#118

He pressed my shoulder with his left elbow that wasn’t holding me, and in an instant, he swallowed my head with his palm and pressed it down forcefully.

As I swallowed dry saliva in surprise, Johannes’s heartbeat, pounding as if about to collapse, came over to my temple. The sensation of the blade that had been shallowly embedded in my palm suddenly falling away was chilling. After confirming the sound of metal hitting the floor, Johannes finally exhaled a labored breath.

“Tolerance. Misunderstanding…. Inet….”

“……”

“Yes, misunderstanding, you….”

“……”

“I, that, can’t… don’t you think.”

He whispered desperately to me as if wringing out his insides. I felt a tightness in my chest. It’s a misunderstanding. That trembling voice seemed to brush over my nape and shoulders. It’s okay.

I grabbed Johannes’s lapel and buried my forehead in it. What’s okay…. Nothing has changed. Resentful tears and darkness mixed chaotically, making my vision waver.

“I… hate you so much….”

I sobbed under his palm.

“I hate you and I hate myself… Ah, I, really… I feel like I’m going to die…. What should I do, Johannes. I can’t stand it anymore…. I really hate it…. I don’t have the confidence to love you gently, nor to see your back…. I truly feel like I’ve gone mad….”

“……”

“Are you showing me this side of you out of responsibility alone, when you’re not even sure if you won’t change? Don’t do that, Johannes. If I’m to remain by your side like this, I will… treat you as if you don’t exist…. Ah, yes, I won’t see you anymore. I won’t listen to your voice. Like in the old days, never, never again will I open my mouth to you….”

At that moment, Johannes shook his head as if shuddering. The tip of his nose urgently pressed against my temple. He moved his lips breathlessly as if trying to say something, but it came out only as a groan mixed with rough exhalations, unable to form proper sentences.

“Don’t….”

“……”

“Never again, such… don’t….”

“……”

“…don’t. Please. I’ll… do well…. In, et….”

In that agonized moan filled with shock, the only thing I could understand correctly was my name.

I twisted my head under his palm. Johannes’s neckline, damp with cold sweat, filled my view. Amidst his neck turning black, a small white area remained as pale as ice, but my anxiety took precedence over his.

Anxiety that surged up, unable to believe despite knowing clearly. It was a cruel feeling of wanting to drive him to the extreme to gain certainty. Finally, wrapped in nervousness that even I found hard to understand, I raised my body. Without bothering to wipe away the overflowing tears, I traced under Johannes’s eyes and peered at him.

“You… You won’t leave no matter what I do?”

Confirming Johannes who exhaled heavily like an answer, I picked up the knife handle again. Johannes looked at me with startled eyes. Ignoring that gaze, I tilted the blade and pressed it against Johannes’s nape.

“Even if I, if I do this to you…?”

I leaned on his chest as if pressing the knife with my entire body. The heavy tip of the blade got stuck in the gap of the wall, and the blade instantly cut into Johannes’s flesh as if skinning him. Johannes did not avoid it. He just grimaced deeply and let out a short groan once. While the blood that welled up flowed along the blade darkened by the darkness, his flushed gaze never left me.

“Answer this… one thing….”

Suddenly, he whispered to me.

“You… didn’t give your heart… to that bastard, did you…?”

“…That bastard? Who?”

“……”

As if he couldn’t bring himself to speak anymore, Johannes closed his mouth tightly after the painful question, answering only with his labored breathing. His gaze, fixed directly on me, trembled pitifully in the air. Only after realizing his eyes that even showed a somewhat embarrassed look did I shudder and gasp.

“You… fool.”

“……”

“My goodness…. How can you be like this. Do you have no eyes or ears? Are you joking in this situation?”

“……”

“If I were a woman who could give even a grain of millet’s worth of heart to someone other than you, if that were possible, I wouldn’t have clung to you like this today…! I…! Johannes, you!”

“……”

“I love you… so much… that I’ve gone mad like this….”

“…Ah.”

A short, awkward reply, half a beat late. And in an instant, Johannes’s face crumbled forward. Near his chin buried in his chest, a low groan escaped Johannes’s lips, rumbling his throat like a beast.

I think he might have murmured, barely audibly, that he felt a little more alive…

I slowly pushed his forehead so that the silver gaze would face me. Johannes’s eyes and cheeks, which looked particularly pained, were strangely flushed as if he had a fever. As if he was looking at me but couldn’t see, like someone who had finally lost half their senses.

Thus, Johannes, with a gaze clearly different from before, fixed his eyes on mine while taking short breaths and clung to my palm covering his forehead to below his eyes. It was the palm that had been pierced by the blade, just like his nape.

Johannes’s long exhalation brushed down close to my hand. Even a faint heat could be felt in that breath. And his gestures.

First, his lips that twitched slightly as if about to lick my wound. The canine teeth visible between them, seemingly about to scratch me. The way he tried to get closer to me by lifting his upper body… It was just like a domesticated animal rubbing its lower body, unable to control its excited body.

Inet. Inet…. He poured out a desperate whisper into my hand.

“This body… is the sinner you’ve captured….”

“……”

The darkness was deep.

The inn room, which seemed to have no one left, was desolately empty, even the night shadows like ruins. That night when even the moonlight was like shattered ashes. We were no different from orphans left alone on a black land where civilization had perished.

Perhaps the black silence, which seemed utterly otherworldly as everything around was quiet except for the two of us breathing and moving, quietly called forth our barbarism hiding beneath reason.

I don’t know how Johannes felt that day. I only remember very well that his condition seemed unusual. He tried to approach me regardless of the knife cutting into his flesh every time he moved.

No, rather, he thrust his body towards me, pressing the blade deeper into his neck, so much so that I had to hurriedly push his chest away with both hands. He reluctantly retreated. He leaned his back against the wall, catching his rough breath. For several minutes, Johannes, as if his brain had melted, just stared at me with blank eyes.

In the static filled with lingering heat, I, completely exhausted, looked at Johannes with my eyelids deeply sunken. When our eyes met, he seemed to want to remove my hands pressing on his chest, but he didn’t reach out his arms that were limply hanging down.

It wasn’t so much that he restrained himself, but rather it seemed as if he couldn’t move at all. Like a prisoner with his palms nailed to invisible stakes and his ankles bound by non-existent shackles.

Only then did my heart secretly ache. Although it was the knife I had stuck in, seeing Johannes not even thinking of removing it and just taking labored breaths looked too pitiful, and I couldn’t leave him like that. I deliberately ignored the faint guilt that belatedly arose.

I carefully moved the blade lodged in his neck to the side, and wiped his forehead, clammy with cold sweat, using my nightgown sleeve. The heat of his body touching my skin through the thin fabric was so hot that I felt my wrist might evaporate soon.

Johannes shifted his body, as if wanting to cling to those fingertips. That gesture… looked as if he was begging me not to leave, causing a lump in my throat as a sorrowful feeling welled up.

I anxiously watched his widely opened flesh, wondering if perhaps red threads would grow and weave the outside like before. However, contrary to expectations, nothing happened.

“What? Why… aren’t you healing today.”

I asked in a tone that subtly blamed him, wanting to hide my own stinging sensation. But at that moment.

“Ugh….”

Johannes let out a short groan and twisted his shoulder. Surprised by that reaction, I sought his gaze. Johannes’s eye whites were moist with heat. As if my gaze scanning his wound was too stimulating.

What? I blinked in disbelief at Johannes, who clearly seemed flushed. Johannes lowered his eyes as if avoiding my gaze. My eyes lingered on the tips of his eyelashes, then went back down to the wound area.

Red blood flowing down the taut line of his nape, which was black only at the back. While staring at his front, which was gradually getting wet with that blood, I drew my gaze down to his waist, which had been twitching once in a while.

My heart sank.

The outline of that thing, more excited than ever, was clear at Johannes’s waist wrapped in clothes. Right in front of my kneeling knees, it stood up shamelessly. Please. Open up. Look at me. As he had done on some nights, he sought my caress with his body language.

I could hardly understand his reaction. However, my effort to comprehend him ended in a flash. Somehow, Johannes’s reaction looked like someone trying to fulfill my cruel desire in that form. I even felt a slight thrill.

Johannes, who had climbed the castle walls to the women’s quarters a few years ago, overlapped. Even Johannes, who had knelt before me several times in this inn, overlapped, creating the illusion that he too had wanted the ‘cruel’ me from long ago….

I wanted to sink into that dizzying illusion. Ah, you…. You don’t dislike it. Actually, you’re fine with this, you want to be gently trampled under my feet…. The illusion transformed into certainty.

Suppressing the rising elation at his plea that couldn’t have been clearer, I raised my head. I wanted to ask Johannes directly to his eyes. Perhaps you’ve been wanting cruel treatment from me all along?

Am I right in my guess?

However, Johannes, whose eyes met mine, only panted, seemingly without even a speck of strength to open his mouth. He just swallowed the saliva pooled in his mouth while painfully rumbling his throat.

Gulp, his Adam’s apple rising and stopping, then quickly falling. That neat curve, red and moist, was so beautiful it made my insides start to boil furiously.

Ah, to confess the truth, by that time my insides were boiling. I was on the verge of going mad. Wishing I could be the one to break this person, wanting to unleash all the impulses I no longer wanted to endure through this man’s miserable appearance….