Christoph leaned against the closet door, facing Jeong Taeui, silently looking at Ilay without saying a word.

“You weren’t around this evening.”

“I went to take a break.”

“Hmm…… But for some reason, I smell something familiar.”

Ilay raised an eyebrow as he spoke. Jeong Taeui widened his eyes and looked at him. As expected, he’s got a nose like a bloodhound.

Ilay raised an eyebrow as he spoke. Jeong Taeui widened his eyes and looked at him. As expected, he’s got a nose like a bloodhound.

“So, you know too?” – Christoph asked curiously. Ilay looked at him questioningly. It seemed he didn’t understand what Christoph was talking about.

“That medicine he applied. He got it from Jeong Changin, and he knew what it was. I’ve never seen anything like it before, it even smelled strange… But does it really work? I’d rather use it on a bruise or something……”

Christoph mumbled vaguely and then closed his mouth. He got lost in thought for a moment, then glanced at Jeong Taeui’s stomach, covered by his shirt.

Ilay turned to look at him.

“Medicine? You applied medicine? What kind?”

“…… A bruise ointment.” – Jeong Taeui muttered as he pointed to his side with his thumb. In response, Ilay only widened his eyes slightly and said nothing.

At that moment, Christoph suddenly seemed to remember something. “I’ll be back,” – He said briefly before leaving the room.

Jeong Taeui stared blankly at Christoph’s retreating figure as he walked out without even looking back, then murmured to himself as if talking to no one in particular.

“It must be because you came that he left so suddenly…….”

“Why would he leave because I came?”

“If not, there would be no reason for him to go out at this time. The timing is coincidental. A crow flies, a ship sinks*……. In other words, it’s your fault.”

(*까마귀는 날고 배는 떨어지고: A crow flies, a ship sinks: doing something simultaneously with another bad event happening => being unjustly suspected. For example, a person working overtime until 10 PM passes through an empty park, and at the same time, a person goes missing nearby => unjustly suspected that they didn’t do anything.)

“……Do you understand what you’re saying?”

“It’s not your fault, but it’s also your fault.”

Jeong Taeui made his claim confidently and lifted his chin with pride. Ilay narrowed his eyes and stared at him in disbelief, but soon let out a quiet chuckle.

“But still, is it really okay to barge into someone else’s room in the middle of the night? And not just anyone’s—Christoph’s room, no less.”

“Do you even know how many years I spent with that guy in the same Task Force?”

Jeong Taeui nodded while watching Ilay laugh sarcastically. Perhaps Christoph didn’t say anything about Ilay’s sudden appearance in his room because it happened too often. …… It was just that Jeong Taeui felt uncomfortable for some reason. 

Out of habit, Jeong Taeui clicked his tongue and rubbed his side without even realizing it. Illei, who had been watching him, gave a small nod of his chin. When Jeong Taeui looked up with a questioning “Hm?”, Ilay nodded again, this time gesturing toward the hem of his shirt with his chin.

Jeong Taeui glanced at him a bit heepishly, then obediently lifted his shirt.

“My side’s really popular today……”

He muttered like a sigh. In front of him, Ilay silently stared at the exposed skin. His cold eyes held no particular emotion.

“…….”

Jeong Taeui stared at him while Ilay looked around his stomach.

‘It seemed unlikely, but could he be feeling guilty?’

Jeong Taeui scratched his head.

If Ilay was apologizing, it was only right to accept it. But strangely, Jeong Taeui didn’t really feel angry or resentful. Maybe he’d felt a flash of indignation, something like: ‘That bastard shot me, even if it was a mistake, and doesn’t even apologize?!’—but even that had faded quickly. After all, that was just the kind of guy he was, so Jeong Taeui had let it slide. It wasn’t intentional—it had been an accident.

He remembered learning once in a lecture on interpersonal relationships that emotionally lashing out over a harmless accident was one of the worst ways to respond.

Still……. if he was feeling guilty about it—

Jeong Taeui tilted his head to the side and looked at Ilay with gentle eyes. He smiled faintly and blurted out.

“Since coming to this house, I’ve been hit by you many times.”

At that moment, Ilay, who had been silently looking at Jeong Taeui’s exposed torso, raised his eyebrows.

From the way he was looking, it was hard to tell whether he genuinely felt sorry—or if he was just admiring his own handiwork with a sense of pride.

Their eyes met.

When Jeong Taeui gave him a goofy grin, he seemed to frown slightly, then let out a quiet laugh. That laugh quickly faded, though.

“I told you to go back to Berlin. Why are you going out of your way to make things harder for yourself?”

“No, but the book…….”

“The book? So, if I get that book back for you, will you go back to Berlin?”

Ilay slowly approached and sat next to Jeong Taeui. He sat so close that only a hand’s width of space remained.

He smiled mischievously, and although his tone sounded like he was joking, it seemed he wasn’t joking at all.

Jeong Taeui stared at Ilay and scratched his stomach, accidentally touching the bruise. He couldn’t help but let out a soft “Ow” before calming down and lowering his shirt. Seeing that, Ilay clicked his tongue in annoyance.

“Well… If that’s the case, then I have no reason to stay here anymore.” – Jeong Taeui responded, then after a moment of silence, asked.

“But why are you so eager to send me away? You’ve been trying to get rid of me for a while now…… Are you really secretly living a double life?”

The last words were almost muttered to himself.

But quickly, he shook his head.

How could someone like him live a double life? Someone like him, if he truly found someone he liked, would openly bring that person to his home.

“A double life?”

Ilay muttered with a tone of utter disbelief, as if it were a word he’d never heard before.

Beside her, Jeong Taeui was lost in his own daydreams. Still not fully out of them, he looked at Ilay.

“Then maybe I could finally go back to Korea for a while. No need to stay in Germany—just live at our place……Oh. Right. I’m a wanted criminal.”

He remembered as he spoke.

The main reason Jeong Taeui was in Berlin was because of that man, but part of it was also due to Kyle’s protection. Being able to enjoy a somewhat peaceful, almost retired life as a wanted man—he owed that entirely to Kyle.

So what would he do, then? Maybe cling to his brother or his uncle… Jeong Taeui mumbled to himself, already sketching out an anxious plan for an uncertain future. Over his head, a completely dumbfounded stare shot his way. But Jeong Taeui didn’t notice it—and that look only grew colder.

“Cut the nonsense. That’s not going to happen—now or ever.”

“Oh really?”

At those words, Jeong Taeui erased his anxious future plans without hesitation.

Maybe something else would come up to throw his future into uncertainty—but it seemed that this wasn’t going to be one of those things. He rarely said anything comforting, but he had never once said something without meaning it.

“If possible, try to be back in Berlin before the succession day.”

Ilay returned to the earlier topic.

Jeong Taeui simply looked at him in silence, waiting for him to explain the connection between the succession day and returning to Berlin.

Ilay stretched an arm back, resting it on the bed just behind the stool, and settled into a comfortable position. Then he spoke casually.

“If Christoph’s mother comes, he’s going to become even more unstable.”

Jeong Taeui was stunned, then frowned; it didn’t seem to fit the context of the current conversation.

“How could he become more unstable?”

Jeong Taeui pointed to the door where Christoph had just left.

Christoph’s already unstable enough. While he did show a more composed side in front of Jeong Taeui, from Jeong Taeui’s perspective, he was already plenty unstable. Any more than this, and he’d have no choice but to be institutionalized.

Leaning back comfortably in his seat, Ilay suddenly spoke, his eyes naturally drifting to where the light fixture swayed slightly just below the ceiling.

“Have you ever killed a butterfly?”

“What?”

” A butterfly. Or, well, a dragonfly.”

Jeong Taeui stared blankly at Ilay, precisely at his profile.

He truly couldn’t understand what Ilay meant with that slightly lethargic tone.

“…… Huh?”

Jeong Taeui replied with a frown.

When he was a child, there was a pond and a wide open field near his house, so dragonflies were always flying around.

As summer deepened, the dragonflies began to appear one by one, and by the time autumn came, they had turned into bright red autumn darters, covering the nearby fields.

Jeong Taeui used to run around with his neighborhood friends, swinging dragonfly nets. One of them collected dragonflies the way people collect butterfly specimens, and before he knew it, the boy’s net would be filled to the brim with dragonflies. Many of them would end up dead before they even got back home.

Seeing those lifeless bodies, dead like insects, made him feel sick. After that, he stopped catching dragonflies—or butterflies, or anything like them.

“When we were kids, some of us used to catch butterflies, tear off their wings, and pull off their legs for fun.”

At Ilay’s words, Jeong Taeui frowned.

“No, I never played like that.” – Taeui muttered, and Ilay glanced at him with a faintly amused look in his eyes.

“When you’re a kid, butterflies, dragonflies, worms, pill bugs—children kill those things for no reason at all. It’s just play.”

“Mm…… there are kids like that.”

There’s probably no one who hasn’t killed at least one small creature when they were little. Even an ant, at the very least. Children are innocent and cruel.

Sometimes, when you reread the fairy tales you heard as a child, you’re surprised. Was it always this brutal and horrifying?

Clearly, it was still the same book with the same content as when he was young, not missing a single word.

Stories that once brought him joy, watched without the slightest hesitation, now caught on certain parts and gave him pause.

In truth, cruelty was simply human nature intertwined with pity, and the things we learn as we grow only serve to cover it up. Jeong Taeui sometimes found himself thinking this.

“If you really think about it, children are crueler than adults. They’ll laugh and stomp on ants just for fun.”

As Jeong Taeui muttered this, Ilay nodded and replied,

“True. Then, would other children be afraid of a kid who kills ants?”

Jeong Taeui looked at Ilay curiously. Ilay still wore that vague smile.

“So what about this? A child who kills squirrels, rabbits, or dogs with the same ease as crushing ants.”

“… ―.”

“Christoph’s mother was horrified by him to the point of being repulsed.”

Jeong Taeui fell silent. Ilay’s words, spoken as casually as if recounting an everyday story, sent a chill through his chest.

“‘What’s the difference between killing a rabbit and killing an ant?’ He asked, looking genuinely confused. Said his mother screamed.”

“…… It’s pretty telling that he asked you that. What, did you help him kill it or something?”

Jeong Taeui muttered quietly, and Ilay laughed.

“Not a chance. Believe it or not, I’ve never killed an ant or a butterfly without a reason—not even once, even as a kid.”

‘I think I heard…… that before even starting school, you swung an axe at a friend…… if you could really call them a friend.”

Jeong Taeui stared at Ilay with wide eyes before quickly looking away. Ilay continued slowly,

“It wasn’t just limited to animals. Christoph was…… a little unhinged from the start, in the most conventional sense of the word. Pain meant nothing to him. The pain of others, his own pain…… At least now he’s learned how to disguise himself, but back then? There wasn’t even that. He’d just hurt things. For no reason at all.”

Like how you’d crush an ant. Like how you’d kill a fly.

“In fact, some kids found Christoph even more unsettling than me.”

“That’s…… truly disturbing.”

Jeong Taeui muttered the words blankly, like a fool.

Ilay fell silent for a while. His hand, resting on the bed, began slowly tapping the blanket.

“The real problem was that Christoph felt nothing toward his own pain either. Emotionally speaking, he lacked any form of self-defense.”

Ilay said from beside him. Jeong Taeui bowed his head and looked at his toes.

Not being able to feel pain……

He wasn’t sure what that truly meant. He might have understood it intellectually, but he couldn’t actually imagine it—because Jeong Taeui wasn’t like that.

Then, suddenly, a thought struck him.

If you keep enduring pain, over and over, yet never feel it – left completely defenseless – you’ll eventually die.

Whether it’s your body or your mind.

Without even realizing you’re dying. Just tilting your head in confusion, thinking: ‘This is strange…… This is strange……’

“That guy’s mind works in two layers. In some ways, he feels and perceives things just like everyone else—yet in others, not at all. And the one thing that makes him think somewhat like a normal person…… is his mother. The mother who finds him utterly terrifying and recoils from him in fear.”

Ilay drew out the last syllable: “……fear-ful mo-therrr”,  as if trailing off into silence. He seemed unwilling to continue further.

Jeong Taeui glanced at Ilay, then turned his head away again.

He kept looking at his feet, then at his wiggling toes, then briefly up at the ceiling, before finally letting out a sigh.

“That’s not something I wanted to hear.”

Jeong Taeui’s voice sounded drained.

Christoph today might still be the same as when he was young. He was cruel. He was cruel for no reason, and no matter how cruel he was, he didn’t remember it.

Just like the man sitting next to him.

But Christoph and Ilay were still different.

Different in what way?

“……. Really…….”

Jeong Taeui grumbled: “Ugh, I really didn’t want to hear this. Should’ve kept my mouth shut”, and yanked at his own hair in frustration.

Watching him, Ilay suddenly smiled: “Well then, Taei.”

Jeong Taeui eyed that faint, curling smile with suspicion. Ilay lowered his voice further, almost whispering into his ear:

“Why do you think I told you all this?”

“…… One lunatic deeply entangled in my life is more than enough.” 

Jeong Taeui muttered sullenly, prompting Ilay to raise an eyebrow slightly. The smile that surfaced at the corner of his lips was so faint it was hard to discern, but the subtle crinkling around his narrowed eyes clearly said: ‘What an excellent answer.’

Jeong Taeui studied him intently.

He gazed for a long while at this man who always carried himself with such easy composure, yet never quite concealed the cold glint beneath—then finally let out a quiet sigh.

“Just handling one lunatic is exhausting enough…… Who knows, he might even end up shooting me someday.”

‘I should humanize him before that happens…… But the more I learn, the further away that goal seems.’

Ilay Riegrow remained as unpredictable as ever.

Only one thing could be predicted.

That he would always act unpredictably.

He often discarded things he liked or had liked for a long time without hesitation.

‘When you think about it—though some part of me vaguely sensed it wouldn’t come to that—it wouldn’t be strange if he turned the gun on me one day.’

‘See? Today, he actually fired. Even if it was an accident, even if it was just a joke, he still pointed the barrel at me.’

Suddenly, his side throbbed again, and Jeong Taeui let out a muffled grumble through clenched teeth.

“…… Me?”

Then, a quiet voice drifted from beside him.

It was a voice stripped bare, not a trace of emotion left. A stark contrast to moments ago.

Jeong Taeui turned to look. Ilay was watching him with an expressionless face, murmuring under his breath as if talking to himself:

“Yeah…… yeah. That could happen. That could definitely happen.”

It took Jeong Taeui a few seconds to realize those words were a reply to his own earlier muttering.

He clicked his tongue.

‘I know this is your normal, but did you have to say it out loud where I could hear? Maybe I really should open a “Common Sense Academy” for guys like you. Start with the basics, like “Things You Should Never Say Aloud”.’

With a bitter twist of his lips, he finally said:

“Well, that’s for later. For now, I just have to manage and get on with life.”

‘If things fall apart someday down the line, then I’ll just let myself feel a bit of regret for a few days and move on. Maybe it won’t be so bad. No more lunatics hanging around me. I can go wherever I want. I could even go back to my own country, somewhere familiar……’

‘…… But when it actually happens, it’s the little things I’ll probably miss.’

Jeong Taeui stared at him in silence.