STABLE BOY ; Trash of the Count's Family

70. SWIM

South didn't care that the water was murky.

He knew that Cale knew that too, and that's why this place was made. South spent every hour working in the stables, handling gross animal biofuel every day. He knows the hardest, most disgusting parts of working with animals like the back of his hand.

That's why murky water was the least of his troubles. The water soothed his aches, the perfect temperature that he felt like he was floating in the clouds.

The fish were large and strong. They had scales as hard as steel, fins are sharp as blades, and skins as thick as walls. Near the muddier parts there were also reptiles, who had fangs and claws strong enough to destroy trees.. He found them insanely amusing— the fishes were transported here normal sized, so how did they grow so big so quickly? Did they adapt to the new environment and grow stronger?

Still not strong enough to be a problem for South, though.

"Woah, dipping into slightly contaminated water like that actually kinda stings!" he surfaced after a long time, hefting his body on the side of the shore and smearing away the water dripping down his hair to his chin.

"Are your eyes fine?" Vicross asked, handing him a towel. South's skin is one thing. The open wound on his head from yesterday's fall is another. His bare uncovered eyes is the main point of concern right now. "Since it's dead mana, magic might not heal it. Don't make yourself blind."

Vicross pointedly avoids looking at the eerily thin electric eel snaked around South's arm. It's sniffing. There's a slug-looking thing stuck on his cheek.

South refused the towel. He's going back in. "My eyes don't hurt, actually. Maybe I'll even be fine drinking some water too."

"Do that and I'm dragging you home."

Sheesh. Apparently no one in this County knows how to make warnings without threatening violence.

"But don't underestimate them," Vicross warned, "you might be strong, but in water, your movements are restricted. You're neither a merman nor a whale tribesman."

South smiled, assuringly.

"Don't worry," he said, with more confidence than anything else in this life. "I may work with horses now, but I used to work with fishes. I belong more with them than on land."

-

He dived immediately under after that, but Vicross couldn't help but wonder to himself, once South started wrestling with something that looks like a gargantuan anglerfish. He's grasped the angler and is being thrown around, but he's laughing the entire time.

"Used to?" Vicross murmured to himself.

Their ages are maybe ten years apart.

Of course, by the time the Molans came to work in the Henituse County, South was already here, and as a child he was an apprentice stablehand around the same time teenage Vicross became a permanent worker in the kitchen. He was found in the county stables, but despite being nursed by the handmaidens in the county, he had worked odd jobs outside the County to earn his keep like a commoner orphan.

The townsfolk recommended him to the stables here soon after finding out how capable he was, and he's been here since. If only referring to the amount of time he's spent in this county, he surpasses Ron, Hans, and even Hillsman, as he was nursed by the horses since infanthood.

The late Countess herself helped the handmaidens often, and thus there was apparently a time that she cared for him like a godmother alongside the young master himself, though that was only for his first few years of life.