『Schadenfreude』▷ jaesahi。

t r e a s o n

"So you do not wish to meet His Highness?" Haruto's voice echoed, dark eyes peering onto his own. "You insolent fool. If I had my sword by my side right now, your head would already be rolling on the ground."

Treason was it for a lowly knight to defy his master's orders. Yoshinori was his master, and had demanded for his presence; yet here he was with his figure firm, indifferent to everything that Haruto had said. Even in their past lives, Asahi had always been such a malapert person and Haruto was never able to place trust upon him as a comrade.

"I still wonder why he accepted your pledge," he continued. "In the end, you're just an ungrateful mutt. Had it not been for the crown prince, you'd be dead long ago. And yet you never listen to his orders and continues to always disobey him."

How baffling.

Asahi nearly let a chortle escape, but he held himself back and simply kept his calm visage.

"Me too. I still wonder why His Highness hasn't seen through your lies yet."

Haruto's response was to send him a immediate, splenetic glare.

"Oh my," his monotonous voice seemed to be mocking his fellow erstwhile knight, somehow more irksome that any other's jeering tone. "Was I not supposed to know that you're not actually cursed, Sir Daemon?"

The other all but glowered at him, threatening.

A heart cursed with no emotions.

That had been the one curse said to loom over the young master of the Hearthsong family, and yet now he glowered at Asahi with such spite. It was surprising, truly, that the crown prince had yet to discover about his barefaced lies. Peradventure if he had not eyes that bore into the past but discerned through truth and lies, then he would not be fooled so.

Here was the true treachery; a knight who lied to his master yet refuses to confess his crimes rather than a disobedient banneret.

"Still, I don't want to be so headstrong and tell the prince myself," Asahi spoke. "I do respect you as my senior, after all."

Haruto gritted his teeth, "Everything I do is for His Highness' sake."

"Then believe me when I say that I am also doing this to ensure His Highness' safety."

"What are you talking about?"

Once contorted into an expression of vexation, Haruto's face instantly turned into one of consternation at his next claims.

"The Krneluce is alive."

Asahi needed not more than a second to comprehend the flurry of emotions that so quickly flashed across the other's orbs. Jaehyuk had, after all, killed not only him but his whole family and his lord. It would be near absurd to hide his loath— he could already descry Haruto's shaking hands hidden under the table, likely itching to extirpate everything pertinent to Jaehyuk's existence.

Forthwith he regaled his former compeer with sugarcoated words of his relation to Jaehyuk, lying without as much as a twitch of the eye.

He, of course, had told a mere quarter of the truth and mentioned Jaehyuk's name not. Selfish may it be, but he was not one to capitulate for another's behoof.

That had been how their second meeting in this world had gone.

Not until he had left did Haruto's crimson irises show themselves, gazing forlornly onto his departing figure, hands balled into fists at his sides.

You've always been this way, Ettore, he murmured in his mind for he did not have the courage to say so with his mouth. Always doing what you want. Always disregarding His Highness.

And if only Asahi had stayed for just a minute more, maybe he could have told him what he wanted to.

I wish I could've been you, just so he'd need me too.

----

Two days might have already passed yet Asahi's cynosure were still the dark orbs of Haruto's. Most would not notice, vampire or human, but he was no middling man.

He held pride not only as the greatest knight of their kingdom, but also as the wisest vampire of their generation.

The redder the eyes, the darker the false ones would be. Haruto's eyes were stygian, more so than his ones, and it meant that his true irises were a brilliant crimson red.

The color of blood; the eyes of a vampire.

Interesting.

He had yet to see what the prince's appearance was of the the present, but if Haruto had already effectuated equinox then there was naught need to think all that farther.

The prince and his retainer had gone and metamorphosed back into their vampiric forms, and he too was near the end of his own.

If so,

then how come Jaehyuk hasn't entered equinox on his own?

He paused, curious of the outré existence that was Yoon Jaehyuk himself.

"What are you standing there for?"

Speak of the devil and he shall come, they say. Asahi wondered who 'they' were to bear such truth to their words.

-----

Remember, remember.

They whisper to his ear.

Despair, despair.

They tell him to give.

Again and again, in the silence of where he was, they haunt him and tell him of what he truly is.

So he shall heed their words, for this despicable curse to end.

— the missing page, line 15:16:17:18:19:20
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