CAR 31

“…”

“How many people must have seen this…”

“I don’t know what kind of answer you want.”

Biting his lip, Sami lowered his head again. He let out a long sigh onto Dennis’s lower body. At the lukewarm breath, Dennis unknowingly pulled his body back. As if he didn’t care, Sami held his thighs in place with both arms.

While his lower body was held by Sami, a resigned Dennis slowly looked around his room. It seemed he was using an empty classroom as his lodging, having brought in a low bed. Though he had drawn the curtains over every window, it was obvious that it was on a lower floor.

The low candle placed at Dennis’s feet flickered violently from time to time. Due to the dark interior, Sami looked, at a glance, like a doctor performing a ‘sublime procedure.’ Not a kind pervert who trimmed the likes of pubic hair that grew lushly around a man’s dick…

“Why do you… abuse your own body so much?”

He was choosing every word with care, considering his relationship with Dennis. But to Dennis’s ears, it sounded like nothing but an insult. A condemnation, asking why he treated his body so carelessly…

“Just as you take shelter under a roof when it rains, and wander in search of something to cover yourself with when it snows… You, too, should avoid it. Don’t keep trying to stand up to him…”

“I’ve never stood up to him.”

“Then…”

“I’m just always found by that bastard.”

“Teacher…”

“I’m just damn unlucky.”

Dennis looked down at his right hand. Blood and pus had soaked through the bandage Sami had clumsily wrapped. Looking down at his numb hand for a long time, he opened his mouth as if in confession.

That standing up to someone only works if you’re equals, that he was a seasoned predator, and he himself was merely prey… He muttered gloomily that his only limit was to seem like spoiled food, long dead.

Sami, having finished the hair removal, raised his head with a proud face. He even nonchalantly planted a kiss on Dennis’s toes, which were curled up from tension and shame. Dennis stared blankly down at his lower body, which looked particularly unsightly today.

Countless cloths and blankets were scattered under the bed. It seemed he had used those to wipe Dennis’s body.

He was kind, but there was an excessive side to him. The more Sami comforted and pitied him, the more he felt like he was gradually wearing away. It was truly the kind of favor Dennis did not want.

Dennis was about to get off the bed, pulling his legs together, when Sami, who had been tidying up the area, widened his eyes. He blocked Dennis’s path. Dennis was starting to get annoyed by his impertinent behavior.

“I’ve been unnecessarily indebted to you. I’d like to go back now, so if my pants could…”

“Dennis.”

He called Dennis ‘Dennis,’ not ‘Teacher.’ It was a familiar form of address for which he had not asked permission. This was usually not a good sign.

“Please answer me now.”

When Dennis didn’t look at him, Sami personally bent his knees and knelt at Dennis’s feet. He had crossed the line long ago. Dennis suppressed his nausea and looked down at him.

A boy brimming with vigor was a useful card if one could handle him well. Wouldn’t a gardener, whom no one paid attention to, be more convenient for carrying out the task than Dennis, who had been seen in ‘that situation’ by the entire student body?

Sami, who met Dennis’s gaze, looked extremely serious at this moment. He pressed a kiss to Dennis’s knee. His desperate gaze pierced through Dennis. He continued to speak.

“What was your relationship with Laurent?”

Dennis’s vision wavered for a moment. It was getting too hard to bear. With a face that looked exactly like Laurent Lemaître’s, so innocently, as if to insult him once more…

Dennis retched.

“Ugh…”

As if he had been waiting, Sami raised both hands. Sami, who caught Dennis’s vomit, which was mostly stomach acid, with his hands, put on a worried expression.

His vision blurred for an instant. Every time he closed his eyelids, the scene from that day replayed vividly. Being bound to a bed just like this one, the contradictory gesture of diligently trying to have sex while looking down on Dennis as if he were a pest…

He haltingly threw up what had been caught in his throat. His own suppressed voice felt shameful.

“Your brother, he… me…”

“Must have loved you, right?”

It was absurd. It was a goddamn wild guess. Sami should have seen how Laurent looked at Dennis. It was a look of disgust, as if looking at rotten, fermented sardines. And that was while he was doing worse things to Dennis…

“Dennis, I… I have nothing, and I’ve never had a good education like my brother. Our positions here are completely different, too. My brother was a rising star, after all.”

“Well, I don’t think your brother was any better than you…”

“Nevertheless, I dare to want to take his place.”

Sami’s ears turned red. He casually wiped his two hands, stained with vomit, on his trousers, and then bit into Dennis’s irritable knee. With his hands clasped behind his back, he looked at Dennis with a polite and desperate expression.

Was it a fabricated innocence? Or an innate disposition? Dennis blankly tried to gauge him.

“I’ll be your shadow.”

“That’s…”

“An errand boy, a carpet, a cloth to wipe your body… I’ll be anything.”

“Sami, wait…”

“Dennis… you want to get revenge on him, don’t you?”

Dennis wiped his mouth with his arm. Sami’s pupils took on a strange glint.

“To dare to do that to Dennis publicly, in front of others…”

“…Yes.”

“So I’ll kill him for you.”

Sami smiled. The freckles on the bridge of his nose were as dazzling as ore.

It was a moment when everything fell into place strangely. A young lamb who admired Dennis had offered to be his weapon. How to wield it would still be Dennis’s burden to ponder, but…

“What’s the price?”

Dennis asked after a moment of hesitation. Sami repeated his earlier confession with a hurt expression. Hearing such words from a man-cub brought him no pleasure at all.

However, Dennis placed a hand on the crown of his head. He stroked his hair as if giving a baptism.

“Everything that is Dennis.”

His tongue licked Dennis’s knee. His gaze, looking up at Dennis as if ready to crawl up at any moment, was glistening. But Dennis didn’t mind what part of his body that tongue touched. He had endured worse things from them.

If he could just murder Vittorio, Dennis could set himself on fire and embrace him. To offer to others a body he had already resolved to burn was nothing at all.

Dennis’s hand gripped Sami’s cheek firmly. Sami, who had puckered his lips in surprise, quickly lowered his eyes.

“Not now.”

“…”

“We, together, are going to cut off Vittorio’s head.”

“Dennis…”

“There’s no down payment. But… I’ll pay you as much as you want later on.”

“Is that a promise?”

Sami held out his hand to Dennis. His hand, which had been glistening with his stomach acid, had been clean for a long time. Dennis stared for a long time at the fingers he held out. They even resembled the hands of Laurent Lemaître, who had probed his insides.

Eric, who had approached at some point, whispered in Dennis’s ear.

‘Quachi’s dog, Quachi’s manservant, Quachi’s hole…’

‘You’re really… a slut beyond saving.’

‘Someday that bastard might cut off your limbs and bury them under a tree.’

Just like you buried Laurent’s head.

The hallucination of Eric, adding that, tilted his neck bizarrely and laughed. Dennis threaded his fingers through Sami’s. As if he had been waiting, Sami licked between his fingers. He had no strength to stop him, so he just stared blankly at the scene. Sami’s groin was bulging.

The candle went out.

During the long weekend, Dennis Kahler stayed in the annex. In truth, it was not of his own will. It was because Sami did not let Dennis out of the annex.

There was no coercion, but Sami would sit at Dennis’s feet and look up at him all day long. It was a worship more bizarre than imprisonment. It was nothing more than Dennis being ‘displayed’ like a luxury item that had been acquired by barely scraping together three months’ salary.

He was the object of such longing, but like a child who did not know how to use it, he merely stared vacantly at Dennis.

Dennis was curious about the situation in the main building. Among the outsiders who had come to observe the regular performance, Quachi’s close associates were also mixed in. They had vividly witnessed the scene of Quachi’s spy being violated by the king’s maternal cousin. Dennis’s reputation and credibility had fallen to pieces.

Word of Friday’s tragedy must have reached Quachi’s ears. Quachi would undoubtedly send a letter with a gob of phlegm enclosed.

But Sami held Dennis’s hand like a rein and would not let go. Even when Dennis fell asleep as if fainting, Sami stayed awake all day.

Dennis did not like Sami’s lodging either. Although he made a fuss as if this space were entirely his own territory, cutting him off from the outside world and hiding Dennis in the most comfortable place, that was ignorance and a delusion. Because the annex was Vittorio’s territory.

The reason Sami and Dennis could sit face to face and rub shoulders here was because Vittorio tolerated them. A naked Vittorio could barge in here at any moment. With a hatchet in hand…

‘You… have such great luck with men.’

Eric, sitting beside Dennis, muttered so.

They were not alone. The vision of Eric loitering by his side was extremely grating to Dennis. His daily routine was either making a bizarre sound as if he were being strangled, or insulting Dennis… one of the two.

“Shut up.”

When Dennis retorted so, Sami’s eyes grew wide. Dennis did not bother to explain. There was no way he could confess to Eric’s existence and the full story.

Dennis tried to smile gently to hide his look of insanity. At the rare smile, Sami also smiled back. In the empty room, there were only two crazy men.

The time Sami fell asleep was at dawn, when the long weekend had finally ended. Dennis easily loosened his rough hand that was gripping his wrist. When he set his feet on the floor, a wave of dizziness came over him.

The garden, where the spring rain had fallen, was muddy. Dennis walked like a ghost to his room. Eric openly mocked his shabby bare feet.

Only after leaving the room and endlessly climbing the long staircase that led to the classrooms did Dennis realize that he was holding nothing in his hands. But to go back, everything was too arduous.

At every step, Dennis stopped at the back door of a different classroom and stared blankly inside. Most of the students were lying face down on their desks, or had their chins propped on their hands. Occasionally, the back of an eager student’s head was spotted, but he realized they were looking out the window, not at the teacher.

After passing a couple of classrooms like that, Dennis’s classroom at the very end soon came into view. It was already twenty minutes late. Nevertheless, it looked quiet at a glance. As he got closer to the door, his chest felt as if it were tightening.

As he threw open the classroom door, dozens of pairs of eyes stared only at him. The teacher’s platform instantly became a stage. It felt as if his heart were in the soles of his feet. Conscious of his own gait, Dennis looked only straight ahead. Standing at the lectern, Dennis slowly looked around at the countless pairs of eyes.

They were looking at Dennis with interest.

Dennis, who took a deep breath, looked down at the lectern. He couldn’t remember at all how he had taught them before. What conversations had he had with the students last week? Feeling guilty for having idly passed an hour with only a reading, in the previous class, he had told the students to try writing a formal last will and testament.

Perhaps thanks to injecting some interest into the boring morning hours, the students had followed Dennis well. He couldn’t remember the reason for having planned such a lesson. Was it guilt for those who had died futilely without a single will? The students had laughed innocently at the message to always carry the written will in their practice clothes. At that time, he had even deluded himself into thinking he had gotten a bit closer to them.

But now on the lectern that Dennis was looking down at, there lay a dead rat.