Atonement, About it’s Cruelty - Chapter 22

Oscar moved with the key in hand. He heard Simon leaving the suite behind him, but his focus remained solely on the key in his palm.

The key.

The cold, solid metal was smaller and simpler than he had expected. Once, he would have overturned the seabed just to find it. He had searched tirelessly without a trace, only for it to appear now, on its own accord.

“Well… if this is the price for being outwitted by a fool, it’s not too bad.”

Muttering self-deprecatingly, Oscar reached the door and came to a halt. His sharp, blue eyes, which had been fixed on the key, now shifted forward.

Beyond the wide-open door, there was a woman, in a state where she could hardly recognize him, or who had dragged her here. The woman lay on the bed bathed in moonlight. Between her and Oscar was only the powerless shroud of darkness.

Oscar, who had briefly paused, resumed his steps. Moonlight streaming through the window touched his toes. He stepped fully into the moonlight, and soon stood by the bedside.

The moonlight cast a sharp silhouette along his side, half of him illuminated and half cloaked in shadow, as he gazed at the woman.

The woman, now a living key, had a face Oscar had never imagined. In his fantasies, the keyholders were always those at the pinnacle of power.

A pirate king who crossed seas from the South of Norfolk to the East, a drug lord who controlled all narcotics, a leader of a violent gang, or even the king of a country.

Yet here she was, just this woman.

A bitter laugh escaped him. But the self-mocking laugh soon dried up, leaving only a cold gaze in its place.

His chilling eyes slowly traced the contours of her face. The unprotected face appeared extraordinarily exotic. Her dark brown hair spread out on the bed like seaweed, making her face look even whiter.

Along with the exotic impression, what was striking was how all the lines that made up her being seemed so delicate they might break if touched.

The woman had a sharp jawline and neck, shoulders that seemed barely two handspans wide, fingers that continually pushed against the sheets, slender wrists, and small feet and ankles visible beneath the rucked-up hem of her skirt.

How should he put this woman….

In a way, she looked like a drawing sketched faintly with a pencil. Following the delicate, barely-there lines, his gaze settled on her wide-open eyes.

The man’s body, as if carved out, leaned towards the woman, who seemed like a sacrifice.

The flickering focus that had been coming and going now appeared entirely absent. However, it was not like the eyes of a dead person. The eyes, drained of life and turned white, were unsettling just to look at. The woman’s eyes were now so transparent that the bottom was clearly visible.

Despite her attempts to lower her eyes and hide her face, she faced him. Actually, with her lack of focus, it might be more accurate to say that his gaze simply rested beyond her pupils rather than that she faced him directly.

Moonlight, which had been pouring over Oscar’s cheek, shifted direction and cast its glow on the woman’s face. It was as though color was bleeding into the black-and-white pencil drawing.

The details of her brown eyes seemed layered like colored pencil strokes, with delicate, finely drawn eyelashes.

“……”

In the night, the man who had claimed many lives stared at the woman he had forcibly brought with an intensity that made him forget how much he was observing her. Tears seemed to well up in her meticulously detailed brown eyes, shimmering as though they were caught between searing heat and a paralyzing despair.

“Ha, ung…”

The woman, who had been quietly exhaling breaths, let out a faint, strained moan. Her round eyes narrowed, and the tears that had gathered flowed sideways. Her once-clear eyes rapidly clouded as if intoxicated, and she tilted her head to one side.

This revealed her white, unprotected nape to him. The delicate nape, which seemed as if it could snap with a single grip, pulsed with a bluish throb.

It was around this time that a flash of surprise flickered in the man’s eyes, as clouded as the woman’s.

“Ha.”

Oscar, regaining his composure, let out a sharp, hollow laugh and brushed his hair back. He found the drug amusing; it only took a drop or two for a person to end up like this.

Straightening his previously slumped body, Oscar turned away from the piercing observation he had made. What good was it to continue looking at a woman who had lost her mind? As he began to step away with a cold thought, an unexpected sound halted him.

A sickening crunching noise came through.

Oscar, who had turned his back to her, spun around almost reflexively. The woman’s once red, wet lips were now tightly shut.

“……!”

In an instant, Oscar was by her side, one knee propped on the bed. He supported the back of the woman’s head with one hand while she grimaced in pain and bit her own tongue.

There was a smell of blood.

It seemed the woman, even in her unconscious state, was trying to bite her own tongue in a desperate attempt to overcome the effects of the drug.

Oscar grabbed her chin with his free hand, pressing her jaw with his thumb and forefinger in an attempt to force her mouth open. But despite her clouded eyes, she refused to open her mouth.

Oscar’s brow furrowed with frustration.

He had once been driven mad searching for the key he now regarded with a sense of futility. He had desperately sought it, faced despair as if he might die, and then, after some time, had become indifferent and almost forgotten it.

The circumstances had changed, but it seemed he had forgotten in order to move forward.