Episode 20
She knew very well what had to be done first at a time like this. It was thanks to the adults who had taught children playing by diving in lakes or rivers in their youth that they must always take their clothes off and leave them outside before going in. Everyone had experienced ignoring those warnings, playing in wet clothes, and having their teeth chatter even in the height of summer.
Rose hurriedly unfastened the buttons of Ezekiel’s nightshirt. The soaked fabric clung so tightly that her fingernails caught several times. Worse, the man was strong. Each time he hunched his shoulders and twisted, trying to trap even a thread of warmth, Rose was helplessly dragged along, losing her balance and staggering. The man, his large frame folded in on itself as he curled up, was like a mountain.
“I’m not doing this with any strange intention. It’s because of hypothermia. You’re a soldier too, Major… so you know this.”
She was not sure whether her voice would reach him properly when his reason had completely fallen apart, but Rose whispered into Ezekiel’s ear.
“It’ll be quick. Just for a moment.”
Clinging to him with something close to brute force, she finally managed to strip off his upper garment. She threw aside the sweat-soaked, heavy cloth and pulled back the sheet, hurriedly wiping his wet body.
That was when the beast on the bed lunged over her in one breath.
❖ ❖ ❖
Since when had his body become such a wreck?
Ezekiel ground his molars together.
As if my eyes weren’t enough, now I’ve become a complete cripple.
All his senses had slipped beyond his control. His optimism that he would be fine after a little while had been a delusion. As time passed, his condition only grew worse.
The symptoms were so varied that he could not even tell where or how something had gone wrong. Until just now, he had been pouring cold sweat until his back was drenched because of some unidentified abdominal pain that wrung out his insides.
Next came muscle aches and chills, as though his whole body had been beaten. His limbs trembled violently. His teeth clacked together, and his body convulsed like an aspen. His muscles contracted and his joints curled in on themselves. He could not straighten his arms or legs.
It was not cold weather, and yet he was cold. Cold enough to die.
He let out an incredulous sneer.
Cold? Me? Since when did I feel the cold?
Having fought wars as a soldier was much the same as saying one was immune to most heat and cold. In truth, Ezekiel was not particularly affected by the seasons. He had often slept outdoors in the snow in the depths of winter, and for surprise attacks, he had spent whole nights hidden without even a tent, wrapped in only a single blanket so the enemy would not discover him.
He had also been born healthy and had no memory of ever being ill. Even wounded, he fought in battles the same as anyone else, and his recovery was so uncommonly swift that those around him would click their tongues in amazement.
So his current state was absolutely not normal. His consciousness was already hazy, and with his vision plunged into darkness as well, dizziness and nausea rose in him. The sensation of cold seeping deep into his bones was eerie.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Even through his flickering consciousness, he hurriedly thought of ways to keep his falling body temperature warm, but for some reason his limbs would not obey him. It was the first time he realized that undressing could be such a delicate task.
Instinctively, he understood what he needed to get rid of this damned cold and pain.
…Laudanum.
He was thirsty. His instincts whispered cunningly.
Yes, that’s it. Just a few drops of laudanum will do. It’s right there if you reach out, isn’t it? You don’t even need to drink much. If you only touch it to your tongue, this unfamiliar agony will vanish at once.
The temptation was sweet, affectionate, and gentle. Just like that woman, Rose.
Rose probably assumed that his dependence on painkillers had begun because of the pain from the poison, but that was not all.
The place where laudanum had first been recommended to him was right here, at De Rosa’s villa. The reason was simple. At the Cleris main house, Ezekiel had refused every kind of treatment without exception.
He could not trust the doctor Akenaus had summoned.
“What’s wrong, Ezekiel? Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?”
Even as the nerve-burning poison gnawed away at his eyes, he stubbornly endured it fully conscious, using the bed as a fortress in a siege. Akenaus appeared and mocked him to his face, but Ezekiel’s belief that he must not allow anyone in the main house to come near him did not waver.
Not even his parents were exceptions. Whether it was something Akenaus had done on his own or in collusion with their parents, in the end, his parents would have no choice but to choose Akenaus, the son whose limbs were still whole, over the two brothers.
If there was one stroke of luck, it was that the Valdemaera main house was always a noisy place crowded with people. The ill news that had befallen Ezekiel swiftly spread through the city by way of those who came and went from the main house.
Only after his subordinates, having finally heard the rumors, stormed into the main house, extracted him, and carried him to the villa where Madam Serva was, did Ezekiel receive his first proper examination.
Strangely, the place where he came to face the pain in his eyes for what it was had also been this De Rosa villa. The main house, filled with enemies on every side, was far too tense a place to simply lie down and suffer in comfort. There, he could not look sick. He could not look weak. He had to stand guard over himself, stay wary of everyone, and at the same time conceal his openings as much as possible. He had to be all right.
That will became a kind of hypnosis. In truth, at the Cleris main house, he had been in comparatively less pain. Like soldiers who, even after losing an arm, regripped their bayonets with the other and fought, or advanced on legs utterly shattered, he had not realized that he was in no condition to enter combat properly.
Only after Ezekiel was surrounded by people he could trust did he open his mouth for the first time.
It hurts.
At that single sentence, the hypnosis broke, and all the pain that had been erased rushed in at once. He spoke again, correcting himself.
“This is truly horrendous—damn it, what the fuck is this feeling? What the hell did they do to my eyes!”
It was around that time, after he faced reality, that he caused a commotion trying to tear out his own eyes. The doctor urgently prescribed laudanum to him, who was showing instability in many ways.
“If you drink this, you will feel much better. Take it whenever you suffer.”
At the time, everyone agreed with the doctor’s diagnosis. But looking back now, the torment of his body and mind had in fact been natural and obvious symptoms. His brother had become his enemy, and his eyes had been crippled overnight; if his mind and body had remained calm and peaceful, that would have been absurd.
Yet the people around him, frightened by this unprecedented situation, rushed to press alcohol and medicine on him at the slightest sign that Ezekiel was in danger. They insisted on a quick recovery through drugs rather than self-healing, which no one knew how long would take. Madam Serva even prepared opium in advance on the bedside table so it would never be out of reach all day long.
Laudanum’s effects lived up to its name. The mixture of bitter wine and even more bitter opium flowed into his body and softened his nerves. It was a hazy peace that reassured everyone.
What followed was only natural.
They fed him, and fed him, and fed him again.
Even he himself became so accustomed to it that he would start awake from sleep and drink the medicine without wandering for it.
At first, he drank it to stabilize his mind and body; afterward, a new purpose appeared, and he continued to drink.
That woman.
The one who had brought about all the nightmares that led to this day,
and yet might be swept away by time’s oblivion and slowly collapse into its depths,
Akenaus’s woman, of whom he knew nothing but the face that had flashed past in a single instant—to keep from forgetting her, he had no choice but to drink.
The drug’s effect was mysterious. One cup of medicine had an excellent effect in calming the body and mind, and if he drank a few more cups than that, he could see the scene he wanted with vivid clarity. It was an astonishing experience. For the moment he borrowed the power of the drug, he was not blind.
In that strange hallucination, neither waking nor sleeping, Ezekiel saw the woman’s face with clear sight, again and again.
It was dreamlike to call it reality, and too realistic to call it a dream.
She had tied up her abundant chestnut hair in one bundle, and with hazel eyes faintly tinged with olive along the rims of the irises, she met his gaze with her eyes wide open.
He studied the woman’s delicate features with such intensity that he seemed determined not to miss even a single downy hair on her skin. He neither grew bored nor tired. It was then that he realized her eye color was subtle, quite mysterious.
The expression tinged with bewilderment, her slightly parted lips, the pulse fluttering at the tips of her fingers…
By that point, the woman would throw poison into his eyes and flee. At first, he had no choice but to simply let the receding illusion go, but now he knew how to handle it.
Click—he would seize the illusion and bring it to a halt, then rewind into the past as though winding a clockwork spring, and snatch the woman by the wrist.