Dogs Among Withered Roses - Chapter 27

What does she take people for….

Suppressing the urge to punch her, Erkin didn’t miss the chance and repeated his question.

“Miss, were you pretending to sleep?”

“No.”

“Are your salivary glands injured too?”

“What?”

“Are you short on saliva to wet your lips?”
[t/n: In Korean, “to lie without even wetting your lips with saliva” is an expression for telling a blatant lie shamelessly.]

“….”

At the words spoken so casually, Berenice’s face went blank for a moment.

“No answer. If you’re really lacking, should I share mine?”

“…Are you insane?”

As if saying he could at least moisten her lips with his saliva if she wanted, Erkin leaned back comfortably in his chair and crossed his arms. Berenice, glaring at him with annoyance at his smug attitude as if he’d gained the upper hand, reluctantly opened her mouth.

“Michele probably told the nurse to give me a nutrient injection instead of a sedative.”

Already exhausted from staying up all night, she ran a hand over her forehead, looking as if it would be hard to fall asleep without a sedative, irritation thick in the motion.

“I wasn’t pretending to sleep. I closed my eyes thinking I’d naturally fall asleep, but I couldn’t. Who would go out of their way to fake sleeping?”

“So timing it to fall asleep right when my shift starts to avoid me isn’t ‘on purpose,’ it’s ‘by chance’?”

“It’s not on purpose. It just happened to line up.”

Was it that she couldn’t take the opening he gave her, or that she thought if she denied it flatly she could get by? In truth, whatever excuse Berenice made, he could have let it slide. He already knew what the truth was.

But today, he didn’t want to let it go.

It was enough that she kept prying at him while watching his reactions, and now it had gone so far that she clearly didn’t want to read his mood, meet his eyes, or even exchange words, showing him only a face asleep as if all of it was unpleasant.

As if venting the complaints he had been stacking up for ten days, Erkin sneered, “Seems you really enjoyed our lips touching back then. It sounds like you’re indirectly asking for some saliva to moisten them.”

“Ah, you’re unbelievable. Fine, I avoided you. I avoided you!”

Berenice burst out, as if asking whether that satisfied him now.

“I just slept because it’s hard to look at your bruised face. Why? Is that enough?”

“…Were you planning not to look at my face until the bruises were completely gone?”

“It’s just, you’re uncomfortable with me watching your reactions, and I can’t sleep well at night anyway, so I figured….”

Erkin’s playfulness gone, Berenice glanced at him to check, then, embarrassed, tried to turn her gaze away. A long hand reached out and grabbed her slender chin.

“…What is this?”

When Erkin took her chin and turned it toward him, her eyes widened and fixed on him. With no way to avoid it, their gazes met, turning sharp in an instant.

“Have you lost your mind? Let go.”

“Please, don’t read my mood.”

Unlike the rude hand that had grabbed her chin without permission, his voice, sunk low, pressed heavily into her ears. Twisting her chin sharply free from his hand, Berenice asked with a look of having run into an annoying nuisance.

“Did Michele tell you to do this?”

“Why would Michele?”

“No?”

“No. I’m asking you myself.”

“….”

Not missing the moment her momentum faltered, Erkin pulled his chair a little closer to the bed.

“The one who should be careful is me. Not you, Miss.”

“…How does that look like someone being careful?”

What a joke. Berenice let out a hollow laugh. As Erkin watched that faint laugh for a moment and parted his lips again, Berenice spoke first, a little faster.

“Do you know what the first thing my father gave me was?”

At the sudden question, Erkin only knit his brows, and Berenice answered for him.

“A stiletto.”

“….”

“I learned the knife before letters. After the knife came the gun.”

She was only able to learn to read after she could endure the recoil of a handgun to some extent.

“I hated it… but I had no choice. If I slacked off even a little or made a mistake, a fist would fly immediately. Not at me. At my friends.”

So she threw herself into it like her life depended on it. She couldn’t stand watching Michele and Andre take the blows in her place.

“I told my father this. If he wanted to adopt me, I’d do anything he ordered, so he had to take my friends with me. The three of us are one, so if it isn’t the three of us, I won’t go.”

Seeing Erkin unable to hide his surprised expression, Berenice gave a bitter smile. It was exactly the reaction she had expected.

“I didn’t know they’d end up taking the beatings in my place as the price.”

“Running away….”

“Running away? Do you think orphans who crossed from Linferno to Bridgent would dare even dream of running? If we ran, who knows what kind of hell would be waiting there.”

It was impossible. At the very least, staying in the Valentiera mansion meant that even if their bodies were worn out, they could sleep somewhere warm and not worry about going hungry. No matter what it was like inside, they could live more comfortably than most.

Erkin ran a hand over his mouth as if covering it.

‘What makes you any different from Father if you act like this!’

Now he understood.

Andre, who didn’t get up as if waiting for the kicks that hadn’t finished, and Michele, who froze stiff even though all that happened was his collar being grabbed.

‘Don’t pretend you’re not the same! You’re exactly the same! Disgustingly the same! Like father, like son, right!’

And Berenice, who had screamed without reason.

Everything he hadn’t been able to piece together at the time now made sense. On top of that, the fact that Berenice, known as Antonio’s illegitimate child, had been adopted, and that she learned guns and knives before letters….

Having realized much and learned even more, Erkin was carefully watching her when Berenice, in a resigned tone, drove the point home. If the silence dragged on any longer, it felt like the unblunted shame would rise and stain her face.

“So seeing your bruised face is very uncomfortable for me. I hate it.”

“….”

“I’m so ashamed I want to hide as much as possible.”

It was embarrassing that she had screamed like she’d gone mad the moment the unhealed wound split open, and she hated herself for watching Erkin’s reactions. It wasn’t just Erkin’s face.

She felt sorry toward Michele and Andre as well, who had frozen stiff like they’d gone back to being young boys. Even if they didn’t show it much, facing them was just as uncomfortable as facing Erkin.

“So that’s not something I can grant just because you ask…. What are you doing?”

Erkin was rummaging through his suit pocket for something.

“Would this make you feel less uncomfortable?”

Erkin pulled out a black eyepatch and turned to Berenice, perfectly covering the bluish bruise over his left eye.

“Let’s make it fair.”

“You want me to cover my eye with a patch too?”

“….”

If she weren’t the one he had to protect, he would have punched her already. That was written clearly in Erkin’s remaining eye as he grabbed Berenice’s hand firmly. Just like Berenice had done ten days ago.

“Do you know how I felt the moment I let go of this hand and you fell down the stairs?”

The woman’s hand slipping away from his fingertips, her slender body bouncing down each step, the blood flowing from her head when it slammed violently into the landing….

Afraid that the limp body in his arms might grow cold at any moment, that she might never open her eyes again….

He swore, the hour he spent blankly waiting from the moment Berenice fell down the stairs until she opened her eyes again was the longest hour of his life.

“Just like I don’t know your past or how you feel, you don’t know mine either.”

“….”

“All I wished for was for you to open your eyes. That was the only thing I wanted. But every time I come into this room, you’re lying there sleeping like you’re dead. You have no idea how that makes my heart drop.”

Erkin let out a long breath after releasing the hand that felt like it would break out in cold sweat. His hand trembled faintly, just like when he held Berenice’s unconscious body in his arms.

“So sleep when other people sleep, and complain all you want, just act the way you usually do. It’s much better to see you lose your temper than tiptoe around.”

“…You don’t regret it? Taking on the job of being my bodyguard?”

“I don’t regret it. There’s never a dull moment, so I don’t even have time to get bored. It’s fine. It’s not boring.”

“….”

Berenice stared at Erkin as if she wanted to grab him by the hair. Then suddenly she looked oddly embarrassed, hesitated, and asked with a subtly expectant face, “Did you want me to wake up quickly?”

“Yes. I did.”

Enough to call on a god he didn’t even believe in.

“I truly did.”

Erkin, who had swallowed the rest of his words, added quietly.

He truly did. He had approached her to find evidence and use her, not because he wanted her to get hurt like this without gaining anything.

“If I don’t sleep, I’ll probably make you do all sorts of things. I’ll get permission from the doctor to take walks soon. You’ll have to push my wheelchair.”

“Order me to do everything.”

“I might ask you to tie my hair, and since my right hand is like this, I might ask you to feed me.”

“Ask for everything. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Cheeky.”

Erkin lightly caught her left hand as she swung it at him. Berenice shot him a slightly sulky look, then gestured at his eyepatch with her chin.

“You keep wearing that eyepatch until the bruises are completely gone.”

“Sure, whatever.”

“It’s funny because you look like a pirate.”

A small snicker spread softly, as if she’d wanted to laugh for a while. Watching that laugh, now much more relaxed and clearly teasing, Erkin’s gaze deepened.

That short, dry laugh earlier….

Only after seeing Berenice smile did he realize.

Erkin wanted to see the woman’s smiling face.