#130

[Xavier!]

The black-haired boy who seemed to be the leader turned to look at the boy who resembled Johannes. The boy called Xavier grumbled with an embarrassed smile.

[Sorry, I’m a bit late. My sister has been feverish since early morning…. But what are you all doing now?] [That one, it’s the bastard I told you about before.]

The black-haired one grinned and nodded towards the tied-up Johannes.

[That bastard?] [Kretzman’s son.] [Oh?] [We caught him wandering near the slaughterhouse and brought him back. We were lucky. I thought we had completely lost him.]

Xavier’s distinctive wall-eyes slowly scanned Johannes, hands thrust into his waist pockets. That boy who resembled Johannes. At that time, Johannes, who was crossing the threshold of death every second, did not realize it, but due to his tall stature and upright posture, despite his comfortable impression, his presence was particularly vivid among the other children. Like a sun fallen to earth.

That sun, Xavier, strode over to under the tree. Soon he drew a dagger from his waist and whispered like pouring water against Johannes’s knee, which was frantically flailing in mid-air before him.

[I simply cannot understand. Why bother escaping and inviting trouble…. If you had the strength to run away, you should have slit the throat of the one who caught you first. If you didn’t have the confidence to kill, you should have first built up the strength to finish off those vermin. Not even having that much resolve…. Weak bastard….]

Despite the gentle tone, it was an insult that didn’t even try to hide the contempt directed at everyone, but Xavier was nonchalant. It was a monologue that even Johannes right next to him couldn’t fully hear. Let alone the onlookers forming a circle at a distance.

Whether Johannes writhed like a trapped animal or not, Xavier shook his head with a faint sigh and casually raised his hand to cut through the middle of the rope. Surprised exclamations of “Why is he doing that?” leaked out from here and there.

The rope around his neck unraveled with a whooshing sound. At the same time, Johannes tumbled to the ground, squirming and coughing out several painful breaths. His lungs were not just sore but burning hot. His crushed fingers felt like they were on fire. Moreover, as soon as his breath cleared, his vision was turning black again. That sensation was similar to losing consciousness while having his neck pressed by the bandit’s grasp.

The sole of a soft leather shoe firmly pressed against one of Johannes’s cheeks as he failed to come to his senses. His tender cheek was pushed into the dirt ground. The gazes of the two boys met up and down.

Johannes groaned long and painfully. Even while being stepped on, he couldn’t take his uncontrollably shaking gaze off Xavier. No matter how he looked at the figure standing before him, it was his older self.

[You, what’s your name?]

Xavier smiled with a friendly eye-smile while slapping the cheek he was stepping on playfully. There wasn’t a trace of oiliness in those eyes that formed a refreshing curve. It was as if he had casually thrown a joke to an old friend, expecting an immediate retaliation. A calm gaze with a hint of expectation.

[Hm? Why can’t you answer? Surely being Kretzman’s son isn’t the entirety of your name.] […..] [Do you perhaps not have a name?] […..] [Even the dog my sister raised had a name. Surely you’re not worse than a dog, without even a name?]

Xavier smiled bitterly. Johannes had no intention of answering. This humiliating situation, the pain, and the appearance of Xavier standing before him were so unbelievable that his mind was boiling black. No, rather, with each labored breath, his consciousness was flickering in and out as if falling asleep momentarily, making it difficult to even distinguish things. It felt like being stuck in a swamp with only his nose barely above water. But then….

[…Idris.]

His ‘body’ answered first. It was a hoarse voice he had never heard before. Johannes felt like he was suffocating again at the sense of disconnection between his mind and body.

[…Hmm.]

Xavier, seemingly satisfied, still wore a faintly smiling expression. Now it looked like a gentle smile, reminiscent of a sunset. The way his smile constantly changed color while never losing its hint of amusement was just like sunlight. Xavier rolled Johannes’s cheek back and forth with his toe, staring at him as if examining him, and continued quietly.

[I thought the son of an apostate would surely be cursed with a monstrous appearance, but that’s not the case. It’s surprising how clean you look. If we remove the bruises and swelling, my sister might even be pleased…. Ah, but you don’t know her. She’s a pretty girl. But she’s a bit lascivious and enjoys looking at handsome boys…. She’s utterly incorrigible. A girl who was never meant for heaven in the first place….] […..] [Well, if your father’s nonsense is correct, we’ll never reach heaven even after death, but will wander for ages before treading this hellish earth of survival of the fittest again. Didn’t he say it’s a hundred, no, a thousand times better to be reborn as the king of hell, immortal, than to live and die as a creature of hell? It sounds good, but do you perhaps believe that too?] […..] [Why no answer again?] […..] [Are you also an apostate, unable to dare say no? My, my…. It’s amusing. An apostate hesitating to betray?] […..] [How frustrating. This is, no response, no manners…. Seeing as you don’t seem to understand human speech at all, you must indeed be on the same level as a dog. If that’s the case, I should train you until the day of my appointment and then gift you to my sister. A letter from mother arrived this morning, saying the dog my sister had been raising tenderly since childhood was kicked by a horse’s hoof and died. Poor thing. With my long absence and now losing her beloved dog, she must have been greatly distressed since morning…. Her fever shows no signs of going down.]

The expression of sighing deeply, with the smile gone for the first time today, was unmistakably that of a sibling worried about their own blood. Xavier turned his shoulder towards the leader boy while keeping his foot on Johannes’s cheek, and asked in a plain tone if it would be alright to take this fellow for himself.

Permission was granted easily. Xavier looked down at Johannes again. By then, Johannes’s vision had been completely consumed by darkness. Only Xavier’s final words slithered into his eardrum, dry like a snake shedding its skin.

[A dog to be gifted to a woman must, by all means, know how to properly control its excrement and urine, not soiling just anywhere. What if it accidentally dirties the hem of a fine skirt?] […..] [So, shall we start with leash and toilet training…?]

And then light suddenly returned to Johannes’s pupils.

“…Aagh!”

The bandit who let out a scream was instantly thrown off. Feeling his neck being released, Johannes rolled over to his side and desperately gulped in air. From deep in his throat came involuntary sounds of choking and coughing. With each cough, his consciousness that had drifted so far away seemed to spark like a flame.

Johannes blinked his wet eyelids several times in a state of utter confusion. The bright summer sunlight of midday could be felt on his earlobes. Now it was soft wool brushing against his cheek, not the dirt ground. He was suddenly back in the children’s room.

Good heavens. Even a foreigner suddenly dropped in a foreign land overnight would be less confused than this. If only there had been an inaudible impact sound of “thud” as he was thrown into the children’s room, it might have been easier to accept this abrupt change.

“You… you devil!”

The bandit, whose entire wrist was deeply scratched by Johannes’s nails, grabbed his own trembling forearm and screamed. Dark red streaks of blood were flowing down, staining the bandit’s collar red.

Meanwhile, Johannes, who had instinctively grabbed his own neck, caught a glimpse of the bandit’s forearm and was even more startled. He had no memory of scratching his mother’s wrist. His gaze jerked towards his own hand, and the hand rose to the side of his face that was lying down. Ah.

He saw the sight of a hand that could hardly be called that of a human child, scattering like dust.

Every joint of his fingers was protruding, with large hands seeming to be stuck onto thin wrists, trembling half-curled. The long, inward-curving black nails were believable even if called the talons of a bird of prey. They looked more like some kind of trap or hook. And the skin, glossy like tanned leather, was a fierce bronze color even in the dim light of the children’s room. It was the bronze-colored skin peeling off and fluttering away like ash.

What… what is this?

He was too shocked to even feel the bandit’s weight mounting him again. In that state of shock, his neck was strangled once more.

“Mother.”

“Why…! Why won’t you die…!”

“Mother, w-wait…”

“I can’t stand it until there’s dirt in these eyes, so die…! Please, please! Die!”

“…Goodness! My lady!”

And then Griselda burst into the children’s room like a scream. She immediately pounced on the bandit. The bandit, who was desperately clutching her son’s neck, and the wet nurse became entangled like one mass and rolled around almost like wrestling.

“Brother…?”

A faint, trembling voice leaked out from under the quilt. Winfrid, who had been deeply affected by the medicine, had finally managed to open his eyes. Johannes lay there without hearing his younger brother’s voice. He was breathing heavily. His mother’s grasp, the inexplicable rope, had scorched his neck red. His entire body was shaking like an aspen tree.

“Brother. What’s all this commotion? Are you alright?”

Winfrid, who had come down at some point, peered at him nervously with a pale face. Johannes couldn’t possibly answer. His mother who had strangled him. The strange yet familiar face. The bird of prey-like hands. And… his sister who had been confined to the women’s quarters after kissing him. He couldn’t decide where to focus his shock. The bandit shouted as she was dragged out of the children’s room.

“That bastard won’t die… No matter how much I kill him, he won’t die…!”

And so it was a long day.

It was a terrible, long, long day for all four people gathered in the children’s room.