#114

“You’re not thinking straight right now. You can’t be sure when you’ll be pursued if you try to escape secretly, yet you want to provoke the one right in front of you. What about the consequences? Are you saying I should handle that devil? You know he’s someone who can take down a hundred soldiers single-handedly. I can’t stop him with my abilities.”

“No. You don’t have to worry about that. I can stop him. So, okay?”

“How?”

“Well…”

As I was about to come up with a plan I hadn’t even thought of. Woong, the wall vibrated. It was actually a very low vibration, barely noticeable, but its meaning seemed clear. While Henrik and I were just staring at each other in surprise, Henrik seemed to come to his senses first, shook his head, and hurriedly spoke.

“Let’s stop. It’s too late.”

“Henrik.”

“I’m really going to die like this, Giovinetta. Do you have to see that happen to be satisfied?”

“…”

“Well. Why should I ask when you probably don’t care about my safety at all. You’re such a consistently cold-hearted woman.”

Henrik didn’t seem to even think about fixing his disheveled clothes. As he got up from his seat fumbling, I couldn’t help but exclaim in an anxious state.

“Isn’t my chest quite pretty?”

“…What?”

Henrik, who had fully stood up by now, looked down at me with eyes as big as saucers. Startled by the sound I had just blurted out, I quickly tidied up my rustling chest.

“You saw it, didn’t you… When you were hiding like a bug in the bushes, watching Johannes and me.”

“…”

Henrik was silent for a moment with a dumbfounded expression. I bit the inside of my lip so he wouldn’t notice. I didn’t particularly want to recall that day. However, I could shake off the shame that suddenly came over me by looking at Henrik’s eyes, which seemed to have lost his words for a moment at my provocation.

Woong. The wooden wall of the room vibrated louder than before, but Henrik didn’t show any sign of leaving his spot. He just stared at me blankly with slightly parted lips. Thank goodness. I took a small deep breath, trying to calm my uncontrollably trembling insides.

“Come to think of it, you said my moans were quite pleasant to hear. If I’m a cold-hearted woman as you say, you must be a truly pathetic man. Reduced to masturbating while peeping at others’ private moments.”

“…”

“I’ll let you touch me today. I’ll moan in your ear. I’ll want you… not Johannes.”

“…I never wanted pretense.”

“What’s wrong with pretense, you won’t have another chance other than tonight anyway. When and where could you see me again, you who might die a sudden death anytime, anywhere. In your dreams? Will you secretly masturbate even in your dreams? Ah… Is voyeurism your ‘hobby’? Oh dear, how pitiful. Even with your father dead, his shadow of fear remains like this.”

Koong.

My heart sank at the sound of the wall vibrating again. By then, it was more than just a simple vibration. I could feel the impact well through my kneeling toes, as if the inn was about to collapse. Moreover, the intervals between the wall’s vibrations were getting noticeably shorter.

Johannes is nearby.

Desperately feigning a calm attitude, I carefully grasped the hem of the nightgown sprawled on the floor. I pulled it up slowly, ostentatiously. I gently grabbed Henrik’s hand, which couldn’t take his eyes off the thin fabric rustling quietly. Henrik, who had seemed dazed, startled and stared into my eyes.

“…I saw your eyes. You… you’re no longer a man steeped in defeatism. I know. You are the knight who will save me today.”

“…”

“So, don’t go… Henrik.”

I pulled up my nightgown to my chest, revealing my paper-thin underwear. Henrik seemed to gulp dryly. This must be how I looked when Henrik saw me in that forest. This must be the sight of me he had longed for. I thought as I fixed the nightgown between my cleavage. How precariously the cloth would look, splitting from the collarbone and hanging on both sides. How sweetly the vaguely concealed, plump flesh would appear to a man’s eyes. I didn’t even need to imagine.

“You… damned woman.”

Because Henrik knelt down with a thud, as if about to push me over.

Henrik embraced my waist.

His forehead buried between my breasts. I felt the sensation of his lips constantly brushing against the bare skin inside as he frantically lifted my nightgown and dug in. And then, bang!

The door of this room burst open as if it would break.

The force blew out the only candle in the room, extinguishing it completely. In the end, the inner room became like spilled ink. The distant lamp carelessly placed on the table in the outer room barely outlined the intruder’s silhouette with a flickering line.

The intruder was like a sharp sword in itself. The sword that had drawn its blade froze at the doorway upon discovering me. Just before the light went out completely, I caught a glimpse of the intruder’s eyes and quickly shut mine.

Huk, huk…. He, who had been breathing roughly as if about to burst, seemed to die on the spot the moment our eyes met. Beyond my closed eyelids, I could no longer feel even his slightest movement.

Just the sight of the thick horns protruding from both sides of his forehead freezing in mid-air. The black shining skin climbing up the nape of his neck to his cheeks, and the unusually pale skin between them turning completely ashen. That’s all that remained like a horrible afterimage.

My airway was completely blocked. The fireball that had started boiling again after that dazzling summer day at seventeen, and now felt almost one with me, finally seemed about to burst up my throat. And so, just once. I vomited that hot lump of breath with my eyes closed. I shuddered.

What did Henrik do then? Did he turn around? Or did he freeze? I don’t remember well. Just silence. A terrible silence that pools only in this inner room, without a single breath being heard.

Perhaps because the door was flung wide open, almost hitting the wall, only the aftermaths of the chaos beyond seemed particularly clear, as if from another world. People stumbling and falling, trying to escape somehow, those panic-stricken footsteps. Soon after all human presence vanished from the inn, only a desolate silence remained, and, ah, you….

With a demonic appearance as if just risen from hell, you now look at me with desperate eyes like a youth who has just opened the gates of hell. Come here.

Come here, my sun….

I whispered inwardly, trembling at the tail end of a climax that felt like it would break my waist. I had unconsciously clenched my fist, pressing hard on the center of my collarbone, making the area around my chest sore.

Henrik, who had let go of my side and touched the floor, took crab-like steps towards the window. I felt the cold air touch the bare skin where Henrik’s lips had left. I lifted my sticky eyelids.

I saw Johannes’s eyeballs, glittering silver without any whites, twitch towards Henrik’s brow. That guy made a mistake. Henrik, who had been watching Johannes carefully with his shoulders tensely stiffened, swallowed hard. Gulp. How painfully that sound echoed in the ruinous darkness.

“It’s… been a while, Uncle.”

Was he going to make some lame excuse? Henrik’s side profile, stammering a greeting without even managing to lift his knees off the floor, looked more helpless than a mud wall before a cavalry. However, Johannes, who seemed out of his mind, didn’t even respond, let alone make a sound. There was no focus in his gaze towards Henrik.

With no sign of anger, not even a single eyebrow out of place, just a face like a half-demon’s corpse. He merely twitched his fingernails, grown long like animal claws, and scratched the sword hilt. Briefly. A sound almost like metal scratching metal quietly fell downward. Kadeuk….

Henrik’s back sprang up in the darkness.

That cowardly back fled right away.

As if the sound of nail friction was an axe swooping down on his nape. As if there would be no way to survive if he missed this moment. Quickly raising his bulk, almost twice my size, through the narrow window beyond.

When had that guy ever been so agile? I followed his retreating figure with blank eyes as he ran away without even looking back. Although it was just minutes ago that he had fallen for my provocation despite clear danger signals, now he looked like a rat desperately trying to hide its head in a mouse hole that perfectly fit its body size, not even a dog.

“…You’re not lowering it.”

I startled at the low voice that sounded like a boiling throat and looked at Johannes. Johannes, standing with his back to the already faint lamplight, was barely visible. He just looked like a strange curved surface, like the black shadow of a statue left standing alone in a defeated castle. Moreover, with the inside of my eyelids still hot from the residual heat, the darkness all around was somewhat hazy. But… what am I not lowering?

“Your hand.”

Johannes answered abruptly as if he had heard my inner thoughts. Following his words, I lowered my head, becoming aware of my hand. The thin fabric that split from the center of my collarbone and flowed downwards was precariously covering both sides of my chest, glistening with Henrik’s saliva. My lower abdomen and thighs, as pale as Johannes’s skin, were fully exposed.

Why had I been flustered by my own half-nakedness? I stared down at myself, panting heavily. It felt as if I was gazing at myself through Johannes’s eyes. Is this how my body appears to your eyes too? I wanted to shamelessly display my body, touched by another’s hands, in front of him. Whiter, redder, more miserably.

“I was wrong.”

Thunk. The silhouette that had stabbed the long sword shadow into the floor took a step towards me and muttered lowly.

“You were… just at your climax, it seems…. In my worry for you, I barged in tactlessly and interrupted.”

The black silhouette, growing taller as it approached, was like a dark curtain pouring down from the ceiling. It came to cover me, kneeling, as if about to swallow me whole. One step. Another step.

“Why are you trying to hide it. I can tell now just from a single look in your eyes, one breath.”

Had I been backing away on my knees? With my gaze captured by the shadow wavering even darker in the darkness, I wasn’t sure what I had done. I just thought that Johannes, quietly settling down in front of me and meeting my eye level, looked just like a great bird of prey crouching with its huge wings folded.