Bertram Kildun.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I learned his name before I even learned my own.
I cannot explain my past life without Bert hyung in it.
He was the firstborn son of Duke Kildun, whom my father, Earl Wigg, had served since before I was born — that was Bert hyung.
Three years after Bert hyung came into the world, I was born, and my father would often bring me along on visits to the Kildun ducal estate. It was through those visits that I naturally came to know Bert hyung, and I fell completely under the spell of what made him so extraordinary.
The moment Bert hyung was born, he was cursed by a sorcerer who held a grudge against Duke Kildun. From the very instant of his birth, he was struck by the Curse of Sealed Emotions.
The sorcerer who cast the curse on him reportedly said, “This child will forget how to cry, will never know love, will spend his entire life unable to understand others who are different from himself, and will live out his days dry and barren,” before vanishing without a trace.
Even so, for the first year, Bert hyung had apparently been able to cry like any ordinary newborn. Duke Kildun had been greatly relieved — but as Bert hyung grew, his arid nature became ever more pronounced.
And so Bert hyung became exactly the kind of person that sorcerer had described.
In the Kildun ducal house, succession through the firstborn was the most important principle above all else. Duke Kildun tried everything to cure Bert hyung of his curse and raise him as the head of the family.
As Duke Kildun searched for answers about the curse placed on Bert hyung, he heard that “if one feels the extreme height of a particular emotion, the seal on that emotion alone will loosen,” and so he made efforts to break Bert hyung’s curse.
Duke Kildun decided to start by trying to make Bert hyung angry. Whenever I visited the ducal estate, I would often see servants acting on the Duke’s orders — snatching away the toys Bert hyung had been playing with.
Bert hyung, who had never once changed his expression, gradually began to learn how to frown. And in that way, he became able to feel a little anger.
But making him feel sadness or joy seemed to be an entirely different matter. Sad stories left him unmoved, and even precious gifts were met with cold indifference.
When I was around eight years old, I visited the estate as usual, only to witness flames rising from the garden.
Duke Kildun had ordered his attendants to bring out every single one of Bert hyung’s belongings, and was burning them all.
And there in front of it all, he had seated Bert hyung, pressing down on his shoulders with both hands so he could not move.
Objects Bert hyung had used for years — toys, comfort dolls — were letting off acrid smoke as they became unrecognizable, their shapes dissolving into the fire. Among them were also keepsakes left behind by Bert hyung’s mother.
Bert hyung watched it all burn with a blank expression.
Duke Kildun, who seemed only to grow more furious because of Bert hyung’s reaction, kicked over one of the burning barrels with great force. The barrel toppled, sending sparks flying in my direction, and I stumbled backward with a startled cry.
In that instant, Bert hyung turned to look at me — and though there was no sadness in his eyes, there did seem to be anger.
And yet, Bert hyung never did come to feel the emotion of sadness. After that incident, Duke Kildun washed his hands of Bert hyung’s upbringing entirely. From that point on, he treated Bert hyung as though he didn’t exist, and turned his full attention instead to educating his three-year-old second son, born of the wife he had remarried.
I always watched over hyung.
Bert hyung always wore the same expression — composed, moving and speaking with nothing more than the minimum of gestures, never out of order. He never said or did anything unnecessary. Perhaps because of that, he was a man of few words and quiet ways.
No matter what you said to him, he was unfazed. In all the time I had known him, Bert hyung had never once cried, nor once smiled.
Many children feared him and kept their distance, but there were also those who were drawn precisely to that quality and found themselves fond of Bert hyung. I belonged to the latter group.
A young noble lord who has been cursed — how extraordinary is that?
I, who cried easily and laughed just as easily, found Bert hyung’s difference fascinating and dear to me. There were even moments when I thought he looked admirable — the way he wouldn’t bat an eye even in situations that should have been frightening enough.
And so from a very young age, I trailed after Bert hyung like a shadow. I was utterly captivated by him and adored him with great enthusiasm.
Before I knew it, I had become the only one left by Bert hyung’s side. Other children would take interest in him and approach, only to find he was nothing like what they had imagined, or they would grow tired of his indifference — and one by one, they gave up and drifted away from him.
Hearing only that he had been cursed might make you picture something frightening, but hyung was in truth an incredibly easygoing person. So easygoing, in fact, that it made me wonder if that was precisely why his emotions were so dulled. Even though he had become capable of feeling anger, he rarely ever actually got angry. I thought hyung was just kind by nature.
Many people feared him or found him strange, but there were very few people around who were as untroubled and gentle as hyung. These were things you could see clearly with just a little bit of looking. So much of the world’s misunderstanding is born of ignorance.
I was not a good person. If I had been good, I would have gone around spreading word of Bert hyung’s kind nature far and wide — but I wanted to keep it for myself alone. I wanted to be the only one close to Bert hyung. I wanted to be someone special to someone as special as Bert hyung.
I was terribly selfish and awful.
Every day, seeing Bert hyung alone, I felt a pang of sympathy for him, and would resolve to treat him even better. When I did, it felt as though I had become a good person.
Day after day I went to the estate, sought him out, spoke to him, tried to spend time with him. It wasn’t simply out of pity. I genuinely enjoyed that time as well.
My mother had been my father’s second wife. My father had loved his first wife so deeply that he doted only on my older sister Rozina, who was the spitting image of the late former Countess.
Whether by reluctance or habit, my father paid my mother no attention either. He always looked at me and my mother with eyes full of irritation, and would scold us harshly over the smallest mistakes.
In that vast Wigg manor, it felt as though my mother and I were the only outsiders. I thought we might be happier if the two of us ran away together and lived in a small cottage somewhere.
No matter where I was, I always felt like I didn’t belong — but it was different when I was with Bert hyung. Wherever he was, I felt at ease. Was it because hyung was such a calm and unhurried person? When I was with him, it felt as though the world slowed down.
By the time I turned fourteen, I wondered if Bert hyung might be my other half. If not, I couldn’t explain why being with him felt so perfectly, snugly right. I was no longer simply following him around — I had slowly begun to express myself too.
“Bert hyung, I really, really like you.”
“Why?”
“Just because!”
Bert hyung would look at me as if he couldn’t understand me at all, and then soon lose interest and look away.
It may have been my imagination, but even so — Bert hyung looked after me well.
Even when he walked ahead of me, he would glance back, then adjust his pace to match mine. If it looked like I might trip, he’d catch my arm. I was confident he didn’t do that for anyone else. There was no one beside Bert hyung but me, after all.
“You’re always the same.”
“In what way?”
“……”
Hyung, who would stop mid-sentence the moment he lost interest in a conversation. For some people, that was the very point at which they began to resent him — but to me, even that side of him was amusing and endearing.
His indifference toward others, his few words, his excessive bluntness, the way he almost always dismissed me without engaging — all of it was different, and I loved it for being different.
And I came to love him so dearly — hyung, who, when my mother passed away, said nothing at all but sat quietly by my side as I showed up at the ducal estate without a word of explanation, just crying.
“Bert hyung, would you say I’m still fairly close to you?”
“Yes.”
“Really? Do you like me too, hyung?”
“You’re not bad.”
“Wow — why?”
“You’re the same on the inside as you are on the outside. You’re easy to understand. I don’t have to think too hard. That’s why I like you.”
As he let me into his side and the time we spent together grew, I fell in love with hyung. I felt as though I could not go on without him. I, too, would have been alone without him.
So when my father tried to arrange a marriage between my older sister Rozina and Bert hyung, it ached in my chest. It was then that I realized — Bert hyung would have to marry someone. He wasn’t going to sit forever in the ducal garden reading books.
That was the first time I had ever tried to imagine Bert hyung being in a romantic relationship. And so my chest hurt, and a sigh escaped me on its own. The thought of Bert hyung growing close to someone other than me was already unbearable — but imagining him in that kind of relationship with someone was something I could not accept.
The moment I realized this, I understood — what I felt for Bert hyung was something romantic. Something that desired him.
I began to imagine kissing Bert hyung. I wanted to press my lips to his. To be held by him.
And yet, perhaps it was still better this way — Bert hyung marrying my sister Rozina. At least then, I would become family with him.
My father respected and exalted the Kildun ducal house to such a degree that he wanted to emulate everything Duke Kildun did. Whether Bert hyung was treated poorly in that household or not, my father adored Bert hyung simply because he was of the Kildun bloodline.
Becoming tied to a ducal house through marriage was something close to my father’s greatest dream, and so he pushed very aggressively for the union between Rozina and Bert hyung.
Duke Kildun didn’t care who his cast-off son Bert hyung married, and Bert hyung himself didn’t seem particularly opposed to it either. I was miserable, but I told myself this was the best possible outcome and tried to make peace with it.
And then — Rozina suddenly announced she was going to become a pirate, and left home.
