Plague Lord-Chapter 58: A Fleeting Dream

There were certain kinds of bad people in this world.

Those who used violence against their wives, gambled away their savings, drank themselves to a stupor, and threatened the very stability of their own families.

A family of three — or rather, two of them — had the misfortune of living under such a man.

Yet, it was strange.

Just as there were husbands who abused their wives to vent their frustrations, there were also choices a wife could make in return. For instance, she could have called the police at any point in time and had him arrested. The bruises she wore daily were evidence enough, and with the justice system often siding with the victim in such cases, proving his guilt would not have been difficult.

If convicted, he would have spent several years behind bars. And the irony was almost poetic.

Most prisoners didn’t take kindly to men like him. They would’ve welcomed him with open arms, eager to show him their own special kind of "affection."

But if the wife had no desire to involve the police, she still had another choice.

She could have simply taken her child, packed their belongings, and fled to a place where the husband would never find them. After all, he was the kind of man who spent his days idling, drinking, and gambling away what little money he had.

The odds of him having the will or even the energy to search for them were laughably low.

However, the wife in this particular story chose to do none of those things.

For some unexplainable reason, she decided instead to stay.

Day after day, she endured the shouting, the blows, and the endless nights filled with the stench of alcohol and regret. To any outsider, it would have seemed like madness.

The stubbornness of the woman to leave was too unreasonable, or perhaps she was too afraid of what lay beyond the door if she were to ever leave.

Whatever the case, it didn’t matter.

Because the one who suffered the most, and the true victim, wasn’t the woman, but the child who was forced to watch it all unfold.

Helpless and powerless, he could only stand there, trembling, as the violence played out before his eyes, unable to stop it or even look away.

The boy couldn’t understand.

Why did his mother have to be beaten every day?

Why did she always return home with more bruises than she left with?

And why did his father who had sworn an oath to protect his wife allow it to happen?

What kind of love was this exactly?

He truly couldn’t understand.

As a stupid thirteen year old boy, he knew nothing about the complexities of life.

There were many things he couldn’t comprehend, and even more that he couldn’t change. The boy was too small and weak to stand against a grown adult. The difference in strength, size, and sheer mass was far too great for him to ever hope to overcome.

Even so, there was one thing he understood with absolute certainty.

The violence he witnessed was unforgivable.

And even more unforgivable were the men who allowed such cruelty to continue, even if one of those men happened to be his own father.

That, in his eyes, was utterly evil.

Which was why the boy was compelled to put an end to it by any means necessary. But doing something and thinking of doing something were two fundamentally different things.

The last time he did something remotely close to rebellion, the boy had received a fierce punch to the face which had knocked out of his baby tooth as a reward for his efforts.

More precisely, he had been punished for not passing the TV remote.

He hated it.

He hated the fact he had been born into a world that allowed such violence and cruelity.

He hated the world for punishing the weak who only wanted to live.

And even more, he hated his own weakness and inability to challenge the cruelty of that world.

On one rainy day, however, everything changed.

His entire worldview shattered in a single moment.

Strangely, his mother came home without a single bruise on her body. Under normal circumstances, the boy would have felt glad, maybe even relieved. But something about her felt off.

Something didn’t quite add up.

The mother who always smiled through the pain now stood before him with lifeless eyes. The warmth that once lingered in her gaze was gone, replaced by a cold, hollow emptiness. It was as if every spark of life had been extinguished, leaving behind nothing but a shell.

She looked less human and more like a broken doll.

Seeing his mother return with that pitiful yet haunting expression that twisted her once-beautiful features into something unrecognizable, something inside the boy quietly withered away. It died that day, never to return.

No matter what horrors awaited him in the future, nothing would ever compare to the darkness that consumed him in that moment.

He stood frozen for a long time, trembling as his mind went blank. Then, slowly, the faint light in his eyes faded, replaced by a cold and unfeeling emptiness.

That same rainy day, the boy approached his drunken father, who had passed out on the couch after yet another night of indulgence.

In the next instant, he rasied the knife and, with chilling resolve, plunged it into his father’s neck.

Nightingale closed his eyes as the memory resurfaced.

What happened afterward was little more than a blur, fragmented flashes pieced together through time. His mother’s trembling sobs, the wail of police sirens, the sterile chill of the courtroom, and the sight of himself standing in a black suit at the funeral.

Did he regret it?

Of course not. If he ever found himself in that same moment again, if fate offered him a second chance, he would have made the same choice in a heartbeat.

If it meant he could return his mother’s smile, then he would have done just that. But in the end, she... she...

’What a waste.’

He opened his eyes again, feeling more annoyed than sorrowful.

It was difficult. No, rather than difficult, it was shameful.

Banishing the memory back into the depths of his psyche, Nightingale turned his gaze toward Flaming Rose.

She had been silent for quite some time. Hidden behind that pristine mask, her expression was unreadable, and that irritated him more than he cared to admit. Still, he had a rough idea of what was going through her mind right at this particular moment.

She had probably already realized that he was the protagonist of said story.

But why had he told such a story to a complete stranger? Perhaps it was precisely because she was a complete stranger that he could tell this story.

There was an awkward silence before Nightingale spoke again.

"So, what do you think after hearing that story? Do you believe the child was wrong for what he did?"

Flaming Rose said nothing.

"Well, I suppose you wouldn’t know. Looking back, it must have been difficult. At the time, the child pleaded guilty, but the court went easy on him. They decided that a thirteen-year-old boy didn’t have the strength to stab an adult to death. I heard he was a rather thin boy, too. According to the investigation, it looked as though the father had tried to assault the boy and accidentally fell on top of the knife, stabbing himself between the ribs and piercing his heart. In the end, it was ruled as self-defense."

Silence lingered.

"Don’t you think it’s pitiful? The boy only wanted to save his mother, yet he failed at even that. She died two years later."

Still, she didn’t respond.

"It was a bit hard because of this. No, it was hard for a long time."

Flaming Rose looked as though she wanted to speak, but Nightingale showed no signs of stopping.

"He once had ambition. He once had a future. He once had a purpose. But all of it went to hell along with her. It was as if his time had completely stopped."

"..."

"At some point, he stopped caring about living and simply existed. Whether he lived or died didn’t matter anymore. I even heard rumors that he started doing reckless things like sleeping with married women, breaking the hearts of a few maidens too. Maybe he thought that if he pushed far enough, someone would finally come to beat him half to death or worse. Unfortunately, no one ever did."

Nightingale spoke in his usual calm, sardonic tone, as if he were telling someone else’s story instead of recalling the events that had defined his entire life.

His gaze drifted upward, to the darkened sky that shimmered faintly like a web of shifting computer codes. A quiet sense of longing passed through his eyes.

Then, Nightingale raised his hand toward the sky, as though trying to grasp an unreachable dream. Without turning to face the masked Caster, he spoke.

"Tell me something, Ms. Rose. If I descend all the way to the very bottom, slay every cursed and forbidden creature I come across, and completely conquer the Black Mire, do you think I’ll find what I’m looking for?"