“…No. I can’t agree with anything you’re saying. Life is sacred. They may not understand everything I say, but they are each a person — precious beings who must never be treated carelessly. That remains true whether they understand it or not. Someday, I will—”
Leopold said it and immediately caught himself. Depending on how you looked at it, talk like this was either nonsense or dangerous thinking. Either way, it wasn’t good.
He knew perfectly well that he was strange. But Leopold’s mind simply worked this way — and if you asked whether it was fate, he would say yes. A fate uniquely and cruelly his own. A sentence condemning him to endure, for the rest of his life, a loneliness that had settled all the way into his bones.
The boy with the jet-black hair tied back tightly — still a little shorter than him — had always made a fool of him.
Every time they exchanged words, Leopold felt irritated, and sometimes Terren was so insolent that he could barely contain his anger. And yet here he was now, a prince who had cast aside even the dignity he was supposed to uphold, rambling on about things that even he himself recognized as strange.
“Your Highness has never come close to starving to death, I imagine.”
Terren pushed back still. But strangely enough, Terren Meyer’s blade-sharp insults were slowly cracking Leopold open, prying him out of his shell.
“No. I haven’t.”
“Filthy, reeking creatures who have never read a word in their lives, who don’t know how to think, who dig through trash every single day just to avoid starving — are we supposed to call them human?”
“Of course. They simply weren’t given the chance to learn. They are precious human beings, every one of them.”
“They are nothing but animals writhing to survive. For the common people, life is endless suffering. If you truly wished to make them happy, you shouldn’t have tossed them bread — you should have killed them cleanly with a single stroke.”
“…People want to live.”
“They want to live because they’re alive. Once they’re dead, the hell they called a life disappears.”
Life is suffering. Especially for those living in poverty in the Kingdom of Delua — it is an even greater suffering. Something the noble prince would never understand in his entire life.
Terren was capable of cutting down innocent lives without a single shred of guilt. He still believed that killing the street children was an act of salvation.
And yet Terren Meyer was wracked with regret, to the very marrow of his bones. Why? Even now, he still couldn’t understand it. And yet he did regret. Sometimes he dreamed of dying slowly, surrounded by piles of corpses reeking of blood.
The embers burned pleasantly, and neither of them said anything more. In the unbroken silence, Leopold announced he was going to scout the surroundings and stepped out of the cave. Terren pressed himself flat against the cave floor.
He closed his eyes for a moment — and when he came back to himself, Terren Meyer was staring face-to-face with a monster.
The monster was truly strange.
Its form was human, but it had no face. Or perhaps it did. Terren looked at something that both was and wasn’t a face, and his stomach lurched. He became aware that his hands were shaking violently.
He swept his gaze around in a panic — the dagger had fallen to the floor. Terren moved his trembling legs and picked it up where it lay alone in the distance. He needed to kill that monster, quickly.
If he didn’t kill it right now, he would die.
Terren Meyer gripped the dagger and approached the thing, which stood completely still, one step at a time.
Feeling his entire body convulse, Terren dropped the dagger he’d been holding.
And closed his hands around its throat.
It gagged and thrashed. The sensation of a life crumbling apart beneath his hands. That rush of elation that flooded his entire body whenever he killed a person. Terren’s Dark Magic surged wildly through him. The thing struggled against the grip around its throat, then gradually turned liquid and melted into the floor.
Terren Meyer cackled at the genuine killing intent he hadn’t felt in so long. The small laugh quickly grew into unrestrained laughter. He laughed until tears came to his eyes, making horrible, ugly sounds.
Ah, this happiness. The joy of killing that thing — it was this much.
“…Terren.”
In that moment, a voice reached him from somewhere far away.
This was clearly a sealed black space with no openings — so where was the sound coming from?
“…Stop — stop it, I said!”
The black space Terren occupied began to warp and bend.
Terren Meyer kept trying to kill the thing. But the warping space was already pulling him and it further and further apart.
“Terren Meyer!”
A terrible pain crashed over him, and Terren let out a cough.
He choked, barely able to breathe, blinking repeatedly as his vision blurred — until he found himself staring straight into a pair of blue eyes.
“Are you out of your mind? What — what is this—?!”
Leopold had both of Terren’s hands locked in his grip. Restrained was the more accurate word.
Seized by both wrists, Terren kept coughing relentlessly — and in that moment, he became acutely aware of the pain wrapping itself around his throat, and of the Dark Magic raging violently from deep within his core.
“Do you know what you just did?”
Leopold shouted. Terren shook his head.
“You — while you were asleep — you were strangling your own—”
He’d strangled himself?
Terren wrenched his wrists free from Leopold’s grip and reached up to feel his own throat. It stung, and his stomach turned.
Inside him, filthy, clinging Mana churned and roiled.
A sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Terren broke into a wide smile.
So that was it.
That was it!
But why? All of a sudden?
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t done similar things before —
And yet Terren’s mouth had escaped his brain’s control entirely.
He laughed, giddy and loose, and before Leopold could stop him, he reached without hesitation for the dagger and drew it across his own wrist.
Blood welled up, and it hurt. The Dark Magic that had already been running wild surged as though it needed to expel its energy outward that very instant.
It grew stronger. Just like when I killed a person!
But the joy was short-lived.
Terren sliced again. And yet the Dark Magic that had been raging stayed exactly as it was.
The ripple he felt every time he grew stronger — it was gone.
Why, why isn’t it working? Just as the dagger was about to sink deep into his forearm again, Terren Meyer had the blade torn from his hands and his entire body pinned down.
“Let go — let go of this — you’re insane, Delua!”
Terren Meyer struggled. But the hold didn’t loosen. Maddened past the point of reason, Terren lunged and tried to bite down into Leopold — tried to tear off a piece of him. And in that same instant, their eyes met.
“Get ahold of yourself!”
Those blue eyes shook violently. Leopold’s expression was drenched in panic and fear.
“Please, get ahold of yourself, Terren — okay? What is even wrong with you!”
All at once, clarity snapped back. In an instant, he became aware of exactly how he must look to that damned prince.
It was the first time Leopold — who was always so composed — had ever looked this utterly undone. Terren, flooded with deep self-contempt, went limp and let go of his resistance. Then his mind began to work.
Why didn’t it work just now? Because I was awake? Because I recognized myself as “me”? Does it only work when I’m asleep? But the first time I made a wound, I definitely felt myself grow stronger —
Whatever the answer, this was a remarkable result.
The smile still hadn’t left his face. Once a possibility appeared, he could find a way to make it into an answer through any means necessary.
He wouldn’t have to become a killer and earn Leopold’s contempt anymore!
Terren Meyer became aware of the blond-haired boy beside him, murmuring something as he poured healing magic over Terren’s wrist.
He found him less repulsive now. Terren answered levelly.
“Get away from me.”
“Pull yourself together!”
“I’m perfectly fine, so get out of my face. Stop making a scene.”
Leopold obediently moved away from Terren. Even so, he kept stealing glances.
He was clearly watching, carefully. Trying to appear unbothered, yet his distress was plain as day. Terren reluctantly offered an explanation.
“I had a nightmare.”
“And that’s supposed to mean something?”
A sharp rebuke came back without delay. But Leopold quickly caught himself with an expression that said he’d overstepped, and added hastily:
“Then why did you just — do that.”
Under normal circumstances, Terren would have simply ignored him.
If only that damn prince didn’t look so utterly pathetic struggling to keep it together.
“I thought I was still dreaming.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I’m perfectly sane. Now that I know this is reality, it won’t happen again. Stop making such a ridiculous fuss.”
“…What kind of nightmare could possibly—”
Faced with that rude, unruly tongue, Leopold finally felt his relief settle in — Terren was back to normal.
The pounding in his chest gradually began to steady. And yet he was still afraid.
Leopold had never in his life seen someone press a blade to their own wrist with such utter calm. It would make more sense if he had never seen such a thing at all.
Who could possibly hurt themselves without even flinching?
And of all people — this rude, impudent boy—
The sixteen-year-old was reeling from yet another blow to his psyche. His ability to manage his own expressions had long since abandoned him.
At the natural tremor in Leopold’s voice, Terren let out a quiet sigh.
“Your Highness. I’m fine.”
“…Fine?”
“I had a nightmare. When I woke up, I wasn’t sure whether this was real — and I did what I did without thinking. It won’t happen again.”
“Terren, don’t tell me — that wound in the pine forest back then… was that also something you did to yourself?”
Sharp as ever.
