#41
Like pouring a bottle of water on a hotly swelling volcano, it wasn’t a violent reaction but a movement that slowly cooled down.
“Sniff, I’ll go get some warm water and clean towels.”
With those words, Sercil carefully got up.
“Please do.”
Hyung’s response was simple. It held neither emotion nor indifference. The neutral tone he used when focused on handling business.
His silhouette disappeared beyond the door crack as he left the room, muffling his footsteps. After Sercil left, Theodore hyung broke the brief silence and asked.
“Are you conscious?”
At those words, I opened my eyes and moved my head just slightly.
Only then did I realize I was still being held by hyung.
Even though my body was touching the sofa, hyung’s arm was still supporting my waist, and his hand was slowly cradling my head.
Strange.
By now, he should have put me down. I could feel his breath very close by, and in my vision I could only see the neat shirt wrinkles below hyung’s neck.
Why still.
Just as I was trying to steady my breathing, hyung’s low voice continued.
“Are you in your right mind? Drinking poison yourself again.”
His tone was low and quiet, but each word contained clear reproach.
“…?”
I turned my head hazily and looked up at hyung’s face. Only then did hyung exhale slightly and carefully arrange my arms.
As I stirred at his strange words, hyung carefully laid me down somewhere.
As the warmth that had been clinging to me fell away, my body trembled without me knowing.
When the warm body temperature that had remained on my back and inner arms scattered into the air, the coldness of the air rushed in instantly. A light tremor swept through my body. The air touching my exposed skin, damp with cold sweat, was like a thin blade’s edge, and the breath flowing out between my slightly parted lips gasped under the pressure of the cold air.
“What on earth do you want that you keep, no, was it half-demon? This is absurd. For something so trivial.”
Hyung’s voice was much more subdued than I had expected. At first it sounded like anger, but there was more fatigue, disappointment, and despair at looking at someone he couldn’t understand.
“Wha, t.”
I couldn’t finish my words and could barely move my lips. My tongue felt heavy. No saliva gathered, making my throat dry, and it took terribly much energy just to produce a single word.
“Right, is it precious to you?”
Theodore hyung continued speaking without a bitter laugh. The less emotion mixed in his voice, the deeper it pierced.
It seemed hyung had been misunderstanding something from earlier.
That misunderstanding was by no means light. The current hyung was thinking in a direction that would put me in danger, unable to understand me. Certainly I had my own reasons, but even if I explained them now, they wouldn’t be accepted.
I was about to deny it, then hesitated slightly.
So he thinks I’m the kind of person who would risk my own life to steal what I want from half-demons.
‘Though we might have different thoughts about what that desired thing is, it’s not wrong.’
It was difficult to gauge whether risking my life would work in a positive direction.
‘Would he think it’s demon-like? Or would he think it’s useless?’
Should I say I don’t intend to die after all?
But even if I said that, hyung probably wouldn’t believe it, and the problem was that I wasn’t in good condition right now and couldn’t speak properly.
“Rather than precious, cough.”
I hesitated before speaking briefly.
“For me, that’s, huu, that’s all there is.”
“I recommend you reconsider.”
“For a very long time.”
Having opened my mouth like that, I couldn’t continue speaking for a moment.
Reconsidering wouldn’t change anything.
I already knew that from trying it too many times.
‘Theodore hyung, even on the day you chose to die with Sercil rather than live with him, I thought about it over and over.’
If I hadn’t existed, it would have been fine. No, it would have been better if I had been an object rather than a person.
If not that, then it would have been better if I couldn’t have anything at all.
On one hand, I thought that because I was only looking at them, my blind actions might be the root of the problem.
If I had tried to have something else besides you two, the situation might have been different.
…All meaningless thoughts.
People don’t change. The fact that you two are the source of my happiness was also something that had been decided at some point and never changed.
“…I really thought about it a lot.”
When I chuckled and replied, hyung snorted.
“No matter how much a guy like you thinks, how substantial could it be?”
Without making excuses, while I hesitated, Theodore hyung, who had been looking at me, sat down somewhere with a thud and let out a deep sigh.
The posture of resting his elbows on his knees and holding his forehead with both hands. Hyung’s appearance as he looked at the floor and exhaled long seemed larger than usual. I was now realizing anew how much powerlessness didn’t suit a person like hyung.
And with his characteristic cold voice, he asked curtly.
“Didn’t you make a contract with me?”
Though his voice was devoid of emotion, his vocal cords seemed to tremble slightly.
“Cough, …I did, didn’t I?”
The smell of blood rose to my lips again, but this time I barely held it back and smiled briefly.
“Then why don’t you cherish your body as promised?”
That statement was spoken as if he truly couldn’t understand, rather than as a reproach. With those words, hyung looked at me once more. His pupils were still, and rather than looking at me, he seemed to be trying to see through something inside me.
I slowly squeezed my eyes shut and opened them to make my blurry vision even slightly clearer.
In the meantime, hyung moved a little. He returned to a posture of sitting upright and staring straight ahead.
In my peripheral vision, I could see hyung, no, His Highness Theodore making a strange expression.
That face wore an expression mixed with bewilderment, fatigue, and above all, slight fear.
“There seems to be something between Lady Marsien and the half-demons.”
Hyung’s tone was concise, but mixed with definite suspicion. It was already a deduction half-tilted toward certainty.
Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but it is scheduled to happen.
Those words didn’t come out of my mouth, and instead I smiled faintly. I let out a laugh with a face crushed by fatigue.
When I just smiled palely, His Highness let out a “Ha!” and snorted.
That laugh was short and sharp. The kind of laugh humans make when their faith crumbles.
Then with a click, the sound of someone entering the space where I was could be heard.
The door opened quietly, and the air inside swayed slightly. The sound of shoe soles delicately stepping on the floor, the sound of fabric lightly brushing.
That someone naturally joined the conversation, having apparently heard the last exchange.
“There’s no definitive evidence yet, but there seems to have been some contact.”
That voice was low and solid. A tone with emotion almost excluded.
“What? You said there was no connection.”
Theodore hyung’s reaction was immediate. His voice was raised slightly.
“There’s no specific circumstantial evidence linking them. At least that was true until yesterday.”
Low and dry tone, and short breaths.
…The Archduke?
My lips trembled. Archduke Rodias. The Archduke’s manner of speaking was drier than ever, and his sentence endings weren’t smooth.
Was the Archduke’s voice sounding slightly more breathless than usual because I was worried about him right now?
I felt like something serious had happened.
Or perhaps.
It might not have been simple emotional resonance.
The sense of crisis that had activated only for those precious to me before regression was sounding an alarm.
“So something was different today?”
His Highness Theodore asked again. Carefully lowering his voice, as if requesting confirmation.
“Well.”
The Archduke answered briefly. There was a gap between words as if he was catching his breath.
Wait. But the Archduke’s words were strange.
He definitely said “until yesterday.” That means circumstances have arisen as of the current time, doesn’t it?
‘Lady Marsien and the half-demons have already made contact?’
The Archduke wouldn’t give false information.
Archduke Rodias is a more cautious person than anyone. Especially given his personality of being sparing with words, there’s no case where he would speak of unsubstantiated information as if it were certain. The mere fact that he mentioned contact between Lady Marsien and the half-demons here and now was tantamount to ‘fact.’
Then could it be that in the original work, the Lady and the half-demons had been in an alliance relationship from long ago?
This question swirled rapidly through my mind. I tried to recall memories, but no clear clues came to mind. Even in the flow before regression, the Lady had long been portrayed as a figure unrelated to the half-demons.
Wasn’t it that they joined hands to harm Sercil?
This was a major clue that reversed the flow of thought. Their attack on Sercil might not have been simple collaboration of tools, but part of a thread that had been connected from much earlier.
“…Ugh.”
Whether the effect of what I had drunk earlier ended quickly, my mana kept jumping in strange directions, interfering with my thoughts.
The feeling of something creaking inside my body. Mana should originally be organized deep within my organs, but now it was jumping chaotically around my heart and stomach, around my lungs. Those scattered energies brought pain and confusion.
The Archduke approached me as I groaned in pain and continued speaking.
His shadow slowly entered my field of vision. Upright shoulder line, low and steady breathing. His footsteps were barely audible.
“I don’t know what kind of deal they made through contact, but.”
He murmured while gently wiping my lips with cloth.
The handkerchief was warm and delicate. As the fabric’s texture touched softly, the blood on my lips was gradually wiped away. His movements were quiet, careful, and composed.
“It’s not like there are no expectations.”
Those words were brief, but the meaning was heavy.
Strangely, though it was an answer to His Highness the Crown Prince, his voice reached my ears as if he were speaking to me, whispering close by.
His presence was right beside me. At a distance where I could almost hear his breathing, warmth from the end of each word remained hitting my cheek. Had he crouched down in front of me?
“Cough, wha, t?”
I barely squeezed out one word. My voice rang out dryly due to lack of saliva in my mouth.
When I smiled weakly and met his eyes, wanting to see his expression, the Archduke’s unrealistically beautiful face was immediately visible.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
