“Ah….”

“Aah…!”

It was an unidentifiable woman’s scream. The muffled cry echoed through a distant corner of the palace corridor. However, it had subsided by the time Johannes opened his eyes.

Johannes slowly opened and closed his eyelids, heavy with sleep. As he lifted his unfocused gaze, he saw the round ceiling of the fine silk canopy bed and the gleaming beams. A cool night air permeated the surroundings. The feeling of the blanket wrapping around his limbs was strangely damp. Even in his hazy state of mind, he sensed something strange. Where…

Here.

It wasn’t Idris’s dwelling. Not the low, red wooden ceiling drenched in twilight. The height seemed so distant, as if one couldn’t reach it even stretching their arms three times. He lay there blankly for a while, eyes open. To be honest, it wasn’t a place entirely unfamiliar to him. It looked familiar. He just couldn’t recall its exact name. The impression that came to him was as faint as scenery revisited after many years. With both his mind and vision clouded as if having swallowed a mouthful of mist…. No. Anyway….

“…Vinetta?”

To his dazed call, Johannes’s bedroom remained silent. There was no sign of her. Johannes fumbled and patted the space beside him a couple of times. Nothing. No arms or waist to embrace. He turned his head limply. Still, she was nowhere to be seen. Where did she go…

“Open your eyes…!”

“Just once, young lady, look at this nurse just once…!”

Just once more, before dawn breaks, I want to look into your eyes and share your breath.

As Johannes was pondering his lover’s whereabouts in his hazy consciousness, he suddenly laughed like an echo. His ‘sister’ had most likely gone to the well. She would sneak out on tiptoe, afraid of being seen, soak a clean towel in cold water, then come back to shake his shoulder awake, pestering him to wipe her body. She’s a girl raised too delicately to know how to properly wring out even a single wet towel. Even with his blurred vision, he could clearly see Giovinetta’s stubbornness, bringing that dripping thing all the way to the bed.

‘Hey, young lady. What are you doing?’ he would tease with a laugh, and she would immediately raise her eyebrows saying, ‘Well, you should have set a good example first, shouldn’t you?’ His lover, naked in the soft moonlight, would pout her lips coyly. With such expectations, he couldn’t help but be pleased. But, Giovinetta…. Something was strange.

Were you my ‘sister’?

“Lady Ivet…! My lady…!”

What on earth was this commotion? Johannes closed his eyes for a moment at the scream that seemed to drill into his eardrums. Then he sat up with a deep breath. He had to go meet Ivet, who was surely wandering aimlessly somewhere in the palace. He thought of gently carrying her on his shoulder and bringing her back. Since when had she become a sister needing so much care? He hoped she wasn’t in the dark garden at night, let alone the well. Johannes quietly laughed again at such worries, then pulled back the blanket and lowered one foot to the floor. As he did so, he suddenly felt his bed was strangely high and lifted his head. And then…

He saw it. The long mirror. And the reflection in it.

“Ah! Aah…! Oh God…!”

“Thank you…! Thank you…!”

Johannes’s breath stopped abruptly. Opposite him. The full-length mirror reflected the naked body of a young boy. It was not the young man Idris, whose breath had been full to his very soul, but a boy whose usually bright blonde hair now looked like natural red hair, covered from head to toe in someone else’s blood.

The body of a murderer who had finally obtained his sister’s screams, tears, and fear as an offering. Open it…! Ah, Johannes…! Open it! The screams that had split the night now pulled at his mind like iron threads.

Giovinetta.

At that moment, Johannes’s eyes froze in an instant, turning deathly pale. It’s not true. It can’t be…

He couldn’t come to his senses as a dizzying sensation swept over his spine, as if everything before his eyes was moving away. The floor beneath his feet felt like it was a thousand feet below, as if he would fall at any moment. His whole body swayed. He collapsed. No…. I am. No….

“Young lady, let’s get you out of here first…. Come this way. Hurry. Hurry…”

He heard the distant sound of Griselda, panic-stricken, tending to his sister’s body that lay as if dead. The nurse’s voice, suppressing her breath heavily, was trembling as if about to burst at any moment. It’s scattering.

Idris. Idris. Even Giovinetta’s whisper, mixing sweet sobs like moans. Her fine limbs that wrapped around his entire body like sap-flowing vines. The soft sensation of her breasts that seemed ready to burst with maternal scent if he buried his face in them, even the jokes they shared like lovers. Ah.

Jokes, you say.

It felt like the first conversation the two had shared. Undoubtedly, there had been no walls between them at that moment. Though there was nothing fleeting or trivial about it, he was confident he could recite it again without missing a single particle if he wanted to.

In a relationship that was merely a sickness to each other, Johannes had never imagined such tender acts, such light conversations were possible. The warmth that made him shudder was like diluting a deadly poison that could easily kill a hundred people by pouring water over and over. And now it was fading away like a ghost. He tried to grasp it. He missed it. Only the muttering he had repeated in his dreams became a belated divine punishment, shattering the back of his head.

I’m glad I didn’t strike you.

“Ugh….”

There was no time to hold back the nausea. Johannes, who had fallen from the bed as if toppling over, vomited everything in his stomach. After a long stream of clear saliva, as he hadn’t really eaten anything except drinking celebratory wine, even stomach acid eventually refluxed. He panted desperately, hugging his stomach. Feeling as if his head would fall forward, he barely managed to put one hand on the floor to support himself. His trembling hand. It was bronze-colored with bulging veins.

Giovinetta.

Ridiculously, at that moment, he begged for his life. Giovinetta. Please. Save me…. Save…. Without any clear consciousness, unable to even distinguish who he was, he begged as if fleeing aimlessly. Johannes looked back at the entrance behind him with a trembling exhale.

He truly felt like he was going to die. He had to go to her. She was the only one who could deny this nightmare. The darkness that he couldn’t fathom front or back was no obstacle to his eyes. The white bed sheet, the bedpost, the carpet. He could see with chilling clarity that everywhere his body, hands, and feet had touched was also horribly bloodstained. No…. This, my doing…. No…. Ah, rather….

I should have confessed everything to you.

Someone cries out from within the boy’s chest. That he should have poured out everything to her and repented – this ugly flesh, this gloomy consciousness, this confused soul that may be illusion or reality, this ominous spirit thirsting like a starving ghost. Where had Giovinetta, who had been by his side until just before, run off to? So if he had buried his forehead in his sister’s lap and atoned. She, braver than ever before… might have stroked the head of her unfortunate brother and lightened his burden with her characteristically light-hearted nature.

‘Why worry about how you look? Even if you were a one-legged cyclops, who would dare oppose you? You’re already the eldest son of Valdemar and soon to be my brother, so who would dare….’

‘……’

‘Hmm, but lusting after your sister is a bit creepy…. No matter how much I cherish you, I don’t like it that far, so try to control yourself, okay?’

The image of his sister laughing mockingly at the end crashed and shattered on his wet cornea. The devil who had torn apart that smile, that touch, that last hope with its claws was none other than himself…. Shut up.

Shut up.

His naked body, which had stood up as if screaming, swayed precariously. Who… said devil. With hands like clawed paws, he kept grabbing at bedposts, tables, walls as he moved forward. Near the entrance, he roughly threw on a single coat that his hand caught and went out the door. Without time to think, he simply followed the lover’s presence he felt on his skin. Save me. Giovinetta. Gio…. The cold sweat that flowed down his cheeks, pooled at his chin, and finally dripped, drip, drip, was red with someone else’s blood mixed in.

Blue flames rose in his footsteps, burning away the bloodstains. In the end, the inner chamber visible behind him was an entire sea of dark blue flames. The flames that clung to his heels like snakes climbed up his legs and spread over his entire body. Whoosh… the evidence of sin is being erased.

After walking along the corridor wall for a while, he retched violently.

The nausea truly wouldn’t stop. Johannes, who had bent over with his hand against the wall, covered his mouth with the back of his hand and raised his head. The mirror image he suddenly encountered simply wouldn’t erase from his mind. He had no idea whose clear and pure appearance it was. If it was his own shell, it was so disgustingly heavy that he couldn’t bear it. It couldn’t be.

That night when he was cruel to his sister couldn’t have been real.

Johannes cried out repeatedly in the back of his throat. Nevertheless, the blood vessels throughout his body were bursting at will, driving him mad. The omnipotent feeling of carelessly shedding his shell. Johannes’s body already knew that climax of sharing with his lover the appearance he had desperately tried to hide, finding it ugly even to his own eyes. That’s why this outer skin was unbearable.

Let’s beg….

Johannes swallowed his fear with a trembling inside. Even if it wasn’t reality, he had to beg indiscriminately. He had to kneel down even now. He had to turn back. Before it was too late. Too late? What’s too late about it? What is there to turn back from? Nothing happened between us.

But by any means necessary. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…. Ivet. Forgive me. Tell me it’s not true…. Tell me it’s not a big deal. Please…. Ha, damn it…. Giovinetta…. He couldn’t think about whether it was possible or impossible, right or wrong. He just suppressed his clawed hands with all his might.

Just before Johannes arrived at Ivet’s hiding place.

“Young lady, even if you’re very afraid right now, please wait just a moment. I’ll be back soon…”

He heard Griselda leaving Ivet. Her voice, trying to soothe, was still trembling slightly as if she herself hadn’t calmed down yet, and so were her footsteps. Although he hadn’t particularly intended to avoid her, their paths naturally crossed. Johannes, standing holding onto the doorframe, glanced at Griselda’s back as she melted into the darkness beyond the corridor. Then he crossed the threshold.

“G-Griselda…?”

His life asked faintly. The moment he heard that voice, Johannes froze with his eyes wide open like a child caught doing wrong. All the determination that had dragged his body this far seemed futile as he couldn’t move an inch. Even as Ivet, who had come down from under the bed, raised a lamp to illuminate the doorway, he simply couldn’t move at all. An indescribable fear was overwhelming him. It was the feeling of a cornered animal. Summary judgment was imminent.

“Ah, uh…”

“……”

A long moan escaped from between Ivet’s lips as she discovered Johannes. With an expression mixing fear and anger, her face all red, she seemed to have tied some rope to her pupils. That rope was of course tied to Johannes’s limb tendons. And so, like a puppet, he takes a step towards his sister’s bed.

One step. His sister stepped back. After a few backward steps, she grabbed the bedpost, spun around, and fled to the opposite side, wary of him. Don’t go. Johannes followed mechanically.

“…Vinetta.”

“…Don’t come.”

“Giovinetta.”

“Go away…!”

“Giovinetta….”

“Don’t call me. I don’t want to hear it.”

“I, did wrong…”

“I’ll scream. What nerve does a murderer have to come looking for me again?”

“……”

I’m sorry. Come here. Save me. Ivet…. His tongue was stiff and words wouldn’t come out.

When his sister on the other side of the bed turned left, he turned right. When she turned right, he immediately turned left. Although it looked exactly like a hunt driving prey, Johannes didn’t realize his own appearance. He had simply blocked his sister’s path with a gradually, but clearly suffocating consciousness.

“Ah! Stop mocking me…!”

At the moment his sister, with nowhere to go, finally burst into tears. Bam, the door opened. The siblings’ gazes simultaneously flew and stuck to the man standing as if blocking the entrance.

“Father…!”

Only when he heard Ivet’s muttering did Johannes, who had been panting silently, realize that man was his father.