143.

10. Human Vision

Johannes… No.

‘That thing’.

It had been staring at the target with an arrow nocked for several minutes already. Just as the boys of House Valdemar standing around were about to start murmuring impatiently.

“Elder brother.”

The one who spoke with a somewhat puzzled look was Winfrid. However, ‘that thing’ did not respond. Just trapped in the shell of being the eldest son of Valdemar. Seemingly open to the outside but in reality with eyes closed inward, it was absorbed only in examining the scene forming in its mind. Memories were like a tsunami. Giovinetta, and. It held that name it could not yet utter in its mouth. Giovinetta.

On some day.

A blonde woman resembling ‘you’ seems to have asked me. Why do I hate her so much? What was her sin…? Why did her life have to be this miserable? That woman who cried out bitterly with anger overflowing, she was the Duke’s consort. Who gave birth to you from her womb, and considered you her daughter. In other words, she was your descendant.

Though the memory is not clear, if I were to answer that woman’s question now, Giovinetta. Her sin is her bloodline. Not that woman, but you Ducomeng siblings.

Because you were the cursed bastards to me.

Needless to say that worthless son of a bitch Xavier, you were an ungrateful woman who didn’t know your place, so my indescribable antipathy is especially stronger. No, it seems stronger. Ah, damn woman. A woman who didn’t know how high the sky was, couldn’t appreciate what she had, and only slowly simmered the abyss deeply hidden under that fair face…. To me. To me…. Only harsh to me…. Woman. You.

…Or not?

“Bro… Brother.”

I don’t know. I don’t understand the origin of this boiling emotion. Memory. Memo…ry is, patchy… Ah, damn it. I. You. You… I need to find… Giovinetta. You know. The Duke’s consort, that woman, the wishes she begged of me are constricting my entire body, my path forward, like an unbreakable chain.

“Give me a son…”

“Give me a son with a human-like face…”

“Let my bloodline inherit the Duke title of Gustavus…”

I feel it, the sensation of that chain binding me. Now only scattered old events sprout like weeds in a wasteland. Because of this, only an empty stomach burns like fire. Damn. Ah, damn… From the bottom… I want to scrape it all out, shed it all like a snake…

When was it? When on earth was it? You, how old were you then. Your side profile that was just starting to subtly reveal a womanly atmosphere like a lily waiting to bloom, now, flickers before my eyes. A deer-like melancholy neckline with slender limbs, and a slim waist like a reed. This you must have been thirteen or fourteen.

Giovinetta. How old was I when I was captured in your fortress that was like an anthill of vermin? Were we the same age? I seem to have been… older. No, was I really captured? I don’t… know. I can’t get a grip. My mind… my vision is reeling. Everything is black like vomited filth…

……

……

…Yes, I entered of my own accord.

Though my mother suffering from tuberculosis finally coughed up blood and my young sisters were starving to the point of digging up grass roots or even boiling tree bark to eat, my father was more deeply immersed in his untimely heretical practices, so I secretly went out to beg on their behalf, and that’s when ‘they’ approached me.

Suggesting I try to become a knight while I’m at it. Saying the pay wouldn’t be too bad. The one who persuaded me with a subtle look was one of your brother’s companions. Finally thinking I might get to handle some money, I ended up nodding my head, which was the start of my captive yet not captive period.

Despite the whole family being on the brink of starvation after already going without food for over a week, my father raged furiously that I was entering a den of ignorant barbarians of my own will, while my mother looked as gloomy as deep water. And leaving behind my young sisters clinging to my waist in tears. I entered your dwelling just like that.

The day I left.

For the first time ever, I think I yelled at my father. That the whole family would end up eating books and having an early funeral while he tried to maintain his pride. If seeing that sight now would make him feel better. Father! Father….

I’m sorry, but I’d rather be a knight who kills people.

My voice that had uttered those words lowly while gritting my teeth now buzzes in my ears…. Even the sobbing of my sisters who ran after me to the edge of the forest, saying they’d wait, they’d wait. Could this just be tinnitus? This is….

“Johannes… Brother.”

“……”

So noisy….

Shut up. Shut… up…. Damn it. Someone is calling that name of my ‘shell’ again….

…I crossed over the castle walls again after many years, which I had to turn my back on before I was even five years old, as if being driven out.

Following my new companions, when I first set foot in the wooden fortress, I was assigned the shabbiest bed in the shared quarters. Fortunately, without having to wait any longer, I was able to join my companions’ knight training the very next day. On the way to the training grounds, the interior of the fortress I witnessed left a somewhat strange impression, and I vaguely remember awkwardly faltering and being oddly flustered despite my naivety.

Consisting of one main tower and two spires, it was a dilapidated fortress that would barely catch the corners if thrown into the parade ground of Gustavus Fortress. How many families shared that cramped defensive facility? It was a hodgepodge of the continental common language and all sorts of local dialects. You’d sooner believe it was a tavern or inn.

That place. From what I observed, there didn’t seem to be much of a hierarchy between the families either. When passing through the main hall or corridors, I often saw knights with different accents stopping to chat with each other.

The military outfit, made of chain rather than plate and with leather added to the joints, looked quite shabby even to a novice’s eyes. So rather than knights, they looked like a group of wandering warriors from declining families gathered in that narrow fortress like a bunch of beggars….

But I seem to have quickly grown accustomed to that appearance.

Somehow it had a worn-out feel but was a step up from my previous situation, and though still lacking, I could fill my empty stomach, and by desperately securing a messenger I could even send some food and medicine to my family, so I had to seize this miraculous opportunity that had come my way.

I was foolish.

At first, I didn’t realize. Far from being accepted as a knight aspirant, I was merely the first spoils of war for rookie companions who had just barely earned warrior status and were starting to develop calluses on their soft hands. Spoils of war. Spoils… of war casually captured without any prior plans during an outing. Spoils of war….

I sometimes doubted their intentions. To put it bluntly, the way my companions treated me could hardly be called camaraderie. The boys who would approach me seemingly intimately but then use that friendliness as an excuse to test me with all sorts of secret methods confused me.

Even then, however, there was never a day when I antagonized my companions first. If anything, I blamed myself for doubting them. It’s not that I had some virtuous nature that kept me from harboring ill feelings. You know too. I’m not that upright a person. It’s just that I hadn’t done anything wrong, so surely these companions wouldn’t treat me like this for the purpose of some kind of revenge, I thought. Though it may seem a bit excessive, it’s probably just mischievous pranks. This is probably what companions are like, I just didn’t know, I thought.

Right?

I smiled naively.

Aren’t they the kind people who someday will arrange an opportunity for me, the son of an apostate, to have an investiture ceremony? There’s much to be grateful for in everything. Let’s be thankful and always do my best. Then someday I’ll be able to return to my sick and starving family and finally give them stability. My pitiful family who only have their very inadequate eldest son to rely on.

Even though there were not a few days when my heart was dubiously burdensome like that, until then I was a halfwit who didn’t know that people don’t need any special reason to hate or toy with other people, and besides, I had a vague sense of desperation that if I lost this opportunity it would be over, so I just quietly smiled.

All this was in the days when I had long been banished for my father being an apostate, so I was oblivious to human affairs inside the castle walls. Thus, I was a plaything who didn’t even know how ugly I was, licking others’ feet with useless and foolish hope, and that pathetic mistake was the beginning of my gloomy boyhood. Then.

For some… reason…

“Brother…?”

One day when I finally realized my situation, I impulsively ran out of the shared quarters, unable to bear it any longer, clutching my unbearable feelings. I ran a…way. It seems I ran away. Two… times? Three times? Five times? How many times. But each time I was caught. No, I must have been caught. So in the end I must have spent that wretched time there.

“Look how he crawls when we coddle him. This lowly apostate bastard.”

After my first escape attempt, my companions’ eyes revealed their true colors when dealing with me. Cold stares. Mockery. Contempt. Even a hunchbacked jester would receive better treatment than this, I seem to have thought fleetingly while clutching my kicked stomach. I think the back of my head was cracked open while being beaten by the hands of the children I had believed to be companions in one corner of the training grounds.

They no longer seemed to have any reservations. As if playing a long game, those eyes were more vivid than usual. How absorbed they were in the day and night ‘apostate hunt’. I was deeply perplexed by the effort they put into taking turns setting night watch to monitor me every night.

How many weeks has it been already?

One day I counted the days while lying face down on the dirt floor. I could no longer send food outside the castle walls, and that was more painful than anything. My mother and sisters may have already died. All because I failed to do well. When that thought occurred to me, I think my throat choked up. I’m not sure. The memories of that time are dark. Still.

Only after numerous escape attempts ended in failure, I fell into the hands of a guy I had never even exchanged names with. That bastard. Xavier, who had returned to the relatively stable southern fortress a few years ago after moving around the battlefields of the central west to serve his father. Right…. The eldest son of the Ducomeng family.

Your elder brother.

With a rope around my neck, as I lay face down weakly about to pass out, Xavier’s eyes as he declared he would ‘raise me as a dog to gift to his sister’ come to mind.