Chapter 32
The remaining guard looked at me with an uncomfortable expression and clicked his tongue.
“I can’t help it. I’m forced to do this.”
I shook off the frightened big man’s hand violently. A chill ran down my spine as I looked at the rope in his hands. He must be trying to kill me and disguise it as a suicide.
Is this Celine’s idea? This was the question that came to my mind for a moment, but gradually only the thought that I had to live filled my mind.
“Let me go!”
“My sister is sick. I couldn’t help it. Please be quiet. I’ll make it easy for you.”
I crumpled my forehead fiercely and bit down hard on the guard’s hand, which was trying to cover my mouth. At the same time as the guard shouted, I felt a twitch in front of my eyes and a twinge of pain in my cheeks as he bit down on my hand. Something hot trickled down my nose. The guard, who had punched me mercilessly in the face, furrowed his brow and caught me by the chest.
“Are you a dog?! Biting and going crazy!”
It hurt like hell, I thought I was going to pass out, but I did my best to regain my composure. I wasn’t feeling well right now. Even if you are a self-appointed aid to evil, you don’t want to go through this. I was afraid of dying, no matter what country I was in. He grabbed me by the collar with a rough hand and pulled me back, then clicked his tongue.
I resisted, twisting this way and that, trying not to let the rope touch my neck. The buttons on my clothes fell off and I fell to the cold floor.
“Why are you so strong when you’re so small? Do you want to be hurt badly? Worse than this?”
Let’s stall for time, somehow.
I gritted my teeth and kicked hard between his legs with my knee. The guard’s face was crushed in unspeakable agony.
“Aah!”
With a sudden scream, the guard shrank back and lay down on the floor.
“What are you doing? Just get it over with before the fireworks.”
The other guard guarding the front door hurried in when he heard the scream of the man other than me. He looked at his partner, who was rolling on the floor, his face contracted to the limit, and made a harsh face.
“You got kicked? Who’s going to end your generation this year!”
Panting, I huddled my back against the black wall where there was nowhere to retreat. I made a plan to push the entrance, kick out the guard, and run out, but I wasn’t confident that I could push that guard, who was twice as big as the guard who was already incapacitated by me, out with my vile body.
All I could think was that I had to buy myself some time. Maybe someone would come to my aid, like the Lieutenant Colonel? Because he was a righteous male protagonist who enjoyed helping poor people. Oh, I was not a hero, I was just a supporting character, so what were the chances of such perfect timing? I screamed at the guards.
“Do you think you’ll be safe after doing this?”
“We’ll be safe if we kill you. We have already been paid, and if we fail, we are dead.”
Negotiation would be futile in this situation. My lips were hot, torn from the beating. I couldn’t think of a way to get out of this situation. Thinking of my ending, I laughed in vain.
I wondered if that rope was the only thing that could get me out of this hell. Where will I go when I die, if I am not from this world? Only to return from the unfamiliar hell to the familiar one.
My breath came in spurts and vanished. Would I eventually go through the fate of Diana in the original story and disappear so meaninglessly?
The guard who had been blocking the entrance suddenly approached me with a vicious look on his face, grabbed me by the chest and slammed me down hard on the ground. I felt a cold jolt go through my forehead, and then I felt a flash of heat.
Loud noises echoed inside and outside my body. My head shook and I became increasingly unconscious. I didn’t have time to feel the pain of hitting the floor, and my vision started to turn red.
“Hahaha…”
I managed to pull myself together and sighed in pain, raising my upper body. The intermittent sound of fireworks was a hollow echo that regarded the moment of the end of life as silence.
The emotions that had been confined within my indifferent expression and supernatural demeanor eventually crumbled completely as I felt apathetic despair.
It’s sad, it hurts. I really can’t. I can’t stand it.
Apart from being passive and active, why was I always alone when there was no way a person could go on living alone without anyone to rely on?
It was a place that felt more atrocious than hell. I struggled to suppress the sorrow that preceded my screams and remained face down on the cold floor with my forehead pressed together. And yet, I did not cry.
I just mumbled the name I hadn’t spoken, as if it were a testament. I squeezed his coat, the only thing that shared his warmth, and kept the gentle name in the back of my mind, like a child secretly burying something precious.
I wanted to say it once since it was apparently the last one.
“Noah.”
He was a villain to some, but to me he was a good man and a hero.
He wasn’t a proper lover or a loving friend, but he was the only one I could remember, and I was in desperate need of one. There were words I wanted to tell the beautiful person who was kind to me for no reason and protected me, but now I was wrong. It seemed.
The guard who heard my sad voice approached me with an interesting look on his face.
“What is it? To finally confess that you are with the Progen side…………”
The guard, who had been standing with his hands on his hips, looking down at me, suddenly stopped speaking. I looked up at him. His lower jaw and mouth, covered by a disheveled beard, were firmly covered by someone’s hand. The guard with the panicked look in his eyes twitched.
His dry eyes fluttered upward, and red blood spurted out from his neck. Behind the fountain of blood that splattered as the guard’s body tilted and trailed, I could see the face of a man with no expression on his face.
As I sat there in a daze, I thought it was beautiful, like a scene that marks the moment of liberation and freedom.
The sound of the loud firecrackers was no longer a sound that hid my death, but a congratulatory shot that aided in my salvation and blinded me to the fate of those who had tried to kill me.
The guard’s body, no longer a living person, fell to the floor making a dull sound like a piece of wood. I was in full view of a dark-haired man standing neatly in a dark blue Belford military uniform. He was holding a short military dagger in one hand.
Some of the light from the flames leaked out through the small window of the cell, revealing the figure and then disappearing repeatedly.
My field of vision became clouded and blocked out in front of me, and I could only see the seeming outline, but only the cloudy blue eyes covered with the color of all the flames seemed to be named. The man with the nostalgic scent of perfume that had remained faint since that day asked, staring at my swollen cheeks and forehead.
“Who did this?”
It was a low voice that I had heard sometime before, deeply etched with anger. I closed my eyes softly and then opened them. I didn’t know if I was out of my mind or if I was reassembling the afterimages of my faint memories to see and hear what I hoped for.
“That black hair, Lieutenant Colonel Grenendall? No, who are you…….?” (Guard)
The guard, who got kicked in the groin by me and was lying on the ground half unconscious, managed to get up to the sudden and unexpected situation. When he saw the unusual color of his black hair, he made a strange face and didn’t say anything further because he was blocked by the dark-haired man.
“It’s me.”
It was a creepy voice that was determinedly trying to harm anyone who would listen. The gruesome killing intent thickened as if it wasn’t human’s.
The guard quickly approached the man, but was unable to match the strength of the magnificent man who clamped his mouth shut and subdued him.
A red line began to draw at his neck, and blue veins appeared on the guard’s forehead. The guard struggled to break free from the unbearable pain of death. Intermittent moans escaped from between his pinched fingers, the soles of his shoes rubbed violently against the floor, and the sound of his struggling pain filled the prison.
The ugly hands that had tried to kill me resisted desperately, clawing at the man’s arm as he tried to choke it back. Afterwards, the pale guard’s hands fell lifelessly and shook helplessly.
The dark-haired man, who had casually thrown the guard’s breathless body away, still looked at me with sad blue eyes. The smell of blood grew thicker, and the familiar body scent, faint but wafting, grew closer.
The fierce appearance covered with the blood of the slaughter he had committed to get here, exhaling a cold breath.
It was cruel and beautiful, but unlike the bloody figure, he gently touched my cheeks with his hands as if it was fragile.
His beautiful face was covered with scratches, and the arms of his uniform were ripped open and soaked with blood.
His eyes were red and wet, and he looked as pitiful as the day we parted.
“Diana.”
He called my name in a dull voice. A sigh of breath escaped from around my lips. The beautiful colors of the fireworks poured in through the small window. It was just like that day when he had offered me daffodil flowers to express his feelings under the fireworks that had dyed the sky with colors. A nostalgic memory that I desperately needed to break through came to blade at me.
I had always wondered how he would answer. No, I always waited. In fact, what I wanted the most was to see him again even for a moment. He crouched down and placed his hand on my cheek and stared at me.
The deadliness in his empty blue eyes, which showed neither sadness nor joy, faded away. This time, he didn’t ask if I wanted to be saved. He just did as his heart desired.
“Diana, this is how I really feel.”
Noah, with his pitch-black hair, conveyed his heart with an expressionless face full of empty emotion. He was beautifully crafted, but like a lifeless artificial flower, he was someone who always had a consistent smile on his face. I realized that was his true face.
***
*It seemed that Noah had dyed his hair black to disguise himself. He had white hair before. Noah with black hair wore Belford military uniform, so the guard thought he was Jeffrey for a moment, but then the guard knew Noah was someone else, that was why the guard said, “That black hair, Lieutenant Colonel Grenendall? No, who are you…….?”