* * *
The woman ended up vomiting everything she had eaten.
“COUGH! BLARGHHH!”
Perhaps she ate too hastily, or perhaps she spent a while struggling to keep him from going to fetch water.
Or, it might have been both.
From his perspective, her body seemed almost reduced to her own bones.
It was clear, without needing to see, how she had survived wandering through wastelands and forests all this time.
As if intentionally revealing herself to be a stranger from another world, she had absolutely no clue which fruits were edible and which were not.
Then, after suddenly gorging on large amounts of meat, it was clear that she had failed to properly digest it, especially since she hadn’t drunk a single sip of water.
Calix, while holding her hair back with one hand and patting her back with the other, clicked his tongue out of frustration and slight empathy.
“Foolish.”
He had to take care of her eating, and on top of that, she wasn’t well enough to eat properly.
She was quite a handful.
Calix took her in from head to toe as she crouched.
Her pale skin bore marks of lashes and wounds from falling while chasing after him.
Her clothes were nearly torn, not serving their purpose well.
Looking down from her face, her private parts were embarrassingly exposed, which he tried not to look at.
After a bout of vomiting, she collapsed with a gasp, exhausted, her gaze empty and distant.
It was clear she was barely clinging to her life.
‘Is she really going to die like this?’
Calix genuinely thought so.
What if she suddenly dropped dead?
But of course, that was not what he was worried about.
“Please, just stay still.”
Calix stood up to wet a towel for her, which captured her focus instantly.
She shuffled uneasily, as if she was about to stand up and follow him.
“Stay, I won’t leave you.”
Not right now, at least.
He couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud, fearing that he might give away his inner thoughts, even though she likely wouldn’t understand.
While he rummaged through his pack, she quickly stood by his side, hovering around Calix.
“Could you please just….”
Seeing her like this sparked a fire in him.
‘Why is she clinging to ME out of all people?’
He mused.
Despite not understanding his words, why does she insist on him taking responsibility for her with such persistence?
He was convinced that she could not manage to survive on her own, not even for a day.
Yet, Calix also had no future ahead of him.
With no reason to live, his future was empty.
He had decided to live as though he were dead.
Yet here she was, a complete stranger who was trying to ruin Calix’s plan to live a dead, meaningless, and empty life….
“I told you… SIT STILL!”
He snapped, and she flinched.
“Sigh.”
Yelling didn’t help when she couldn’t understand.
Calix regretted his outburst.
“I’ll help you clean your face and hands, so just… Sigh…”
At that moment, instead of cowering, she snatched the bag from his hands.
“…What are you doing?”
The bag was pretty heavy, filled with emergency rations and items that he collected during his trip.
“Give it back.”
“Ugh.”
When Calix reached for it, she clung to it as if it were her treasure, fighting hard to keep it when he tried to take it by force.
Why was she insisting on holding it?
Stealing from the bag would have been pointless for the woman anyway.
She couldn’t enter cities to sell anything.
And even if she somehow managed to smuggle into the city, how would she negotiate the sale without being able to speak?
Yet, the woman seemed to have no intention of returning the bag.
It must have been quite heavy.
Though it was meant to be worn across, she insisted on wearing it in front, hugging it close to her bone-thin body, ironically to prevent it from being taken away by him.
He found her utterly incomprehensible.
She was already a source of turmoil, and on top of that, she wouldn’t even ‘try’ to listen to him.
“Do as you please, then,”
Calix snapped irritably before turning to walk towards the waterside.
Then the woman, clutching a piece of his clothing in one hand, followed him.
When Calix looked back, she clutched the bag even tighter, as if it were a hostage to make sure Calix couldn’t leave her.
“It’s too heavy for you. Give it to me.”
But she met his demand with a defiant look, refusing to relinquish her hold on the bag.
It seemed she believed that without the bag, Calix couldn’t abandon her.
“Sigh… You’re really driving me insane, woman….”
Calix felt as if he was about to have a headache any moment.