Chapter 100. The Play (1)
Chapter 100. The Play (1)
1
Splash.
Blood flowing from the mirror flooded the surroundings.
At first, only a drop or two fell. Blood beaded like a faucet not quite shut off.
But then—ding... ding... the moment the grandfather clock tolled in the distance, the trickle changed. Blood poured uncontrollably from the cracks of the mirror.
Ding......
Twelve o'clock. Twelve tolls of the bell.
One drop swelled into one stream.
One stream split into six streams.
The corridor was submerged in blood.
A red sea of blood.
The grandfather clock announced its final toll.
We stood in the middle of a carpet made of blood.
"My lady."
Instinctively, I wrapped my arm around Lady Silver Lily's shoulders. My ankles were submerged in the pool of blood. The slime-like, clinging sensation was ominous.
"This is..."
"My nightmare."
Lady Silver Lily murmured from within my arms.
"Do not let your guard down, butler. This place is already no different from another world. Others neither know nor see what unfolds here."
Gush! Bubbles surged up from the sea of blood.
Thousands of bubbles opened and thousands of bubbles burst.
Yet among them, there were some that, instead of vanishing like bubbles, took on complete forms.
[The Silver-Plated Heart manifests.]
They were demons shaped like lips. No—they were lips themselves. They had no faces or bodies, only red lips and red tongues.
They grinned.
-Your Highness the Crown Prince.
-How hateful.
The lips of the blood-bubbles endlessly rose and burst. The words they muttered rarely connected. They broke off constantly. Like a chorus producing a dreadful dissonance.
-His Highness the Crown Prince is so kind.
-Back when you were not yet crown prince, the prince picked flowers for me.
-You wiped my tears with your sleeve. You are still a good person.
-Because your heart is tender.
-Even so.
Flash!
Lady Silver Lily thrust her rapier and pierced the lips of a blood-bubble. The demon burst. But tongues surged from the sea of blood—twice, three times as many as had burst.
The demons' giggling rang out red.
-How lovable.
I swung my sword as well.
-What meaning is there in loving someone who has been exceptional since birth?
The demons' combat power was negligible. They did not even resist us. They meekly accepted the blade.
Only.
-Though he may be flawed.
-Embracing and guiding someone flawed—that is true love.
They grated on my nerves.
Not a physical attack, but a mental attack.
-I love you, Your Highness.
-I know how to love too.
-I am a noble who loves.
I bit my lip. It was unpleasant. I swung my sword faster and cut through the blood-bubbles.
-Will you kill me?
-It's useless. Tragedy only grows sweeter the more it is trampled.
-Golden Thread Plum. Did you see her wagging her tail at His Highness the Crown Prince?
-How revolting.
The sea of blood laughed and rippled.
-His Highness is naive and still dreams of a romantic life. His Highness does not love Golden Thread Plum. She is merely an escape route from the throne.
-Poor His Highness.
-How pitiable His Highness is.
Damn it.
I had witnessed a phenomenon similar to this before.
'Demon King of Fall Rain!'
Before she was taken in by me and received the name Agwi. In those days, the Constellation was like this. The Demon King had shed blood from the sky and commanded a legion of monsters freely.
This is the power of a Constellation.
Those demons are Lady Silver Lily's familiars.
[The presence of the Silver-Plated Heart grows clearer.]
Something other than lips burst from the sea of blood.
Hands.
Like a bride and groom at a wedding, two hands clasped each other.
-Raviel, our families and the imperial household have betrothed us.
-Betrothed... is it.
-Yes. But I do not want a political marriage.
The demonic hands interlaced their fingers.
Blood dripped endlessly from the hands made of blood.
I realized those demons were performing [events of the past] like a play.
-Ignore the engagement the adults arranged on their own. Regardless of the adults, I will love you. Today, I came to formally propose to you.
-My prince.
-Raviel, when we are a little older, will you marry me?
Dozens of lips surrounded us.
They answered simultaneously.
-Yes.
-I will surely love you.
-I will love you too, my prince.
That son of a bitch.
He spouted that kind of nonsense and didn't take responsibility?
-His Highness the Crown Prince has probably forgotten.
-Because it was a promise made in childhood.
-It can't be helped.
-People forget so easily.
The lips of the blood-bubbles giggled.
-It can't be helped!
I could not endure it any longer.
Heat surged through me.
Splash! As I stepped forward, I focused aura into my lead foot.
Demonic Heavenly God Art魔天神功.
Eighth Form第八式.
Sword of Incineration燒死連劍.
As the waves of blood spread, my aura spread as well.
I seared the sea of blood covering the corridor with aura.
-Oh ho.
Behind me, the guardian spirit spoke.
-Now these trash mobs aren't even worth one hit. You've grown a lot, our little crow-tit.
Normally, I would have played along with the guardian spirit's teasing. But I wasn't in the mood right now. I swept through the corridor.
The demons burned. As they vanished, they didn't even scream. Instead, they laughed until the very end, which only made me angrier.
"Damn it all."
I had incinerated the demons in one strike, but my insides still churned.
Rage toward the Crown Prince. Contempt.
That someone as noble as Lady Silver Lily had been wounded because of a wretch like him—that it had even become a wish she could never take back. Those things infuriated me.
"Since when...!"
I inhaled sharply. It was to steady my voice. No matter how angry I was, I didn't want to raise my voice at Lady Silver Lily.
"...Since when have you been a Constellation? These are a Constellation's familiars. They are things you created, my lady."
That must be why they recognized us as allies and didn't resist.
Lady Silver Lily nodded as if she knew it too.
"It happened the moment I drove the dagger into my heart."
Before I knew it, the blood had begun returning to the mirror. Squirm, squirm. Streams of blood crawled into the cracks of the mirror.
Reverse flow. Lady Silver Lily watched the blood droplets squirming like leeches with quiet eyes.
"It seems this world originally has no Constellations. Whether they once existed and were slain, or never existed from the beginning, it is difficult to know which."
Lefanta Aegim probably killed the Constellations. But now was not the time to discuss that. I listened to Lady Silver Lily's words.
"As time passes, the demons grow ever stronger. Their numbers swell, and their forms grow enormous. Controlling them as I do now becomes difficult. And on the tenth day."
On the tenth day.
Lady Silver Lily paused for a moment. Then she shook her head once and continued on a different tack.
"...At any rate, as the ten days began repeating, I naturally became the [Representative of the World]. Even if I did not wish it, the hands of this world's clock turn around me."
-Hmm.
The guardian spirit stroked his chin.
-It's not a proper ascension. In murim terms, she reached that realm not through the orthodox path but through the unorthodox path. The sword she drove into the mirror—even if it's only a shattered fragment—was once a holy relic of the [Goddess of Protection].
The guardian spirit muttered, "Well,"
-If you drive something like that into your heart, of course you'd ascend as a Constellation whether you like it or not... And if you repeat regressions on top of that, it becomes causality that a human body cannot bear. She's not a complete Constellation, just a half-baked one. Anyway, it must be the result of several coincidences overlapping.
'Can a person become a Constellation even if they don't want to?'
-Yeah. Did you, you zombie, choose to be born human?
Seriously, this old man always has to say things like that.
-What matters is the conditions, not the will. There are plenty of people who suffer because they're human, and surprisingly many who suffer because they became Constellations. Making life miserable is really easy. Do you understand, Young Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult?
"Hoo..."
I swallowed my rage toward the Crown Prince deep in my chest. The swallowed rage tasted bitter in my mouth.
Lady Silver Lily looked at me.
"How strange. Are you not disappointed?"
"Pardon?"
"What you said is correct. Whatever the circumstances, those demons are my familiars. They do not fabricate false words to sing. They are all things I muttered in my dreams, words I recited even unconsciously."
Lady Silver Lily tilted her head.
"I swore an eternally unchanging love. To keep that love pure, I must daily brush away the dust and faults that accumulate upon my love."
Disappointment.
Frustration.
The feeling of wanting to be repaid as much as one gives.
"Those are the result."
The grease of the heart.
A curse in its purest sense.
"Is it not ugly?"
Lady Silver Lily murmured.
"I taught you about love, but that was all. I meant to make you let go of that love around this point. I brought you here deliberately to shatter your illusion."
"Disappointment?"
A breath escaped me before I realized it. It wasn't a sigh. It was a breath that barely held my anger in check.
"Ugly, you ask? I may not know much, my lady, but I could never be disappointed in you over something like this."
"...This much?"
"You shared your secret with me. You took out your heart and showed it to me exactly as it is. A truly ugly person, my lady, never shows their heart to another person. They pretend to be at ease, pretend to be composed. They only know how to wound others."
That Flame Emperor bastard.
"If anything, I'm worse. If you knew what thoughts go through my mind, you'd be the one disgusted, my lady."
"Now I'm curious."
"If you brought me here intending to push me away, you were mistaken, my lady. I didn't fall in love with you because I thought you were incapable of ugliness."
Lady Silver Lily hesitated for just a moment. Love. It was because of that word. My face flushed when I spoke the word aloud, but I had no intention of faltering.
"It has only been a day since you came to admire me. Your sweet words are dazzling."
"Is one day the problem? Would one year of loving you suffice? Would one thousand days suffice? Should I come back after that?"
"......"
"I can see what kind of people you loathe and despise. What I loathe and despise, you surely hate just the same. I can also see what wounds you and causes you pain. I love the way you live. Because you and I live the same life."
Will my words reach her? Am I expressing my meaning properly?
I can't know.
I have never said things like this to another person. I'm not used to it. But I want the person before me. I want Lady Silver Lily to possess me. I want us to possess each other and share one life.
"I like you as much as I like myself. I hope you come to love me as much as you love yourself."
Those were my true feelings.
And I knew no way but to give my true feelings everything I had.
"I will definitely make you love me. I won't tell you to abandon the Crown Prince. Even if I don't say it, at some point you will abandon him on your own."
"My heart..."
"Yes. I don't care whether your heart is mortgaged to the world or not. If that's the problem, I'll solve it. And if you still love the Crown Prince after that, then I'll become an overwhelmingly better person than the Crown Prince and keep hanging around in front of you."
"......"
"Did the Crown Prince gift you unforgettable memories in your childhood? That doesn't matter either."
I whispered into Lady Silver Lily's ear.
"The two of us are regressors. The only two in this world."
I can tell. My face is red right now. But I said what needed to be said.
"There will be so much time that only you and I can enjoy. During that time, I will gift you memories so breathtaking that the Crown Prince's memories will fade. I will try."
"Hmm."
The corners of Lady Silver Lily's eyes lifted.
"Do you intend to repeat the final ten days infinitely? You will collapse from exhaustion."
"That's not a threat. This isn't the first time I've repeated identical days."
"What if I grow tired of you and tell you to disappear from my sight?"
"I would disappear."
I moved my hand. I moved it to grasp Lady Silver Lily's fingertips—she had lost her lamp in the fight against the demons. It was an act requiring courage. Fortunately, I had exactly as much courage as I needed.
"But that will never happen in the first place."
"Why is that?"
"Because you are someone who did not grow tired even of the Crown Prince, and I am a better person than the Crown Prince. If you find me bothersome, tell me now. I will disappear."
Silence.
Lady Silver Lily looked at my face.
"...This is troublesome."
Lady Silver Lily spoke.
"I ought to find you bothersome, yet right now I do not find you bothersome. Nor does it seem I will easily grow tired of you."
That was the moment.
"...Sir! ...!"
A sound came from far down the corridor. It was urgent. Lady Silver Lily's residence, which had been quiet with even the servants asleep, suddenly became noisy.
"Where...! But...!"
Soon, the sound of footsteps thundered. The attendants had awakened. Lights came on here and there, and before long, a gray-haired servant ran to where the two of us stood.
"My apologies, my lady."
Lady Silver Lily released my hand.
"What is this commotion at such a late hour?"
"I am sorry to report..."
At that moment, the voice causing the disturbance in the distance became clearer than before.
"Butler! Where are you, butler!"
My face stiffened.
It was an all-too-familiar voice.
The gray-haired servant bowed toward us.
"Lady Golden Thread Plum, the baron's daughter, is causing a scene."