Chapter 24

The armory Kiril led her to, set apart from the mansion, could not be adequately described by the simple word ‘armory.’ Inside a building the same size as the mansion, there was every weapon in the world that could harm a person. To put it bluntly, it looked as though they could wage war immediately without any difficulty.

“Maybe there are so many weapons because this is a border region?”

“Pff.”

Anton, who had ended up tagging along, let out an airy laugh.

Something Kiril threw rolled across the floor to Anton’s feet. Realizing it was a grenade, Anton jumped straight up in surprise.

Then, seeing that the safety pin had not been pulled, he looked ready to get angry, but upon remembering the other person was Kiril, he firmly shut his mouth.

“It’s just a hobby. He buys up anything strange or unusual, experimental things, or things that show up on the black market, no questions asked. There are probably at least twenty more armories like this inside mainland Russia alone.”

Anton explained to Gayeon in his place. Just as he said, everything from antique hunting rifles that looked as though they might have been used long ago to modern *ssault rifles was ‘displayed’ there.

There were rows of guns that showed no sign of ever having been used and remained in brand-new condition, and on one side were guided missiles including surface-to-air missiles, even air-to-air missiles of the kind used from helicopters or aircraft. Thanks to her adoptive father, who had owned a defense industry company, Gayeon was naturally able to recognize familiar weapons.

“Still, I don’t see any intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

When she said it like a joke, Anton’s face stiffened. An ‘intercontinental ballistic missile’ was not something a private individual could own, and it was not something that ought to be here either.

“If you’d like to see that, you’d have to go to the Moscow mansion……”

“You have one?”

Her voice rose before she realized it. Enough that Kiril, who had been putting various kinds of knives into a leather pocket, turned his gaze toward her.

“No way.”

“Hahaha, yes. There is a private individual who owns that impossible thing. Not a terrorist organization, either.”

As he said that, Anton’s finger was pointing at Kiril. When Kiril looked at him as if considering whether to break that finger, it slowly folded back down.

“It was Kiril who identified what kind of missile brought down the plane Yuri was on. He’s the type who can’t rest unless he knows every weapon in the world. He even has to know the information on what each country is developing.”

“Was it really a coincidence?”

“As if.”

Unlike what he had said to Karlena, Anton answered with a bitter smile. It was a complicated political matter. And Anton and Kiril, too, had already focused on the fact that President Belov must have known about this, considering things like Yuri’s flight number being suddenly changed.

There was no man in the world who was tolerant of his wife’s affair. The reason Yuri had been allowed to survive was, from the beginning, for Kiril, who would someday have to receive a liver transplant—they had learned that far too late.

“There is no such thing as coincidence in this world.”

After arranging knives of every size, from one as small as his palm to one as long as a forearm, into the leather case and rolling it up, Kiril said it as he picked it up.

She did not know why those words sounded not as if they referred to Yuri, the younger half-brother they were talking about now, but to the connection between herself and him.

“Why didn’t you kill me? Because it was your younger brother’s last wish?”

“It’s not good to add an unnecessary corpse to a funeral.”

If not for the younger brother named Yuri, she could imagine what would have happened that day at the mansion. This was a man who would have destroyed the thing Lloyd was obsessed with and hanged him from the very top of the mansion.

“And……”

His fingers played with the ejection port of one of the hunting rifles on display. The long barrel, stretched out sleekly, glinted darkly. Meaninglessly stroking the tip of the barrel, he smiled as though unable to endure it.

“Rather than asking why I didn’t kill you, you should ask why I’m putting up with the trouble of keeping you. I dislike that far more.”

He did not like talking too much. The Angelica Willis he had seen was tight-lipped. She did not ask rash questions, nor did she argue back. That did not mean she looked frightened of him, either.

“But when I’m with you, it feels like I’m having s*x.”

It was not Gayeon but Anton whose upper body swayed. With a face that said he had heard something he should not have heard, he dug at his ear.

“It feels utterly intoxicating.”

It made him want to reach a peak and spill something out. In fact, the smell of the s*men he had released properly for the first time in a while had been overpowering.

That urge became especially stronger when Gayeon’s hand touched him naturally. Whether by biting the skin of her neck until it bled, or by slashing his own wrist, he felt like a madman who wanted, one way or another, to make himself hard and thr*st into something.

“More than that……”

More than what he was saying, there was something that had been bothering Gayeon for a while now. She went over to Kiril’s side and, with her small height, rose on her heels and stretched out her hand.

She took out a small pocket knife from the display case. All the knives here were sharpened as though they were always kept maintained.

“This is better. For skinning.”

It had kept bothering her.

The knife Kiril had chosen would be useful for skinning an animal, but it looked too big and inconvenient for her to use. She unrolled the leather case again and, even standing on tiptoe, still had to look up at him, taller than herself.

“Can I switch it?”

“You’re planning to skin it yourself?”

“I’ll skin it. If you get hard while skinning an animal, people will call it bestiality.”

“Ahem, hm, hm. I think I’ll head out now. I don’t know whose skin you two are going to peel off together, but have fun with it.”

Struggling desperately to keep the corners of his mouth from lifting any higher, Anton left the armory.

“You must have hunted a lot. Ah, come to think of it, you tried to shoot me with a gun used for catching wild boars.”

She had looked rather practiced then. Taking Kiril’s words as a simple acknowledgment, Gayeon switched out the knife in the leather case.

“The forest is dangerous. And my adoptive father taught me that even if you’re a woman, you should know how to shoot.”

After changing the knife, Gayeon this time picked up, from among the different types of guns, a shotgun that was likewise used for hunting wild boars.

“I’ll take this one. With a rifle, you have to hit right between the eyes in one shot, so that’s a bit difficult for me.”

A shotgun, at the moment of firing, hits the target and the shot spreads and tears into it from all directions, inflicting a fatal wound.

For her, this was ideal, since it could deal a fatal injury no matter where it hit. No matter how much she practiced shooting, hitting a moving target was difficult for her.

“If all the flesh gets blown away, stuffing it will be difficult.”

As though the taxidermy talk had not been a joke, Kiril said it with feigned seriousness.

“And difficult to eat too. If you want to have it stuffed, you have to hit the nape or dead center between the eyes.”

“I’ll pass. I don’t have that kind of hobby.”

She refused with a smile, but Kiril did not smile.

“There should be clothes inside that Mother wore when she was younger. I’ll tell Anton to prepare them.”

Just thinking about wandering through the mountains made the tip of her nose sting from the cold already.

“I already know you can ride, so as long as you’re careful about the cold, that should be enough.”

Telling her to wrap herself up all the way to the tip of her nose, Kiril smiled kindly.

“……We really are going hunting, right?”

“Why. Does it not seem that way?”

Gayeon sniffled. He asked back in such a gentle, soft voice, and yet she could not understand why it sent a chill through her.

“When you smile like that, things usually don’t end very well.”

“You catch on fast.”

Leaving behind that meaningful remark, Kiril smiled warmly. Right, this man had smiled like this before catching the bear, and after catching it too. But then as now, there was nothing Gayeon could do.