Chap 2

"Call me Rocard. Say my name out loud. So that everyone can hear. It's okay if you do it angrily. I like the emotions in your voice."

"Ha ha ha. Enough with the perverted talk."

I just barely resist telling him to shut up loud enough for everyone to hear. I hold it in. And hold it in again. He was like a walking gauge of my patience.

But then Duke Kaidel, who I thought would retaliate, was looking down at me, his face slightly flushed.

Even though we're at war, did I go too far? My heart sank as I met his quiet, purple eyes filled with silence.

"Did you just call me a pervert?"

His voice had grown heavy.

But I sensed it. Especially now, I couldn't back down. This wasn't just my fight.

I put strength in my belly, and spoke as calmly as I could.

"You do have good hearing, Duke Kaidel."

After a brief silence, an unbelievable sound came.

"Snort."

His face turned red as he held back laughter, looking off into the distance to compose himself.

Then, he suddenly took my hand and kissed the back of it. His lips, whispering a secretive murmur, tickled my hand as they brushed against it like a feather.

"The Second Prince does not call me Tagaru's cub lion for nothing, Lorisha Roar. I will definitely bring you down."

I fanned myself, fluttering like a butterfly's wing, and smiled with my eyes.

"If you can, then try."

[Star icon]

Deep Mountain Spring

My mother was a herbalist. We lived in a small cabin in the Tunbar Mountains near the border.

When my mother went to the mountains for a few days to gather herbs, I stayed alone, waiting for her.

People said that the Tunbar Mountains disliked people and would often consume them, never to return them. That's why there were so many accidents and mishaps.

I was worried about my frailbodied mother climbing the mountains and feared she might encounter a bear or a wolf.

But Mom always promised me.

"Lorisha, Mom will definitely come back to you. If the mountain path is broken, I may be a few days late, but I'll definitely return to you, Lorisha. Will you trust me?"

Then I would nod vigorously and reply.

"Yes, Mom!"

When Mom came back and prepared the herbs, I would take them to the herbalist in the market and bring back the money.

Running errands and seeing the market was always interesting. The unfamiliar people, goods, haggling, and the occasional fights.

But the journey back home through the village was never easy.

The children in the village below would gang up on me, yelling that a monster from the mountain has come down, or poking me with sticks, calling me fatherless.

Perhaps that's why I never felt curious or longing about my father. 'Father' was a word only mentioned in the most dreadful situations.

One day, when I went home with blood on my forehead from a stone thrown by the village head's son, my mother looked at me crying, her face seeming about to explode.

I thought my mother was terribly angry with me, and I cried even harder out of fear and sorrow. But later, when I looked out and saw my mother was not at home, she was crying outside.

She did not cry loudly like me, but muffled her voice as if she were scared.

I then realized how wrong I had been.

My mother was my only family, my talisman, and my blanket. And she was my mother. But I had made her cry like that.

I then made a resolution. I would never do anything bad to my mother again.

The next time I went to the herb shop, the village head's plump youngest son again surrounded me with the village children.

He poked me with a stick and shouted,

"The monster from Tunbar Mountain has come down! The monster born without a father."

I clenched my mouth as I watched the children giggle. I could not take a beating and go in today.

"Hey, damn it! Aren't you going to put that away?"

At my shout, the children looked at each other with wide eyes. I must have been seven or eight at the time. Children that age were still afraid of harsh swearing.

My first curse was so shocking that it stuck to my ears.

The village head's son was startled and hesitated, and I seized the opportunity and poured out curses.

All the various curses, scorn, contempt, and insults I had heard in the market poured out like a waterfall.

Cursing is curious, and the first time you do it, it feels like you are breaking the scariest taboo in the world, like even your soul is corrupted.

But once you break the ice and ride the flow, it comes bubbling up from deep within the soul, effortlessly.

That day the village children ran away crying.

Afterward, whenever I went to the market, I remembered well the haggling and verbal jousting of the adults, and especially if a fight broke out, I would run and study.

Fighting is about momentum. As long as I cursed first, I did not hear that I was a child without a father. I may have been more severely pointed at behind my back, but at least there was no one in front of me making the sound my mother hated the most.

So cursing was magic that protected me and my mother. In fact, I was a little proud that I was good at cursing.

But that peace was suddenly shattered one day.

One afternoon, instead of my mother who had gone to pick herbs, the village head came to my house.

"Come down to the village with me."

I burst into tears then. Something must have happened to my mother.