DKFTI 74

Three years ago, Aizen opened his eyes in the treatment room of the Holy Kingdom. The bright light inside stabbed his eyes. It was a place with a familiar style.

“Ugh…”

When he tried to raise his body, he felt pain all over his body as if it was being torn apart.

“Apostle Aizen.”

“Elder Brivan?”

Brivan had a long relationship with Aizen. He had been the priest who treated him not only when he rolled through battlefields but also when he got hurt in meaningless places.

The two had spent a long time together, so they could be called close friends, maybe even bound by something deeper.

“It is fortunate you regained consciousness.”

“Forget the small talk, why am I here?”

Aizen forced his body to sit even though it did not want to move. He had no external wounds, yet inside he felt pain as if his insides were rotting.

“Did I swallow lava or something?”

After he said that, Aizen suddenly remembered the last scene before he collapsed.

“Are you in great pain?”

“…I feel like I am dying.”

“There is good news and bad news.”

“Is that routine a rule that you must say it whenever someone wakes up after fainting?”

Aizen frowned, spouting nonsense as usual after a short thought. But in the end, he answered the question.

“Let us start with the good news.”

“You know your body was never normal.”

“You think I do not know that?”

“Your body was like a glass bottle filled with condensed energy, overheated and ready to break anytime. But rejoice. Now it has become completely normal.”

“…How can that be possible?”

When Aizen heard Brivan’s words, he realized his body state was indeed different from before.

Unlike before, when he felt like he could explode and die at the slightest touch, now he felt the calm flow of energy inside his body.

“It should not be possible. But it seems you found the antidote.”

“……”

He said it was poison. I knew it. I knew it would be a lie.

He suddenly recalled Leviathan’s calm face when he was lying, the face that confused him so easily. He wanted to rush over right now and smack it.

But the time he doubted Sibel also crossed his mind and he felt regret. But at the same time, he resented him.

He only wanted him to say, “no, believe me.” But instead, the memory of that face lying that it was poison made him angrier.

He felt like he would only feel relieved if he chased after him right now and threw a fit.

“The bad news is that because your holy power decreased too much, it will take a full three years to recover.”

“What? How can it disappear and come back like that?”

His holy power already belonged to him, so where could it have gone?

“That is how the antidote works. It burns away the dangerous energy. If you leave the empty holy power unattended, and something else fills that space, it becomes even more dangerous.”

Brivan supported Aizen’s unstable body and helped him sit.

“Wait, then that means…”

“His Holiness, the Pope ordered you to gather pure holy power in the Selenian Fortress for three years.”

“……”

Aizen shut his eyes.

“But at least you kept your life, is that not fortunate?”

Aizen almost shouted at him “what’s fortunate about this?” He did not know why he was so angry. He had never struggled to live in the first place. He only grew stubborn about not wanting to die in the place where he went to die.

“Who brought me here?”

“Who else, Calypse.”

“How did he get there? Wait, wait. What happened there?”

As Aizen reacted sharply, his body tightened like a wet towel being wrung.

“Ugh.”

“Hey, you must not move carelessly yet.”

Aizen pressed his hand against his solar plexus and breathed roughly.

What happened to the Demon King? What about the Demon King’s people in the castle? Could it be the Apostles of the Holy Kingdom…? Aizen’s gaze shook violently.

“They quietly handed only you over.”

“Anyone killed or injured there…”

“Look, Aizen. Do not ever show those eyes or say such words to anyone else.”

“……”

“You look just like someone who left behind a loved one.”

Brivan had matched steps with Aizen for a very long time. Because of that, he knew the man quite well.

So when he saw Aizen acting so impatiently, he could roughly read what was in his heart.

“Why are you worrying about demons? You fool.”

The Aizen Brivan knew was a rough but pure man. That purity came out as raw and unrefined character, but compared to humans stained by the secular world, Aizen was like a child running in the fields. That was why he could not hide his expression at all.

“There are rumors everywhere that you were bewitched by demons.”

“Bewitched?” Aizen sneered.

“Is it not true? An Apostle of your level could not possibly be trapped in the Demon King’s castle, yet you did not show your face all that time.”

“I do not care what others say.”

“Anyway, nothing you are worrying about happened, so put your mind at ease.”

Brivan pushed a thick pillow behind Aizen’s back. Then Aizen was able to lean comfortably.

“But why did you really not return? Did you really fall for the demons?”

Once Aizen’s posture became comfortable, Brivan stroked his chin and asked with a mischievous expression.

“You know, I was bound to die anyway, old man.”

“But here you are alive. If this is not God’s will, then what is it?”

“Whenever you say things like a priest, it makes me worried.”

“Worried about what?”

“On days you said that, you always made me take bitter medicine.”

From a long time ago, since Aizen’s childhood, Brivan had always been that way. Even though Aizen was now a grown adult, Brivan had not fixed that old habit.

It was his habit to treat Aizen while speaking of God.

“You caught me. But what can I do. If you do not take medicine, my heart feels suffocated.”

“You said I am cured now.”

“That is how the human body is. You fix one thing, another causes trouble, you touch this, that one bursts. Life is the same. To settle the aftereffect of your holy power leaving your body all at once, many medicines and divine power are needed.”

“You explain with too many words…”

“First, meet His Holiness. Then your future will be predicted.”

“……”

Aizen leaned his head back. A white ceiling came into view.

“In the end, I came back to the same place.”

It had been a place he hated so much, yet after spending only a short time in the Demon King’s castle, it felt strangely unfamiliar.

“Do not space out like that in front of His Holiness. You know he is not the same as me.”

“If I am a heretic, he will cut off my neck immediately.”

Aizen said without any hesitation.

“Why say such hurtful words. No matter what, you are like a child to His Holiness the Pope.”

Brivan answered Aizen and started to prepare medicine on one side of the treatment room.

Of course. See. He is giving me bitter medicine again.

Aizen smirked at that thought.

“If it is for the Holy Kingdom and the Church, he would not only throw away his children, he would cut his own neck without hesitation.”

“Watch your mouth. If you keep making enemies everywhere, you will end up in trouble.”

“I am not here to play politics.”

“From now on, you should try politics too. It is not something you cannot do. Young people are supposed to have dreams and ambition.”

Brivan brought the medicine back to Aizen.

“If you drink it, it will have a pain relief effect.”

Aizen accepted the medicine without a word and poured it into his mouth. The rough powder spread a bitter taste inside his mouth.

After swallowing the medicine, Aizen felt something strange.

Did I really go there to heal my body? Looking at the outcome, it really ended up that way.

“Rest for now. You can worry about other things later.”

Brivan dimmed the lights in the room. Aizen leaned against the pillow.

“You can sleep a little. I must inform His Holiness that you woke up.”

“Do as you like…”

Aizen’s eyes began to close.

As his eyelids shut, many things unfolded on the black background. But among them, one face floated the most clearly.

He gave me poison. He fed me poison. Yet in the end he healed my body? That is deception.

‘Go back to where you belong.’

In the end, it went just as the Demon King said.

He stabbed a knife into his chest, and he achieved his goal.

He should hate him, but why does he keep remembering those eyes.

Those trembling eyes that looked like they would start crying any moment.

“…He will not even miss someone like me.”

It was humiliating, but Aizen knew his own place. He was just a stone that rolled into the Demon King’s castle, shamelessly lodged there. So of course he knew that disappearing here would be right for both sides.

“But.”

Then why am I so angry?

“Fuck.”

Aizen, whose body had been sinking down, suddenly sat up.

“Is it really true he is safe there?”

If it was demons, then Calypse, who hated them to death, would not have left that bite-sized Demon King alone.

In the end Aizen jumped up from the bed.

He immediately tried to rush to Calypse. But his body was not the same as his will. The moment Aizen stepped forward, he collapsed on the spot.