So you’ve come after all.

It was a dream he had once been tormented by endlessly, but had not had in over a year and a half.

“……”

He remembered clearly the last time he had this dream, the one where his mother appeared without fail.

It had been around the time Adeline told him she was pregnant.

After that dream, his mother’s specter had not visited him for a long while. And yet here she was again. He supposed she must have grown quite bored in the meantime.

Sitting in the middle of this wretched dream that had returned after so long, he told himself it would go away on its own when the time came, and accepted it with dry resignation. It was all very familiar to Kailen.

In this dream where his mother appeared, no matter what he did, he could never wake up in the middle of it. He could only open his eyes once she disappeared. He had learned this through countless experiences, so he no longer struggled desperately to pull himself out.

Ah, this miserable dream has started again. He would watch it from a distance, and before long it would end.

“……”

This miserable dream always began with him looking at his mother’s white feet dangling in midair. His mother, who had hanged herself in the dressing room, was straining against the cord tightening around her neck, eyes wide open. She had boldly hanged herself, and yet she could not manage to die. It was, in a way, almost absurdly funny.

〈……Ugh…… Kgh.〉

Just before the whites of her eyes, burst red with broken vessels, rolled back completely, his mother fell to the floor with a thud, gurgling. Whether it was because it was her first attempt and she had been clumsy, or because the knot of the noose she had made from a curtain cord had not held tight enough.

His younger self held his mother, who was writhing like an insect with both hands gripping the cord around her neck. As he watched the image of his younger self weeping endlessly, his vision gradually turned white.

And then, still unable to escape the dream, the place where ten-year-old Kailen stood shifted. When the sound of dripping water reached his ears and the sharp stench of alcohol filled the air,

his mother appeared without fail, lying on the sofa, drawing the broken glass of a liquor bottle across her wrist. Then she looked at him through eyes glazed with drink and drugs and asked.

〈Do you want to come too?〉

His mother, pointing the blood-smeared shard of glass at Kailen, failed once again to sever her stubborn hold on life. Half-soaked in alcohol as she was, there was no way she had cut her wrist properly.

〈You miss your father and your brother too, don’t you?〉

We are a family, so we ought to be together. He would listen to his mother’s cackling laughter for a while, and then his vision would go white again, and before he knew it he was eleven years old, looking down at his mother’s body, bloated and waterlogged.

Black hair plastered to pale greenish-grey cheeks. A tongue that had slipped slightly out. The faint smell of water and blood. A foot with its shoe gone, covered in countless small wounds. Fingernails and toenails turned a pale, lifted white.

After a long succession of attempts, his mother had finally gotten her wish. She must have steeled herself with remarkable resolve, because she had thrown herself into the river below.

The eleven-year-old boy surrounded by people beneath the grey-white bridge did not shed a single tear in front of his mother’s body, unlike when he had been nine.

As he gazed at his quiet mother, found as a drowned body on the second day of her disappearance, her pale corpse would begin to come apart piece by piece, and before long he would wake from the dream on his own.

That was always how it had been……

But this time, that wretched dream was a little different. To be precise, everything up to the part where his mother cut her wrist was the same as before. But at the very end, the body pulled from the water onto the bank beneath the bridge did not seem to be his mother’s.

Golden hair flowing along visibly swollen and burst grey-white skin, catching the afternoon sunlight like golden sand.

The eyes visible through the violet eyelids that had not closed all the way were green too.

Wh…… what.

Only then did he realize that the figure in the dream was not his mother but Adeline, and his entire body convulsed violently. He had not even registered that he was dreaming, but his thrashing was so fierce that the bed shook.

“……Hah!”

Kailen shot upright from the billowing blankets and dragged in a ragged breath.

“Ha…… d*mn it.”

What kind of a nightmare is this?

His mother’s specter had overlaid itself onto his wife. The indescribable horror of it made him feel as though his head might split open. He shoved his sweat-damp hair back from his face, his expression twisting.

“Absolutely wretched. Wretched.”

He never wanted to have a nightmare like this again. He would rather face the unpleasant specter of his parents clinging to his ankles every single night than this.

Adeline was a woman with a trauma around blood. A woman who went pale at the mere sight of blood, and yet she had cut her own wrist……

What a fool……

He had heard the news over the phone that same day, that Adeline had hurt herself. They had told him the wound was not deep and not to worry, but a chill had run down his spine. And at the same time, he had been utterly dumbfounded. He had felt that if he went home and saw his foolish wife in that state right away, his anger would boil over, so he had put off returning.

He had steeled himself thoroughly before going to see his wife after so long, but the moment he saw the white bandage wrapped around her slender wrist, a surge of emotion rose in him that he could not hold back.

The one saving grace was that he had at least not committed the disgrace of rambling on about his wretched mother’s end in front of her.

Kailen lifted his hand from his forehead, raised his head, and looked around. The hotel room, bathed in a soft crimson glow, was utterly silent. It was neither his bedroom nor Adeline’s, and he thought it had been the right choice to stay at a hotel near the branch office, since more matters had piled up requiring his attention.

He thought that if he had woken up in his own house in his current state of mind, he might have gone to find Adeline without a second thought.

The image came to him of what he might do if he lost his composure and went to his wife’s bedroom, whether he would grab the woman who already seemed on the verge of breaking and make a scene, or whether he would cling to her pathetically in search of her warmth. The thought disgusted him, and he pressed his hand over his mouth.

“Wretched.”

He himself was wretched, but his wife Adeline, refined and of noble birth, was in some ways an even more maddening woman than his own mother. She was a woman who laid bare the very worst of him. She felt like a swamp he could never escape, one that slowly drained the life out of him.

Kailen steadied his exhausted breathing, got out of bed, and headed to the bathroom. Four in the morning. A deep, bone-heavy fatigue pressed down on his entire body. It was a bit early to start the day, but lying back down would not bring sleep anyway. It was better to cool his overheated head under cold water than to stare blankly at the ceiling and hear things that were not there.

Standing at the bathroom door, still grinding out curses under his breath, red blood was seeping from his side and soaking into the white of his robe.

* * *

He had barely stepped out of the car that stopped in front of the Varsen branch building when a flash of white light stabbed at his eyelids. Unlike the early morning sunlight that still carried a blue tinge, the bursting flashes were quite grating.

“Councilman!”

Click, click, Kailen turned his head reflexively toward the camera shutters and bursting flashes, but he had not managed to compose his expression in time.

“Councilman! We have questions! Just one look over here, please!”

Collen quickly stepped in front of the cameras and bowed his head, trying to placate the reporters.

“We respectfully decline any interviews not arranged in advance. Please, everyone, step back.”

But Collen’s polite refusal and earnest appeals had no effect. In the end, building security and aides came rushing out and formed a ring around the reporters. Still, four or five of them raised their voices, competing to be heard.

“Please wait just a moment, Councilman. There is something we must ask you!”

One reporter, peering at Kailen’s sharp jawline and cool eyes through the camera lens, flinched and swallowed.

“Um…… is it true that Miss Melcher administered a harmful substance to your wife?”

Kailen’s steps stopped at that question, and the reporters seized the moment, questions pouring out all at once.

“Councilman, can you tell us exactly what that substance was? Did your wife truly miscarry because of it?”

“Do you have any idea who might be behind what Miss Melcher did? There are those saying William Rosenthal is the most likely suspect. What do you think, Councilman?”

Passersby on the street began turning to look as the commotion grew. The larger the crowd, the more certain it was that the reporters would only get louder.

“Enough, enough. We will arrange an official press conference shortly.”

Collen was breaking into a cold sweat beside him when Kailen stepped slightly forward and gave a quiet laugh.

“This does not seem like a matter light enough to address here.”