“It’s…”

“Pardon?”

“It’s fine. You may leave.”

“Why? Why?”

“Leave…”

I ordered firmly. However, Alyona ignored this and laid me down properly as I was gasping severely.

“You must have been very shocked. I’d be shocked too. A demon, how terrifying…”

It’s not because of that. I wanted to deny it, but I couldn’t answer at all. My heart felt like it would burst, and just breathing was overwhelming. Alyona said it was unfortunate there wasn’t much she could do at a time like this, and diligently massaged my arms and legs for a while.

Whenever the dizziness subsided a bit, I repeated “Leave.” It must have seemed like an incomprehensible stubbornness that didn’t fit the situation. Alyona looked at me with a puzzled expression, then left the room carrying the pot.

“Still, I’ll come check on you, young lady.”

That was the kind girl’s final greeting.

The nausea was extreme, as if the ceiling and floor were tilting back and forth simultaneously. Meanwhile, trying to lie still in a proper position made me feel so queasy I couldn’t stand it.

A corpse torn apart and hanged.

That one phrase of Alyona’s had risen as a vivid image in my mind, completely unsettling me. Even as I was hearing the rumors from Alyona, long-buried memories and familiar memories of the White Tower were already blending together. On that wedding night at age twelve, Johannes left me with only hostility towards me and my husband’s corpse by my side.

That night 10 years ago, as I lay awake in pitch-black darkness, I caught a glimpse of the outline of a corpse hanging from the bedpost between the tearing dawn. A glimpse? No. No. The flesh torn apart, the bones mercilessly broken, that horrible hole…

Johannes, that corpse that seemed to have been killed in my place, I…

Ah, I, I…

I felt like I was going crazy. Alone in the inn room after Alyona left, I shuddered at the sensation of the blanket damp with my sweat, for the first time in a very long while. As if I had suddenly dropped back into that wedding night 10 years ago, it felt like the blood-soaked cloth would not let me go. And at that moment, in my mind, my first husband was haphazardly caught in Indridason’s gun sights. Like an overturned black bird.

Three, five, ten, fifty, a hundred… However many of my husbands there were, hanging dead in the exact same way. The scene unfolding before my eyes like a vision made me feel nauseous. Ah, no. A black puddle was pooling beneath the White Tower, dripping with the red iron scent that had soaked all those many corpses.

No, Johannes.

I’m scared. What should I do, Johannes…!

I don’t know how I managed to get up. I just couldn’t bear how horrible it was. Somehow I raised my body that felt like it would collapse at any moment, using every last ounce of strength, and rushed blindly to Johannes’s room.

But inside the door I flung open, Johannes wasn’t there. The room was an ice-cold tomb, without even a trace of human presence. Johannes, who had seemed unwell since early morning, had gone out that day without even saying goodbye to me.

Don’t… don’t do this… Where on earth did you go, leaving just me behind…

I trembled as I gripped the doorknob. With all my heart I wanted to flee inside, but my bare feet seemed stuck fast to the icy floor, unable to move an inch. Only after flailing about trying to lift my feet that wouldn’t budge was I finally able to approach his bed.

And I think I collapsed there. I simply couldn’t handle the dizziness, my husband’s corpse flickering before my eyes as if real. I felt like I would just die. No.

To be honest, in that situation, was it perhaps myself seeking out Johannes that I couldn’t handle?

I don’t know. Lying face down on the bed, I trembled in terror as if a knife was at my back, desperately fixing my gaze on the window where foolish sunlight streamed in indiscriminately. The bright surface drew a brilliant line below the windowsill, refusing to cross over.

Though it was a windowsill I could reach in just three or four steps if I got off the bed, it seemed I could never arrive at that clear space. The dizziness was extreme, and my vision was bright yet dark.

That day, I couldn’t understand myself. This body that had been struck by sudden lightning on a clear day, and even the fear towards Johannes that was newly welling up.

Fear, of all things.

It’s ridiculous. After all, hadn’t I already sensed that Johannes must have done something since that night when “a bloody wind blew through Indridason”? When Johannes came looking for me soaking wet from the rain, wasn’t his appearance worse than a demon’s?

Looking at Johannes like that, I thought that if someone had died by his hand, it surely wasn’t just one or two. That many must have died. Nevertheless, I felt sorry for Johannes who kept losing his mind because of me, and pitied him as he wept silently before me. In the end, I voluntarily accepted him.

Because I loved even that side of him.

But now, why do I feel like my heart will burst? Divine punishment? Am I afraid Johannes will be punished? Am I afraid I’ll be punished along with him for being by his side? No. The very fact that a demon had possessed Johannes’s body at that time was already divine punishment to me, a curse. Haven’t we lived embracing such harsh years, such miserable feelings, because of a demon we didn’t even summon?

Then what is this feeling?

This feeling where every hair on my skin stands on end, and even my legs grow weak moment by moment.

Around that time, even breathing was a struggle for me. The spasms in my curled up limbs as I lay face down would not stop. It pained me to recall the faces I had encountered during my time in Indridason. It wasn’t the faces of the elderly, elders, or soldiers that came to mind.

Just the mutilated corpses of those voiceless ones who had stood by as I was beaten – the maids and servants. Their torn appearances in my imagination resembled my dead first husband exactly. Also, what had become of all the children in the castle? Ah, merciless, merciless demon.

That day, I felt as if I was fully witnessing Johannes’s cruel true face for the first time, which I had only glimpsed before. Johannes was not the pitiful man who couldn’t help fussing over me. He was not the sorrowful, desperate man eager for my affection, but simply a demon.

The demon of the wedding night who killed my first husband and imprisoned me. That very demon who forcibly pinned me down when I resisted! So I keenly realized anew, in a way I had never anticipated, Johannes’s power that bound and constrained me, his cruel and selfish strength.

Now you must admit it?

The twelve-year-old me whispered in my skull.

How long will you keep turning a blind eye? Wasn’t that very day 10 years ago that you’re recalling now the day we were shattered? Isn’t that man you say you love the very one who shattered us that day? This terror is all because of him, and you actually want to kill him.

I wanted to shout that it wasn’t true, that I loved him. But strangely, my voice wouldn’t come out. My tongue root felt numb and stiff, as if a wooden block had been attached in place of my tongue.

Save me, Johannes. Rescue me, Johannes. Ah, come back quickly, please, please…

How long I kept repeating that with my pounding heart. How long I lay face down like that, I don’t remember well. Only that before I knew it, the corners of my eyes were all a terribly red sunset. The irresponsible sun that crept below the horizon without arms or legs.

Johannes did not return late into the night, and Alyona, who had said she would come check on me, did not show her face even once, perhaps busy with her work. Only the child in my head endlessly tore me apart and condemned me.

What, you pity him? Loooove? Don’t spout nonsense. You just want to kill that selfish bastard.

…

I know. I know everything. You just can’t admit how weak you are. Since you’re utterly powerless, even more than a puppet, and simply can’t kill him, the stupid method you barely came up with is just fake love, isn’t it? You thought that if you made that bastard who trampled you for his own filthy emotions yearn for you and kneel before you, this terror would fade away as if nothing had happened?

…

Have you enjoyed it all this time? Did you like it? Ah! What am I to do… I feel like I’ll just die from hating you… Look, see how we ended up trapped in the third chamber, unable to go forward or back, after falling head over heels despite knowing that ecstasy would be fleeting…

It was as if the girl was laughing loudly and chewing on a knife. I couldn’t even respond to that. The pathological fear from before had dissipated, but my whole body was still trembling like an aspen in the wind.

At the moment when the last rays of that day’s sun were barely clutching the windowsill, dying brilliantly. I opened my eyes wide. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Was I having a waking nightmare? Was I perhaps seeing a vision?

The entire room at sunset was blood-red. The bloody wind of Indridason that I had heard about from Alyona was now raging inside the room. And suddenly, the back of a woman I had never seen before yet was strangely familiar appeared before my eyes, standing blankly. In that moment when I was too shocked to even scream at her sudden appearance. I realized when I saw the whip marks tearing her back. Ah.

That was ‘my’ back view.

Yes, that woman was myself from the nightmare, mutilating Johannes. She was the side of myself I never wanted to see.

…You killed my first husband, and I was imprisoned.

I saw clearly with my own eyes the back view of myself from the nightmare, faintly muttering with a long-scarred back, huddled in a corner of the room where no light entered.

Because you didn’t take care of me after I was imprisoned, I was lonely for a long time…

The rag-like back lamented to the empty air. Johannes, Johannes… Isn’t it all your fault? I lost my voice because of that wedding night, and because of that I was abandoned and neglected, never meeting a good person, until finally an old man as cruel as you bought me, and I trembled, robbed of even a shred of self-esteem in the face of unprecedented violence, and you recklessly charged in saying you would save me, but even took away my chance for direct revenge, and… ah, that’s right!

How fleeting was the death of that old man who had seemed like he wouldn’t die even if killed hundreds or thousands of times? Was it just the blink of an eye? Did I even have time to scream once? You snapped the neck of the old man who had dominated me as easily as breaking a dry twig.

If it was so simple to rescue me, you should have saved me from the beginning, no, you shouldn’t have left me like that in the first place!

Ah, how are you any different from the others? And you dare to seek my sympathy? You can’t live without me? You feel like you’ll die? Johannes, Johannes! I want to kill you even more than them…!