195.

Johannes was captivated to the very last hair by the curse casually dropped by Inette with her ghostly complexion. He lost his words. Somehow, it felt as if something like a half-boiled pottery filled his entire intestines. Unconsciously, he tried to say something. No, he tried to wish for something. But the form of language wouldn’t take shape correctly. What was he trying to say? What do I want? He just felt dizzy at the back of his head.

“…Just die.”

In the end, he only repeats her words with a blank stare like an idiot.

Then for just a moment.

It was when he was entranced by the lips moving before his eyes, without any sense of crisis or awareness of being discovered in his true form. He thought that the thing constricting his throat like some diagonal line didn’t seem to resemble those eyes from the past. The long pupils that had been fixed on his sister’s mouth rose towards her eyes outside his field of vision. Ah, so these are your eyes in this era. They fell back down into the deep again. Only then did he gradually begin to realize what he had wanted. The sight before his eyes was such a slow shock.

Would it look like this if you held a white bird in your hand and broke its neck?

Inette, half-prostrate in the air below Johannes’ chin, was in a bizarre and eerie posture as if reflected in a cracked mirror. Her arms spread wide along her wrists held by demonic hands remind one of crumpled wings.

With such a frail posture, murderous intent bursts forth, and her white face, sorrowful fingertips, and thin nightgown are all painted with blood flowing profusely from her dead husband’s heart, as she turns to look at Johannes with an unknown, monstrous strength.

The force that had twisted her thin shoulders to her long neck so firmly was comparable to the stiffness of a distorted corpse sprawled out. Because the shape slightly exceeded even the limits of the human body, it would have been a sight that was somewhat nauseating if someone else had seen it.

Perhaps, a form more demonic than even a demon.

He finally had to swallow dry saliva. A familiar nausea swirled in his stomach and a painful shudder started from the tip of his chain-like tail and rose along his protruding spine. Johannes could only acutely feel it with his entire body. That there was a terrifying magical power even in an appearance that had completely collapsed due to external pressure.

Yes. He never dreamed there could be such a sight in this world. To confess, it was terrifyingly beautiful.

For him, who could not be anyone’s origin or his own end because he simply did not exist, it was a sublime beauty he dared not approach. A strange figure that, because it had scattered, had finally escaped the orderly laws of the human world and returned to magnificent nature. Johannes alone would be unable to take his eyes off of it. The creature of his violence was so nauseating and ecstatic.

He shuddered. It could be even more than this. On this hideous night, he could give birth to the god he would serve. A god born from the miserable remains the moment he shattered and broke it with his own hands. I will give birth. Inette, please remember. I, who have received nothing intact from you but these ferocious nails, will use this one weapon I possess to give birth to you again in such beauty. You who are so terribly weak that you happened to give birth to me.

Now it’s my turn to tear and raise you.

“…You say die.”

“……”

“Do you truly wish for me to die?”

“……”

“I truly can’t believe it. Why…”

Johannes’ whisper, stroking Inette’s crown, was tinged with both laughter and tense trembling. He hunched over, gathering both of Inette’s wrists in front of her abdomen. Inette’s eyes opened silently.

“Why do you tempt me so?”

“……”

“Why… are you so skilled? How on earth… can you be like this?”

The slow, delayed climax finally arrives. Johannes grasped the back of her hand, placing a part of what was once her husband into Inette’s hand. Inette’s slender fingertips trembled just before touching the soft muscle.

“No… This… Let go.”

“……”

“Die. I told you to die… Monster. Mon…”

“……”

“Ah…”

Her gasping, barely audible towards the empty air, was not like the passionate loser Giovinetta of the past, but rather like the duchess of this era – somewhat weak and morbid in reaction. Eyes colorless and odorless like burnt remnants, and an expression that, despite being just that, convulsed occasionally in a popping manner. But Johannes paid no heed.

“I can’t hear you, Inette. I’m sorry.”

“……”

“So tell me again…”

It’s not over yet. He will destroy as much as he can destroy. It was a miserable and ecstatic state of mind that if she would only show him the sight he desired, he would drop her to the bottom of hell.

I’ll become not the knife that you hold, but the knife that butchers you. Johannes did not yet know why the current extreme climax was so much like pain. Because he was a boy too cornered to measure deprivation. He can’t hear. He can’t see. He simply covered her back, leaning his entire body against her tiny frame that didn’t even reach half his size.

He pressed his forehead firmly against the nape of Inette’s neck where her cervical vertebrae protruded, feeling her bones. He took a deep breath. Hoo… As if he had found some false peace.

At some point, Inette’s chin trembled.

“The bloodline I shared with you is disgusting…”

“…So it is.”

Johannes responded quietly, still pressing his head down. His sister’s following voice was faint, as if completely dried up.

“It’s horrifying that a brother who shared a name and womb is such a monster…”

“It was.”

“Tell me you crawled into mother’s womb on your own…”

“Ah.”

Johannes’ black hair, which had been constantly rubbing his forehead against the bare skin between her nightgown, became disheveled on Inette’s back. He seemed to be laughing very softly. As the chuckle subsided, he kissed her back line and whispered lowly.

“Inette, you’re actually right. But isn’t it about time you admit that your situation is worse than mine, hideous as I am?”

“…No.”

“Don’t resist needlessly. From now on, tempt me a little more. You should just parasitize my body.”

“……”

“Do you understand? Don’t cling anymore to a name that can’t even be yours, and nestle against me and whisper. Whisper in my ear to leave. Make me, who can’t help but be impressed by your gestures, reluctantly withdraw for this night.”

It wasn’t what Johannes truly wanted. Of course, even if his sister were like that, he would be glad enough to make his heart ache, but he already had a more desperate sight. It was to damage his sister. From soul to marrow, completely.

This is how I give birth to you.

He pressed down on his trembling breath. His sister must be both his girl and his monster. The nauseating appearance, crushed and distorted under pressure, was the true form of a lover who would mix like water with the half-demon called Johannes. The girl would be reborn as an incarnation of terror and hatred under verbal abuse and tyranny.

Inette was silent for a while. Despite her nature of not being able to bear insults, she was just stiff like a thorn. Her slender fingertips, forced to hold her husband’s heart, remained spread apart. Her stiffened shoulders and face turned up towards the ceiling as if refusing to look down, did not move at all between Johannes’ arms. Then she asked blankly.

“Are you telling me to beg now…? To you who acts so cruelly?”

“Why are you acting like a stranger? Don’t you adore someone more deeply the crueler they are?”

“……”

“How sincerely you looked up to our cruel father.”

Johannes gently rebuked as if soothing his younger sister. It was then that Inette’s chest, which had been like an empty shell until now, let out a rough breath. She seemed about to respond immediately, but stopped. She swallowed her breath. She appeared to be barely suppressing her turbulent emotions for her own reasons. And somehow she managed to spit out.

“I am… Valdemar, not a whore.”

“Yes. Because you’re Valdemar, you gave your body to a mere court playboy.”

“You’re the one who needs to admit it!”

Inette’s whole body jerked as if about to stand up abruptly. She sat down with a force that seemed like her joints would break due to her wrists caught in his grasp. After shuddering once, his sister turned to look at him again.

“Rather than giving my body to a monster like you… why do you pretend not to know that it’s far more beneficial and joyful for me? Why are you the only one who doesn’t know…?”

That was not simply a look of anger. It was a look filled with resentment beyond feeling mortified.

Johannes stared back at Inette for a moment, then turned his face away. He released her wrists in as natural a motion as possible. In fact, it would be more fitting to say he let go. Due to his neck and forearms being stiff as boards, he barely managed to open his fingernails.

Strangely, his whole cheek and chest stung as if clawed by talons. Yes. For you, mingling bodies with me would be even more horrifying. He seemed to have such a thought fleetingly. He forgot it immediately. He himself did not know that his eyes, which had only been trying to enjoy her reaction, were frozen pale. Now he raised his shadow-like body and stepped back.

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to handle your stubbornness.”

“Ah!”

“Wouldn’t it be good to yield to me just once in your life?”

Unable to handle her suddenly freed body, Inette collapsed sideways. Johannes, who had quickly stepped down from the bed, immediately turned around. He heard Inette, left alone with the corpse, trying to crawl down after him. But that was all.

“No…”

Inette’s miserable moan came over from inside an opaque ice wall-like curtain. Johannes’ eardrums felt like they would burst from the heartbeat mercilessly pooling under Inette’s breastbone. Johannes glanced at the young man’s corpse on the bed. It was a corpse that had already half-risen according to his will. The torn blanket twisted like a rope and wrapped around the corpse’s neck with a ripping sound. Inette watched the entire process with her eyes open. No… I don’t want to… She shook her head slowly, then gradually more fervently.

“Open it. Open it. Open it, Johannes…! Open it!”

She crawled on her knees to the edge of the bed and pounded on the curtain, but Johannes turned away again.

“Open it!”

A tear-filled scream of a single word pierced the back of his neck.

“Ah! Johannes!”