The King's Queen

Chapter 31

Hunger.

A term used extremely lightly could mean a need for food, entertainment, or pleasure. Or a want for something.

To need something because of hunger is justified in society. To want something to the point of hunger is sin.

Gently, almost too afraid to touch because of its fragility, a woman rubbed her swollen stomach with care as she tried to soothe the aches.

Her obi had been loosened just for her condition, she was expecting after all.

Her body was frail and malnourished as she had spent weeks eating meagre meals that even the rat in the kitchen would pity her for her plight. Despite the loving caress on her womb, her eyes were vacant and lost, as if she wasn't there anymore.

The room she was in was tiny and bare with only a futon placed neatly in the middle. It was cold in here. Winter had yet to leave before Spring could arrive. The shoji____ which was the only way in and out of the oppressively small room____ opened delicately so as to not scare the woman inside.

In walked a small girl holding a tray with plain rice and water, she wore a pitying grin before using her heel to shut the shoji behind her____ careful to not make too much noise as to not alert the guards who were on their break outside.

"Hello madam, how are you?" The girl's cheerful tone was met with silence as the woman continued to rub her belly and stare into the wall. The girl's smile faltered as she walked further into the room, placing the tray down beside her. She could already see the woman looking at the meal____ the clay bowl, to be exact.

With a sigh, the girl took a pair of chopsticks from the tray and took the bowl of rice firmly in her hand. She gave the woman a pleading look before forcing the woman to eat.

"There, all finished. Thank you for not making a fuss about eating this time. I can't have you or the babies starving, yeah." The girl spoke once more while making sure she let the woman drink every single drop of water____ seeing how dry and pale her lips were___ this earned the first reaction from the woman since entering the room, a flinch.

Then a laugh.

A haunting laugh that held no true warmth or humour, just sadness and hate. Truly a hypocrisy to the usually sweet and infectious sound.

"And that is a good thing?" The woman who hadn't said a single word since she had woken up croaked out, her haunting eyes zeroed onto the poor girl who shivered at the intensity that brewed in her void like eyes. "These things," the venom on her tongue would have even the most poisonous vipers weeping in humiliation. "Are the only chains that attach me to that man."

"No matter what punishment they give me, or how many times he has his way with me. I will never love these things, so let us starve together." Her face was vacant whilst spitting those words out, she didn't care if her outburst was heard and the girl getting punished for trafficking food for her. "At least then I will be out of my misery." From booming to muttering, the woman had reverted back to her previous catatonic state, her gaze bore through the wall in front of her as she rubbed her belly once more with the same gentleness yet no real love.

The young girl flinched before taking this as her benevolent presence no longer wanted, her movement was equivalent to a voice cracking as she scampered to reach the door. Leaving the room with only the scent of morning dew as evidence of her presence, she shot a lingering look back before speeding through the hallway___ careful so that her feet make no sound.

The woman didn't care as she fell further into her pit of self-loathing, lamenting at her lack of action to terminate herself and these children.

Even after eating, the feeling of hunger persisted, the boys in her womb sent their cries of hunger through the insufferable pain of cramps and jolts. One of her sons kept kicking at her womb playfully while the other rarely if ever moved, only moving after his twin got too close to his side.