Time of the Blind Beast - Chapter 74

“Meal distribution.”

At the detention center, food was distributed once a day. It was usually low-quality black bread or soup, though occasionally they handed out potatoes or carrots.

Even when they were weak and sprawled out from exhaustion, the inmates would scramble, pushing and shoving to get even one more piece of bread during meal distribution.

However, Lisanne had never once managed to stand in the meal line. She didn’t have the strength to get up, and even if she did, she wasn’t confident she could withstand the other inmates’ hostility. As a result, Lisanne and other inmates in poor health had to wait until the guards handed out leftovers, fasting in the meantime.

Even then, most of it she couldn’t eat because of the pain in her throat. She forced herself to swallow water or soup despite the pain, but she couldn’t even bring herself to put bread or vegetables that needed chewing into her mouth. So the food the guards took the trouble to give her often ended up being snatched away by other inmates.

“She won’t last long looking like that anyway. The rest of us need to eat to survive. That’s the only way we’ll be sent to the labor camps.”

The inmates justified their theft by pointing to Lisanne’s condition.

From what she had gathered, there were only two possible outcomes for the inmates. Either they were sentenced to death or condemned to lifetime labor in places like mines.

Though they called it a trial, in truth it was a one-sided announcement. The punishment wasn’t based on the severity of the crime, but rather on physical condition—those too sick to be sent to labor were executed, and those strong enough were sent to work.

On rare occasions, a guard might be bribed by a family to smuggle someone out, but people sent to this kind of harsh detention center were rarely in any position to have money or status in the first place.

What’s more, with the number of detainees increasing, speculation was growing that a trial would soon take place. Once the facility became overcrowded, they would clear it out through executions and labor assignments, then fill it again with newly captured criminals.

Among the inmates, Lisanne—guilty of a serious crime and unable to recover for days—was openly treated as a death-row prisoner even before any sentence had been handed down.

“You think Valdemaira will let that girl live? If she ended up here, she’s clearly lost all her connections. They’re probably just keeping her alive to make an example out of her.”

“She can’t even speak. Skin and bones, too. Like that, she’ll just be dragged off and killed. What else is there?”

The detention center wasn’t a place where people held back their words out of concern for others’ feelings. Everyone said outright who they thought would die and why. At first, Lisanne couldn’t get used to it, but eventually, the shock wore off. It even had its advantages. Since no one bothered filtering their words, it was easy to pick up information.

Lisanne constantly repeated their words to herself.

So I’m going to be executed.

The day the guards come to take me out of here will be the day I die.

At times, she felt like she had come to terms with it. At others, a sudden, indescribable fear would surge through her. Her heart would pound so fast she wondered if it might burst.

In those moments, she would think of Ezekiel.

The man who must have suffered the same emotions for far longer than she had.

As she traced his image from memory, countless impulses tormented her.

She missed him terribly. But she was terrified to face him. She was overwhelmed with guilt. She wanted to beg for forgiveness, but she feared that such a petty apology could never atone for her sins.

And sometimes… just sometimes, she wanted to be honest.

That she was the real Rose.

But she knew better than anyone that this was the one truth she must never speak. It was a relief she had injured her throat and couldn’t talk. That severed, by force, any means of communication with him.

Caught in such overwhelming thoughts, sleep never came easily. Lisanne would only manage to fall asleep around the pale-blue dawn. And even then, it was rarely more than a shallow doze.

As always, she had fallen asleep at dawn while staring at the moon slowly shifting position through the palm-sized hole in the wall.

Lisanne awoke with a jolt from a chilling sensation. The persistent throbbing pain in her stomach now felt distinctly different.

A pulse raced through her entire body. Thump, thump—the tremors shook all her limbs, too strong and too fast. It was an ominous rhythm.

Ah…

Lisanne opened her mouth wide. It felt like a sharp, triple-pronged hook was scraping through her abdomen. The inexplicable pain tore through her from top to bottom, and then again from top to bottom, lacerating her insides.

The pain was so excruciating it took her breath away. She wanted to scream, but of course, no sound would come from her throat.

Suddenly, a warm sensation spread between her legs.

Her mind was dazed, unable to grasp what was happening. With trembling hands, Lisanne reached over her clothes and touched her thigh. Her palm became sticky, hot, and wet.

What is this…?

Her blurry eyes widened.

It was an unreal sight. Fresh crimson blood was soaking the dark, crusted hem of her clothes. The blood that had trickled down her thighs now ran warmly along her calves.

The metallic scent of blood stirred the sleeping inmates.

“What’s that smell? Something reeks… ugh!”

Someone spotted the blood trailing along the grooves in the stone floor and scrambled away in alarm.

Lisanne immediately curled up further into a corner. With limited access to running water and poor supply distribution, even this was seen as a nuisance in the detention center. Though the pain twisting her abdomen left her barely able to breathe, she hid herself instinctively, fearing how the other inmates—already hostile—might react.

“What’s that blood? Is it… that thing women get, like menstruation?”

“Sir, does that even make sense? If women bled that much every month, they’d all die. And why’s she suddenly bleeding like this here?”

“Isn’t she having a miscarriage or something?”

A middle-aged woman sharing the same room stared anxiously at the gasping Lisanne.

The inmates quieted for a moment.

“A miscarriage?”

“She was pregnant. Doesn’t look like the type to carry easily with that frail body, but if she had a condition, she’d have started bleeding from the beginning… Women who’ve given birth can tell right away.”

The woman placed a hand on Lisanne’s stomach. Lisanne tried to push it away, but didn’t have the strength.

“What’s the point of touching her, really?”

“I don’t know. I’m no doctor. But there’s no fat on her belly at all. Even if a baby tried to hold on, there’s nothing to cling to.”

“No wonder she was clutching her stomach every day—it looked strange.”

A miscarriage? That couldn’t be…

It couldn’t be, yet the constant abdominal pain she’d endured and the blood now streaming between her legs made her feel uneasy.

When was the last time she had menstruated?

At the mansion, it had been irregular, but recently, it hadn’t come at all. She’d thought nothing of it. She’d been constantly anxious, dreading the moment her identity might be exposed.

During wartime, many women had missed their regular cycles. When Milena Girls’ School was caught in the warzone, many teachers and students, including Lisanne, had stopped menstruating.

From that, she instinctively learned that extreme stress and fear could suppress a woman’s cycle.

Even after leaving the Derosa mansion, the anxiety for survival had only intensified. Returning to her true self, Lisanne, after discarding the safer identity of Rose, had brought even sharper terror. So she never questioned the absence of her period.

Besides, she had diligently used lemons as contraception for a while.

There’s no way she could’ve gotten pregnant… right?

…Or maybe not.

As the time for parting approached, she had increasingly lost control of her emotions and forgotten to use protection. And Ezekiel had always finished inside her.

She knew why he hadn’t used any contraception—because he was ready to take responsibility for both her and a child.

But now, now…

The bleeding didn’t stop. Her body temperature was dropping rapidly from the severe blood loss. It was so cold. Her teeth chattered with chills.

She really had been pregnant…

Lisanne stared helplessly at the blood endlessly soaking the floor.