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I can’t sleep.
I opened my eyes, untangled the sheets from my body, and rolled over.
The empty room was cold, both in temperature and mood.
Jack and I were sharing the room, but he’d started sleeping in Robins’ room ever since that day Alice came to visit. He was angry about how cruelly I sent her away.
The old Jack would have surely burnt the dorm to a crisp, but he’d been learning to control his rage ever since the Jack the Ripper case. Unlike his stunning growth, all I could do was run away, lock myself in a room, and lash out at my lover.
I ran my fingers over my head until they collided with the stiff bone.
“It’s all their fault.”
I always checked if my horns were still there when I awoke from a dream. It was a habit from my youth, but it came back when my body transformed. It was pathetic. I could never let Alice see me like that.
Suddenly, the curtains shook. It seemed the chill in the air had been from an open window. I stood up, grabbed the curtains, and something suddenly overpowered me.
“Whoa!”
I fell on my rear end and peered up through half-open eyes.
Underneath the fluttering curtains, illuminated faintly by starlight, was a girl with blood-red hair that shook in the night breeze.
She wasn’t supposed to be in my room. I was speechless for a while.
“…Alice.”
“Good evening, Dark. I see you’re not wearing your sheets today.”
I’d forgotten to hide my horns as soon as I stood up. I quickly grabbed my bedsheets and wrapped them around my head, turning to face the opposite direction, but she never took her eyes off me.
“How did you get up… No, I have nothing to talk to you about, so get out.”
“But I do. Dark, I just kissed Dum and Dee.”
She said it so simply that I took a long time to react.
“The Tweedles…?”
The twins were always giving Alice affectionate kisses. They were for good mornings, good nights, and other things in between. But even as all my rationality was on the verge of screeching to a halt, I could still tell that Alice wasn’t talking about those kinds of adorable little kisses.
The betrayal sent me into a rage. Before I realized what I was doing, I’d slammed my lips into hers.
“Mmph!”
She tried to turn her head and escape, but I grabbed the back of her head and pulled her toward me roughly.
I swallowed all the sounds escaping her, caught hold of her frightened tongue, and consumed her completely with the kiss. Alice finally went limp and slumped into my body.
Did you let the twins see you like this, too?
Thinking of her snuggling up against their muscular bodies made my eyes spin. The feelings I’d kept hidden from Alice were fiery and bubbling like a fake turtle soup that’d been cooked for too long.
Why did you betray me? Why with my dear twins of all people?
Don’t you know how much I love you?!
My brain was boiling, and I’d lost myself in the kiss—but that was when my demon power slipped into Alice’s heart.
I was able to read the mind of anyone I kissed.
I could open the tiny locked room deep in their hearts that held their emotions and memories, even when I didn’t have their permission to set foot inside.
Hearts were fragile things once they’d been unlocked.
I’d peered into Alice’s mind many times before, but now I found it wide open and waiting for me. It was enough to make me concerned about her.
At the very bottom of her scarlet heart, playing on the screen in that internal room even she’d never explored was…
“?!”
I drew back from Alice in shock.
I couldn’t believe what I just saw. I stared at the blushing, dizzy Alice looking up at me as closely as I could.
“You didn’t kiss them?”
The three of them were close in her memory.
Alice thought her romance with me was over.
Dum and Dee had used that opportunity to pursue her.
Alice had closed her eyes out of spite toward me…and then the twins kissed her cheeks, not her lips.
“If you really can’t fix things with Dark…”
“Then be our lover instead.”
Then Alice started to cry, her emotions overwhelming her.
The twins comforted her as she wept. They convinced her to talk to me, set a ladder up against the outside of Unicorn Dorm, and helped her get into my room on the second floor.
I couldn’t believe it. I’d thought she betrayed me.
“Why did you lie?” I asked, my throat tight.
“…I had to. I thought you would send me away again if I didn’t.”
Alice had lied to stop me from rejecting her. I’d fallen for her trick hook, line, and sinker.
“Besides, it’s easier for me to show you my feelings this way.”
Then she pulled me forward and pressed our lips together again.
“Ah!”
The soft sensation made my mind go blank.
It was her first time initiating a kiss.
I gazed at her when she separated from me again, making her pout her lips in embarrassment.
“Now, do you see how much I love you?” she asked.
“…I do. I’ve always known.” I smiled bitterly, unable to say anything but the opposite of what my actions had been indicating all this time. “But I can’t be at your side so long as I have these.”
I touched the horns on my head. The rugged, bony sensation made my mood plummet.
“I’m only at peace when I sleep at night. As soon as I look in the mirror every morning, I’m sent into despair because it’s another day that I can’t see you…”
Alice looked at my horns. She said they weren’t so bad. But I could only see them as proof of my identity as a demon. I wanted them gone. It was all I thought about when I was a child.
Alice probably didn’t know how many times I’d tried to cut them off and failed, leaving shallow wounds on my scalp to this day. I couldn’t believe that she saw them as anything other than disgusting.
Wasn’t it possible that she was hiding her true feelings so as not to hurt me? My inferiority complex and suspicious nature filled every nook and cranny of my body. It threatened to spill over in front of her now that my body was so small.
“I can put on a human skin, but I’m still a demon. Someday, I might show you my wicked nature and end up hurting you. That’s the feeling that came back to me once I couldn’t hide my horns anymore.” My voice trembled.
Seeing me like this was probably ruining Alice’s impression of me.
The “Earl Knightley” everyone loved was a character I’d worked hard to create. The true me was a cowardly, shy, weakling who had to lock himself in his room with a sheet over his head to breathe.
I hated myself for it. But Alice chuckled at me.
“What has you so scared after all this time? Aren’t you still Dark, even if you shrink and can’t hide your horns anymore? Do you really think of me as some little lady who flees when she sees a demon?”
She pointed at her pouch, now with a serious expression.
I remembered now. If someone did something bad to her, even me, she wouldn’t hesitate to fire.
She was more than just a kind-natured noblewoman. Alice was brave, noble, and a merciless executioner who protected the order of the criminal underworld.