Please Kill Me - Chapter 123
That voice touched on a deep question Yekaterina had long ignored.
‘Why did Dmitry cast the spell on me?’
It stirred memories of Dmitry that had only recently surfaced in her current life. When Yekaterina first learned about Offenbach’s magic, she thought she must have inadvertently done something to acquire it.
She hadn’t wanted it, nor even known of its existence. So, it seemed logical to consider it a tragedy wrought by chance. But the truth revealed by her faint memories was different.
Dmitry had personally bestowed the magic upon her.
But why?
Yekaterina and Dmitry were practically strangers. They didn’t have a particularly bad relationship, but they were more distant than close. Yekaterina was naturally aloof, and Dmitry was similarly reserved. Moreover, Sergei didn’t particularly like seeing Dmitry and Yekaterina together.
So, the memories she regained after returning to the past felt unfamiliar.
‘I was that close with Dmitry?’
It was surprising, but the past was just the past.
She assumed Dmitry had forgotten those memories as well.
Dmitry was the heir to Offenbach, a beloved young master. Everyone in Offenbach knew that Sergei, known for his ruthless handling of affairs, had one soft spot: Dmitry. Even the temperamental Ludmila would rush out barefoot for anything related to Dmitry, and everyone knew how she was always eager to attend to her only son’s needs.
So why would someone like him care about an adopted child?
‘Even if he calls me sister.’
Yekaterina always felt that his voice carried more mockery than reverence when he called her that. She believed his only object of reverence was Sergei.
But had she been wrong?
She thought she knew Dmitry well. She thought going back to Offenbach meant certain death. But now, she couldn’t be sure of anything.
Remembering the voice that called out to her from the cliff made Yekaterina feel as if she was facing a stranger. She realized that she knew Dmitry but didn’t really know him at all.
Perhaps she thought she knew Offenbach inside out, but there were undoubtedly aspects she was unaware of.
Thus, Yekaterina concluded that she needed to revisit what she had left behind. She had to understand why Dmitry killed Sergei, why he tried to kill Leonid, and perhaps most importantly:
‘Does he intend to kill me?’
Finding these answers might also provide a way to save Leonid.
As her thoughts reached this point, Yekaterina arrived at her destination.
The camp adorned with the red serpent of Offenbach.
A soldier standing guard pointed a blade at her neck.
“Identify yourself.”
The instinctual and extreme hostility signaled that she had returned home. She pulled back her hood. Seeing her face, the expressions of those facing her stiffened.
“I’m here to see Dmitry. Take me to him if you don’t want to die.”
* * *
“Cough, cough!”
Inside the tent marked by the red serpent, Dmitry, a young man with silver-blue hair, broke into a fit of coughing. The handkerchief he used to cover his mouth was stained with dark red blood.
Wiping his similarly stained lips, Dmitry’s face showed fatigue.
‘Seems like I’ve been overdoing it lately.’
Though Dmitry appeared fine on the outside, his condition had been deteriorating ever since he returned to the past.
He had exhausted almost all his life force and mana to forcibly turn back time. As a result, whereas Dmitry once used magic as effortlessly as breathing, now even shattering a part of the ground took considerable effort.
Moreover, he had been using magic frequently of late. He had employed it to conceal his presence when he found Yekaterina in the forest and used it during the command meeting to briefly calm Sergei and seize a moment to speak. The cumulative strain had finally caught up with him after yesterday’s events.
‘I’ll have to be careful for a while.’
Offenbach was a place where everything operated on the simple principle of survival of the fittest.
To maintain this structure, the head of the Offenbach family and their children must train themselves harder than anyone else. Thus, physical weakness is a critical issue in a family that upholds the principle of survival of the fittest, especially now when the head of the family has died, causing chaos.
Although Dmitry’s current condition doesn’t show outwardly, if it worsens, it will become apparent, and controlling his subordinates will become difficult.
The situation was unfavorable for Dmitry as well.
‘…Sister threw herself just to save that man.’
Of course, with the protection magic of Offenbach, he didn’t think Yekaterina was seriously harmed. However, her actions themselves were shocking to Dmitry.
