Chapter 15

Johannes pulled a cigarette from the pack in his jacket and put it between his lips. When he flicked the lighter and drew on the filter, harsh smoke burrowed into his throat. The deeply inhaled smoke soaked his lungs and then poured back out through his mouth and nose. As the cigarette smoke coursed through his blood, his mind grew hazy. With blurred eyes, he followed Judith, who walked with her shoulders drooping. She could simply ask me for help. He did not know why she insisted on making things so difficult. If he had not visited the Loewe house that day with Grandmother, he would never have known about Judith’s sly and dangerous plan. To think she would boldly try to find a man through an advertisement. Meeting lowlifes was one problem, but just imagining Judith laughing and flirting with some decent man made his chest ache sharply.

Johannes had been restless ever since seeing how much Judith had changed after meeting her again for the first time in thirteen years. Unlike before, Judith’s cold and chilly behavior only left him at a loss.

Where had Judith who had cried and welcomed him on the day of Elijah’s engagement gone?

Johannes frowned as he recalled that night.

Judith had clearly looked at him and smiled as if she were about to cry. She even kissed his cheek first, telling him not to disappear again. And then she leaned her hot body into his arms and said she wanted to rest. He had thought she had become bold as an adult, and since they were adults now, he judged it to be an acceptable relationship. So, using the sausage Judith had liked since childhood as an excuse, he joined their bodies together.

[I want this sausage to be mine.]

The feeling of being trapped in those warm, wet inner walls was vivid. He had gripped and sucked her soft br*asts again and again. It had not been a dream. It had been real. He had always ravished her only in imagination. It felt as though he had finally been freed from the guilt that clung to him like a tag. She wants  him too. That’s why he’s this hot. Every time he split into her, he had been intoxicated by joy.

[Hng, this feels so good.]

In the middle of devouring her, unease had attacked him. Was it because she was drunk, or had she been with other men several times before? Judith, who looked innocent but was also quite bold, frightened him. She was supposed to belong only to him. Was it already too late? He was frightened and desperate that she might no longer be the Judith Loewe he had known.

The deeper his thoughts became, the more he crushed her small body in his arms and moved against her. Whether she knew his feelings or not, Judith had taken his length into her small soft mouth and sucked. He had thought his heart would burst.

Johannes swallowed dryly as he remembered the n*pple Judith had sucked that night. It had stung and hurt for three full days. She must have sucked hard, because the area around his chest had been covered in bruises. The nail marks engraved on his chest had been turned into a tattoo at a back-alley tattoo shop before they faded. To make it clear who the owner of the sausage was.

And yet she thought she could go around looking for some man other than him? The more he thought about it, the more fire rose inside him. He  should have carved him name onto Judith’s chest too. It felt unfair and miserable.

Johannes imagined the pale flesh marked with his own initials and blushed. He wanted to kiss the br*asts that had swayed so sweetly. He wanted to s*ck at those sweet peaks like candy. If he had known she would not remember, he would have stayed inside her until morning. Of all things……. Had he known he would end up in this situation, he would have prepared more thoroughly. Fool.

Johannes smoked as he silently followed Judith from behind. Ever since returning to Bayer, all he had done was trail after Judith. He wanted to stay close to her somehow. But for whatever reason, she never gave him the slightest opening. Ever since that night, she had been like a rose full of thorns. If he came near, he got pricked; if he stayed far away, she was a lush rose he wanted to touch.

“Wow, Judith Loewe. How long has it been?”

The golden hair that had been swaying softly down her back went still. Her small pale face lifted and stared at someone standing before her.

Josef Klein. Why, of all people, did it have to be that bastard she ran into out on the street? Even from the back of her head, Johannes could feel how glad Judith was to see him. Josef Klein, smiling clearly at Judith, was attractive even to another man’s eyes. There was a strange light in his bluish-gray eyes. Yes. That guy had always looked at Judith with eyes like that. As though he wanted her badly enough to die.

He wanted to run out that instant and drag Judith into his arms, but he could not. If she already snapped at him for merely acting familiar in the street, then if he appeared in front of a man she liked, she might say she would sever all ties with him. If you knew how I lived just to come back to you, you shouldn’t be like this. Judith.

“I think I saw you just a month ago.”

“It’s already been a month since we met? Wow, that’s far too long.”

“Ha. You really are……”

At one slippery line from Josef, you smile helplessly again, and I fall sick. He turned his back on Judith and Josef, who seemed wrapped in a warm and easy air. He filled his aching chest with cigarette smoke and forced his feet to move, though they did not want to.

Ha. Judith.

Please. Judith.

* * *

A heavy sigh settled down over the worktable where the dancing figure painting of the Kingdom of Alkairo lay spread out.

Judith was in the middle of checking the condition of the relic, carefully brushing the surface of the painting with a fine, soft brush. It was an object over a thousand years old, so even the slightest lapse in attention could damage it. She ought to have been careful, yet she could not concentrate at all.

Judith put the brush back into the container holding her restoration materials and simply stared at the dancing figure painting. On the dark brown paper, aged with decay, faint images remained of figures wearing only short lower garments, dancing with arms and legs outstretched. Now that it had come into her hands, this painting would be restored in clear lines and colors for everyone to recognize easily. Holding onto time that was disappearing. Judith preferred examining the lives of people who had been buried in the earth and reduced to bare bones rather than living, breathing people. Sometimes she even looked at relics and spoke to them. Asking why they had made such a choice. Asking whether that time had been comfortable. Such trivial things. Perhaps she communicated better with relics than with the living, and at the very least, they did not stab painful places with words.

“Ha.”

Judith took off the glasses she had been wearing and held them in her hand. She leaned her aching back against the chair and tilted her head back. Closing her dry eyes, she quietly drew in a breath and let it out. As the old smell exhaled by ancient objects flowed into her lungs and then out again, the noise in her mind settled.

With Johannes’s return, the nightmare had evolved. In the past, it had centered on the moment her confession was ignored, but these days it was dominated by scenes of her teasing a bare Johannes. Whenever she woke from those nightmares, she despised herself so much from the shame that she wanted to throttle her own neck. It was even worse because she could not remember what had happened that night. Johannes had said she had been rather rough. Just what had she done for him to call her rough? They said forgetfulness was a gift from God, but in her case it felt more like a punishment.

Judith dug both hands into the hair she had twisted up and fastened together. Why did it have to be Johannes of all people? If she had known he had come back, she would have guarded herself. Elijah probably had not known he would be attending her engagement ceremony either. If she had, she would have screamed herself hoarse that that bastard had returned. The one who had ignored a pure young girl’s confession. Elijah hated Johannes intensely for trampling all over a young girl’s dreams and hopes and turning her into someone incapable of romance. But the real problem had been the fool who poured drink down her throat that day without thinking. Whom could she blame?