#16
I momentarily held my breath. In place of the current him whose smiling face from childhood I could no longer see properly, that image immediately appeared before my eyes. Johannes’ expression with gently creased eye corners, slightly wrinkled nose bridge, and lips drawn into a long smile. A fresh look like bursting wildflowers. Our once fierce exchanges seemed as if they had never happened.
Somehow then, I came to accept Johannes’ denial that it was not me. Yes, that demon-like thing that crawled up from the abyss could not have been Johannes.
My heart, aching for so long, felt like it was shriveling up. It was too regrettable to just let Johannes’ unguarded appearance flow by. Seeing my silence, Johannes made an unnecessary addition.
“It’s fine. I’ve slept in worse places. Do you know how cramped a bear’s den is?”
I moved my head outside. With my body feeling locked and tired, I snuggled a bit closer to him.
I listened intently to Johannes’ voice. Afraid to miss even a syllable, I held my breath evenly. As if listening to the wheezing breaths of a suckling infant with nose buried deep in its belly, I gently rested my forehead by his head.
“Adding a bit of a lie, it’d be about the size of your fingernail. Ah, ah… For something with a body as big as a mountain, to hibernate in such a place…”
“A den?”
“Yes. An earthen dugout.”
“How did you end up in such a place?”
“Briefly last winter… We used it as an air raid shelter in Tiliu. The line was broken during an engagement. The front completely fell apart, and the right wing… was almost annihilated. Just before being completely surrounded, we barely managed to regroup and retreated along the mountains…”
“Were you alright? You weren’t hurt?”
Johannes laughed once more.
“I’m here now, aren’t I… Hmm… This won’t do. If I start laying it all out, there’ll be no end. Honestly, thinking about that day still gives me heartburn even in my sleep… So Isolde, what about the chest?”
“…The second one from the left by the mirror, I hardly use it. Griselda won’t touch it either.”
“Second from the left… Is that it? The long one.”
The sound of fabric rustling echoed. Johannes seemed to have turned his head. I followed the direction he was likely looking, but to my eyes, nothing was visible except dark shadows.
“You can see that?”
“Hm?”
“It looks monstrous.”
“…”
Johannes had no reaction.
“I’m sorry…”
“…Your words aren’t wrong, so there’s no need to apologize.”
As always, I apologized reflexively. Johannes brushed it off casually, but he fell silent afterwards. I felt a bit uneasy, thinking I might have hurt his feelings. It felt like Johannes might leave for somewhere. I felt I should say something.
I asked him.
“Is the spot not uncomfortable?”
“It’s fine… Go to sleep. Don’t worry about me needlessly.”
Johannes, who had comforted me, turned his head towards me. Resting one arm on the bed, he stroked my forehead as I clung close to him. The touch of his fingers brushing my ear as he tucked my hair, or the warmth of his palm covering my entire forehead as if checking for a fever before pulling away – how gentle it all was. Such a kind person. Thanks to that, my unease dissipated considerably, and with my heart swelling, I…
“Um, Johannes.”
I couldn’t help but ask.
“Yes.”
“…Do you want to come up?”
Johannes’ breath caught.
Then there was silence. A silence where even the slightest noise died. A deathly pale silence that crept up as if having trampled someone barely alive. Crack. At last, a wordless bone sound from somewhere tore through it.
“…Don’t torment me.”
The voice, somehow choked down, was a wasteland. The bedcovers rustled like dried-up curses. At first, he seemed about to let it pass. But gradually, gradually his shoulders began to heave, and at some point he was gasping for breath roughly as if having run down a steep slope.
“You’re out of your mind.”
Finally, Johannes exploded from deep within.
“You… What on earth are you thinking. How can you… What have I done to you. After what you’ve been through, how can you say such things to me.”
“Earlier…!”
I reached out my hand, flailing. Johannes’ blanket-wrapped body was haphazardly touched. Johannes twisted his body as if to push me away. I grabbed his shoulders tightly. Reaching further forward, I could feel his collarbone. I spread my fingers. I grasped the nape of his neck.
“When I was scared… I missed you so much…”
I poured out.
Johannes, who was about to spring up, froze for a moment. His body stiffened like rusted bones under my fingertips.
“Even as you were doing that to me… While thinking it was you before my eyes, I still missed you. Strange, isn’t it? I missed you, Johannes. I thought I would die from missing you. So… when you came back, I was so happy. I was so happy that…”
“…Isolde.”
“I’m just relieved it wasn’t you. Really, I feel like I can live now. You know, Johannes. What should I do…”
Johannes was too far away. I wanted to embrace him, but I had no more arms or shoulders to offer. Once realized, the feeling I could never discard no matter what, this sin-sick body moved naturally as if the hand was an extension of it. As if the part touching Johannes was the center of this body. As if that place to cross the line was the fate embedded in this body. To the tips of my hair.
“Jo, ah!”
“Isolde!”
“Uh, ugh…”
Because I couldn’t see in front, I stumbled near the edge of the bed, taking a careless step without knowing where. I fell, almost into Johannes’ arms. Reflexively, I tried to get up by grabbing his shoulder, but darkness.
My fingertips, flailing in the air, caught on the blanket he was wearing, and I slipped, almost stripping Johannes. Johannes’ bare arm wrapped around me suddenly, supporting me as I fell, and hurriedly draped me over his shoulder to prevent further tilting. At that moment, I…
“…Don’t do this. Isolde. We really, can’t, do this.”
“I know. I know but. Ugh… I know but…”
How hideous must I have looked.
I was no different from a rickety boat in raging waves. I was completely out of my mind. I couldn’t see anything. Sitting on Johannes’ thigh, I desperately clung to him, swaying this way and that like someone about to drown. It felt like that was the only way I could survive.
“Isolde.”
“I really don’t know what to do anymore…”
“No. No. You. If you get involved with me…”
Gritted breathing came down to the side of my face. Our hair rustled as it collided. Johannes anxiously felt my body. As if he thought my waist would cut off his wrist if he touched it, he couldn’t bring himself to embrace me, but merely spread both hands to hold my waist.
“We can’t.”
Johannes muttered painfully.
His cheek pressed against mine. The sensation of his lips, not knowing what to do, touched my ear fully. Breath held back to the brink before exhaling, heat so red it seemed visible. Thus, as his words and actions differed so,
It felt as if I would drown right there.
“…We can’t.”
My body was bound in Johannes’ arms. His trembling hand came up, threading through my disheveled hair. His lips, wandering absently over my cheeks and mouth, almost touching but not quite, finally overlapped with mine.
That night. Perhaps tears were pooling in his eyelashes that I cherished. Johannes was trembling so much. It was the trembling of one facing punishment.
“Jo…”
My lips were bitten just like that.
Inside. Johannes sucked on me with his moist mucous membrane. Again and again, again and again. Even as his whole body shook from his rough rising and falling chest, he bit again and again. Isol. De. Isolde. The name whispered repeatedly at times seemed to undo my clothes and burrow into my bare skin.
Finally, his tongue hesitantly, little by little, through my parted lips. Shallowly licked in. But that sorrowful hesitation was only momentary. Already tangled in incomparably to that childish thing, as if starved for months, ignoring my flowing tears, the occasional bursting gasps were urgent, hah, hah.
When I turned my head, choking on his deeply penetrating tongue, he grasped my chin. Kisses that chased me as if to devour me when I pulled my body back. I clung to his neck. In the end, it was ecstasy. Erasing even the last traces of hesitation, we focused only on the sensation of consuming and being consumed.
We were sinners who had finally shattered the taboo, now left with no way to turn back, only a future of being crushed under its debris. That day, we kissed for so long.
It rained.
The sound of rain, like the cry of a ghost bird, had been scratching at the window for some time. It was the sound of rain declaring our inevitable incest.
Johannes’ lips parted reluctantly, reluctantly. We shared a few more brief kisses with our noses touching. When confessions of “I like you, Johannes, I like you” overflowed, Johannes groaned as if he couldn’t bear it. Tell me more. He closed his eyes.
I did not return to the bed. Johannes held my back, all scraped from tossing and turning all night on the stone floor with no elasticity, in his arms throughout the night.
Johannes’ legs stretched out with me between them. Johannes’ arms tightly wrapped around my waist, refusing to let go. The feeling of his firm chest. And the whispers wetting my ears like raindrops, Isolde.
Isolde.
Even the smallest whispers. They were all joys I had never tasted before.
I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid that if I dozed off for a moment and opened my eyes, it would shatter as if it had never existed anywhere from the beginning, so I absolutely couldn’t fall asleep.
The conversation was long. The content was meaningless. We carefully brought out only the past that had already gone by, hiding our respective anxieties in cave-like hearts.
The careless daily routine of putting down an unfinished embroidery frame on the table. Scenery that passed by so fleetingly you wonder when you saw it, or trivial stories no different from that. So in truth, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say there was nothing there.
But there was no solution for Johannes’ voice, sweet to the point of sadness. I was helplessly immersed in it. Intoxicated by his voice, I dozed off at some point. That’s how the night ended.
It was a night with no future other than a bloody catastrophe, but…
I declare.
That was the happiest moment in my short life.
Male lead reborn without memories — but he still falls for her.
The person he finds displeasing in this life turns out to be his cherished wife-master in previous life…
Xie Zhi and Fang Xianxing who had known each other for less than three days through a blind date sat in the same car in front of the civil affairs bureau. They had a disagreement and failed to get married.
Xie Zhi immediately took out his phone, slid through his contacts, and randomly selected the next marriage candidate.
The woman snatched his phone and hung up. Looking at his phone wallpaper, she awkwardly changed the subject: “An ancient painting, eh? It looks pretty good, it’s just that the person in the painting looks a bit like me.”
When he heard this, he sarcastically mocked her for being so delusional, completely unaware that, the person in front of him was the reincarnation of Wen Ru, the famous prime minister of Yuan Shun whom he most admired…
The female CEO who doesn’t want to get married with a divorce agreement in hand × The male archaeological researcher who will only get married if he’s sure he can get divorced
