11. She Who Possessed Warmthless Beauty
"Yes."
Arwin answered as if it were natural with a languid face. He had admitted the fact that he had two hearts.
"You are human, right?"
"Yes."
Arwin answered without blockage even to my strange question. I let out a short sigh. What kind of question did I even ask?
I placed my palm on his forehead. Fortunately, the heat that had tormented him the past day had completely disappeared overnight.
Where did all that intense heat disappear to?
Perhaps when he entered inside me last night, his heat was absorbed into my body then.
As soon as I thought that, I felt the core inside my body becoming hot. It felt as if Arwin's heat was circulating slowly around my heart.
"Your head doesn't hurt anymore?"
Arwin blinked his eyes instead of answering. That was his own way of answering.
"That's a relief."
As expected, no words returned from Arwin. Since I didn't say it expecting an answer in the first place, his silence didn't matter.
I raised my body which had been lying down and put on the clothes I had taken off last night. Arwin watched silently as I got dressed.
After dressing completely, I told Arwin I would return. He only watched my figure leaving as well.
Now it felt like even my stomach was hot. It must be certain that Arwin's heat, which had stayed near my heart, reached there.
I exhaled a heated breath. The tableware became foggy with my breath leaking through my dry lips.
"Bell? Are you okay?"
Katie stopped organizing the newly arrived tableware and looked at me.
"Do I look sick?"
When I asked, Katie nodded her head vigorously up and down. Then, for some reason, I felt my head spinning.
Touching my forehead, I guessed. It's clear I caught a cold. Thinking of taking away Arwin's cold, I kissed him, and I ended up really taking his cold away.
At that moment, the words Arwin said to me came to mind.
'Do you regret?'
Although I caught a cold from him, my answer remained the same.
'No.'
I wiped my forehead with my sleeve and said to Katie.
"I'll go get some fresh air for a moment."
It seems necessary to cool down Arwin's heat. Otherwise, I might catch a fever sooner or later too.
But still. I wonder if a coolness capable of cooling down Arwin's hot heat exists.
I had a strange conviction that there wouldn't be. Even if it were an iceberg in midwinter, it seemed impossible to defy this heat heating my body violently.
The heat rising in me was unusual.
Giving up on finding an iceberg on a perfect autumn day, I walked slowly down the hallway. It was when I was going toward my room thinking I should lie down for a moment. I faced Dalton's room like a coincidence.
As I inadvertently approached the front of his room, I saw the door slightly open. I instinctively brought my face to the gap of the open door. My heart began to beat faster little by little.
Within the narrow vision reflected through the crack of the door, Dalton's blond hair caught my eye quickly. His blond hair was shining dazzlingly in the sunlight seeping in from the wide-open window.
I observed him, squinting my eyes a little. Dalton was wiping something very carefully. It was something like a person-sized crate with a brown hue.
If I had to attach a word I knew, it looked close to a 'coffin'. Coffin. It was also a very familiar object I would encounter sooner or later.
The brown crate shone enough to sting the eyes, no different from Dalton's hair. Just how much did he wipe it for it to shine like that?
At that moment, suddenly Dalton's head began to turn toward me. I must have stared too excessively.
His head turned exactly to where I was standing. Soon our eyes met.
"Iphoe Bell?"
He called my name more familiarly today. It was certain that there was someone with a name similar to mine among those he knew.
Far from running away, I threw the slightly open door wide open instead. Dalton might be dumbfounded by my confident attitude.
"Surely... is that a coffin?"
I pointed at what was presumed to be a coffin with my index finger. Dalton answered readily.
"Then would this be a bed, not a coffin?"
Dalton wasn't displeased with me appearing abruptly.
"Do you want to see it up close?"
He spoke boastfully. His face facing the coffin looked excessively joyful. It was a bit ironic.
"Yes. I want to see it up close."
I entered the room completely and walked up to Dalton. Then, squatting down, I looked closely into the brown wooden coffin.
It was as Dalton said. It was a real coffin with no way to deny it.
"What's with the coffin? Surely now with a corpse...."
I blurred the end of my sentence and looked at Dalton askance.
Dalton was one who engaged in a libertine life meeting various women of different races. A nonsensical suspicion briefly occurred that surely he wasn't meeting a woman who was a corpse now....
Dalton answered, appalled.
"I am not a pervert!"
"Did anyone say you were a pervert?"
"Iphoe, your eyes were looking at me like that!"
"Did they?"
I retorted nonchalantly and moved my gaze to the brown coffin.
"Then just what is it?"
"Shall I show you the inside of the coffin too?"
Dalton asked in a sweet voice as if asking when he had raised his voice. Those sweet words somehow brought a dangerous feeling like a double-edged sword.
Something that shouldn't be seen might exist inside. It might be better not to know.
However, I nodded my head. If I hadn't known the existence of the brown coffin, it wouldn't matter, but since I saw it, I definitely wanted to see what was inside.
As soon as my nod ended, Dalton began to open the coffin lid. The coffin lid opened smoothly, and soon what existed inside was revealed.
The owner of the coffin was a woman. A woman lying as if asleep.
The woman had her eyes closed as if she had been asleep for a long time. Her face was white without a drop of blood, and her well-groomed blonde hair came down to her waist.
The appearance of the woman wearing a white dress resembling her skin tone was also quite beautiful.
But she was dead. What she possessed was the warmthless beauty of the dead.
Dalton didn't say anything, but I could know who she was. Her whom he said he loved a long time ago.
"Say hello, it's Arabel."
Dalton spoke as if introducing her alive.
'Arabel.'
That name had a similar nuance to my name. The reason Dalton called my name as if worn out in his mouth was here.
"Is this person the woman you loved?"
"Yeah. Pretty, right?"
I nodded my head. Although she was dead, pretty was pretty anyway.
"I kept thinking of her lately, so I brought the coffin here myself."
"Doesn't she rot?"
"I am an Archmage. Preventing decay is something I can do too."
"...."
"I don't want her to rot."
Dalton pressed lightly on the back of Arabel's hand a few times. It looked as if checking whether decay had set in or not.
"Until I die, she won't rot. But there is one place even I can't prevent decay."
"Where is that?"
Dalton's hand, which stayed on the back of Arabel's hand, began to move its place secretly.
His fingers passed her shoulder and went up near her chin. Soon reaching her face, his hand quietly stroked the white, pale face of the dead.
"The heart."
The heart. The only place Dalton couldn't prevent decay.
"I told you before, right? Human life and death are irreversible."
Dalton raised his head and looked straight at me. His red lips were smiling a small smile toward me.
That smile was a beautiful smile without flaw, but I felt goosebumps for some unknown reason.
I wanted to know more details about his dead lover, Arabel, but my head hurt excessively. I eventually left Dalton's room with words that we should talk again next time.
Barely reaching my room with weak steps, I laid my body on the bed. My body was heavy like wet cotton. Now my head throbbed enough to blur my vision.
Soon, heavy eyelids covered my eyes. As I closed my eyes, drowsiness began to flood in. I covered myself with the blanket up to my neck. Sleep came quickly.
I come to dream a slightly bizarre dream.
In my dream, Dalton and Arwin appeared. They were standing facing each other, but somehow the contrast in light and shade was too stark.
It was bright around Dalton with blond hair and odd eyes, and dark around Arwin with black hair and black eyes.
It was when I was thinking why the two people appeared in my dream. Dalton began to lift his hand up to his chest area.
A surprising thing happened immediately. Dalton's lifted hand stretched toward Arwin's chest area without an inch of hesitation.
Dalton's hand pierced Arwin's chest horizontally and accurately. It was a perfect hand gesture without error.
Not long after, Dalton's hand came out of Arwin's chest. Dalton's hand wasn't empty. On his white hand, a red heart was held.
It was Arwin's heart.
Hot red blood leaking from Arwin's heart soaked Dalton's white hand. Dalton smiled leaving the flowing red blood alone.
That smile resembled the smile of his I saw in his room. That smile which gave me goosebumps for some unknown reason.
Arwin's face, having one heart stolen, was strangely calm. No sign of pain was visible from him at all. Only, Arwin's black eyes just became a little empty.
It was a look of having lost something important. If I had to be specific, maybe something like one screw of the heart he spoke of.
Apart from the terrible scene, cherry blossoms were scattering above their heads. Cherry blossoms reminding me of the spring Dalton gifted me.
The smell of blood leaking from Arwin's heart and the spring smell of cherry blossoms were mixed without disharmony.
I instinctively remembered that smell.
"...Ha."
When I opened my eyes again, the surroundings were bright just like before I fell asleep. I had slept for a short while.
Gasping for breath that had become short for no reason, I tried to escape from the afterimage of the dream. But the trajectory of the red color I saw in the dream did not disappear easily from before my eyes.
As I raised my upper body, something fell with a thud from near my forehead.
"A handkerchief?"
It was a plain handkerchief. When was something like this placed on my forehead?
Examining it closely, it looked exactly like the handkerchief Arwin gave me the other day. I lifted it to the tip of my nose and smelled it. The fragrant smell I smelled the other day was not smelled.
At that moment, the smell seeping into the tip of my nose was the fishy smell of blood. The smell of blood pooled for a long time rotting and rotting again until decomposed.
It probably isn't the smell actually coming from the handkerchief. The identity of that smell was that smell I instinctively remembered in the dream.
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