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Chapter 78
I Want to Soil You
Petty Morrison stood right in front of me.
“Don’t hesitate?” Yohan’s languid voice prickled at my ear and spread deep into my chest. Like a drop falling onto a still lake, ripples spread.
“About what?”
Petty Morrison trembled in the chair, his limbs bound.
“P-please… spare me. Have mercy….”
Fear was plain in his ordinary, common brown eyes.
“Fear, huh.”
It was an unfamiliar look to me.
Most looks directed at me had been malice and contempt — or anger and hatred. And those looks were usually when people looked down at someone weaker.
“Why should I forgive you?” I asked.
Because Yohan was standing behind me, I suddenly held the power to decide a life.
“So this is how it feels.”
To look down on someone, to stand in a place where you can judge them at will.
“Yohan must have always looked at me from this place.”
I met Petty Morrison’s eyes with a calm gaze. His brown eyes trembled when they met mine.
“I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. Our family’s circumstances forced us to write sensational articles….”
He averted his eyes, embarrassed and ashamed.
“Anything else to say?”
From this vantage point, the begging and desperate expressions of someone below felt simply ridiculous.
Petty Morrison had already wronged me. No matter what he said, I had been harmed, and with a single decision of mine he could easily be erased.
A strange feeling rose up.
“You belittled me for no reason, criticized me, hurt me. Because of that, I became a villain without sin, judged by everyone.”
“I—I didn’t think it would go that far.”
“Your few lines and those made-up nonsense ruined any possibility I had in life.”
The rumor that I was the villain of Libertan.
If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have suffered such humiliation.
“At least I might have had a chance to do something.”
But because of that rumor, I was confined in the mansion, and escape from Libertan became nothing but a dream.
Petty Morrison, who still couldn’t look me straight in the face, stammered and begged.
“Forgive me just once. If you forgive me this time, I swear it’ll never happen again.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?” Yohan sneered in a cynical voice.
“That’s just an excuse to get out of this situation.”
“N-no! I’m truly repentant, and if you forgive me, I’ll—”
“Then what will you do?”
Yohan playfully kicked the chair Petty Morrison was tied to. The chair shifted a little, but that was enough to make Petty Morrison start as if stabbed.
“I’m sorry!”
“If you know your crime, you should die for it. Why make excuses?” Yohan laughed at Petty Morrison’s reaction, then slung his arm around my shoulder. His thumb rubbed the nape of my neck.
“Estelle, it’s good that you think about others, but if you do that you’ll be the only one harmed.”
“Is that so?”
“Think about your own wound. Isn’t that the most important thing?”
On the surface, Yohan’s words made sense.
“After all, nobody ever cared about my situation.”
I lifted my head and met Yohan’s eyes. He took a dagger from his clothes and placed it in my hand. The dagger felt oddly like an extension of my body; my heartbeat quickened.
Maybe I was overly excited.
“More than that worthless person’s crimes, I care more about the wounds you received. So I want to make you feel better.”
Yohan kindly pointed the dagger where to stab.
“Stab as much as you want.”
His large hands took mine, guiding them so the blade touched Petty Morrison’s throat. I could feel Petty Morrison’s fear at the blade’s tip.
“Aren’t you tired of always being the one who gets hurt?”
Yohan narrowed his eyes and watched Estelle.
Estelle brought the dagger to Petty Morrison’s throat. A thin line of blood flowed where the blade grazed.
“That’s right.”
Estelle’s long, pale lashes fluttered down.
“I’m fed up and annoyed with just taking it.”
“Right, you have every reason.”
“I wondered if there was a reason he treated me like that, but there wasn’t.”
Yohan nodded sympathetically and patted her shoulder. Just his voice alone conveyed the pain inside her.
Although gentle Estelle hesitated, this stage would be different.
She would not endure it.
“Like I did.”
Thus Estelle entered the same world as I had.
Yohan felt a strange satisfaction and moved his dark magic. Petty Morrison struggled in terror, but the dark magic swallowed his body and he couldn’t resist.
“Now.”
A mysterious magic circle rose in Yohan’s red eyes as the black magic activated.
All that remained for Estelle to do was kill this stupid, sinful man.
“Petty Morrison.”
Estelle gripped the dagger as if to thrust, then suddenly turned the blade away.
“Any last words you want to leave?”
“I—I don’t know….”
“I thought so. Then you won’t regret dying, will you? You’re dying by your own fault, after all.”
Estelle swung the dagger at Petty Morrison. He went pale and shut his eyes tight.
But the dagger stopped right in front of his face.
Estelle snorted and casually tossed the dagger to the floor. Yohan raised one eyebrow at her action.
‘She won’t kill him?’
Estelle’s actions weren’t what Yohan expected.
“Estelle, are you going to take revenge some other way?”
Estelle didn’t answer him. She moved on from Petty Morrison to the next person nearby and, as she had with Petty Morrison, asked a similar question.
“Why did you hate me that much? If you tell the truth, I’ll give you a chance.”
Unsurprisingly, the answers were unsatisfactory.
“We— we thought it’d be okay. I’m sorry!”
Estelle bound their mouths again, blindfolded them, and moved on. It looked like she intended to ask everyone here.
‘It’ll be meaningless anyway.’
There was a reason Yohan had kidnapped these people and tied them up to be offerings.
Everyone gathered here was rubbish.
If their crimes had been only moderate, Estelle might later be bothered by them. But Yohan still couldn’t understand Estelle.
‘She was truly enraged just now.’
Estelle’s angry reaction had been sincere. That was why Yohan was confident she would take revenge.
“We needed money urgently….”
“Our publishing house is small, so to catch the Empire’s attention we had to—”
Soon, Estelle seemed to have calmed. She listened to their excuses with a composed air.
‘Why won’t she take revenge?’
It wasn’t for lack of resentment. Any person would be angry in such circumstances. She had even prepared evidence so Estelle could be satisfied.
‘Why is this woman……’
She moved in a way totally different from Yohan.
“Do you realize those excuses don’t justify what you did?”
“……”
“If you didn’t know, that’s one thing. I’ve been through it too.”
After hearing the last person’s answer, Estelle took a slow breath. Yohan stroked her cheek and asked,
“If you can’t take revenge, should I do it for you?”
When you thought about it, revenge might be too heavy an emotion for someone raised kindly like Estelle. She looked up at him with her clear, navy eyes.
“No. No need.”
“……Why?”
Yohan unconsciously leaned in. The grip on her cheek tightened.
“You won’t take revenge and will let them go?”
“Who said I’m not taking revenge?”
Estelle smiled faintly.
“This is my way of revenge.”
“……”
“I don’t want them to commit their crimes and then leave it at that. They should have time to look back on what they did and correct it.”
Among these horrific human scum, Estelle was supremely noble. Yohan twisted his mouth.
“You don’t actually believe they’ll change, do you?”
“I just want to do this.”
“……”
“I thought about it a lot and in the end this is what I want.”
A terrible thirst gnawed at Yohan.
He could not understand Estelle. To him, only when the perpetrators suffered many times what they had inflicted would he be satisfied.
He was a monster who sought to bury people in an even greater hell than the suffering they had inflicted.
‘I want to soil you.’
A woman with sparkle despite deep wounds and trauma.
‘No, I want you to stay as you are.’
Yohan wanted to drag Estelle down into the hell where he himself existed. Instead, she reminded him of a forgotten feeling he had buried deep inside — something filthy he had thought lost.
His perfect scheme to punish those who tormented Estelle, to offer them as sacrifices to cure her illness…
‘Totally failed.’
Once again, Estelle denied his plan.
I glanced at the dagger I’d tossed to the floor.
‘We almost really killed him.’
Honestly, I had wanted to kill them all. No— I didn’t want to do it with my own hands, so I wanted to ask Yohan to give them a horrible end.
If not for that passing thought.
‘What makes me different from Yohan then?’
I understood Yohan’s actions, but I didn’t want to become like him.
‘That would be too sad.’
Even in Yohan’s seemingly perfect plan there was an unjust victim like me; even now someone like me could exist.
‘At least I don’t want people like me to be born.’
Then I could be proud in front of myself, to the child I used to be who had been unjustly hurt and sad.
So I deliberately listened to each of their stories, even if they didn’t recognize the crimes they’d committed.
In the end, as I expected, all the excuses were unacceptable, but I wanted to give them a chance.
“If my doing this upsets you, I’m sorry.”
Yohan’s gaze darkened as if it could devour me.
A fierce heat engraved into his glossy red eyes, and a prickling tension hit me as if I were prey being eaten to the bone.
“So, what kind of chance do you want to give them?”
“At minimum, they should go back and publish a correction article. They should be able to admit what crimes they committed. Public opinion has changed a lot since then, so it shouldn’t be hard.”
“And if that still isn’t enough?”
“Then what more would I have to say?”
I had no intention of digging graves for these fools or taking responsibility for their lives.
“Let Yohan deal with them in the cruelest way he sees fit. If they squander the chance, they should pay a higher price.”
“That’s strange.”
Yohan hugged me tightly as if he couldn’t bear it. He rubbed his face against my nape. The breath on my neck raised the hairs on my skin and gave me goosebumps.
“Looking at you makes me feel like I’m the one at fault. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I can do this because of you, Yohan.”
Just as easily as we could dispose of them, we could punish them again if they sinned.
‘From Yohan’s point of view, I might be annoying.’
Honestly, Yohan and I had different positions. Without punishing them, my survival wasn’t threatened.
“And there’s one more reason I let them go that I’m grateful for.”
“What’s that?”
“They gave bad rumors about me, so I could meet Yohan.”
I grabbed Yohan’s neck and gave him a soft, melting smile.
“So I’m okay.”
Then I planted a kiss on Yohan’s handsome lips.
Yohan inhaled, warm with heat, and pulled my cheeks close, gripping them.
“I can’t beat you, after all.”
At that moment, the gagged dolls, trembling violently, crumpled grotesquely and then burst like fireworks. What came afterward wasn’t a disgusting spray of blood.
“What is this….”
Glittering stardust and flower petals scattered wildly. I watched the dazzling scene, my eyes meeting Yohan’s.
He narrowed his eyes and smiled.
“I wouldn’t make you do some terrible revenge like that.”
“What the— you scared me!”
Estelle widened her eyes like a rabbit and laughed.
“Are you going to keep playing tricks like this?”
“Sorry, your reaction is just so cute I can’t help teasing.”
A lie.
It was just a simple trick. Yohan had intended to use other methods to offer them as payment; due to an error in the dark magic, a strange reaction had occurred.
Yohan’s seemingly soft heart was burning black inside.
Dark magic couldn’t cure her. From the recurring problems with the dark magic, Yohan reached one conclusion.
“I’ve surprised you enough, so now I’ll take you to a place where you really won’t be surprised anymore.”
Estelle was already cursed.
To cure Estelle, that curse had to be solved first.
