Codename Anastasia Novel (End) - Chapter 41

With the noise pollution gone, peace finally arrived. He walked to the window and watched Vladimir, fuming, get into his car. His playful smile quickly faded.

He slowly turned and surveyed the empty office. The clock on the wall indicated it was still morning.

“Boring, boring,” he muttered to himself. Time seemed to drag on unusually slowly.

The rattling window, which had been constantly shaking, suddenly swung open. The curtain billowed fiercely in the incoming wind. In his sleep, he pulled the blanket up to his neck and hunched his shoulders. But he couldn’t escape the cold that seeped deep into his flesh. If he stayed asleep like this, he felt he’d be found dead in the morning. So, he grudgingly overcame his annoyance and slowly got up.

As his feet touched the floor, his entire body ached. He thought he had a rather good pain tolerance, but it seemed he was mistaken. During his unconsciousness, his stamina had plummeted, and it had taken quite a long time to recover to even this extent. He trudged to the window and closed the fully open pane. Only then did the biting wind cease. His shoulders instinctively shivered.

Half-asleep, he returned to the bed. The mattress was hard, and the blanket was too short, barely covering his whole body even when he curled up as much as possible. Yet, despite being a single room, the facilities were terribly poor. He vowed to complain properly to headquarters once he returned safely.

Since he was up, he quenched his thirst and lay down again. For now, he wanted to rest deeply, without thinking about anything. He closed his eyes to sleep, but suddenly his hair fluttered. At first, he thought it was due to the steam from the humidifier. But gradually, everything from his hair to his hospital gown, the IV tube, and the blanket began to intensely flap.

He had definitely closed the window, hadn’t he? He opened his eyelids with a puzzled expression.

‘……!’

He started up, startled. The window, which he had firmly closed, had somehow opened again. Someone’s silhouette was visible through the fluttering curtains. Even though he couldn’t see the face, he felt he knew who it was. His heart sank. All the pulses in his body pounded fiercely, as if on cue.

‘Is this all your burrow is?’

He grinned. His long legs easily stepped over the windowsill. Kwon Taekjoo’s hospital room was on the fourth floor, but that didn’t seem to be an issue for him. He parted the curtains and strode in. His peculiar smiling face was too terrifying. He instinctively backed away. But soon, the cold, hard wall met his back. There was nowhere to retreat.

‘H-how… how did you get here, ugh…!’

His voice, bursting out like a seizure, was crushed. It was because he had suddenly reached out and squeezed his neck. For some reason, his body seemed to have grown several times larger. The strength choking his windpipe was monstrous. His eyeballs bulged, unable to withstand the pressure, and his mouth gaped open. He struggled to escape his grip. He didn’t budge. He merely swayed with a leisurely tone.

‘I got bored after abandoning my toy, you know? As expected, it seems cleaner to just finish things cleanly.’

His eyes, licking his dry lips and looking down at Kwon Taekjoo, were bizarre. His quietly glistening pupils were like those of a gigantic reptile. He barely kept his eyelids open, which kept wanting to close due to lack of breath. A reddish tinge was spreading around his eyes. It was a desire. A sign of burning lust.

‘We’ve grown quite fond of each other, so I should say goodbye, shouldn’t I?’

The moment he sensed danger, his body spun around. The hand that had been choking his neck unceremoniously pressed down on the back of his neck. His head sank helplessly deep into the pillow. Without realizing it, his lower body felt loose. As he rummaged through his stiffened buttocks, something hot and hard pressed firmly against him. He thrashed desperately.

‘Stop it! I’ve had enough of rape, you bastard!’

When he screamed, filled with malice, he tilted his head. He even sneered, rubbing his heated rod against his gluteal cleft.

‘Is that what you call rape? You liked it too, didn’t you? After cumming so many times.’

Along with a cold sneer, an immense pressure crushed up his spine. His lungs and intestines were mercilessly squashed. He screamed in terrible agony. Knowing it was useless for anyone to come, he thrashed as if for anyone to hear.

However, the louder he raised his voice, the more it drowned out. Like crying out in deep water, or sinking in a dense swamp. No one heard him. No one came to help. A profound sense of isolation washed over him.

“…Gasp!”

He opened his eyes, taking a sharp breath. He saw the ceiling, which was now quite familiar. All his breathing holes suddenly opened, and the hair on his body stood on end. With trembling hands, he fumbled at the floor. He felt a familiar texture. He was still on the hospital bed. He frantically looked at the window, which was tightly shut.

Was it a dream? He lay there blankly, then felt every part of his body. Except for a dull ache, there was no particular pain. The feeling of being choked was also gone.

He sighed, wiping the sweat from his face. Of all dreams to have, why such a nightmare?

After a long while, he sat up. Sweat beads on his face dripped down. His throat was bone dry from how heavily he had been breathing. His mood instantly sank. His head felt heavy too. He felt like he needed a shower.

Kwon Taekjoo, who was stepping out of bed, then paused. The center of his blanket stood erect. No way. He snatched up the blanket. Sure enough, his thin front was bulging as if it would burst.

Damn it. Damn it, damn it.

He sprang from the bed and rushed into the bathroom. Without even taking off his clothes, he just turned on the shower. The rushing water cooled his uncontrollably aroused body.

He’s crazy. He must be truly crazy. Was it possible to get an erection while having such a nightmare? It wasn’t just once or twice. If it had only been today, he could rationalize it as his body reacting strangely to fear. But there was no excuse for the repeatedly occurring bizarre phenomena.

In self-disgust, he bashed his head against the wall. The drug Zhenya had injected before he lost consciousness was clearly not a simple sedative. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be getting erections at odd times.

Zhenya’s face automatically came to mind. That face he saw in his dream, that cold sneer, played vividly in his mind. His flushed fist clenched tightly in the cold water.

Perhaps, as Salman said, it was fortunate that he had even survived. He knew he couldn’t stand against Zhenya. Setting aside his wealth and power, he was simply outmatched in absolute strength. Knowing all this, it brought no comfort. He felt like he would burst with rage if things continued like this.

Even in his heated state, a direct confrontation seemed reckless. He couldn’t just barge in on Zhenya and punch him while still in this condition. The hotter his heart grew, the colder his head needed to be. Hasty decisions would only ruin things.

Was there no way to screw him over? A way to truly hit back at a man who was both strong and exceptionally brilliant.

Kwon Taekjoo, wracking his brain, suddenly went blank. As he continued to think, a strong sense of déjà vu brought back a past memory.

‘…He’s strong, and nothing can kill him.’

It was a story he had heard recently. Who had said that?

‘There’s always one character that appears in Russian folk tales: Koschei the Deathless.’

It was Zhenya. That was definitely a story he had told him. Remembering the speaker naturally brought to mind the situation in which the story had come up. His face flushed intensely at the excessively vivid memory.

He shook his head to clear away the distracting thoughts and then carefully reviewed what he had said.

‘Of course, Koschei also has a weakness. Only Koschei himself knows it.’

What else did he say?

‘In the end, he’s always killed by the hero. He foolishly blabs his weakness, seduced by beauty.’

He had added that too.

‘You’re definitely not a beauty, but I’ll tell you. Koschei’s weakness.’

The weakness of the immortal.

Kwon Taekjoo went back further to examine the context in which that topic had arisen. Before mentioning Koschei, he had talked about Anastasia, the Russian princess. Before that, he had confessed that the weapon Kwon Taekjoo had been searching for, ‘Anastasia,’ had failed in its development. The non-existent Anastasia, Anna Anderson who had impersonated the last princess, and the weakness of Koschei the Deathless. Each story, which he had considered to have no special connection, began to link up little by little in his mind.

After the failure of ‘Anastasia’ production, everyone involved in its development was massacred. But the Bogdanov family remained unharmed. Why were they not purged? And did ‘Anastasia’, once praised as an unprecedented weapon of mass destruction, truly disappear without a trace, forever? Or does it, like the surviving Bogdanov family, still exist somewhere, in some form?

‘Anastasia? I don’t know why you’re looking for that from me.’

When he met Boris of ‘Solntsev,’ he reacted as if he had no idea. He had also glanced at Zhenya with a peculiar smile. A rather meaningful look had passed between the two. What was it? What had Kwon Taekjoo been missing all along? Something seemed to be on the tip of his tongue.

He turned off the noisy shower. Then, previous memories surged like mushrooms after rain, filling his now quiet mind.

‘Psikh Bogdanov. In Russia, he’s a man like a Nuke.’

‘There’s a reason he’s called ‘the Nuke.’‘

Nuke.

A man like a nuke.

A man who is a nuke himself.

As his thoughts progressed step by step, his eyes widened. Something powerfully pierced his mind. Why hadn’t he considered it?

The darkest place is often under the lamp. The item desperately sought is often found right before one’s eyes. That truth might, perhaps, hold true this time as well. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he burst out of the bathroom.

The place Kwon Taekjoo found was a library in Irkutsk. The glances from people, eyeing the foreigner in hospital attire, were sharp. He didn’t mind. He had worried that the books in the old facility would be too few or only old editions, but unexpectedly, the interior was equipped with quality materials.

He accessed the internet through a public computer for information search. The speed was not as fast as he had hoped, requiring patience. He finally clicked on satellite photos on the portal site. The address he entered into the search bar was the Bogdanov mansion in Moscow.

After waiting for a while longer, a photo appeared. It was a picture of the Bogdanov mansion and its surrounding streets. He zoomed in as much as possible. Although it was difficult to identify precisely due to the resolution, he could distinguish the main building, the outer garden, the central garden, and the front gate. He traced the blurry photo, muttering to himself.

“A castle where no one lives, a tree as old as Koschei, a jewel box to the south, and inside it smaller jewel boxes…”

Suddenly, his eyes widened further. His heart pounded rapidly. It might not be. There was also a good chance it was a stretch. It could just be a terrible coincidence that the circumstances fit. He needed to confirm it more definitively.

He moved away from the PC and headed to the bookshelves. He quickly passed several shelves and stopped at the architecture section. He pulled out all the materials related to residential styles, focusing on recent publications. Then, he skimmed through the indexes of the selected books. He again sifted out only those that mentioned the Bogdanov mansion.

He was left with about five or six books. He opened the pages indicated in the index. Conveniently, there were detailed descriptions of the Bogdanov mansion’s photos, its architectural style, the designer, and the materials used in its construction.

The appearance of the mansion in the photos varied. Some had lush green backgrounds, while others showed a stark winter landscape with bare branches. One book even published a photo taken at night, explaining the localized lighting around the building.

“……!”

He repeatedly looked at those photos, then paused. He wondered if it was a delusion, but even after re-checking, it was unmistakable. Regardless of when the photo was taken or from what angle, one of the countless rooms in the mansion always had a light on. And the curtains were always drawn back.

Found it. Koschei’s heart.