167.

Johannes’s eyebrows and eyes immediately took on a pitiful look. He was not the only one who felt a bit of anxiety about the marriage proposal that could come at any time. His arm around Inette’s back tightened slightly.

“Don’t worry too much.”

“…Huh?”

“It’s still early for three years. In the meantime, if you’re prepared, we could first do something…”

“Three years?”

Inette’s head snapped up, interrupting Johannes mid-sentence. She stared at him straight with a startled expression, her eyebrows even strangely contorted. Her eyes seemed to urge him to repeat what he had just said.

Johannes’s eyes suddenly widened. The reaction was incomprehensible at first glance, and even the clear impression before him couldn’t be immediately processed. He had no response other than a pathetic “Uh… huh?” He searched Inette’s face with a perplexed gaze, trying to understand her thoughts.

“What do you mean, three years?”

Inette whispered quickly, as if unable to wait any longer.

“No. I can’t wait that long.”

“……”

“No. Absolutely not. I’ll die waiting that long.”

With that, she abruptly escaped from his embrace as if gasping for air. Johannes’s entire body lurched forward due to the sudden loss of weight he had been holding. He immediately corrected his posture, but couldn’t steady his heart that had sunk in that moment.

Did I mishear something? For a moment, he doubted his own ears. A deeply perplexed look began to cloud his face as he straightened his back.

“What do you mean you can’t wait? What are you saying?”

“I mean exactly what I said.”

Inette frowned with a somewhat agitated attitude. She seemed to hold a question in her expression: Why are you acting like this towards me? She appeared bewildered, unable to understand why Johannes was questioning her while she was feeling so anxious. At this, Johannes’s pupils dilated. His composed expression gradually turned pale. Could it be that our intentions are not aligning right now?

“You…”

Johannes, who had started to speak, suddenly closed his mouth. While he rationally understood the situation he was in, he couldn’t possibly accept it. After desperately catching his breath, he barely managed to open his lips again, which had now completely lost their color. The voice that followed was devastatingly low.

“You.”

“……”

“Don’t tell me you’re actually looking forward to a marriage proposal?”

“I am.”

“Truly?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

Inette drove the point home by repeatedly giving immediate answers. Moreover, she still seemed unable to grasp the other’s true intentions. However, at some point, her eyes, which had been glaring at Johannes, suddenly widened. Ah, that. It was clearly the look of someone who had realized something.

Her slender body staggered back a step, as if about to collapse. Her gaze, which had been looking at him unsteadily as if she had been hit on the head, soon dropped to the space below. Her lips were slightly parted beneath it. A small sound like an animal’s cry leaked out between them: “Uh… uh…”

Johannes waited for her next reaction, trying hard to suppress the urge to raise his voice. Please, even now, convince him that it was her misspeak. Please ask for his forgiveness for being insensitive. His throat felt parched as he swallowed his impatience.

However, the temperature surrounding Inette gradually dropped. She, who had been boiling up like in the old days after a very long time, was slowly cooling down on her own. The gaze rising from her slightly tilted head was like an early winter lake.

Inette faintly looked up at her brother before her with such cooled eyes. It was as if frost had settled under her eyebrows. A chill ran down Johannes’s spine. Inette whispered softly.

“You’re confirming the obvious.”

“……”

“Every day given to me is a lonely struggle… What else should someone like me wait for? In this situation, what else can I have besides this hope…? Should I instead destroy the sewing room with the loom and spinning wheel? Should I run out of the tower barefoot and alone…? Should I become food for the birds of prey in the wasteland? I can’t do that. It’s impossible. A marriage proposal is the only key to go outside. I’m… right.”

“……”

“You, what exactly are you disappointed about? Is my resolution to accept my circumstances and fulfill my duties, my determination to survive in this harsh world even like this, just a self-centered attitude in the face of your loneliness from losing a sibling? You… what exactly… have you been expecting from me all this time?”

“……”

“Did you want me to grow up like an idiot in the tower… without any expectations or desires?”

“……”

“For whose sake?”

Then her head shook slowly from side to side. That head movement, with her gaze never leaving his eyes for a moment, was like an ice sheet harboring fire. It seemed to rebuke him, asking by what right he dared to treat her like this. No. It also looked like an expression of extreme disappointment.

Johannes swallowed his breath. No, it seemed to have almost stopped. An internal conflict, like being butchered alive, gradually rose to the top of his head, ultimately making him forget to breathe. He forgot to speak. He wanted to deny each phoneme of her speculation, each end of the emotion she showed, but paradoxically, his throat was choked because of it.

Expectations. Desires. Idiot?

Ah, she was only half right. Yes. To speak truthfully, he had earnestly wished. For her to grow into a beautiful and blind monster. But to desire only ‘him’, nothing else, just as she was born, to yearn for him utterly like a beast, and to simply take root here in this tower, by his side. To rage like a carnivorous plant. Ah, is this wish wrong? Is it terrible selfishness? Enough to warrant your misunderstanding, disappointment, and anger? Who tried to break you just now? Was it me?

No one else but you. You. You who cry and laugh over ordinary things, get angry recklessly, and shiver with joy as you please. You who have thoroughly bewitched my blind heart with that appearance alone and will never let go even if I die soon. I, who breathe anew with just one act of sympathy from you and whose living breath stops again with one turn of your back, tried to step on you?

“I can’t believe the direction of your disappointment in me. Ah. Yes. It’s absolutely…”

Suddenly bursting out, Johannes couldn’t finish his words and covered his forehead. He felt his chest heaving with rough breaths throughout his body. He had to take a deep breath to speak his next words. He barely opened his mouth, almost chewing and swallowing his own voice.

“…Fine. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that everything you said is right. That I… that I, being a selfish bastard only considering my own feelings, tried to hold you back regardless of your will. That I blamed you for such reasons. But even if that were the case, shouldn’t you be pleased about it? How… in this situation…. Why do you… rebuke me so much…”

Yes. In fact, what he truly couldn’t believe was this point. He tightly closed his eyes, then opened them and stared straight at Inette.

“Let me ask you one thing.”

“…Go ahead.”

“You. If I were to say I’m leaving you to take a new wife. If I were to bring some unknown woman and introduce her to you, are you saying you absolutely wouldn’t show the same reaction as me?”

“Huh…?”

“Are you saying you wouldn’t be devastated at all?”

“……”

“Because that’s the duty given to you?”

Now it was Inette who showed a more confused expression. Unable to keep up with his intentions being spat out one after another, she couldn’t even ask back what kind of obvious question that was. She seemed completely dumbfounded. The answer she barely managed to give was….

“Of course… not…?”

This kind of thing.

She closed her mouth with a bewildered expression. The cold shadow that had fallen on her face had disappeared as if it had never been there. In the end, in the silence where only one side remained frozen blue, Johannes’s breath, which he had sharply held back, burst out with a deep tremor.

Why on earth are you like this? He took a step forward. Another step. He stood close, as if blocking Inette’s path. With an expression of extreme dizziness, he opened his mouth.

“…How on earth.”

“What do you mean… how?”

“By what means.”

“…I don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“How can you give up on me so easily?”

“You?”

Inette’s brow furrowed strangely. Rather than being upset, it was an expression of great perplexity and embarrassment. She said reluctantly,

“I don’t understand the meaning… Johann. I’ve never even put you in my options.”

As soon as her answer ended, Johannes shook his head with a sigh. He was on the verge of going mad from frustration.

“If you’re going to make excuses…!”

“……”

“Please… I beg you, make an excuse that’s believable. If you’re determined to grasp the knife handle, you could use me right here instead of someone else… and that’s what you’ve been thinking from the start, isn’t it? But why are you trying to break what’s between us now? Ah, you, since when have you been thinking of leaving…!”

“What do you mean by knife handle? Johann. I can’t follow your words….”

Suddenly, Inette’s shoulders flinched. Somehow, Johannes’s gaze, which had grown taller on its own, was at a height where he could look down on his sister. Although his eyes looked unstable and almost dangerous due to his complete lack of composure, that height difference alone must have been sufficiently threatening to Inette. However, he didn’t realize it. He just unconsciously grasped below both of Inette’s shoulders. His throat, choked with indescribable emotion, barely vibrated.

“While you could have me so openly… why on earth…”

“Ah… it hurts.”

“Why are you waiting for something like that…”

“It hurts…. It hurts, Johann.”

“…I can’t bear it anymore. Am I not enough for you? Are you really going to say that to me now…? Were all the things we shared just lies? Why can’t it be me…. Did you perhaps hear some useless rumor? Ah, tell me even now. What damn name in this continent is superior to Valdemar that it so easily satisfies your heart…!”

Inette, whose forearms were gripped by him, let out a thin groan, but it didn’t reach Johannes’s ears. Inette also seemed too confused to fully comprehend his voice, which was unclear whether it was a rebuke or a plea.

“I’m in pain…!”

Finally, a small scream burst out. Startled by the sound, Johannes almost reflexively spread his hands wide, and yet Inette shook off even his remaining touch with a shudder. Her eyes, still holding a faint anger amidst her fear, shot like an awl towards his face.

“You…. You’re strange.”