169.

For that reason, their argument was out of alignment from the start, like being thrown at a wall and bouncing back. Both expected a mirror image and became angry at what was not a mirror. Johannes at his lover, Inette at her brother.

Johannes’ lightning-struck mirror shatters. The tremendous sound of rupture dug into his larynx the words he could not utter. It can’t be. You, you clearly told me then. That your feelings were the same as mine. That your heart was the same as mine. You definitely… told me…

Johannes’ eyelids opened wide as if about to spill out his pupils. The past gestures of his sister clinging to his body and affectionately snuggling rushed into his mind like colorful foam. But that was all.

Nothing.

He had not heard it.

Johannes, I am also like you, she had never once given such an indication even in passing. Her expressions were always nothing more than physical contact. That was the truth.

“…Inette.”

With a brain full of foam, there was no time to think further before his lips parted. Inette’s gaze awaited his next words. Johannes looked up as if gazing at the edge of a dizzying cliff. He couldn’t believe it.

“You, what do you… think of me as?”

“You?”

Inette furrowed her brow as if perplexed. But gradually, her beautifully curved eye corners and both cheeks were dyed with various colors. Her Johannes. With just that one simple clue thrown out, all sorts of emotions seemed to surge and disappear within her small head.

Like a girl holding an armful of an overwhelming amount of roses, she blushed intimately and fidgeted restlessly as if wanting to run away immediately. With no way to avoid it, Johannes had to pin all his hopes on her reaction. With the feelings of a criminal facing a solemn verdict, he nearly fell to his knees. Please.

Please say that you too are the same as me. Declare that I am your one and only brother, friend, and lover who will promise even the future. Even if your desires don’t match mine, say that we will be bound like one soul even in foreign lands. Please drive a stake into my neck with those lips and brand my hand and forehead. Please.

Though it was all in vain, and an unconscionable plea.

Contrary to Johannes’ wish that he was about to lose his breath over, Inette gradually calmed her movements and turned icy cold. Soon the blue eyes that looked directly at him were the sharp point of an ice pick that was often seen this night.

Her nature that he believed would pierce his own neck. She took a deep breath as if hiding it and lowered a colorless smile like a veil over her well-composed face. And carefully opened her lips.

“Johannes… Erich. Eckhart. Valdemar.”

That. It was as if she was weaving each name one by one to put up a sacred rope around her sanctuary. Having thus warded off evil, she continues the incantation that deliberately awakens evil.

“The shining half of my black flesh.”

It seems you didn’t know.

“The only person who cares for and embraces me more than myself.”

The tower that confined me was not the tower you built.

“The person who will surely grow into a great knight someday…”

You know… I am ‘still’ here.

“The most proud in the world…”

Ah, my poor devil….

“You are my ‘brother’.”

…Now what will you do?

***

“Do you love that corpse?”

Idris asked without even raising his head straight. It was late winter. Despite it being a day when an unseasonable severe cold had descended upon the south, which normally embraces evergreen vegetation and dry desert together, covering everything in sight with faintly white snowflakes, the Ducomeng reception room, without even a small brazier brought in, was as cold as ice throughout.

“Like my own body.”

Giovinetta, crouching with her back to Idris, answered without even looking back. Idris immediately asked again.

“Did you say that was brotherly love?”

It was a question with exactly the same temperature as that season. Giovinetta, who flinched her shoulders, casually answered as if it were not a big deal.

“…That’s what I said.”

But Idris saw the tips of her ears.

Though she was wrapped in rare white fox fur rarely seen in the south, covering her slender back, the tips of her ears peeking out between her long golden hair were as red as if on fire. It seems she knows she’s not normal. Idris stared at Giovinetta’s back as if to pierce through it as she focused on washing Xavier’s bare feet with ice water that seemed to burn her hands.

Xavier, that soulless man’s body, is ‘seated’ in a throne-like chair, watching his sister with empty eyes. The scene of the early dawn light hitting the back of the corpse’s head, shattering into pieces and forming a heartless halo, was unspeakably miserable.

Idris unknowingly clenched his fist. His mother must have already passed away. Though he didn’t know the details when he was young, now he seemed to understand why that man who was his father turned his back on the monotheists who civilized this barbaric continent and was absorbed in research on immortality. Perhaps he wanted to save his wife so desperately. Maybe he hoped for the couple’s eternal life.

But it was he, the fool, who stole the ancient artifact that the impious scholar was researching and offered it intact to the woman he believed to be his lover. So Xavier, sitting there pretending to be alive, is in a sense the corpse that Idris voluntarily exchanged for his mother’s life. And his damn lover says she loves that corpse. What, brotherly love?

“It’s been 3 years already since you received your formal knighthood?”

Giovinetta glanced back at him, blowing on her fingertips that had turned red from the cold water.

“You’ve got quite the knightly air about you, Idris…. It seems that since you’ve accomplished some feats, even those guys can’t treat you too casually now. It looks like those little idiots have finally realized their place. How fortunate….”

“Can’t you come back to me?”

Idris cut off her voice. He had finally, unexpectedly, blurted out the emotion he had been suppressing for years. Giovinetta’s eyes, which had been cupped like caves with both hands, widened like oil lamps. After looking back at him with a dumbfounded expression for a moment, she soon shook her head as if it wasn’t even worth mentioning further and smiled softly.

“Come back? I’ve always been yours. You know that…. It’s always been that way, and it will continue to be.”

“No. Sometimes you seem to care more for that corpse than for me.”

“He is my… brother.”

Her gaze turning sharply to Xavier’s feet looked quite bewildered. Giovinetta, who made an expression that could have been either a smile or a frown, turned her body and even stroked her sideburns with her still wet hands as if hiding her expression from Idris. With each of those subtly shameful gestures, once and again, it felt as if a thousand fires were lit throughout Idris’ entire chest. His prayers were all melting.

It had already been several years that he had been holding his breath, anxious that this flame might leak out. It seemed as if he had lived his entire life that way. He could no longer just keep swallowing it. He barely managed to speak in a tightly strained voice.

“…You’re lying.”

“…Huh?”

Giovinetta turned to look at him, fumbling. Idris had to bite the inside of his mouth once to keep from raising his voice.

“You are… lying to me.”

“What… what did I…?”

“Do you know? You say it’s brotherly love, but that. It’s certainly not such a noble emotion. It doesn’t even qualify as any kind of affection. It’s just… a desire so ugly that you desperately have to hide it.”

“Idris.”

“Am I wrong?”

Idris pressed on as soon as Giovinetta raised her upper body as if she had been suddenly struck in the back. It was truly a harsh statement after a long time. The woman, who had turned pale, closed her mouth. Xavier, who had been sitting silently, suddenly raised his head and stared at Idris.

But that was all. Far from pouncing or reproaching, there wasn’t even meaning in the gaze directed at Idris, so it was nothing more than an empty response. While he could fly on the battlefield when receiving whispered orders from Giovinetta, he spent his time looking more foolish than an idiot like this unless given special commands.

The sensation of receiving the empty gaze of an expressionless object was stranger than one could imagine. Idris’ spine was chilled to the core.

He no longer had the strength to watch this quiet hellscape. Idris lowered his head and covered his eyes with one hand. Like a man with all the burdens of the world placed on the back of his neck, he finally spat out.

“On the eve… I saw you kissing that corpse.”

A nail was driven into the air. A dizzying silence filled the space between the two. Giovinetta stood up staggering. Soon came the sound of her stumbling towards him. Soon a light weight clung to Idris’ arm that was covering his face. It was with such force that she almost collided with her whole body. Ah. He groaned long without even lowering his covered hand.

“It’s not true.”

“Is that really brotherly love?”

“Idris. Listen.”

“Or is it the same affection you have for me?”

“It’s… it’s a misunderstanding….”

“…Every night you say you love me, but you don’t really know love.”

“Idris…. It’s not true.”

“It’s not that corpse who has lost his soul. It’s you.”

“……”

“Do you know? I… despise you more than anyone.”

Idris slowly lowered his hand and brushed off the woman’s touch that had been clinging to his arm like a leech. He didn’t know what kind of look he was giving her. Only that the sight of thick moisture rippling in the blue eyes that collided in midair was unbearably disgusting and resentful.

Ha….

Ha. Ha….

Giovinetta’s delicate face, which had not yet managed to shed tears, contorted. She covered her mouth with both hands as if bursting into false laughter like a clown. While breaking her breath with a low muffled sound like that, she raised her already large eyes even wider and burst into loud laughter.

She laughed so loudly, unlike her usual self, that it was as if she was using her voice for the first time in her twenty-some years of life. The sound of accidentally swallowing her own tears that had flowed down along her hands covering her mouth came out several times with a choking sound. In the end, she scratched away the tears pooled in her eyes with her fingers.

“What… what about you?”

And without removing that strange smile, she asked.

“Are you engaging in such a grand and noble love…? You… do you love me? Is that why you can’t leave this place… which must be like hell to you… enduring all sorts of humiliation and contempt… so attached to me? Well… answer me. You. Is yours love? Is that love?”

It was not the woman who had always begged for forgiveness and understanding as she had done before. Idris’ eyes rose from beneath his hand. He was fuming with rage he had never felt before at that attitude, like some unexpected blow. Since he didn’t expect to be asked such a question, he answered while desperately suppressing his anger.

“It is love.”

“Ha.”

Where did she learn such a posture? Giovinetta, who snorted like a street prostitute, did not take her eyes off his face for a moment. That gaze, tinged with madness and almost seeming provocative, was fanning Idris’ anger moment by moment. Ah.

All this time… what have we shared? What have I offered and sacrificed for you? It was the humiliation of how dare you ask me such a question. Idris’ hand grabbed her shoulder.

The smile disappeared from Giovinetta’s face in an instant. She must have been startled by the sudden force. Her beautiful brow furrowed painfully. A short cry of pain, “Ah, ugh,” flowed from between her lips.

“You ask if it’s love? There hasn’t been… not even a single moment when I haven’t adored you. There has never been a time when it wasn’t love, and it couldn’t not be love.”

“……”

“Even your every breath was like wire to me, but it was an irresistible force here. There was no way to escape. Ah, yes…. You were like a trap designed to catch me by your very existence.”

“……”

“Because of you… because of you alone, I even wished I had never been born… This pain, this pain that I cannot remove without seeing you, if this is not love, then what is it?”

“……”

“How can you be like this… How can you ask me such a rude question when you know me better than anyone…! Is this also part of your usual torture? How… how can you…?”

The arm gripping his lover’s shoulder trembled. He could no longer see Giovinetta’s expression. Perhaps because he had roamed the battlefield like Xavier’s limbs on the surface after Xavier’s resurrection, his tall figure that had grown like an old tree was sinking below the forehead, below the nose tip, below the chin, between his forearms of the woman who barely reached his shoulder. Her neck bent as if sinking. It seemed like she would burst into tears like this. Giovinetta, caught in his grasp, was as silent as air.

“Even now… can’t you leave with me?”

Barely whispering, in a posture close to deeply pleading without even raising his head,

“Abandoning the corpse that may rot at any time when the devil’s power runs out… can’t you come with me even now?”

“……”

“We….”

“……”

“We promised….”

“……”

It was begging.