Chapter 8

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Chapter 8

Sylvia looked at Azela with a frown on her face, then quickly turned and left the bedroom.

Tilted her head to one side, Azela stared at the tightly closed bedroom door. It was because she thought that after a while, Irene would come in, making a fuss and say, ‘Madam, are you okay?’

However, no matter how long she waited, that never happened.

She laid her body back on the bed again helplessly. Azela had no intention of doing anything, and she had no will to do anything. If she did what she did, she was sure someone else was going to die again. So, just like this, she would become a dead man as he wants and as Sylvia wants.

…She should have been like this from the beginning.

After some time passed, the locked bedroom door opened, and the maid she had never seen before brought her a meal. The maid set the meal without saying a word and left the bedroom. No one gave her a gaze.

Azela, who got her body up, looked at the meal and habitually picked up a silver spoon to stir the food.

The silver spoon changed its color.

When she saw that, it was apparent that Sylvia had her hands on this.

“…Yes.”

Nodding her head, she glanced at the changed color of the silver spoon, then scooped out the food before putting it in her mouth. The food tasted good. She continued to put the food in her mouth before it even made its way into the esophagus.

Even though her throat choked and her tears flowed, and she gagged, Azela swallowed it.

‘I, too… I want to go to you too, Irene…’

For a while, Azela felt the pain that her throat was about to burn for a moment and closed her mouth. The silver spoon that had changed color in her hand fell to the floor with a sound.

“Kuhk—!”

Grabbing the burning throat and tingling heart, she fell to the floor.

The sound of the prepared meal falling to the floor echoed loudly. There must have been a loud noise leaking to the outside, though no one was running towards the bedroom.

No one cared about her.

All of the power drained from her body. It felt like someone was holding her heart tight, and she couldn’t breathe properly.

It was a realization that her death was nearing her eyes.

As saliva dripped from between her open lips, she could vaguely feel the marble floor she faced was very piercingly cold. …Was Irene this cold, too? As her face crumpled at the pain, Azela thought only of it.

‘When I die, Daniel will be happy.’

Her heart tightened more as she drew nearer to death, piercing remembered Daniel’s face over her death. He must be so happy to make Sylvia the Madam of Todd mansion before the funeral was even held. And, they would live happily ever after…

…Just like the end of a fairy tale book.

Azela gently closed her eyes. The children’s book was not her own story. Yes, now it didn’t matter. It was not bad to just go on like this.

It was then that she had given up on everything.

“Are you giving up so quickly?”

A strange voice opened her eyes.

There was no sound of the bedroom door opening, no footsteps, no signs of a presence. When she opened her eyes to the unfamiliar voice she had heard for the first time. The night wind was blowing fiercely through the open window.

Obviously, the window was locked, and no one had opened it.

Still, there was the stranger sitting on the open window sill, covered in all black. There was no bright moonlight or twinkling stars behind him. As if everything had been eroded away, the pitch-black darkness was all there was.

“….”

Azela looked at him and let out a rough breath. Her heart was pounding and her throat was on fire, so she couldn’t say anything.

As though he knew all about Azela’s condition, he crossed the window and entered the bedroom with a light gesture. He had to climb more than three stories high to get to the bedroom window. Although it was impossible for him as a human being, his movements were light.

‘Who… How are you here?’

With Azela’s swaying eyes, she gazed at him as he approached her very slowly.

Unmistakably, he was walking towards her, though he was somehow mysterious. It was as if he was walking in the air rather than the floor.

“You will die soon.”

Slowly walking to Azela’s front, he murmured in a low tone. He then squatted down in front of her, clenched her chin and looked at Azela indifferently. She couldn’t take her eyes off of his purple eyes that she couldn’t tell the depth of.

He exclaimed a small ‘hmm’ before lifting up a long, thin finger and lightly tapping near her heart with his finger.

Even though he just tapped it lightly, the strangely tightening heart and the burning sensation in the throat all disappeared at once.

Astonished, Azela opened her eyes wide.

“Wh, who…?”

“…I came here to ask for your help in various ways, though I didn’t know you were rotting here.”

“…What?”

“No, but this is fun in its own way. It’s been a while since I had fun.”

Contrary to the sentence ‘fun,’ his tone was dull. The face, which showed no emotion, was also very cold. Long eyes and white skin looked like a monster from a legend, not a human.

At the sense of alienation, Azela forgot her question, and she stared blankly at him. She wanted to ask why he came here and who he was, but the moment she looked at him, nothing came to her mind as though she had just forgotten everything.

“Yes, you…”

He gazed at Azela with cold eyes as he stroked her chin.

“Would you like to sign a contract with me?”

“What?”

“What you want, I’ll give it to you. Whatever it is.”

He raised an indifferent eyebrow and asked after spitting only words with no meaning.

Contract…? She had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

Azela wrinkled her eyebrows and tried to lift her torso, yet for some reason, her body didn’t move. It was difficult to move even one of her fingers as if tied to a rope. Startled by the unfamiliar phenomenon she felt for the first time, she tried to twist her body.

Seeing that, the man spread his palms out and spoke calmly.

“Don’t waste your strength. Because I paralyzed your body for a moment, so you won’t move. That’s why you won’t feel any pain.”

“…Who are you?”

At that, Azela asked the question she should have asked the first time she saw it. As she was asking her questions, her head was beeping with a warning tone, instinctively saying not to do it.

“Me?”

He held his chin and his red lips smiled.

Goosebumps ran all over her body at the sight that felt grotesque even though he was simply smiling. He was like a ‘devil’ born of evil. As he was pondering in his thoughts, the man continued speaking in a low voice.

“In human language, I am ‘the devil’.”

His blood-stained red lips drew a half-moon curve, and he smiled.

“…What?”

“You can’t believe it, right? I know you don’t want to believe it, I’ve had a lot of reactions like that.”

Even though she stared at him like a madman with suspicious eyes, he was still calm.

…Devil?

Azela pondered the words he spat out. Was he now saying that he is the real devil? Or, was he simply using the metaphor of ‘the devil’…?

She came across something about the devil in a book when I was young. There was no way such a thing really existed in this world.

Glancing at him with suspicious eyes, the man shrugged his chin as if he had read her heart.

“It’s okay if you don’t believe it. I have no intention of making you believe me, anyway.”

Azela stared at him with a confused expression at the sharp words hidden behind the mischievous laugh. So, he was saying he was really the ‘devil’ she could only see in books. It was a nonsensical story.

Lost for her words, she couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

“So what are you going to do? Are you going to make a contract with me?”

“…What is the contract?”

“Ah.”

At her shaky question, he let out a small sigh and turned his gaze into the air. He had a grumpy expression on his face, wondering, ‘How should I explain this?’ as he furrowed his eyebrows and shrugged with an expression unsure of his explanation.

“The contract… It’s literally a contract. Have you ever heard of it? It’s a ‘contract with the devil.’ Most people know what the contract is.”

“…Are you going to kill me?”

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