# Chapter 95
Hearing the unfamiliar word, Levi felt his face heating up strangely. His heart and core resonated, pulsing together, spreading warmth throughout his face.
Even when he had heard the story of Claudia’s life and learned that she had called herself someone who loved him, he hadn’t felt this hot.
The emotion displayed by the man before him collided with Levi mercilessly, accompanied by its clear name. With no way to avoid it.
Levi deliberately ignored his abnormally racing heart and core, and focused on another word.
“I’m not hurt.”
“Don’t lie, Levi.”
Ion shook his head, his face contorting.
Even during the rampage incident, Levi had been trembling pitifully with a deeply despairing expression. Cursing and blaming himself.
If that wasn’t the face of a severely wounded child, then what was?
“Wounds can’t be selectively received. If you come to view all your memories with me as wounds too, then I…”
Ion’s face became precarious and anxious, as if it might crumble at any moment. It was unbearable for him to think that Levi might be hurt again like back then.
Levi was considerably taken aback by this unexpected side of Grand Duke Ion Verdit. Though Ion occasionally showed bitter expressions, he always smiled brightly enough to lighten the atmosphere, was endlessly affectionate, and relaxed in everything…
‘Relaxed…?’
Though he had recalled the word himself, something about it felt off.
Thinking about it, Ion always seemed to be anxious about something unknown behind his bright smile. Though he tried not to show it to Levi, the occasional glimpses of anxiety and worried expressions were definitely strange at times. That was certainly not something that could be called relaxed by any measure.
Ion Verdit had never been relaxed in front of him for even a moment. He had always been busy hiding the anxiety and unease that kept trying to leak out from behind his smile.
While Levi was lost in thought, Ion had somehow approached close enough to touch him.
Ion’s careful fingertips hovered near Levi’s face before hesitantly lowering. As if uncertain whether he was allowed to touch him.
“I still don’t know. Whether I should tell you everything or not…”
Ion, exhaling as if lamenting, bowed his head deeply and brushed back his fallen bangs with trembling hands. His eyes trembled anxiously like a child about to confess a grave mistake.
“Maybe it would be better if I were the only one who remembered…”
Ion recalled the day when Levi had saved him and died, forcibly etching that terrible scene deeper into his mind. Even more painful than his two legs shattered beyond recognition and the terrible pain that prevented him from even making a sound, was the sight of Levi turning into black ash and scattering away.
He recalled the memory of that day more strongly here and now, the same memory he revisited in the nightmares he had every day. He didn’t want to make Levi remember such memories.
“Back then…”
A small voice flowed from between Levi’s closed lips.
“When I died and left you behind… did you cry?”
Ion, who had been hanging his head, looked up at Levi’s eyes, dark as the night. Meanwhile, Ion’s eyes were gradually beginning to emit a light as bright as the sunlight that had found its way into the room.
“Of course.”
The bitter memories of Ion’s past flowed from his lips.
“How could I not cry when the person I loved died?”
Levi let out a short gasp at his words, which knocked on his own memories.
He had been aware, but indeed, the man before him was that child.
In his vague memory, that child had said he liked him, and therefore would definitely cry if he died.
Amidst the memories where only voices remained, a fragmentary scene flashed by.
It was a scene of a child, covered in blood and collapsed, screaming as if coughing up blood.
“Don’t tell me such things! I don’t know! I don’t know any of it!”
The child, crying and shouting in anger, had grabbed his Black Hand with his own fair, white hand. Just like Ion Verdit did, that child too could only feel each other’s body heat when grabbing his Black Hand that contained death.
“Levi can come with me, *sob*, if he comes with me… I don’t want to go alone…”
The child looked as if he would never let go of his hand, even if he himself became a corpse.
For the first time, he thought it fortunate that he would turn to ash when he died.
Otherwise, the child, the man before him, would surely have spent his entire life guarding his corpse.
The tearful face of a young boy flashed across Ion’s pale face. Until now, only his voice had remained, and no matter how hard he tried to recall, the boy’s face had never appeared. But now, it flickered before his eyes.
“I only remember parts of the conversations we shared.”
Levi grabbed Ion’s hand, which had been hanging limply. Just like that child who had held on as if he would never let go at the moment of his death.
“None of those memories were painful to me.”
“But in the memories you don’t know…!”
“I wouldn’t ask someone who would hurt me to ‘kill me.'”
It must have been a harsh request for the young boy, but Levi thought he had been able to say such a thing because he had ‘loved’ him that much. And the child, too, must have shed tears at his death because he ‘loved’ him.
‘Love…’
It was a strange word that seemed to break something inside him just by reciting it in his mind.
Until just a moment ago, his chest had been tight with all sorts of negative emotions.
He had learned that Ion Verdit was indeed that child, but he had changed so much that he lied to him and deliberately created holes in their story.
That sense of betrayal was truly profound. It brought a sense of despair as if his very foundation was being shaken, and his chest hurt as if strange sobs might escape his throat.
He wondered if this was what Raziel had called ‘useless emotions.’ Raziel’s words—that the more one is swayed by humans, the more dark emotions that eat away at oneself would increase—were frighteningly close to the truth.
‘But Raziel… emotions other than what you mentioned are also increasing.’
Levi pulled on Ion’s hand that he was holding. Ion, drawn in weakly, placed his knee on the bed and leaned forward. Levi, who was sitting up with a pillow behind his back, and Ion’s faces naturally came closer.
To foreign nations, Ion Verdit was a young Grand Duke with power second only to the Emperor in the Delos Empire, a fearsome ruler leading an immortal army. Levi too had no choice but to know this, as he belonged to an enemy nation.
Yet such a person becomes endlessly affectionate before him alone. And now, he’s even showing a defenseless, fragile face filled with fear. Despite the dagger, with which he could behead Ion in an instant, still lying on the bedside table within reach.
Levi’s red lips moved for Ion.
“I was able to endure because I had memories of you.”
Without them, he would have broken long ago while being exploited by Kalvern. Even during his time with Raziel, he would have just expended his abilities like a doll without any purpose, eventually turning to ash at some point.
What had sustained him were his memories with the young boy. Though all that remained of him were merely his voice and a few words, that had been enough. The desire to meet that child had not dimmed for even a moment since he opened his eyes in this world.
Like the longing of the black bead searching for the golden bead in his primordial memories, returned through the black fragments Raziel had given him.
Levi, maintaining eye contact with Ion, showed a faint smile.
“Only you can make my memories whole. So…”
Before he could finish, Ion’s lips suddenly approached. Though his eyes were still trembling like a frightened child’s, his lips were rough as if he would go mad with anxiety.
Ion hastily consumed Levi’s red lips, and as if that wasn’t enough, he grabbed the back of his head with his free hand and pulled him even closer. Through the seamlessly joined lips, Ion’s cooled tongue entwined with Levi’s warm flesh.
“Mmph… ah!”
Levi felt a strange sensation that made his whole body shiver just from their lips meeting and tongues touching. It was different from when Ion tried to forcefully feed him sleeping pills, or when he had first approached Ion and kissed him in the Black Forest. A peculiar heat, incomparable to those times, kept pricking various parts of his body.
“Is this really okay?”
Ion’s voice, whispering without completely separating his lips, was trembling to the point of being pitiful.
“Everything that happened to us… if I tell you everything, you won’t hate me, right?”
Ion, speaking as if he had returned to being that pure young boy, was in an absolutely desperate state.
Until now, Levi hadn’t recognized him and had been manipulated by others, so it couldn’t be helped, but Ion couldn’t bear it if Levi, after learning everything about what happened 15 years ago, still looked at him with contempt and hatred.
As if to reassure the anxious Ion, Levi, whose face had already turned red, grabbed the back of Ion’s head just as Ion had done to him.
“Yes.”
With their lips lightly touching, Levi whispered as if breathing into him.
“It’s okay, Ion.”
That day, Levi fell asleep with Ion only after dawn had passed into bright morning.
