190.

Inette’s face turned pale.

“I didn’t do that. Did I?”

As she repeated his words, she looked like a dead person. Lying down, her complexion was as if ice-cold water had been poured over her from head to toe. Her eyes were wide open as if she had fainted at Johannes’s last words, her lips thinly parted as she slowly raised her upper body. Could this reaction be a sign of realization? Would she now return to her true self? Would she scream? No.

Would she finally strike me with the baton again?

Johannes, sitting up with her, smiled optimistically for a moment. However, despite his smile, Inette’s lips, now tightly closed and trembling, remained cold.

“You’ve grown up.”

It was almost a nail-like voice.

It pressed deeply into Johannes’s eyes.

“Yet you haven’t grown at all. You really haven’t grown a bit.”

Eventually, Johannes withdrew even his faint smile. More than the scratched content, her attitude irritated him. It was a subtle anger, with no boiling reason left. He almost sighed. That icy attitude shows no sign of breaking. How much more must I push…

“You know. We’re already twelve years and a month older. We’ll soon be of age.”

Inette’s lips quivered.

“Moreover, aren’t you Valdemar’s successor? And yet… you’re amazingly the same as before. You know nothing. So… willful.”

There was a sound of Inette’s hands gripping the bedding. His sister, though resentful, seemed unable to let go of her tension, glancing at her husband’s back of the head a couple of times.

“The barbarism you spoke of…. Yes, it’s not power but mere ignorant barbarism, but anyway, I can clearly see today that the barbarism you seem to desire so much is your privilege alone. Power is power indeed. You’re right. I’m glad you can freely enjoy what I’m not allowed. And you dare to say… that I ran away. That I ran away…”

As Inette’s gaze fell on the young man lying with his back turned, who had long since died without moving, the back of her neck gradually tensed, not yet realizing this. Finally, she raised her burning eyes to face Johannes directly.

“I have never run away for a single moment.”

Johannes gave a small, hollow laugh.

“Never, you say. Yet here is the living proof of your escape and deviation.”

Ah. Perhaps not exactly ‘living’. Inette narrowed her eyes.

“What deviation? Sneaking into your bedroom on nights when Mother was away at Father’s call?”

“No. That’s not all I’m talking about…”

With a smile, his gaze blurred as he recalled memories that were not his own. The golden sister unknown to his sister. The lover who, starved for affection, didn’t know what affection was. Giovinetta, who survived to the end out of cowardice.

Now that I think about it, that was rather a brave attitude.

Yes. It’s not easy to betray with just an ordinary face. You, in those days, repeated that act well with that delicate face. What about the brother who abused you? You killed him with your own hands. What did you do with your brother’s corpse? You kept it by your side and fed on it. And still not satisfied, you fretted every time about Idris’s desperate affection being difficult and burdensome. In the end, it was amputation. Finally, you pinned an absurd crime on him, punished him by breaking the tendons in his wrists and ankles with your own hands, then dumped him in a dry well in the wasteland and ran away like a guilty child. Ah, you. Indeed, you’re no ordinary person. Johannes smiled unconsciously. Idris remembered the look in her eyes as she peered down into the well, filled with sad tears, fear, and a flush all at once. It was a gaze reddened with excitement, as if she had finally boiled and eaten a troublesome hunting dog. Well, as you promised without promise, we’ve met again in this life.

Whose memories they are, Johannes no longer cares.

“Fine. I won’t deny it.”

Just as Johannes was about to push back, Inette spoke first, as if reading his intentions.

“It’s true that for a while, I used your bedroom as a refuge. But didn’t I always return? No. Didn’t I have to return? At least after bidding farewell to childhood and growing up, I never forgot my duty for a moment. You, if you have eyes, just look.”

Inette’s forehead, her cheeks flushed, tilted slightly towards her husband. She spoke in a hushed, almost scolding tone.

“Look at that strapping young man. Look at those broad shoulders, the product of my efforts. Although his skill with sword and spear may never match yours in a lifetime, he’s a worthy member of the royal family. He’s not lacking as a son-in-law for Valdemar. ‘That’, I achieved. I endured and worked hard for a long time so that any knight would be compelled to make me his wife by my name-worthy conduct. A strong alliance, the military funds that came with it, today’s achievements are all ‘my’ doing. In the end, whether willingly or unwillingly, I never ran away for a single moment…!”

Inette’s breath had somehow come close to Johannes’s face.

“You don’t know. Even today, I was pleased and proud of myself for fulfilling my role. Yet you dismiss it as ‘running away’? What right do you have? How I, with what feelings… lived, no, survived…”

Unable to easily continue her words as if emotions were lodged in her chest.

“The days spent in the women’s quarters. The days I alone endured that mad woman. Tonight. All of this…”

She couldn’t finish her words. She lowered her head as if hiding and gritted her molars. Her small chin, hidden in the darkness, was trembling finely. Then she opened her eyes wide with indignation.

“Does it all seem so ordinary to you?”

“Yes.”

Johannes cut her off without giving her a chance to catch her breath. Inette’s brow furrowing was clearly visible even in the darkness. Of course, he didn’t intend to completely deny his sister’s pain. Hadn’t he been right there, seeing and hearing like her shadow all this time? But, what can I do? You had other choices too. My rotten heart is full of resentment. Johannes calmly gazed at the moisture in Inette’s eyes. The smile on his lips was like ash water.

“Don’t say you survived.”

“…Ah.”

“You merely existed.”

“…Ah.”

“Conformity is a relatively easy path, isn’t it?”

“…Ah!”

Finally, Inette’s eyebrows to the corners of her eyes collapsed. But that was only for a moment. She seemed startled by her own exclamation. Hastily covering her mouth with one hand, she struck her chest with the other. Her white hand was like a chisel. It was a gesture as if she would die of suffocation with a stake driven into her chest. At the same time, her occasional glances at her husband’s condition were not so much busy as truly desperate.

In the end, Inette buried her face deeply in her trembling palms. In the pitch darkness, her blonde hair, almost white in color, spilled over her shoulders.

“You, leave now.”

Inette spat out from within her palms. Johannes tilted his head slightly as if to say don’t make such nonsensical sounds and shrugged his shoulders.

“I won’t go.”

“Go.”

“I said I won’t.”

“Go.”

“It’s a waste of time, Inette.”

“I said go…”

The impulse to shout suddenly died down. Her still lowered face turned slightly to look at her husband’s back. Not noticing the corpse stiffening like an old tree, Inette lowered her upper body almost prostrate. Her palms fell onto her knees. In the remaining space, Inette’s pupils, dried up with anger, opened.

“What do you want?”

“Hm?”

“You must want something to be doing this. Why… are you tormenting me?”

Her questioning voice was thin. But her gaze, staring at him, was like that of a beast ready to attack at the slightest opening. Johannes held his breath for a moment. He almost reached out to scratch her long, white nape where her hair had fallen, but stopped. Even the impulse alone made his solar plexus ache.

“What do you want from me to come to the bridal chamber and do this, other than being faithful to my given role? What… what should I have done? Have I committed some sin? Answer me. What do you want from me?”

As if Johannes was barely listening to her voice, Inette, lost in her own passion, asked again in a low, hissing voice.

“What do you want from me?”

What do I want…

Should I scratch, or not? Should I scratch that neck, or not? Johannes, whose forearm skin had started to turn dark and shiny like tanned leather, was weighing the impulse that made even his non-existent reason dizzy, when he suddenly averted his gaze from his sister’s nape. As if a space in his mind had suddenly emptied, he felt oddly perplexed. What could it be? The siblings’ gazes met in mid-air. It was at that moment.

What do I want, you ask.

Somehow, Johannes’s heart sank. He didn’t know. He suddenly realized. In fact, he didn’t know.

What exactly he wanted.

Overwhelmed by bewilderment, he felt like an orphan who suddenly didn’t know what to do. His face, still in human form, turned pale, then red, completely at a loss, changing from moment to moment. Could he be so absurdly embarrassed now in front of the girl he had known intimately for such a long time, even with others’ memories added? Unconsciously, he covered his mouth with the back of his hand and abruptly withdrew his upper body. Upright.

You.

He was so ashamed that he couldn’t even call out loud. He felt goosebumps as if hundreds of crumpled canvases were filling his mind all at once. Those canvases, without exception, were portraits of Inette. Hundreds of sisters condemning him, seducing him mockingly, lovingly tormenting him, crying and snuggling up to his side to sleep, wearing a glorious helmet, stabbing him with a treacherous awl, embracing him like water. In fact, he had been so desperate with lonely thirst every minute and second that he would have gladly accepted anything from her. Even if she were poison and bile, he would have drunk it like sweet water. So he hadn’t even dared to know.

To me. You’re giving me a choice.

Now.

“I’m asking you.”

“……”

“What exactly do you want from me?”

“……”

“You were so eloquent, why can’t you speak now?”

Inette growled a few more times in a low posture. As his sister lowered her upper body, Johannes’s upper body retreated even further. Without realizing it, his hand, which had completely transformed into a trap, still covered his mouth, and the trap-like fingertips were about to touch Inette’s forehead. Johannes’s chest, barely suppressing rough breaths, swelled irregularly. There was a sound like cartilage breaking from his back. The muscle beneath one shoulder blade was splitting along its grain. He instinctively knew. His shoulder blades and joints breaking through his back.

No. Not yet. Just a moment.

“Calm down, Ini.”

Johannes asked, barely remembering to breathe. Lest his sister run away. He was nearly losing his mind trying to fold the monstrously twitching wings back into his body.

“Will you give me peace?”

“If I do, will you leave?”

This child seems to have gone completely blind and deaf to this petty internal strife. In the darkness where not even an inch ahead was visible, only Inette’s gaze, piercing Johannes’s bridge of the nose, was like a blue and dry flame. Johannes swallowed dry saliva. What should I do with you? What can I wish for from you?

I.