#42

“Me!”

My crushed insides burst out.

“If I’m a cruel person you can’t trust! Then just let me go. If I’ve been so cruel, heartless, and selfish to you, if you’ve always seen me that way, why can’t you let go and why all this fuss!”

“…”

“What does that make me when you say such things? Why are you acting like you’re the only one carrying all the burdens in the world? While knowing nothing, while knowing nothing, why do you keep talking as if I’m the only bad person? Why do you judge me as you please! Are you the only one suffering? Are you the only one having a hard time?”

Johannes did not offer even a brief rebuttal. He didn’t even pretend to listen.

“Do you know what I’m like now to say such! Such!”

I felt heartbroken to the point of suffocation at his attitude and anger. It seemed Johannes was trying to carry me on his shoulder. As if afraid he might lose me if he let go, he lifted me forcefully while keeping me buried in his arms, causing my entire back to rub against Johannes’s front.

With my back straight and unbending, I jolted my whole body as I was thrown upwards and fell back down. Every time my solar plexus was pressed against Johannes’s arm, groans of “Ugh, ugh” escaped in succession. It was only when Johannes lifted me up with all his might one last time that I could breathe again.

“Ah, really, what do you want me to do…”

Then I cried out, hitting his forearm that was wrapped around my hips and upper thighs rather than my waist.

“How can you say such things, how can you… drive me like this!”

At that moment, I was utterly exhausted in body and mind from the unceasing emotional drain. My vision was tinged red. Johannes’s strength constricting me was heartbreaking. That oppressive force continuing through the night felt as if it had taken physical form and pierced through my lungs.

At some point, I even recalled the night I was left alone with the devil. Its voice. The sensation of something like a ball of fire rubbing against the inside of my thighs while damp. The night that carved into my body just how powerless a being I was.

The devil’s persistent smile came to mind. It felt as if the sensation that had flowed down the curve of my buttocks was reviving. Ah, and Johannes.

I recalled his forceful touch.

As if there was nothing he desired but climax in his mind, as if he saw nothing and would stop at nothing, as if he couldn’t see my shame or tears at all, his face had been flushed red! Even Johannes’s expression that had been hidden in the nape of my neck at the time instantly came back to me.

“…Elder brother simply found it difficult to withdraw the curiosity he happened to acquire, I suppose?”

And Winfrid’s words that had cut me. Ah, Johannes.

“…Then is that love?”

You enjoyed that situation.

“Wouldn’t it be much more plausible to say you enjoyed the tension or thrill instead?”

You were excited the whole time!

The whites of your eyes painfully wet, those expressions I thought were your sorrow for me were all just your lust excited by this situation. This ant lion pit of time where you degrade me and I insult and reject you, Johannes, you were secretly enjoying it, ah, how could this be. How could this happen.

In that moment, my Johannes seemed no different from the beast of a devil that was only obsessed with exploring below.

I couldn’t bear that feeling. I clutched Johannes’s back. I twisted my body any which way.

“Let go!”

I sobbed with complete anger.

“Can’t you hear? I said let go! Dirty. Dirty! You’re no different from that creature. Just as filthy. You’re like a dog in heat, like a monster! I don’t want to see your face, I hate your touch. Even brushing against you disgusts me! Let this go. Let this…”

I truly wanted to shake off Johannes and run away. The sensation like an insect crawling on my body. My heart felt like it would burst from the self-loathing that overflowed despite being inexplicable.

“I, I dislike you so much…. Ah, I really hate you…. I hate you so much, really, I hate you so much that, ugh, I can’t bear it, ah, ugh….”

So in fact, it was just anger and reproach spilled out without going through any thought process. Like interjections or curses uttered as they come, in pain or surprise, without concern for cause and effect. Meaningless things.

“If you truly loved me, you couldn’t do this to me!”

A wail like instinct.

“Is this love? Do you even love me?”

Though it was such a meaningless question. Perhaps the answer I didn’t hear that day was like a silent prophecy. Johannes’s breathing stopped abruptly. No, it was swallowed in one gulp. Johannes didn’t call out to me anymore after that. No. He probably couldn’t call out.

He only held me tighter. I remember nothing but that force. For instance, what kind of face he had. Whether he looked at me. Whether he was angry. Whether he was unexpectedly ashamed.

Or whether he despaired.

For a while, I just looked ahead and panted. The silence was long. It was a pitch-black stillness. It was such an abrupt and intense silence that even I was taken aback and lost for words at his sudden change. Only after breathing heavily for a long while did I start to awkwardly twist my shoulders this way and that. I wanted to look at Johannes but couldn’t get the right angle.

I craned my neck and crumpled my side, but could only barely see the tips of Johannes’s hair far below my line of sight. Finally, just as I was about to call out to him again, unable to bear it any longer.

“…Stop resisting now. Get on my back properly.”

Johannes cut off his long-held breath shortly. Taking advantage of my momentary daze, he properly hoisted me up and strode towards the window.

“N-no….”

I resisted, tensing my whole body. But like that night long ago, I was slung over his shoulder with my body bound by his arms, unable to move my upper half at all. Just a few futile kicks. Finally, as Johannes sat me on the windowsill, completely pushing me back, I cried out to him.

“Can’t you hear what people are saying? Are you deaf? I said I don’t want to. I said I don’t want to go with you.”

“Ah, I can’t hear. I can’t hear at all. So if you don’t want to get hurt, get on nicely.”

My hand flew up. Slap! With a tremendous sound, Johannes’s face twisted to the opposite side. Flap flap. Birds took flight from somewhere in the forest outside. It must have been because the friction sound carried beyond the window. But the night that filled even the empty space left by the flying birds soon returned to its usual silence, and Johannes.

In that stillness, he didn’t even bother to touch his own cheek. It was just his twisted profile, and the silence of shadowed eyes.

“Who do you…”

I moved my lips. If you don’t want to get hurt? I completely lost my mind. It felt like sparks were flying from my eyes.

“Who do you really think… To treat me… So carelessly… Who are you… Who are you to treat me so carelessly like this…!”

The golden hair fell diagonally across the middle of his body blocking me. I saw the cold air that brushed past me completely disheveling his moonlight-soaked hair.

The tears. The tears running down my cheeks and pooling under my chin before dripping down hardly seemed like my own, but someone else’s. So perhaps I was crying on Johannes’s behalf. I raised my trembling arms.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I mechanically struck his shoulders right in front of me. I cried out in a muffled voice.

“Just how great do you think you are to treat me like this…! How! Ah! Ugh….”

A lump of tears choked my throat. No more words came. Johannes, with his head lowered, didn’t dodge even once despite the increasing intensity. He just took my punches as they were.

Tears came up like blood. It was a lump of long-accumulated sorrow covered by new sorrow.

Living and living in this desolate world that never becomes familiar no matter how long, in this place where I feel lonely to the bone and breathless – in a moment I was swept away like a mere object by the one person who seemed to truly respect me. Because you happened to see me as a woman.

Because I happened to see you as a man.

Though I only tried my best to leave you with even slightly shallower wounds, how could you do this to me? Ah, though nothing of the outcome will change, why are we now in tatters? There was no way to bear the welling sorrow.

I cried for a long time.

There were no hands to wipe away my tears. Just warmth that was no longer forceful, nor distant. Nor watching. My hands that had been beating Johannes stopped at some point.

As the tears I had poured out to my heart’s content slowly subsided. I was completely exhausted. As the dizzying and confusing emotions faded and my head became empty, I hated Johannes so much for not making a single excuse.

Johannes, you are no different from a beast. Though I had spilled that out so harshly, full of certainty, it seems a part of me hoped he would explain himself. I wanted the common confession a man would naturally make. For instance, I love you so I simply couldn’t let you go. Or, you are mine but you keep trying to run away so I got angry, you scratched me.

Stories that ultimately amount to ‘I love you’. So I wanted to hear a confession that it was at least love, that his mindset was different from the devil’s from the start.

Rather, I wished I could confirm from him even that forceful affection, the form of love I had seen and experienced directly.

“Since evening…”

As if reading my mind, Johannes suddenly opened his mouth. It was a voice so quiet it was barely audible.

“…I had a bad feeling.”

I raised my tear-soaked face. Johannes’s eyes hidden by his hair were still not visible.

“I… felt like turning that whole place upside down wouldn’t be enough, but you, who should be the most anxious, were just quiet without a single change in expression… It reminded me of the old days. You never looked for me. Always the same. You grab me first, but when it really matters, you don’t even glance at me once as if someone like me doesn’t exist at all. Like that, making the one watching feel so terrible…”

A brief silence.

“…Don’t leave me.”

Johannes breathed out. I was a bit taken aback. Perhaps because I had cried, all the intense emotions had oxidized away leaving only a dazed feeling. Though it was the confession I had earnestly desired deep down, somehow I couldn’t understand its content. Something was different. It even contradicted the facts I knew.

“When did I ever…”

Johannes slowly grasped my hand resting on his shoulder and continued with words even more incomprehensible than before.

“Yes, you’re right, I am a beast…. Can you even imagine the feeling of an insect that can barely survive each day only by somehow losing itself?”

“…What?”

“Do you think I didn’t want to live like a proper person too? I wished you would disappear before my eyes. I had no greater desire than for you to go far away. Even when the one who proposed marriage to you happened to be that kind of man, I tried to endure it. Because there was nothing I could do anyway and I thought that was best for both you and me. Because I wanted to live too. But you…”

My hand hurt. Johannes was gripping so tightly that cold sweat had formed, making the touching skin damp. But I couldn’t even gauge half of that strength.

“…You held onto me. Asking me to protect you…. Saying we should be together.”

“…”

“Me…”

Then Johannes’s hair, now completely bowed forward, was swaying in the breeze. Johannes murmured softly from below his eyes hidden by his hair.

“…Saying you love me.”

Ah.

“Not anyone else, but you, Isolde. You yourself… You said you love me…”

Johannes seemed to be gritting his teeth. I saw his whole body stiffen from the nape of his neck.

“Why… did you change? Isolde. Why are you doing this now of all times…”

And that voice flowing through his clenched teeth.

“…Don’t do this…”