On the day he returned from the party, Bernard had a dream.
“Bernard?”
In the dream, Elliot stood before the open mansion door. He didn’t look hurt anywhere, but he gazed at Bernard with his characteristically delicate face. The sun was setting. The distant evening glow spreading across the sky left dramatic contrasts of light and shadow on his face. Like a masterpiece painting.
“The wind is cold.”
He approached softly in slippered feet.
“Why does your face look so terrible?”
His whispered words were affectionate. His eyebrows drooped, his expression full of worry and concern. At the voice that stroked his cheek asking what had happened, Bernard nearly spilled everything. Elliot knew such magic. The magic of digging into someone’s insides and awakening what lay within.
Even in the dream, Bernard couldn’t let go of his thoughts about the ring. Hurriedly shoving his hand into his pocket, Bernard swallowed dryly. He only kept his gaze lowered, saying it was nothing. That nothing had happened. After staring at him silently for a long while, Elliot spoke with difficulty.
“……We’re brothers. Right?”
Between people, stable things don’t need to be asked about. Only uncertain things are brought up needlessly, wanting to hear denials that it’s not really like that. Bernard’s eyes trembled finely.
“I feel like you’re distant lately, Bernard.”
He felt guilty at the moisture in that voice. The ring fitted on the hand thrust deep into his pocket felt hot. It was his ring. Not Bernard’s own…… But perhaps it could have been his own, that kind of ring. He wanted to hate him instead. But he couldn’t hate him. He wanted to be honest, but if he did, their thin veneer of brotherly happiness would shatter. Even knowing it was a dream, Bernard agonized fiercely.
“……I’m sorry.”
“I’m not blaming you. Why would you say it like that?”
“I, I did everything wrong.”
Like a button foolishly fastened wrong—who could he blame? His own words scraped at his insides. Bernard himself was a terribly immoral wretch. He felt the illusion of bugs crawling over his body.
“Don’t say that. You’re my pride.”
“……”
“I love you for always being kind and gentle, Bernard. Because you’re a truly valuable person. I hope you can smile more and live well. I pray for that every day.”
Something felt like it was breaking. Bernard wanted to cry but couldn’t, so he smiled faintly instead.
“If you need help, tell me. You know that, right?”
“……Yeah.”
“I’ll help you with anything. You can ask for help. Friends will help together too……”
“Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Elliot.”
Elliot didn’t ask anything. He looked as if he knew something.
“I love you.”
“……”
“Bernard?”
The sun set behind Bernard’s back. Bernard’s face was completely buried in backlighting. Instead, Elliot’s face stood out even more in the brilliant sunset. Elliot squinted his eyes as if the light was dazzling.
“Me too.”
I love you too, Elliot.
Bernard felt like his head had turned to mush. So even though it was a situation where he should cry, he kept laughing instead. Not even knowing how he was smiling, Bernard pulled up the corners of his mouth. Elliot might resent him someday.
Looking down at his brother’s dry shoulders and back as he desperately pulled him into an embrace, Bernard couldn’t say he was walking into a predetermined destruction. Bernard closed his eyes against the overwhelming sense of remoteness.
“Elliot. I slept with that man.”
The body in his arms stiffened. But no answer came back. Bernard chewed over his own worth anew. Perhaps his existence was meant to make Elliot shine.
“……Maybe in the future too.”
Elliot slowly pulled away. It was Bernard’s turn to apologize, but he couldn’t. Elliot was glaring at him. With a face he’d never once imagined, with a vicious expression…… The moment Elliot reached out and grabbed Bernard’s throat.
“Huk……”
Bernard, waking from the dream, rubbed his throat soaked with cold sweat. It had been a terrible dream. He got chills from directly confronting what he’d been avoiding. Pulling the blanket over his head, Bernard muttered.
“……I shouldn’t commit sins.”
The muttering of someone who had already committed many sins was close to futile whining.
***
Some time later, Rubens called Bernard out. The reason was concise. The interview was a good excuse, and Liam shouted and bullied him like a drunk, saying he should always be grateful to Rubens.
“Is there anything else you can do well besides that?”
“……I’ll work hard.”
“Working hard isn’t enough! You have to do it well!”
Liam was excited, saying he’d received good wine as a gift from Rubens. He’d recently attended various events with Elliot and said he’d obtained a position at some association. Even though it was nothing more than a fancy but hollow achievement, it seemed to be a very happy thing for Liam, who coveted honor.
Bernard glanced at Rubens. This man really handled his family well.
“Is the meal not to your liking?”
The man asked in a businesslike voice. Bernard looked at the dishes in front of him with a somewhat difficult expression. The problem wasn’t the meal but the fact that he was sitting at the same table as this man, which made him most uncomfortable.
The place Rubens had brought him was a restaurant located slightly off the main street. It was late at night so most shops were closed, but he opened the closed door of a certain restaurant without hesitation and entered.
Inside the lit interior, there was no one else. A waiter who had been standing as if waiting only for them guided the two to their designated seats. There wasn’t even a menu, so Bernard looked around anxiously. Watching the dishes being placed on the table one by one in order, Bernard belatedly realized this was all a pre-arranged meal.
“I’m…… not hungry.”
The food placed before him was such a luxurious meal that it would be difficult for him to experience twice. The expensive-looking plates and the dishes cleanly plated on them looked impressive enough to make anyone gasp even without knowing anything about them. Even after the dishes changed several times according to the course order, Bernard barely touched his meal.
“You have a small appetite.”
It was a muttering like talking to himself. It didn’t seem like he particularly wanted an answer, so Bernard also saved his words. The brilliant chandelier light dazzled blindingly on the plates.
“My mother also always had such a small appetite……”
Bernard’s head lifted slightly. Glancing at Rubens’s complexion, he added quietly.
“Mrs. Hurt was famous for her strict management.”
“She was obsessive.”
Rubens’s mother, Elisa Hamilton, was famous as a model-turned-actress in her younger days. The woman who had built a solid career as a model, then suddenly entered the film industry to show off her talent, was also famous for meeting Lucas Hurt, sharing a fateful love, and succeeding in marriage.
“Because she couldn’t bear watching her beauty fade.”
The man’s words had been a bit light since earlier. However, Bernard didn’t bother to nitpick and just blinked. He was also someone to whom casual speech suited more naturally than formal speech. He too seemed to have no real interest in the meal, cutting the beef wellington into small pieces.
“They say she had the love of the century.”
It was a fiery love. Many regretted the loss of her brilliant talent when she suddenly announced her retirement at a young age, leaving all her work in the industry behind. But soon they envied her for forming a harmonious family, and many also admired Rubens, who was born between them. Everyone said they were a picture-perfect family. They also said it was perfect happiness.
“From what I saw, it didn’t seem very romantic.”
But this man tells a different story. It was such an amazing scandal that everyone admired their love and indulged in sweet dreams of such love coming to them. But this man, their fruit, had a bored expression. Bernard unnecessarily looked around. Fortunately, even the waiter seemed to have left his post at some point.
“Because those with the Hurt surname are all people accustomed to covering things up.”
It’s a rather shabby assessment for a family called a big player in the business world. A piece of finely cut meat disappeared beyond his lips. The man concentrating on his meal with downcast eyes looked like a picture. Just like a created portrait.
“…Should you be telling me such things?”
A faint sense of guilt seemed to stir inside him. Bernard emptied some of the wine in his glass. Rubens showed no particular reaction to his cowering face looking cautious either. Strictly speaking, Bernard was in a position where he should be interviewing him. Whether it was real or fake. A contract had been concluded to publish a book about the Hurt family, and what he said could be put in print as is.
Of course, before the book came out, it would have to go through the Hurt family’s review…… He knew well enough that there was nothing good about laying out such talk to him.
“Since you’ll be joining the family circle, you should know, shouldn’t you?”
He spoke as if it was nothing, but to Bernard, that weight sounded particularly different. The pastry crumbled to pieces under Bernard’s unfortunate forking.
“My father was excessively promiscuous, a person who didn’t know how to be satisfied with Mother. So…… Mother’s excessive obsession with appearance might have been natural too.”
“……Promiscuous?”
It was unexpected talk. Lucas Hurt was famous as a lover devoted to his wife. There were even stories that he gave her an island as a gift every anniversary, so his wife already owned more than twenty islands.
“Should I say his only rationality was not having any illegitimate children?”
He laughed self-deprecatingly. It was a completely different story from what Bernard had heard. Even though he must know confusion was appearing in Bernard’s dark green eyes, Rubens didn’t particularly explain.
“So isn’t that proof that I’m of the same bloodline?”
Blue eyes looked directly at Bernard. At the gaze meeting him squarely, Bernard blinked slowly. Rubens seemed firmly determined to depreciate himself. Bernard couldn’t even guess why he was saying such things to him, or what kind of reaction he wanted.
“Taking hyung……”
He pressed down on the meat with the flat of his knife. Juice faintly stained with blood slowly spread across the plate.
“And taking the younger brother too.”
The blue eyes were half-hidden between curved eyelids. The man looked somewhat pleased. Black hair fell down a bit, covering his eyes.
“Befitting beastly bloodline.”
His mouth felt like it was drying up. Not being able to read his intentions made this place even more uncomfortable. It would be better if he reproached him about what happened at Horden’s party. If he interrogated and pressured him about what happened with Rhino, he wouldn’t be swept up in anxiety that something might explode at any moment, wondering if it was rather what he expected.
But Rubens didn’t do that. Bernard wanted to loosen the tie tightly choking his neck, but he couldn’t even do that because the man’s action of scrutinizing every inch of his body was persistent.
The sound of placing silverware on the plate sounded unusually loud. Rubens stared at Bernard with his chin propped up. The chandelier’s light left deep shadows on his face. In the shadows cast over his sunken eye sockets, only the blue eyes were exceptionally bright. Looking down, the protruding wrist bone below the metal watch on the man’s wrist stood out.
A shoe tip touched his shin. When he flinched and pulled his foot back in surprise, the man seemed to smile a little, or maybe not. Bernard’s back straightened. His appearance clutching the knife in his right hand as if it were a lifeline, gripping it hard enough to break, might look funny, but he absolutely couldn’t let go.
“If I say yes, will you stop?”
“Don’t you think we’ve come too far for that?”
His parched voice seemed to lay bare Bernard’s tension completely. He didn’t even want to know what had rubbed Rubens the wrong way, what made him show him this side of himself. Bernard’s dark green eyes distorted.
“Just, please be mean to me instead……”
The man’s expression as he looked at the contorted face was strange. Since the incident at the party, he hadn’t looked at Bernard with the same disgusted expression as before. He hadn’t blamed him for coveting his brother’s lover either. Even while being coercive and hierarchical, it seemed he didn’t want to drag Elliot into their relationship. That was really strange.
Whatever assumption arose, Bernard was just in agony. He thought it might actually be more comfortable now if he forever hated and blamed him. Ambiguous interest rather pushes a person into confusion.
“Is that your request?”
“Rather than a request……”
The place where the smile gradually disappeared somehow felt like an execution ground. The shoe tip that occasionally touched his shin no longer touched him now. Only the chandelier light remained as brilliant as ever. Bernard suddenly became newly aware of the distance between them. It was a gap that couldn’t be filled with brief conversations or time.
“It would be the proper thing to do.”
The words came out deliberately cold. Bernard’s voice sounded assertive enough to surprise himself. The smile completely disappeared from Rubens’s face. Rubens could knock Bernard down at any time. That might be right here, right now. Hadn’t there already been one precedent? Bernard tried not to look at his frustrating left hand.
“Is that so?”
The man’s face hardened.
“I see.”
He looked like someone who had placed something on scales. Bernard crushed the pastry with his knife once more, cutting through his anxiety. Both of them had completely lost interest in the meal by now.
“Then I’m curious…… If you could choose again, would you choose me?”
His head tilted.
