Dogs Among Withered Roses - Chapter 29

Plucking off a few leaves, trimming them neatly, cutting the ends of the stems at an angle, and changing the water in the vase, his hands moved as smoothly as flowing water. It wasn’t the skill of someone who had only done it once or twice.

After placing the vase where it would be easily visible from where Berenice lay, Erkin pulled a chair over and sat close beside the bed. He picked up the coffee cup on the small table and brought it naturally to her lips, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

It wasn’t as if she had been waiting for him to attend to her meals just because she’d been watching him move around busily out of curiosity. But it seemed Erkin thought she had been waiting for him to serve her. Berenice glanced back and forth between the coffee cup hovering near her lips and Erkin.

“Aren’t you going to drink? It’s not that hot.”

“It’s not about it being hot. I’m from Linferno. My nationality might be Bridgent, but only Linferno blood runs in my body.”

“Who wouldn’t know that?”

“If you know that, you shouldn’t be doing this. How am I supposed to enjoy coffee this watered down? Are you trying to torture me?”

“You were told to refrain from strong coffee for the time being. Did only I hear that?”

Remembering the doctor’s nagging she’d heard to the point of exhaustion every time they met, Berenice frowned in irritation.

“You drank it just fine until yesterday, so why the sudden change?”

“I’ve been holding it in for days before saying anything.”

“So, you’re not going to drink it?”

“I will.”

“….”

Since he followed the doctor’s instructions to the letter, if she didn’t drink this, there would definitely be no next chance. Even though she could coax Michele and Andre into letting her have it, a few days ago Erkin had found out she’d asked them to bring her cigarettes and reported it directly to the doctor.

Annoying bastard….

Snatching the mug from his hand, Berenice swallowed the still‑warm coffee smoothly. Erkin stabbed a fork into the apple pie thickly topped with apple slices and brought it close to her mouth.

Berenice recoiled slightly and shook her head in disgust.

“I have a mouth too.”

“You mean your hand.”

Because she’d injured her dominant right arm, even things she could do with one hand had become noticeably slower. Still, she needed to keep using her left hand so she could get used to the inconvenience, but neither Michele nor Erkin could stand watching her struggle like that.

“I get that your temper’s just as quick as mine, but this is excessive.”

His stubbornness was just as bad. A few days ago, half joking, half serious, she’d told him to do this and that… she hadn’t expected him to actually do everything. Later, she’d told him it was fine and tried to stop him, but Erkin didn’t listen at all.

Doesn’t he realize that when he acts like that, it only makes me want to test him? With her limbs like this, as if she’d hold back for now, Berenice accepted the apple pie he fed her and slowly chewed and swallowed.

With an ambiguous look, Erkin let out a low sound, like clearing his throat, and spoke, “When you finish this—”

“When I finish, what?”

“Shall we go for a walk?”

“A walk?”

“You can go outside in a wheelchair. I asked the doctor on the way here.”

Knowing Erkin wouldn’t say something like this lightly, Berenice’s face brightened.

A walk. To breathe the outside air.

For the first five days after being hospitalized, she’d stayed in bed the entire time except for going to the bathroom and washing once a day. If it had been only her leg that was injured, that would’ve been one thing. But since it wasn’t her right foot and right arm but her left foot and right arm that were injured, she couldn’t even use crutches until her injured arm recovered enough.

To quote Erkin’s nagging, she didn’t sleep well at night, tried to rely on sedatives at all hours, and even skipped meals at times, so it was only natural that compared to other patients, not only her recovery but even the point when she could move around kept getting delayed.

Berenice didn’t have nothing to say in response.

Sleep, by nature, should come when one is comfortable, but with her limbs like this, closing her eyes and lying down didn’t automatically mean she would fall asleep. It wasn’t like she wanted to rely on medication.

So until now, she had no choice but to move around only within the spacious single room and the rarely used hallway. She could transfer from the bed to a wheelchair, but pushing it alone was difficult, and all she’d been told was that rehabilitation therapy would only be possible next week.

“You look too cooped up. I thought getting some fresh air might help….”

Erkin leaned forward slightly as he trailed off. His gaze, as if carefully observing every bit of Berenice’s reaction, was extremely cautious. Even though there was no reason for her to refuse a walk after three weeks of being hospitalized.

Meeting his quietly flowing gaze like a gentle current, Berenice wriggled her toes beneath the blanket, then Erkin asked again, “You’ll go, right?”

“Of course. What kind of question is that?”

Worried that Erkin might take back the walk by bringing up her condition, Berenice pressed the fork in his hand more firmly.

“Hurry up and feed me. Both your hands work just fine.”

“If you eat too fast, you’ll get indigestion.”

“Ah, hurry!”

Honestly…. Letting out a small chuckle, Erkin stabbed the largest piece of apple pie and stuffed it fully into Berenice’s mouth, as if telling her to go ahead and eat it all.

***

Erkin, looking down quietly at the round crown of her head that anyone could tell was excited, then looked forward again. The hallway was wide, but worried her injured foot might hit something, he slowly pushed the wheelchair along the route he had already checked.

“…What happened to Russo? You know, don’t you?”

As he watched the elevator numbers descend one by one with a faint clatter, Berenice suddenly asked, catching him off guard. Erkin lowered his gaze slightly, his tongue slowly running over his lips.

Of all things, Russo, right before going for a walk.

“The boss told me to pass along something if you asked about Russo.”

“You could just tell me the truth. What’s with having something to ‘pass along.’”

What is he, trying to write a novel? Berenice scoffed as if it was ridiculous. Even after the visiting restrictions were lifted, Ricardo still hadn’t been allowed to come, so it seemed she still held onto her resentment from him beating the bodyguards in front of her.

The moment the elevator reached the first floor, Erkin relayed Ricardo’s words without leaving out a single syllable.

“You’ll never face Russo alive again, so worry about your own limbs. If you move to take revenge on Russo, you’ll be the one who gets destroyed first—”

“…?”

“—that’s what he said.”

Berenice, looking bewildered, started to turn her head back but straightened her body again. She wore an expression that couldn’t tell whether he was reciting Ricardo’s message word for word or using Ricardo as an excuse to say everything he wanted to say, but Erkin pretended not to notice.

“Did he not even bother to listen when I said I’d make Russo pay back everything with interest?”

“You can think of me as nothing more than a carrier pigeon delivering what I heard from my master.”

“You’re awfully big for a pigeon.”

“….”

Her voice, which had been lively in the hospital room, dropped heavily, and the atmosphere was such that if he added even one unnecessary word here, he might end up as roasted pigeon on the spot. Erkin felt slightly stifled being stuck looking only at the top of her head.

He suddenly didn’t like the structure of the wheelchair.

Shouldn’t it be designed so the person pushing it can always see the patient’s face? If all you can see is the back of their head and crown like this, there’s no way to check on them.

The size might differ, but many strollers are built so you can face the baby….

Erkin shook his head, wondering how his thoughts had wandered as far as strollers.

Anyway, that bastard Russo was the root of everything, the disaster itself.

Staring at the back of Berenice’s head, clearly in a foul mood, Erkin hesitated for a moment before deciding to take care of Berenice, whom he saw every day, rather than Ricardo, whom he rarely saw lately.

He briefly imagined Ricardo sitting in a wheelchair, but unlike Berenice, whether Ricardo was in a wheelchair or not, whether his legs were fine or broken, didn’t concern him at all.

Even if those sturdy limbs broke, so what?

But Berenice was a different matter. He couldn’t help worrying that she might get even more upset here, that she might be biting her lip in frustration.

He felt like he should stop the wheelchair right now and check the face he couldn’t see to relieve this suffocating frustration, but no matter how he thought about it, even if Ricardo got upset….

So what?

Berenice was his protection target, and on top of that, she was relying on him completely from head to toe without a single uninjured spot, so anyone in that position would naturally soften. That was only human. Having come to that conclusion, Erkin muttered quietly, almost like a confession.

“Russo is at a scrapyard near Norick Port.”

“A scrapyard?”

“He’s with a Marino Family soldato, so at least he won’t be lonely.”

After a brief silence, Berenice asked again, “So? Are they going to start?”

On paper, the Norick Port scrapyard, owned by a relative of Marcello, Valentiera’s consigliere, was faithfully used for its intended purpose, but occasionally other kinds of work took place there.

For example, preliminary work to deal with people who were better off being listed as missing and fading from public attention over time rather than having their bodies discovered.