#111

With that silent scream, I firmly stomped on the cripple’s head. I sensed that if I let it protest blindly, even the foundation of the resolution I had made that night would be completely shattered. After finishing that round of slaughter, I sharpened my anger anew.

Meanwhile, my exhausted head finally slid forward. I desperately muttered, skipping over all the previous talk.

“…You must hate him too. Here, lend me your knife. I… I can repay him for you. I’m serious. Really. Serious…”

Henrik was silent for a while. I thought his silence was the silence of time calculated in his head, but that was just my misconception. After a moment that was impossible to gauge whether long or short.

“…Good heavens.”

Henrik laughed softly.

“You think I would hate that monster?”

My eyes widened. It was a completely unexpected response. Henrik seemed to laugh a little more above my head. As I raised my face with a sound like tearing seams, Henrik, who was looking down at me just then, opened his mouth again without removing the faint smile.

“Rather, that day I trembled, Giovinetta.”

“…What?”

“You probably will never know in your lifetime how marvelous the screams of a family coming over the castle walls can be.”

“Marvelous…. No, what kind of crazy…”

“Ah, don’t glare at me. It’s not like I particularly expect you to understand.”

Henrik showed me both his palms, paused for a moment, then laughed like a sigh.

“Well…. To be honest, it was an unspeakable shock. I had taken plenty of other lives, but it was my first time experiencing the mass death of familiar faces. I was so surprised that for a moment, even though I was clearly standing outside the castle walls, I had the illusion of standing at the center of the massacre. Well… thanks to that, I finally realized it miraculously on that day.”

“…Realized what exactly?”

Henrik had no answer. After staring at me for a moment, he took a step back from me. Soon he leaned languidly against the door. First his shoulder touched, then his head tilted back, finally revealing his firm neckline.

That relaxed movement. It was emanating an atmosphere I could hardly believe was Henrik’s. I blankly watched as an expression of comfort I had never seen before appeared on Henrik’s slowly lowering eyelids.

“So the day that damned castle crumbles will come after all.”

“……”

“That old snake really did die after all.”

“……”

“Sometimes the process is more important than the result, Giovinetta. If you miss the process, you’re left with regrets even when you get the result, and the cost of scraping away those regrets seems to be more than you’d think. Still, I didn’t feel it was too much of a waste.”

“……”

“I think I stood there for quite a long time. It felt like digging up the embalmed corpse of an old man and dismembering it myself. It was lucky, if you can call it that, that your elder brother didn’t discover me.”

I was completely taken aback. It was as if I had been struck in the face by the shadow of branches overhead. When had he opened his eyes? Green eyes that looked as if the leaf veins would show through if light were to break, were quietly gazing at me.

Those eyes finally looked ‘alive’. Though surely accustomed to the buried daily life, how transparent they looked that day. It was a powerless and cruel green that had finally sprouted using the flesh of relatives as fertilizer through another’s hands. Why? While I found that green pathetic….

At the same time, I craved it madly.

“So.”

As if a breeze had suddenly blown, the branches above my head gently swayed. It seems I had unknowingly placed my palms on his chest.

Henrik gathered both of my hands in one of his and drew close to me. I reflexively stiffened my shoulders. Dark green eyes gazing at me. His quiet exhale scattered as it hit the curve of my forehead.

“Now that I’ve met you today, I’d like to resolve the second regret too, if I can.”

“…Regret?”

“Answer this first. What do you mean by saying you’re that guy’s weakness? I can’t even begin to guess.”

“What do you mean by….”

Having been distracted by the gentle yet cowardly color, I hastily lowered my eyes, unable to gather my thoughts in time. After shaking my head once from side to side and erasing the lingering green from my mind, I was finally able to stammer out a response.

“He, he… if I were to stab him, he would let himself be stabbed even with his eyes open.”

“Ah.”

“He won’t resist me at all. No, he won’t be able to.”

“Is that all?”

“What else would be needed besides that?”

“Hmm.”

“……”

I quickly shut my mouth under the incomprehensible gaze falling on my nose bridge. It was because I had just then realized that I had been thinking something completely wrong. Yes, Johannes won’t be able to stop me. I should be able to stab him more easily than anyone else. I’ve never been more certain of a result than this. But, but…. If I stab him….

What then?

My heart sank.

“I saw an arrow piercing that guy’s neck. Clearly.”

Henrik, who had been quietly examining me, said. His expression, which had already put on its familiar mask again, was blank. Henrik studied my complexion as if trying to gauge my thoughts.

But unable to get what he wanted, his gaze slowly flowed downward. Henrik stared at the back of his own hand for a moment in silence. No, to be precise, he was staring at my hand that had begun to twitch slightly under his palm.

No.

“…To jump from such a high tower with such a serious injury, when I found you in the forest he seemed too unscathed, so I thought I must have seen things in the urgency… Until he destroyed my father’s castle, as you said. Hearing it today, it doesn’t seem like something you instigated.”

“……”

“Anyway, I was quite surprised. That monstrous body…. Those huge wing bones, and the body completely in tatters…. I might have understood that appearance more easily if told it was a corpse mauled by beasts. But after living outside for a while, I heard rumors that your maternal family is a house that summons demons. Having seen it myself, I think the demon in the rumors is your elder brother.”

“Th-those are all, baseless rumors….”

“Baseless rumors. I suppose you’re so disgusted because you’ve seen that horrific form too.”

“No, it’s not exactly….”

“Enough. My point is, is there really a way to harm such a being? There were times when mortals hunted demons, but that’s more legend than history now.”

“Of course… with a… knife….”

“Would stabbing kill something that survives even with its neck pierced?”

Henrik looked quite perplexed. His question was correct. I had no exact answer to give him. Would he die? Wouldn’t he die? The desperate retort couldn’t come out as sound, and at that moment I was so flustered I nearly lost myself.

In the end, I just stared intently at Henrik’s eyes, forgetting even to exhale the breath I had taken in deeply. I was desperate. At that moment, Henrik was not my past enemy.

He was a pioneer who had by chance broken the lump inside himself before me and witnessed the collapse of its remnants, and I hoped to find the answer I was looking for while sifting through the green heap of such a person.

Somehow it would work out, right? It would be possible, right? I looked into his eyes with all my might. But it was all in vain. The cruel green I saw was entirely his own green.

Impossible. Ah, aah, what an incurable fool…. What were you thinking, about him who revives even when destroyed….

I couldn’t understand my own ridiculous misconception. Even now, after meeting you and hearing the full story of the misfortune, I still don’t understand that time. How did I think of a knife first, when I knew it was impossible, how did I so easily imagine the pleasure of stabbing him?

One clear fact is that I was left with the memory of a hot flame I could not forget. The heat of vomiting all the black soil that had accumulated in my throat for as many seasons as I had spent trapped in the women’s quarters, nursing a cold heart in vain.

The memory of sitting under the window sill, catching my breath and grasping the last heat with the tip of my tongue, while seventeen-year-old Johannes’ wet back was left outside. So it was recklessly a knife. For some reason, it felt like I could feel that flame again with just that cold, hard metal.

Impossible. As I was recoiling from the realization I absolutely could not accept.

“Are you perhaps planning to behead him?”

Thunk. That question seemed to pierce my throat. And once more.

“Hmm… Yes. Cutting off the head might work.”

Thunk.

My reaction must have been quite unusual. Yet Henrik turned me inside out with such a bland tone. His insensitive attitude may have been the composure of someone who had already seen the end.

“How…”

The words wouldn’t continue. Beheading?

“Hmm?”

“……”

“Giovinetta.”

Henrik finally showed a slightly bewildered look as he drew closer. My head lifted higher as he approached. Cut off his head? Johannes’ head? Tears that had welled up in an instant fell in drops. My eyes had dried up from being wide open, but they flowed freely without any precise reason. The body’s reaction came before understanding.

“What’s wrong?”

Henrik seemed about to touch my face.

“Watch… your mouth, Indridason.”

“What?”

“Behead, beheading. Beheading…. H-how can you… say such a horrible thing. How can you…”

“Uh….”

“If anyone does such a thing to Johannes, I won’t stand for it, I’ll kill them first. You worm…. How dare… how dare anyone…”

At that time, I seem to have been completely shocked, unable to close my mouth. The terrible scene of a huge weapon chopping down on the back of Johannes’ neck flashed like delayed lightning. Johannes’ life pouring out from the cut surface like a burst dam. Even the image of myself standing alone on the red earth where he had disappeared.

Your death.

Perhaps someone who has never succeeded even once cannot draw a clear picture while persistently hoping for success. Since Johannes in my nightmares was always by my side even with a dismembered body, I don’t think I understood well until then what my resolution meant. Your death. Your death.