Everything was a gift planned for this day. His goal was to obtain Melissa after disrupting that child using Rael and Sion.

While the hotel in the forest was difficult to approach with its exposed surroundings, a foreign security-specialized hotel in the city was different.

He probably thought to keep his precious treasure hidden away all to himself, but excessive caution instead brings disaster. That was what Selheim truly wanted.

‘Drawing Melissa out.’

After killing a friend who was like family with his own hands, and having his beloved wife disappear too, what expression would that child make?

Would he finally show the expression Selheim had been wanting to see?

Simply putting a bullet in his head and making a pretty corpse would be unsatisfying. Crushing him slowly from fingertips to toes, gradually breaking him down from mind to body would be the most painful.

For daring to touch their Mel, he wanted to quarter that bastard alive, cut off his manhood and throw it to the pig pen – only then would his anger be satisfied.

Selheim clenched his fist with sad and lonely eyes. While his reflection in the mirror was beautiful, his inner self was being dyed with an ugly black color.

He suddenly felt something flowing from his eyes. What could this be? The man smiled faintly as he looked at the wetness that had fallen on the back of his hand.

“It must be raining.”

* * *

The blood-stained floor was nauseating just to look at. Reizen froze in place for a moment seeing Sion in the electric chair, with his finger and toenails pulled out one by one.

On the back of his right hand was the mangled trace of a bullet wound that hadn’t been treated. Reizen’s breath grew short. He opened his mouth to take a deep breath and exhaled quietly.

“He didn’t reveal anything particularly useful.”

A middle-aged man wearing a green hat approached Sion, who had collapsed unconscious, while smoking a cigar. The man, who looked like a soldier with a face full of scars, lifted Sion’s eyelids to check his pupil’s response to see if he was dead.

“Since he knows about our base, it would be better to dispose of him. What do you think, Commander?”

His attitude was extremely disrespectful for speaking to a superior. He was once Reizen’s military academy instructor and senior by far.

Reizen looked at him with a silent gaze.

“…May I have a conversation with him?”

Though it wouldn’t save the spy’s life, the man who had taught both of them during their school days raised his thick eyebrows as if agreeing and stepped aside.

“Sion.”

A voice as deeply soaked as the monsoon season echoed through the empty room. When there was no answer, he quietly took a seat in front of him. The wooden chair felt damp with blood soaked all through it.

After a moment, Sion, who seemed to have trouble even lifting his eyelids, opened his mouth with a hoarse voice.

“…Rei…”

It sounded like the final words of a dying old man. Reizen choked back the emotion welling up inside him.

He had many questions he wanted to ask on his way here.

Why he betrayed him, since when, if he never thought of coming back.

But what came out of his mouth was something completely different.

“Moore… you shouldn’t have killed him.”

When Sion coughed, blood sprayed everywhere. There must have been blood pooled in his mouth too, as the man raised his head with clouded eyes after coughing for a while.

“Had no… choice.”

Since Selheim was using Marita’s shop like a toy box, Reizen’s side naturally had to spy on the place, and Moore was assigned that task.

To avoid suspicion while frequently visiting the pleasure district, he volunteered to be a debauched knight. It was a decision that no one who knew a knight’s pride could easily make.

“But if I didn’t do it, someone had to. From what I saw, Sion would be hopeless at seducing women, and Whilton? Oh. Women hate men with bird’s nests for hair. And Erich… what if that kid actually fell in love while on the mission.”

Moore patted Reizen’s back with a light laugh. Don’t worry, friend. I don’t care about my honor anyway. If we can get closer to our ideal, step on me to go up. Higher, higher.

Remembering Moore’s words made Reizen despair once again. He had climbed higher as Moore wished, but the reality he faced as a result was miserable.

“Why… did you do it?”

If only I had trusted a little more.

“I…”

Reizen couldn’t continue speaking. His throat closed up and he pressed his hand tightly over his mouth. The veins in his neck bulged. Resentment, betrayal, and gut-wrenching sorrow stirred like a storm inside him.

Sion smiled hazily watching such a Reizen.

‘You’re smiling?’

How can you smile now?

You’re about to die, and I’m about to become someone who killed a friend.

Sion spoke.

“I thought… you would lose.”

Saliva and blood mixed together and dripped down as he opened his mouth to smile. Yet despite looking like that, Sion’s expression seemed rather refreshed.

“Because history… doesn’t change easily.”

Reizen stared at Sion with a hardened expression.

“Because countless people who dreamed of revolution lost their lives and were forgotten. Justice, everyone’s happiness… I thought such things would forever remain utopian ideals.”

Sion’s voice shook with tears.

“Those idiots… who can’t even see reality… Morons who only focus on putting on shows… chasing ideals… that’s what I thought.”

So he carried out the orders passed down through his family. The head of the Clark family, his eldest brother, was a madman who killed their father and second brother to take the position himself when their father tried to change the succession.

Rather than resist the madman right away, Sion had chosen a realistic life. But.

“I was wrong.”

Tears rolled down Sion’s cheeks. His voice trembling pitifully conveyed his sincerity. Reizen bit his parched lips.

“Being here… I can hear the voices of commoners outside. The sound of protests that were unimaginable before.”

The world is changing little by little through someone’s efforts.

Things that seemed absolutely impossible, that we couldn’t even try because we were so discouraged… could somehow be achieved.

Sion said he realized this fact while by Reizen’s side. But by the time he wanted to return to him, it was already after killing Moore. When Moore discovered his spy activities, he dealt with him on the spot. After killing a friend, he couldn’t step back or hesitate anymore.

Like a speeding train that can’t stop midway, once the rails ahead were set, there was no choice but to keep running with the burden of guilt…

But now those rails have been cut off. It means he doesn’t have to run anymore. Sion said he was truly happy about that as he laughed while sobbing.

“But now I… think you’ll win. Because you’re the only one who has survived no matter what he did.”

Reizen closed his eyes without responding.

“Even if I die, don’t break down, Reizen.”

Is this what you say to someone who’s going to kill you?

Reizen’s closed eyes trembled. He tried to calm his heart. Showing emotion to an enemy was unacceptable.

But when he collected himself and opened his eyes, the one bleeding and smiling before him was not an enemy but still a friend.

Damn it.

Reizen’s brow creased harshly.

At that moment, a mass of blood gushed out of Sion’s mouth.

Reizen felt as if he had gone deaf, unable to hear anything. The sight of his dying friend played out in slow motion before his eyes.

The image of his mother writhing in a bloody mess overlapped with his friend’s image.

People rushed in from behind to check Sion’s condition. When they broke his neck and opened his mouth, what appeared to be poison powder was found inside.

It was suicide.

Sion had intended to die from the start. He had come to him with poison powder in his mouth or throat that would kill him when it burst.

If so, he didn’t need to endure the brutal torture all night. If he had died right when he was caught, he could have gone without pain…

Don’t break down even if I die?

Was that what he wanted to say?

Reizen collapsed in his spot with a hollow laugh. The wooden chair soaked with Sion’s blood still retained its warmth.

Looking at the blood on his palm, he thought.

This must have been what Selheim wanted.

Terion must have known his brother was captured but didn’t come to save him. As if marking that place as where he would die.

“Those bastards…”

Ironically, what motivated Reizen to start all this wasn’t anything grand. It was because of his friends.

Back when he was shut away in the Rose Maze, he thought he was the most pitiful person in the world. But when he came out, that wasn’t true.

There are many different kinds of people in the world. Each living with their own stories.

Reizen’s friends were like that too. Most were commoners, and occasionally abandoned nobles who were second sons or later, or children born out of wedlock.

He wasn’t the only one who was unhappy.