Chapter 14
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 14
Moonlight shattered through the window, touching the tips of his toes. His feet, his ankles… then, stepping fully into the light, he stood by the bedside.
The encroaching moonlight traced his profile in sharp relief, etching it in black shadow. Half-shrouded in light, half-submerged in darkness, Oscar gazed down at the woman.
The woman who had become the Living Key wore a face he had never imagined.
In Oscar’s mind, the one holding the key had always been a person at the pinnacle of power.
The pirate king said to roam from the southern seas of Norfolk to the oceans of the East; the drug lord who controlled the entire narcotics trade; the head of a violent syndicate, or perhaps even the king of a nation.
And yet, it was merely a woman like this.
A hollow laugh escaped him. But the self-mocking chuckle quickly died, and in its place, only a merciless gaze remained.
His cold eyes slowly swept over her face.
Her unguarded expression was strikingly foreign. Her dark brown hair, fanned out across the bed like seaweed, made her face seem all the whiter.
Along with her foreign features, he was struck by how every line of her body seemed so delicate it might break at a touch.
Her thin jawline and neck, shoulders no wider than two spans of his hand, the fingers and wrists that kept pushing at the sheets, and the small feet and ankles visible beneath the hiked-up hem of her skirt.
The woman was…
Like a drawing sketched faintly in pencil.
As if not a single line had been drawn with any pressure, his gaze traced the faint contours of her body until it reached her wide-open eyes.
The man’s chiseled frame leaned over the woman, who lay before him like a sacrifice.
Her focus, which had been flickering, seemed to have vanished completely. Yet her eyes were different from those of the dead. The ghastly, vacant eyes of a corpse, drained of life, were unsettling just to look at. The woman’s pupils, on the other hand, had become so transparent one could see straight to the bottom.
Belying the way she had constantly lowered her eyes and hidden her face, she now met his gaze. No, since her eyes lacked focus, it was more fitting to say she simply allowed his gaze to pass through her pupils, into whatever lay beyond.
The moonlight that had been pouring over Oscar’s cheek shifted, casting itself upon the woman’s face. It was as if color were bleeding into a black-and-white pencil drawing.
He saw the texture of her irises, like overlapping lines drawn with a finely sharpened colored pencil, and her delicate, feathery eyelashes.
“…”
On this night, the man who had taken countless lives watched the woman he had abducted, losing all track of time.
Tears seemed to well up in her brown eyes, which looked as if they were colored with dozens of fine lines. In that moment, her tear-filled eyes conveyed a contradiction: a helplessness against a searing heat, and a misery just as profound.
“Hah, ngh…”
The woman, who had been lying still, breathing faintly, began to stir with a sharp moan. Her wide, round eyes narrowed, and the tears that had gathered there streamed down the sides of her face. Her once-transparent pupils instantly clouded over as if intoxicated, and she turned her head to one side. A white nape, defenseless, was laid bare before him. The bluish pulse in her slender neck, which looked as if it would snap in one hand, throbbed rapidly.
It was then that a glint of light flashed in the man’s eyes, which had become as hazy as hers.
“Ha.”
Snapping back to his senses, Oscar let out a sharp, derisive laugh and swept his hair back.
Drugs are a funny thing. Just a drop or two, and a person ends up like this.
Oscar, who had been leaning forward, straightened up and turned away, leaving his cold assessment behind. What was the point of watching a woman who had lost her mind? As he took a step, a frigid thought crossing his mind, an unexpected sound stopped him.
A wet, tearing sound reached his ears.
Oscar, his back to her, spun around on pure reflex. The red lips from which wet moans had escaped were now clamped tightly shut.
“…!”
In an instant, he was back at her side, planting one knee on the bed. He cupped the back of her head with one hand as she, her face contorted in pain, stubbornly continued to bite her own tongue.
He smelled blood.
Even in her unconscious state, the woman was trying to overcome the drug’s influence by biting her tongue.
With his free hand, Oscar gripped her jaw, pressing his thumb and middle finger into the joints on either side. He tried to force her mouth open by pressing on the jaw muscles, but even with her clouded eyes, the woman refused to yield.
Oscar’s brow furrowed.
This key—which he now felt he could live with or without—he had once searched for it like a madman. He had craved it desperately, then one day despaired as if he would die, then grew numb to it, and then seemed to forget. Circumstances had changed, but it also felt as if he had to forget in order to move on.
But it seemed he hadn't forgotten after all. Either that, or the emotions from that time of frantic craving had been etched into his body. Memories in the mind can fade, but what the body learns, it never forgets.
The moment the woman bit her tongue and drew blood, his gut clenched fiercely, and something primal surged up from deep within him.
“Don’t.”
Oscar snarled and forced his fingers between her sealed lips. His fingers pushed past her red lips, bruising them, and wedged between the teeth that were clamped down hard on her tongue. The slick, warm tongue coiled around his fingertips.
“Relax.”
“Heuk…”
His voice was sharp enough to make even his Wolves cower, but the drugged woman didn’t react.
She only struggled with all her might to push him away, desperate to bite her tongue and regain her senses.
Her slender hands gripped his thick wrist and pushed. Tears streamed endlessly from her watery eyes as she used all her strength to push the long fingers invading her mouth away with her tongue. To push him away and bite her tongue again.
I won’t let you.
“By whose permission?”
Oscar tightened his grip on the woman, who had begun to twist her head to escape his grasp. He completely enveloped her ridiculously slender nape with one hand, forcing her to look at him. More tears leaked from the eyes that held a searing heat and misery.
“Heut…”
Her pleading expression seemed to be begging him to just leave her alone.
A bitter smile formed on Oscar’s lips.
Give up.
Oscar pressed down on the tongue that coiled around his finger, then let her bite down on his flesh with her white teeth. With a languid expression, he watched her bite his finger.
White teeth were visible between red lips. Hot breath rising from beyond her narrow throat flowed over the back of his veined hand. Her shallow breaths traced a path over his skin and brushed past the tip of his nose.
“…”
Oscar’s eyes narrowed. He caught a strange scent.
But the thought was cut short. The faint pressure of her bite on his fingertip faded away. At the same time, the hand gripping his wrist slowly fell, and her brown eyes, open in supplication, gradually fluttered shut.
“…”
As even her slight struggles ceased, a silence fell upon the moonlit bedroom.
With the disappearance of sound, time itself seemed to stop.
His blue gaze slid to her red lips, where his finger was still held. His half-lidded eyes stared, without the slightest tremor, at the glistening, wet lips and the long finger that had entered them.
After a moment, Oscar slowly withdrew his finger from her mouth. As he pulled it from between her closed lips, he had the illusion that her small mouth was licking his finger. His sharp hearing caught a sound that should have been inaudible, a wet friction that seemed to emanate from his very fingertip.
His finger, wet with clear saliva, bore no bite marks.
With a soft chuckle, he started to rise, but his brow suddenly furrowed.
An unparalleled chill settled into Oscar’s already subdued eyes. He looked down at his own body, let out a disbelieving laugh, then looked back up at her before his gaze dropped to his body again. The look he gave himself was even colder than the one he had given the idiot from Pelfe.
“Fucking…”
He exhaled the curse on a weary breath and grabbed a towel from the nightstand. Wiping the saliva from his hand, he let out a short laugh.
Right. She’s certainly worth what the brothel owner fought so desperately to keep.
Then, the laughter vanished as if it had never been. His true expression, devoid of mirth, was as desolate and scorching as a blackened castle just after a conflagration, the heat not yet fully gone.
Oscar tossed the towel aside and stared blankly at the completely unconscious woman before turning away. Then he summoned Simon again.
“You called for me, Your Excellency.”
Having washed his hands, Oscar leaned back on the sofa. Resting his head against the backrest, he stared at the shimmering key and spoke.
“What’s your opinion? How do you think this key ended up in that woman’s hands?”
“…She appears to be around twenty years old. We just heard from the Pelfe Bank. Her nationality is Danguk.”
“Danguk?”
“Yes. It’s a monarchy on the Eastern Asu Continent, bordering the Rioher Empire.”
After a moment of thought, Oscar spoke again.
“She looks mixed-race.”
“That is my assessment as well, but… I apologize. As for how the key ended up in her possession, I have nothing but clumsy speculation at this point…”