Chapter 121: Malice from the Past
When people are in their most peaceful moments, they can’t help but think back to the past.
They start to treasure their current happiness, fear the loneliness they once had, and even worry for no reason—
‘If I’m so happy today, what if something bad happens tomorrow?’
As the saying goes, what you think about during the day appears in your dreams at night. Evelia and Armand were both like that.
Both of them were silently wondering. How long can this moment of peace really last?
It felt like there was an invisible countdown in their hearts, ticking toward a personal “end of the world” every single day.
“Hahh…”
Even though Evelia had managed to fall asleep, a rare thing for her, it didn’t last very long.
Maybe it was because Armand was still awake, and his occasional movements disturbed her.
In her sleep, Evelia’s eyebrows began to furrow, and her breathing grew heavier.
Armand noticed her breathing change but didn’t know what she was dreaming about. All he could do was gently pull her closer into his arms, hoping it would help her feel a bit more at ease.
In her dream, Evelia was back in the past.
Many memories were already blurry, so her dream was filled with black fog, making everything look dim and unclear.
She was in a dark, damp prison that smelled like mold and rust.
This was where she spent her childhood.
The prison of the “House of Nightingales”, definitely not a place where happy memories were made.
So in the dream, everything looked gloomy and depressing.
Maybe because she hadn’t eaten enough at dinner, the Evelia in the dream felt hungry.
She patted her empty stomach with her small, dirty hands. Her fingers covered in mud.
“So hungry…”
In the dream, Evelia spoke in a child’s voice. But because it was just a dream, she wasn’t sure if that voice was really hers.
She walked forward, following the image in her memory, and came to her own cage. She sat down on the cold ground and stared at the ceiling she knew so well.
—Come to think of it, she was always hungry here.
She rubbed her stomach and muttered in her heart.
Back then, she had been so small and weak. Even though she was barely seen as a “kid with some potential” and allowed to live, in a place like this, where all the children were supposedly “promising”, Evelia was by far the weakest.
If a stronger child kicked her, she could’ve died right on the spot.
“New here?”
Just as she was zoning out, a boy’s voice rang in her ear.
The room was dim, and the light bulbs hanging overhead swayed, disturbed by the other kids fighting nearby.
At night, the House of Nightingales was always like this, completely swallowed by darkness.
After all, they were being trained to become assassins. And the most important thing for an assassin was to be comfortable in the dark.
“……”
Evelia looked at the figure sitting just beyond the metal bars beside her, but she didn’t say anything.
She couldn’t see what the boy looked like anymore. His appearance, his clothes, everything had faded from her memory.
She had deliberately chosen to forget a lot of things. Even the boy’s voice didn’t sound quite real anymore. It was strange, like a mix of real and dream-like.
“Still alive? Why aren’t you talking?”
The boy on the other side of the bars seemed to lean against the divider and sat down.
“…Not dead.”
Evelia replied simply.
That short exchange felt incredibly familiar to her.
—So in the end, she still couldn’t forget everything about him.
Evelia curled up her body, feeling cold and helpless as she leaned against the freezing wall.
Why was she dreaming about this now?
Even though she was fully aware that this was a dream, Evelia was already thinking about how to escape it.
"I see."
The boy turned his head to look at Evelia, but she couldn’t see his face clearly.
‘Forget it. I don’t need to see him. I don’t want to have anything to do with him anymore.’
Gurgle.
Even though it was just a dream, Evelia’s stomach growled from the imagined hunger. Expressionless, she patted her empty stomach and lifted her shirt slightly. She could already see her ribcage.
Back then, Evelia was extremely thin. On top of that, because she was quiet and a bit timid, she was always one of the kids others liked to bully.
They would steal her food, but they never bothered to kill her. Maybe they thought someone so small wasn’t worth it. She was seen as the weak, easy-to-pick-on one.
Even though Evelia changed later on, during this time in her life, the part she was now dreaming about, she really had been that weak little target.
She pressed her hand against her stomach, but the hunger just kept making noise. But she was already used to this kind of hunger. Even if her stomach made a full song out of growling, Evelia wouldn’t care.
Grrrrr…
Thud.
After her stomach growled for the third time, she heard another sound nearby.
A small piece of bread, just a chunk, was tossed to the ground near her feet.
"……"
She remembered this scene.
This was when they first met.
Because of this piece of bread, the two of them got to know each other. Young Evelia believed they had become good friends. She looked up to that boy, treating him like a big brother.
But later on, she learned the truth. Everything had just been her foolish imagination. He used her as bait for his escape.
Did he already target her back then?
Evelia stared silently at the piece of bread on the ground, her expression dark, her eyes fixed on it.
Now, to the current Evelia, that piece of bread looked just like bait in a trap. Just like meat placed in a hunting snare.
Back then, she had been too young and naive to see through the trick.
"…Disgusting…"
Evelia looked at the bread and stepped aside.
Maybe because it was all a dream, the moment she got closer, the bread turned into a dagger. The iron bars between her and the boy disappeared too.
—If you ever saw the person who betrayed you back then, what would you do?
Evelia had asked herself that question before. And for her, there had always only been one answer—
‘I’d kill him. I would absolutely, completely, 100%. Tear him apart!’
"…?!"
Evelia grabbed the boy and slammed him against the wall. Without saying a word, she stabbed him.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Four times.
Maybe because this never actually happened in the past, the dream-version of the boy didn’t say anything. He just stood there, letting Evelia cover him in wounds.
But Evelia was different. She shouted almost like she had gone mad, pouring all the pressure and pain from the past years into this one act of violence.
The boy, covered in blood and barely alive, moved his mouth weakly at the end. It looked like he was trying to call out her name.
“Shut up…” Evelia raised her dagger high, aiming at the boy’s head. “You don’t deserve… to say my name—!”
“Eve!”
“—!”
The shout in her ear suddenly snapped her out of the dream. Evelia jolted awake, breathing hard, her whole body covered in sweat.
“Are you okay? You were shaking a lot. Are you feeling sick?”
Armand was sitting next to her, gently wiping the sweat from her forehead with his hand and checking if she had a fever.
“I…”
Evelia stopped mid-sentence. She looked down in a panic. She was tightly clutching Armand’s arm.
She must have held on too hard, his arm was already red from her grip, and her fingernails had dug into his skin.
“…I’m sorry, Mr. Armand.”
Evelia slowly came back to her senses. She let go of his arm, put a hand to her forehead, and took deep breaths, trying to calm down.
“What happened?”
“It’s nothing… just a normal nightmare. Sorry for worrying you.”
“Just a normal nightmare?”
Armand didn’t quite believe it. Could something as simple as a regular dream really make Evelia react like this?
…Could it have been about the House of Nightingales?
That place really was enough to give someone nightmares.
“Really, just a normal nightmare. Sorry… Mr. Armand. I lost control. Thank you for taking care of me last night. It’s already morning, I should get back to work…”
Even though Evelia was awake, she still seemed to be trapped in the emotions of that horrible dream.
She shook her head and tried to stand up, but her body was unsteady. After only a few steps, Armand reached out and firmly pulled her back down to sit on the bed again.
Of course, this movement disturbed Rachel, who was sleeping nearby. But she seemed to be a heavy sleeper, she just scratched her bottom, turned over, and went right back to sleep.
“What work? Do you think you’re in any shape to work right now? Lie back down.”
“But I—”
“No buts, Evelia.”
Armand looked down at her from beside the bed.
“I stayed with you last night not so you could force yourself to work today in this condition. I’m not some kind of evil boss. If you’re not feeling well, then just rest.”
Standing in the light, Armand’s tall figure looked slightly intimidating.
Maybe because Evelia was still affected by the nightmare, or maybe because of the way the light hit his back, she suddenly felt a strange pressure from him.
“Sigh… Evelia…”
Seeing that she was still trying to be stubborn, Armand sighed and sat down beside her. Now that he was blocking the sunlight behind him, he suddenly looked much more gentle and calm.
Armand understood better than anyone how nightmares could leave someone unable to function properly. Even though he had mostly moved on from his past, he could still clearly remember how that kind of fear felt.
At times like this, resting is absolutely necessary.
“Evelia, you’re my personal maid, right?”
“Yes, Mr. Armand.”
“Then your work is up to me. I don’t have anything important to do today. Just rest, okay?”