Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 476

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 246.
Playing Oneself (22)
“Even if I were alive, should I be interrogated by you about such matters?”
“You can’t ask a dead sister, can you? Ah, of course, I couldn’t ask her even when she was alive.”
I rake my blade’s edge across Theo’s taut nerves with subtle precision—just enough that another pull would snap them entirely. Soon, twilight descended upon the window. As darkness receded from their profiles, the eyes that had been hidden came partially into view. Theo’s eye sockets were sunken, the area beneath his cheekbones darkened with shadow, giving him the haggard appearance of a sickly man. When he married Ivnoa, people said he possessed nothing, yet he was truly handsome. But in mere months, that face had aged a decade.
“Yes. I’m already dead, an idiot, and in love with a woman who preferred my younger brother to me. I loved no one but her. Not a single soul in this world. Not even my own parents. Of course, not anyone from your household either. This is precisely why everyone knows it. A madman. A man who calls a woman no more intelligent than a five-year-old his wife. A man gone mad, clinging to her portrait and conversing with it even after she died. A man for whom nothing matters without her, who shows no interest even in the child she left behind.”
These were words Theo had never admitted before anyone, not even once. That he loved Ivnoa more than anything else in the world.
Everyone knew that Theo had cared for Ivnoa with patient devotion over long years, but they refused to acknowledge what emotion lay beneath it. Wasn’t it for money? Wasn’t it for his title? Theo let them think such things. They had no right to know. They who believed that a man who truly loved an idiot could never exist in this world. Why would he explain his most precious part to them? Why would he show them even a fragment of his sincerity?
But Joshua was different. Joshua knew. And Theo knew that he knew. That was what made it unbearable. The pity a child born with everything showed to a man who had nothing, the way he seemed to shield him before others. Merely remembering it made his face burn with indignation and shame. That trivial consideration seemed to expose Theo’s sincerity like cheap gossip.
So I tried to hide it deeper. Concealing, pretending, mimicking an impossible detachment. But now it was over. Theo leaned forward, supporting himself on the table.
“Now you understand why I hate you?”
Joshua shook his head shamelessly.
“I don’t understand.”
“The cup Ive drank from was yours.”
“Of course it was.”
“If you hadn’t handed over that cup… Ive would still….”
Joshua turned his head sharply toward the twilight. The swollen red line beneath his eyes became distinctly visible.
“Yes, if I hadn’t taken that cup, I would be dead instead of Ive. Just as you’ve wanted all along.”
The air in the entire room grew hot. Theo stared at Joshua as if to devour him, glaring as though he would have torn him apart if he had claws. Joshua struggled to open his dizzy eyes, forcing strength into them as he spoke.
“Do you know what Ive said to me before her breath stopped?”
The moment I spoke words I thought I had never heard, tears streamed down my face.
“Forgive Theo… and ask him to hold me….”
The truth that I had forcibly denied, the twelve-year-old Joshua had already known. Like a sealed shard of sharp glass, it tore through my heart and emerged. Theo’s body went rigid.
“Don’t lie. Ive said such things? While you were holding…that time?”
Joshua said nothing more.
“That can’t be. Ive… why would she say such things? She….”
“She couldn’t have known, could she?”
Joshua lifted his eyes. Theo stopped what he was about to say.
“She couldn’t have known who to forgive, who poisoned the cup. Isn’t that right?”
Cynicism returned to Joshua’s wet eyes. He wiped away the tears clinging to his lower lashes with the back of his hand, the sweat from his forehead, and the mask. Theo watched him clearly. Realization came. With it, his pale lips convulsed.
He was not a doll acting like the real thing. He was real. Joshua had been playing himself. Playing ‘oneself’ is incomparably more difficult than playing someone else. Above all, ‘oneself’ cannot be observed. Just as one cannot witness one’s own profile. Creating ‘oneself’ through acting was a realm difficult to imagine.
An instinctive word burst from Theo’s lips.
“Why did you come?”
The words about Anistan sending him had already lost all meaning.
“Why do you think I came?”
Instead of answering, Theo turned his face toward the darkness. When he turned his head again, he was smiling.
“Give me that answer a little later. In any case, I’m surprised. If you meant to surprise me, you’ve succeeded.”
“The days when we could play pranks on each other passed long ago.”
“Yes. I heard you were an actor in Hyacan. Well, that doesn’t matter anyway. But I’ll tell you one thing… while orchestrating this affair, I often wondered how you would accept it. And I’ve already reached a conclusion.”
Theo waited for Joshua’s response, then continued slowly.
“I thought you’d like it.”
Joshua kept his expression composed.
“Why did you think that?”
“You always found your position ridiculous anyway, didn’t you? Your parents, your sister—they meant nothing to you. It didn’t matter who received the title. The only thing you cared about was yourself, singular. So I made it into something you’d enjoy. Something to lose yourself in completely. To observe yourself from multiple angles, it’s most convenient to have another version of yourself. Since it’s yourself as another person, you can observe to your heart’s content until you’re sick of it. Isn’t this the perfect toy for you? And I even took care of all those tedious duties you despised. Nothing could be better than this.”
“If you really thought that, you shouldn’t have tried to kill me. If you truly wanted to let me be satisfied and live as I pleased.”
Theo’s laughter abruptly ceased.
“Why would I do something you’d enjoy? As I said before, I hate you. Creating something you’d love and then snatching it from your hands—there’s no greater satisfaction than that.”
I recalled the nine-year-old Joshua I’d faced in that dream. Now we stood before each other again, our eyes finally level. Memory slowly spiraled back to its origin. To the place where the first rage had been born.
Like grass uprooted at ten years old, with no territory to call my own, I had endured in that place. Theo had told himself: you are a gardener. You tend a secret garden of your own. The thorny vines of that garden are dangerous and difficult, but with patient care, small and exquisite flowers bloom—visible only to the gardener.
My rose garden alone.
I unwound the twisted, tangled branches with bare hands, pulled out thorns with my teeth when they pierced my skin, sucked the blood from my wounded fingers and swallowed it—all while believing this courtyard was mine alone, a garden I cultivated and gazed upon in solitude. Then one day, a child arrived—a child who possessed the entire sprawling gardens of Jade Ring Castle—and invaded my rose garden, casually inhaling its fragrance while I stood there in shock. That child looked down at me with what seemed like pity.
The world is inherently unjust, but at least there exists the right to revenge. Even empty hands can hold hatred.
A child? People saw Joshua as five, seven, nine years old, but to me, Joshua had never been any of those ages. He was nauseating, almost cruel in his excellence, looking down on the entire world from an early age. He possessed everything I could ever want, yet trampled it all with indifference, never even sparing a glance. That was the unbearable truth.
So I harbored no hesitation in wanting to destroy that child’s garden. Through my own petty methods—the only ones permitted to someone like me. Like pricking with a thin needle, I secretly trampled roots, gnawed at stems, and snapped flower buds. I scattered the ash of my hatred upon your innate brilliance, made others doubt you as you came to doubt yourself, until finally, fear withered even your light.
My hatred had ultimately branded Joshua’s soul. Whenever I saw it, I could barely contain my laughter. That delicate web of constraint coiling around him in secret, the way he pretended composure while knowing everything—it was pitiful, and that piteousness pleased me.
“So tell me. You actually enjoyed it too, didn’t you? As long as you didn’t die, you could dump all the bothersome duties on the copy and just run away to become some actor. You must have thought about it. Haven’t you?”
Joshua answered without hesitation.
“I did.”
Theo stared at Joshua, then burst into laughter again.
“Ha, haha, so you really are far more insane than I thought.”
“I am.”
Joshua gave the same answer a second time, brushing back the hair matted to his forehead.
“I could only abandon that idea after visiting Periwinkle Island.”
“Why? Did the people there reject you? Did you realize you had nowhere to go if you didn’t return to Jade Ring Castle?”
“That would have been easier. Instead, they welcomed me like a returning prince. They embraced me, wanted to do anything for me, came seeking me, hoping I would grant their wishes.”
One corner of Theo’s cheek twitched.
“So being treated well made you reluctant to die.”
“Yes. Or rather, it had to. Because for so long, I’d felt death hovering just beyond a thin curtain, close enough to touch. Since the day a single cup of wine divided my path from my sister’s.”
That day, Joshua survived instead of dying. A fate that seemed to hinge on whether a card I’d drawn landed face-up or face-down. After that, death always followed at my heels. In the form of a ghost, in the grip of a murderer’s hands around my throat, in the guise of a cunning mage possessing my body—clinging to my back.
Why had I walked that precarious line? Why had I dipped one foot into that blood-soaked shadow? It was as though, having survived by chance, I’d sought out inevitable death as compensation. I despised myself for clinging to survival purchased with my sister’s life, and even though it was the instinct of all humans, that very instinct seemed so repugnant that I wanted to step back. Because it was a stolen jewel, something I couldn’t wear with pride.
The one who’d driven Joshua to such a state gazed at him with clear eyes brimming with mockery. Joshua shook his head and looked at Theo.
“But now I understand that I cannot die so easily. Because they love me. Because they accept me unconditionally, respect me, and follow me. And I realized the reason they do so isn’t because I’m someone worthy of admiration, nor because I did something for them in the past, but for one reason alone: because I am Joshua von Arnim.”
“So you’re proud of the treatment you received thanks to your bloodline?”
“Does it feel good and comfortable to receive treatment unrelated to your own abilities or actions?”
“Isn’t that exactly what you’ve always received? Your entire house places expectations on someone with no achievements whatsoever, saying that you alone matter, and you’ve accepted it as natural all this time. Now you suddenly deny it? And you’re Demonic, someone this house has deemed useless for generations. There’s a ten-out-of-ten chance you’ll contribute nothing to this family. Isn’t that right?”
Children of Rune – Winterer
Author: Jeon Min-hee
Publisher: 14 Months Publishing
The rights to this book belong to the author and 14 Months Publishing.
To reuse all or part of this book’s contents, written consent from both parties is required.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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