While the man was still struggling to collect himself, Achim shook his hands off and quickly moved deeper into the warehouse.
It was around here. Achim felt his way around, estimating the position he had seen just moments before.
As his vision gradually adjusted to the dark, a face came into focus — and Achim sank down, dropping to his knees as though his legs had given out beneath him.
“……Dora.”
He had desperately hoped it wouldn’t match what he’d feared. That was exactly why the shock hit all the harder.
Up close, Dora’s face was a ruin — there was not a single part of it left unscathed.
Her cheeks and the area around her mouth were split open and bleeding, as though she had been struck repeatedly, and deep bruises were etched around her eyes, along the bridge of her nose, and across her jaw. She looked barely alive.
Achim quickly brought his fingers beneath Dora’s nose. There — faint, barely there — he felt the thinnest thread of breath.
“……”
Achim’s gaze moved slowly across Dora’s features, then shifted to the side. He looked at her small, scraped feet, then gently slipped the ownerless flat shoe he’d been holding onto Dora’s right foot.
After that, Achim quietly rose to his feet.
By the time Achim turned around and moved toward the man nearby, the man was still clutching the back he had wrenched when he fell.
In just a few steps, Achim stood before him. One corner of his mouth curved up in a slow, cold smile. Then, in an instant, he lifted his right leg to the height of the man’s opposite knee.
A sharp crack — the sound of a splint snapping clean in two — rang out alongside the man’s scream.
“Aaaaaaaagh……!”
This time, the man clutched his right ankle with both hands instead of his back.
Achim looked down at him with his head tilted slightly to one side as the man writhed across the floor, gripping his ankle. It was a languid gaze — not an ounce of pity in it, only the detached look of someone assessing a situation.
The broken bone had punched through the skin on the outside of the man’s ankle. Achim glanced at the ankle, completely mangled and flooding with blood, then let the curve of his lips go flat.
“Piece of trash.”
Ignoring the screams, Achim grabbed the man by the collar, yanked him upright, and drove his knee into the man’s chin. Before the man’s head could even swing back into place, Achim followed through with a clenched fist across his cheek. Then, before his head could return again, he slammed the other cheek just as hard.
Again and again, the man’s head whipped to one side and then the other, spraying dark red blood. Before long, the man lost consciousness from the force of it — but Achim sat over him and kept driving his fist down.
He had no idea how much time had passed. Then, at some point — just as he raised his fist above his shoulder again —
Footsteps, somewhere nearby. Achim froze mid-motion, arm still raised.
Time felt suspended. His thoughts moved slowly, sluggishly — as though someone had grabbed him by the hair and wrenched him forcibly to the surface of deep water.
Some time later, as though finally returning to reality, Achim blinked slowly and turned his head.
“……”
The figure standing within focus was the Butler. Whether he had come because of the man’s screaming, or because Martina had told him — Achim couldn’t say.
Wolfgang met Achim’s eyes, then slowly lowered his gaze. It came to rest on the warehouse keeper — who was no longer just a pulped mess, but something closer to a corpse.
Covered in blood as he was, it was nearly impossible to tell who the man had been — but Wolfgang could infer it, given that this was the warehouse.
Wolfgang was silently looking back and forth between Achim and the warehouse keeper when another set of footsteps sounded — and then a large figure appeared. It was Michael Bernhardt.
The moment Achim saw him, he was finally able to snap fully back to his senses. But at the same time, the full weight of what he had done crashed over him like a tidal wave, and he felt as though he might lose the grip on his mind he had only just managed to reclaim.
“Wolfgang.”
Michael glanced briefly into the warehouse and gave Wolfgang a short, quiet instruction. It amounted to little more than a casual wave of his right hand — but Wolfgang dipped his head as if he had understood everything.
Wolfgang tapped his small radio twice, and within moments two guards came running into the warehouse. One took Dora, and the other took the man who had been pinned beneath Achim, and both were carried away somewhere.
Achim, still slumped where he sat, reached out instinctively toward Dora as she was taken away. But Michael stepped in front of him, blocking his line of sight, and Achim had no choice but to pull his hand back.
“Mm……”
Michael let out a short, low sound — a voice like the depths of a cave — and reached out a hand.
Long, straight fingers slid smoothly from just below Achim’s ear, down along his jaw. It was, by any measure, a beautiful hand to look at — yet something about it made Achim’s skin crawl, and he jerked his head away sharply.
“Whose blood is this?”
Achim said nothing, only lifted his eyes to look at him. Whose blood is it. The question was so out of nowhere that words failed him entirely.
After a brief silence, Achim opened his mouth.
“……It’s that man’s.”
Something metallic seeped between his parted lips. It seemed a few drops of blood had splattered onto his mouth as well. Achim scrubbed at his lips and cheeks with the back of his hand and forearm, rough and impatient, as though it disgusted him deeply.
After a few swipes, he noticed his sleeve was already soaked red — and in that moment, he knew.
I’m going to be thrown out.
It had only been a few hours since he’d come back with Linus’s advice still fresh in his mind. For an instant, a black curtain seemed to fall across his vision, and the world tilted dangerously — Achim squeezed his eyes shut.
Damn it. It’s all over.
Achim had let the tension drain from his shoulders, already half-resigned, and was wiping the blood from the corner of his eye — when something touched the tip of his chin and his head was forced upward. His gaze followed involuntarily.
Michael’s fingers rested lightly beneath Achim’s chin as he spoke, his tone unhurried.
“Shall I have him killed?”
That one. The lips forming the words curved into a faint arc. Reddened lips — like a mouth that had just bitten into a poisoned apple.
Perhaps because the words had slipped out far too lightly for what they actually meant — Achim could only blink for a moment.
— He’s dead, they say.
Linus’s words suddenly surfaced in his memory, and Achim’s pressed-together lips parted slightly.
A moment later, eyes still locked with the pair that held the night inside them, Achim replied with a question of his own.
“Have you ever killed someone?”
Michael’s eyes curved at the corners this time. No sign of being thrown by the question. He simply pulled the corner of his mouth up, as though he found Achim’s question interesting.
Michael shoved the hand with blood on it — just as it was — into his trouser pocket, and tilted his head at an angle.
“I’ll do it, if that’s what you want.”
It was a noncommittal answer. Achim’s brow furrowed slightly in dissatisfaction, then smoothed out again. He stared steadily into Michael’s eyes, as if trying to determine what was real.
Achim found Michael’s manner bewildering.
It had only been a few days ago that Michael had openly called Yvonne worthless, hadn’t he — practically grinding her down. He simply could not understand why Michael was suddenly offering this, this strange thing that wasn’t quite a kindness.
After another stretch of silence, Achim stopped trying to work it out, pulled his gaze away from Michael, and tossed the words out flatly.
“Even if you don’t — I’ll kill him myself.”
He was grimacing again, a curse bitten down between his teeth, his expression turning dark as the image resurfaced —
“Have you ever killed someone?”
A quiet voice fell over his head without warning. The words, despite their meaning, came out soft — and Achim slowly raised his head again.
“A person.”
“……”
“I asked whether you’ve ever killed a person.”
Michael still had that smile on his face. The sight of him — speaking the most brutal words imaginable with the most gentle expression in the world — was a contradiction in and of itself.
He was like Lucifer wearing the face of an angel, whispering into someone’s ear.
Achim stared up at him, lips parting as though in a daze — then his eyes flew wide, startled, and he snapped his gaze away without a word.
Achim brushed off his trousers with a couple of rough pats and stood up.
