6. The Existence of a Child

The night is dark.

It was a simple truth of the world, yet Vaye Levantes had never felt it more deeply than he did these days.

From the moment the sun fully disappeared, and the curtain of darkness swallowed all of Motrel, until the first faint light of dawn crept in, precisely six hours passed.

That was also exactly half a day—the length of time he suffered through his sleepless torment.

A discarded syringe rolled across the disheveled sheets.

“…….”

A moment when he even doubted the breath he exhaled himself.

Vaye now understood how agonizing it was to forget how to breathe.

Whenever the pressure in his chest became unbearable, whenever his brain screamed from lack of oxygen, he chose the simplest solution.

A tranquilizer worked fastest and most effectively when injected directly into the vein.

Especially for someone like Lorena.

He never imagined that one day, he would end up using his wife’s medication on himself.

Sprawled carelessly, with the back of his hand covering his forehead and eyelids, the needle marks on his forearm stood out starkly.

Even after injecting himself this much, he still heard the gunshot ringing in his ears.

Perhaps he really had gone insane.

Vaye Levantes had never doubted himself his entire life.

But this time, he couldn’t shake the uncertainty.

His world had collapsed from a single point in time—

The last day of March.

The dawn he woke up in Alborada Hotel.

Looking back, it had clearly been a nightmare.

And yet, the dream was so vivid, it was only natural that he lost his grip on reality.

Even now, a full month later, he heard the gunshot several times a day.

The face of the woman gripping a pistol, smiling dangerously, haunted his mind.

A face that laughed, while aiming a gun at her own temple.

The moment the gun fired,

The face that had been smiling so radiantly shattered into pieces.

The dream was so horrifically detailed,

Even though he had never once in his life seen the corpse of someone who had shot themselves in the head,

His mind constructed the scene with disturbing accuracy.

The lifeless body that crumpled helplessly.

The unrecognizable mess of flesh and bone fragments, goddamn it—

Vaye dragged his hand away from his eyes and roughly wiped his face.

“Fuck…….”

The stench of gunpowder and blood filled the air.

The gray stone walls, cold and lifeless, were splattered with blood.

Like someone had clumsily crushed a ketchup packet.

The sensations of that moment—

The sights, the smells, the sounds—

They were so disturbingly vivid, as if he had truly been there.

‘Reality?’

A crooked smile twisted on his lips.

Reality… No. It couldn’t be.

He had seen it with his own eyes.

That damned dream—

The very morning he woke up from it,

Vaye had driven straight to Soto.

The very place where, in the dream, he and his wife had stood together for the last time.

Soto’s sealed monastery was a cold, gloomy place.

Every year, millions of pilgrims visited the holy temple that held the relics of saints,

But the monastery, separated by a valley, was completely cut off from the world.

The moment he arrived, he kicked open the monastery doors and grabbed the first monk he saw by the collar.

“Lorena?”

His voice, tangled with hoarseness and ragged breathing, felt as if it didn’t even belong to him.

〈There is no such sister by that name, Your Grace.〉

〈Forgive me, but only those who have devoted their lives to the Lord may pursue their ascetic training here. Please, maintain your silence—Your Grace!〉

Vaye had rampaged through every single cell in the monastery—

Until he finally found the hidden chamber deep inside.

It was exactly like in the dream,

And yet, completely different.

There was no wife.

No corpse.

No blood, no scattered flesh, no fallen pistol.

Only a solitary crucifix, hanging on the wall, bathed in an endless, flickering light.

After confirming multiple times that Lorena was not there, Vaye finally returned to reality.

Once he regained his rationality, the whole situation felt absurd.

Lorena was obviously supposed to be at the Ducal mansion, so why had he traveled all the way to this remote Soto, wasting three or four days?

It was just a nightmare.

A pathetic dream.

Perhaps he had been feeling uneasy because the time had come to execute the Canary Operation.

Vaye laughed at himself and returned to Motrel.

But even as he drove back, he still couldn’t define the emotion that had shaken him so violently.

Perhaps.

Perhaps somewhere along that road, he had already realized it.

That no dream could ever be so vivid and detailed.

That no dream could last for a full year, replaying itself with unwavering clarity every single day.

That no dream could allow a person to recall every single moment as if it had truly happened.

That no dream could carry consequences into reality.

That a nightmare powerful enough to drive a man insane did not exist.

He already knew all of this.

He had just buried the truth.

Because if it was a timeline that no longer existed,

Then it was nothing more than an illusion.

It never happened.

It did not exist.

Vaye repeated these words to himself over and over.

Yet, he only realized how utterly unsettled he still was on the night of the downpour, when he finally returned home.

The wheels of his car, which had raced through the unpaved roads, were now scratched and damaged all over.

As he stepped out of the vehicle, his eyes habitually lifted toward his wife’s bedroom.

It was dark.

Vaye remembered.

Lorena always left the lights on when she slept.

By the time he snapped back to awareness,

He had already slammed open the door to her bedroom.

And there, he found a woman, deathly pale, staring at him as if she had just seen a ghost.

The emotions that had been boiling just beneath the surface finally overflowed, violently erupting.

〈You just had to drive me to this point. Like a parasite, burrowing into my head, eating away at me. ……I should have never let someone like you into this family.〉

And indeed, that was the truth.

A dark chuckle rippled through the silence.

Perhaps it had been a wise decision for Lorena to leave the mansion when she did.

If she hadn’t, she might have never left this bed again.

“……I should have had a child earlier.”

He had miscalculated.

He should have never hesitated—

He should have just had a child with her, before anything else.

Back then, he had seen no need for one.

Lorena alone was already a headache—adding a child into the equation would have made it impossible to discard her.

But in the end, he had failed to cut her away anyway.

If it was always going to end like this, then why had he ever hesitated?

The more chains that bound Lorena to him, the better.

If there had been a child, maybe she would still be here.

If she had returned… with a child…

A meaningless thought.

But it didn’t matter.

She would return to his side soon enough.

So, for now, he was willing to tolerate her little escapades.

After all—

Whether it was a dream, the past, an illusion, or reality—

To Vaye, this life she had begun anew was nothing more than a childish game.

She could do whatever she wanted.

Except for two things.

Divorce.

And suicide.