Chapter 81
Chapter 81. My Brother, Tatar, My
Tatar’s movement, about to find the other’s lips with familiar ease, suddenly stopped. He lifted his head slightly to look at the other person.
Brilliantly shining platinum blonde hair. And beneath it, a pitch-black face with indiscernible features. The scent that usually brushed his nose was absent, and an alarm bell rang in his mind.
Had she ever appeared in such an alien form in his hallucinations?
“Who are you?”
The black face moved slightly. As if trying to speak, or perhaps trembling.
Eventually, the black figure imitated Vinea’s voice exactly and whispered to him.
“…It’s me, Your Majesty. Your Empress, Vinea.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed prominently. Could it be real? The touch and voice were so identical that he looked at the unidentifiable figure before him with sunken eyes.
“You poor thing. How did it come to this? That devilish woman finally…”
The voice trailed off, trembling slightly at the end.
Slender fingers touched Tatar’s cheek. Soon, the black figure burrowed into his arms.
The body heat embracing him felt so vivid. Though it should have disappeared by now after bewitching his mind to this extent, why did this vision cling so persistently?
Tatar’s eyes watched the platinum blonde hair softly curling around his fingers.
Why was it so irritating? The feeling of this vision different from usual, the subtle discomfort he’d been sensing.
He lowered his hand. The black figure looked up at him.
“…Your Majesty?”
What was this being before him imitating Vinea? A vision? A person? His broken mind couldn’t distinguish properly.
If it was just a vision, he could cut it down and be done with it, but if by chance he were to cut down someone close to Vinea rather than a mere servant, it was clear that her resentment would pour down on him fully, even though she had lost her memories now. Perhaps even after regaining them.
He pushed the black figure away. The staggering figure looked up at him, but he passed right by it and opened the office door.
A gust of wind. As the wind, whether illusory or real, swept past him, another black figure appeared immediately to his right.
It seemed to be saying something to him while standing still and doing nothing, but unlike the figure inside the office, he couldn’t make out what it was saying.
He grasped his throbbing head and moved his feet.
Was it fortunate that there was no one in the palace with the guts to block the path of him, the Emperor? In his current state, it wouldn’t be strange if news spread immediately that the mad Emperor was slaughtering everyone in the palace.
A buzzing in his ears stimulated his nerves.
“Quickly, the medicine, ha… hurry.”
He had placed medicine in the bedroom for times like this. Even if he couldn’t distinguish properly due to the hallucinations, he always put it in the same place so he could find it. Whether it took the form of a shadow or Vinea’s form, if he could just pour it into his mouth, he could lie down for at least two hours without needing to encounter anything.
“When I come to my senses again, this wretched vision will have ended too.”
He roughly brushed back his bangs. Under his furrowed brow, ominous silver-gray eyes sought the bedroom door.
Still, it was better than when his vision usually turned completely dark. When trapped in that terrible loneliness, he was seized by the urge to strangle himself to regress again and bring Vinea before his eyes immediately.
He flung open the tightly closed bedroom door. He yanked open the drawer set against one wall and reached inside, even though the interior that appeared before his eyes was empty.
Thunk, a cold medicine bottle caught his fingertips. As he grasped the bottle, a white medicine bottle was suddenly in his palm as if it had always been there.
He had no time to play along with the hallucination’s petty tricks. He uncorked the bottle with his mouth and was about to lift it to pour out the medicine when—
Slap—
Someone struck the back of his hand. The bottle slipped from his grasp and rolled across the floor, spilling medicine onto the carpet. The gray carpet turned black.
“—Don’t drink it!”
A shrill scream pierced his ears.
“That woman has been feeding you aphrodisiacs all this time! That’s why you did that to me, isn’t it?”
This ‘thing’ imitating Vinea’s voice, wasn’t it just a simple hallucination?
Tatar looked at the black figure pretending to be Vinea’s platinum blonde hair and confusing his mind, his dry lips parting slightly.
Really, just a little, even knowing it wasn’t true, a faint anxiety arose.
“What if it’s really you and I just can’t recognize you? I already can’t face you as it is, what if you tell me not to even speak to you?”
He had already learned painfully what hell was, was this another test?
He raised his hand and grasped the black figure’s neck and ear together. The vivid pulse felt under his palm was that of a living, breathing being.
Vinea, could it truly be the Empress?
“Isn’t it too cruel to test someone who’s already been defeated by you and is in tatters?”
Even so, if she truly wanted to confirm, he would kneel at any time, but if that wasn’t the case, whoever dared to imitate her before him would have to pay the proper price.
He asked,
“If I were to try to break the Empress once more, would you allow yourself to be broken by me?”
The black figure hesitated, then finally answered him in Vinea’s voice.
“If that is what Your Majesty desires, gladly.”
At that preposterous answer, Tatar’s gaze bypassed the other and turned to the ceiling.
“…To think I mistook such a thing for the Empress.”
The black figure placed its hand over his, which was grasping its neck and cheek.
“Your Maj—”
At that moment, with a strong force squeezing its neck, the black figure choked and gasped for breath.
Tatar no longer had any mercy left to hear the voice imitating the Empress. His nerves were too on edge, and his murderous intent was boiling. Patience disappeared like sand flowing through his fingers, and impulse took its place.
The black figure began to struggle for its life.
It flailed its arms and grasped something, but Tatar’s eyes, lost in madness, didn’t see it.
Eventually, the black figure swung its arm with all its might towards his head.
Crash!
A sharp sound rang through the room, and pieces of broken porcelain rolled across the floor. Soon, drops of red blood trickled down his jaw, coloring the colorless space.
“Ah, aah…!”
As he lost his balance and fell to the floor, the black figure also collapsed in its place. The figure, grasping his head, began to sob with pain-filled groans.
“Ah, no. I didn’t mean to, that’s not what I was trying to do…! Brother tried to kill me, me first…!”
Tatar’s blood-soaked eyes blinked slowly. The face of the other, which had been completely black, contorted, and the hallucination covering his eyes began to peel away, starting from the face.
The brilliant platinum blonde hair lost its color and faded. Under the lusterless cheap wig, green eyes filled with terror took in his fallen, bleeding form.
Tatar, barely managing to put strength in his knees and raise his upper body, grasped his wet head.
“I should have killed you long ago, Eurene Castallo…!”
At her name, ground out by Tatar, Eurene muttered in shock, her face blank.
“How, how could Brother say such a thing to me…”
Tatar placed his hand on his waist. Eurene’s bewildered gaze followed his hand.
Realizing that he truly meant to kill her, Eurene hesitated no longer. The moment Tatar grasped the sword hilt, Eurene threw herself at him with all her might.
Eurene, who had knocked down Tatar as he failed to keep his balance due to excessive blood loss, snatched the sword from his waist and threw it to the floor.
Straddling the fallen Tatar, Eurene’s stained eyes met cold silver-gray eyes devoid of warmth.
“I can forgive you. All of this was because that woman drugged you, right? That’s why you didn’t recognize me and treated me so coldly.”
“Ha—”
Tatar burst into a hollow laugh. Though he wanted to twist her neck and kill her right away, his vision was blurry and his body wouldn’t obey due to the blow to his head. Instead of curses, only rough breaths escaped his throat.
Having died once or twice before, he knew this wasn’t a fatal state, but he couldn’t predict what Eurene Castallo, straddling him before his body could recover, might do.
Wiping the red blood trickling down Tatar’s cheek with her hand, Eurene spoke with an anguished face.
“Wait. I’ll find a way to bring you back to how you were before. You might resent me, but soon you’ll know. Who the person you should truly love is…”
With trembling hands, Eurene pulled out a beautiful, opaque bottle shimmering with five colors from her bosom and said,
“This is the only way I can protect you, Brother. That woman was the one who first bewitched you with her wicked tricks, so I won’t hesitate any longer either. Please… forgive my unworthy sin.”
Realizing the nature of the drug, Tatar managed to spit out words between rough breaths.
“You fool. Don’t you still not know who shares the same father as your mother?”
Towards Eurene holding the medicine bottle, Tatar spat out the truth he should have poured into those ears long ago.
“The Emperor Emeritus and your mother are half-siblings, Eurene Castallo—”
Eurene squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to hear any more words. She didn’t want to be hurt by the nonsensical lies uttered by him, bewitched by that devilish woman’s tricks.
Grasping Tatar’s chin, Eurene finally poured the medicine into his lips.
“Just wait a little. The pain will be brief, and soon a happiness greater than that will wash away the darkness covering your eyes…”
The empty bottle rolled from Eurene’s hand. As she undid the buttons stretching from her neck to her chest one by one, white skin that had erased all traces of that night permitted to another man was revealed.
As Eurene was about to lower her upper body, her clouded eyes caught sight of the medicine that Tatar had failed to swallow and spilled out of his mouth.
The red liquid identical to the ‘lethal drug’ she had handed to the head of the Valita Trading Company.
