187.

Once, I heard a rumor about an irresponsible man and woman.

The man was said to be a priest of Duke Gustavus’ household, and the woman a lady-in-waiting from Ducomeng who attended the duchess. The two could not resist a moment of passion. Breaking even taboos, they made eye contact and became intimate, then one day quietly gave birth to a baby boy. The woman buried her child, who had not yet let out his first cry, in the bare earth of the backyard. The child died with soil filling his lungs. The man and woman both left the fortress.

Suddenly.

The weak are evil. Did they truly not know that closing one’s eyes to a spark could invite a conflagration? Life is chained together by choices and consequences. They must have naturally known from their life experiences that all words and actions lead to great and small tragedies and comedies.

Surely they knew, yet were negligent. They knew, yet turned a blind eye. Knowing full well the miserable ending, they burned their own flesh intoxicated by a moment’s passion. Later, whenever passing by the tree where the child was buried, they must have broken out in a cold sweat while still laughing. Haha! I’m alive, how fortunate.

In the weak woman’s mind, there was likely no place for the corpse she had birthed. After turning her back on the fortress, she probably erased it even from her memory and no doubt lived happily until her later years. So she was a woman weak and thus evil, evil and thus strong.

That’s what some ‘mothers’ are like.

“Remember.”

Slap! Johannes’ left cheek rang out.

“Remember.”

Slap! Johannes’ left cheek rang out again. As he was struck until his head spun, he stood straight in an outwardly pious posture. He was not conscious of the pain. With one clenched fist placed on his left chest, beneath it his heart rotted and crumbled. There was no flesh left to feel pain.

“Remember.”

The duke’s lips closed tightly as his strong palm cut through the darkness. With a final friction sound like tearing leather, Johannes’ head turned completely to the right. In the pitch black surroundings, he stared at his evil with bloodshot eyes beneath a calm expression. It was the shadow of a black reed rising above the opaque curtain hiding the bed. It was Isolde’s silhouette. He took it in with his eyes amid a silence that felt like tearing.

There were only four dim candles around the four-poster bed placed like an altar in the center of the banquet hall, which was as dark as the bottom of a well. A noblewoman from the royal family, whose name he could not even remember, parted the dim lighting and approached the bed. As she entered through the secret curtains of the young newlywed couple who had just consummated their marriage, the shadows of one young man and two women blended together in one place.

Soon the noblewoman descended from under the bed with a rustling of cloth. As she carefully raised both hands, a white cloth unfurled with a swish and floated in the black air. The crowd gathered in groups of three or five at the foot of the bed to witness the couple’s wedding night silently confirmed the virgin’s bloodstains with their eyes.

The commotion was subdued. Someone’s shadow opened a fan to hide their face, while a shadow at the far end silently raised a wine glass as if in congratulations. Indifferent, formless whispers and a murmuring buzz of presence settled like a swamp. There were no real voices in the dark space.

But the marriage was accomplished. The shadows of the king, duke, and high priest simultaneously nodded under the white and red cloth. The stout king approached Johannes and gazed at him intently. Johannes gave a short bow. After a moment’s pause, the king suddenly slapped Johannes’ cheek.

“Remember.”

Remember this evidence. So it was again, three times. Even as his slapped head turned properly towards Isolde on the bed each time, like a true witness, before returning to face forward, Johannes’ gaze persistently did not lose sight of Isolde’s silhouette. The curtain between them was no obstacle. After all, he had seen more with his eardrums than his eyes from the start.

Without time to feel his burning cheek, he reflected on the wedding night of two precious bloodlines. The moment that was both the finale of the wedding and the true opening. Beneath the blanket that Griselda lastly laid over them reassuringly, Isolde was firm and silent. More truthful than her stiff, cold movements was the sound of Isolde’s heart fluttering like a frightened hummingbird. So even without trying to look, it was sufficient before his eyes.

While she desperately bit the inside of her small mouth and endured her husband’s climax, he heard the blood rushing through her veins. The shuddering of her shoulders as if in pain clearly struck his eardrums. If tears had welled up in her eyes, he might have heard every bit of that moisture forming. Of course, she did not show even a trace of tears to the very end.

And now, after the deed was done. Isolde sits coiled on the bed like a pitiful snake, letting out a faint “Hoo…” of cold scales. Secretly. But that sigh clearly held the sense of achievement of a knight who had defended the battlefield to the very end.

Johannes knew it was a trophy that only one who had fulfilled their duty could obtain. Moreover, that it was also a deep sigh for the end of the war that had finally arrived. Crunch. It was then that the sound of breaking came from inside the jaw of Johannes, who stood just as gracefully as his sister. Isolde’s final sigh was like such a signal flare to him. Run away like that… you are worthy of living.

Below his throat was hot, no, cold. While his body was cold, only the whites of his eyes staring at his sister’s silhouette were fiercely red. The thin curtain fluttered in the night breeze that came in long through the window opened near the ceiling. The sunken eyes of the two siblings were briefly entangled that night for the first time through the gap between the parting sides of the curtain.

The corner of Isolde’s eye flinched, as if stiffening. How did she discover him standing in a darker place than herself so quickly? I don’t know.

The ink-stained curtain that had been fluttering in the air soon settled down. The encounter of only gazes ended briefly. Without time to read each other’s feelings, Johannes speaks a few words with a gloomy look in his eyes. That you push me into the grave under the tree, and my lungs are filled with soil. You…

Do you perhaps know that this life is not a life I wanted to obtain?

Giovinetta. My sister and… my ancestor… and my birth mother who bore me using a descendant as a surrogate. My sun. So you… shouldn’t you rightfully take responsibility for this wretched half-paralyzed life?

He asks his cowardly matrix.

That night.

Johannes, who had been gazing alone at the unfamiliar waning moon in a strange bedroom for a long time, finally got up. There was no need to endure any longer. As he suddenly came to that thought, what he had been enduring rather became clear. Endurance, he says.

Yes. He had been enduring. He could have opened the door to the women’s quarters at any time. Whether as Johannes Valdemar or as the devil. Though he had constantly turned away from it as a dreadful and unbearably uncomfortable truth, that was exactly it. That was the reality.

And so his feet, which had never once stepped towards that purpose, fell surprisingly easily that day. He walked casually down the narrow, long corridor with the lights out.

He had quickly become familiar with the path, and Isolde’s faint breathing sound coming from afar was his guide. Why is the breath of the king, who chose someone other than him as a sacrifice and sleeps soundly, so wretchedly beautiful? Ah, the king. The king…

Do you know that throne, the seat I gave to you? Somehow a cloudy smile comes.

With that smile, the back of his right hand burst open with a crack. The feeling of his spine splitting his back ran through his whole body and he staggered for a moment, but that was all. Stumbling, he leaned against the wall, and as he steadied his body that kept tilting to the side, he dragged himself towards the banquet hall where his sister had spent her wedding night.

Amidst his staggering, a smile thinner than water flowed across his face repeatedly. Just as two guards who discovered him were about to give a puzzled salute, they received a handful of his gaze and writhed, clutching their necks before perishing. The hand of one of them was crushed under the foot of the staggering Johannes with a crunch of bones.

He thus arrived at the banquet hall, which opened its round entrance like the king’s nest, gaping like a cave. Walking as if collapsing like a drunkard in the night, walking and walking again, Isolde’s bed that he found again was no different from several hours before. It is the dead of night.

Haa. Haa…

His deep breaths echoed in his ears. Johannes, who had gradually calmed down while walking straight to the bed, stood pale like a ghost at Isolde’s bedside as she slept. Beyond the thin cloth, he slightly lifted the thin curtain with the tip of his index finger, on which a long black nail had grown. Johannes’ head tilted obliquely along the gap that parted like a waterfall rising up.

Silver eyes split black with long pupils invaded inside the curtain. Isolde’s white shoulder appeared, lying sideways towards Johannes as if waiting for him. The moist membrane that had covered the whites of Johannes’ eyes then pushed up into his eyelids.

A misty smile spread across Johannes’ eyes and mouth. He himself did not know that that expression, which was hard to tell whether it was resignation or composure built on anger, looked more comfortable than ever. He only threw the lifted curtain behind his head with a flop.

Wearing the fallen curtain like a veil, just like that, he penetrated deep into the bed with only his upper body and bent his waist. He gently lowered his forehead to the sleeping girl’s temple. The curtain hanging limply at his waist swayed uselessly.

Their foreheads touched. He rubbed slowly back and forth like a tired beast. Whether it was moisture left after washing, or the scent left by her husband. Isolde’s skin was still damp.

“…nette.”

Perhaps because he whispered too quietly.

Isolde did not open her eyes. Her heartbeat was also innocently steady. It did not matter. This child would inevitably open her eyes before this night was over anyway. A vision as harsh as it was ecstatic was vivid before his eyes.

Rather, his heart pounds. To the point his spine tingles all over. Mmm… The sigh he let out unconsciously was quite faint. But it was a sigh that flowed from deep inside his solar plexus. Why could I not do this until now, I wonder. Something so easy.

“Isolde.”

“……”

“Isolde…”

“Mmm…”

“Isolde.”

His sister tried to turn over without much consciousness. She stretched out her arm like a sleeping habit, almost hitting her husband’s shoulder lying on the other side. Johannes, who was pressing her head with his forehead, gently grabbed her under the shoulder to hold her in place.

That pressure seemed uncomfortable. Johannes sensed Isolde’s slow blinking with the warmth of his lips. He rubbed his lips against the corner of her eye, coming down as if melting. Isolde’s eyelids closed as if in sleepy protest.

It must mean she is tired and annoyed. But Johannes. As if your body heat is not unfamiliar even in her sleep, she clings more tightly under his lips. Johannes laughed softly. Kissing her long eyes carefully, he whispered.

“Shh… Isolde.”

“Mm…”

“Quietly.”

“……”

“Gently…”

Meeting Isolde’s gaze as she looked up at him between sleep and waking, Johannes caressed Isolde at length. As if soothing one drunk with sleep, he quietly stroked her repeatedly from the tip of the shoulder he had lightly grasped all the way down to her wrist. Isolde. Isolde. Isolde…

“Jo… hannes…”

“Yes.”

“…nes.”

“Yes.”

“…Johan.”

“Yes, it’s me.”

Isolde, now with her eyes almost fully open, lay straight gazing at him with a blank stare. Due to his posture of pressing his head against her face, Johannes’ lower body naturally climbed onto the bed following her. Now he pressed the pillow with his elbow, cradling Isolde’s head between.

Without even realizing the situation yet, one of her arms came over Johannes’ nape as if by habit. Seeing her even slowly leaning into his elbow with her temple as if burrowing in…

His heart ached and he laughed.

“What should I do with you?”

“……”

It felt as if all his vile blood was flowing backwards. His posture is that of a complete lover. From his waist pressed tightly against his sister’s belly to the nape of his neck held by her curved arm. Even his heart aching with emptiness in one corner despite touching, rubbing, and grinding against her side. Even his short breaths subtly panting beneath eyelashes as beautiful as his sister’s. Ah, now. He is about to accuse someone who has no memory of wrongdoing.