小嫂子的味道

"Wait a second, what are you saying? Who is coming?!" my mom asked again, this time a bit more gently.

Dad didn\'t reply this time, rather stared deep in her eyes for a while before moving forward toward the storage room. A few minutes later he came out with a crowbar in his hands. He held it like a weapon, as if he was prepared to stab or smack anyone who came in his way.

Then he stepped near me with his hurried and heavy steps, the wooden floor creaking everytime.

He stood next to me and stared down. It sent a chill down my spine, the air around him had changed. It was like he had lost his sense of logic and reasoning and was acting based purely on instincts.

The expression on his face was a mixture of fear and panic, but still, he was the same person. He grabbed me by my wrist and forced me up from the chair and to my feet.

I, being the clueless kid I was at that point, pouted in anger since he\'d used quite a bit of force to pull me up. However, he paid no mind to my futile attempt of resistance and swifty walked me to the main door.

He released me from his grip and then stared intently, "Go outside and run as far as you can. Understand? Go toward the mountains, if possible. And don\'t ever turn back, no matter what happens. You mom and I will be right behind you.

As soon as he finished commanding me he rushed inside again, leaving me alone on the doorstep. Confused and a little startled too, I stood there wondering what the hell he was rambling about.

I heard the sounds of things falling on the ground, probably metal. Then there was my mom trying to ask him what happened and why he was in such a hurry. His reply was always the same: "I don\'t have time to explain."

A couple of minutes later he came back with my mom. Judging by her condition I guess he\'d rushed her out too, as her clothes were a tangled mess and she was carrying a few things in her arms—iron rods, sickle, knife and such.

He was probably the one who made her carry them because his hands were now full with the crowbar and a rusted machete we\'d stopped using a long while ago.

His face turned visibly hot when he saw me still standing there. He came close in a few abrupt steps, leaving my mom behind. I opened my mouth to say something, I don\'t know what but I was probably going to ask him the same question again.

Then, before a word could leave my mouth I felt a stinging sensation on my left cheek. I had been hit, my dad slapped me. He was not the type to raise hand on me, I had not a single memory of that.

Thus what happened surprised both me and my mother as well.

"I told you to run, didn\'t I?" he spat, then held me by my elbow. It was then I think.

He was dragging me out of the house, my mother was tagging along behind him with a worried look over her face. A few tears had welled up in my eyes hence my vision was blurry…no, maybe it became blurry afterward.

As I stepped outside the door, I felt a wave of heat hit me from behind. It was hot, too hot I could not explain. And I sensed it all over my body.

First the impact was on my back, then it spread on my arms and legs, then through the gap under my armpits it reached forward and engulfed my chest. It hit my legs, surrounding my knees and covering them in a sheet of scorching energy. It was over my head too, the strands of my burning hair was a proof of that.

And all this lasted only for the span of a second or two, if it went on for any more than that then I\'m sure I would\'ve burned to death. But before that can come true I was hurled forward in the air, as if a big, muscular warrior had kicked me in the back and sent me flying.

I crashed a few meters forward, outside the wooden fencing that covered my house. My head had crashed right on the ground so it took some time for me to recover my senses and gain control of my body.

When I did, I pushed my body up and sat up straight on my knees before pulling myself even further and standing on my feet. That time I was too occupied by other things to notice that I was covered in blood, my own blood that\'d came out when I skinned myself as my body rolled on the ground.

I turned behind, I was afraid to look but I kind of wanted to know what happened.

…My house was burning. It was made of wood and dried grass so it was quite easy to set it on fire, but that was not all of it. At the center of the house, was a huge boulder that was smoldering in flames. It\'d crashed right into the house\'s frame and had crushed everything that came in between.

I ran forward, or rather I tried to. Since I stumbled on my feet two times and broke a tooth before I was actually able to move on my now-weakened legs.

I landed on my knees before the doorstop, which was now a pile of crushed and burning wood. My eyes wandered in every direction, searching for at least a clue…something…anything would\'ve been better than nothing.

I moved around from place to place, I bent and dug the ground with my hands. I flipped the burning wood aside, even though it burned my palms. I jumped inside the weaker flames and tried to push aside the stash of whatever was left of my house.

When I finally found a good piece of log and cleared the area around the doorstep, the scent of burning flesh and hair entered my nostrils.

I\'ll spare you the details of what I saw there, as I don\'t think you would be interested in knowing that. I\'ll spare you the numbness I felt at that time, seeing the hand of my father that held my elbow just a few moments ago…

***

Req slowly came to a halt as she stared into nothingness, the words seem to have left her throat, probably because some bitter memories were returning.

"I see. That would\'ve been painful for you," Zero said as he finished his cup of coffee and rested the cup on the desk beside him.

While he was offering words of reassurance, there was no real meaning in them. They were plain as stale bread, they carried no weight.

A part of it was because he\'d expected some kind of tragedy in Req\'s story. Given his knowledge about the fantasy tropes and given that he was currently living in a world based on a fantasy novel, he knew that it wouldn\'t be so strange for Req\'s story to have a similar setting.

Hence, he was not all that surprised or sad or stunned. It was but just another story for him; from which he wanted to dig out the information about the past of Req and this world.

"Why were they attacked?" he asked.

This snapped Req back to reality and she tried to assume her usual cheerful smile, but failed miserably. Thus he presumed a semi-serious expression as she explained.

"My parents were not the only ones who were attacked, it was the whole village that was under the target. And not just our village, but all the villages and settlements that were on that edge of the kingdom.

"It was the result of an all out attack launched on us by the Askington kingdom. This was one of those rare battles where the king himself had entered the battlefield, and while we were lucky that he wasn\'t raging the grounds on our side he sure had sent a fearsome amount of soldiers and war power toward the Devil\'s Mountains.

"This side of the kingdom wasn\'t as densely populated as the others therefore we did not have much guards or security either. It made the borders a perfect point to invade the kingdom without much effort.

"In the eyes of the world it was a perfectly normal event, my parents were not the first to die nor the last. People died every day, that was how wars were. Yeah, it was just another assault one kingdom had made on another, I just happened to be caught up in it…"