183.

The man who had been frantically parting the waves with his tattered clothes suddenly stopped. He seemed like someone whose steps had been blocked by an invisible wall. So abruptly. He lifted his face from the sphere he had been pressing his forehead against. Soon the man’s gaze rose into the air. His blank eyes climbed steeply towards the ceiling as if chasing a distant sight beyond the inner palace walls.

“Vald… ma? Dimar…. Valdemar. Johannes Valdemar…. Ah, at least one name seems valuable….”

A hollow smile played on the man’s lips. Johannes’ gaze also flinched towards the man only when he was called repeatedly.

“You have even lost the name of the knight you so desperately longed for to your shell. You said that alone would earn you a piece of your vulgar lover’s favor. You couldn’t let it go. Pathetic… pathetic fellow…. You’re beyond salvation.”

Was it due to the dark blue waves filling the inner palace? The afterimage of arms with black nails raised like traps overlapped the man standing in front. The sphere in the man’s hand, standing in the middle of the trap, finally came clearly into view. That. It was a head. Johannes, his own head.

My head.

Johannes swallowed. His hands instinctively rose to his chin. He grasped his nape as if to confirm his head was still firmly attached to his body. Though the horror was extreme, for the same reason he couldn’t bring himself to retreat. His gaze simply became fixed on the head in Kretzman’s hands.

Is that truly the head of a demon? Thick horns protruding from the black hair near the temples like those of a ram completely obscured the eye area of the side profile. In the end, only the tip of the nose, mouth, and chin of the pale black skin were barely visible below the eyes, which couldn’t be seen as open or closed. Though it had delicate side lines like Johannes even from afar, that appearance tinged with a rough air like charcoal remained forever unfamiliar like a stranger’s.

But that is none other than my own head.

The head of a monster corpse, entangled with a monster by the hands of his ‘birth father’, changed, and sawed for a long time in that very form. Mine.

“Ah, fa….”

“You’re in pain. You trapped there are in pain….”

“…Father.”

It wasn’t a call that went through reason. The moment he saw his own head, he knew the man before him was his birth father. Kretzman. He didn’t even have a moment’s doubt as to why he hadn’t thought he might be his father upon hearing that name. He only inadvertently and painfully realized the fact that parents do not remain as mere names.

Yes. Even in memories as vivid as the present, his father had always been nothing more than a vague impression with an indistinct form. A gray shadow that clicked his tongue with an expression inflamed with irritation at every little thing. That ashen stain who had resolutely cut off both the settled domain and the family within reach, hunched over from the shoulders while sitting at his desk, was all of the name and appearance of the father, so that he only realized the blood ties following it after first recognizing his own head like this.

Kretzman. That is the tattered name of his sordid and cruel birth father.

In that moment dominated by instinctive realization, it didn’t matter to Johannes whether his memories were Idris’s or his own. His words simply burst forth.

“Why….”

“Of course. You should be in pain…. You should suffer eternal life in pain with that woman you were so attached to.”

“Why did you….”

“Shouldn’t you pay the price for turning all of your father’s hopes to nothing…?”

A smile as if submerged beneath a dark blue water surface settled on Kretzman’s gaunt cheek. As if unable to bear the weight of that smile, his face sank back down. The shoulders of the man who again pressed his forehead against the head of his dying monster son began to tremble finely. Is he crying? No. He’s laughing. He’s shaking from his heels up as he laughs.

“Suffer every hour and every second inside the bars…. My son.”

Kretzman, who had now buried his nose deep into his son’s hair, continued to giggle as if sobbing without even raising his face. There was even a steady rhythm felt in the sight of him swaying his upper body back and forth while holding his son’s head he had cut off himself against his forehead. It’s like a sorrowful dance.

“Ah, …I see. Though blurry, I see…. I can still see, I tell you….”

Fragmentary mumbles with no context flowed between laughs that seemed about to emit a fishy smell. It was exactly like the appearance of a drunken man unable to leave a deserted street, so that even if called out to loudly and his shoulders shaken now, he seemed unlikely to understand. He was so trapped in his own world.

Johannes hesitantly took a step closer. Price, he said. Do you resent me so much for stealing the demon you were researching for ‘her’ sake that you were ultimately unable to save your wife? But he couldn’t understand the will that tried to revive a son whose limbs were rotting. Do you truly blame me for that sin?

“Father. Why… did you….”

And then.

“Who’s your father?”

Kretzman’s face, which had been buried in his son’s hair, twisted precisely towards Johannes. His gaze was nailed into Johannes’ brow. It was a movement with not even a fraction of error, as if moving from bottom to side, point to point. Unlike his outward appearance of seeming oblivious to the world, it was as if he had been watching Johannes’ position in detail from the very beginning.

Johannes’ entire body stiffened with a start. He felt as if his shoulders had been dislocated by the gaze watching him obliquely. His lungs were blocked, and he even forgot to exhale the breath he had drawn in with a gasp. Kretzman’s shoulders, which had been hunched with his head tilted to the left, slowly spread wide. His ashen face, rigidly set, was deeply permeated with contempt that seemed to well up from the pit of his stomach like a convulsion.

“Stop pretending to exist here, void. Even the joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure you now use as if they were your own, even the conflicts and agonies you drink in and spit out are nothing more than you imitating the humans you’ve seen. Yes. Half of all that human nature you mistake as your own belongs to my son Idris, and the other half to ‘that woman’.”

…What?

Johannes’ face crumbled miserably. He was terribly bewildered. What is this you’re saying? He couldn’t understand what he had heard. Kretzman, who suddenly seemed possessed by evil without any reason, didn’t seem to want his understanding. He spat out his words rapidly.

“Don’t make me sick by calling me father. You have no roots of life like that. You are like a machine meticulously assembled to act human. You will never know. How chilling it is for me, who is actually alive, to read the reactions of nothingness that I can never interact with, and even respond to them alone…! How mad I seem, rambling to myself in empty space even at this moment…! Damn it!”

He gulped down air, his shoulders heaving greatly, after spewing out his words fiercely without pause to breathe. Kretzman, now standing completely straight with only his head still turned towards Johannes, shuddered all over once.

“For such a thing to even call me father…. Me!”

As if unable to contain the evil filling him.

“Just who do you think you are?”

Kretzman asks, as if striking out. Johannes, who couldn’t even accurately gauge half the meaning of what he had spat out, was unable to answer. Kretzman still did not wait for Johannes.

“I remember clearly. That woman, who was desperate to survive in the shadow of her cruel husband, was exceptionally obsessive even among the Ducommengs. What more need I say of the only Ducommeng who managed to summon me three times without going mad or dying…. The Duchess of Gustavus once asked me if my bloodline would inherit the duchy. I answered frankly as I had witnessed. Ah! Indeed, I said. Your ‘bloodline’ inherits the duchy, I said. And you opened your eyes the moment I answered. In the end, ‘that woman’ whom my son loved so dearly bore her brother’s son as in her previous life, but in this life, far from fulfilling her greed because of it, she fell to the bottom of the bottom. Listen carefully…! For it is your fate that will befall you in the not too distant future!”

Johannes drew in a breath, seemingly overwhelmed by Kretzman’s fierce demeanor as he lashed out at him. But Kretzman gave not a moment’s respite.

“Yes, ah, yes! You are a fake consciousness that opened its eyes to lead the last Ducommeng’s wish to misfortune. You are a phantom shaped for the longest and most terrible end of the woman who led me and my son to our deaths, I tell you. For the son you will bear! For your bastards’ offspring who will inherit the duchy!”

“Fa… ther?”

“For the utterly peaceful eternal rest of my son who lives eternity with an incomplete soul…!”

Johannes’ complexion gradually turned pale. This person, just when, who is he talking about? He couldn’t keep up with Kretzman’s fierce hostility. So what am I? He absolutely could not understand the long string of curses that Kretzman’s lips were spewing out without order or reason.

Is what I’m hearing even human language? I simply cannot gauge the meaning. In the end, without even minimal understanding, it felt like having ice water thrown on his bare heart. The inside of his ribcage was unbearably hot from the cold.

Phantom. Only that word sticks in his mind.

“Do you understand? Do you get it? If it weren’t for your Duchess’s wish, you wouldn’t have even had the illusion of being intoxicated by the sweet sensation of life! So if you too are someone’s child, your parents’ names would be ‘Ducommeng’s Wish’ and ‘Heaven’s Forsaken Power’! Ah! That’s right! Indeed, you are the stillborn child born of ‘that woman’s’ last descendant together with this land’s final hell…!”

And then Kretzman, who had been showing only his side profile with his head turned until then, finally turned to face Johannes head-on. His long sleeves fluttered widely, as if about to push against Johannes’ shoulders right then. But, thud.

He stopped.

“You are one of the dozens, hundreds of strands of ‘spider web’ that entangled those women’s necks….”

“……”

“Demon.”

“……”

“Hideous flesh that could be immortal for lack of a soul.”

Emotion sank into the whites of Kretzman’s eyes. For a moment he glared coldly at Johannes, his expressionless cheeks trembling slightly, then soon split his lips into a long grin. Due to the strange tension in his face, the skin pushed up above his cheekbones twitched minutely like the flesh under his eyes. Before Johannes could even recognize that visage as a ‘smile’, he first suddenly realized the nature of the dark blue air pooled in the inner palace. It was eye light.

Eye light. More precisely, eye light that had flowed like a fountain from one of Kretzman’s eyeballs. Dark blue eye light had gushed from that man’s eye, whose face was gnarled as if burnt on one side, filling the entire inner palace. That extraordinary light. It could never be called human eyes. Ah.

A shallow exclamation of instinctive astonishment leaked between Johannes’ lips, his mind churning like mud.

“Your, that eye….”

Johannes murmured blankly.

“…Still half kindred, it seems you can see this eye.”

Kretzman cut off the end of Johannes’ words, twisting up one corner of his still twitching mouth.

“Yes. Because of this imperfect eye, I forget time…. Because of this eye, my present self is always past and future, and the days to come are present and already past…. I am everywhere, and thus nowhere. Shattered like fragments, trapped in the crevices of time. I’m reaping the full benefits of my son who fancied himself a noble knight in love….”

“That, did I…?”

“Shut your mouth. I have no intention of rambling on at length to myself like a madman in an empty room.”

Kretzman clicked his tongue loudly and stepped back abruptly. The blue waves traced a long arc through the air like the trail of his clothes. Kretzman grasped one of his son’s horns that he had been holding until then with one hand. He raised both arms wide. The red cross-section of the black neck, finally lifted carelessly into the air, dangled following Kretzman’s movements.

“Didn’t you come here seeking answers? There! You may rejoice. I, this very I, prophesy. Today you have realized all truths. Every trivial emotion you have, every fleeting choice you make, are all chains of curses strangling that woman’s throat, so you and all entangled with that woman will each meet your own unhappy end…!”

The rather majestic cry reverberated through the underground inner palace. Because the final sentence was too sudden, Johannes was unable to react in any way. As reactions always come from the body before reason, his whole body trembled and his jaw clenched before understanding came. Just as silence began to pool like water with no chance even for despair.

“…But there is not absolutely no way to save that woman.”

Johannes saw the sneer settling again on Kretzman’s lips.