Ch#193
Talia stared at him intently, her eyes shimmering with expectation.
“What do you think?”
“……It’s passable.”
At his indifferent reply, a faint look of disappointment flickered across her face.
“Is that all?”
Varkas furrowed his brow. He couldn’t even begin to guess what this woman wanted from him. Was he supposed to praise the taste of the wine more extravagantly? A strange suspicion bloomed at her unprompted, unusual behavior, but he didn’t want to ruin the mood of the woman who had prepared all this for him.
He opened his mouth, intending to say something more. At that moment, a burning sensation flared in his throat. Varkas instinctively gripped the table tight. The liquid traveling down his esophagus felt like a blade scraping against his entrails.
“……What did you put in the wine?”
“I didn’t put anything in it.”
She denied it, her voice trembling. Varkas, looking at her with confused eyes, slowly pushed himself up. He felt as though he would collapse unsightly if he didn’t lie down somewhere immediately.
He stumbled toward the side of the bed and slumped onto the sheets. As blood rushed back to his head, his swimming vision gradually stabilized. However, the sense of helplessness only grew stronger.
Had she fed him some absurdly potent liquor? He struggled to clench and unclench his fingers, which were turning stiff as if paralyzed, when Talia approached the bedside and peered closely at his face.
“How do you feel?”
He narrowed his eyes, unable to grasp the intent behind the question. What exactly did this woman want to know? Regardless, it felt as though he had to answer.
He opened his mouth to describe the sensations he was feeling. Then, something hot surged up from his roiling stomach. Varkas instinctively twisted his body to the side. A metallic liquid surged up his throat and spilled onto the sheets. It took several more seconds for him to realize that it was blood from his own body.
As his vision blurred into blackness, he gasped for breath. From far away, he heard the sound of someone crying out his name. He wanted to answer that call, but his frozen tongue wouldn’t move an inch.
His crumbling body was sinking somewhere. The river of blood he had seen thousands of times in his dreams. In that thick tide of death, he let go of the something he had been desperately clutching.
Soon, a perfect silence arrived.
It was a world of pure nothingness, where nothing could be felt.
The boy is dreaming.
In the dream, he sits a girl with hair the color of deep honey on his lap and kisses her rose-colored lips.
The playful kiss, like birds rubbing beaks, gradually transforms into something deep and carnal. Even though he knows she is not yet grown enough for such things, the boy does not care.
Before long, the boy’s body burns like a fireball. Even while seized by the painful heat, a sense of intense happiness fills a corner of his heart.
The girl who has driven him into this fever chattered incessantly. Looking down at that innocent face that hasn’t the slightest inkling of his longing, the boy feels a sweet yet sharp pain.
Finally losing his self-control, the boy kisses her even more passionately. As if in response, the girl’s fingers tunnel deep into his hair.
Desperately suppressing the urge to slide his hand beneath her clothes, he painfully lifts his head, only to see the girl wearing a shy smile on her flushed face.
In that moment, the ecstatic joy that had seized the boy vanishes like smoke.
Waking with a desolate and empty heart, he is soon overcome by intense self-loathing.
The boy does not understand why he keeps having these recurring dreams.
In reality, the girl is nothing more than an impurity disrupting his life. The image of himself smiling happily while holding her simply feels alien.
The boy soon dismisses the illusion his brain has woven as an unavoidable deviation brought about by physical growth.
Perhaps it was a natural phenomenon for the body to react to the closest member of the opposite sex.
Having reached a rational conclusion, the boy rises from his bed.
At the window, the dawn light blazes with a sharp, cold ferocity.
The sunlight, rushing in like a tide, soon shatters and washes away the lingering traces of the dream on his retinas.
Presently, his world returns to a state of stability.
A perfectly refined, orderly world. That was the life he was meant to lead.
The boy reminds himself.
This unwelcome confusion will end before long. He will continue his unwavering life within the framework set since birth, and the girl will remain nothing more than a temporary ill-fated connection.
Having perfectly washed away even the remnants of unnecessary emotion, the boy soon steps out of his sanctuary.
But in the next moment, his world is encroached upon by blood and darkness.
The young man is trampling on something in a filthy back alley reeking of a foul stench.
His eyes, which had been looking up at the crescent moon glowing faintly through the clouds, slowly travel downward.
The face of a man who has turned ashen after spewing out all the blood in his body fills the young man’s vision. The man’s eyes are rolled back, showing burst capillaries, and his bloody gums are exposed where every tooth has been pulled out. In his unnaturally wide-open mouth, there is only a dark red lump of blood where his tongue should be.
He soon remembers that what he is trampling on is that man’s tongue. The young man shifts his gaze to the man’s empty wrists.
The man’s hands, severed cleanly, are buried in a pile of trash fish discarded by fishermen. Moving his gaze to those fingers poking out among the rotting fish carcasses, he asks himself a question.
What am I doing here?
He recalls the priest’s steel-like eyes observing him through a crack in a door. His father’s gaze, looking at him as if seeing something repulsive, also flickers through his mind.
Had they glimpsed this scene within him beforehand?
After staring at the corpse’s face, which looked as if it were witnessing hell itself, the young man soon exits the secluded alley.
Just then, the moonlight breaking through the clouds shines starkly upon his blood-soaked body.
He must look like something no one could imagine to be an imperial knight. Perhaps, he doesn’t even look human.
Thinking such thoughts blankly, the young man walks slowly through the darkness. Within the thick silence, the river wind blows incessantly. Yet the smell of blood surrounding him shows no sign of fading.
The young man is suddenly overcome by a question.
This wasn’t the first time he had killed a person. It likely wouldn’t be the last. So why was he feeling like this?
Beyond the Silviska River where the current surged, the girl’s scream echoes.
The sudden realization that her voice had pushed him here sends a chill down his spine.
Danger.
That single word pierces his mind like a needle.
Only then does he realize he is standing before a boundary he must not cross.
What will happen to me if I cross this line?
A scene from a dream that had been repeating for several months flashes through his mind.
A dream that made him flush with fever and long for things he did not want.
But that vision is soon stained by the image of a wasted Bernadette and the face of an Emperor who, despite holding the world in his hands, chose to be a slave to a single woman. He also thinks of the girl who had been screaming while pinned beneath a man who would soon rot as a corpse.
He senses that his ruin is waiting within those eyes mangled by tears, fear, and despair.
But it is not too late yet.
If he has taken the wrong path, he can simply turn back.
As he always had, he ruthlessly cuts away all the impurities disturbing his solid world.
With that, the young man’s world sinks once again into a death-like tranquility.
In those deep, dark waters, he does not surface for a long time.
When he regained consciousness, the room was filled with the intense light of the sunset.
Varkas, barely managing to lift his eyelids which felt as stiff as untanned leather, slowly looked around the red-stained room with unfocused eyes.
For a while, he couldn’t even properly recognize where he was. Only after several minutes passed did his stalled gears of thought begin to creak back into motion.
‘……How long have I been unconscious?’
