132.

Johannes lamented as if meant to be heard.

“Hm? How did you notice?”

His sister rolled over and lay on her stomach, propping her elbow on his thigh and resting her chin on her hand. Her attitude was annoyingly brazen. In this area, she was always one step ahead of him. Johannes let out a small chuckle.

In fact, it wasn’t as if he had said something uncertain. His sister was always like this. Despite the maids’ attempts to dissuade her, fearing she might pass her fever to the heir, his sister never moved to Winfrid’s chambers or slept alone in a separate bed.

He’s never sick anyway, she would say. When Johannes wasn’t around, it was fortunate if she didn’t throw a fit, wheezing that she couldn’t sleep.

“You’d have to be an idiot not to notice.”

“Hmm.”

“Are you really going to do this every time?”

Johannes clicked his tongue as he watched his sister roll her eyes nonchalantly. At the sound, her eyes widened.

“Look at you? It’s not your turn to subtly blame me right now.”

“Why?”

“You don’t seem to remember. When we were in mother’s womb.”

“Oh.”

“Back then, didn’t you suck up all my vitality?”

At that moment, Johannes was at a loss for words.

“What?”

His lips parted slightly without him realizing. Johannes wore an expression almost like that of a simpleton. In contrast, his sister, looking up at her brother’s bewildered face, wore a clear, serious expression.

“So, my being sick is because you stole my yang energy. That’s why I call for you, feeling regretful and precious about it.”

“…Huh?”

“So act more conscientiously, Johannes Valdemar.”

“……”

Johannes couldn’t respond for a long time, truly a long time.

The moment of exchanging silent glances lasted long. Johannes suddenly noticed the corners of his sister’s mouth curling up slightly. His sister asked.

“So… was it tasty?”

“……”

“Are you happy being strong all by yourself?”

“……”

“Hm? Why can’t you speak?”

Johannes slowly blinked. His relaxed lips closed tightly. Soon, as if feeling a tickle inside, he twitched the corners of his mouth following his sister’s expression, and finally, it burst into laughter.

“Ah, are you a monster? Sucking the life out of a living person. Making jokes while groaning in pain.”

He chided his sister in a tone still tinged with laughter. Having heard the assessment of being rare male-female twins so often it was etched in his ears, his sister’s statement sounded so plausible that he was genuinely surprised. However, the joy was as great as the depth of his relief. His sister’s talent for teasing others sometimes had strange aspects, but Johannes found even that quite amusing and likable.

His sister shrugged her shoulders. She seemed quietly satisfied with her brother’s reaction. Johannes grabbed both of his sister’s cheeks and brought his face close. Soon, he gently touched the tip of his nose to one corner of her mouth. The corner of his sister’s mouth, held silently, still carried the scent of herbs as she smiled slightly.

The bitter green scent of the meadow and the crisp smell of dried sunlight. It was the scent of illness. Johannes, as if biting into that scent, bared his teeth and made biting motions in the air near his sister’s mouth, tup, tup.

“I.”

“Mm.”

Once on the left corner of her mouth.

“Haven’t tasted it.”

“Mm.”

Once on the right corner of her mouth.

“Not knowing this taste is rather the regret of my life.”

“Ha.”

“And you tease me about it.”

And he swallowed.

“Are you a dog? What are you doing, really? It tickles.”

His sister squeezed her eyes shut and laughed, “Puheuheuh.” Dimples formed on her cheeks held in Johannes’ hands. Johannes’ eyes curved long like his sister’s.

The time they spent playing alone always felt like a fleeting moment. However, his sick sister seemed to run out of energy and soon went limp. Lying completely flat on top of Johannes, who had somehow ended up on his back, she held her hands together inside her chest. Johannes used his arm bent backwards as a pillow and waited for his sister to fall asleep. The silence between just the two of them was always like warm water, simply and only pleasant.

In the midst of this, suddenly.

His sister raised one finger like a hook, pointing to the crown of her head. It was a clear command even without words. Come on, stroke me now. Johannes, supporting his upper body with his elbow, looked down at his sister on his chest, bending his forehead slightly. He soon sighed with an exasperated expression.

“Wow… Lady Giovinetta.”

“Mm.”

“Really, you’ve been impertinent for more than just a day or two.”

“Hurry.”

Johannes laughed briefly. Alright, alright, he responded casually and complied with his sister’s wishes. While stroking, he also gathered and smoothed her hair. It was his habitual gesture, done without any particular thought.

Thanks to this gentle and stable habit, his sister’s messy golden hair was soon tidied, and in the end, it flowed down like a sunlit waterfall. Whether or not his sister knew the spectacle created by her own hair, she merely let out a shallow, contented sigh like a cat.

“…So who sucked the life out of whom?”

The neat eyes gazing at his sister’s parting held a comfortable smile. His sister didn’t even pretend to hear his joke. She seemed too lazy to even make a sound in her throat. Is this what it feels like to raise a single, noble lily that knows no hardship? If his sister’s arrogance was welcome, someone might criticize him for being overly indulgent. Johannes found even that self-deprecation enjoyable.

Suddenly, two slender arms wrapped around Johannes’ upper body. Johannes responded by grabbing the inside of his sister’s armpits, pulling her up and embracing her more securely than before. The siblings’ legs intertwined. Entwining every part of their bodies that could be entwined, they were like a single vine. There was not the slightest hesitation in such intimate contact. Johannes felt his sister’s body temperature permeating his entire body and thought. This must be why his sister seeks him out whenever she’s ill.

The supreme sense of unity where each is the other’s place, where no one else can intrude.

“…I can hear your heartbeat, Johan.”

“……”

“It goes thump-thump… thump-thump…”

His sister murmured softly. She was rubbing her cheek, damp and hot with sweat, against his chest. Johannes didn’t respond. He merely stiffened his body so that his sister could listen more closely. At times like this, his sister was not like a plant but like a young animal, he thought, and stroked her head again with a mind to cherish every part of her from head to toe. More.

Snuggle closer.

“It feels good….”

With that whisper, almost like talking to herself, his sister closed her eyes. And… she fell asleep as if by magic.

Johannes was lost in savoring his sister’s clinginess and couldn’t respond for a while. Slowly, his stomach was tightening again. That sensation was creeping up his esophagus, pressing against the back of his throat.

“…That’s good.”

Even though he belatedly offered an appropriate comment, there was no one to hear it. His sister’s breathing was already deep. As he gradually quieted his breath to match hers, his eyes began to close as well.

Before falling asleep.

Maintaining his hazy consciousness, he felt his own heartbeat that his sister had listened to with pleasure. It was a pulsation he wouldn’t normally hear himself. The beats that jumped out from his throbbing heart, crossed the damp barriers of wet organs, breastbone, and skin, collided with his sister’s delicate cheek, and only then resonated back to him were unfamiliar and dreamlike. And red.

To the young Johannes, it was the evidence of his own ‘living’ that he would never have felt if not for his sister, and thus rightfully the color of hot blood. Thanks to you, I hear my own heartbeat.

And so, the whims of his sick sister in bed particularly overwhelmed him. Perhaps it was the first symptom of the illness he was suffering from. And the cause of that illness might have been the sensation of yearning for the inaccessibility of his sister, who looked mysterious with her strange face between a flower seeking to wet its stem and an animal soaked in the rainy season.

The bitter scent of medicinal herbs proving his sister’s pliant bones. Flushed cheeks. Meanwhile, her blue eyes that sometimes gazed at him steadily, sometimes ignored him, and sometimes burst open like blooming summer, shook and awakened his senses that had already died once, and thus he became aware of his own rebirth, and so, he began to suffer from this illness.

Sometimes he longed. Like someone who had once lost everything in defeat, though he had never lost anything.

Even with her by his side like one body, he sometimes yearned desperately. For his sister who would declare with triumphant lips, “That child is mine.” But on days when she was ill, for his sister’s ecstatic gestures that seemed to whisper, “In reality, it is I who belong to you.” For that affectionately clinging heat. For her illness.

“If you could be sick a little more often….”

“……”

“I think I would be happier than ever.”

In the end, it was always Johannes’ solar plexus that was cut last. Swallowing the nameless pain as if savoring it, it clung warmly even to his cold tongue. Ecstasy. There was no reason to hide it, but he had never spoken it aloud, a heartless ecstasy.

That day.

Johannes fell into a deep sleep, warming his skin with his sister’s feverish body temperature. Slightly intoxicated by the ecstatic loneliness that was hard to distinguish between satiety and hunger. Why do you seem to sleep alone even when we share a bed? Why do I always feel this way? As he counted each eyelash of his sister sleeping quietly in his arms. And this must surely be… entirely.

A memory of ‘Johannes himself’.

Without a doubt.