Chapter 4

The time of mortals was fair.

They always grew, changed, aged, and vanished. No matter what great deeds they achieved or glory they seized, they could never defy the years.

If I record such an obvious matter out of the blue, it is because I am an entity who must constantly, consciously accept what is obvious to them. When away from human society, I used to grow numb to the passage of time; but back then, having settled long in mortal society and posing as a human, I became terribly sensitive to every change around me.

While snow piled up and melted over and over in the Black Forest, the little boy who had crouched low and trembled at my feet grew into a dazzling young man.

The little tot whose crown barely reached my solar plexus could now meet my gaze by lifting his chin just a fraction; the round, large eyes turned up at the corners and began shedding allure. The slender neck that felt as if it could be snapped with a single hand developed an Adam’s apple, and the back and shoulders that used to hunch and cower straightened proudly.

Having blossomed into a man, he bore a resemblance to him so exact it was bewildering.

Yet the true problem of that period was not Michael’s full bloom making me feel as if he had returned.

It was that as much as Michael had grown, so too had the sole heir to Margrave Eisenhardt—his grandson.

Josef’s grandson, Friedrich, who was destined to inherit Belsenburg, would make an appearance whenever I went to his manor once a month.

“I am always deeply grateful to you, my lord, for protecting Belsenburg on my behalf.”

He was a boy who had offered such greetings to me since he was not even an adolescent, but a mere child. Whether he took after his father or his grandfather, his mettle was exceptional from an early age, and I recall assessing that he would never cow even before rough soldiers.

Friedrich was younger than Michael, but the age gap was not large. In the year Michael came of age, he turned sixteen.

Three years. Three years until he celebrated his coming-of-age ceremony and formally inherited the title.

During that period, I could not take those three years lightly. They might not seem short to a mortal, but to me they were hopelessly fleeting. A span of time I could let slip away merely by sleeping in some shabby old castle or mountain cabin.

The day Friedrich came of age, I had to step down from Belsenburg. For that was the bargain I had struck with Josef.

Yet even when that day arrived, Michael, bound to the family by contract, would have to remain there. The one who had to leave was me. Treated as an asset of Eisenhardt, he would serve the new master who took the seat I vacated.

Years at the shortest, decades on average, centuries at the longest. Given to me, who had lived constantly looking forward and looking back across such spans of time, were a mere three years.

There was joy in having raised a trivial boy, who seemed likely to die if left alone, into a healthy and beautiful young man, but behind that joy bloomed an unavoidable restlessness.

It was around the time the desire I had swallowed down again and again, repressing it relentlessly, began coiling itself in preparation to crawl out in earnest.

In the dawn when the window was still draped in dark bluish gloom, sitting propped against the headboard and turning pages, I would register the start of the day by the faint footsteps approaching beyond the door.

Hearing those footsteps, I would quietly close the book, lie down, and close my eyes. In the early days after granting him permission to enter the bedchamber, I used to simply stay awake as usual, but this charade began because he, having entered with slightly excited eyes, wore a peculiarly disappointed expression upon seeing me already awake.

Entering gingerly, Michael drew the bedchamber curtains without a sound. Catching his breath once, he crept softly to the bedside and stood there. Yet he did not wake me right away. Though I could not know precisely what he was doing since I could not open my eyes, through presence and sound I knew he stood motionless, watching me.

Well, it is embarrassing to say with my own mouth, but I imagine it was admiration. By human standards, my appearance belonged to the thoroughly beautiful sort, praised timelessly across eras.

Just as it had always yielded the finest results when integrating into human society, it was an aspect that had worked wondrously on him in every era.

“My lord.”

When that brief bout of admiration concluded, he would wake me in a voice feigning solemnity while concealing a faint tremor.

“My lord, it is time to rise.”

If I did not awaken immediately, his voice would grow steadily softer and his words longer, so I always pretended not to hear until he called three times before opening my eyes languidly.

“Somehow you seem to wake later and later. Before, you were awake even before I arrived…”

And when his eyes met my half-lidded gaze, he would fluster, whipping his head away and nagging unnecessarily.

“…Are you not going to scold me?”

“For what?”

“…Never mind.”

Of his morning routine, what he loved most was the time spent dressing me. The time that made me “Margrave Eisenhardt.”

During that time, all I was allowed to do myself was slip into my trousers and shirt. It was not that I had ordered him to do so; he had made me that way.

In the beginning, I had dressed myself while his back was turned, but he looked at me with such a shocked face as if I had committed some unforgivable sin. On such days, he would pout and act sullen throughout the entire morning, so allowing him to do as he pleased gradually led to this.

While he arranged the garments in order, I would pull on my breeches and sit on the couch by the bed, and Michael would kneel at my feet to slip on my stockings and boots. He pulled the trousers taut and fastened them so no wrinkles formed, then clamped the silver spurs on for the inspection that would follow shortly.

Looking down at the crown of Michael’s head as he rose, I would stand with him, and next came the cravat. A pristine pale hand reached out to wrap starched silk over the stiff collar standing straight beneath my chin.

“I will tighten it slightly.”

Lest his hand touch bare skin, lest the knot cinch too tightly. Beneath my slightly raised chin, cautious and precise movements shifted back and forth.

When I quietly watched that pale face in deep concentration through lowered eyes, my gaze would meet his as he lowered his hands and stole a glance upward. Each time, he would flinch slightly and hastily drop his eyes.

Because I could tell from the tips of his ears that doing so every time and looking at me every time was not purely out of habit, I too gazed at him quietly every single time.

“If it is too tight, you may loosen it a bit… Ah, but I have set the symmetry, so please take care…”

Quickly fleeing my sight with muttered rambling, he stood behind me, and over my shoulders came the waistcoat studded densely with silver buttons.

After fastening all the buttons of the waistcoat, which clung so tightly to my ribcage and waist it bordered on constricting, the dark navy frock coat was draped on last.

Michael always returned to the front to examine me quietly, brushing away even the specks of dust on my shoulders with meticulous care. Then, taking a step back, his face peculiarly flushed, he proffered the gloves with a bowed head.

“You are ready to depart.”

Then I, too, gazing at those flushed cheeks, would accept the gloves and leave the room. Wondering precisely what about me caused him to blush so.

A morning finishing preparations without looking into a mirror even once. It was merely one of the ordinary routines repeated daily, yet for him and for me, it was a time that made us hold our breath day after day.

The coiled desire that had been compressing like a pressed spring finally reared its head in the autumn of 1823.

It was a little past three in the afternoon. It is a nearly exact recollection, as I had checked my pocket watch on horseback on my way back from border patrol.

The horse, having galloped hard over rough terrain, let out a weary snort—prrr—as its hooves stepped onto the drawbridge. The thick wooden bridge rumbled with a dull vibration beneath the herd of hooves, and the sentry peering through a spyglass at the narrow path atop the battlements rang the bell.

“His Excellency has returned! Open the gates!”

Behind the sharp clanging of iron—clink, clank, clink—the firmly shut, towering arched gate groaned heavily. Entering the gatehouse tunnel as the doors swung open with a swirl of dust, the cool, damp air peculiar to shadowed places surged in.

Up to that point, it was the usual routine.

Yet when I crossed the inner courtyard and had just dismounted, a single remark from the aide-de-camp, who approached with hurried steps as if waiting for me, caused the day’s routine to veer sharply from the ordinary.

“Your Excellency, the former Margrave has arrived.”

The hand handing over the reins paused briefly. As I turned my head, the aide lowered his eyes and continued in an undertone:

“However… he has brought along an unidentified noble lady.”

Though puzzled for a brief second at the news of Josef’s arrival, the moment I heard the following words, I understood the situation immediately.

A visit without notice, letter, or appointment. At first, I thought he had dropped by for reassurance out of anxiety over his fading mortal life, but the greedy old man was harboring an even more covetous ambition.

Having heard the general situation, I traversed the corridor with faster strides than usual. The spurs I had not even had time to remove rang with an irritable metallic clink, clink at every step.

Hearing the sound, maidservants pressed themselves against the walls from afar, bowing their heads. Catching the peculiar curiosity blooming across their faces, I headed for the drawing room in an even fouler mood.

When I rounded the final corner, I ran into Michael. Having heard my footsteps, he had been waiting on the other side so as not to collide with me.

“…You have returned.”

Instead of lifting his head to gaze at me with sparkling eyes as usual, he spoke while staring only at my feet. His expression was dark.

“A guest is waiting in the drawing room.”

Whether he had been on his way to greet me, he turned to guide me toward the drawing room, but I passed him by and issued a different command:

“Hans is sufficient to attend to them, so attend to your own duties.”

Your duties. I phrased it that way deliberately. To engrave the fact that he was still a personal servant under my command. It was an act beyond pathetic, utterly childish.

Leaving him frozen in place, I headed to the drawing room. Hearing the approaching footsteps, the door opened from the inside. The first thing I met was Hans’s eyes. Eyes revealing a hint of awkward trouble.

“Oh, you are here.”

The situation that had put even that seasoned old butler in an awkward spot was laid bare immediately after he lowered his eyes and stepped aside.

“This is Isabella. My niece. She came by to visit me while I was ill not long ago, and after hearing about you from Fritz, she insisted on greeting you in person, so I have brought her along despite the imposition.”

In the corner of a pitch-black forest, a dreary castle where only the metallic tang of iron and the thud of combat boots echoed. Inside the room sat a spring hue that had never existed in such a fortress.

“I-I am Isabella Eisenhardt.”

She was a young woman of Michael’s age. Her bright, vivid dress looked entirely out of place.

“Thank you for making time in your busy schedule, Your Excellency. Please forgive my sudden intrusion.”

Approaching with a faint scent of lavender, Isabella dipped gracefully in a curtsy.

Under the guise of lowering her gaze, she scanned upward from my boots soiled with dust and dirt, and by the time she reached my hair, slightly tousled from riding, her face bore a flush of feverish excitement she could not conceal.

“It is… truly an honor to meet you.”

It was before I had even stepped fully into the open room. Down the far end of the corridor, the boy’s gaze, having still not departed, was caught clearly in the corner of my lowered vision.

It was repulsive. Josef’s wicked intention of using his niece to sate his own greed, and the hand extended by the young woman before me, blushing naively without knowing a thing about me or this situation. It was thoroughly disgusting.

Yet I could remain silent no longer. Had we been alone in the room, it might be different, but eyes were watching from every quarter.

“Coming all the way to the borderland must not have been an easy journey.”

Supporting her hand, I bowed at the waist. Bringing my nose close to the back of her hand, I mimed a brief kiss. When I straightened again, Isabella was far more flushed than before, struggling to maintain an elegant poise.

Once I had fully entered, Hans quietly closed the door. The moment we were severed from the outside, I made my displeasure clear to Josef.

“Had you sent word, I would have visited your manor.”

“I know you well enough by now. Even if I had asked you to come the instant you received the letter, you would surely have waited until next month’s visiting day.”

“Still, such an encounter is an impoliteness to the young lady.”

Though aware that Isabella was looking back and forth between Josef and me in bewilderment, I did not yield my stance.

“You seem thoroughly displeased at being made to receive her unprepared.”

Josef was no different. Replying lightly with a hearty laugh, he deftly changed the subject accompanied by a dry, metallic cough.

“Since she is already here, what use is there in arguing? Instead of that, why don’t you young people have a leisurely conversation?”

Josef’s intentions were transparent.

The cunning old margrave sought to manipulate me by putting forward his naive young kin. Since he was a man who possessed an iron sinew of attachment to his house—even desiring eternal life despite recognizing my solitude—it was not particularly surprising.

“As it happens, the girl has lately been curious about the world of men, so it would be wonderful if you escorted her and showed her around Belsenburg.”

Among the mortals who came to know me, there were occasionally such people. Those who sought by any means to tether their bloodline to “immortality.”

“The ground is muddy; it is not a suitable environment for the lady to walk.”

That visit, too, was a shallow ploy to entangle me with his bloodline and turn me into the family’s strength.

“Then how about showing her only the inside of the castle? While I’m up and moving for the first time in a while, I’ll watch the soldiers’ drills, so pay me no mind.”

Josef was shrewd. At least among mortals, that would have been so.

“Of course, if the young lady wishes it as well, I shall do so.”

What he overlooked was the fact that I had lived centuries longer than him and had undergone similar situations dozens of times.

“Th-Then… please guide me.”

And that I could not father a child with a mortal woman.

It was a moment that made me realize once again that human judgment is formed mostly from what is seen and heard. Well, by human standards I resembled humans in every way, so it would have been difficult for them to fully comprehend that my nature was entirely different from theirs.

In the end, to me the day’s affair was a commotion all the more irritating for its laughable shallowness.

“It is truly magnificent. The mansions in Vienna are glamorous, but they lack this sense of solid fortitude… Now I finally understand why it is called the Shield of the Empire.”

Even while walking through the castle with Isabella, the annoyance was not easily shaken off, though I did not display that emotion to her.

“I am glad you do not find it disagreeable.”

“Disagreeable?”

“Because everything here was built to kill someone, or to keep from being killed.”

“My, you speak so… frighteningly.”

Not only was she not the cause of my irritation in the first place, but the sight of her blushing naively, unaware she was being used by another’s greed, strangely brought Michael to mind.

“Yet I heard from my uncle. That ever since you took charge here, the border has become peaceful beyond measure. That the deaths of soldiers… are disappearing.”

It seemed Isabella regarded me as something akin to a “war hero” or a “formidable knight.”

“He praised me excessively. I have merely repeated the duties handed down to me.”

Whatever Friedrich had said that made her want to meet me, it was vividly obvious without looking that Josef had planted strange illusions in her mind throughout their journey.

So I intended to continue speaking and shatter her fantasy, but Isabella was faster.

“I… learned that the heaviest emotion for a person is responsibility. Therefore, I believe that accomplishing the tasks given to one with perfection is the true proof of strength.”

As she spoke, the gaze she lifted carefully toward me was clear. It was a gaze filled with shyness, yet straightforward without concealment.

“…Knowing that such a strong person protects it, I somehow feel envious even of this castle.”

At the words that followed in a soft, mumbled murmur, I inadvertently averted my gaze.

The moment I read in her eyes the same heat I had seen in Michael’s, I believe I felt a slight helplessness. I did not wish to offer false hope. Yet neither did I wish to wound her unnecessarily. For was it not an innocent heart that had caused me no harm?

It was the moment the laughable farce turned into a slightly troublesome affair, and simultaneously the moment I finally reached absolute certainty regarding the gaze Michael directed at me.

That night, I ordered Michael to attend my bath for the first time.

Even after elevating him to valet, I had excluded that single duty, but on that night when the tightly suppressed coil had reared its head, I could no longer endure the desire to confirm him.

Perhaps Josef’s hasty conduct had stirred an impatience within me as well, in a different sense.

Inside the room where the tub was filled and all preparations were complete, the air hung damp and heavy with steam. Having shed only my coat and sinking deep into the armchair before the fireplace, I drew a slow breath at the sound of Michael entering. I recall a sensation both complicated and clear, tumultuous yet strangely unburdened.

“You always used to do this alone.”

Approaching with a soft grumble as if to hide his embarrassment, Michael knelt at my feet with a faintly stiffened face.

“…You must have been terribly fatigued from entertaining your noble guest.”

The fingertips unbuckling the spurs and setting them down were neat as usual, but when they reached out to unfasten the belt at my waist, they trembled past all concealment.

A slight motion brushed across my lower abdomen. Feeling the trembling of those fingertips in its entirety, I looked down at him quietly. His Adam’s apple bobbed as if swallowing dry saliva while he slowly released the buckle; he breathed a sigh of relief as though he had overcome some immense crisis, only to lower his head frantically upon meeting my eyes.

Hesitating as if wavering for a moment, he took a deep breath and began slowly unfastening the buttons. Loosening the waistcoat that clung like scales to open its front, he reached out as if embracing me—motionless where I sat—and unfastened the ribbons of the cravat wrapping my collar.

It was a proximity closer than ever before. The warmth he harbored was palpable, and the breath he exhaled brushed against my skin. Even without opening my hearing, the pulse raging inside his body was conveyed entirely.

He moved with difficulty amid extreme tension, yet I merely sat in silence, observing only his state. Confirming, and confirming again.

By the time his quivering fingertips began unbuttoning my shirt, the steam rising from the tub seeped between us. Pop, pop, pop. With each clumsy, slow motion unfastening a button, the tip of my nose grew damp with moisture.

When he finally unbuttoned every last one, exhaled a breath, and rose to his feet, I reached certainty once more.

The crimson blush visible clearly even through the hazy steam. The sound of a frantically pounding heart. The pupils wandering the low air in helplessness, and the body shivering with tension.

All of those things were, without question, things that could never be explained by admiration or gratitude.

“You must stand, so that the rest…”

The moment I acknowledged it, the desire that had been biding its time and slyly lifting its head began to swell, as if it had been waiting for this very instant.

I rose slowly. As I stood straight before him, he took a deep breath of the humid air and reached out with trembling hands once more.

The waistcoat hanging from my shoulders fell. Then the shirt, which had only been parted, slipped over my shoulders, grazed down my arms, and fell away. Looking down at the blue eyes wandering in confusion once more at the bare skin revealed before him, I slowly reached out my hand.

Michael’s gaze, which had been wandering the floor with his head bowed low, finally jerked upward toward me as his whole body flinched.

“Is—”

His wide, startled eyes froze for several seconds, as though incapable of comprehending that the object touching his cheek was my hand.

“Did something… get on my face…?”

Then, as I shifted from merely touching his cheek with my fingertips to cupping it in my palm, slowly caressing him, he flared with sudden heat like a lamp soaked in oil that had belatedly caught fire, trembling precariously.

“Do you still…”

Gazing deeply, so very deeply into him, I asked in a quiet voice:

“I wonder if being desired by me is still an insult to you.”

The moment the satisfaction of knowing he desired me eclipsed the pathetic shame of projecting him onto Michael.

“Still… what do you mean, still…?”

The moment he shook his head, trembling, his face flushed to a pitiful crimson.

“I have never… not once…”

I could no longer find any reason to hold back my desire.

That night, I took Michael into my arms.

I could not indulge to my heart’s content. Though it was a night when everything I had suppressed for so long finally burst forth, even on that very night I had to hold back, again and again. To me, a human body was sometimes far too fragile. The wild, bursting pulse of his chest pressing against my buried lips made me fear he might perish from that alone.

While suppressing, enduring, and swallowing it down, I observed him ceaselessly. I watched and remembered everything about how he received me.

Thanks to that, the pale body defenselessly disheveled beneath me as he surrendered everything; the desperate touch of his hands clutching my shoulders, his face flushed with feverish heat; the bewitching line of his arched throat, bared wide like a delectable feast and trembling in spasms—even now, it all remains as vivid to me as a scene witnessed only yesterday.

His clumsy movements, at a loss before sensations he had never known; the way he stubbornly reached out his arms even while frightened and struggling—it was sweet beyond measure.

“Mas… ter…”

Whenever he reached up with both arms, calling out to me with tear-drenched eyes, I drove into him as deeply as I could go, greedily devouring that cry.

The lips that called me, the tongue, the throat, even the fingertips reaching out toward me—without missing a single spot, I licked and kissed them all, branding him as mine.

There is no reason to write falsehoods here, so I shall record it honestly.

It is true that I was seeing him in Michael. It is true that my heart was drawn to him because he reminded me of him, and that I could not take my eyes off him because he resembled him so closely. I had not acted with such conscious intention at the time, but looking back, I cannot deny that I held Michael with the sensation of having reclaimed him.

Yet back then, I swear I never even conceived the possibility that Michael could actually be him. In other words, without even knowing it was him, I had fallen for him all over again.

It was a night when, after a very long time—a truly long time—I felt a fulfillment that seemed to replenish my soul.

When dawn broke, Michael remained in my room, lying in the same bare state as that time during his boyhood when he had thrown a punch—believing not himself, but me to have been insulted. By my side, having become the very warmth of my bed.

Until the hour he would usually enter to draw the curtains, I sat motionless, merely watching his peacefully sleeping face. Only when the hour to rise arrived did I quietly stand and dress myself.

Michael, who would always move with careful yet brisk efficiency to draw back the curtains and groom me, did not open his eyes even by the time I had dressed fully on my own and left the room.

It was a morning without troop inspections. An unoccupied stretch of time before starting my duties in the office. I could have returned to the bedchamber to prolong my time with Michael, but I chose instead to sit across from Josef and take tea.

“Well, did you take a liking to Isabella?”

Having perhaps heard that I had been reasonably courteous to Isabella, he tilted his teacup with the relaxed composure of a general awaiting an inevitable victory.

“She takes after her mother with her exquisite features, but her heart is every bit as lovely as her face. She has a sensible, capable side, so she will manage the household brilliantly. You will regret it if you let her slip away.”

Instead of answering, I slowly tilted my cup. The heat of the previous night still lingered in my body. A destructive, violent savagery—the element perhaps closest to my true nature—was still writhing behind my closed lips.

“Count.”

Was that why? For a fleeting instant, the thought crossed my mind: Should I simply devour him?

“I am telling you this because you seem to be laboring under a grave misconception.”

Feeling an ache in my gums, I spoke in a quiet voice. Overpowering him by force was effortless, yet precisely because it was far too easy, I had to rein it in.

“The reason I defend Belsenburg in your stead is not because of some petty bargain with you.”

For just as I had felt again last night, to me, humans were far too fragile a creature.

“Rather, I would like to ask you. Do I look to your eyes like someone who cannot hunt his own prey? Do you think I must rely on you—a dying human whose only possessions are a few decades of authority and coin?”

“…Sir Adrian. What is the meaning of this sudden insolence?”

“Insolence?”

Lowering my cup, I lifted my gaze. His smug face had already turned the color of ash.

“Blinded by greed, you seem unable to see how hard I am trying right now to treat you as a living being.”

Even as he flinched at the faint clatter of the teacup meeting its saucer, he stubbornly forced an air of composure and asked,

“Then for what… for what reason are you here?”

As if peeling away the layers of greed accumulated over that thick skin one by one, I answered slowly:

“Amusement. A small one.”

“…”

“As you said, when a human approaches me without fear even after knowing what I am, it stirs a certain curiosity in me.”

Watching fear creep across his face until it could no longer be hidden, I continued in the tone of an adult reprimanding a foolish child:

“Back when you first proposed this bargain to me, I saw mettle in you. Not this vile greed—this pathetic attempt to covet eternal life while knowing my solitude, and when that failed, daring to use an ignorant girl to turn me into an asset for your lineage.”

From that point on, Josef did not utter another word. Whether he was struck dumb with humiliation, or whether the instinct of a military man warned him that speaking further would cost him his life.

“Pull yourself together, Count.”

Whichever it was, it was the first time since making his acquaintance that he deserved praise.

“I have far easier options available to me than scolding you with words.”

For had he failed to come to his senses and opened his mouth even then, I likely would have felt no further need to indulge him.

That day, Josef fled the castle in haste without even staying for luncheon. From the office window, I watched his gaunt back as he climbed into his carriage.

Though I felt a faint pity for Isabella as she was dragged along, glancing back at the fortress in bewilderment, a soft snort slipped from me at the sight of the Margrave scurrying away with his tail tucked between his legs despite his ailing body.

After Josef’s visit, a strange atmosphere hung over Belsenburg. It stemmed from the rumor that a mistress of the castle might soon arrive.

Had the maidservants been the only ones stirred by this fresh agitation rising where the old had faded, I would not have paid it any mind. But because Michael had caught wind of the rumors and grown unsettled as well, I eventually had Hans put an end to the baseless gossip.

“…You were in the wrong, Master.”

Michael’s reaction was, as expected, entirely characteristic of him.

“In what way?”

“Of all nights, it had to be the night she arrived that you… did that.”

When the rumor was at its height, he had spent the entire day stealing glances at me and chewing on his lip, wearing a face that made it obvious to anyone that he was agonizing over it. Yet once Hans silenced the castle with the explanation that ‘the lady is merely a relative of the Margrave who stopped by out of curiosity about the fortress,’ he turned right around to grumble pointlessly and place the blame on me.

“Come closer.”

“…The maids are right outside the door.”

“What indecent thoughts are you harboring to give such an answer when I simply told you to come closer?”

“I-Indecent thoughts? I was not thinking that, it is Master who always…!”

“Very well, just come here.”

“If I go close, you will… t-touch me again.”

“And?”

“…”

At the time, I never did manage to understand why taking him on the night Isabella arrived had been such a terrible thing, but pleased that Michael—who had been waddling awkwardly for days while refusing to give me a single chance to examine his body—had obediently answered my call, I let the matter slide.

Even after we shared that night, Michael remained frantic to shy away from my gaze and my touch out of embarrassment. Yet even so, he never left my side. Even as he grew accustomed to my gaze and familiar with my touch, the sparkling light in his eyes whenever he looked at me and the secretive flush staining his ears remained unchanged.

“Master, the candle…”

“Leave it.”

By day, he was a loyal attendant dressed in immaculate attire who followed behind me like a shadow; but once the veil of night fell, he became a creature more alluring than anyone in the fortress, stirring my aesthetic cravings.

“You must show me everything.”

Whenever such nights came, I stripped away every shred of the masculine pride and human modesty he had cultivated his entire life. Obsessively, I committed every inch of him to my eyes and engraved every part into my flesh.

What expression he wore when feeling pain, and with what eyes he gazed at me. What taste lay in the tears he shed when drenched in pleasure, and what flavor possessed the fluid that could have sired a child in his exact likeness.

How that secret place, which swallowed me greedily as if forgetting he was a man, stretched open and fluttered; where and how to touch within it to strip him of his human composure; and what I looked like reflected in his eyes as he stared at me from the heights of climax.

I saw it all, heard it all, tasted it all, touched it all. In that manner, I engraved every piece of him into myself.

Spending such nights together and steadily binding his soul, I came to learn that Michael had long been tormented by nightmares.

“I can tell I had an agonizing dream, but whenever I open my eyes, the memory…”

Because he struggled so terribly, I would wake him and ask what dream he had seen, and that was the answer that returned.

“It seems I… had that dream again.”

It was the same the next time, and the time after that. Even though I asked the moment I woke him, he never remembered the contents of the dream. Occasionally, unable to bear the emotional aftershocks lingering in his body, he would strike his own chest or pound his head.

“It is all right. It is only a dream.”

And so, wishing to soothe him without waking him, I spoke those words for the first time.

“When you wake, you will forget it all.”

It was effective. When I swept back the sweat-damp hair from his brow and softly whispered to him, the severe furrow between his brows—contorted as though in excruciating agony—would gradually ease, and his strained groans would fade away.

Back then, I did not know. There was no way I could have known.

That the nightmare tormenting him was my very death, engraved so painfully upon him that it had driven him to be reborn into this life and seek me out once more.

“It is all right.”

They were words I could only utter because I did not know.

Time flowed silently, like the mist of the Black Forest. As days turned to weeks and weeks to months, we endlessly craved one another and learned things we had not known.

“…I have been watching for an entire week.”

With the increase in time spent together, certain truths inevitably came to light.

“Over the past week, the only moments I was not attending Master were when you went on patrol and when you entered the interrogation chamber.”

The most prominent of these was, of course, my true nature.

“You could hardly have eaten anything in such places.”

A trait that could never remain hidden from someone who knew my entire daily routine and attended me at the closest range: the complete absence of ‘meals’ was where it began.

“Which means Master has consumed nothing but tea for an entire seven days…”

It was my own oversight. Reluctant to waste even the hours of luncheon and supper that had once kept us naturally apart, I remained by his side—and yet ate nothing all the while.

“And yet, for your vitality to remain entirely unchanged makes no sense at all.”

My focus on him had narrowed my vision; it was my oversight, my carelessness.

“Actually… I have been thinking about this for some time. Ever since I realized that even after warming yourself in the bath, you felt somehow far too… cold.”

As I fell silent, weighing my words, he seemed to judge that I intended to conceal it to the very end. Glancing at me with slightly hurt eyes, he pressed on with his reasons:

“Even when… when held in your arms… I could hear no heartbeat. And compared to how vigorously you moved, your breathing barely quickened at all.”

Even while thoroughly flushed with embarrassment at speaking of our lovemaking aloud, he pushed me resolutely, his expression openly declaring that he would no longer allow me to hide the truth.

Even up to that point, I still had a chance to deflect.

“All this time, I believed it was simply a difference in our feelings.”

But from those words onward, all hope of deflection vanished.

“I thought that I… that I was the only one burning so hot, feeling my heart race and swell to bursting. But, but if that was a misunderstanding…”

I cannot hide it. No, I must not hide it. The moment an emotion other than terror settled in those eyes that had been quietly suppressing a solitary sorrow, the conclusion struck me immediately.

“Please tell me.”

And at that moment, I saw in Michael him, whom I had set aside for a time. The one who had penetrated straight into me with such effortless ease.

“Just what kind of being… is Master?”

Those blue eyes—holding embrace rather than aversion, worry rather than dread—were reproduced before me with chilling perfection.

I believe I froze for several seconds. I do not remember clearly. I must have been considerably shocked. I do not know how long that suspension lasted, but from the moment I drew breath, my memory returns.

Staring blankly, I suddenly drew in a breath. My chest, which would not even rise or fall unless I consciously willed it, expanded broadly before slowly subsiding.

“I cannot clearly define myself either, but…”

I felt somewhat dazed. Having lost him decades ago, it felt as though I had abruptly come face-to-face once more with the first human I had ever loved.

“To put it in the simplest terms, I would be your natural predator.”

I saw Michael’s eyes, wide with either tension or intense focus, twitch faintly.

“To put it most ordinarily, I suppose I am a monster in the guise of a man.”

Deliberately averting my gaze to look away from him, I continued quietly:

“To put it in the most difficult terms…”

The sound of Michael drawing in a breath reached my ears. For reasons I cannot explain, the tactile memory remains of slowly closing and opening my eyes in rhythm with that sound.

Revealing what I was with my own lips—rather than merely conceding to someone who had discovered it—was something I had not done since him. I think I was a little nervous. Even though I had seen him in Michael, and even though I had witnessed the exact same relief he had once offered.

Yes, I was likely anxious and uneasy. Terrified that he might fear me. That he might try to run from me.

“…Perhaps one abandoned by this world.”

After those words, the sound of his held breath bursting forth reached me. Keeping my eyes fixed on some point on the desk, I quietly listened to the sounds he made.

I heard the thrumming pulse of his heart growing alarmingly loud; I heard the friction of muscle as he curled his fingertips tightly into his palms. I heard his faintly trembling breaths, and heard the air he drew expand his ribs and fill the depths of his lungs.

Silence hung over the room for a long while, but to me, with my senses heightened to their peak, it was an excruciatingly noisy interval.

“A predator…”

How long had the silence stretched? Breaking the tumult, a calm voice drifted out.

“Does that mean, perhaps…”

Is he going to ask if I eat humans? The moment that thought crossed my mind, an absurd question reached my ears.

“Are your feelings toward me… also an appetite?”

Caught off guard, all the wind knocked out of me, I looked at him without realizing it. I believe a soft, incredulous chuckle slipped through my lips.

“An appetite?”

The moment our eyes met once more, realizing that I had never had any reason to avoid his gaze in the first place, I smiled without thinking. Since laughing or smiling had only become natural to me after meeting Émile, it was a remarkably unusual occurrence even for me.

“Well, since I do experience hunger, I suppose it is somewhat similar.”

He too seemed startled by my sudden laughter. His eyes widened, and he flushed with a dazed expression.

Though his parting lips failed to form words, anyone could see he desperately wanted to demand, Why must you show me a smiling face for the very first time at a moment like this? And feeling reassured by that very sight, I laughed even more.

“You could say you are a packed ration I intend to carry until it rots away.”

It was a joke that might have frightened him, but far from recoiling in shock, he chewed over the words for a moment before turning completely crimson.

“I-If that is what it is, then, well…”

Then, whipping his head away as if to hide his burning face, he retorted sullenly:

“…I suppose I could spare a single bite before I spoil.”

Truly, he was an absurdly arrogant, lovable creature.

It began then. From that day, when I had clearly seen him in Michael.

Uncharacteristically, I began to entertain an absurd notion—the thought, truly preposterous for me at the time, that Michael might be his reincarnation.

Nearly ten years had elapsed since the moment I first laid eyes on Michael.

Looking back now, I suppose I was remarkably cowardly back then. Even though my soul had recognized him from the very first instant our eyes met. Even though every cell in my flesh that remembered him had been screaming at me to go to him.

Despite being an entity completely detached from reality myself, I seem to have drawn an unconscious boundary, convincing myself that something as unrealistic as reincarnation could never happen.

Or perhaps, rather than feeling guilt over projecting him onto a young boy, I was simply afraid of facing him again.

“When is your birthday?”

“In February.”

“…The twenty-second?”

“How did you know?”

Even while feeling an inexplicable sinking sensation in my chest whenever I discovered another trait shared with him, I could not stop unearthing Michael’s details.

Once the thought It might be him took root in my mind, it was impossible to suppress, just as I had been helpless against the urge to protect him when he was still so young. Whether the conclusion turned out to be ‘true’ or ‘false’, I simply wanted certainty. Only then did it feel as though I could decide my course of action going forward.

“Lately… even after waking, parts of the dream linger in my memory. Only fleeting scenes, though.”

The moment I finally arrived at certainty was when he began to remember his dreams.

“It was a riverbank when the sky was crimson. A large crowd of people had gathered, and everyone was furious…”

Of all times, it was the year Friedrich reached his majority—the year I had to leave Belsenburg.

“While held back by someone, I was screaming and weeping toward the gathered crowd.”

A riverbank.

From the instant I heard that word, all thought ground to a halt; frozen like solid stone, I simply stared blankly at him.

No.

That was the very first thought that arose.

Do not remember.

And that was the thought that immediately followed.

I believed it to be a conscious thought, but in truth, it was a defense mechanism bordering on pure instinct. As proof, only after seeing his face did I realize I had spoken those words aloud.

Immediately after meeting those wide, startled blue eyes, I experienced a kind of collapse—no, a psychological death.

The breath I had no need to take rattled in my chest. The heart that had no need to beat rampaged wildly inside me, and every fragment within me that remembered him threatened to spill out from every pore and orifice at once.

It was him. It truly was him. He had returned to me. He was by my side once again.

Alive.

Right before my eyes.

Even loving me once more.

The moment I recognized all those truths alongside an explosive eruption of longing, I was seized by a shock every bit as monumental as the moment I had realized I lost him.

He said it was a dream that had haunted him since early childhood. It had not manifested after meeting me; he had already been suffering under it long before he ever met me.

He said he was frightened every night. At one point, he had even thought it was an illness. Because even after waking, his heart ached with a twisting agony, yet he could never understand why it hurt. He said he had felt suffocated and frustrated for so long, because even after thrashing in a drench of cold sweat and waking with his pillow soaked in tears, he could not remember the dream and thus could never know why he was in such pain.

Reborn, he remained bound to my death.

“Master! Master…!”

The one who shook me awake from my petrified stupor, trapped amid cascading memories and turbulent emotions, was once again him. I remember barely coming to my senses after seeing Michael looking so pale and terrified, as though I had dropped dead on the spot.

“Why, why are you suddenly doing this…? Please answer me! Are you unwell somewhere? Please, just breathe once. Just once, so I can hear it…”

Shaking my shoulders, he pressed his ear against my chest and spoke with tears in his voice. Having done nothing but shift my pupils, I finally flinched into motion. And in that moment, I realized the reason God had sent him back to me.

“…Michael.”

Ah. It is a punishment. It is to make me beg for forgiveness for my sins.

“Master!”

It is to ensure that this time, he truly lives.

“I really thought… you were d-dead! Your pupils dilated all at once, and your body went rigid like a corpse…!”

It is to protect the remaining life I stole from him in his previous existence.

“I am sorry.”

That is my atonement.

“…I was wrong.”

Though I had never once believed in God, I thought so in all sincerity. At the time, I truly believed that was the only answer.

Not knowing that the wrong I confessed was entirely different from the fault he was scolding me for, Michael looked at me with a face half bewildered and half frightened.

Watching me on and on, he too caught on that I had come to some profound realization.

“It is all right.”

And then, he said those words. As if the shock of seeing me abruptly freeze like a corpse had not yet passed, his hands trembling faintly as he gently cupped my cheeks:

“It is all right… now.”

It is an embarrassing thing to admit, but it was a moment when I wanted to weep.