158.

11. Fortification

“I don’t quite understand.”

“What?”

“You, do you remember the story about the woman I told you before?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t understand her heart, I mean. Why that woman… chose to resurrect her abusive brother, leaving behind the lover who promised her a future.”

“……”

“While being the very one who stabbed her brother in the back.”

“……”

“Was it because she worried about the inevitable poverty from the moment she would be with her insignificant lover? Was her affection for her lover only that much? Was an oath… only of that much weight to that woman?”

“……”

“Or else, was it simply that she couldn’t bear the guilt?”

“Well…”

Inette replied half-heartedly in an unenthusiastic voice, resting her chin on her folded arms on the windowsill. Her platinum blonde hair flowed down her narrow back, which was almost lying down, swaying limply in mid-air just an inch above the dark floor.

It was a back that looked infinitely bored, but Johannes knew she was listening to his voice. Whenever he brought up ‘that woman’ as a topic, Inette would stubbornly maintain such an attitude. Pretending to be bored. Pretending not to care much.

Why does she avoid it so much when she doesn’t even have any memories? Her inner thoughts, usually as transparent as a clear stream, are at times as unfathomable as a well ten fathoms deep, both in the past and present.

Johannes was determined to hear her ‘own’ speculation today. Even if the response was slow, the winter night at the beginning of December, when the two had already grown up considerably, was deep and long. For a while. While hiding his subtle impatience and waiting for her to give more than just a perfunctory answer, he finally asked first.

“What… do you think?”

“Hmm?”

Even as he asked, he felt awkward about his own dark thoughts. He slightly averted his gaze and quietly cleared his throat. Only then did he ask again.

“What do you think the reason might have been?”

“How should I know?”

“……”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

He unintentionally reproached her with a sigh. He hadn’t expected such an indifferent response, even though she was showing an attitude unlike herself. If not you, who else would know? He instantly felt hurt. Inette, hit squarely by the sudden disappointment, tilted her chin and looked up at him.

“Is it wrong not to know?”

“Well…”

“Is it strange?”

Her gaze quickly turned into an uncomfortable dark blue. …Oh no. Johannes’s shoulder, which had been leaning against the stone wall by the window, moved slightly away from it as if to approach her.

“…No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

“It’s fine.”

Inette shook her head as if to cut off his words. The gesture was quite resolute. Johannes felt he couldn’t press further. He closed his mouth. He was sweating from nervousness he hadn’t felt in a very long time. In fact, it was an unnecessary question. Over the course of several seasons, neither memories that weren’t his own, nor veins that seemed to live separately, nor even pain resembling labor pains had troubled him.

The devil seemed to have disappeared forever.

With memories full of only pain and the curse that had been like chains buried like a myth, it seemed that he might even die as Johannes Valdemar of Gustavus. All of this might have been some kind of miraculous joke played on him by his sister, who knew only herself, with her nasty temperament. He couldn’t let it slip away.

So he should be able to just forget about it and live on.

Yet his docilely hidden mind, as if it couldn’t believe this situation, was deliberately scratching at its inner anxiety and discord. As if it were his nature. An unfortunate kind that couldn’t even feel alive unless anxious.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the selfish young lady who kept worrying him time and time again, making his miserable state of being confined for years seem pale in comparison, was now supporting her chest with her elbow and stretching her neck. Johannes watched her with an expression that mixed some bewilderment with the impatience he hadn’t fully suppressed. What was she doing? She was puffing out her throat, which she had put out the window, and blowing out a concentrated breath with a “haa”. The cold air that rose up Inette’s windpipe bloomed white like a flower, then faded away before it could even advance two spans into the deep darkness of the night. Inette stared blankly at the empty space where her breath had disappeared. Then somehow, it seemed she had found amusement in this mouth play. Taking a deep breath, she blew out her breath again. A long, deep breath. Haa…. Haa…. Out, out. As if trying to send out her own soul.

Johannes was able to compose himself only after confirming Inette’s side view, her chest stuck to the windowsill. He closed his eyes like a monk reciting a prayer. His stiff shoulders finally relaxed. Although he didn’t get an answer today either, the fortress would not fall. This child’s strange whims would someday come to an end. Johannes slowly rested his temple against the window.

“…I don’t want to put much effort into interpreting mere folk songs of commoners.”

“…Huh?”

“I’m already overwhelmed with the didactic books the priest recites.”

And only then, suddenly, Inette continued her words, several minutes late. The end of her slowly flowing words felt a bit like an excuse. Johannes made a somewhat bitter expression, then, thinking this might be his chance, he pleaded once more.

“…If that’s the reason, please make an effort just this once.”

“Why?”

“Because I… don’t understand. I feel a bit stifled because of it.”

“Stifled?”

Inette’s puzzled voice was thrown directly at him. Somehow, as if looking at him face to face for the first time in a hundred years, she blinked her large cow-like eyes slowly.

“You? About that woman’s story?”

“Yes, actually… I’m so curious that I find it hard to sleep.”

“……”

“I know it might seem strange. It’s a choice I find very difficult to understand, but how could I know a woman’s heart? So… you answer for me. Even if you think I’m pathetic for obsessing over such a trivial matter and that I have a strangely petty side… Okay?”

“……”

“That woman, why did she do it?”

Inette just blinked her eyes as if she couldn’t hear his roundabout request, then turned her head back to the window. In the silence that was short if short, long if long.

“…I do have some guesses.”

Finally.

“Yes.”

Johannes unconsciously took a step forward. Inette still had her gaze fixed outside the window. She said,

“I don’t want to say it out loud.”

“Why?”

“It’s too… sordid.”

In an instant, his breath stopped at her unexpected statement.

“Isn’t it? That, whether you hear it or not…”

Johannes saw Inette’s fine brow strangely distort. Inette parted her lips as if exhaling a held breath.

“It must have been an expression of unfilial love.”

“……”

“……”

“…You think so?”

“I don’t know…. Isn’t it? I don’t know. It just feels like that’s what it might have been. I have that feeling. Otherwise, why would she save such a man…”

What a filthy whore. Inette shook her head with a shallow sigh. That head shake was like a dagger cutting into his chest. His solar plexus, cut in an instant, stings as it gets wet.

Johannes, who had lost hope in an instant, couldn’t continue his words. Feeling like he should say something, he was about to ask where she learned such harsh words, but stopped. He had already heard the enraged commoners shouting such things several times when Inette’s rebellion went too far. There was no need to create unnecessary trouble. He just felt dizzy from the pain he hadn’t felt in a long time.

You think so?

“You say it’s sordid…”

“Huh?”

“…No. Nothing.”

Johannes avoided Inette’s puzzled gaze.

Inette seemed to have not noticed that the direction of the questions and answers exchanged between the two had subtly diverged from the beginning. Affection between siblings. That emotion, which now seemed essential to his survival, she calls a sordid act. She says it’s no different from prostitution. Although it’s somewhat surprising considering her past actions, she says that’s what she thinks for now. It hurt.

Even if the devil has disappeared, it’s already irreversible, his hope pinned entirely on her obsession hurts unspeakably.

How precarious is a life hanging on something of such a variable nature? Johannes desperately ignored the fact that his state, which could crumble at any moment with one of her whims, was certainly not normal. Along with the fact that he himself, wishing for her downfall, looked pathetically sad.

Anyway, I, who desire that sordid emotion from you, am ultimately a man who wants you to be like a whore. Therefore, I am no different from a pimp who would throw you into a brothel. To you, I can be nothing more or less than that.

It doesn’t matter.

He had no right to be sad. Johannes quietly swallowed a sigh that seemed about to consume his prayer. However, he couldn’t fully control his gaze, which momentarily wavered in the empty space outside the window. His hand, about to cover his eyes out of habit, stopped just above the black windowsill. Because suddenly, the face of his ‘sister’ entered his field of vision.

Her delicate profile, with deep eyelids half-lowered, was slightly raised towards the air. That face, blowing out breath with lips gently parted, with a blank gaze as if asking when, with whom, and what conversation had taken place, also looked like the figure of a priestess caught up in divine fever. Pouring.

A side profile as if drinking in the kiss of a god-like lover like the water of life. Without a word.

Only the ripples formed by Inette’s tongue were still breaking white in a quiet shape.

He lowered his gaze without realizing it. Johannes, who unconsciously grasped the back of his neck, stepped back very slightly as if to hide his flushed face in the shadows. It was because he was afraid of his strange sign being detected by any chance. Such a trembling feeling should not be revealed for the time being. Before Inette realized the siblings’ impure determination and distanced herself from him, he had to compose himself and build a fortress for just the two of them.

He took a few deep breaths inaudibly. Finally, he was able to feign composure by lightly clenching his fist. Johannes, now much more stable than before, asked as if throwing bait while sending his gaze to the darkness far outside the window that Inette was looking at. Because there was no way to endure without asking.

“…I don’t understand.”

“What now?”

Inette looked at him. Johannes continued speaking with a deliberately lukewarm attitude.

“How… one can love such a sibling. There wouldn’t have been many memories to outweigh the abuse between the two who spent little time together.”

Despite the sordidness, there must have been a reason why she couldn’t help but love. He wanted her to say that she understood that much at least. That was his intention, grasping at straws. However, Inette laughed out loud, seemingly not understanding Johannes’s true feelings at all.