Lady Devil - Chapter 124

#124

In fact, he opened his eyes without any memory. Moreover, for a few years after the day he first opened his eyes, he simply lay in his cradle without any particular awareness. His vision was like a blister. His focus, blocked by a transparent membrane, never settled on distant objects, and things outside his focus were always blurred like halos of light. And of all people, it was his sister who monopolized the narrow field of vision. Giovinetta Isolde Yuricates Valdemar. There were no exceptions.

Because the siblings were as close as one body, he couldn’t see his sister’s whole figure. He only saw the fine hairs on her white cheeks glistening in the transparent spring sunlight. The light-colored hair below her ears often scattered like feathers, and her soft eyelids would quietly settle, enveloping her glass bead-like eyes.

His sister remained in his newly formed mind like a few panels of a painting. It was more of a landscape than a portrait, more of an impression than a memory. An occasional golden forest hiding a pond. He, who didn’t even know what beauty was without anything to compare it to, simply found his sister dazzling.

He learned about humans through his sister, who was blindingly dazzling to his eyes. He grew up imitating his sister, the only beautiful human figure by his side. He instinctively mimicked her every small gesture, every subtle expression. When his sister laughed, he laughed along, and when she cried, his heart ached. Until his head was more firmly set, he thought this was only natural.

And unfortunately, unexpected warmth began to pour over him, who had only been true to his instincts. His sister, unaware that her twin brother was actually just a blank slate imitating her, loved him as if caring for her own body.

“Johannes, my Johannes.”

His sister clung to her fake relative like a leech. From her perspective, he was always a perfectly matching brother, so she couldn’t help but love him. And Johannes gradually realized that the attention and warmth his sister poured on him felt quite good.

Beasts are tamed by gentle hands. The eyes of the devil wearing a human face began to change. Now he was no different from a domesticated animal warmed by his sister’s touch. As Johannes’s interest in his sister deepened, the siblings’ affection became extraordinary.

It didn’t raise concerns from those around them. Until the siblings were three or four years old, those unaware of the situation simply saw them as unusually close siblings. From some point on, Johannes’s gaze towards his fake sister became unusual, but even then, only a very few worried about the siblings’ relationship.

From the start, it was already unusual that fraternal twins looked so alike. People assumed there must be something only the two of them knew, viewing it as one of the mysteries not yet illuminated by civilization. Moreover, their cold father and deranged mother were not the type to harbor worries about their children.

The predestined misfortune continued to take root in the midst of indifferent power. The situation remained unchanged even after the siblings were well past six years old. It was a time of false peace, when everything was secretly rotting from the inside, unbeknownst to anyone.

Then, at the beginning of summer.

The children’s room, usually noisy with playmates’ commotion, was unusually quiet that day. Johannes felt the moisture of the drizzling rain outside on his cheeks as he lay his head next to his sister. It was exactly the third day since his sister had taken to bed with an unseasonable fever.

The head servant wanted to move his sister to Winfrid’s sickroom, but Griselda strongly objected, saying it might spread the disease to the frail child. In the end, his sister’s nursing took place in the children’s room.

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