The Baby Isn’t Yours

“Ha.”

How did things get to this point?

Hemmie gazed at the round moon, high in the sky, beyond the window. The castle of the noble lord, perched on a high plateau, offered an unobstructed view of the clear moon.

Hemmie, cradling the egg in her arms, sighed once again as she looked up at the moon.

Behind her…

“Please! Let us out! Open the door! There’s a pregnant woman waiting!”

Bang, bang, bang!

Allen, who had been relentlessly pounding on the locked door, pleaded desperately for their release.

Even though he had been knocking for several hours, and his hands and arms had turned red from the effort, he showed no signs of giving up.

His voice was strained from shouting for so long.

“I have to go! Damn it!”

He kicked the door and yelled, but no one answered from the empty hallway outside.

Exasperated, he took a deep breath and nervously ran a hand through his disheveled hair.

“Allen, please stop. What good will it do? All your efforts will just hurt your arms, and do you think those people outside will even acknowledge it?”

Hemmie, who had given up on rebelling hours ago, calmly reprimanded him.

“Ha… Damn it!”

Allen sat down impatiently, buzzing with nervous energy and gritted his teeth.

It seemed that screaming and knocking on the door for hours was a bit difficult and had taken a bit of a toll on him. Though his face was flushed from over exertion, it had an unhealthy pallor.

“…Hemmie, you seem surprisingly calm.”

“It’s not calmness; it’s resignation, Allen. This egg doesn’t want to leave my side. We’re powerless until the magicians arrive. Luckily, it seems they will come sooner than we thought.”

“Did Kalia contact you?”

“I don’t know, but since we still haven’t returned, wouldn’t she know something happened especially when we haven’t contacted her? In reality, that’s what I’m most concerned about.”

Allen closed his eyes in response to Hemmie’s sigh-mixed words.

“She’s not the type to wait patiently.”

‘Yeah, that’s what worries me the most.’

With a gloomy murmur, Hemmie’s words were met with a nod from Allen.

‘You’re not going to come all the way here with that heavy body of yours, right?’ 

No matter how much Kalia is worried, she won’t wouldn’t move around too much when she could possibly give birth today or tomorrow.

‘I’m sure she’ll be more careful with how much I warned her.’

But…

“This feels strange. I have a bad feeling…”

Allen got up again, restless and fidgety.

His pale face was contorted with worry.

“Take it easy, Allen. The due date is still a bit far off, right? Didn’t you say it was over a 10 daus away?”

“Not all pregnant women give birth on their due date. Some give birth before, while others give birth afterward.”

That was the case with Allen’s wife.

Contractions had started more than three weeks ahead of her due date. The baby was much smaller and weaker than average, and his wife had resisted the contractions, which had led to hyperventilation.

An old doctor from the village, who was known for little more than drinking, had rushed over to assist with the delivery.

At the time, Allen had just begun his studies in medicine, so he had no choice but to leave everything in the hands of that doctor.

“…Sorry, both of them were so frail.”

However, after those five grueling hours, the words he heard upon returning were just that.

Up until that moment, he thought the doctor’s breath smelled of alcohol.

He couldn’t believe it.

However, when he rushed into the operating room, the whole room was a sea of blood.  It wasn’t until later that he found that all the blood was from her unnecessarily bleeding out.

The tiny, fragile skull of their child, barely the size of a fist, was distorted by both the forceful grip and being forcefully pulled out. 

‘…No, no, no. Not a chance!’

Allen hurriedly pressed his fists down on his eyelids, trying to chase away the feelings of despair he had felt that day.

He thought he had almost forgotten it, but sometimes, it all came back to him incredibly vividly.

‘It must never happen again.’

Allen’s eyes were filled with a reddish glint.

“And there’s no rule that says Kalia shouldn’t experience that.”

“…Ugh, do you really think so? And for hours of labor?”

“The duration of labor varies from person to person. Furthermore, if Kalia is as insensitive to pain as you claim, her cervix might fully dilate before she even feels ‘slightly painful’.”

Hemmie also agreed with Allen’s last statement.

That person’s sense of pain was strangely dull, or so it seemed.

“That’s a bit worrying.”

Alarmed by Hemmie’s concern, Allen once again yelled while pounding on the door.

“Could someone please come out! If you’re concerned, we’ll come back tomorrow morning! So please, just let us go!”

With sweat dripping from his face, Allen’s hoarse voice echoed through the empty hallway.

By that point, Hemmie, who had given up, began to seek other solutions. She glanced down at the ground beyond the window.

It was quite a distance down.

‘…I can’t jump from here, can I? Since it’s a stone wall, maybe I could climb down carefully.’

The castle’s walls were constructed with large, sturdy stones. If one were careful, they could find footholds to climb down. It was only about four stories high, so perhaps they could climb down a bit and then jump.

The problem was the egg.

How could she carry the egg while climbing down?

‘Should I carry it on my back like a baby carrier? Is there anything like a rope or a carrier in this room?’

She turned her head quickly to look for something she could use as a rope or carrier.

At that moment, a chilling sensation gripped her.

The loud banging on the door had stopped, and in its place, they heard a sound of something collapsing.

She quickly turned her head toward Allen, who, with a thud, had fallen to the ground.

A long, dark shadow looming under the door, where Allen had been standing.

“Oh, darn.”

For the first time, Hemmie involuntarily let out a curse.

She had always tried to be polite and speak kindly because of Kalia’s pregnancy, but right now, she couldn’t help but curse.

She felt a cold sweat as she held the egg tightly in her arms and stepped back.

Click.

Even though they had been banging on the door, it had seemed unyielding until now. Now, it was slowly creaking open.

* * *

“Oh, by the way, I almost forgot to pass on a message.”

Kalia looked out into the dark through her window and recalled the words Mrs. MacCanna had relayed.

“I told you before that my husband works as a gatekeeper in lord Shelton’s castle, didn’t I? My husband has been on guard duty all night and told me just now… Hemmie and Allen came to the castle today. But it seems there’s some trouble. I don’t know what but the lord said he would send the two off tomorrow. It was probably because he recognized familiar faces that my husband asked people who worked in the castle what happened. They said they brought in something, and that… it caused some trouble. I think there’s a problem.”

“Problem?”

“Yes, apparently magic explodes every time they try to remove the item from Hemmie’s arms? What kind of magic item do you think it is? Anyways, they said that the magicians would come tomorrow or the day after but the lord told them to keep the two of them in the castle until they come.”

It seemed something was wrong with the dragon egg.

Kalia felt concerned about Hemmie and Allen, and she wanted to go to the lord’s castle right away. But she decided to wait a bit longer. Going there recklessly might not resolve anything, and the two of them weren’t likely to have done anything wrong. There probably wouldn’t be any major consequences.

Above all else, her moving around recklessly would probably worry the two of them more than them having to stay at the castle.

She knew that they would likely try to return today.

So, there was no need for her to move. Especially since Allen was constantly nervous about when she would give birth since she entered the last month in her term.

She couldn’t help but feel bothered by the lack of communication, but the nobles weren’t the type to contact them personally because of a minor issue like this.

“However, my stomach keeps tightening…”

The problem was the state of her stomach.

She had experienced three contractions already today. One just outside the fairy forest a while ago, another when Mrs. MacCanna left, and now.

The contractions were weirdly frequent.

‘Could it be… is the signal of coming today?’

Kalia lay down comfortably on her bed in her room, trying not to move as much as possible, resting her body. Thankfully, it had started to rain outside.

The sound of the crackling fireplace and the rain mixed together, providing some comfort to her anxious heart.

Kalia’s lips murmured quietly as she lay on the soft pillow, listening to the sound of the rain.

* * *

Squeak…

“Eek!”

Hemmie took a startled step back when the rusty door opened slowly, and Allen, who had fallen, showed no sign of getting up.

She hurriedly pinched her nose with one hand just in case, but she didn’t smell anything strange.

‘Who, who is it, all of a sudden?’

The opening door hit Allen’s fallen thigh and stopped.

Hemmie had no choice but to stop retreating at the feeling of a wall against her back.

The shadow that had fallen through the door cracks was now cast on the ground next to the fallen Allen as whoever on the other side approached.

Seeing as she had nowhere to retreat to, Hemmie decided to stop hesitating. With shaking hands, Hemmie reached out to open the door. 

Her trembling eyes fell on the figure of a man and in that moment, the height of her fear, before her brain could register what she was seeing, Hemmie’s heart felt like it was going to explode.

“What’s going on tonight, my lord?”

Hemmie greeted the man at her door.

It was the Viscount Shelton, the lord of the castle.

When she opened the door, the moonlight from the window fell over him to fully reveal his nightgown-clad figure.

He came inside with somewhat unnatural movements, all the while with eyes focused intently on her. Thinking that his eyes were strange, Hemmie inched closer to the wall.

A nobleman visiting in his nightgown at this hour…

Warning bells went off in her head and Hemmie urgently tried to stop him from approaching.

“Um, um, you’re not thinking strange thoughts, are you? You’re not that kind of person, right?”

Lord Shelton didn’t answer and continued to approach her.

‘Oh, my god, he must be crazy!’

A startled Hemmie tried to move away but was caught by the lord’s hand.

“Oh, my God! You crazy man! Allen, what are you doing? Get up!”

The struggling Hemmie got tangled with the lord and fell to the floor. At the same time, Hemmie accidentally dropped the dragon egg in the struggle and hit the floor with an audible thud.