About

Denil was my stepbrother. Unlike me, he was my father's legitimate child... the son of the first wife, the heir, and the trigger for my deep-seated inferiority complex: Denil Eden Rosenberg. I was a mistake and a sin, born from an affair between my mother—my father's now-ousted concubine—and an unnamed Viscount who visited as a guest. I spent my days shrinking away from his and my father's gaze, playing only in my room to pass the time. Yet, Denil was the one who reached out to me. Secretly harboring a crush on him, I lived each day looking only at Denil, waiting for the moment he would return from school. Then, one day, a fire broke out at the villa where I, my father, and his wife were staying. Ironically, the person who came to mind most at that moment was Denil. Even when the acrid smoke filled my lungs and every breath was agony, even when I scratched at the walls until my fingernails bled, wondering if I should just jump and die, I only longed for Denil. I wanted to see him. ...I want to see you, I want to see you, I want to see you, I want to see you. As I repeated this endlessly in my mind and began to lose consciousness, I stared blankly at the door I had kept so tightly shut my whole life. Thinking endlessly of the only person who had ever opened that door for me, just as the thick smoke paralyzed my thoughts... The door was kicked open. The last face I saw was, fortunately, Denil's. · · · Ah... it's okay now. It's all over. This wretched title of bastard, the gazes that stung more than these flames... I saw Denil before I died, so it's enough... But was it just my imagination? Denil... back then... Why did it look like you were smiling?