145.

“Jo… hannes, brother!”

“……”

Ah… damn it….

Damn it….

“…Hey. …Why are you like this?”

“……”

“Why can’t you answer?”

“Um….”

“Doesn’t it look strange to you? It’s like he’s dead with his eyes open….”

“Well….”

“Does he often…? Was he always like this?”

“T-that, no. I, well, that is, I don’t…. I dare not say….”

“What do you guys even know…?”

“…I’m sorry….”

“……”

“……”

“Brother. What happened…. Bro….”

“……”

“…ther….”

…The seasons changed frequently.

From the spring that ended in an instant to the scorching southern summer that seemed capable of killing people. To the rainy season when downpours day and night filled the iron cage floor with muddy water. To winter when my skin, soaked by rainwater, was cut by the cold wind and froze, cracking open. And then… again. Once more.

To spring when wild flowers bloomed profusely, pushing through the iron bars.

Around that time, the days when there wasn’t a spot on my body without bruises, making me doubt if my skin’s true color wasn’t dark red, also became less frequent. I was entirely, down to every hair, within Javier’s grasp.

With each repeated order and submission, there was an iron bar.

Every time I was mocked as the laughingstock of the entire fortress, it grew, reaching dozens, piercing through from the top of my head to my legs, and I had long forgotten about my family’s circumstances. However, I lost both the courage to die and the heart to endure simultaneously. With my reason skewered and segmented by the bars, what grand contemplation could I engage in? The breath coming in and out was the entirety of my existence.

I almost forgot how to speak, having no occasion for conversation other than imitating barking, and I learned to tear apart the fur of dead animals with my bare hands and mouth, eating the flesh before it rotted. My unclean naked body was blistered and diseased from the intestinal walls, making it difficult to distinguish whether I was human or beast. Ah, so perhaps it was a time when I was a perfect dog, both in appearance and inside.

With a sense of helplessness deeply ingrained in my bones as if it were my nature. Living each day erasing myself out of habit. At that time, of all times…. Giovinetta.

I met you like a divine punishment.

“Even when given a precious gift, you don’t smile once.”

“……”

“Ah, ah…. Making your brother feel bad.”

Javier, who had my leash wrapped around his hand, seemed to laugh insipidly. It was the ration station on the first floor of the west tower. Probably in the midst of the lingering uproar after the evening feast, we had set up camp in a corner of the ration station to avoid the noise. That’s how it seemed. This part isn’t clear. Just. I….

“Hey, you. Yes, you there…. You, go to our nanny and tell her I’m looking for her….”

“You mean Griselda… ma’am?”

“Yes. Are you stupid? Why are you asking again? Our nanny… is there anyone else besides her?”

Is that girl a flower of barbarism?

Is she the young lady of beggar-like warriors?

Your appearance, sitting slouched on a crude wooden stool with a sheepskin matted with dry, dusty earth, looked exactly like that. You seemed like a small queen dominating the corner of the shabby ration station.

You, who looked about thirteen, carelessly received my leash that Javier handed over. You leaned crookedly against the filthy throne of the southern fortress, which was truly rags, a mess, letting your long golden hair flow like a river, pretending to listen to your brother’s affected complaints while nibbling at your fingernails or occasionally scratching the ground with one heel.

Your delicate features were embedded in your small, white face like lifeless jewels, with an expression of utter boredom and tedium. You seemed to still be immersed in the blue of that lake you said you had visited.

As if you never wanted to surface from this water again.

“If you don’t rejoice, there’s no point in all this effort.”

“……”

“Hmm. Perhaps you think this fellow lacks talent?”

“……”

You didn’t respond to Javier’s joking reproach. It was unclear if you were even breathing properly. Apart from the minimal movements that seemed to be an attempt to alleviate your boredom, you showed no signs of life, not seeming particularly like a mortal of this world. In this barbaric land strewn with war, death, famine, and plague, you were like a solitary, noble divinity….

It felt as if my eyes and ears had been devoured by thunder and lightning. The world except for you seemed to have been banished beyond a black wall in an instant. I couldn’t see anything but you. How could someone like this be in front of me… I. Ah, I, prostrated naked and filthy before you… A cripple who had been broken down so much that I had eventually torn off my own legs. A coward who had voluntarily erased even the way to stand up. I buried my face in the ground.

I felt unbearably disgusted. I had never felt so disgusted with myself, with myself who had chosen to give up using family as an excuse, before or since.

“Then shall I show you the results?”

Javier seemed to look down at me. At that time, I was lying face down on the ground, almost burying my nose in it, as cowards always do at the end, avoiding your gaze. That subservient posture, as if dead, was one where I could no longer properly see even the tip of your feet, let alone your gaze, but….

“Let’s go out, Giovinetta.”

“……”

“I believe if you handle it yourself, you’ll change your mind.”

At that moment.

A fire ignited in my long-shattered reason. You want me to stand before that child in this state? A flash crossed my vision. It’s shameful. I felt like my soul would escape. No, I rather wished for my soul to escape. I wish. The self that I could have sworn I had completely abandoned came back to life like a phoenix, rushing up from the tips of my bare toes, soon burning red hot all the way to my forehead, and that sensation is another shame. My whole body trembles uncontrollably at this unbearable double torment. The dirt I had unknowingly grasped in my hands crumbles. I want to tear apart this pathetic nakedness.

A bastard who didn’t endure. A bastard who didn’t persevere. And thus, in the end, a supreme cripple who never stood up again, that’s me. Ah, this empty space between my thighs, even the genitals that will be helplessly exposed before you are evidence of the incompetent and cowardly person I am.

As a man. I want to hide. I want to hide. Cowardly bastard. I, myself…. Ah, it’s disgusting. Nausea rises wildly in my throat, ha. Ah, ugh…. It’s disgusting. Dis…. The act of recalling the moment I shared the same space with you, that act is so disgusting that I, I, can’t bear it like this…. Giovinetta. You. You.

Where are you now.

“Brother!”

Johannes opened his eyes with a start.

The bowstring that had been taut with an arrow nocked until then broke with a sharp rupturing sound, as if it could no longer endure. The arrow didn’t fly far, and the tip of the rebounding string scratched one of Johannes’ cheeks. Johannes inhaled sharply as if slicing through a cliff. It was a pain that made his hair stand on end. He froze in place. Johannes’ skin, already pale, had turned so ashen it almost had a blue tinge.

Where… Where is this?

“…Remove it.”

“Huh?”

“I said remove it.”

Johannes spat out the words, his whole body trembling slightly. He tilted his head slightly towards the area that had been touched. Then, with a jerk, he looked down at his younger brother who had grabbed his waist. Such a sharp, blue-tinged threat.

“…Ah.”

Winfrid seemed to have been scared. With eyes like a grazing animal, he immediately removed his hand. With an expression of being at a loss for words, he closed his mouth like a clam and looked up at his elder brother with a cautious air, as if walking on thin ice. Even the companions standing around Johannes fell silent all at once.

Only the sound of the wind remained in the desolate training ground, and the silence was like a thorny thicket. However, Johannes was unable to escape from the confusion of the world overlapping in twos. Like someone who had suddenly dropped onto this land, he frantically assessed the situation. He didn’t know. Where he was standing now. Who was standing in front of him.

Who he himself was. What the hell. This is….

And he was hearing it. No, it was those things that were randomly digging into the eardrums of Johannes, who was utterly unable to come to his senses.

“Look, look. He was doing well until now, but see how he’s holding back in front of a woman.”

The noise of the past.

“It’s not even funny.”

Although there was only deathly silence in the training ground of Fort Gustavus, beyond the shoulders and between the legs of his companions, unfamiliar yet familiar laughter scattered like dust, woo, woo.

The illusion was like a persistent shadow.

A group of southern boys, seemingly numbering well over twenty, stood in a dark crowd amidst the boys of Gustavus. Those boys came rushing from all directions. Soon they linked shoulders, forming a round boundary outside of Johannes. Johannes just stood there like an empty shell, unable to move.

Where am I now…. Where is this….

“Drink.”

It’s Javier. Ah, this damned ‘memory’.

‘This time’ too.

Only then did Johannes realize with a jolt. That he was trapped in what was usually a nightmare or hallucination while wide awake. But in broad daylight? He felt as if all the hair on his arms was standing up.

“Brother… are you angry?”

Winfrid asks.

“I said drink.”

Javier commands. Cold sweat began to form all over Johannes’ body. Johannes looked at the water container placed in front of him. Had they rinsed a rag in it? Or had they fetched sewage from underground? There were five containers in a row, filled with murky water of unknown origin. Javier clicked his tongue.

“He still doesn’t know his place, why don’t you kick his behind?”

Javier suggested to his ‘sister’. Instead of that, Giovinetta urged Johannes by swinging the leash. Johannes clutched his neck, inhaling sharply. His whole body was weak. It seemed as if his upper body would collapse. Watching this, Javier slowly scratched the back of his neck and approached languidly.

It seemed his short patience had run out. He quickly approached and randomly grabbed Johannes’ hair, yanking it back. His field of vision suddenly shot up towards the sky. Did it shoot up? No. Johannes was still standing in a deathly still posture. It was just that his field of vision in the memory was like that.

It was a struggle even to tightly close his eyelids against the force that felt like it would tear off his scalp. While Johannes staggered, trying not to fall backwards, Javier glanced back at Giovinetta standing behind him, as if to demonstrate.

“Now, like this… is what I mean!”

There was no warning. Johannes’ face was immediately plunged into the water container. It happened unexpectedly. Johannes involuntarily swallowed the nauseating water through every hole in his face. It was such an unprecedented disgust that he felt like he would vomit bile right away while submerged in the water.

Contrary to the nausea, a sense of suffocation soon overtook him. He struggled to lift his head. He writhed while pressing down on the edge of the container, but it was in vain. Not only was Javier’s grip considerable, but more than that, it was hunger beyond an empty stomach that was the cause. Both of Johannes’ forearms, gripping the water container, trembled like aspen leaves. What, on earth, is this….

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

He was repeatedly dunked in the water. The boy, who could barely writhe due to weakness from hunger, must have been good entertainment for the monotonous daily life. While torture was being carried out under the guise of training, the impatient boy spectators’ booing sounds echoed in Johannes’ ears.

Occasionally, when his head was lifted with a wet sound, he could see some laughing uproariously while pointing fingers into the circle. In the brief moment he was inhaling air, Johannes, no, Idris, suddenly vomited without warning. There was no time to hold it back.

“Ugh.”

Javier stepped back, releasing Johannes as he collapsed beside the water container. And next to him, Giovinetta, ah, her eyes…. Those eyes, that look…. as if it was dirty….

“Lord Johannes. Blood…!”

Griselda suddenly approached, bowing deeply, and placed her hand on Johannes’ cheek. But as soon as her fingertips touched his skin, a fire lit in Johannes’ eyes.