152.

With their faces so close together in the pillow cave, Giovinetta Isolde Yuricates Valdemar whispered gossip as if only for his ears.

“…So I’m really sick of it…. It’s both amusing and contemptible to see a woman who harshly nags me as if her tail is on fire freeze up at her father’s call…. What’s so difficult and frightening that she acts like a dead fish? And what qualifications does such a dazed woman have to teach me anything…?”

Her prolonged tone showed no sympathy for a mother in a similar situation. She’s still the same self-centered woman as ever, isn’t she? Johannes felt deeply reassured by her brazen attitude. But he still didn’t know the reason why.

“Life in the women’s quarters must be tough.”

He just laughed as if sighing on purpose.

“Life in the women’s quarters?”

“Huh?”

“You’re not teasing…. That’s not for you to say.”

“Ah.”

“…”

“I’m sorry. Seeing you after so long must have me out of sorts….”

“…”

“I was insensitive. Please don’t be angry, Giovinetta.”

Johannes bowed his head repeatedly in an exaggerated manner. Giovinetta’s furrowed brow, which had been pouting, finally relaxed. She slowly narrowed her eyes and said,

“Still… I’m so happy to be reunited with you today thanks to Griselda.”

“Really?”

“Yes! I feel like I can breathe again….”

“I’m glad.”

“I missed you so….”

“…”

“So much….”

“…”

Her voice trembled like a final breath as she confessed. Giovinetta’s eyelids lowered slightly. Johannes stared blankly at her quivering eyelashes, unmoved. After a brief pause, Giovinetta’s gaze rose to meet his.

“You know, sometimes I’d sit by the window and secretly watch you without mother knowing. I called your name countless times as you walked away among your friends, your back getting smaller in the distance.”

“…Did you?”

“Of course.”

“I had no idea.”

“What would you have done if you had noticed?”

One of Giovinetta’s hands that was holding the pillow slid under his arm. With her face still hidden behind the pillow, she pressed her forehead against his chest.

“Nothing else happened?”

Johannes gently pushed her shoulder away. What he wanted was not physical contact.

“This is your day, so tell me everything. Keep talking.”

Thus he encouraged her, longing for her smile.

Giovinetta, who had a blank look for a moment, soon returned to her original position and began to chatter. How tiresome the etiquette books were, how poor her dancing skills were. What she learned from her tutor, what non-advice bordering on verbal abuse she heard until it was hammered into her ears….

You know what? Mother told me to be careful with my behavior, to be wary of men. Can you believe it, she even told me to be careful of you and Winfrid…. What on earth does that mean…. Do you perhaps understand?… Such trivial gossip.

But at that time, Johannes pretended to listen attentively to her complaints with a thin smile, while in reality he was staring intently at the inside of her mouth. He was mesmerized by the enchanting sight of her small tongue swimming tirelessly inside her mouth as she complained about this and that. A wet, pretty and cute tongue. So, ah, inside that mouth….

He struggled to restrain his hand from reaching for the tip of her chin. Ah, ah…. Inside that mouth….

Push in long nails. Scratch the root of the tongue. Your tongue would flop about like a fish suddenly pulled onto land, startled by the unexpected pain. Perhaps at that moment you would sob violently. With tears welling up in your wide-open eyes. Chillingly.

A shiver ran down his spine.

The sound of rain mercilessly drenching the bedroom interior and then flowing away into some void on the far side of the room was as muffled as that of a certain night he recalled.

So even if Giovinetta, caught in his dark clutches, opened her narrow throat wide to beg for her life and forgiveness while shuddering, her faint screams would be completely drowned out by this rain. No, Johannes didn’t care even if they weren’t drowned out. He could bite down in one go anyway. On her soft neckline.

His dreamy gaze unconsciously shifted. Following the movement of Giovinetta’s narrow yet round chin, downward. The spot where the center of her long neckline met just below her chin, forming a hollow, caught his eye.

That’s the spot.

He intended to bite down exactly there.

Then beneath his tongue, which would inevitably lick and press against the soft skin he hadn’t tasted in years, her breath, as small as a hummingbird’s, would surge like fresh blood, gulp, gulp. When her breath caught in his bite finally started to gasp, he would slowly pull out his embedded fangs and explore the wound, kissing it as if sucking it. Embracing her convulsing body, he would frantically devour the pain pouring from her slender neck, his mouth covered in it. Just enough for her to barely cling to life. Ah….

He almost sighed. He almost panted. He unknowingly started to open his lips, then caught himself and swallowed hard instead of soothing his silently screaming heart without Giovinetta noticing. At this moment, even his own saliva was sweet in his mouth.

Lost in fantasy, Giovinetta’s face was all wet with blood-red. His heart pounds uncontrollably as he looks into that chillingly red veil. Is such a murderous delusion beautiful because it’s ‘you’? Or is there some ‘other reason’ that he doesn’t yet know for why such sweet beauty exists only for him? It’s confusing.

What. At this point….

Anyway, he couldn’t control his irregularly pounding heart and aching body. Momentarily forgetting the risk that Giovinetta lying beside him might find it strange, he was on the verge of immediately licking his lips while swallowing this already trembling breath.

“I heard you’ve already started learning archery?”

His sister asked.

“I only barely heard the cheers, but… I could easily imagine your impressive figure with just my imagination.”

“…”

“Ah, but it would have been even better if I could have seen you directly….”

Her smiling gaze drifted to the side. After letting her last words trail off like her gaze, she suddenly adjusted her position to lie straight and hid her face under the pillow again.

It’s raining.

Johannes absently stared at the white feather pillow dotted with spreading ash-gray in the darkness. Feeling a bit surprised after a half-beat delay, he glanced down at the floor of the inner room to see a pale mist creeping across it. He looked up. Strangely, the black ceiling of the bedroom was raining black rain.

It’s raining inside the bedroom.

Johannes was caught in the illusion that the bed he shared alone with Giovinetta was getting soaked in a downpour like that night in his memory, and ultimately in the illusion that he was back on that night. This illusory sensation was hauntingly vivid.

He could hear the sound of water dripping onto the bedside table, the basin on top of it, and the carpeted floor, and the blanket covering his entire body and Giovinetta’s nightgown caught on his fingertips felt heavy as if soaked with water spit out by the ceiling. Finally, even a hint of confusion subsided frighteningly.

As expected.

He realized. This doesn’t seem to be the reality where he lived as Johannes. Why? Because right now he is reliving that day from his memory. He has merely returned to the past.

So this woman, though she had a face like Johannes’ sister, was also not like his sister. She was the woman who had manipulated him so much and left him with only contempt-filled eyes, who abandoned him, who is abandoning him.

It was clear that she was now hiding behind an unfamiliar appearance, finding it difficult and frightening to even make excuses to him. He had been played by this woman’s masquerade. He was not Duke Gustavus’ heir. This was a huge misunderstanding.

So this woman, when it became difficult to endure the pain, seemed like she would reveal her true self hidden in a small and fragile avatar, just like him. No, this was not mere conjecture. He was convinced like a plague that this was a prophecy received like dark divinity by a priest of karmic retribution. The shattered reality he had turned away from is overturned and gives up its place to hallucination.

The secretly rising sense of guilt. There’s no need to have it.

The unsettling and uncomfortable feeling of harming his ‘sister’ who knows nothing.

If it’s ‘me’, it’s fine to push it aside.

He smiled faintly. What he was about to do would be the first attempt to overturn the pattern of violence that had continued until now, this night would be the first link in the unfortunate love affair where he and she would eat each other and be eaten by each other….

“…Giovinetta.”

I don’t know.

He whispered quietly, in a posture of peering under the pillow. The thickening scent of rain as he drew closer to his sister was welcome. There was no point in trying to sort out the delusions.

Because the entanglement of past and present was worse than the tangled thread that Giovinetta had roughly bundled up and thrown in a corner of the women’s quarters, unable to suppress her rising rebelliousness. He finally opened his ears and eyes that he had kept closed while pretending they were open, thinking that only you and I are here, and our night begins now.

“Giovinetta.”

How far should he, no better than a creature of hell, consider? He suppressed his voice, which was faintly trembling with excitement, with all his might. He called again. Giovinetta.

Johannes narrowed his eyes and stared at Giovinetta’s pillow.

Giovinetta, who until just now had seemed unable to contain her joy at their reunion, is silent under the wet pillow. Even her laughter, which had been wetting the center of the pillow as if stamping her face, had faded into the sound of rain at some point while he was lost in his own rationalization.

But something was strange.