After leaving Hank's house, Murphy arrived at Bart's.
Murphy gave Bart's mother the four Silver Coins he had been entrusted with and relayed Bart's message. "Bart said not to skimp. Buy the medicine you need."
The old woman readily agreed, but Murphy could tell from her evasive eyes that she didn't mean it.
The old woman suffered from the same ailment as Hank's youngest son—a common cold—but hers had already developed into a chronic pulmonary disease.
But for the poor, sickness was never a reason to see a doctor. It was a gamble with death. If you pulled through, you were lucky. If you didn't, it was fate.
Murphy didn't offer any extra help, because their situation was, admittedly, slightly better here.
However, that was only relatively speaking. The hay in the corner was piled a little thicker, and their clothes had a few more tufts of cotton padding.
But they were still a family that couldn't afford firewood. In the dead of winter, they could only huddle together indoors for warmth.
There wasn't much work to be done in the winter anyway. With little to eat and no energy, they often slept the entire day away.
To preserve warmth, they relieved themselves indoors whenever possible, making the air thick and foul, filled with a suffocating stench of mold and rot.
If you were to ask how Murphy knew all this so well, it was because he had once lived the exact same way.
Now, after leaving Bart's home, he stood before a collapsed farmhouse, staring into space.
The cold night was deathly still, save for the wind whimpering through the ruins.
It felt as if he were the only person left in the world, keeping company with this forgotten land.
The border war six years ago had claimed the lives of his father and older brother, and with them, the family's last pillars of support.
Heavy war taxes piled misery upon their already fragile household. His mother and sister starved to death, one after the other, and Murphy himself was left clinging to life by a thread.
Ironically, however, the border war had caused the Baron's Domain to suffer such heavy losses and a drastic reduction in able-bodied young men that the castle was forced to lower its recruitment standards.
This, in turn, gave him, a newly orphaned boy, the chance to be selected—and the chance to survive.
'Past life and present life...'
Murphy unconsciously clenched his fists.
"Murphy!"
A voice, trembling with agitation, called out from the darkness.
Startled, Murphy turned to see a dark figure shakily opening the wooden door of a nearby farmhouse that was still mostly intact.
He immediately recognized the familiar figure. "Tom, why did you open the door? Aren't you cold?"
It was true. He hadn't lied to Bart and Hunter; Tom really had sent word asking him to come.
Tom's situation had originally been better than Murphy's. His father had survived the border war, so his family was certainly better off than Murphy's.
But after his father died of an illness last year, Tom was the only one left.
After being cast out of the castle, gravely ill and in despair, he had sent word to Murphy.
Hearing Murphy's voice, Tom responded excitedly, "It's... it's really you..."
His voice was halting, his words punctuated by an unnatural tremor. "I'm... I'm not cold. I'm... I'm very warm..."
Seeing this, Murphy immediately realized Tom was suffering from hypothermia.
This fatal symptom—feeling paradoxically warm right before death, even to the point of stripping off clothes in the dead of winter—was known among the common people as "Oriane's Call," meaning one's soul was about to be received by the god.
Murphy supported Tom by his stiff arm and led him into the small hut.
This dilapidated hut was in even worse shape than Bart's and Hank's homes.
Icicles hung from the drafty roof, frost coated all four walls, and the moldy hay in the corner gave off a damp, rotten smell.
Tom shakily tried to head for the corner. "You... you sit... I'll see... if I have anything... to offer you..."
His words broke off abruptly. He looked down at his own endlessly trembling hands, as if only now truly realizing his body's condition.
"S-Sorry..." Tom's voice was suddenly choked with a sob. "That winter... I shouldn't have... gotten them to throw snowballs at you..."
His teeth chattered ceaselessly, yet he persisted, "Murphy... did Oriane send you?"
Murphy was silent for a moment. He had intended to just nod, but then considered that Tom might be night-blind, and on top of that, the room was utterly dark. "Yes."
Hearing this, Tom managed a stiff smile. Though his body was still trembling uncontrollably, he began to unfasten his thin, ragged linen tunic. "So... so strange... I'm not cold at all... In fact, it's very warm..."
His movements were stiff and clumsy. He sat down without thinking, his voice growing more and more slurred. "Th-that year, at the recruitment... on the log array... I fell three times... You were so skinny... how did you stay on your feet...?"
Seeing this, Murphy sat down beside him. "Your days in the laundry room weren't easy, were they?"
Tom's gaze began to lose focus, his breathing growing rapid. "Hands... soaked in ice water all day... All ten fingers... they all rotted... Jack and Will... they weren't much better off..."
Suddenly, a flicker of agitation entered his voice. "It's all your fault... If it weren't for you... we wouldn't have been thrown out of the castle..."
But the anger came as quickly as it went, and Tom's expression soon turned vacant again.
He murmured, "But... you got to stay in the stables... wearing warm cotton clothes... you even got a share of the oats... I really envy you... Murphy..."
"Oh, Oriane..."
Tom suddenly whispered a prayer, "Why... In the castle, they can light fires for warmth... but we... we can't even scavenge firewood..."
The night deepened. Tom's trembling gradually stopped, and at some point, his body had come to rest on the floor.
Again and again, haltingly, he spoke of his time in the laundry room, of the days he, Jack, and Will had spent washing clothes in the ice and snow, and he endlessly repeated his envy and jealousy over Murphy getting to be a Groom.
Murphy was mostly silent, only occasionally adding a word or two.
"Murphy..."
Tom's voice was so faint it was almost inaudible. "I... I just can't accept this..."
In his final moments, he suddenly used all his remaining strength to ask, bewildered, "Why...? The Lord Baron's horses get to live in warm stables and eat fine feed... while we... we are like weeds on the roadside... not even as good as a horse..."
He never finished. His voice cut off abruptly. His eyes, though still facing Murphy's direction, had lost their focus.
Murphy sat silently in the darkness, listening to the howling wind outside.
In that moment, he saw more clearly than ever before.
Some people live in warmth, while others die in utter silence.
After some time, Murphy slowly rose to his feet.
He took one last look at Tom's face in the darkness, then turned and pushed open the creaking wooden door.
The warm "Qi" in his body slowly circulated, bringing him a sense of warmth.
It was time to do what he had to do.
It was time to take back the position of Groom.
With that thought, Murphy stepped out into the biting cold wind, dissolving into the thick darkness as snowflakes began to fall.