Chapter 32: 32—Pain Long Past

Eventually, I carried her to a nearby tree, where we sat down next to each other, connected by one hand through interlocked fingers.

Neither spoke. We didn't need to.

For what felt like a short eternity, we sat there, enjoying the silence. The winds carried with them stray dust and leaves and faraway bird cries, yes, alongside the sounds of the bustling city, yet they were but echoes of a world outside our own, this moment in eternity for just the two of us.

We basked in it.

"...hey, Aina" I hesitantly, tentatively spoke up, breaking the spell.

"Yes?" Her response was short, curt, almost afraid. Her hand tightened her hold around mine.

"So... there's this thing that I've been meaning to ask you for the longest time, but... honestly, I was scared. Not of your answer, but of you wanting to leave if I brought it up." I spoke, once more, slowly, testing the grounds.

Aina looked blank for a moment, then gave me a warm smile. "Ah, did you want to ask about my past?"

I froze in shock. "Ye–yes. How did you know?"

She smiled mischievously, causing lovely dimples to appear on her cheeks. "I don't know... womanly instincts?"

Her playful words pierced straight through my heart.

"Aina, how the hell can you be so cute!?"

"Wh-whaaat!?" she squeaked, "y-you can't say things like that!"

The somber mood completely trampled, I playfully yanked Aina's arm and brought her body to a rest on my lap, where I guided her face to mine and connected our lips.

She quickly recovered and reciprocated, feverishly smashing her soft lips against mine in a not-quite-chaste display of affection. No tongue was involved, though.

After a few seconds, we both separated as if on command, and Aina lowered herself, leaning her side onto my broad chest, her face snuggling in between my pecs.

I wrapped my arms around her body, and waited patiently for her to organize her thoughts.

Yhe world grew quiet for a moment.

"I... don't remember my mother," a minute later, her quiet voice disrupted the silence, sadness tinting her words.

I said nothing, as she was clearly going to tell me her story.

"My father raised me all alone ever since my earliest memories. He told me... he told me that my mother was taken away, when I was very little." She shook her head. "He always refused to go into detail, no matter how many times I asked, but I still hope that... maybe, just maybe, she might be alive, somewhere." Aina smiled up at me, briefly, then looked back down.

"My dad was a simple farmer. We lived in a small village, where life was hard but everyone cared about each other. If there was a bad harvest, or if a monster made its lair in a nearby forest, everyone would chip in with some of their savings to help the village hire an adventurer party or buy food and stuff to stay afloat.

"My father was always a bit... estranged, I think is the word—which I think was my fault, even if he never said it—and I never really had any friends either, which I think was in big part due to my disgusting appearance... but I still think they were good people." 

Aina smiled briefly, perhaps recalling some happy memory, but soon her  expression turned downcast. She sighed

"Life was good... until my father died when I was ten, by some stupid disease that a travelling merchant brought to our village." I tightened my hug around Aina's body, and she responded with an appreciative hum, then continued;

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"With so many people dead and many others stuck in bed or weakened, the village had no spare money to take care of me, a useless snotty girl who could barely lift a hoe and didn't even know how to sew or wash clothes, so they decided to take me to a nearby town and leave me at the orphanage there." As she said that, she tightened her grip on my arm, as if the mere mention of it made her need the reassurance of my presence. I kissed her in the cheek to give her courage. To tell her I was there for her.

It took her a moment, but she composed herself and continued her story.

"Life at the orphanage was a lot worse than back at the village. Even though the adults there stopped other kids if they caught them hitting me, I still received one-sided beatings on a weekly basis. But I could handle those. What was worse were the constant insults, the looks of disgust, of..." She trailed off, not finding the right word.

"Disdain?" I provided, with barely contained anger.

She nodded."Yeah. It was the worst, the looks and insults they gave me constantly, every single waking hour."

My fingers dug into Aina's flesh, my arms tightly constructing her. She didn't seem to mind, simply tightening her own hold of me as the painful words flowed out of her lips. Tears threatened to spill out of her eyes.

"I had no friends. I spent my days alone, with nobody to even take pity on me. The adults did their best to ignore me, to act as if I wasn't even there. I tried every possible way to gain weight, but no matter how much I ate, no matter how much I forced myself, all I got were stomachaches and constipation."

She shook her head. I wiped her tears away with my fingers. She gave me a genuine smile, but it was short lived. She soon continued.

"Six years passed like that, and I got too old to live at the orphanage. They kicked me out on the very day of my birthday. It was probably a day to celebrate, for them."

She was sobbing quietly at this point, even as she recounted her past to me. I peppered the top of her head with kisses, noticing for the first time the several scars on her scalp.

"And so began my days on the streets. After all, no shop would take someone like me for an apprentice, with so many other eligible orphans. I barely squeaked by, since I didn't need much to eat." She grimaced. "At least I was beaten less often, and got much fewer dirty looks, thanks to sleeping in dark, cramped alleyways coated in filth and only going out to get food or water.

"I tried to fish and hunt, but I got nowhere without any appropriate equipment. Instead, I was forced to scavenge through the garbage or take what others dropped on the streets." She scowled, perhaps remembering the horrid tastes.

I was practically strangling her at this point, I had to be, but she still hadn't said a single word of protest. She just went on talking, even as torrents of tears silently flowed down her face. 

"But... one day, that wasn't enough. starved half to death, I was forced to take more... drastic measures." She sighed. "I... I tried to steal a bun of bread from a bakery. I got caught. I had no money to compensate the baker so, like the law says, I was forced to become a slave.

"The baker sold me to a slave shop for a pittance, and there I spent several months in that dark, dingy dungeon. At first they tried to fatten me up, but I only regained my previous weight from before I became homeless. They tried for weeks, but when they realized that nothing would work they gave up on me, and then the beatings began."

Aina shivered. I just wanted to hug her and never let go. To protect her forever.

"One would think I would already be used to pain at that point, but somehow, it still hurt as much as the first time. I was shackled, caged, trapped. I could not move. The air stank, far worse than the alleyways, since the slaver didn't even bother to pay for a cleric to purify the place every now and then. The food was disgusting. The toilet was a hole in the ground, which hadn't been emptied in years. No other slave would talk to me, or even turn my way." She covered her face with her hands. The tears still reached her chin, where they fell to the grass drop by drop.

"I gave up on life, in that tiny, dingy cell in the basement of a slave shop. I gave up on trying, on clawing through the mud to live another day. I was trying to find ways to end my miserable existence. I just wanted it all to end." She looked down at the ground, and moved her hands away.

"But then you came."

She looked up at me, the setting sun illuminating her tear-soaked face, and all I could see on it was happiness.

"You saved me. You bent open the bars of my cell, you broke my collar, and you took me with you. You carried me in your arms to a fairytale palace, gave me food fit for kings, and touched my body like no other had done before. You weren't disgusted by it; all the opposite, you wanted me. All of me. You made me the happiest girl alive. A girl whose pain is long past.

"You saved me, Ray."

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