Of course, you have never engaged in prostitution. No one would have desired the flesh of a barbaric apostate. Kretzman, judging by your crazed cheeks and fastidious gaze, you would never have set foot in a brothel to purchase a lowly body. For you, sexual desire was merely a cheap possession of lazy good-for-nothings. Or is this just the baseless speculation of an ignorant third party?

However, now I recall your expression as you declared your long and unfortunate family history, as if taking revenge on me.

“…Before my eldest son, who suffered from a pitiful fever and ultimately abandoned his sick family, and his weak and wicked lover, ah! This body was gloriously divided…”

You spoke so proudly and laughed deeply.

Such obsession, such cruelty.

It’s a madness that can never be displayed by someone blinded in just one day. It is the nature of a person who has devoted their entire life to a single goal, consumed by it. Such a person tends to discard even the rest they shouldn’t avoid and the surroundings they shouldn’t reject. Let alone dalliances with women.

You were exactly such a person, whom I could only witness after finally awakening the devil’s flesh in a ‘complete’ way, unable to bear watching Johannes go mad day by day. You, who was obsessed, despairing, enraged, corrupted, even separating your soul and body, tying half of it to the devil’s flesh.

Kretzman.

That night, I went to a brothel, a place you would surely have despised.

“Seems they’ve given up.”

The woman who had been peering over my head, watching the outside, suddenly whispered lowly. Feeling her breath on the back of my head, I focused on the direction she was looking. Nowhere in the crowded street could I see any angry men.

Nevertheless, I stood with my back and palms spread wide against the wall. Thankfully, the alley we had slipped into was secluded. Had someone seen my exaggerated childlike gestures then, they would surely have made an astonished sound. Saying something like, a grown woman playing such a strange game. I understand.

Though the unsettled mood of my fleeing companion was clearly transmitted to the nape of my neck, the corners of my mouth, which had risen so high, showed no signs of coming down. The chase scene in this unfamiliar land only fueled my already heightened excitement.

“We’re safe.”

The woman leaned her head back against the wall and let out a shallow sigh. I sighed along with her and then mimicked her, relaxing my entire body. The opposite wall exuded a damp lime smell. The alley was so narrow. Our noses were almost touching the crumbling stone walls as we stood side by side.

“So… Where are you from?”

The woman, having caught her breath, asked about my background once again, and I answered without hesitation.

“I don’t belong anywhere. I’m not even a resident of this place to begin with.”

“…Hmm.”

Turning her head sharply, the woman stared intently at my forehead, narrowing her eyes for some reason. Though she had disguised herself with gaudy makeup to appear loose in conduct, her cool, defined features seemed unwilling to lose their true color. She slightly raised her index finger and gently pushed my cheek. As she examined my features, turning this way and that as if appraising me, I blinked in slight surprise.

“Of course. You must be an outsider. The fact that I don’t remember a face like yours. It’s a face one couldn’t forget even after just a glimpse.”

Below her eyelids, which were swollen and bruised a deep blue, her eyes curved upward, and the corners of her lips rose slightly. She then released my cheek. With a strange expression, she asked me.

“Where have you been wandering to only arrive here now?”

As if observing from a distance.

Yet also as if closely examining.

It was an expression and a strange calmness impossible to imagine from a woman who had been beaten nearly to death just moments ago. Feeling an interest difficult to put into words, I answered gently.

“The West, the Center, the South.”

The woman raised her eyebrows with an utterly perplexed air. I continued speaking.

“Where the sun sets, where it doesn’t set, places by the sea. All the towers there.”

“…”

“I wandered across the continent following precious husbands. Although I didn’t broaden my knowledge much.”

“Husbands?”

“Yes. Husbands.”

To her question, I answered reflexively. Strangely, at that moment, three places and three men were appearing like shadows behind my retinas. The royal palace garden and the young man who lost his heart. The white spire of Indridason and the old man with the bow. And the wilderness spread out like a siege around the iron-walled fortress, where my love was redder than sunset and more brilliant than dawn. The back of my brother.

They stood planted in their respective lands like solid sentences.

The fresh emotion was no different from a slow tide. I had no choice but to open my eyes and mouth wide and slowly, yet fervently, spill it all out. I clung desperately to the woman’s thin arm beside me.

“Never… going back…”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Never settling down again. Really, never…! Ha!”

The woman seemed quite startled by my sudden exclamation and excessive contact. She tried to shake me off immediately, but due to the narrowness of the alley, even regaining a bit of distance was not easy. In the end, she just pulled her shoulders back awkwardly and gazed at me from a distance.

I absolutely.

I absolutely didn’t want to let her go. I clung to her as if urging drinks on someone who refused, over and over. Perhaps it was truly something like intoxication. I wanted to somehow convey the emotion surging through me to that woman. You must know, ah, you must surely know this…! And so, still clinging, I let out a pleading laugh.

“Good heavens…. Child. Please, don’t look at me with those eyes…”

“…”

“You know, I’m actually a princess of Duke Gustavus. So I unintentionally had husbands here and there quite often. I got absolutely sick of it.”

“A princess of Duke Gustavus…”

“Yes.”

“The Devil Princess. That’s what you mean?”

“Yes, yes. You know too?”

Rumors really do spread far. I grinned and marveled repeatedly. The woman, as tall as Griselda, looked down at me intently.

Unlike her earlier startled appearance with shoulders jumping, she had regained her initial subtle distance in expression. I still remember how only her black pupils were interestingly widened within her casually opened eyelids. Suddenly displaying a faint smile, she stroked her hair deeply and asked.

“So… Do you have a place to stay, Princess?”

“Not yet. I’ve been too busy sightseeing.”

“What about meals?”

“Ah.”

My eyes opened wide as if lying. I felt as if I’d been hit on the head by her kind voice asking after my well-being. It was because I finally noticed the nature of the sensation that had been rumbling in my stomach for a while. It was hunger, something I had never felt before in my life.

“Am I… hungry?”

“How would I know that better than you?”

The woman had a troubled look. That appearance made me even more flustered. I hurriedly detached myself from her arm.

“No. Um. That’s right. This must sound strange…. I’m not exactly famished. But, well, I think I might be hungry.”

“Is that something to be so confused about?”

“Well. I’m not sure. Am I strange? This is the first time I’ve felt like this.”

“You must have been raised preciously. You’re funnier than you look. For such a woman to have been strutting around so boldly this night, no wonder your stomach is growling.”

The woman laughed briefly. Her eyes, which had shown no warmth a person should have other than the heat rising from bruises, instantly curved into soft lines, revealing her body temperature.

I can’t describe how well those eyes, neither touchably cold nor freezingly hot, matched her makeup that had only looked vulgar before. To tell the truth, I thought for a moment that she was blooming into a purple flower. If I hadn’t been someone accustomed to seeing beautiful faces, if I hadn’t been the sibling of Johannes Valdemar, I might have been a little blinded. Surprised, I even had such a thought fleetingly.

“Regina.”

“Hm?”

“My name.”

The woman’s head tilted slightly and came close to my face. I just stood there, directly receiving her interested gaze on my eyelids. My heels involuntarily lifted several times. A kind of elation, different in quality and texture from the excitement I had felt all night, was rising from my ankles. Envy.

Now that I’ve left Pesoa, I think I understand the nature of the elation I felt at that moment. Yes. It was clearly envy for something I had never had. With my mind hazily soaked in her gaze, I seem to have asked myself incoherently.

How is this woman… so different from me?

“Want to come with me? I’ll feed you.”

“Yes. I’ll go.”

There was not even a moment’s delay in my answer. Regina immediately clicked her tongue.

“You’re agreeing to follow without even knowing where.”

“It doesn’t matter where.”

“Why?”

“To me, you seem quite novel and fascinating.”

I murmured as if talking to myself, unable to take my eyes off Regina’s strange pupils.

“I wonder why. You seem somehow very light. And that’s so pleasing to see. That’s why it’s fascinating.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Of course. So feel free to be proud of it.”

Regina, who had been staring at me dubiously, suddenly let out a short sigh. And then, she smiled faintly.

“Let’s go out. I must have hit my head wrong earlier. My skull is ringing.”

She gently pushed my arm, which was standing sideways. After emerging from the narrow alley, Regina looked around briefly before taking the lead.

The place Regina entered, gently curling my aimless arm, was a gloomy tavern with red lanterns hanging like fruit from every dark window. That place where a shabby, nameless sign swayed like a red shadow.

It was a large brothel located downstream of the Pesoa River.