APRICITAS [ENG] || Johan Liebert || Monster

Chapter 20 - The Confrontation and The Abstraction

Emiko still had her eyes closed when she suddenly felt the familiar smell coming from the kitchen - it was freshly brewed green tea.

'It's good that it's not a coffee, because in the presence of Johan, my blood pressure rises enough...' She thought ironically, but in addition to this one smell, another began to join... As if something... something sweet...? She began to smell it carefully.

'Ch...' She swallowed loudly. '...Cheesecake!?' After that last thought, she was mentally at a loss for words. The girl felt as if the whole universe had started to joke at her expense. Throwing away memories of her surreal dream, she knew that only her parents and close friends knew about her love for this cake. But she also didn't believe in any coincidences in which Johan might have been involved.

What's going on here?

For a moment, absurd thoughts started to flood her mind. She looked at the bouquet of white roses still standing on the bedside table.

'He... acts like...' Due to the recent events that have happened, she couldn't deny that he treated her differently from others. Of course, when Johan explained to her why he had imprisoned her the previous day, she dismissed it as one big mockery. But now she was beginning to realize that there was more truth in these words than she might have guessed before.

"...it would be interesting to spend some time together..."

Still stunned by it all, she shook her head to throw out his voice out of there. Yet his softly spoken words lingered in her as if they were a strong, unbreakable spider's web.

"...Nice to know that in my presence, you have dreams where you smile..."

She moaned, feeling incredibly embarrassed. It couldn't be... It was just... too weird. Wrong in every way possible. However, all the pieces in this puzzle were starting to fit together more and more...

'...Why me?' She remembered the murders that her brother was wrongly accused of. 'God, he could have anyone...' How much effort and funds did Johan have to invest to learn all these things about her? '...Whoever he would like to have...' Even the fact that she and her brother had gotten the "privilege" of taking his life, didn't appeal to her. 'That persistent, sadistic fanatic...'

She almost felt grateful when the young man returned to the room, distracting her from the thoughts that were inexorably on the way of unraveling this dark mystery.

"What could I do for you, so that we can end this circus and to let me go? As far as I can see, you're clearly not going to kill me." The young man cocked his head slightly to the side, watching her. His lack of response was nothing but sheer madness that started spreading through her body again. "Tell me so we can finally get it over with!" Despite the earlier decisions, Emiko felt that she was losing control over herself again, and anger wasn't an appropriate reaction to be able to confront the monster.

"Not sulking like a little child would be a good start." Johan suggested, then gave her a gentle look. It was adding oil to the fire that now burned in her veins.

'YOU...'

"If your goal is to break me, know that you will fail!" Young Tenma clenched her fists, finally concluding that she had had enough of it all and it was right time to put an end to it.

"Is it a challenge, Emiko?" One corner of his lips curled up in a dangerous, but at the same time, some kind of oddly cute smile.

"Indeed it is."

"In my life I have seen many broken people, Emiko." Johan stared at the wall behind her, but it felt as if he was looking at a very long distance. "People who had lost all their humanity, people who wanted nothing but death, people who..." His cold gaze returned to look straight into her eyes; or even not so much as into her eyes, but straight into her heart and pierce it right through with deadly icicles. "You Emiko... you would not be so easy to break. Moreover, I will not let that happen - no, until you kill me with your own hands and then you can look at me. Aah... you will understand yourself. But now..." Johan finished eye contact, leaving her heart still frozen. "Let's go eat something."