Something prodded him awake. The bald man was fastening a chain to the cuff on his right wrist and locking the chain to something above the youth’s head. As the youth tried to get up, the man pressed down on his neck. The youth obediently sat back down.
Holding out a bowl of something, the man said, “Drink.”
The youth lowered his head over the bowl to do so but involuntarily turned away. It was something similar to the green stuff he had drunk that morning but with an extra, sharper smell. The dizzy, nauseating feeling came back to him and he frowned.
“Drink!” The man grabbed his neck and shoved his face into the bowl.
Listlessly, the youth tried to resist with his left arm. All that happened was the chain dangling from his right wrist clanged, an irritating sound. With all his might, the man grabbed the youth’s neck with one hand and tilted the contents of the bowl into his mouth with the other, forcing him to finish it. Spasms rocked the youth and he coughed violently, but like before, half of it had already made it down his esophagus.
The bald man looked down at him expressionlessly as the youth coughed and gagged. “If you hadn’t drunk that medicine before, you would’ve killed that bastard. Understand?”
This change in tone was so abrupt that the youth looked up in wonder.
“You were lucky that little shit didn’t die and we kept our money and got out of there. Think of what would’ve happened if you killed him. You’d be finished. Do you hear me?”
The youth kept looking up at him and didn’t answer. The man’s hand struck the side of the youth’s face, hard.
“You hear me?” he shouted again.
Getting slapped out of nowhere made the youth angry, but he couldn’t move his body. His face flashed red, but all strength had left his limbs.
“Eat everything I give you from now on, right? Don’t throw it up or get clever about it.”
Having spat out these last words, the man, teetering slightly, left the carriage and went back into the inn.
X
Ever since the bald man gave him the mysterious liquid to drink and made him fight men, the youth began to feel worse and worse.
The strong-smelling liquid no longer made him vomit so often, but the dizziness and nausea increased. Suppressing the vomit, he tended to be unsteady on his feet in the arena, making him more vulnerable to the blows that rained down upon him. His body was definitely deteriorating, which meant the speed in which he recovered from the effects of the liquid was slowing down.
He knew, of course, that in the last moment, hard scales would sprout from the scars that It had left on him and protect his body from harm. But because he could not think straight, those defenses were slow to come into effect, and with the flagging of his strength and the battering his body was receiving, he could not fight back as hard as he could before.
The day he faced a pale giant with an almost geometrically perfect smile, completely white skin, and red eyes, he thought he would finally die. The red-eyed giant, like a cat playing with a mouse, struck a blow on every part of the youth’s body and whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Sometimes the giant would make an aggressive move and the youth would feebly try to counterattack, only to have the giant sidestep out of the way in the last second and bow to the applauding audience, the white giant’s red eyes beaming with mirth and confidence. Just as the fight was beginning to seem endless, the giant attempted to strike the final blow on the teetering youth, who was near fainting.
The youth would later remember that just then, he sprouted black wing-like limbs from his back and whacked away the giant that had been lunging for the youth’s throat. The giant’s body flew out of the arena, and the audience roared with appreciation at this unexpected turn. The wing-like limbs disappeared in the next moment, and the youth felt the blood drain from his face as he began to keel over.
Immediately, the bald man ran up to him and snatched his arm with one hand and propped up his back with the other so that he wouldn’t fall. Holding the youth’s arm up, the bald man bowed to the audience and gathered the coins that the audience was showering them with as the youth tried not to vomit or fall. The world was spinning, and his insides hurt like they were being twisted.
In the carriage as they pulled out of the village, the bald man counted his coins and cackled.
“Yes, that’s the spirit! Keep doing exactly what you did today! Look like you’ve reached the end and then, bam! Those wings! How did you do that? What’s your secret? Oh, who cares, just keep doing what you’re doing.”