ERTHMB Chapter 120

Shining and Beautiful

“Then beg.”

“Don’t, brother!”

Heidi cried out from beside him like a single scream, trying to stop him. Beelzebuth didn’t spare even a glance in that direction and urged again.

“Beg.”

“Save me, please save me, brother.”

“Ha, how troublesome you are. Don’t make me repeat the same words over and over. Is your desperation only to that extent?”

Seeming unsatisfied with Ian’s response, Beelzebuth kicked his leg dismissively, shaking Ian off. Then, with a disgusted expression, he pressed his foot firmly against Ian’s shoulder.

“Do you think I gave you this opportunity just to see this pathetic display? At the very least, you should beg enough to make me think, ‘Ah, this bastard isn’t human scum. This bastard is truly a piece of shit.’ I’m telling you such a simple method – wouldn’t it be better to bark a few times and lick my shoes rather than having your head cut off and dropped into boiling oil?”

Ian blinked slowly. All the moisture that had gathered rolled down, and his vision became clear.

Right before his eyes was his brother, smiling more brightly than ever before. The wrinkles at the corners of his folded eyes, the frown on his nose bridge, the lips tightly curled upward.

Taking in every detail of his facial muscle movements, Ian lowered his head. From this moment until the day his breath ceased, this would be the image of hatred he would have to long for.

Ian pressed down his heaving lungs and slowly bent his upper body downward. Beelzebuth’s black shoe tip grew closer and closer.

The scent of blood, whose it was he didn’t know, was thick. His own mother’s might have been mixed in. Heidi’s wailing screams sounded distant.

Before long, Beelzebuth’s chuckling laughter fell from above his head. He kicked Ian away from his feet and looked down at his now-clean shoes with satisfaction.

“See, you do well when you’re told.”

The laughter of the other brothers followed. Beelzebuth bent his knees and sat down, placing his hand on Ian’s head.

“Listen well, little brother. You must never forget today for the rest of your life, carve it into your bones, and live in agony forever, remembering it again and again.”

He suddenly gathered his fingers, grasped Ian’s hair, and pulled it back. From the pain of his scalp being yanked, Ian swallowed a gasp. Beelzebuth’s breath, close to madness, carved into his skin like a blade.

“You couldn’t protect anything, and you never will. So live like you’re dead, remembering and re-remembering every night the mercy I’ve shown you today, living in gratitude.”

Understanding his farewell wasn’t difficult. The mercy Beelzebuth spoke of was the slave market. Ian saw himself, who had fallen from an imperial prince to a slave in an instant. He saw the man who had made him so.

He looked down on people so easily, pushed people into pits, robbed them of their life’s pride, and ultimately destroyed them.

Ian could no longer find a reason to live. He wanted to die following his mother, but he also lacked the courage to take his own life.

Until he landed on soil he had never stepped on in his life, crossing the sea, Ian just rolled around like an empty tin can.

It was that year when he met the girl. When he arrived in the Empire of Instantia after passing through two kingdoms.

“Come a little closer, my arm isn’t long enough to give water to your mouth.”

At a time when he doubted and didn’t believe in all the love in the world.

So Ian paradoxically ended up asking.

“Do you like me?”

A transit point he had stopped at while going from one slave market to another, a basement with only a fingernail-sized ray of light and layers of accumulated dust. A girl who came every night when even the moon held its breath.

Through a small window made by removing bricks from the loose wall, she would bring water and food. Even though she herself was kicked around like a roadside stone, being Cinderella.

The floor of the Owen mansion was as thin as paper, so Ian could vividly hear what kind of treatment she received. Even now, she would probably be pulling her sleeves down long to cover the bruise marks that had spread to the backs of her hands.

Ian pressed his body close to the wall and added,

“Everyone here is a slave.”

“I know.”

“Do you like me even if I’m a slave?”

“…The bread I gave you yesterday must have been spoiled after all.”

“If you don’t even like me, then why on earth are you helping me?”

So Ian had asked because he simply couldn’t believe it. In a world where people could hate without reason, it was nearly impossible to show kindness without affection.

But the girl looked at people with tender eyes so easily, pulled people up with rays of light, made life praiseworthy, and ultimately stood them back up.

And then she intended to pretend not to know until the end.

“Today I helped Theo’s grandfather with his garden work and received rye bread. This one shouldn’t be spoiled.”

“If you can hear me, we were having something called a ‘conversation.'”

“But lately, little Theo keeps pestering his grandfather to make him a sibling. He’s even named it Pol or something. Goodness, it’ll take several more years before he understands that grandfather can’t make babies. Only grandfather suffers, really.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Ah, about who Theo is…”

“I could listen to your nonsense until dawn breaks.”

“Sigh.”

When Ian persistently pressed her, the girl finally exhaled deeply and answered curtly.

“It’s just because you’re hope.”

“What?”

“You’re my hope.”

Having longed for an answer so much, Ian burst into hollow laughter as soon as he heard it.

Hope?

She must be mistaking her conversation partner right now. If all her previous good deeds were because she was a child with a bit of a head problem, that would be understandable.

“Aren’t you the one who ate spoiled bread? Giving up medicine for your sibling like this.”

Ian frowned as he looked at the thin arm that stuck out through the brick gap. In the hand waving as if telling him to hurry and take it was a green bottle.

Since hearing Heidi’s coughing three days ago, she had been bringing not only food but also medicine faithfully. Really foolishly.

“Fool, I’m not giving up, I’m sharing. You think you’re eating for free? No, you’ve been paying the price all along.”

“Who are you calling a fool? Can’t you see my state right now? Stuck in a basement waiting to be sold, what do I have to give?”

“I told you, hope. If your sister gets better after taking this medicine, I’ll have hope that my sibling could too.”

The girl waved her arm again. Eventually, Ian sighed and took the bottle. She had a talent for making people agree with her absurd logic in a deflating way.

While Ian gently stroked the hair of Heidi, who was sleeping beside him, the girl continued speaking.

“So you should have some too.”

“What.”

“Don’t you want it?”

“……”

Ian, realizing what she was talking about, closed his mouth. However, the girl deliberately pinched the painful part.

“The position you shouldn’t dare covet. The reason you came all the way here, even though you lived pretending not to see, pretending not to hear.”

Ian groaned quietly inside. Apparently, the girl’s head didn’t have a problem. Seeing how well she remembered his carelessly dropped words.

“Theo’s grandfather said so. Things I don’t have now but want to have, want, wish for. Those are called desires.”

The girl met his eyes with her own that contained the blueness and vastness of the sea and declared.

“So desiring isn’t a sin. That’s natural. Wanting to have what you want.”

It was words that were both gentle like foam running at the edge of waves, and left clear traces like ripples. Words that finally crossed the line.

At those words, Ian’s mind boiled over.

That wanting to have what you desire is natural.

That wishing isn’t a sin.

The more he chewed on it, the more embers began to flicker in what had been only black ashes inside. He couldn’t know whether they would be buried again or become flames, but eventually Ian spoke with embers in both his eyes.

“Yes, I want it.”

Only after falling to the very bottom could he face his true feelings head-on.

It was an ambition that had already taken root too deeply to be buried in the frustration of being stripped of qualification. It was a yearning he dared not throw away, even though he considered it something he dared not grasp.

“Because that’s the only way I can protect the precious things I have.”

Looking at such an Ian, the girl spoke as if it were a natural desire.

“Then take it.”

“What?”

“Don’t live like you’re dead. Trample down all those people who drove you to this situation, and seize it. Climb to the highest place and let them know. Make it so everyone has no choice but to see you. That the person they abandoned breathes proudly, is alive, and exists.”

“…Could you do that?”

“……”

The lips that had been moving steadily finally stopped. The girl didn’t answer. Instead, she hesitated awkwardly and suddenly held out something she had brought.

“Oh, take this too.”

It was a clumsy change of subject. But Ian decided to gladly accept it. Because Heidi, who had woken up, was getting up drowsily and beaming with joy.

Heidi buried her nose in the yellow bouquet the girl offered and sniffed. She said it smelled like fresh rain. Heidi was completely absorbed in the outdoor scent she hadn’t smelled in a long time.

“It’s so pretty. Brother, do you know what kind of flowers these are?”

Suddenly, round eyes turned to Ian and sparkled. Ian deliberately spoke indifferently.

“These are just nameless wildflowers—”

“Marigolds.”

The answer came from the girl. Both siblings’ gazes immediately shot toward her. The girl reached her arm through the gap again and tucked a fallen flower behind Heidi’s ear.

“There are no nameless flowers. We just don’t know them. Either we pass by them because they’re so common we don’t need to know, or we forget them quickly even if we do know.”

A fresh smile hung on her lips.

“Do you know what this flower means?”

“Tell me, sister.”

Heidi, pressing her face to the gap, sparkled her eyes. The girl’s smile deepened even more.

“Happiness will surely come.”

A simple sentence fell like a sudden shower that arrives without warning.

Ian thought that if there were puddles in his heart, they would have rippled greatly because of those words just now. It was an unfamiliar churning. He had to suppress it before it became more troublesome.

Trying hard to suppress it, he stared intently at the small bouquet Heidi had passed to him. The time leading up to being trapped in this filthy basement suddenly overlapped above it.

It had truly been a wildflower-like life. Unable to raise its head once among the tough vegetation of the royal palace, unable to receive even a handful of warm sunlight, stepped on and stepped on again, its stem broken several times.

Yet you stubbornly stood up again. Despite that, you spoke of happiness.

Ian wanted to cherish that fragile yet upright wildflower. So without knowing it, he revealed his true feelings.

“What’s your name? You.”

It was a sudden question, but the girl smiled. As if dyeing the surroundings entirely with flower water, endlessly gently. Ian had no choice but to look at that face as if it were beyond his control.

You who shine and are so beautiful…

“Helena.”

Ian answered while grasping the marigolds, as if making a vow to himself.

“I’ll remember, Helena.”