#75

Yes, at that moment, I wasn’t afraid of his transformation. I didn’t dislike it, nor was it disgusting. So I climaxed with excited moans and tears.

“Yes, Jo, han…. I, uh…. I was wrong….”

“Are you going to run away again? Leaving only me behind?”

“N-no, no. I’m, sorry. I….”

“I can’t believe you….”

“Believe me, please believe me.”

“No….”

“I won’t do it again, Johannes….”

“I just, can’t, you….”

Johannes closed his eyes as if in pain. His nape turning away from me again and shaking his face breathlessly still showed signs of not trusting me.

“Ha…. Damn it. Uh….”

After breathing heavily for a while as if feeling me swallowing his essence with my whole body, he suddenly muttered like a sigh.

…I want to stay like this.

It was a voice so low it was almost inaudible. I couldn’t answer anything.

My body, held by Johannes’ waist, slowly fell backward. Johannes’ outer garment poured down like a curtain, covering the sides of my nearly naked body.

With himself still buried in my body, Johannes laid me down straight on the pile of fallen leaves and pulled me up. With my two legs hooked over his forearms like that, he licked his own fingers. Soon he gently caressed me, who was already racing towards climax. As if drawing circles, while observing my expression. As if coaxing and soothing me.

The continuing sound in the meantime seemed to drive me to the edge. Johannes tilted his head slightly to one side and fixed his gaze downward.

Perhaps it was an intentional touch. At some point, the tender part of me was lightly scratched by the tip of Johannes’ nails that had grown long. It was not just that sensation, but I felt like I was going mad at his gestures that seemed like he himself might die from not being able to control me.

“Ah!”

Unable to hold back any longer, my vision flashed white. Climax. White heat rising up my spine, draining all my senses. It felt like every muscle from my toes to my whole body was contracting into one mass. Johannes, who had hastily swallowed his breath, withdrew his body.

His entire body, tensed up, trembled violently. Johannes just twitched a few times and couldn’t move for a while.

Only the ominous silver gaze of the devil’s hand and the irregular breathing sounds falling on this belly with ‘huk, huk’ were so strangely pitiful that both of us didn’t seem to belong to this world. At that moment, I was somehow seized by an urge to strip off Johannes’ outer garment.

Perhaps I wanted to see his naked body. You and no one else would know, but Johannes reaching climax in my arms was beautiful no matter where I looked…. The smooth and firm body of the naked Johannes was vivid in my eyes, making my heart flutter again.

“…Johannes.”

A strange emotion welled up like tears. I was embarrassed by that emotion, and on the other hand, my face was hot. Soothing alone the feelings that were difficult to put into words, I reached out and caressed Johannes’ ear.

One hand came up and covered the back of my hand. Johannes, wearing a crown-like shadow of leaves cast black in the pouring moonlight, collapsed onto my body.

“Haa….”

Johannes’ long breath pooled like a puddle on my nape.

***

“It’s all gone.”

“……”

Johannes, leaning his back against the tree, was silent. I sat on Johannes’ thigh, almost embracing him, and rubbed his neck where the blood had dried, as if scratching with my fingertips.

With my temple pressed against Johannes’ shoulder, I could see his smooth nape right in front of me. It was a nape that had once been more tattered than a rag, crushing people’s hearts, but now it had filled in new muscles and new flesh as if it were natural.

“It’s amazing….”

I raised my upper body slightly, propping myself up on Johannes’ chest. The outer garment Johannes had covered me with poured down, following my movement and covering my shoulders. As I lowered my head, Johannes’ well-chiseled nose bridge and lips came into view.

A countenance that looked just like me, merely human-like. With his hair completely disheveled due to the dried blood, it was still a neat curve unlike usual. I cupped that cheek that was touching just to look at with one hand. Johannes, who had closed his eyes quietly, tilted his head slightly, putting a little weight on my palm.

“Did you know, Johannes?”

I asked softly while stroking the corner of his eye touching my thumb.

“Just now, your appearance changed a little. Your eyes, fangs… things like your nails.”

“……”

“So for a very brief moment, I thought you weren’t you.”

“I see.”

Johannes, who had been silent for a long time, responded moving only his lips with his eyes closed. It was a rather nonchalant voice, though low. I was a bit surprised by his sudden answer, which I didn’t think would give even a small reaction, and stared at his deeply sunken eyelids with a dazed feeling as I spoke.

“Yes. So I was surprised.”

“……”

“…Are you upset?”

“No.”

Johannes replied in an indifferent voice.

“Don’t misunderstand. It’s not that, but last time it broke through so painfully, but this time it changed without any sound or news…. That’s why I was just surprised. Really.”

“…I didn’t know.”

To my hurried excuse, Johannes made a slightly choked sound. Relieved that it seemed to have returned to a texture appropriate to the situation, I quietly asked Johannes.

“Wasn’t it painful?”

“No.”

“How’s your neck?”

“It’s fine.”

It was the same calm voice as usual. I unconsciously let out a long sigh.

“I’m glad….”

I murmured while moving my fingertips to Johannes’ eyelids, who had completely entrusted himself to my hand. I gently rubbed near his eyelids and eyelashes, and even stroked his neat eyebrows.

Perhaps when one misses someone even when they’re right there, people want to touch that person. At that time, I felt like I couldn’t bear not touching any part of Johannes’ body.

Whether the old man wearing human skin had died or not, whether Indridason’s soldiers were chasing us or not, just the fact that Johannes had come back alive. And the fact that Johannes was within reach was so delightful it brought tears to my eyes. For that reason, I even gave a silly smile for a moment, forgetting even the situation that we were in the middle of fleeing.

In reality, nothing had been completely resolved, neither the past nor the future.

“Are you sincere?”

Suddenly, Johannes, half-opening his eyes, asked me while throwing a glance.

“About what?”

I, who had been a bit distracted by the newfound emotion welling up again, didn’t understand his sunken gaze and asked back. Johannes, who had been staring at me with a complicated expression, suddenly leaned towards me.

He buried his forehead in my shoulder. He raised his arms that had been lying helplessly on the ground, wrapped them around my waist, and pulled me tightly into his embrace.

A moment when even our breathing seemed to have belonged to the forest from the beginning. Quiet darkness. The faint sound of insects chirping from somewhere was transparent. The heartbeat of Johannes holding me was muffled and calm as if rising from the bottom of a deep lake. Such a peaceful and moving resonance.

I rested my cheek on the cheek that had dug into my shoulder, and put my arms around his neck. I stroked his hair that had become stiff, perhaps due to the dried blood. Every time my touch grazed the nape of his neck, Johannes pressed his forehead against me as if he would tear me apart.

“What on earth… should I do with you….”

Johannes murmured lowly while holding me. The lukewarm distrust emanating from his tone cut to the bone. The pain from my neck where he had bitten me and my back that had been completely scraped on the ground began to slowly rise, and the thought that maybe I had been hurting him for a long time spread in my mind along with the pain.

There were so many things I wanted to ask Johannes.

How did you come back to life? What do you mean you’ve been like this from the beginning? Is it unrelated to the sarcophagus I woke up? Were you in this form even 9 years ago, on the day you killed my first husband? Or….

‘Who are you?’

Questions like the one I had asked him on the night Johannes had his first seizure, when he had transformed into something I couldn’t tell if it was a devil or what.

At that time in the forest, I had no idea how long Johannes had been hiding himself. I just thought that the miracle I witnessed or Johannes’ transformation was all due to the curse said to dwell in the sarcophagus. A curse that suddenly invaded my brother’s body one day, like the seizures passed down for generations through the mother’s bloodline.

My Johannes… I didn’t know he was the devil himself.

I didn’t realize. Perhaps Johannes had been suffering from emotions I couldn’t fathom, such as fear, anxiety, or guilt, from the moment he rose like a corpse from Indridason’s bed. I just casually assumed it was like seeing myself when I was out of my mind.

To confess now, during the 8 years or so that I kept my mouth shut, I was subconsciously aware of my condition. But if one day my sanity suddenly returned, I couldn’t possibly admit my flaws, so I would ask Griselda:

“Griselda, Griselda. Why don’t I receive any marriage proposals? What part of me is so lacking that I’m still confined here?”

Then Griselda would make excuses on my behalf, considering my feelings:

“My lady, it’s all because of rumors spread by ignorant people. Since your husband died so horribly, it’s not entirely incomprehensible. So don’t blame yourself too much. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are the proud Valdemar.”

‘Devil lady’ sounded better than ‘mad lady’. Yes, it’s not my fault. Soothing the guilt and shame inside me with Griselda’s answer, I could sink back into deep contemplation.

Turning away from the world, from Johannes, from this shabby body that had lost its function and couldn’t even take care of family. Because believing that made my heart easier. Because it was bearable to swallow loneliness while dreaming of freedom that would come someday.

And so, foolish me misinterpreted that the look in his eyes throughout our escape was not anger, but close to the deep shame I knew well. That it would be the shame of a person who knows their body is not normal. Ah, if only I had offered comfort first, saying it was okay. My heart ached with how pathetic I was for not understanding Johannes earlier.

Like a fool.

In fact, Johannes’ feelings were probably not that simple.

Perhaps Johannes’ angry disregard and coercion towards me that day were all born out of confusion. Confusion. When angry and frustrated in a situation where one can neither do this nor that. When you absolutely can’t trust a lover who betrays themselves over and over again in layers of misunderstanding. When you can neither live nor die. At such times.

Helplessness that rises uncontrollably.

His anger towards me was probably closer to a desperate request. That he couldn’t bear it anymore. To please see how ominous a being he was. To acknowledge how terrible a monster he was. To know him, a little.

And if there was a faint desire to leave again, it meant to completely liberate himself from this long-standing pain by getting up and leaving.

‘Just kill me with your own hands. And leave. Don’t you have even that much acknowledgment? Really?’

Johannes, Johannes. You say you don’t know what to do with me? What should I do with you who is so pitiful…. Even now, my heart breaks when I think back to that time.

“…I don’t know.”

Johannes muttered weakly against my nape.

“I don’t know. I can’t see ahead.”

Giovinetta.

It was a voice where I couldn’t distinguish whether he was angry or sad. If voices had focus, it would be a tone that could be said to be absurdly blurred.

I turned my eyes away from the pain in my neck and back. I swallowed all the questions and bit my lip. It didn’t seem to be the right time.

I carefully tilted my forehead and kissed Johannes’ ear, cheek, and corner of the eye that were buried in my nape. I felt Johannes tightly closing his eyes. He moaned shortly as he received my kiss. I whispered softly to him.

“It’s just the two of us now, isn’t it? Right?”

“……”

“So… let’s find out slowly. For now, let’s just focus on getting out of here.”

“……”

“Okay? Johannes.”

But no answer came back.