#70

“Ah…!”

I fell forward.

“No, no… No!”

I cupped Johannes’s cold cheeks, almost embracing him with my whole body. And pressing my cheek against his forehead, I seemed to beg, please, I implore you, wake up.

At that time, were you perhaps watching me?

Was I trembling? Did I scream? Did I wail? I’m not sure. I just kept muttering something like ‘Johannes, Johannes!’ but in reality, there was no thought in my head. Just, no. This isn’t it. Only urgent denial was everything. So I couldn’t believe or accept it. Such a sudden, desolate death.

Ah, Johannes’s.

“Ah, uh, aah….”

I might have screamed sporadically, but my voice seemed distant as if it wasn’t mine. No, a strange sound that could neither be called a scream nor a groan forced its way out of my throat. How could this be?

Then suddenly, my tear-filled vision flipped over. Without a chance to resist, my head was thrust into the floor. My body rolled off the bed so abruptly. Perhaps the white-haired demon who approached with a cursed bow in one hand had grabbed my hair and pulled me down.

A cracking voice was heard nearby.

Looking up from where I was sprawled on the floor like a rag, Johannes was still lying long on the bed, staring at me with empty eyes. In the corner of my chaotic vision, I vaguely caught the sight of the old man standing next to me, unconcerned with the corpse on his bed, loosening the belt around his waist.

Only then did I turn my eyes towards the old man. When my brain was so dense as if filled with black leaves that no thoughts came, for the first time that day, I saw the old man’s face. No, it wasn’t just his face. I saw the old man’s eyes, red with anger. And then there was a ringing in my ears.

“…Stop it, Johannes!”

The sound from 9 years ago. The smell. The temperature.

All senses mixed chaotically and overwhelmed me. Therefore, at that moment, for the first time in my life, I dug up the long-rotted soil at my grave with my own hands. No. That’s not right. It wasn’t me, but a storm that came from somewhere, sweeping away all my mounds of earth, uncovering memories I didn’t want to dig up.

That very first night when my first husband died long ago.

The husband who had finished with me knelt at the end of the bed and pulled back the curtain. As he proudly displayed the blanket stained with the virgin’s blood outside the curtain, my father spoke, slapping Johannes’s cheek.

“Remember this.”

With his delicate face turned sharply from the slap, Johannes’s gaze as he stared blankly at me had no strength at all, but only.

It was uncontrollably red.

I was too busy hiding my naked body to face that gaze.

Yes. Johannes was there at that time. Beyond the opaque curtain of the bed where I was pinned under my husband’s body. Johannes was frozen among the witnesses who watched our entire consummation.

As you also know, it is an old custom for one or more young witnesses to attend when carrying out important affairs. On that day, it was Johannes who was tasked with engraving the union of the two families in his mind, even getting slapped in the process.

Ah, that was the moment I first felt Johannes’s hostility.

The memory returned so suddenly. Perhaps it rushed in because the situation, with the smell and damp sensation of blood spilled on the bed, and the ‘murderer’ standing before me, matched exactly with that of the past.

The memory I had buried with my own hands had been writhing with rotten flesh before, but I didn’t have the strength to block it as usual when faced with Johannes’s corpse.

“Johannes, Johannes. Why are you like this?”

The me in the memory sobbed. My field of vision seemed to distort and swirl chaotically. It was as if the senses of this body were burning away all the black paint overlaid on a mural, revealing the colors hidden within in an instant. It wasn’t that the memory returned to me, but that I had fallen into a room with a massive mural.

In the pitch darkness where I couldn’t even see right in front of me, a presence that I couldn’t tell whether it was human or beast just by its aura. And in that moment when I felt I might suffocate in the darkness, a single small whisper that came to my ear.

“…Vineta.”

Ah, that autumn of my youth when the white light of the celestial palace was sorrowful. After spending a difficult night with my young body, when my first husband was dying under torture by Johannes’s hand, it wasn’t simply fear alone that paralyzed me.

When I heard the sound of a person’s chest bone, who had been breathing with me just moments ago, twisting and breaking without a single scream due to a torn throat, and the human blood clot inside turning into dismembered chunks of meat. It was the fact that it was none other than my beloved ‘brother’ in the midst of that nauseating smell and noise that bound me.

The fact that that ‘man’s’ hostility was also directed at me.

In addition, the fact that I too was an accomplice in this horrific situation that betrayed human ethics. Yes. I vaguely realized that I was the ’cause’ of that hostility.

“Stop it, Johannes. Please. Stop it.”

Johannes gave no particular answer. Only his presence seemed like suppressed laughter. I couldn’t stop him. In front of Johannes, who was uncharacteristically cruel, I was too powerless, too afraid, and it felt as if I, unwittingly, was the one who had encouraged him, so I didn’t even have the right to stop him.

Dying in agony.

The person who turned away, unable to bear the corpse of the human who had finally died, was me on that day. Thus, I lay there, unable to even close my eyes, as if I had died instead.

“What kind of person was it?”

“How can it make sense that you didn’t see even for a moment?”

I couldn’t give any answer to those questioning gazes. It was as if lukewarm water had filled my brain, everything was numb. At the time I didn’t know well, but what first sealed my lips were indescribable emotions.

And rather than betraying my beloved Johannes by tattling that the cruel assassin was actually my brother, I wanted to erase all the facts I had heard, felt, and understood.

Ah, so I endured all those long years, flattened by fear and guilt. And the cause of those unjust emotions was entirely, without exception, Johannes.

Although it was my husband he was tearing apart with his own hands, the presence in the darkness, whose aura alone seemed as if it would kill me, not him. The shadow-like demon who seemed to mock me as I begged him to stop, knowing that silent killer was Johannes.

At that time, I was unable to come to my senses due to the agony. I understood him, yet couldn’t understand.

Why did you come to me with a man’s aura?

It was only that summer when I realized that I too had come to love him, my ‘brother’, that I was able to fully comprehend and ignore rather than misunderstand.

That hostility, it was nothing but your twisted jealousy!

And yet, the seventeen-year-old Johannes, shining alone by the well as if he were light itself. Imprisoning me in a tower so I couldn’t go anywhere, standing where my hands couldn’t reach, not approaching me first.

Ah, I wanted to kill you for binding my feet for such a trivial reason, but in the end, I couldn’t kill you because it was you.

That summer when I finally acknowledged, at least unconsciously, the emotion I absolutely couldn’t accept. When I poured out the fire I couldn’t understand rationally towards the window, an even more unbearable reality struck me. Incest. For that reason, I must have erased it again out of habit. Because that was more familiar. Because it would have been easier than remembering, holding onto it, and living with it.

As if I had become a fool who knew nothing and could do nothing.

As if it were my nature and my punishment from heaven.

“Ah…. Uh, uuh….”

Groans poured out uncontrollably. In fact, the time I had fallen into the memory was probably just a moment. But in that short time, I felt like I had become a completely different person, as if my outer skin had been turned inside out. Even the night shadows filling the room seemed to have changed color.

As if I had plucked out my lost eyes and replaced them with new ones.

“Ah, it was you…. It was you!”

Slap, slap! The old man’s belt was falling mercilessly on my back like a whip. I could barely even notice it. My limbs were trembling, but I crawled on all fours and draped my upper body next to Johannes, who was lying sideways. I reached out both arms and cupped his ice-cold face, which had not even closed its eyes until then.

“Please…. Look at me….”

Absurd and unbelievable scenes seemed to be pounding my head. With each blow from that excessive realization, I felt like I was shattering into pieces, about to sink into the bottomless underground.

“Johannes….”

His hair, evenly scattered on the bed, would have been a brilliant gold even without light shining on it. Oh, you who were like the sun, you who stayed like a season outside my lonely window, how could you do this to me!

Do you know?

You committed such a terrible act just because you loved me, for the trivial reason that I was leaving you for another man. Ah, you just couldn’t control your temper. You did such a thing so blatantly in front of me, in front of no one else but me. You were practically the one who imprisoned me! Johannes, Johannes.

Is that truly love?

The belt continued to strike down. It was more violent than before, but I didn’t feel the pain. I just wanted to faint from the unbearable resentment towards Johannes’s unfocused gaze.

If you leave me like this, what am I supposed to do now? How am I supposed to live with you, so weak and even cruel, buried in this grave-like heart like a rotten funerary object? How could you leave so suddenly like this? How could you do this to me until the end? Please don’t leave me alone. Please.

Come back.

My whole body felt like a vessel filled with rotten water. I couldn’t bear my flesh, brimming with sorrowful and futile tears about to overflow. It felt like my heart was collapsing. Because I hated Johannes’s empty eyes. Those terrible eyes that could no longer see me….

So much.