Siegfried was already in his nightclothes, just like me. There was a certain vulnerability to him now, a subtle sensuality even I, another man, couldn’t ignore.
“Would you show me, Kreis?” he asked.
“Show you what?”
“You have scars on your body, don’t you? Besides these.” He reached out and touched my hand.
I wasn’t wearing my gloves anymore; I’d taken them off since I’d been alone in my room. The cracks had mostly healed by now, but the calluses remained. Siegfried gently took my hand in his, his expression filled with quiet sorrow.
There was such certainty in his voice that it was clear hiding anything would be pointless. I gave up trying to pull away or cover up, and simply let Siegfried see my unsightly hand.
“I had no idea you were suffering. I keep wondering how painful and awful it must’ve been... That’s why I can’t sleep lately.”
“It’s all in the past, Siegfried. You don’t need to carry that burden.”
“Even if it’s in the past, a wound is still a wound. Scars on the heart don’t just disappear, do they? At the very least, I want to see what wounds you carry with my own eyes. I want to etch them into my memory as a reminder. So I’ll never overlook even the smallest pain again.”
“It’s not a pretty sight,” I warned.
“I know.”
He gazed steadily at me. I could tell he wasn’t going to back down, so I let out a quiet sigh, slipped my hand from Siegfried’s, lifted the hem of my nightshirt, and shrugged it off, exposing my upper body. I turned away and knelt before him so he could see my scars clearly.
“It must’ve been so painful, Kreis.”
“I’ve already forgotten about it.”
I remembered the lashes that had left those scars. The searing pain as my skin split open, the humiliation of having my dignity stripped away. But compared to the despair I’d felt when I had helplessly watched a blood-soaked Siegfried die before my eyes, the earlier abuse I’d suffered seemed almost mild by comparison.
Or so I’d thought.
“I want to kill the ones who did this to you.”
“A king shouldn’t say such things so lightly. If you abuse your power for personal revenge, I won’t be able to respect you anymore. Don’t let me down, Siegfried.”
“I know.”
His trembling fingers touched my back, and I felt the warmth of him seeping straight into the coldest corners of my heart.
His touch and his voice carried genuine emotion; it stirred something within me. He was truly angry on Kreis’s behalf, and somehow the Kreis who had gritted his teeth through those beatings felt a little less alone.
“Nngh...”
The emotion welled up inside me unbidden. I bit my lip hard, trying to hold it back. I felt like if I didn’t, something deep inside me would break. But then...
“It’s okay, Kreis. It’s just us here. Just me. Let it all out.” Siegfried knelt behind me and gently wrapped his arms around me.
“Ahh... Nngh... Waaah!”
And for the first time, I let myself acknowledge and lay bare the pain of those days. Tears streamed down my face, splashing onto the floor. I couldn’t stop them... I just watched the dark splotches form.
Whose feelings were they? Mine or Kreis’s?
The memories were there, and I’d lived through them...but this wasn’t my life. Did I even have the right to cry? The thoughts crossed my mind, but the tears wouldn’t stop. And eventually, I cried without even knowing what exactly I was grieving.
Siegfried’s warmth surrounded me the whole time—that brought me more comfort than anything.
“Lord Kreis, a crow has arrived,” Theodore said.
“Again?”
“Yes, again.” He nodded and opened the window of the study so a crow could noisily fly inside. I raised my arm instinctively, and the bird landed there.
“Hey, Kreis,” the crow said with Siegfried’s voice.
“Don’t ‘hey’ me. You were just here this morning,” I said.
“I had some free time, so I wondered what you were up to.”
“I told you this morning that I would be busy with paperwork all day. You should get back to your duties as well.”
“I’m having teatime. Isn’t that right, Lucas?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Lucas said.
Hearing multiple human voices coming out of a bird was frankly unsettling. The crow was a familiar conjured by Siegfried’s magic. I didn’t even know that kind of thing was possible. The first time the bird had shown up and started speaking in Siegfried’s voice, I was so shocked I nearly ran out of the room.
“Don’t drag Lucas into this,” I grumbled. “It’s nice to hear your voice again, Lucas. Thank you for indulging me the other day. I never got a chance to thank you properly.”
“Not at all, Lord Kreis. I hope I was of help to you.”
“I’m helping Kreis too, you know. By the way, did Raiden arrive safely?” Siegfried asked.
“He did. He’s already started training the kids.”
“Good, good. Hey, Kreis. If you’ve got time tomorrow, I was thinking of coming to visit.”
There it was again. I’d heard it a dozen times already. I braced myself and replied firmly, “I told you already yesterday that won’t work.”
“What’s so bad about me wanting to come see you?”
“I never said it was bad. It’s just that there’s no reason for it.”
We’d had this conversation over and over the past few days. Obviously being a king was a busy job. Siegfried was far busier than me, and yet he insisted on coming to visit again and again.
“But even when I had a good reason, you still said no.”
“That’s because it wasn’t a good reason. What kind of king shows up just to deliver flowers?”
“This one.”
“That doesn’t make it wise.”
Siegfried had always been a capable ruler. He prioritized his role as king over his own personal desires. But something was different now; he wasn’t quite the same as he had been the first time I lived this life.
I had assumed that changing Kreis’s actions would shift the flow of events around him, but I hadn’t anticipated this kind of change in Siegfried. Ever since that night, he’d been overprotective of me.
During my first life here, when Siegfried had become aware of the situation at the Louboutin estate, all he’d done was calmly ask Kreis what had happened. But maybe seeing the actual scars left on Kreis’s body had saddled him with a guilt he had no reason to carry.
Even though I had left the Louboutin estate, I was still within Albert’s domain. Siegfried clearly felt worried about that.
I appreciated his concern, but at the same time it was hard not to feel a little insulted, like Siegfried didn’t trust my abilities at all. If I’d known it would end up like this, maybe I would’ve just forced Siegfried out of the room that night instead of letting him see my scars.