Chapter 299

=====[Damien]=====

Is being different a blessing or a curse?

In a society of social animals living in groups, being different always seems to invite scorn and rejection.

That child was no exception.

—

“That’s not my child, that’s a monster’s spawn. It must be cursed. I should’ve gotten rid of it long ago.”

This was the phrase Damien’s father, Hermann, would spit out every time he drank.

It was a venomous outburst, too harsh to be directed at one’s own child. In any normal situation, no one would think kindly of a father who spoke like that.

But in this village, hardly anyone disagreed with him.

To them, the child was not just strange—he was downright eerie.

Hermann’s son, Damien.

Though Hermann would fly into a rage if anyone called Damien his son, side by side, no one could deny the boy was his spitting image.

Yet, Damien was anything but ordinary.

Or was he even human? That was the thought most villagers, including Hermann, harbored.

A boy who never laughed, cried, or got angry. A boy who showed no interest in anything, his face perpetually blank.

So quiet that some villagers, even after nine years, had never heard his voice.

In a rural village full of simple folk, it was inevitable that the boy would be labeled a “cursed child” and ostracized.

Adults would avoid him, pretending not to see him when they crossed paths.

At least they didn’t openly persecute or try to eliminate him—proof that they still had some semblance of conscience and a shred of pity.

But the children were different. Children, after all, can be terrifyingly cruel to those weaker than themselves.

With bright smiles, they’d pull the legs off frogs or tear dragonflies to pieces.

There was a vast gap between childlike innocence and human kindness.

—

“Hey, look over there! It’s the ghost kid! He got beaten up yesterday, but he’s still fine?”

“Maybe Hans just punches like a wimp. Maybe it didn’t even hurt?”

For boys eager to show off their bravery, there was no better toy than Damien.

Not everyone joined in the bullying, but the numbers weren’t small either.

A kid who wouldn’t cause trouble no matter what you did to him. A target the adults strangely avoided.

Even his delicate face somehow rubbed them the wrong way.

“Who cares about that? Let’s play ghostbusters!”

“3 points for the stomach, 5 for the limbs, 10 if you knock him down! Don’t aim for the head!”

They didn’t have the guts to kill him, so their bullying was limited to beating him up or throwing stones.

As a result, Damien’s body was always covered in wounds.

His face, at least, remained unscathed—not out of any last shred of conscience, but because the kids feared getting caught by the adults if they left visible marks.

They’d been sternly warned not to go near him, so they knew they’d be in trouble if they were caught bullying him.

Even boys who wouldn’t hesitate to throw stones at a smaller child were terrified of their parents’ scolding.

“Ugh…!”

Damien let out a faint groan as a sharp stone hit his solar plexus.

Though the stone thrown by a child’s hand held little force, the target was also just a child. What the village boys didn’t realize was that if Damien had been an ordinary child, he would’ve been dead long ago.

But Damien felt no threat to his life—just a bit of pain.

His innate toughness protected him from the bullying. A fortunate thing.

For the village boys, not for Damien.

—

The incident happened when Damien was around ten years old.

Turning ten changed nothing. In fact, things only got worse.

The villagers’ persecution continued, and Hermann’s temper grew sharper with each passing year.

Every evening, he’d come home drunk and hurl abuse at Damien.

“Monster spawn. Why are you still clinging to life?”

After Hermann passed out, Damien would silently clean up the broken shards and then go to his mother.

The only person in the world who didn’t ignore or antagonize him.

“Are you okay, my dear…? I’m sorry, I should be protecting you…”

In Damien’s memory, his mother was always pale, slumped against the bed with a weary expression.

She was a woman.

Every time he came, she tried to force a smile.

After giving birth to him, she fell ill and couldn’t move properly.

The villagers whispered that it was because she had given birth to a cursed child.

“Why?”

Her face was filled with such sorrow that anyone would feel pity, but Damien just asked with an expressionless face.

From the time he started crawling, Damien had only seen people filled with hostility. Insults and violence were just too normal and natural for him.

So, to the boy, this woman was the strange one, someone he couldn’t understand.

Love for her son, the heart-wrenching sadness—these were emotions Damien couldn’t comprehend.

“…Because I love you. Someday… someday you’ll understand too.”

Again, it was an answer he couldn’t understand.

He didn’t know why she cried, or why she forced a smile.

But it didn’t matter.

Her embrace was as warm as sunlight, and his pain-free body felt as comfortable as if he were about to fall asleep.

That was enough.

—

Life’s turning points always come suddenly, like an unexpected coincidence.

It was the same for Damien.

On an evening when the sunset was sinking lazily below the horizon.

While returning home after being pelted with stones as usual, he spotted Hermann walking in a completely different direction from home. It was purely by chance.

‘What’s this…?’

He wasn’t staggering drunk, nor was he walking with his usual confident, almost aggressive stride. Instead, he moved cautiously, as if trying to avoid being seen.

This wasn’t the Hermann Damien knew.

‘That direction… leads to Mr. Dieter’s house.’

Dieter. A middle-aged man who used to be a hunter, living with his wife Eila and daughter Milia, a bit away from the village.

It was strange. Hermann and Dieter weren’t close enough for a visit at this hour. In fact, Damien had never seen Dieter mingling much with the villagers. And most importantly—

‘Mr. Dieter shouldn’t even be home…’

As a hunter, Dieter often spent days in the forest.

When he returned with his catch, he would share the meat with the villagers… Damien knew well that Dieter hadn’t returned yet.

There was no way Hermann, an adult, wouldn’t know this.

Puzzled by Hermann’s strange behavior, Damien cautiously followed him.

And what he saw there—

“Ah, ah! Haaah…!”

A woman’s moans leaking out of the log cabin. Hermann’s heavy breathing.

Peeking through the window, he saw a naked man and woman writhing passionately on the bed, drenched in sweat.

“Ahh, Hermann…! Slow down…! Hnngh, if Milia wakes up…”

“Your face says you’re loving it. If you’re worried about your daughter, bite the blanket or something.”

Hermann, tangled with Eila, smirked.

Damien understood what they were doing. He had heard about such acts between men and women.

‘I thought only couples or lovers did that. Guess not.’

That was all Damien thought as he watched their affair.

He didn’t know why they were doing it secretly, but now that he knew the reason, he lost interest.

Losing interest, Damien turned away from the window and headed straight home.

The boy didn’t know.

He knew about sexual acts, but the concept of adultery being a sin wasn’t something he could easily grasp just from overhearing things.

And he didn’t understand the emotions of someone caught in sin.

So, he didn’t care.

Not about the trail of a child’s footprints stretching from Dieter’s house to his own.

—

That night, someone died.