Chapter 63
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 63
Stopping just a single step away, Oscar tilted his head, his words a poised blade.
“Or…”
Last night, from mere inches away, he had watched everything behind her brown eyes crumble to ruin.
He wanted to grind even those ruins to fine dust, to leave absolutely nothing behind.
“Did you like it?”
He felt her breath, laced with the scent of wild greenery, catch in her throat.
Without blinking, the woman bit her lip again, as if by habit. She had done the same thing all night as he clung to her, ravaging her from the inside. She had bitten down with all her might, enduring and enduring until blood finally welled.
This time, however, he intended to break her. Oscar smiled, the charm breathtaking and devastating.
“Or should I pay you for every time we do it?”
He was certain of his victory.
“If you want to be paid for last night, just say the word. I’ll set a generous price.”
There was no way he could have missed it—he had utterly shattered the very last thing this suspicious, naive woman possessed. He could see her clear brown eyes turning dark and hollow.
Oscar smiled cruelly and straightened his head.
The abyss they had tumbled into together had been more spectacular than he’d expected, but that was all.
Yes. That was all.
“What kind of place do you like? The forest? The sea? Or… a valley?”
Just choose. My private estates are scattered everywhere.
After whispering the affectionate offer, he began to turn away from the woman, who could only stare with wide, tear-filled eyes. Or rather, he tried to.
“…If you didn’t…”
The voice that slipped past her tightly bitten lips was as thin as her breath. A sound as fine as a single strand of silk pierced Oscar’s ears, shattering his certainty.
The monotonous drumming of the rain faded from his consciousness.
“…What?”
The woman parted her wounded lips, only to bite down on them again.
And yet, what?
The affectionate mask fell from Oscar’s face. In an instant, he seized the Outsider’s pale cheek. Pressing his thumb against the lips he had bruised and ruined all night, he spat, “Don’t make me laugh.”
Round teardrops clung to her lashes before plunging downward. They didn’t carve a path down her face, falling directly onto the back of his hand instead.
“When you spent the entire night writhing in misery.”
Blood finally seeped from the lip crushed beneath his thumb.
The deep red spreading under his skin stirred the devil engraved deep within him.
As a man who had clawed his way up from the ruins of his own life, he possessed no mercy. He had never received it, so he didn't know what it was. Besides, the world he faced was far too harsh to be burdened by compassion.
It had been a wretched, filthy path.
On that path, he had never left behind even the smallest seed of unease. If he was forced to, he would surround it with two or three layers of safeguards, a habit that bordered on obsession.
Yet now, a seed of unease he would normally have crushed without a second thought was right beneath his hand.
Crush it.
So she can never defy you again. So she can never shake you again.
Completely, this time.
Strength flooded into Oscar’s fingertips.
His blue eyes, seething with a torrent of filthy emotions, shifted.
“…”
A smooth, slender hand rose. What could she possibly do with those round, pink fingertips? Crush a flower, perhaps?
Yet those fingertips—which seemed fit only for crushing flowers—gently caught the hand that was bruising her bloodied lips, as if catching a firefly. The delicate tips wrapped around the back of his thick, scar-ridden hand.
“If…”
A tiny voice sounded, drawing Oscar’s gaze from her fingers.
Even the inner voice urging him to crush the seed before it could sprout faded away, following the sound of the rain into silence.
“If you didn’t hate it…”
Seo-ah slowly raised her eyes.
His were the color of a blue abyss, so deep and clear one could see to the bottom.
In those depths, Seo-ah saw her own reflection, as disheveled as she had been last night. And she saw him, shaking just as much as she was.
Her voice trembled. She loathed herself for it.
“If you didn’t hate me…”
Unable to bear the sight of her own reflection in his deep, ocean-blue eyes, she finally cast her gaze down.
“May I… stay by Your Excellency’s side?”
Clinging to the very hand that would one day choke her, she pleaded to be allowed to stay.
This wretched life of mine… I will spend it all for you when the time comes. So please, do not send me away.
She twisted those words into an absurd, roundabout plea. Seo-ah, who had to remain here no matter the cost, found herself unbearably disgusting.
A silence fell, sharp and thorny. With every passing second, the thorns seemed to pierce her skin.
Seo-ah didn’t even realize she had stopped breathing. As she endured the pricking silence, waiting for his answer, a dry laugh escaped the lips of the man looming over her.
It was a sound halfway between a sigh and a sneer. He shook his hand free from her grasp—though to say she had ever truly held him was laughable.
He turned away from her.
Sweeping his hair back, he walked to the desk, picked up a cigarette, and placed it between his lips. The snap of the lighter was unnaturally loud in the quiet room. He simply stood there, smoking in silence.
Acrid smoke seeped into the space where the thorny silence had lingered.
Seo-ah stared with a fragile gaze at his back. Her hands, which had wrapped around his, now felt colder than when she had first entered the room. Her mind was a hollow void; every function seemed to have shut down, save for the sole awareness of the man before her.
Then, with his back still turned, Oscar spoke.
“You didn’t hate it?”
His voice, drifting with the cigarette smoke, was as low and acrid as the fumes.
“You didn’t hate it?”
Was he testing her?
Oscar turned. His habitual smile was gone, and in its place was the face of the King of the Underworld. Shrouded in hazy white smoke, he stared at her with eyes that could judge a sinner.
“Is that so?”
“…”
Staring at her as if passing judgment, Oscar brought the cigarette back to his lips. He took a deep drag, flicked the white ash into the ashtray, and tossed out his next words.
“I don’t believe you.”
Each syllable was laced with suspicion. He seemed to sink back into the shadows, the darkness of the windowless Reception Room emanating from him as its epicenter.
After exhaling smoke a few more times, he seemed to reach a conclusion. He spoke to Seo-ah, who stood there like a weed sprouting in the wrong place, utterly lost.
“Then.”
“…”
“That thing you didn’t hate.”
The man, sculpted from darkness, whispered from within a gloom that felt strangely crimson.
“Do it.”
He shook the woman who had dared to try and shake him, but far harder.
“How else am I supposed to believe you?”
The acrid darkness flowing from the master of the manor seeped into the Outsider.
Seo-ah felt as if she were standing in a dense fog, unable to see an inch ahead. A white darkness blocked the path behind her, and she had no idea what lay to either side. In this desolate gloom, the only light was the tiny ember producing acrid smoke and black ash.
That single point of light was a will-o’-the-wisp.
The will-o’-the-wisp, said to appear in graveyards, was one of the scary stories that had kept her awake as a child.
“Master. Do you know what a will-o’-the-wisp is? They say it’s a fire that bewitches people and eats them. You must never, ever follow it.”
Her Master had merely shrugged. On nights when that story came to mind, Seo-ah would toss and turn before finally seeking out her Master’s cold room. Though her Master was like iron personified, she had never turned away the sleepless girl.
The girl who had once earnestly warned her Master never to follow a will-o’-the-wisp now had no choice. She had to step forward, even knowing the fire before her was far more terrifying than any ghost light.
The space between them felt thick with an invisible pressure. With every step she took toward him, a resistance as fierce as a storm pushed against her. But that was no reason to stop.
One step, then another.
The closer she got, the more the air seemed to freeze. The smoke drifting from Oscar’s lips had stopped the moment she took her first step.
One step, and then another.
Her steps, though hesitant, neither stopped nor retreated. They finally halted just two paces away from him.
As she stood before him, Seo-ah held her breath, feeling as though the man in front of her was about to crash down upon her.
His voice echoed in her mind, his demand to do that thing she didn’t hate.
The thing she didn’t hate.
She had no choice but to summon the memories she had tried so desperately to push away.
The first thing that came to mind was the cold air on her skin. Goosebumps had broken out, but only for a moment before his firm, hot body had crashed over her like a tidal wave.
Everything had been a first. Nothing that had happened last night was something she had ever experienced before.
If she had to prove that all those things that had washed over her were “not hated”…
What on earth was she supposed to do? And how?