain every moment was exactly like war.
But no war lasts forever. No matter how painful and difficult it may be, an end always comes.
Rose steeled herself again today.
We will end this war and walk out of this room safely.
❖ ❖ ❖
If one asked whether the hallucinations brought on by opium were pleasant dreams, the answer was simple. They were not. Rather, by ordinary standards, they were closer to nightmares.
Even so, if one asked why he had become absorbed in opium’s hallucinations, the answer was also simple. Because even if they were nightmares to ordinary people, they were not nightmares to him.
Opium’s hallucinations were based on impressive experiences. The impressive experiences in Ezekail’s life could be condensed into two great masses.
The war that raised him from a boy into a young man, and the assassination attempted by the brother who shared his blood and womb, who sent a woman who was both his mistress and his lackey.
Time within hallucinations did not flow evenly. Unlike ordinary dreams, which felt very brief once one opened one’s eyes no matter how long one had slept, the hallucinations brought by wine laced with opium were endlessly long, as if their end would never arrive. They were even exceedingly vivid.
Had it not been for the regular life imprinted into his body and a soldier’s senses, which habitually analyzed and discerned his surroundings, Ezekail’s days and nights would have blurred into utter disorder long ago. This was, in fact, the reason many opium addicts could not distinguish hallucination from reality and spent their years in dissipation.
But even if unending battles continued within those long hallucinations, or he found himself in the same place as the woman who had come to harm him, Ezekail was not tormented. He had countless experiences of carrying out combat operations, going close to the line of death, and returning. Compared to the reality of having faced actual death and survived in the end, the fear of a mere nightmare was laughable. Ezekail roamed the battlefield within his hallucinations with unsurpassed delight.
Moreover, unlike Akenaus, whose face he knew well and who was also widely known to the world, the unknown woman whose name and age he did not even know had only been seen for a scant few seconds after he woke from sleep. In truth, he had reason to be grateful for opium’s power, which clearly recalled each time the face of the woman he had to keep turning over in his mind and never forget until he avenged himself.
Thus, for him, the temptation of being able to enjoy the sight that had been stolen from him was greater than the contents of the nightmares themselves. Though opening his eyes afterward would make him despair even more at his wretched state, opium was a self-contradictory thing that gifted him a moment’s rest to ease that wretchedness. Like seawater that made one thirstier the more one drank.
“Major, don’t scratch. You’ll bleed again.”
It was starting again. Bugs were wriggling and crawling over his skin. Ezekail dug in his nails and scratched down his arms and legs. But Rose had already filed the tips of his nails blunt, so his fingers only slid over his skin without much effect.
He immediately began tearing at his flesh with sheer force. Then Rose’s slender fingers quickly wrapped around his rough hand.
“Look, there are bugs.”
Ezekail shook off Rose’s hand as she tried to stop him. But Rose did not let go until the end either.
“You’re mistaken, Major.”
“There are bugs crawling on my body, Rose!”
In the end, it turned into a struggle. It was the sequence that repeated every time. Rose soothed him.
“It’s pruritus. Your symptoms are just a little severe, Major. Believe me. There’s no way there would be bugs on a person’s body.”
“Why wouldn’t there be bugs on a person’s body? When you go into a barracks where wounded soldiers are lying, every wound is crawling with maggots.”
Ezekail retorted.
It was a scene that remained as a nauseating afterimage even for him, who prided himself on having seen nearly every gruesome sight when it came to matters of life and death. Though the soldiers were still breathing, the insects fed on their blood and flesh, burrowing into them. Especially in the height of summer, when the sun was blazing hot, the terrible stench was added to it, and even military surgeons were reluctant to enter the patients’ barracks.
He imagined maggots crawling over his own body. Then he became unbearably itchy.