Chapter 46
The children laughed merrily, like marbles rolling away, and soon grew distant.
As pure as they were cruel, and as honest as they were vile—it was a scene both innocent and hideous.
“Arzeletta.”
In the silence where their laughter had settled like sediment, Yoseph murmured softly.
Arzeletta. Arzeletta.
In Yoseph’s world, where everything had been decided from birth and soon grown familiar, that name was the only one that came from outside.
The name was so uniquely beautiful that Yoseph, whenever alone like this, would take care to pronounce it aloud.
“Arzeletta.”
Arzeletta, a monster of the same status as himself, and yet a beast more beautiful and lovable than any other. The woman who, for once, made the world acknowledge something as belonging to him.
A cursed job like slaughter could only be done by the cursed. Yoseph had gained his profession wrapped in scorn and contempt. Handling death, enduring the curses of the beasts he had killed—he had no doubt that only those cursed from birth could bear it.
They had created beings to be despised, purely so they could conveniently push guilt and curses onto someone.
Among all those who had entered his realm, Arzeletta was the sweetest and most radiant.
In the cold slaughterhouse, where only dead beasts, beasts doomed to die, and the pain and blood they left behind remained, Yoseph longed for Arzeletta for a very long time.
“You, who were abandoned, suit me here.”
Let’s remain here together, in this place of curses. Let us touch death each day, touch each other’s bodies, and enjoy pleasure beyond the eyes of God.
Because we don’t belong to the world of light anyway.
Yoseph opened a jar with a heavy lid.
Inside the jar was quite a lot of money.
Since Yoseph had never indulged in any luxuries, he had been able to save nearly all the money he had earned from slaughtering beasts over the years.
“……”
The man’s eyes, peering into the jar, shimmered subtly.
This was Yoseph’s dream.
For Yoseph, whose entire world was confined to the slaughterhouse, these coins allowed him to dream in concrete terms.
It was enough money to buy a small corner house where two people could live without lack, and still afford to have two rather decent sets of outing clothes made.
Even after that, there would still be enough left to buy a whole jar of the fine liquor that one could only taste at weddings in the Rosenburg territory.
Perhaps, with this money, he could take Arzeletta as his bride.
Just maybe—like the children’s mocking songs—really, perhaps… Arzeletta’s twisted back might guide her to him.
Maybe Arzeletta would come into this lonely world of death.
Maybe, just maybe, the beautiful Arzeletta had no man she could choose other than him.
Because we are monsters of the same world.
“Haa…”
Yoseph raised his hand and grabbed a handful of coins. Even after being clutched in his large hand, the jar was still full of coins.
He recalled the glimpses he had occasionally stolen of Arzeletta on the street.
Her pale, beautiful face—so sorrowfully vivid in memory—was the only thing in Yoseph’s life that never became familiar, in a life where everything else had.
This longing, too, would never become familiar.
Click.
Yoseph placed the handful of coins back down and closed the heavy lid again. The jar was sealed tight, just like the first time.
He knew well that the more blissful the dream, the colder the reality would feel when he turned back to face it.
“Ah…”
But this time, it was a little different.
Yoseph blinked his large, dark, innocent eyes at the figure hesitantly standing at the entrance of the slaughterhouse—someone who had entered unnoticed.
Was it a hallucination?
Even in the sweetest of dreams, Yoseph had never forgotten reality.
But no matter how many times he blinked, the figure he believed to be a mirage did not disappear.
It was too vivid to be anything but real.
Arzeletta was standing there.
“Um…”
Arzeletta, hesitating as she stepped in, asked Yoseph in a small but clear voice,
“D-Do you remember me?”
Yoseph did not answer. At his feet, rabbit’s blood was flowing.
Arzeletta’s small whisper tickled Yoseph’s skin. Feeling his fine hairs stand on end, he looked at the woman who had stepped into his world.
“A long time ago, you told me… that if I wanted, you’d let me work here anytime.”
“……”
“…Does that offer… still stand?”
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