Chapter 115

(Lurelia’s Belated Bonus – Update 13/14 🎉)

 

The only space connecting this room to the outside was the small iron bars at the bottom of the door.

Ante painfully turned his head toward the sound coming through the iron bars, barely the size of two cheeks.

His vision was blurry, and turning his head brought indescribable pain.

But Ante wanted to know the source of that sound.

“Uh… bya?”

He felt he had to know.

If he didn’t, it seemed like he would truly spend his entire life here, neither living nor dying.

“Bya!”

Along with the cheerful sound, his heart pounded. It regenerated Ante with a speed and power he had never felt before. And the clouds obscuring his vision gradually cleared.

“…A baby?”

What he could see through the bars was a baby.

A baby who looked like it had just barely learned to crawl.

Is it a hallucination?

The infant was reaching out its hand toward him. It pressed its body against the iron bars and made grunting sounds while stretching out its hand.

Ante reached out toward that apparition. The door was within arm’s reach.

The pain felt like all his muscles were tearing, but he couldn’t help reaching out toward this warmth he had never seen before.

And the moment his fingers touched the baby.

Whoosh-

The pain disappeared.

As if by magic.

The pressure weighing down his entire body and the pain that hurt just by existing vanished.

Ante’s eyes wavered.

“Bya, bya!”

The baby firmly grasped Ante’s finger. It pulled hard as if telling him to come closer.

So Ante barely turned his body and crawled toward the door. Since the pain returned as soon as his hand separated from the baby, moving even 1cm was like breaking his bones over and over again.

Still, he painfully crawled.

When he finally reached the door, the baby reached out and gently tapped Ante’s cheek.

The pain receded.

It wasn’t an illusion.

Ante felt something welling up from deep in his chest.

Did God exist after all?

Did someone answer my prayers?

Ante firmly held the child’s small hand.

It was a small, fern-like hand that could be completely held with just his index finger and thumb. But to him, it was nothing less than a lifeline.

“Little one, I’ll just hold on for a moment…”

He whispered weakly.

But the baby, as if understanding his words, just smiled brightly and didn’t pull its hand away.

Tears welled up in Ante’s eyes.

Holding the child’s hand, he realized.

He didn’t want to die.

He wanted to live.

Every day he had said he would rather die than endure this pain, but in truth, he wanted to live more desperately and painfully than anyone.

“Thank you…”

“Uh…?”

As tears flowed, the baby tilted its head and tapped his cheek. Intent on wiping away his tears, it rubbed its small hands all over his face.

Since all of the child’s actions gave him peace, he just let the child do as it pleased.

He held the chubby, plump legs tightly and closed his eyes. How long had it been since he felt such comfort?

His body and mind were so peaceful that it felt like the first time in his life.

And so he drifted off to sleep.

He truly slept comfortably for the first time in a long time.

But he woke up not long after.

The child had begun to move.

The ceiling was noisy with footsteps.

“Bya? Bya!”

The baby, who had been staring at the ceiling with round eyes, began to crawl away.

“Are you leaving?”

Ante urgently called out to the baby.

While he was sleeping, it had moved away and was already out of reach. The pain began to creep back into his entire body.

But it was a little better than before meeting the child. It was just a tiny bit, but having lived in the same pain every day, he could tell.

“Do you really have to go…?”

Can’t you stay?

He pleaded, knowing it was impossible.

“Bya…?”

The baby seemed to hesitate.

But again the ceiling was noisy with footsteps. The faint shouts he could hear were “Find it!” They were undoubtedly looking for the missing baby.

Despair spread across Ante’s face.

But he asked with a small hope.

“Can you come again tomorrow?”

“Pyoo? Uh?”

The baby tilted its head and made strange sounds.

“Please come tomorrow, I’m begging you.”

He didn’t know if it understood, but Ante spoke with desperation.

“Bya!”

The baby stared at him with round eyes for a long time, then smiled brightly, raised its hands in the air, and began to crawl away again.

He had no idea what that meant.

“…Please.”

Ante closed his eyes tightly against the pain engulfing his entire body and prayed desperately.

Let this not be a one-time miracle that would never return.

No, rather, let tomorrow never come.

But the next day arrived, and Ante was dragged back to the “treatment room.”

“Kuaaaaaaak!”

It was worse pain than before.

Was it a problem that he had come to know comfort? Or was it that the power of his heart had grown stronger?

“Ple- Kuaaaak!”

Pain he couldn’t escape no matter how much he twisted his body.

How many hours had passed?

As he lay on the floor of the isolation cell with his consciousness fading in and out, he heard a rustling sound.

Forgetting his pain, he quickly turned his head toward the door. His face was as pale as a corpse, but his eyes wavered with hope.

And, after a moment.

“Bya!”

The baby appeared.

With such a bright face.

Ante’s face contorted with relief.

“Ha…! Thank goodness.”

Ante thanked the God who might not exist with all his heart.

To him, that infant was already a deity.

He painfully crawled to the iron bars and firmly grasped the hand the child reached out.

“Today my screams were too loud… I was worried you might be scared and not come.”

He exhaled in relief, and the baby laughed, saying “Bya, bya.” Today too, it rubbed his face and pulled his hair, playing incomprehensible pranks.

“I was scared that I’d have to endure alone today.”

Ante whispered to the baby who was playing and laughing. Though he wasn’t sure if it understood.

“Thank you for coming.”

For not letting me tremble alone in fear.

And so, Ante and the baby’s secret meetings continued every day.

“You’re pretty when you smile. …Huh?”

When he said “Bya, bya, your smile is cute, you’re pretty,” the child’s eyes widened and suddenly it began to cry.

“Are, are you crying?”

So for the first time, Ante felt both confusion and anxiety simultaneously.

“I’m sorry, little one. I just thought you were pretty. Really, just pretty…”

How do you comfort a baby?

“I was wrong, little one. Please don’t cry, okay?”

He pleaded as he stroked the baby’s chubby cheeks. Those cheeks were so adorable in a way.

Ah, I shouldn’t find the crying cute… But it was so cute he felt like he might go crazy, to the point where mischievous thoughts arose.

And another time, he had such thoughts.

“How wonderful it would be if you were my family.”

Though he knew he had been abandoned by his parents, Ante was still sad, thirsting for family love.

If a baby like this were his sibling, he could love it with his whole being.

Why don’t I have such a family? How happy would I be if this baby were my sibling?

It was a meaningless worry.

There were times when he couldn’t think at all.

“I’m sorry, today too, just a little…”

Just desperately trying to calm the pain.

“Hold me for a moment.”

When he fell asleep holding the child tightly, it would be the next day when he woke up.

Then that day came.

“Kuaaaaaaak!”

On a day when the treatment was carried out to the maximum.

“Kuuuk, kuk…!”

It was pain that made his eyes roll back.

In that moment, the world flipped.

A feeling of turning off and on.

The whole world turned black once and then white.

It was exactly like when he first touched Zeplictus. The heart had finally triumphed over the terrible “treatment.”

Ante, who emerged in light, looked around.

Just like that day, corpses were strewn everywhere. It was unspeakably horrific, with heads burst open, holes in hearts, and limbs severed.

And he was again covered in blood from head to toe.

The sensation of tearing people’s flesh still remained on his hands. Even if his consciousness had been severed and returned, the fact that he had committed these acts was an unchangeable truth.

But this time, he didn’t feel much. There was none of the despair he had felt at the Marquis’s house.

“Ah.”

He could only think of the baby.

My precious deity.

He moved his steps to where his instinct led him.

There was no need to go far.

Everything else was destroyed, but the altar alone was intact.

As if even his crazed self, consumed by the heart’s will, knew not to touch that place, it was clean.

When he went behind the altar, sure enough, the baby was there. And beside the baby were a man and woman with pierced hearts.

Ante instinctively knew.

Ah, these must be the baby’s parents.

But the baby wasn’t crying.

It just looked up at him with round eyes.

Blink. Blink.

Such pure eyes.

Various emotions surged in Ante’s heart.

When they all settled, only one remained.

Love.

No, reverence?

My little deity.

The name… ah, yes.

“…Lina.”

Angelina. He seemed to remember hearing everyone call the baby that when he was half-unconscious.

“Hello?”

He smiled brightly.

“Kyareurek-! Ubya!”

It was the baby’s response.

***

The truth he wished would be buried forever.

That was the true nature of Ante Flaubert that he desperately tried to hide from Angelina.