#20
The cruel devil went out of his way to accompany Johannes on a long detour just to grant that one request. The misaligned pieces that didn’t quite fit in unseen places seemed to fall into place all at once through the link of a curse.
Ah, even.
I can’t even guess when or how the foothold I’m standing on will be removed.
An innocent and cruel voice rang in my ears like tinnitus. The distant sarcophagus seemed to whisper. A curse, it said. You, caught up in that curse, pouring filth on yourself, extending your dirty feet, heading towards catastrophe. Yes.
You pushed your own back with your own hands. Even if you try to turn back now, you won’t be able to avoid leaving at least one nauseating footprint. Come, watch the unstoppable flames approach. Your future, dancing in screams within them. Ah, but you’ll die a filthy death together with your blood relative with whom you’ve shared affection, so that must be nice. How delightful.
Try to escape if you can, disgusting woman.
My lungs dried up alive, shriveling.
“Anyway, it’s best not to interfere if possible. We… Let’s just try to survive somehow.”
Winfrid turned away. I stiffly turned my head, following Winfrid’s shadow. My gaze was fixed on the nape of his neck as he left after recklessly digging into me. My mind was pitch black.
***
Lights out.
I heard the sound of a door quietly opening and closing.
“The search party has returned, young lady.”
Griselda said.
“…Did they find him?”
“No, not yet.”
“I thought so…. I don’t know, but they probably won’t find him. Probably.”
“Pardon?”
“Just… I have a feeling…”
“……”
I’ll go to bed soon, so you can leave. I said quietly with my chin resting on my hand. A brief silence followed. Finally, with the news that Johannes had not yet returned, Griselda left the bedroom.
The room was dark. I sat on the windowsill table, looking outside, feeling the uncomfortable silence flowing. It was a night where even starlight had burned down to white bones. Will Johannes have a seizure again today? Will the devil come looking for me today? Such thoughts suddenly came to mind, without much concern for his late return.
There was a vague belief that wherever he was, Johannes would be safe. A rough estimate that the devil, having shared a body with Johannes, wouldn’t allow his body to be harmed. I simply didn’t want to face Johannes at all.
I. For my own sake, I summoned that vicious thing.
I put that evil thing on Johannes, who would have gone his own way, and recklessly ignited emotional flames. Please come here and die with lonely me. Unable to cut myself off, just saying don’t do this, this shouldn’t be done, I ate up his pain of blocking and turning away, tying up both our necks. I should never have started. I knew that our blood-shared relationship would ultimately leave only ashes from the fire.
And the unknown curse that passed the burnt punishment onto us. A curse? I couldn’t even imagine our end, pushed out by the curse. What should I do, what should I do?
Could I let Johannes go?
Pouring water on the freshly ignited heart from last night. The imagined farewell alone felt like an expressionless self-harm using someone else’s hand. It was shockingly sore, as if I had been struck in the dazed chest, and I couldn’t even spit out tears from my guilty and dry, cracked heart.
I don’t know how I came out of the civil war. On that road returning to the main tower, the wind was fierce. Every breeze on the skin, every piece of clothing was a disaster. I fluttered helplessly like a flag that had lost its purpose in an instant. The clouds flowing through the air, just out of reach, all felt like cruel rivers.
I, it would probably be better for him if I just went far away to get married without ever meeting Johannes again like this.
What should I do?
Time seemed to flow quickly and slowly in my dazed mind. I couldn’t go to bed for a long time. The sound of someone crossing the bridge cut through the corpse-like night from afar, but even long after that, there was no commotion of seizures. That unexpected silence somehow made my heart flutter, and I paced around the room.
And that’s when it happened. From somewhere deep below, there was a scratching sound like stones being broken and scraped.
At first, I didn’t notice. It was such a small sound. I even thought there might be a mouse somewhere. When it finally started to grate on my eardrums precisely, I had such thoughts. I stood still for a moment, focusing on the sound. The sound was slowly rising from below.
Outside the window. My head jerked up. I stared at the windowsill, unable to move as if my toes were stuck to the floor.
Thud.
A hand with sharp, uneven nails. When it grasped over the windowsill, my whole body staggered.
On that previous night, since the devil was a devil, I had only thought it had simply walked through the darkness and hadn’t questioned how it had come to the third-floor bedroom, but now a terrifying disease-like tremor struck my limbs. With my gaze fixed on the hand, I ran to the door and stood close to it, unable to seek help anywhere.
The cruel voice that had whispered incessantly all night, the gestures, seemed to stir up all my insides again. The head pulled up by the leaden hand rested on the windowsill. It swayed softly. Like clear waves even in the dark night.
“Jo… han?”
The platinum blonde hair.
As the upper body seemed to rise abruptly, the body in elaborate outdoor clothes fell into the window as if spilling. It was almost like tumbling. I stuck to the door like I was one with it, not going anywhere near. Because I couldn’t fathom who he was.
There were no wings.
But the hand that propped up his upper body at a right angle after falling face down on the floor was clearly the devil’s. The face that raised itself up breathlessly after struggling to get up was Johannes’, but ah, those eyes that fixed straight at me with the expression of someone who had just died instantly.
They were dragon’s eyes.
“Johannes. Is it you? …Huh? …Johannes?”
My voice, pale and slanted, crept inward involuntarily. I’m sorry. Johannes’ voice buzzed in my head. If it wasn’t Johannes, I was going to call his name hundreds, thousands of times.
But the deeply buried silence. That thing, whether devil or Johannes, stared at me. Under that gaze that clung to me as if it had seen something it shouldn’t have, it exhaled and inhaled ragged breaths through slightly parted lips.
Its shoulders and chest were heaving as if it had just cried out loudly like a child.
“…I …ne, ah, ugh….”
It collapsed to its knees, hugging its own body. Not content with kneeling, it slammed its forehead to the floor with a thud. It started convulsing painfully in a curled-up position.
Johannes.
I heard it clearly. Inette. Although it was cut off midway by a sudden groan, he clearly tried to call me as usual. His voice pierced like a painful awl into my chest where guilt had grown like stalactites blocking the holes, creating a gap. Tears burst forth all at once.
“Johannes!”
Before I knew it, my feet that had finally found their place rushed forward. I fell in front of his head. I frantically embraced Johannes’ back of the head, neck, and back as he violently convulsed with his body bent.
Johannes, at such a painful sight, I just stroked him, wiped him, wiped away the tears overflowing from my cheeks and chin with my own, then stroked and hugged Johannes again, utterly unable to come to my senses.
“…Ah, ugh, Inette…. Ha, kh, ungh….”
“Johannes. Johannes. Why are you like this, hm? Are you in a lot of pain? Is this because of pain? Johannes.”
“Sorry…. I’m, sor….”
“Ah, what should we do. What should we do about this. Johannes. Johannes.”
I told you, didn’t I?
At first, on the day Johannes had a seizure. Due to the darkness blocking my vision, I couldn’t see clearly the sight of him changing into a devil. I only vaguely remembered it from the terribly echoing sounds.
Thus, it was only on that day when Johannes climbed up the tower that I could witness the entire process with my own eyes. That. It wasn’t simply a matter of shedding an insensitive outer layer and transforming.
It grew from within.
I saw the back of his hand, which was wrapped around his waist and gripping his side, being torn. The sight of the skin, the flesh being ripped, and the nails or muscles inside growing a bit more, the sight of sharp bone tips piercing through near the shoulder blades, tearing the clothes.
The red flesh fully exposed as the outside split open, and through that gap, the terrible membrane stretching and growing, penetrating all the muscles. The cloud of blood evaporating hotly in the air.
It was even slow. It rose and stopped, rose briefly and stopped again for a long time, repeatedly. I think Johannes was somehow enduring, pressing it down again and again. It must have been no different from labor pains. That pain of having the flesh peeled off and all the internal organs exposed, I can’t help but understand it that way.
Even though I couldn’t tell what Johannes was doing or how, a moment like a resting period came. The brutal transformation stopped for a long time in the middle. The back with wing tips protruding like broken branches heaved. The back of the neck that had been heavily bent downward seemed to twitch, and the head was barely raised.
Through the hair disheveled with cold sweat, the still dragon-like eyes looked up at me painfully, distantly.
“…shouldn’t, have….”
He muttered with difficulty.
“Are you okay now? Johannes, hm?”
“I… shouldn’t have… come here….”
“Johannes, Johannes. I can’t hear you. Have I gone deaf? Johannes.”
His voice was so low. I asked urgently, crying.
“…What, should… you….”
“What should we do. Johannes. I can’t hear well. I can’t hear….”
“I wanted to see you…. Really,”
“……”
“I couldn’t… bear it… So, I’m sorry…. Nette, I’m… sorry….”
“……”
My voice.
It crumbled.
I couldn’t say anything.
I still haven’t forgotten. Johannes’ eyes. Those eyes brimming with tears that seemed about to fall any moment, as if he would break down crying right then.
The interval ended like that. The chilling sound that resonated in the bones started to ring again. Johannes’ head, his body, that had suddenly burrowed into the floor, twisted wildly, unable to move as if trapped alive in a mold without even being able to spread out once.
And it wasn’t long after that.
Top Celebrity Younger Brother Bears Her Child (Female-dominant)
One-line summary: Forced to live stream romance with a top celebrity in a female-dominant world.
Yan Jin transmigrated into a brothel, with a fellow transmigrated junior beside her.
Hearing the obscene words coming from outside, the unfortunate junior covered his ears tightly, his cheeks flushed red, and whispered to comfort her, “Don’t worry, I will definitely help you escape.”
“Don’t worry, I will definitely defend your chastity.” Yan Jin looked at the flawless and delicate features of the unfortunate junior and gently comforted, “Because we have transmigrated into a female-dominant world.”
※※※
Top celebrity Yu Shu suddenly fell into a coma during a concert.
Research scientist Yan Jin fainted in the lab after working overtime.
Two people with no connection were rushed to the same hospital.
Three days later, neither of them had woken up.
Suddenly, the entire nation discovered that a live streaming app had been forcibly installed on their phones.
Upon opening it, they heard the two discussing how to escape from the brothel.
The entire internet was in an uproar.
After the two successfully escaped from the brothel, Yu Shu’s fan group rushed to make a banner and sent it to the hospital overnight.
“Big sister bravely took action to defend the chastity of our idol!”
※※※
When Yu Shu was diagnosed with pregnancy, Yan Jin stared at his belly for a long time.
Covering his stomach, he muttered gloomily, “If you don’t like it, I’ll go get an abortion.”
“It’s not that I don’t like it.” Yan Jin hugged Yu Shu and said softly, “I just feel like I’m not human.”
Yu Shu comforted Yan Jin, “I was already an adult when we got together.”
Yan Jin hesitated, “But you won’t be of legal marriageable age even after giving birth to the child.”
At the same time, a flood of bullet comments appeared in the live streaming room that the two couldn’t see.
[Although it’s inappropriate, I also want a young and handsome boyfriend to have my child.]
①Male pregnancy (highlighted)
The female lead is five years older than the male lead, and the male lead is already an adult when he appears.
