#73
It wasn’t simply a colleague’s words. It was the desperation that only survivors could speak. Not rational analysis, but insight born from instinct. No one could take such words lightly. Theodore remembered even Skyle’s silence, and he knew that these weren’t words he could easily bring up.
He lowered his eyes briefly.
Even the air became heavy. The warm sunlight had somehow gained shadows, and not even small wisps of steam remained on the transparent surface of the teacup.
Cold wind from outside the window shook the leaves. The sound echoed with strange instability.
The sound the leaves made brushing against each other was light, but the rhythm was irregular. The branches swaying unsteadily disturbed the view. Like some ominous premonition, that flow left reverberations in the room’s silence.
While the air in the room grew heavy somewhere, the tea in the cup cooled.
The warmth didn’t last long. It resembled this moment. Even the warmth that had quietly settled in his heart rapidly cooled from the moment logic and judgment seeped in. Theodore couldn’t stop it, nor did he try to.
Then Skyle turned his head at a small sound from beyond the window.
It was a brief distraction, but at the same time, it was a gap to catch his breath. The presence of someone passing by the entrance to the courtyard below the window. He couldn’t hear voices, but the human presence was clear. At such moments, Skyle reflexively relaxed his tension.
“You two have a lot to talk about.”
Theodore’s words were half joke, half sincere. Since he was aware that even when changing topics, they returned to discussing Ersen, there was a strange awkwardness mixed in his expression.
Skyle nodded as if in agreement.
There were no words, but it meant he fully agreed. He wasn’t reading Theodore’s mood, nor was it an intention to avoid the atmosphere from just before. Simply—because those words weren’t wrong. Because there was a weight that both acknowledged.
And then he spoke of something that suddenly came to mind.
As someone who had always observed everything from a step back, he spoke as if pulling out another puzzle piece. At the intersection of emotion and observation, a rare emotionless diagnosis emerged.
“Sercil Lindea. He also seems to need caution.”
“If Ersen causes emotional provocation, Sercil would be the first to be affected.”
Skyle’s words were closer to a warning than a prediction. Causing emotional provocation could inherently have uncontrollable directionality, and the collapse of a person within that sphere of influence would be the beginning of a crack.
Those words appeared to be concern for Sercil on the surface, but what was actually contained within was something else.
It wasn’t about being wary of Sercil, but about being wary of Ersen.
Conversely, it also meant that Ersen was someone who could become a ‘provocateur’ to someone. Especially the more positive the emotion, the more dangerous it was. People usually guard against hatred or hostility, but what was truly frightening was affection and attachment. They were too natural and seeped in too easily to destroy people.
Skyle shook his head and said,
“No, that’s not it. I expected he would be careful after eavesdropping on our conversation, but he didn’t.”
Those words that could have seemed indifferent actually contained quite a long observation and calculation. He knew the usual positions and times when Sercil’s footsteps could be heard, even his movement patterns. He had deliberately not closed the door and hadn’t lowered his voice. It was an intentional device to see how he would react if he happened to eavesdrop.
He had deliberately let him eavesdrop. With the intention of seeing how he would act.
But the expectation was wrong. Or perhaps, the expectation itself might have been mistaken. Sercil acted as if nothing had happened and didn’t react to the conversation’s content. Was his lack of reaction because he pretended not to know, or—had he truly felt no emotion at all?
Was he pure?
If that were possible, it might actually be fortunate. However, Skyle didn’t conclude definitively. Sercil as a being was inherently innocent and warm, but at the same time, he was more dangerous because he was too transparent.
Or perhaps he didn’t care because he hadn’t given his heart to Ersen from the beginning.
If so, the direction of the problem changes. Indifference creates bigger gaps than wariness. An attitude that could let everything flow by—whether attacks or threats—because no heart was given. That wasn’t loyalty or affection, but expressionlessness that came from distance.
Or perhaps he was already to the Prince…
The words stopped there. Skyle unconsciously swallowed the words inside. Even without needing to continue the rest of that sentence, Theodore already knew the end of that sentence. Not simple goodwill, but the directionality of emotion. As long as that possibility couldn’t be ruled out, the relationship between those two was also thoroughly subject to surveillance.
“It’s worrying. There’s no reason for Sercil to be so good to Ersen.”
Theodore let out a short sigh.
His tone was calm, but deep fatigue was mixed within. If one was the type to question reasons for all relationships, one had no choice but to doubt the roots of that goodwill. Especially if it was related to half-demons.
“There certainly isn’t. So he must also be watched, Theo.”
Skyle still spoke in a low, even voice. He didn’t put emotion into it, but it was a definite assertion. People become most insensitive to their own emotions, and thus reach irreversible points. To prevent that, someone had to keep checking from a step back.
Skyle spoke in a low, quiet voice.
He was deliberately calm. Words that shake emotions must be said without emotion. Only then could one objectively confirm the other’s reaction. Skyle had spoken that way for a long time and had acted that way.
“Young Master Lindea might already be too late. No, perhaps Your Highness the Prince is already placing all of us in the palm of his hand.”
Those weren’t words easily spoken. If Ersen had just been a ‘strange child,’ he never would have said such things. But now he had too many things. Moving the Archduke, making the Crown Prince worry, keeping Sercil by his side, shaking the half-demons’ interior.
Theodore didn’t answer those words.
There was no rebuttal, no agreement. Instead, he slowly moved toward the curtains. He slowly raised his hand toward the closed window and grasped that thin cloth again. The line where sunlight had been streaming in disappeared, and the room briefly became dim.
He simply closed the curtains again, withdrawing his gaze that had been directed outside.
That action was strangely symbolic. Stopping looking outside and returning inside. Gathering emotions and choosing to return to one’s position. Theodore was quietly returning to center that way.
And he sat in the chair without a word.
A time to straighten his spine that had never been broken and return to being the expressionless Crown Prince again. But Skyle noticed. That his heart was still lingering somewhere. Though he had turned his head, his thoughts hadn’t left.
With his ambiguous attitude, he moves without hesitation, and even though he’s been confined inside, it feels like he knows everything that’s happening outside.
That wasn’t just the level of intuition. It was actually the case. Ersen was inside, but he was grasping all movements through Sercil and embracing both the Archduke’s and Crown Prince’s wariness through experience. From the smallest and most fragile position, he was creating the deepest ripples.
Strange movements had recently been detected in the half-demon district, which had seemed peaceful when Ersen said he had ‘taken the bait.’
The moment those words were thrown was ridiculously peaceful. So it was easy to think it was just bluffing or joking. But now, cracks were forming inside the half-demons, and the atmosphere of replacement, movement, and internal purges was being detected. Most of all, ‘unexpected’ reactions.
‘How far is he seeing?’
Ersen only made proposals that were entirely disadvantageous to himself.
There were no benefits, and the sacrifices were one-sided. Among the various plans discussed at meeting tables, he always presented the most disadvantageous plan to himself first. And if no one else opposed it, he pushed through with it. It sometimes looked like actions to maintain emotional superiority rather than efficient judgment.
Yet since he was the only one who would suffer, they had no clear grounds to object.
So it was even more impossible to refuse. When one side tries to bear everything, the others fall into the illusion that they’ve been given concessions. Ersen knew that. Though he seemed to move without calculation, that calculation was always focused on reading emotions.
Even if all of that was scheming to use people’s emotions, it would be understandable.
Skyle thought that way coldly. A method of using human warmth as a tool. Smiles, silence, self-sacrifice—even if all of that was part of calculation, he thought it was entirely possible. And the problem was that such methods were effective.
Half-demons, Eris—they were humans capable of that.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
