"Did I fall asleep again ?"
Kikmura's injuries were so serious. He lost consciousness earlier without a warning.
The food was all gone. That was Kikimura's clear thought when he woke up. The bowl beside him was empty. Only some dried herbs and a faint smell of broth remained. He also remembered hands that weren't his own feeding him.
He slowly sat up. Tested his body. His ribs still. His arm throbbed where the beast had hurt him.. The pain felt different now. It was sharper. Not the kind of pain that came with a fever.
The girl had left while he slept. The old man, too. But this time, Kikimura knew they were real. He remembered the chaos of waking up. The old man's laughter. The granddaughter's accusations. The beast's rumbling laugh when he'd jumped out of bed like a fool.
It had all been real.
He swung his legs off the bed. He was wearing clothes this time.
Tested his weight. The wooden floor was cold beneath his feet. He was glad it felt real.
The first thing he did was explore. He hadn't had the chance to do that the last time. Everything moved fast like a dream.
The room was simple. There was a bed, a chair and a small table. No decorations. Just functional furniture.
He moved slowly, holding onto the walls for support. The hallway was longer than he expected. There were three doors, but he hadn't opened them yet.
The house was bigger than it seemed. The kitchen was well-organised with copper pots hanging from the ceiling. Someone had been preparing food there. He could smell garlic and something he didn't recognise.
The living room was sparse with a fireplace and two chairs. There was a table and shelves with dishes and books. Everything was clean. Had its place.
The library was different. He found it by accident. It was full of books. Hundreds of them. They were organised with care. They seemed to come alive.
Kikimura forgot his pain as he looked at the books. He read the titles. There were books on nature, history and medicine... One book caught his eye: "A Comprehensive Study of Dark Magic: Theory and Application".
It wasn't hidden away or marked as dangerous. It was just shelved with books as if dark magic knowledge was just... normal.
"What kind of man owns a library like this?"
Kikimura stumbled back into the living room, looking for a window. His mind was reeling from the books.
The window faced south or west. He wasn't sure. Direction didn't matter much when you had nowhere to go.
What mattered was what he saw outside. The land rolled out in hills of green grass. There were no farms or villages. Just endless grassland stretching to the horizon.
A wind moved across the grass. Kikimura felt something twist in his chest. He'd forgotten what open space looked like.
But that beauty meant nothing now. The old man had made it clear: "You can leave after you recover."
Just like that. Recover, and then go.
"Sigh... Better than staying in the village, maybe". Kikimura sighed in pain.
The girl stood in the doorway, looking solid and real. She carried clothes and food. She asked, genuinely curious.
"How are you feeling?"
Kikimura looked at her. This girl was the old man's granddaughter. The one he tried to save in the forest. Being this close, she looked beautiful.
She was watching him with those dark eyes, waiting for an answer.
"Where am I really? " He asked, though he already knew.
"This is my grandfather's house, The girl responded as she set the clean clothes on a chair. She also brought him food - Bread, cheese and fish.
He ate without waiting for permission. He was starving.
She watched him eat and observed quietly.
"Rest today ", she said. "Tomorrow, my grandfather will want to see you. He'll ask questions. You should have answers ready."
She warned him not to lie to her grandfather... Not to be alarmed by the beast.
Then she left Kikimura alone.
"She's still uncomfortable around me". Kikimura thought to himself.
"I can't blame her. I tried to help her in the forest, and the beast nearly killed me for it. Now I'm eating her grandfather's food, occupying her house".
"Soon I'll have to leave."
Kikimura didn't notice the beast arrive. One moment, the corner was empty. The next time it wasn't.
The creature was huge. Had brown-black fur. Its eyes gleamed with intelligence. Kikimura's hand went to the knife that wasn't there.
The beast's eyes tracked his motion.
"I won't hurt you ", it said, its voice rough but clear.
Kikimura didn't say anything. He couldn't. His throat was tight.
"The girl was right ", the beast said. It put its head on its paws and looked at Kikimura like a cat looks at a mouse it's not going to eat. "I'm not going to hurt you. If I wanted you dead, you would be dead."
This made sense. The creature was using reason. Kikimura didn't like it.
"How can you talk?" he whispered.
The beast didn't answer. It just lay there breathing, watching, filling the room with its presence. It was like a weight. Like a presence of something far older and stronger than anything Kikimura could comprehend.
There was one thing that annoyed him. One weird thing.
"It wears glasses… What kind of beasts have poor eyesight?" Kikimura couldn't help but laugh without making a sound.
"Humgh"... The beast felt something and made a sound with his eyes closed.
Kikimura moved to the corner of the room, put his back to the wall and waited. The beast didn't speak again. It just existed, like a piece of furniture.
They stayed like that until the afternoon.
Kikimura watched the creature watch him.
When the girl came with food for the evening, he realised something. The beast's presence wasn't the worst part. The house, the library, the girl and the old man waiting in the background. All of these things looked like a trap, and Kikimura was stuck in the middle.
But the trap wasn't designed to keep him here.
The trap was designed to fix him just enough to push him back out into the world.
The beast was honest about its threat. The old man and his granddaughter were worse because they seemed kind. Because they fed him and tended his wounds and spoke to him as if he mattered. And then the old man said, "You can leave after you recover."
As night fell, Kikimura lay in his room staring at the ceiling. His mind was racing. He couldn't rest, even though he was very tired.
"Who was the man? Not just a farmer for sure". Kikimura started thinking.
The library proved that. He wasn't rich. The house was well-kept, and there was good food. Maybe he was a scholar or a teacher, with enough power to control that beast. A man with knowledge of dark magic sits on his shelves like it was nothing.
"Why did he save me?"
That was the question that wouldn't leave him alone. The old man had said something about "potential." But potential for what? Kikimura was weak. Broken. Marked by his own village as something cursed.
"And the beast. It could think and speak …"
Everything Kikimura learned about creatures in the wilderness was wrong. There were creatures out there with intelligence and agency, and no one warned the villages? Or maybe they did, but the villages were forgotten over time.
Maybe this was just how the world was full of things that could speak, that could think, that could kill you with a gesture.
The scariest thing was that the old man controlled the beast. He had enough control that the beast obeyed him.
"What kind of power did that take?"
More than magic, Kikimura suspected. More than books in a library.