Travel through the city of orcs

"Do you love me? No, you don't love me. If you love me, you won't just be mediocre and indifferent to my words."

"You know, I've had enough of living a boring life with you. That's not the life I want at all. You understand, but you act as if you don't know!"

"What's wrong with me pursuing what I want? I asked you to come, but you didn't come. Now that I'm here, what right do you have to control me? I also have the right to pursue my dreams!"

"I don't owe you, Claude, although I used you, but I gave birth to your child, I accompanied you through your most difficult time, I paid equal rewards for my actions, we did not No debt."

"Let's go, Claude, I don't want to see you again, I look forward to the day when I can take off the letter."

Who said such words?

Who is it that shows such a resentful look?

Who is looking at all this with eyes that seem to be smiling but not smiling?

In the middle of the night, Claude, who was lying on the bed, woke up from his dream. He sat up frowning and rubbed his face with his hands. The dream just now became clear in his mind.

Claude remembered, it was Lance, it was what he said to himself when he saw Lance for the last time, and not far from Lance, the luxuriously dressed young man looked at all this with a half-smile .

Claude shook his head and got out of bed to see if Ian had kicked off the leather mattress. He didn't realize it until he saw Ian's empty bed. Ian didn't live at home today, he lived in Cheng Chi's home.

Yes, it's Cheng Chi, not Lance.

Although he has soft black hair, a warm smile, and smiling eyes, Claude knows very well that he is not Lance.Because those words were just descriptions made by Claude to give Ian a good imagination, the real Lance was never like this.

Although Lance has soft black hair, he has never had a warm smile, his eyes are full of calculations, and his heart is too big for the town of Topa to hold him.

Claude couldn't understand before, he had already given Lance everything he could, why he still had to leave.

It wasn't until that day that Claude realized that what he thought was precious was nothing but worthless in Lance's eyes, and those he wanted to forget and put aside were Lance's goals.

From beginning to end, Claude guessed wrong, understood wrongly, and gave wrongly.

Claude wanted a whole family, a dream he'd had for as long as he could remember.

Claude lived with his Daddy Bernie since he was a child. He never met his father. He raised himself by making leather boots and selling them for money.

Families without adult males always seem so fragile and difficult, but Bernie, who is in poor health, still does his best to make Claude grow up without any worries.

Claude also loves his Daddy. Although Bernie is very silent, he often sits in a daze by the window full of thoughts, and doesn't often talk to Claude, but Claude can see from Bernie's eyes that he loves him. The only child with genuine love.

The specialness of the family made Claude lose his childishness early, and he tried his best to help Bernie do what he could.He learned how to chop firewood, learn how to barbecue when other children were playing carefree under the pampering of his father and Daddy, and learned how to find Barry to see a doctor for Bernie when he was sick, and boiled the medicine and brought it to Bernie. in front of the bed.

Claude didn't think it was hard work. He thought that in the days without his father, he should take responsibility like an adult male.

Claude always hopes that he can grow up quickly, so that he can go hunting when he grows up, so that Bernie doesn't have to work hard every day making leather boots, and he can't even get a good rest when he is sick; Taking Bernie around to play, Claude believes that the daily heavy work and the loneliness with no one to communicate are the reasons why Bernie looks weaker and weaker.

All along, Claude never asked Bernie about his dad, he was intuitively sure that Bernie wouldn't want to hear that, and if he asked, Bernie would answer, but he wouldn't be happy.Crowder never did anything that would make Bernie unhappy.

But if Claude didn't ask, it doesn't mean he doesn't want a father. Once when Claude went to find his partner Rupert, he saw Rupert's father Sam throwing Rupert high and hugging him , Rupert laughed and screamed excitedly, Claude standing at the corner clearly felt the jealousy and envy in his heart.

At that time, Claude just left quietly. He knew that if Sam saw him, he would also play games with himself that Bernie couldn't play with him, but Claude didn't want it because it wasn't his father. .

The precocious Claude seems to outsiders to be a sensible and steady child. Only Claude himself knows the longing and inferiority in his heart.

Claude would become silent when his friends were talking about what interesting gadgets their daddy caught them from the jungle, and what kind of tender barbecue their Daddy cooked for them, he listened so quietly Watching their lively discussion, and trying to hide the envy in their eyes.

Later, Claude gradually stopped going out with his friends. After a long time, everyone forgot to call Claude when they went out for crazy fun together. In the end, Claude's only friends were Warm and honest Rupert.

After seeing too many ordinary but warm families in the town, little Claude buried a wish in his heart. He wanted to have a home, a complete and warm home.

Every male orc has a coming-of-age ceremony at the age of 16. Before that, they have to enter the dense forest for trials to prove that they have become brave and strong enough to support themselves and their future partners and protect their families.

At that time, the dense forest became a killing field, and the orcs who entered the dense forest had only two outcomes, to come out alive, or stay in the dense forest forever.

After passing the test, the mayor will invite a respected patriarch to hold a ceremony for them and give them a piece of black jade, which will be a gift from them to their partners in the future.

Females have no fighting ability and are easily attacked by various beasts and insects. However, the strange fragrance emitted by black jade is avoided by those beasts and insects. Males engrave the ink jade they obtained through life and death into letters Giving to a female expresses their commitment to guarding the female with whom they mate.

Because of the cruelty of the trials, the adult orcs would pay attention to teaching their children hunting skills since they were young, so as to give them an extra point of weight to come out of the dense forest alive in the future.

And Claude has no father, he learned his hunting skills from Sam, but this is not the best way, because different kinds of orcs have their own exclusive hunting methods.

The animal form of Sam and Rupert is a lion, while Claude is a leopard. The lion's hunting method is not suitable for leopards, so more can only be understood by Claude himself.

Claude knew very well what would happen if he entered the dense forest without enough strength, and he had to come out of the dense forest alive for Bernie and for his wish.

Claude spends all his free time practicing, constantly exploring and summarizing the hunting method that is really suitable for him, and constantly fighting against the beasts that Sam caught for him to practice.

Every exhausting training session is accompanied by sweat and scars, but Claude has never complained of suffering and fatigue. In order not to worry Bernie, he carefully washes himself by the stream every time before going home .

However, Claude, who fell into a deep sleep every day because of fatigue, never knew that every night, Bernie would sit by his bed with his weak body and check his wounds, his eyes were full of distress and self-blame.

On the day of Claude's trial, Bernie also went to the entrance of the jungle with the help of Rupert's father and Daddy.

After what seemed like a torturous wait for Bernie, he saw his grown son come out of the jungle covered in blood and bruises, and smiled a frail but brilliant smile to himself.

After getting Moyu, Claude was not in a hurry to find a partner. He began to take over the burden of supporting the family and asked Bernie to rest and recuperate.

Claude, who was busy every day, didn't notice that Bernie, who didn't talk much, became more and more silent, and the time in a daze became longer and longer. Only occasionally when Bernie had no time to look back at him, Claude It felt like Bernie was looking at another person through himself, and when Claude wanted to take a closer look, Bernie had already turned his head.

Changes always happen so suddenly. When Claude heard that Bernie was attacked by wild beasts in the jungle, his brain went blank, and Rupert standing beside him had to be quick so he wouldn't be unable to stand up. Fall down.

Suppressing the panic in his heart and rushing to Barry's house, Claude saw Bernie, who was unharmed but a little frightened, and Lance, who was pale and had a terrible wound on his back.

The development of things has become so logical, the benefactor who saved my Daddy, the beautiful and gentle female, the thoughtful words in the chat, the shy smile, and the shy but firm affection in the eyes, all these make the feelings Claude, whose world was blank, felt throbbing.

On the day he made his promise and signed the contract, Claude felt that his life had started a new stage, and he would do his best to take care of this hard-won happiness.

But why did it only end like this after such a beautiful beginning?Did it start from the seemingly unintentional but meaningful conversation after Lance gave birth to Ian, or from Bernie telling himself all the truth before leaving this world, from Lance's less and less smiles, or from his intentional Inadvertently describing the prosperous beginning of Roatan City?Claude couldn't be sure, but looking back, those clues were everywhere.

Perhaps because he no longer wanted to be ambiguous, or because he no longer wanted to be patient, Lance began to directly ask Claude why he didn't go to his father, why he didn't want to get back everything that should belong to him, and why he was content with being an ordinary hunter. Those who abandon their noble status in disregard of...

Looking at such an aggressive Lance, Claude thought that the departure of his parents had hit him too hard, so Claude comforted Lance with a good temper, worked hard to hunt more prey, and told him Listen to what you heard from Rupert or the interesting things you encountered in the dense forest.

Claude thought that his efforts had paid off, Lance stopped arguing with himself desperately, he gradually became quieter, began to worry about the scars on his back, and kept asking if he, like Claude, ugly.

Claude denied and comforted again and again.

Then one day without warning, Claude, who came back from the dense forest, found that Lance was missing, leaving him only Ian with a hoarse crying voice and a purple face and a note.

Claude, who was holding Ian, looked at the note and was speechless for a while.

Searching again and again, disappointed again and again, when Claude saw the well-dressed Lance again in the city of Roatan, which he thought was the most impossible, he really felt that everything he had done before was like a joke.

Claude listened expressionlessly to Lance's accusations against him, his complaints, his justification for his actions, and the undisguised annoyance and anger in Lance's eyes when he heard him mention Ian. Hate, he just felt that that beautiful face was uglier than the piranha in the dense forest.

With a surge of anger in his heart, Claude rejected Lance's request to terminate the contract. He didn't look at Lance again, and ignored the ridicule in the eyes of the luxuriously dressed young man. He turned and left Rodan City and returned to Topa Town. Started raising Ian alone.

Such a dull and hard life continued until the arrival of Cheng Chi. Yes, Claude knew from the beginning that Cheng Chi was not Lance, but he was unwilling to face the fact that he was unwilling to face Lance's Death, unwilling to face the reality that what he paid at the beginning was just a mistake, he deluded himself that as long as he didn't admit it, everything would be better.

But as time went by, Claude could no longer avoid those facts. He began to reflect on himself, sort out the past, and began to think about what love is.

It's not like Claude never loved him as Lance said. If he didn't love him at the beginning, how could he marry him, why would he look for him again and again, and why would he humbly beg him in front of that young man in Rodan City return.

It's just that Lance's hurt was too deep, and the truth revealed was too cruel. That green first love just disappeared in the time and hurt.

Claude is a precocious teenager, and fate keeps playing jokes on him in one way or another. He has been tenaciously relying on the guidance of others to survive, but no one can help him when it comes to feelings.

Love turned into resentment, and resentment became obsession in the tempering of time, and the obsession like a thick fog spread out when Claude saw the face similar to Lance again, and Claude was lost like that I tried to save myself and comfort myself with the stubbornness of self-deception.

Thinking back to the past, thinking back to the feeling of relief in his heart when he admitted that Cheng Chi was not Lance this afternoon and sincerely apologized to him, Claude vaguely seemed to understand something, comprehended something, looked at The sky gradually brightened outside the window, and Claude felt as if a light had shot into his heart.