You would not dare to fully comprehend. What I felt from that voice which did not even contain a ripple.

At that moment, I heard the pounding of my heart once again. Johannes’s calm demeanor seemed to gently admonish me with pity. My beloved, I could easily snap that thin neck of yours with just one hand…

His unspoken words quietly echoed only in my ears, gently caressing me as they covered my exposed nape and the upper body hidden by a thin layer of cloth. You know this too, don’t you, Isinette. Isinette…. Ah.

In that moment.

I wanted to wrap my legs around Johannes’s waist. My lofty man wholly clung to my tongue like a cliff. Such an elegant barbarian, tolerating his wicked lover. That form, seemingly without any particular intention to hide, appeared most powerful and beautiful to me, entirely a choking enchantment.

Had I not forcibly reminded myself of his position, placed in an awkward situation due to my mischief, I might have immediately pushed away his upper body and raised my trembling calves onto his thighs. The breath I inhaled deeply, enduring and enduring again the melancholic and strange scent emanating from his face, his shoulders, no, his entire body so close to mine, was all labored. Only futile tears welled up slightly over my tingling abdomen.

Cruelly.

“I visited my maternal family.”

Suddenly, Johannes changed the subject. As if he hadn’t noticed at all how heated his wife was at this moment, how much she desired below her husband’s waist. I, who had been staring wide-eyed, forcibly squeezed my eyes shut and bit down hard, as if stabbing my thighs.

“…When?”

I felt Johannes’s gaze touch my eyelids.

“Today.”

“Without going to Alyona’s?”

“No. On the way back from making amends. The old Ducomagne territory is not far.”

When I asked, carefully enunciating each word to calm my excited body, Johannes quickly explained as if he had misunderstood me. Then, lost in his own thoughts for a brief moment, he gently closed his eyes.

“For me.”

He added shortly.

“I mean it’s not far for me.”

His expression as he murmured seemed quite pained.

Nevertheless, I was gazing at his closed eyes. In truth, I was just impatient. When should I provoke him again? Should I not do it now? In my dark thoughts, I was eagerly watching for an opportunity.

I was about to ask what he was trying to say now, and if he couldn’t just pounce on me already, but I stopped myself.

I judged that now was not the time, no matter how heated I felt inside. I swallowed a rising sigh. I might have made a slightly tearful face as well.

“What business… at your maternal family’s?”

Even as I asked this, how many times had I already buried my nose in his nape and deeply inhaled his scent in my mind?

“To see if I could find a way.”

Johannes answered quietly, alone.

“I can’t stay by your side in this form forever, can I? Now that I’m no longer single, I should live properly in human form. That was… also what my mother earnestly wished for.”

“…”

“I also… want to be a proper husband to you.”

Johannes’s gaze, half-lowered, was unfocused. It was at that truly belated moment that I was struck speechless. His unexpected self-reproach came to me like a tidal wave.

In an instant.

Truly in an instant, for an entirely different reason than before, my throat tightened. No matter how much I endured, it was difficult, and in the end, by gazing at Johannes for a long while, I poured cold water on my own heated nape. The embers I had tried to keep alive by any means were completely extinguished with that. Even in the brief moment of exchanging a few words, the flames that had been flickering in my eyes until then finally became a completely distant memory at that moment.

I almost rushed to whisper to him, forgetting my position. That his body was never the result of divine punishment. That it was merely one of the many powers possessed by his beautiful self. That perhaps the reason his position is so high as to be sublime, even majestic, might be because of that. How could you alone not know such an evident fact?

I don’t know how much my heart swelled, sad that I couldn’t speak freely as it wasn’t my place. His loathing, deliberately stabbing at his own innocent flesh, was in fact an emotion I found utterly incomprehensible. Only his bronze skin, stained like ink marks, ached painfully cold.

For a moment, I even thought that perhaps the mistress’s interference was a help of fate. Maybe it prevented me, endlessly impure, from using such a chaste Johannes for a filthy climax. It was, I declare, an indescribable sense of relief.

I leaned my upper body slightly forward. I looked at my man with all my might.

“What are you… saying.”

“…”

“There’s nothing you can’t do now.”

No answer came. The silence, unable to meet my gaze, was so deep. My fingertips rose of their own accord. Like a blind person, I fumbled with the hair covering the corner of his eye, then caressed a single mark that had flowed down to below his eye. Johannes’s eyelids closed painfully.

“You know, Johannes.”

“…”

“I like you…”

More than I could possibly express in words.

“It’s ruins.”

Johannes, muttering as if spitting out the words, buried his forehead into my nape. His breathing, embracing my neck with just one arm, was irregular like a hurt child. It seemed as if he might collapse at any moment, and I was overwhelmed by a feeling that I should support him.

There was no hesitation. I immediately embraced him under his armpits. I caressed the firm back that filled my palms as if it were my own flesh. Eventually, Johannes’s breathless whisper flowed near my collarbone.

“There wasn’t a single brief record about this unidentifiable body. ‘That woman’…. Not even records about our ancestors. Except for the false biography of a man named Xavier. As if someone had deliberately erased it all…”

“…”

“The revival of the declining family was led by Xavier, they say. What nonsense is that…. That guy was nothing but a moving corpse…”

The last part was a bitter laugh.

“I came back with useless new memories and nothing else.”

I pondered Johannes’s dejected voice while holding his back. The phrase ‘new memories’ particularly caught my ear. Even now, it’s difficult and burdensome to keep up with Johannes, who occasionally speaks of distant past events as if they were his own. For that reason, I had to ponder for a moment to gauge his exact meaning, something that could have been passed off as ordinary speech. Whether his memories referred to ‘this time’s’ memories. Or whether he meant ‘past’ memories.

“That… do you mean the old knight’s memories you mentioned before?”

“…”

“What was it like.”

Even when I carefully asked, taking his silence as affirmation, he didn’t easily answer. I pressed one cheek against the back of his head rustling near my ear. I deeply stroked his pitiful shoulder blades and back. It’s okay… tell me. I urged silently.

“You.”

Johannes’s face, which had been seemingly suppressing something inside, suddenly went deep into the inside of my neck. The arm wrapped around my neck was also gaining more strength than before. Johannes, who had hesitated for a long time, seemed to make up his mind and moved his lips.

“That woman…”

“Yes.”

“She set fire to that man’s father’s body.”

“…”

“…”

My mind went blank for a moment.

“…What?”

I could only ask back like a fool. How shocked I was at that moment. You wouldn’t know. I opened and closed my mouth for a while.

“No…”

“…”

“How…”

“…”

“Could she…”

Johannes’s ‘that woman’ was me from the past. In that moment when I unwittingly became the perpetrator of an incident I knew nothing about, all I could do was stammer out responses. Johannes didn’t move at all inside my neck. I understood.

The fact that such a memory exists would mean that ‘that man’ directly witnessed the scene Johannes described. I couldn’t dare to ask and confirm from Johannes, whose entire being must be miserable with memories that weren’t even his own. Like an idiot, I just kept my mouth shut tight, trying hard to imagine the scene of a woman with fierce and irritable eyes personally burning her lover’s father.

However, I couldn’t easily imagine the story behind the situation. It certainly wasn’t an ordinary event. To do that to someone who was practically a father-in-law. And even in front of her lover….

Why on earth?

“…Well.”

Johannes’s head rose slightly. His complexion, having returned to the posture of resting his forearm on his knee like before, was as pale as if plastered. A white smile was hanging on his eyes as if it were a lie.

“That woman was full of lies whenever she opened her mouth. This time too, she was trying to deceive that man.”

“Deceive him how?”

“Saying it wasn’t her doing.”

“…”

“Idris, how could you not believe me, she said.”

“…”

“In the end, she did confess to her crime. But even then, she didn’t forget to blame her man.”

I stared at him silently with dazed eyes. I could have just let it go since it wasn’t our business anyway. But a strange question scratching at one corner of my heart was pooling in the depths of my mind. Just how evil must a woman be to do such a thing…. It was not so much shock at the cruel evil deed, but rather the pure doubt characteristic of someone who can’t even imagine that the scene presented before their eyes could actually be possible. Is that memory really true?

“Now I know you.”

Johannes murmured calmly.

“I know you.”

As if carving his own heart, he repeated.

“Your escape this time… it must have been just a mischievous joke. You wanted to provoke me. You wanted to see my reaction like when we were young, mock me for falling for it so pathetically to my face, and at the end of the joke, you hoped to laugh together with me. I know you. You… at least that much, as much as wanting a playmate, I know that you want me. You…”

However, unlike his words, it sounded just like the monologue of someone who didn’t know me at all. Even though he was a person who had never shown any sign of doubting my sincerity while we lived together as guests of Pessoa. I noticed then that his calm demeanor was not ordinary. In the end, becoming somewhat surprised, I listened to Johannes’s voice. You, surely not…

“And yet… I can’t trust you.”

Johannes traced the line of his forehead with the side of one hand. His eyes with their fine lines disappeared into deep shadows. I opened and closed my mouth before firmly shutting it. I refrained as much as possible from pleading, “Please don’t look at me through that man’s memories,” or making bold declarations like “Still, trust me.” For now, at least for now. It seemed I shouldn’t be the first to open my mouth.

I saw bronze skin spreading under the hand shadow that had swallowed up to Johannes’s nose bridge. Flowing, one streak, one streak.

As if it would surely cover his entire face someday with that momentum.

“Please don’t deceive me…”

“…I’m not deceiving you, Johannes.”

“Not anymore.”

He spat out slowly, as if uttering a drowsy curse.