168. Love, Love, Love!

2024.03.16.

Clade Euphris’s ears were completely consumed by the lingering voice of Mousan Rev and a tinnitus whose source he could not identify.

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Be happy. I love you.

Staring blankly at the lifeless body growing cold before his eyes, Clade Euphris slowly shook his creaking head.

He suppressed the violent urge to vomit. The words he failed to utter eventually became a curse, trampling over his soul.

Love, love, love.

For one moment.

An all too familiar moment.

He stood right in the middle of the scene that had appeared without fail in his nightmares for over a decade.

The sharp, medicinal odor. The looming presence of death. His father lying weakly on a high bed.

The only sound: his father’s labored breathing, a faint wheezing as if each breath might be his last.

“Who did this?”

“Clade.”

“Tell me. Who did this? Was it my uncle? Was it Jurgen Racha? Order their arrest now, please…”

“I love you.”

“Father.”

“We love you. Remember only that.”

Love, love, love!

That damned love.

His father had died the same way.

He never even uttered the words that Igor Euphris had killed him.

As if he had long realized one dying breath could never be enough to condemn the monster named Igor.

As if he had already foreseen what would happen the moment he ordered Igor’s arrest.

To his screaming son, he merely said not to seek revenge.

Only to be happy.

As if telling him to accept an inevitable fate.

To find happiness somehow, no matter what.

As if completely unaware that young Clade’s happiness existed solely in being with those he loved.

I love you. Only that I love you.

“Father, father. Father!!”

The desperate cries of Eddie Rev, thrashing his injured body.

The pitiful convulsions of Lancelot Rev, clutching the dead body and weeping uncontrollably.

All of it rang in Clade Euphris’s ears like a distant past. Like unrelated noise from outside his world.

Like a buzzing in the endless swamp into which his mind was sinking.

As if every kind of death and sorrow had already filled him so completely that nothing more could fit.

His eyes, full yet hollow,

quietly gazed upon his second father, now senselessly dead.

For the first time in his life, he realized that someone whose body had shattered, oxidized, and utterly disintegrated could feel their eyes burn with strain—yet not shed a single tear.

Someone’s hand closed the dead man’s eyes. A white cloth covered his face.

Grand Duke Drietter and Ariesta entered one after another, offered their condolences, firmly promised to handle the aftermath, then left the room. As several attendants cleaned the messy surroundings and carried the cold corpse away somewhere.

Eddie, who had been lying collapsed on the bed in icy silence, suddenly shot up and glared at Clade Euphris.

“Are you satisfied now?”

“…Eddie!”

“While you were chasing after some woman. My father, my father…”

Unable to control his misplaced rage, Eddie began wildly striking Clade Euphris’s rigid shoulders—frozen as if time itself had stopped.

Striking him without resistance, as if punishing the man who had devoted his entire life to his uncle, who had failed to utter even a single “I loved you too” on his final journey.

Like a beast impaled by arrows, he thrashed, struck, shoved, broke, struck again, broke again, shoved again… until at some point,

Eddie realized he was hitting someone already utterly destroyed—someone with nothing left to break. His fists struck only empty air.

Then, collapsing, he pulled Clade Euphris into a tight embrace.

Lancelot, who had been trying to restrain him, also fell to the ground clutching Clade Euphris.

While everyone around him crumbled, Clade Euphris alone stood tall, silently watching the void left behind by the departed, standing behind the wailing figures.

Still, not a single tear fell from his eyes.

Only as if his soul had melted entirely, seeping deep into the earth.

I love you.

That single, petty phrase.

He had wanted to say it.

Even if he couldn’t finish it.

For the first time in over ten years, he had truly tried to release that word—“love”—from his heavy, stifled mouth.

But the moment he uttered it, death greeted him once more, as if waiting. Instead of weeping and sobbing, Clade Euphris merely gulped madly beneath his throat, like a madman.

“Clade Euphris, everyone you love will die.”

“Just like everyone Alexei Euphris loved has died.”

The voice of his enemy filled his soulless body.

An enemy with whom he could never share the same sky.

Love, love, love.

The enemy who had engraved deep into his bones what remained at the end of that love.

Amid the cries of those left behind,

Clade Euphris,

without blinking even once,

grew quiet and colorless, like a black-and-white portrait drawn on coarse paper.

***

At an inappropriate time, the atmosphere at Grand Duke Drietter’s estate had sunk lower than ever.

While preparing a proper coffin befitting the late Marquis Rev and arranging to safely transport the body back to the Rev Marquisate,

Eddie was consumed by rage to the point of losing his senses.

Federico Companni was also severely injured and still recovering, yet Bollonico, who had specifically summoned them, had long since disappeared, leaving only a vague message to “take care of yourselves” immediately after the campaign ended.

Eddie was certain Bollonico had deliberately called his father and Federico to their deaths.

Eddie, red-eyed and muttering only about capturing and killing that bastard Bollonico, was a far cry from the composed, intelligent heir of the Rev Marquisate he usually presented to the outside world.

And just as troubling to those around him was Clade Euphris, the nephew of the late Mousan Rev.

“Aaah—!”

Ariesta, visiting Clade’s guest room as usual, screamed again upon seeing him drenched in blood.

Desperate not to repeat past mistakes, she forced herself to stay upright and frantically called for the doctor and Lancelot.

Soon after, Lancelot rushed in and burst into tears at the sight of Clade collapsed on the floor.

It was no use that sharp metal objects and glass had already been removed from the room.

After learning the secret about Yuan Pelliese and witnessing the death of his uncle in succession, Clade was losing his mind.

When given a sword to relieve his anger and guilt, he slashed not at straw dummies, but at his own body. When handed a spear, he pierced his own leg. When given a club, he smashed his own head.

Once, they briefly locked him in a room surrounded by dozens of elite knights with nothing in his hands.

But that didn’t work either.

Inside the isolated room, Clade shattered every fragile object and drove the shards into his own veins.

Even when chained to a bed, drenched in blood, it only lasted temporarily.

Lancelot, whose heart was too soft, would quietly undo the chains at night, thinking Clade was asleep—only for Clade to snap his eyes open instantly and slam his forehead into the bedpost or the hard stone floor.

Like someone who couldn’t endure even a single moment without pain. Like someone who could end his life by plunging a blade into his neck at any time—but who thought that far too easy.

Beneath his disheveled blond hair, bloodshot eyes gleamed like a starved beast, making servants and knights alike wet their pants without hesitation.

Ariesta did her utmost to care for Clade, but all her efforts were in vain.

Whenever Ariesta touched him, Clade would shove her straight out the door and punish himself once more.

As a result, Lancelot, unable to escape his own grief, wandered endlessly around Clade with hollow, bloodshot eyes. Was he about to open the window and jump?

Would he, upon opening the door one day, find Clade’s corpse hanging from a rope tied to the ceiling?

Would he tremble in fear, imagining Clade laughing maniacally “kukkuk” as he strangled himself, turning his insides upside down?

Eddie finally intervened just before the departure procession was fully prepared and they were about to set off for the Marquisate.

He became enraged when he overheard Clade, kneeling on the blood-soaked floor, mutter that he was going to visit Count Kimfri’s estate.

“Are you actually insane? Can’t you get a grip? What do you think you’re going to do at Count Kimfri’s estate in that state? Huh? Are you now on their side and planning to broadcast to the whole neighborhood how broken you are?”

Lancelot blocked Eddie, who was shouting with bloodshot eyes.

“Let him go.”

Eddie’s eyes sharpened even further at Lancelot’s hoarse, pleading voice.

“You… fucking… gaping mouth.”

“…I don’t want to lose Clade too.”

Eddie, who had been about to lunge and strike Clade, froze at the weak, trembling voice.

Consumed by rage, he had thrown himself into work and cleanup, leaving Clade entirely in Lancelot’s care.

When he saw Lancelot’s hollow eyes fixed on Clade—utterly exhausted—Eddie, too, turned his gaze toward Clade with sunken eyes.

Clade, his cousin, liege, and closest friend—the once brightest among the Euphris—now knelt on the floor, drenched in blood, unable to endure himself without punishment, like a condemned man belatedly confessing his sins fervently to God.

The fury in Eddie’s eyes gradually dimmed.

For a moment, a metallic voice slipped through his tightly clenched lips.

“Clade.”

“….”

“Clade, you bastard…”

Eddie called out in utter despair. After a long silence, he stiffened at the sound that finally emerged.

A barely audible murmur. Eddie took one step closer to Clade.

“…Let me go.”

Clade, who had been lying prostrate without even a breath, slowly lifted his head at last.

Beneath his wet blond hair, clotted blood stains formed a ghastly pattern, like a soldier’s face torn by shrapnel.

A drop of blood from his freshly split forehead fell into Clade’s bloodshot eye, then trickled down his pale cheek like a tear.

Anyone who had whispered that he hadn’t shed a single tear even at his uncle’s death would have been rendered speechless at this sight.