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140th Chapter

On December 31st, the last day of the year, I, born in the heart of winter, was the complete opposite of a child who saw the light of day on August 9th, right in the middle of summer.

“Your birthday is in the summer… It just doesn’t suit you at all. What on earth does a cold-blooded person like you have to do with summer… You’re practically living proof of the saying that people resemble the season they were born in, aren’t you?”

“…Hah. I think that saying holds some truth. Here you are, born on the last day of the year, living recklessly like a mayfly that treats each day like its last.”

“Are you suggesting you want today to be your last?”

“Enough from both of you. Stop fighting on such a good day.”

I remembered the rough hands that stood between me and that child, trying to separate us as we quarreled like we always did. The tone of voice that suggested futility, and those defined black eyes.

The sun-kissed skin shimmering under the sunlight, and the way the glaring rays painted his white hair like canvas, all replayed in my mind.

“My dear.”

“…Yes?”

“Thank you for being born. Not once have I regretted saving you on that snowy field. So I hope you won’t regret surviving until now, even if life deceives you.”

“You’re a gift to me.”

In that moment, those violet eyes shimmering with moisture. The scent of winter thickening amidst the peak of summer. The black hair fluttering in the humid summer breeze rather than a refreshing one.

Moments etched deep in my mind like they were captured in a photograph.

“Happy 17th birthday.”

The black sword that Karasho handed to that child seemed no different from what was hanging on the rack.

I coldly petrified, shaking hands lifted the tag on the hilt to confirm it.

“In honor of your 17th birthday, and my small victory and protection.”

Victory and protection.

It meant ‘Zigmund.’

Click.

The sound of the doorknob turning brushed against my ears. Panicking, I had been oblivious to any presence until I concentrated on the familiar aura that hit me like a train.

Isn’t that so?

Click.

Who else could possess this icy aura that felt like it froze to the bone, besides that greatest bastard of my life?

With the sound of the door opening, I unsheathed that untamed yet oddly familiar sword from the sheath, pointing it toward the door without hesitation. My gaze met with his beyond the blade.

What could possibly compare to that?

The beauty of violets in spring, the scent of lavender in summer were nothing against it. Even when compared to amethyst, it was just a lump of rock in comparison.

The piercingly cold, eerily transparent, vividly dead violet eyes.

That brutal beauty had always stirred something inside me.

“Your welcoming is still as unruly as ever.”

Zigmund, casting a fleeting glance at the sword aimed at him, raised the corners of his lips charmingly.

“What are you doing, Mir?”

“If you don’t put the sword down right now, I’ll interpret it as a threat against the Guild Leader and will act accordingly.”

The two men standing next to Zigmund drew their swords with tense expressions as they watched me point mine at him. Not bothering to glance at the men who were no match for me, I kept my glare fixed solely on Zigmund.

‘Zigmund is… the Guild Leader of ‘Hide & Seek’?’

His nonchalance was infuriating, knowing full well that the sharp tip of the sword was directed at him. My expression twisted as I grappled with the knots of confusion that only seemed to entangle the more I tried to untangle them, as if the world was mocking me.

“Did you like that sword?”

“You…”

“Yeah. I guess it’s a sword you haven’t seen in a while. Seeing you gripping it tightly, it looks like you really like it, but you appear displeased. Why? Is it disgusting that I still have that sword? Are you surprised that I’m still the owner of this place? Or is it…”

As Zigmund spoke in a low, sultry voice, he took a step toward me. His eyes bore into mine, sensually twisting into a crescent.

“Are you feeling uneasy seeing my face?”

Like he’d materialized the concept of ‘you,’ he said that with an enchanting face.

Though his tone felt somewhat mocking, I narrowed my eyes as I caught a glimpse of a fleeting loneliness in the deep violet.

“Both of you, get out.”

“But Guild Leader…”

“You think I’ll just sit by and take this?”

As I silently glared without responding, Zigmund waved to the two men beside him. It seemed my fierce aura was holding them back, as Zigmund looked at the protesting men with a chilling glare that exuded dominance.

“……Have a discussion.”

Under the pressure of Zigmund’s presence, the two men ultimately sheathed their swords and stepped back.

With a click, the door closed, leaving only Zigmund and me in the room. Exhaling slowly, Zigmund ran a hand through his hair and tilted his head.

“Are you going to keep standing there?”

“I don’t have any tea, and the only food is this. I’m sorry I can’t offer you better hospitality.”

Zigmund sat me down on the sofa, retrieved something from the desk drawer, handed it to me, then sat opposite me. I sat there with a frown plastered on my face, crossing my legs, and raised an eyebrow as I checked what he gave me.

‘……Violet sugar preserves.’

It was the only sweet treat Zigmund enjoyed despite his general dislike for sweets.

Grumbling inwardly about how I remembered his taste, I shook the jar of violet sugar preserves vigorously until the contents mixed completely.

Then, I opened the lid and presented it toward Zigmund.

“Eat it. If it’s poisoned, you’ll just die alone.”

“……Hah. You’re funny.”

Zigmund, who had just assigned the food he’d given to me the duty of a taste tester, chuckled lightly.

I hardened my face as if to say I was serious. Of course, I understood that the likelihood of him directly handing me poisoned violet sugar preserves fresh from his drawer was very low, so this was more like a playful retaliation.

Zigmund, who was eyeing my playful demeanor, began to smile slightly. The red petals seemed to be blooming like they had just layered upon one another.

“If you feed me, I might just eat it.”

Zigmund arched an eyebrow at me. For a moment, I thought mischief sparkled in his eyes.

I fixed my gaze on him and picked up one of the violet sugar preserves.

“You seem to want to consume sugar with your eyes. Given that the colors are rather similar, tossing it in might let it blend in.”

With a toss, I threw the sweet violet morsel in his direction.

The moment he closed his eyes, the sugar preserve hit his eyelid and fell to the ground; while my attempt at targeting his eye ended in failure, witnessing his long, delicate lashes glistening with sugary powder was quite refreshing.

“How does it taste?”

I struggled to suppress a grin that was trying to escape and asked nonchalantly. Zigmund, blinking a few times as the sugar entered his eye, let out a breathy laugh as he flicked his finger once.

Pop.

The jar that had been in my hand vanished in an instant. Using a high-level teleportation magic in a place like this was nothing short of a talent waste.

Frowning at the unpleasant magical energy left on my fingertips, I watched Zigmund gently pick one violet sugar preserve with his pale, long thumb and index finger and place it on his crimson tongue.

“It’s sweet.”

Zigmund rolled the preserve on his tongue, flaunting it proudly, and swallowed the damp violet, responding in a low voice. The corners of his eyes turned upward.

I stared at him, aghast.

‘That bastard… still the same.’

He always had a talent for behaving like a spring flower that could flush cheeks just by looking at it. The sultry aura he emanated was not in the least bit vulgar; rather, it was more refined, leaving viewers in an odd state of mood.

‘This is just like old times.’

The playful bickering with Zigmund just now felt so reminiscent of our past before everything fell apart that I found myself lost in thought for a moment.

Reading my strange expression, Zigmund blinked slowly and propped himself up with his chin, straightening his upper body.

“You seem to have a lot of questions. Aren’t you going to ask?”

“……Hold on.”

Closing my eyes tightly at his unhurried question, I rubbed my temples. After that incident where I fell into his arms while trying to escape a terror attack, questions about Zigmund began flooding my mind, making it difficult to articulate.

I let out a soft sound of frustration and side-eyed him.

“If I ask, will you answer?”

“Depends.”

‘Goddamn…’

That was the same as saying he’d avoid answering any difficult questions.

As someone with a master’s degree in Zigmund interpretation, I understood his words immediately and sighed. Of course, the authority on doctorates belonged to Karasho.

‘What should I do about you? What will happen to us?’

When I first reunited with him, I thought there could be no worse situation than this.

The raw feelings, curt affections, and subtle trust were all long faded relics of a childhood gone by. What remained was a tangled knot of complicated emotions defined mainly by bitter love and hate.

‘I thought I would never face you like this again.’

I gazed at Zigmund with buried eyes. He was looking at me too. His expression was unreadable, as if he wore a thick mask, but it was no longer as nauseating as before.

His cold, lifeless, beast-like violet eyes, devoid of anything yet heavy with emotions, weren’t that bad after all, and I found myself flustered.

‘What do I think of you?’

Slowly, I examined my heart.

I still resented Zigmund. It seemed impossible to return to how things used to be. He still exuded that air of mystery, and I didn’t understand him at all. In fact, even my own feelings were hard to decipher.

But still, I began to think that things might not be as horrible as I initially expected.

‘I hope that even if I were to die in the future, you two would support each other’s pillars so that neither of you collapses.’

Zigmund was a legacy of Karasho.

In his swordsmanship, his magic, fleeting habits, and the items he possessed, traces of Karasho lingered. I couldn’t deny that seeing Zigmund helped alleviate my longing for Karasho.

‘But that bastard betrayed Karasho.’

The reason I hated Zigmund was that after Karasho died, he didn’t come to her funeral, nor on her memorial days.

When Zigmund didn’t show up at Karasho’s funeral, I tried to understand him. I convinced myself that there must have been unavoidable reasons, that one day he would return and explain his absence. I waited like that.

A year passed since Karasho’s blood soaked the snowy field. Two years passed, then three, quickly ticking by. The rough gravestone I had erected for her had aged no matter how much I wiped off the dust, and as the stone wore away, my feelings for him faded too.

Every time I visited her gravestone on the anniversary, I harbored vain expectations. Hoping that there might be a shadow taller than me covering the gravestone.

I thought that maybe Zigmund would visit me at least once. Regardless of how he viewed me, he had been my friend; as much as I hated to admit it, I even missed that annoying face of his.

Yet, he never came to see me, mocking my longing.

I despaired, but I didn’t completely abandon hope.

If he hadn’t come because he didn’t want to see my face, he might have visited when I wasn’t around, perhaps leaving a flower or something. So I visited Karasho’s grave whenever I could during those early years.

All of it was futile hope.

No matter how much I searched, there was never a sign that someone had come, standing before the empty gravestone, I desperately tried to anchor my hole-punched heart.

My beloved mentor had two disciples, but only one remained in memory, which always saddened me.

Thus, six years passed. After all this time without seeing even a glimpse of Zigmund, I believed I had sorted all my feelings for him.

I wished I had no more longing to see him, hoping that he wouldn’t show his face in front of me. I wanted to treat him as a nonentity and forget.

Yet this damned bastard forced his way back into my life with a completely wrecked face, turning my entire world upside down.

When I first re-encountered him, I was filled with pure fury.

The fact that he had been absent for six years, no call or text, and suddenly returning with a face utterly void of life made me infuriated.

‘Did you really think that the death of that useless hero meant anything to me?’

The climax of my anger was ignited by a single remark about Karasho.

If I had lacked conviction, if I had not been blessed by Karasho’s teachings, I could swear I would have torn Zigmund apart at that moment.

With that one sentence, the pre-existing mix of affection and hatred shifted mostly toward hatred, and I truly believed he would remain that bastard of my life.

Our relationship seemed destined to end badly.

‘As you know, this is a place our mentor loved. I don’t want to see it destroyed. That’s all.’

Ironically, the words I heard amidst the terror eased the hardened hatred within me.

The fact that he had not forgotten Karasho disturbed me deeply.

“……Zigmund Hyde.”

I spoke the name of this long-standing enemy in a low voice. Stretching my mouth tightly, I clashed my upper and lower teeth against one another, drew a sound from under my tongue, pressed my lips together quickly, and pulled them apart again to form the word.

Even just speaking it sent ancient, thick emotions trembling like oil.

I extended the sword I had never let go of since discovering it before him. The sword that once held the deep fondness and affection of my mentor, Karasho’s sword.

I needed to confirm something.

“How can you still have this sword after humiliating my mentor like that?”

Was Zigmund still a disciple of Karasho?

Was he my friend?

 

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