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SERIES: What Remains in the Damaged Place
CHAPTER: What Remains in the Damaged Place 65
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65
Was this what it felt like to be devoured by sheer bewilderment?
Like someone who believed their head would be lopped off at any moment, the woman’s pupils were a hazy blur.
But the closer one looked, the clearer it became.
It wasn’t just because of the hint of tears.
Her irises were bizarrely smudged with two colors.
As if something pigmented had been injected over their original color.
Valderion noticed that the artificially glowing color among them was pink and let out a low click of his tongue.
Releasing the woman’s slender chin, he took a couple of steps back.
As expected, the woman seemed to have lost her sight, merely fumbling at the floor, unable to move forward with any certainty. The sound of her sobbing was so sorrowful it felt as if it would chill his cochlea.
What made his head throb was that this display of tearful agony wasn’t limited to the woman before him.
He had seen a total of five women on his way to Dailan. They all looked much the same as the first one he had checked. Their clothes were torn as if they had nearly suffered some rough ordeal, and their hair was either curled so excessively it looked ridiculous, or it was chopped unevenly.
The one thing they had in common was that they had all lost their sight.
Two things were certain.
All the women had silver hair, and a pinkish, natural pigment was cast over their ruined irises.
‘Utterly mad,’
He reached the window, harboring an indescribable sense of unease.
Dailan was right there.
He was lounging like a libertine, several plush cushions piled against the smooth curve of the window seat. The air around him alone seemed thick, and a cigar was, unsurprisingly, held between his lips.
“What are you doing here?”
Valderion asked in a low but clear voice as he approached. Dailan exhaled a long breath, *whoosh*.
A dark, cloying fragrance that churned the stomach devoured the clean air as it spread.
Dailan, who had been gazing out the window like an old man who had seen all the world had to offer, slowly turned to look at him.
“Today is His Majesty’s funeral.”
“……”
“You can’t be unaware of what it means to your subjects for you, the Crown Prince, to be absent like this.”
He should have been among his other kin by now, shedding appropriately feigned tears.
No, he didn’t even expect tears; he just wished the man would stay put.
While the other princes, who seemed to hold at least a sliver of affection for their father, had steadfastly kept their places for the few days of mourning, this hooligan couldn’t even endure two days before bolting from the funeral hall.
Dailan showed no sign of being moved by Valderion’s counsel in the slightest.
On the contrary, he looked out the window again and smirked.
“Rion, sometimes I have this thought.”
“……”
“The daughter of the House of Marquis Blewitt was one of the candidates for Crown Princess.”
The way he stubbed out the cigar in his hand against the windowsill was utterly slovenly. Dailan tossed it aside carelessly and lowered his legs from the window seat.
“What if.”
“……”
“If Lilette’s father hadn’t been so rash, would Lilette have become my wife?”
The eyes that met his directly were lucid, belying a man on drugs.
Valderion recalled the women he had witnessed with his own two eyes on his way here. Silver hair, and coral irises reminiscent of rose quartz. They were, from any angle, imitations of Lilette.
And the one who would have unhesitatingly committed such a bizarre and destructive act was…
“A pointless fantasy.”
When he cut him off sharply, Dailan gave a listless smile, as if he had fully expected it.
“I suppose so.”
His rather defiant and provocative posture quickly dissolved. He leaned his upper body against the cold window. As his body slanted, Dailan’s eyes narrowed drowsily.
“Do you think it’s right for me to become emperor?”
It sounded like a musing, but it was a question too devoid of color to be mere contemplation. Staring at Dailan, who seemed seized by a terrible ennui, the inside of his skull throbbed.
“That is not a matter of right or wrong. You were born of that bloodline, so you must take that seat.”
“And you will make it so.”
Dailan murmured as if he had already seen the future, his tone utterly trivial and monotonous, and slowly crossed his legs. His slanted eyes sank into darkness, as if submerged beneath the water’s surface.
“But I don’t know, Rion.”
“……”
“Life is just no fun.”
He swept back his disheveled blond hair carelessly. His fingertips were trembling slightly. Whether it was because he had just taken a drug, the symptoms of addiction were invading him without restraint.
But Dailan showed no sign of being bothered by it. He had even grown accustomed to the side effects of the drug.
“Will it be any different once I ascend the throne?”
“……”
“No… I’m pessimistic about that. Most regrettably.”
That position was not something to be judged by whether it was fun or not. But Dailan looked as if he were discussing a matter of grave importance upon which his life depended, not a trace of a smile to be found.
“Lilette…”
When the name he had been dreading finally escaped his lips, Valderion’s eyebrows twitched almost imperceptibly.
“It wasn’t like this when Lilette was around.”
“……”
“That’s why I tried playing these silly games with those girls.”
Dailan scrunched one side of his face, as if dealing with something that wasn’t going his way.
“But it’s no use.”
He shook his head. His elegant blond hair, like threads of gold, sliced softly through the air.
“They can’t be a substitute for Lilette.”
“……”
“Their eyes are different. The way they look at me…”
It was a grim mumble.
Like a man who had yearned for something for so long that he had gone mad from failing to obtain it, an air of insanity clung to him tenaciously. Though he was shrouded in a weariness that suggested he had lived his life to the fullest, his act of dwelling on Lilette, again and again, was just that.
And that was what made it chilling.
Because in that part of him, the part that dwelled solely on Lilette’s absence, there was no trace of weariness or boredom.
As if she alone could be the ecstasy in his soft, utterly tedious life.
“Lilette…”
Dailan, who had been muttering in a voice that had become too low to understand, suddenly lifted his head.
“If Lilette came back to me, would things be different?”
A scattered, unusual light filled his slate-gray irises, which had been steeped in gloom.
The corners of his mouth, once a flat line, curved at a bizarre angle, as if he had reached a state of ecstasy from mere imagination. It was the first time someone’s smile had struck him as so eerie.
Valderion stared at him with coldly sunken eyes.
“What do you think?”
Dailan focused his attention on the unresponsive man.
Valderion massaged his brow like someone facing a troublesome matter.
“If you want my answer.”
“……”
“Well… I’d have to say it’s impossible.”
He seemed to be drawing it out, but once again, he delivered an answer that sealed off any room for possibility.
“Yes, it would be impossible.”
At that, Dailan responded with a deflated air, as if he had anticipated as much.
He let his torso, which he had just straightened, slump back against the window. As he assumed a posture so arrogant it looked as if he had melted into place, his eyes suddenly widened.
“Then, what if I take her?”
The fanatical air, which he had thought had cooled, flickered back to life.
In stark contrast, Valderion faced him with an expression that was utterly calm, or rather, even more static.
The aftershock of his words, which felt like both a declaration and a warning, was quite powerful. The air hanging between them grew taut, as if being pulled from both sides.
It was Valderion who broke the silence.
“Did you not say you had no intention of making an enemy of me?”
Dailan’s lips twisted into a sneer that seemed to touch the freezing point.
“Thoughts are bound to change with the times.”
“That doesn’t sound particularly pleasant.”
“Haha… It’s a joke, so don’t make that face.”
He must have been aware of the atmosphere, which felt like it was coated in a thin layer of ice, yet Dailan chattered on.
“I know full well you’re in no position to send her back to me so easily anymore.”
*Really, does he truly know?*
Valderion didn’t believe him.
Shrugging once as if it had truly been a joke, Dailan picked up a cigar from the far end of the seat and brought it to his lips.
“I’ll just smoke this one and then return to the hall.”
A sense of unease lingered, but Valderion gave a reluctant nod.
He then turned his back to leave first.
“Hey, Rion. You know what?”
“……”
“His Majesty would occasionally summon me to his bedchamber, even before he drew his last breath.”
The unexpected words caught him by the ankle.
Dailan took a drag from the cigar, from which smoke was billowing, then exhaled, whispering in a tone as hazy as the mist.
“Actually, it wasn’t just me. He called in all my brothers, one by one… Do you know why?”
*Hooo*, the deeply exhaled breath felt particularly foul.
“He said he was having dreams.”
“……”
“Dreams of my dead younger brother… Rageil.”
Valderion finally turned back around.
With the cigar between his lips, Dailan wore a meaningful smile.
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