Karubene’s Strange Behavior in the Middle of the Night
“Hey Karubene, wait up! It’s dangerous to just run around like that.”
Since it was late at night, I couldn’t shout loudly, and I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I had to catch her quickly. Karubene stumbled left and right before collapsing onto the ground. She looked completely drunk.
“See, are you hurt? It’s late, so be quiet.”
She brushed away the hand I offered her.
“Hmph, I told you to leave me alone, didn’t I? Ugh, damn it… ”
Karubene clutched her head and curled up. She was muttering something to herself. It was difficult for me to deal with her situation here. As I tried to get her to stand up, she suddenly grabbed me by the collar.
“Wait, what, what did I do?”
“You! It’s all your fault! It’s because you told me to leave my luggage behind! Argh, everything is your fault!”
Karubene attacked me with a loud voice, as if she had become a different person. And her strength was tremendous. If this continued, I would be thrown into the water.
“Just wait, tell me what I did, then we can talk about it.”
“Shut up!! You’re hiding something, aren’t you? That’s right, you’re laughing at me like that, aren’t you?! You’re laughing at me and those women watching us suffer!”
She was speaking complete nonsense. I wondered how such a thing had come to happen. Was it some kind of unknown illness? She had never said such things before. But if I only showed my confusion, I would lose ground.
I pushed back Karubene, who bared her teeth like a furious wolf, against the edge of the raft. She fell to the ground, and after breathing hard for a while, she looked up.
“Ah… Brother, I’m sorry. Um, ah, forget it.”
Karubene stood up, her attitude changing abruptly, and started walking unsteadily. She had regained her senses, or rather, she seemed to have lost her vitality.
“Hey Karubene, wait a minute. What’s going on? If something’s wrong, just tell me.”
I moved in front of her and peered into her face. She was listless, pale, and gaunt. Her breathing was irregular, and her eyes were vacant.
“Eh… no… it’s nothing, really, nothing at all…”
“That’s not possible. Sit down there for now.”
I had Karubene sit on a wooden box nearby.
“What really happened? Are you sick?”
She then gave a faint smile.
“Sick… you know, if it were, that would be good. Because illness can be healed, but mine isn’t an illness, it’s a curse. This is what happens when the alcohol wears off. I’m so thirsty right now, no matter how much water I drink, it doesn’t help.”
Was she talking about when I left the alcohol behind earlier, blaming me? And from her actions so far, I gathered she was an alcoholic.
“I wonder why it turned into this. At first, it was fun. I had a high tolerance for alcohol, more than any man. But before I knew it, I couldn’t let go of the drink. No one said anything, and I just thought it was normal.”
In the world I came from, alcohol and tobacco were for those over twenty. But it might not be the same in this world. Surely, from a young age, she started drinking like the adults around her and unknowingly became addicted. Especially if she was good at winemaking.
Karubene clutched her head with trembling hands.
