Chapter 75 |
To the Princess, To the Knight. (2)
Late in the pre-dawn hours.
Carmilla stormed into my bedroom.
“Viktor.”
Had she just bathed?
The girl stood there wearing only a wet shirt.
Water dripped from the tips of her silver hair.
“...Princess-nim?”
I noticed at once that something was very wrong.
And yet she was dressed that boldly.
It was obvious something had gone badly wrong.
Srrk, clench-!
“Uwah...!”
Just as I expected.
The instant our eyes met, Princess-nim used Blood Manipulation.
Red ropes bound my arms and legs so I couldn’t move.
I ended up pinned to the bed.
“Stay still.”
A cold warning.
Carmilla came closer, then sat astride me.
A thin shirt, soaked through. A distinctly improper sensation pressed against me.
The girl lowered her head as if she didn’t care at all.
Her shirt wasn’t even buttoned, and the open fabric sagged.
Through that thin cloth, pale skin and delicate lines showed through.
“......”
The closer her face came, the more her distinct sweet-spicy scent washed over me.
Below her pale neck, curves that should not be seen were exposed.
Naked... no, half-naked was more accurate.
At least the very tips were still covered by cloth.
“Princess-nim, why all of a sudd-”
“I said stay still.”
Her hair spilled down.
Our skin pressed together, and our warmth slowly blended.
I did not resist, just as Princess-nim ordered.
I only looked up at her in silence.
Soft, lukewarm, and blatantly intimate contact.
Even so, no obscene thoughts came to me.
“Hk...”
Because she was crying.
“Kk, huu...”
Because watery lines ran down her white cheeks.
Drop by drop, Princess-nim was shedding tears.
The falling drops landed on my cheek too.
For some reason,
the girl looked like she might shatter at any moment.
“......”
I held my breath.
I let the dark red ropes keep pressing into my limbs.
“Ugh, hhk...”
Eyes soaked as if by waves, like someone on the verge of shipwreck.
Those red eyes looked down at me.
Complicated emotions rippled in them like waterlight.
I waited.
Until Carmilla swallowed her sobs and parted her tightly bitten lips.
“......”
I did not rush her, and I did not question her.
I simply waited, as if telling her to speak.
Her fist clenched tight.
Without meaning to, the ropes tightened until they ached.
“...Viktor.”
A white hand settled over my neck.
“Will you... too...”
A long silence.
At the end of fading sobs came one fragile question.
“Will you leave me too...?”
“......”
It looked like she was trying to strangle me.
Maybe she couldn’t bring herself to apply force, because the pose was clumsy and half-formed.
Even with those thin fingers around my throat, I did not resist.
I made no attempt to shake her off.
I lay there quietly, as if I had never intended to.
“Answer me.”
At my reaction, her brows drew together.
More tears in her eyes, a little more bitterness too.
But no matter how I looked at it, that expression was closer to pleading than anger.
I stayed silent.
‘...She noticed.’
Words I rolled around in my mouth.
It was about the first lie I told her.
-My name is Viktor.
-By order of the Late King, I am the knight assigned to protect Princess-nim.
Since when had she noticed?
Where had I slipped?
Had my act not been perfect?
‘No...’
This was bound to happen someday.
She was innocent, not foolish.
It had only come sooner than I expected.
“......”
“......”
For a short while, silence settled between us.
Carmilla had seen through my lie.
And I had noticed that Carmilla had seen through it.
We both knew, but neither of us brought it up directly.
“Did I not ask you?”
“......”
“Answer me.”
“......”
Carmilla did not point it out either.
She only asked whether I would leave her; she did not press me about the lie.
Maybe she thought that the moment she named that lie, this whole relationship would break apart.
Her shoulders trembled.
Tears fell like rain.
As if trying to keep her dignity, Carmilla spoke.
“Are you... also only thinking of betraying me?”
Her sharp tone quickly blurred into wetness.
Even the Blood Manipulation binding my limbs had loosened.
Even so, those red eyes stayed fixed on my Jester Mask.
“The words you told me, the time you spent with me... were they all lies, so you could laugh and leave me?”
“......”
“I told you to answer.”
“......”
Jersian.
The betrayal of the retainer she had trusted for half her life.
‘No... even calling it betrayal is strange.’
He had never once been on her side.
Carmilla had been thoroughly deceived from the very beginning.
I couldn’t even begin to guess.
What she had thought, what she had felt.
“......”
“Please, answer me...”
Carmilla.
The girl’s face was a mess of tears.
That single shirt hanging off her like a broken eggshell, the pale skin beneath it, her wandering pupils with nowhere to settle, all of it looked ready to tear apart in a passing breeze.
A thin watery sheen.
Her trembling red eyes looked down at me.
She was pleading with me.
“Princess-nim.”
I slowly reached out.
By then, the ropes that had bound my limbs hung slack and powerless.
Rustle.
I gathered her scattered silver hair.
Then I placed my palm against her pale cheek.
Her small face fit in one hand.
“......”
“......”
A moment slowed, as if the world had stopped.
My fingertips were drenched in lukewarm wetness.
Her body was cool, but the tears running down her face were hot.
‘Even vampires have warm tears.’
With that pointless thought, I wiped them away.
Carefully,
gently,
tenderly,
I put her disheveled appearance back in order.
In a calm voice, I gave my answer.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“......”
“I said I would always stay by your side, Princess-nim.”
“Liar...”
“I meant it.”
“Liar.”
“Princess-nim.”
“Bad aide.”
“I will not leave you.”
“Bad aide, hhk... bad, kk...”
“At least I will never betray you.”
Princess-nim.
Princess-nim.
My poor Princess-nim.
“Because I am your aide.”
“Khk, uh...”
I hoped I could give you a happy ending.
Leaving that shallow prayer behind, I wrapped an arm around her waist.
Thud.
The girl collapsed into me without strength.
Carmilla did not resist.
She only buried her face in my chest and sobbed.
Each time I patted her frail back, I could feel her trembling breaths.
“I still belong to you, Princess-nim.”
An answer delivered one sincere word at a time.
Did this voice of mine comfort you at all?
Even while sobbing, Carmilla clutched my sleeve tight.
“Viktor...”
“Yes.”
“Viktor, Viktor...”
“Yes, Princess-nim. I am here.”
“At least you, do not throw me away.”
“I won’t.”
“In this deep mire, do not leave me and go alone.”
“Mire or abyss, I will walk it with you, Princess-nim.”
“If you must betray me in the end... poison me instead.”
“......”
“Do not make me go through this pain again.”
“You will live a long life then, Princess-nim.”
If I was going to betray her, she wanted me to kill her instead.
How much must she have thought about it alone?
How badly must she have rotted inside?
‘Carmilla Blandid.’
A loner.
The last princess of the Blandid Dynasty.
I held the crying child tight.
I patted her delicate back.
“I will not leave until you personally order me to, Princess-nim.”
“Just stay. Even if I order you to leave, uh... do not leave...”
“Understood. I will stay with you to the end.”
“Bad aide, hhk, making me anxious like this...”
“......”
More tears followed.
I held her the whole time, until she cried herself to sleep.
It was a night that weighed heavy on one corner of my heart in many ways.
***
After that somewhat noisy dawn, morning came.
Carmilla woke as sunlight tickled her eyes.
She was still wearing that shirt, barely different from being naked.
And she was using my arm as a pillow.
“......”
Maybe she still hadn’t fully grasped the situation; she only blinked drowsily.
Lying beside her, I greeted her lightly.
Close enough for our breaths to mingle.
My Jester Mask reflected in her hazy red eyes.
“Princess-nim.”
“...?”
“Are you awake?”
“...Mweh?”
A short silence.
Carmilla slowly checked her condition.
A few seconds later, heat flared across her white face.
“Vi, Vi, Vi, Viktor?!”
A satisfying reaction.
I had woken up early, but stayed there instead of getting up first.
I didn’t want to wake Carmilla while she was sleeping on my arm.
And after what happened at dawn, I thought it would be better to stay where she could see me for at least a day.
“Sniff... even so, I can’t believe you pounced on your own aide.”
“Wh, what are you saying?! Po, po, poun...!”
“Are you pretending not to know now?”
“I, I had no such intention at all...!”
Carmilla pulled the blanket over herself.
When I pretended to cry, her flustered look deepened.
After she put me through that yesterday, teasing her a little was only fair.
“So now you’re playing dumb too? Not even taking responsibility, sniff...”
“Nothing happened at all, did it not?! Even if I was dr, dressed very embarrassingly...!”
“So you are aware of it.”
“Yesterday, I was not in my right mind!”
“There it is, the classic one-night line from bad men!”
“I do not know what one-night is, b-but it is not like that...!”
Her face flushed to the brink of bursting.
Thanks to that, the awkwardness from dawn seemed to wash away.
Yeah, this kind of thing is best laughed off.
If you don’t lighten it, it keeps weighing on your daily life.
“It was just a light joke.”
“Sh, shut up...! There is no aide more disloyal than you!”
“But yesterday, Princess-nim was definitely quite bold...”
“St, stop talking about yesterday, it is indecent...!”
“So you do know it was indecent.”
“Ugh, uuugh...”
A face boiling with heat.
Eyes wandering with nowhere to settle.
Exactly the cute reaction I expected.
“Ahem.”
Of course.
If I pushed any further, she would probably sulk, so I decided to stop there.
I reached out toward Carmilla, buried under the blanket.
Wiggles was wrapped around my wrist like a bracelet.
I signaled the wriggling little thing.
“Activate. Coat.”
Flap.
It spread wide and shifted into the shape of a coat.
I draped it over the girl’s shoulders.
“Cover yourself with this.”
“Uht...”
“You should value your body. And you shouldn’t show it carelessly to strange men.”
“I know! The first person to see me like this was Vi, Viktor...”
“Next time, not even me. Understood?”
“O, okay...”
Her lips fidgeted.
Clutching the edge of the coat tight, she answered.
“...Thank you.”
“No problem.”
After that, the mood settled.
Carmilla hurried out of the room and changed in another room.
Then, for some reason, she came right back into my room and lay beside me again...
“Oh? You came back?”
“I will stay beside you.”
“Why?”
“Because that disloyal aide might run away.”
Unlike her usual obedient self, she sounded unusually prickly.
Her thin fingers gripped my clothes tightly.
For a moment, I thought she was just being petulant, but I saw a faint tremor in her eyes.
-Will you leave me too...?
Was she still anxious?
She acted fine, but the tremble in those red eyes looked painfully pitiful.
I had no choice but to let her do as she wished.
“......”
We stayed in bed all morning.
It was the weekend, so there was no reason to go out.
Doing nothing, just lying side by side as time passed.
Maybe because we had just gotten through one major event, this boring routine felt precious.
‘The Lunar Eclipse, the New Kingdom... how nice would it be if things just stayed this peaceful.’
Before long, the clock hands pointed to noon.
I figured it was about time to get up.
I was planning to head outside the Academy that afternoon.
Just as I lifted my head, Carmilla’s fingers pressed at my cheek again and again.
“Viktor.”
More precisely, she was pressing the mask’s cheek.
When I tilted my head, the girl spoke hesitantly.
“Did you call me?”
“It is just... something I thought of. I do not think you have ever shown me your face without the mask.”
“Oh? Really?”
“Yes.”
That made even me pause for a second.
We had already lived together for over two months, and I still hadn’t shown her my face even once.
It wasn’t like I liked my bare face, but it wasn’t as if I absolutely couldn’t show it either.
‘What is this...’
Maybe it was a habit from the early days.
My body was so fragile that after getting the mask, I wore it all the time.
‘...Or maybe, unconsciously, I didn’t want to show it.’
Anyway.
Now that she had pointed it out, there was no reason to keep it on.
If it was Carmilla, she probably wouldn’t be surprised.
“Do you want to see?”
I asked casually.
Carmilla’s eyes sparkled in surprise.
“I, is that really okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I thought you wore it for some personal reason...”
“Nothing like that, so it’s fine.”
Meaning for her to remove it herself, I tilted my head toward Carmilla.
The girl hesitated for a moment, then reached out.
Tap, thin fingers touched the Jester Mask.
“Then, I will take it off...”
She slowly removed the mask.
My bare face was fully revealed.
And in the next moment.
“...Huh?”
Carmilla met my eyes.
After seeing my face, the girl’s eyes trembled in shock.
