Thalia stared at him intently with expectant eyes.
"What do you think?"
"...It's just worth eating."
A faint sense of disappointment crossed her face in a silent response.
"Is that all?"
Barcas wrinkled his eyes. He couldn't even guess what this woman wanted. Should I praise the taste of the wine more? A strange suspicion arose about the unusual rolling without context, but he didn't want to offend the woman who had prepared this and that for him.
He opened his mouth to say anything more. At that moment, he felt a burning sensation in his throat. Barcas subconsciously clenched the table. The liquid that had traveled down his esophagus was like a blade scraping off his intestines.
"...What did you put in the alcohol?"
"I didn't put anything in it."
She denied it in a trembling voice. Looking at her with confused eyes, Barcas slowly stood up. It felt as if he didn't lie down somewhere right away, he would collapse violently.
He staggered to the side of the bed and lay down on the sheet. Blood circulated on his head again, and his vision sank little by little. But the feeling of helplessness grew stronger and stronger.
Maybe she gave him ridiculously strong alcohol. As he struggled to stretch his stiff fingers, which were paralyzed, Thalia approached the bedside and looked closely into his face.
"How do you feel?"
He couldn't grasp the intention of the question and narrowed his eyes. What did this woman want to know? It felt like he had to answer anyway.
He opened his mouth to explain the sensation he felt. Then, something hot gushed out of his sizzling stomach. Barcas instinctively turned to the side. The fishy liquid that had risen down his throat spilled onto the sheet. It took him a few more seconds to realize that it was blood that had escaped from his body.
He gasped heavily as he felt his vision become dark. In the distance, he heard someone calling out his name. He wanted to answer the call, but his tongue didn't move.
His broken body was silent somewhere. A river of blood that he had seen thousands of times in his dreams. In that deep wave of death, he let go of something he was desperately clinging to.
Eventually, perfect silence came.
It was a world of pure nothingness where nothing was felt.
***
The boy is dreaming.
In the dream, he puts a dark wheat-colored blonde girl on his lap and kisses her rosy lips.
The playful kiss, like a bird rubbing its beak, gradually transforms into a deep and dense one. Even though he knows that she is not yet grown enough to do this, the boy doesn't mind.
Soon after, the boy's body burns like a ball of fire. Even in the midst of the painful heat, a strong sense of happiness fills a corner of his chest.
The girl who drove him into a fever is constantly chattering about something. Looking down at the innocent face that couldn't guess his longing, the boy felt a sweet and sharp pain.
In the end, the boy, who has lost his self-control, kisses her even more passionately. In response, the girl's fingers dig deep into his hair.
Desperately suppressing the desire to push his hand into her clothes, he struggles to lift his head, and the girl smiles shyly with a reminisced face.
At that moment, the enthusiastic joy that captivated the boy fades like smoke.
He wakes up with a devastated and empty heart, and is soon seized by strong self-loathing.
The boy does not understand why he repeats this dream.
The girl in reality is nothing more than an impurity that messes up his life. The image of himself smiling happily with her in his arms just feels alien.
The boy soon dismisses the illusion that the brain has arbitrarily woven as an irresistible deviation brought about by the growth of the body.
Perhaps it is a natural phenomenon for the body to react to the closest member of the opposite sex.
Having come to a reasonable conclusion, the boy gets up from the bed.
The dawn is burning like a breeze by the window.
The sun's rays that rushed in like waves soon broke the afterimage of the dream that had been attached to the retina and washed it away.
Eventually, his world returns to a stable state.
A perfectly refined, orderly world. That was the life he was supposed to lead.
The boy is back.
The unwelcome chaos will end soon. He will continue his life within a set framework from birth, and the girl will remain in only a one-time bad relationship.
The boy, who has completely washed away the remnants of unnecessary emotions, soon leaves his sanctuary.
But the next moment, his world is encroached upon by blood and darkness.
The young man is trampling on something in a dirty back alley with a foul smell.
His eyes slowly descend as he looks up at the crescent moon that glows faintly through the clouds.
The man's face, which has turned gray with blood all over his body, fills the young man's field of vision. The man is holding his eyes upside down, exposing his bloody gums with all his teeth pulled out. The mouth, which is unnaturally large, is filled with dark red blood instead of the tongue.
He soon remembers that it is the man's tongue that he is trampling on. The boy moves his eyes and looks at the man's empty wrist.
The man's hand, which has been cleanly severed, is buried in a pile of fish thrown out by the fishermen. He looks at the fingers that rise from the carcass of a decaying fish and asks himself a question.
What am I doing here?
He thinks of the steely eyes of the priest who was observing him through the crack in the door. The look in his father's eyes that looked at him as if he was reluctant also crossed his mind.
Did they get a glimpse of this scene from me?
The young man, who has been staring at the face of the corpse for a while, as if he were witnessing hell, soon exits the back alley.
Just then, the moonlight breaking through the clouds illuminates his blood-soaked body.
Perhaps he now looks like a knight of the empire, something that would be hard to imagine. Perhaps he doesn't even look human.
With that thought in his mind, the young man walked slowly through the darkness. A strong wind blew ceaselessly through the still silence. Yet, the bloody smell surrounding him showed no sign of abating.
The young man is suddenly overcome with doubt.
This isn't the first time I've killed someone. It probably won't be the last. But why do I feel this way?
A girl's scream echoes across the rippling Silviska River.
The sudden realization that the voice had pushed him here sent a chill down his spine.
Danger.
That one word pierces my mind like an awl.
Only then does he realize that he is standing on a boundary line that he must not cross.
What happens to me if I cross this line?
A scene from a dream that has been recurring for months now flashes back to him.
A dream that makes him excited and crave something he doesn't want.
But the scene is soon marred by the image of Bernadette, withering away, and the face of the Emperor, who, holding the world in his hands, still disregarded a woman's slave. Now, the image of the girl wailing beneath the man, now a rotting corpse, comes to mind.
He senses that his own destruction awaits him in those eyes, which are ravaged by tears, fear, and despair.
But it's not too late.
If you take the wrong path, why don't you just turn back?
As he always has, he mercilessly cuts away all the impurities that disturb his solid world.
With that, the world of youth sinks again into a deathly calm.
In those deep, dark waters, he cannot surface for a long time.
***
He came to his senses just as the intense sunset filled the room.
Barely lifting his eyelids, as white as untanned leather, Barcas slowly looked around the red-tinted room with unfocused eyes.
For a while, he couldn't even properly recognize where he was. After a few minutes, his frozen thought circuits began to creak and turn.
'...How long have I been out of my mind?'
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