133.

“That bastard just won’t die…!”

The child’s room after bandits had ransacked it. Only the two brothers remained.

Johannes sat on the floor in a daze.

“Elder brother… Elder brother, what’s going on…”

The skeletal Winfrid clung to one of his shoulders, curling up on the floor as well. The young brother, not understanding the situation, shed tears simply because his elder brother looked pitiful.

However, unfortunately, such affectionate crying didn’t even reach the elder brother’s ears. Having been struck by three consecutive bolts from the blue, Johannes’ mind had finally emptied, scattered like dust. His eyes were open, but inside there was not a trace of will.

“…I’m sorry I’m late.”

Griselda had returned.

It was also Griselda who comforted the sobbing Winfrid and carried him to his own room. Returning shortly after, she sat the disoriented Johannes in a long armchair and tidied his disheveled clothes.

Johannes bent this way and that as the nanny lifted and lowered his clothes. He stared blankly at the woman crouched before him with lifeless pupils. Though clearly not in a state to discern reason, he still captured the strange emotion faintly etched on Griselda’s weathered face.

The woman who usually didn’t hide her bored expression and found everything except Winfrid tiresome, seemed unusually flustered as she tried to maintain a stern face that day.

Griselda seemed almost guilty. The tips of her fingers even trembled slightly as she adjusted Johannes’ collar. However, Johannes couldn’t draw any inferences from the strange scene his pupils had captured. Just an empty, completely empty mind.

“Mother… seems to be confining Isolde.”

He muttered to himself.

“Yes. That’s what she ordered… Though she didn’t specify for how long.”

Griselda responded to his monologue. But her voice only struck Johannes’ eardrums and went no further. He spoke to himself again.

“…Why Isolde?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mother said it was my sin.”

“……”

“Then why, not me… but her.”

“Well, I don’t know the details…”

Griselda trailed off, not realizing her answer was unnecessary. Johannes’ eyelashes trembled, glistening with light. Then they squeezed shut.

It felt as if opening his eyes would spill tears from their corners. His numbed reason or sensation belatedly began to fill his head. But his mind still wasn’t functioning properly, unable to clearly organize even simple doubts. In fact, he wasn’t in a state to doubt or blame anything. He couldn’t classify or arrange the series of events that had occurred during that day. Such was the shock.

Suddenly, Griselda called out to him in a recitative tone.

“…You. What have you done this time?”

A strangely reproachful voice. Pale and hot. But Johannes couldn’t answer.

Today. He had kissed his sister. The sensation felt like it shattered his heart.

Today. He was struck in the heart again by the bandit’s curses bordering on madness. His mother’s hands had strangled his neck. Just today. His right hand had turned into a weapon against his head. And once again, his head, throat, and entire body were struck by indescribable and even humiliating hallucinations. How many times had disasters too overwhelming to accept battered him in the past half day? Moreover, his mind had blacked out completely after dying and reviving who knows how many times without realizing.

Johannes unconsciously stood up. His gait was unsteady, as if he might collapse at any moment. It wasn’t an action taken after making a clear plan or being struck by some impulse. Just a sense of duty deeply ingrained in his bones that he must function somehow.

“Where are you going?”

“The women’s quarters.”

Johannes barely managed to answer.

“For what purpose?”

“To ask… for forgiveness. I must, for Isolde…”

“No. It’s not the right time.”

Griselda, who had been following Johannes with her gaze, finally stood up abruptly and blocked his path. Meeting the gaze of the boy who looked up startled by her sudden movement, the nanny shook her head briefly.

“I’ve served the duchess for a long time, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen her so enraged. Perhaps her old illness has relapsed.”

“……”

“So give it five days. No, about ten days. Until she regains stability or at least calms her anger. Don’t worry too much in the meantime. No matter how angry, what parent can truly overcome their child? Especially you, whom she… obtained in such a way…”

…Surely not.

The last words she dropped along with her gaze seemed like a whisper to herself. It was barely audible. After a moment of silence, Griselda’s gaze, having regained her composure, sought out Johannes again.

“…She’ll likely rescind the order soon.”

“……”

“Anyway, you understand, right? Now is not the time. Watch how things unfold and visit her when she seems to have stabilized a bit.”

Johannes couldn’t answer fully. His throat just felt numb, and he slid back into the chair, his aimless gaze drifting left and right. And he could no longer consider outside matters. Griselda also didn’t seem to expect an answer. She neither asked questions nor made small talk.

“Go to bed early tonight. It’ll be better that way.”

Griselda recommended an early bedtime before leaving. She didn’t even offer customary words of comfort like “You must have been shocked” or express worry. Rather, she left hastily as if taking care of herself.

In the end, Johannes was left alone in the silent room. Evening approached like a truly breathless silence.

Griselda and a few maids entered again and changed the clothes of Johannes, who had been sitting motionless in one spot. The lukewarm residual heat touching his bare feet in unseasonable sleepwear felt entirely embarrassing and unpleasant. Even the fierce heat that had prevailed throughout the day seemed to have its power broken by the duchess’s outburst.

Johannes went to bed early. His eyes were much clearer than before, but he couldn’t fall asleep easily. Perhaps it was because the canopy of the four-poster bed that always caught his eye when trying to sleep looked unfamiliar today.

No. The unfamiliar thing was the situation. It was unprecedented for the Valdemar siblings to sleep in separate spaces. He lay awake all night. After hours of just staring blankly at the distant ceiling, dawn broke mercilessly. He turned his head to gaze at the pillow half-soaked in the first streak of dark blue daybreak. No. No.

Not the pillow, but the space.

The traces of the person who would have filled that place normally. Isolde.

“Just how far into the abyss do you intend to push me before you’re satisfied…! You accursed, demonic parasite…!”

Belatedly but fiercely, his body began to tremble.

“Ah, ugh… ugh.”

Johannes clawed at his chest, panting like a dog. At this moment, he shuddered anew at the concrete sensation of being alive. It was the aftermath of dying several times in one day. Though he hadn’t been aware of those deaths himself, he couldn’t help but feel the horror of those death throes even after regenerating.

With a body that had never known illness, he was finally realizing the pain, acutely aware that he was made of blood and bone and flesh, pulsing and throbbing. That realization was quite different from the sensation of regeneration he had received from his sister. It was a wave that forcefully invaded his insides. His stomach churned completely.

He hugged his convulsively shaking upper body as if to compose himself. He forcibly lowered his eyelids, almost pushing his eyeballs in.

After becoming aware of his body, what followed was, of all things, memory.

The red curses spewed by the woman who was his mother, and the blood that flowed from his wrist devoured by her weapon-like hands. And the strong sensation of the rope that had strangled his neck was now rushing to his eyes and ears like an earthquake. He could hardly believe those red memories.

What on earth were they? The things I witnessed.

Though everything was difficult to accept properly, what he doubted most was his hand that had shone like bronze. If only it had been a hallucination. If only it had been the result of his confused mind playing tricks on him. No. It must have been a hallucination. That. At least that. The reason in his head had all shriveled into a single black dot, leaving no other way to understand it.

Johannes instinctively recalled the sensation of his sister. His sister lying down with him. His sister laughing. His sister clinging to him. That body heat. If asked to describe it, he felt he could depict even a momentary sigh, a single glance cast far out the window, so vivid was that memory that seemed to nail his limbs to reality. Yes. That’s what memories were supposed to be like. That kind of…

…That kind.

***

“Bark, Idris.”

“……”

“What are you doing? Hurry up.”

“……”

“Oh my… Don’t tell me you’re going to embarrass me in front of my ‘sister’ too?”

Johannes sat up with a stifled scream. Then he looked around frantically, exhaling rough breaths as if vomiting. Familiar objects. Familiar scenery. The stone bedroom where the daytime heat had chillingly dissipated. He was certainly sitting on the bed in Gustavus Fortress. It seems today’s nightmare has ended with this. Somehow, he couldn’t believe the fact that he had woken up.

Fifteen days had passed uselessly since his sister was confined.

For fourteen consecutive nights, Johannes had fallen asleep feeling like he was slowly suffocating. And every night, falling asleep as if about to die. Every night. Every night. Without a single day’s exception, every night. He was plagued by the same nightmare. Every time. Every time. He faced Xavier. Xavier. The older boy who had looked exactly like himself in the hallucination he had seen on that cruel afternoon when his sister was confined. In the end, this marked exactly the 15th time he had reunited with him.

In the nightmare… what had that guy done again?