Passion: Diaphonic Symphonia Novel - Chapter 68

But before Christoph could pick up his teacup again, the phone started ringing once more, and it rang for a long time without stopping.

“…It must be urgent.”

As Jeong Taeui pointed to the phone with a tilt of his head, annoyed by the ringing, Christoph rose from his seat with a displeased expression.

He walked towards the phone as if he was about to throw the receiver down as soon as he picked it up, and roughly grabbed the receiver. And the moment he said, “Hello,” in a blunt voice that sounded like ice dripping.

‘Christoph! What’s going on?! Why are you telling me not to come to Dresden? I’ve already finished preparing to go there, and I was just waiting for the day to leave! Oh, my God… Christoph! Christoph!! Say something! What on earth is going on?!’

The woman’s screaming voice echoed through the receiver.

And Jeong Taeui saw Christoph’s shoulders, holding the receiver, subtly stiffen.

As if he were turning into something inhuman.

So pale that no vitality could be felt from his face.

He grew cold. That face, which had been illuminated golden by the evening sun, cooled like the shadow of night.

Watching that sight directly before his eyes, Jeong Taeui’s heart also grew cold.

Jeong Taeui had never seen a person change like that before.

‘Mother,’ Christoph’s lips seemed to move. But perhaps it was merely a faint tremor. His lips trembled like a butterfly caught in a spiderweb, struggling.

‘How long… how long have I waited… to be able to go there, to Tarten, how much…!’

The voice on the phone was sobbing.

‘How could you do this, you know how I feel, how could you do this,’ the voice, faintly audible to Jeong Taeui through the receiver, sobbed in grief.

With a leaden face, Christoph occasionally managed to move his lips. But no words escaped them, only a slight movement as if he were trying to make an excuse.

‘Christoph, Christoph,’ a tearful voice called his name. It sounded like a ghost calling from deep underground.

She was Christoph’s mother.

The person who had created that delicate and beautiful man, that pale and lifeless statue.

‘Christoph, because of you, I was driven out of that place, and now, because of you, I can’t even go back there. Christoph, if it weren’t for you, if you weren’t the one I gave birth to…!’

“…—!”

Unconsciously, his body moved before his mind.

Jeong Taeui, regaining his senses belatedly, realized that he had somehow snatched the receiver from Christoph’s hand and hung up the phone.

But Christoph stood blankly like a ghost, unaware that the call had been disconnected, unaware that the receiver was no longer in his hand. As if he had been pulled by a ghost from underground and had himself become a ghost.

“…Chris.”

Jeong Taeui quietly called him. His voice seemed not to reach Christoph’s ears.

He neither answered, nor looked back, nor showed any sign of understanding, but merely stood there blankly.

“Chris.”

Jeong Taeui called him again. And carefully placed a hand on his arm. At that moment, Christoph flinched, as if shaking off the hand, and stepped aside.

It was then. The phone began to ring again, like a tearing scream.

Christoph shuddered and recoiled. He wanted to retreat, but his feet seemed stuck, moving back only slightly while standing.

Jeong Taeui pulled out the phone cord. The phone’s screaming stopped, and silence returned to the room.

“…Christoph.”

Again, there was no response.

Christoph, hunched over as if embracing himself, clutched his mouth with one hand.

He wondered if he was about to vomit, but after watching for a moment, Christoph showed no signs of throwing up. However, after a short while, the hand covering his mouth began to tremble intermittently. The tremor spread to his arm, then to his shoulder, and soon his entire body trembled faintly.

“Chris, Christoph.”

Jeong Taeui called him anxiously. He still seemed not to hear Jeong Taeui’s call, his gaze fixed, but at some point, he mumbled almost inaudibly.

“I hear sounds. Constantly in my ears, constantly…”

“Christoph. You don’t hear anything. I don’t hear anything. It’s quiet here. There’s no sound.”

Jeong Taeui spoke, but Christoph still didn’t look back. He continued to stare fixedly at some point in the air.

“It’s loud… Don’t shout like that, I can hear you even if you don’t scream, just be quiet…!”

Christoph was quietly shouting at someone other than Jeong Taeui, someone who was constantly screaming in his ears. But the voice escaping his pale lips was so faint that it was utterly insufficient to block the sound that Jeong Taeui couldn’t hear.

“Christoph!”

Jeong Taeui grabbed his arm again. This time, too, he flinched and tried to shake Jeong Taeui off. But Jeong Taeui didn’t let go. He tightened his grip on Christoph’s arm and wouldn’t let go, even when Christoph tried to shake him off.

After Christoph violently shook his arm two or three times and Jeong Taeui still didn’t let go, he finally looked at Jeong Taeui. His wide, clear blue eyes were fixed on Jeong Taeui.

“Let go.”

“Christoph, it’s okay.”

“Let go…!”

Christoph swung his fist at Jeong Taeui.

However, his arm, which was still creaking with every movement from the dislocated bone last night, didn’t exert much force and only managed to barely shake off Jeong Taeui’s hand.

Jeong Taeui, who had tried to hold onto Christoph until the end, accidentally lost his grip on his arm and stumbled back a few steps, tripping over the table. The teacups and other items on the table crashed down with him.

With a loud noise, the thin teacups and teapot shattered. Amidst the glass shards scattering around, Jeong Taeui, sitting on the floor after falling, looked at Christoph.

Christoph, startled again by the sound, flinched and recoiled, then finally looked at Jeong Taeui. At Jeong Taeui, not someone else.

His trembling lips, which had been about to call Jeong Taeui’s name, instead let out a faint whimper.

“It’s cold… My ears hurt. …My eardrums feel like they’re tearing. It’s loud.”

Repeating the same words like a child who knew only a few phrases, Christoph hugged himself. A faint hint of blood showed around his waist, as if a wound had opened.

“It’s loud, it’s loud,” Christoph said, tearing at his ears, then suddenly looked around as if he had thought of something. His eyes, which had been searching for something, fixed on the side table. A slender fountain pen lay there, its sharp tip exposed.

The moment Christoph took a step towards it, Jeong Taeui instinctively realized.

“Chris, don’t!”

He sprang to his feet. His hand, which had braced against the floor, was cut by a broken teacup, but he had no time to feel the pain.

By a hair’s breadth, just before Christoph could grasp the fountain pen and stab its sharp nib into his ear, Jeong Taeui narrowly grabbed his wrist.

“Stop it!”

Jeong Taeui forcibly snatched the fountain pen and threw it away. And then he punched Christoph.

With a dull thud, Christoph staggered back a few steps, then stopped when he hit the wall. And he stood there, pale, hugging himself with one arm, looking down at his feet.

“Chris, don’t do that, it’s okay. No one is saying anything to you. I’m talking to you right now.”

Jeong Taeui approached Christoph.

The distance between them was about three steps.

But he couldn’t get any closer. That was the maximum proximity Christoph would allow right now.

“I hear sounds.”

Christoph whispered. Only his lips moved, as if a statue were speaking.

“I hear sounds. They keep talking to me. Constantly. They talk in my ears, so blocking my ears is useless. I…”

His lips trembled hesitantly, then closed. Looking at his bluish, dry lips, Jeong Taeui asked.

“What kind of sound…?”

Suddenly, Christoph’s trembling stopped.

He lifted his head. His deep blue, clear eyes looked at Jeong Taeui. He mumbled abruptly, as if possessed, like a recorded mechanical doll.

“I am lacking.”

His breath caught.

In the silence where even breathing ceased, only a low, quiet voice lingered.

“I am empty somewhere. From birth, or perhaps even before, from some fundamental source, I am missing. Here? Or here…? …Missing. Empty and cannot be filled.”

Christoph slowly ran his hand from his chest to his head, touching his temples with his fingertips, then shook his head.

As he spoke, his voice slowly regained its warmth. By the time he finished speaking, his gaze no longer wandered as if he were possessed, nor did he speak in a monotone like a machine. He was just a little quieter than usual, and a little paler.

“…Chris.”

“So, this is natural.”

Christoph said quietly. With those words, he leaned against the wall, silently gazing at some point slightly below him in the air.

This was natural. This about himself. Leaving this place. Living like this. Existing like this.

It wasn’t resignation or surrender. Those emotions only arise when one has something to hope for in the first place.

It was simply natural. As if it had been structured and decided from the very beginning.

“Christoph. You,…”

Jeong Taeui wanted to say something but hesitated for a few seconds and then closed his mouth.

The words he needed to say didn’t come to mind. Even if he had something he wanted to say, it wasn’t his place. Any part of Christoph, it wasn’t Jeong Taeui’s place, and it couldn’t be his place.

‘Chris,’ he just quietly called his name once more.

He didn’t answer. He just silently kept his gaze down.

However, like a wave that had passed, the abnormal excitement and convulsions he had shown moments ago were gone. He was simply quietly still.

Then, at some point, he opened his mouth as if to himself.

“My mother loved Tarten. She adored everything the name Tarten represented. Both visible and invisible. …That’s why my mother loved Richard. Like her own son. Because she already knew he would become the master of Tarten.”

Each word was spaced out, connected as if broken.

“For a while after he was chosen as a successor candidate, she paid attention to me, but once she decided it would be difficult for me to inherit Tarten, I became… the biggest obstacle to Richard, whom my mother loved.”

Even that was natural. As if it were natural, no matter what anyone thought of him.

And yet. Nevertheless.

“Still, I…”

“…Christoph.”

Christoph closed his mouth. The words that should have followed never came, even after a long wait. They melted back into Christoph’s body.

“My head hurts. I need to take some medicine.”

Christoph lifted his head. And he walked to the drawer where he kept his medicine bottle.

His languid yet clear gait and expression were already no different from usual.

He was muttering softly, “It’s loud, my ears hurt,” and frowning, but now he was back to his usual self. As if, having crossed a certain threshold of pain, he had found peace instead.

Christoph poured a handful of white pills onto his palm. Without counting, he poured the overflowing pills into his mouth all at once. Chewing the pills without water, he headed for the bed.

“I’m going to rest, so leave now.”

“Chris.”

There was no answer.

Christoph, with his back turned, untied his tie and draped it carelessly over the back of a chair, then unbuttoned his cuffs.

Jeong Taeui watched him for a moment, then sighed and turned away. He knew he couldn’t say anything to him now, and that it wasn’t his place.

As Jeong Taeui heavily dragged his feet, caught by hesitation, and reached the door.

There was a knock on the door.

Beyond the wooden door, where Jeong Taeui was about to grab the doorknob, someone was knocking.

A slow, gentle sound.

Jeong Taeui hesitated for a moment. He looked back, and Christoph was still turned away, as if he hadn’t heard the sound—or didn’t intend to hear it.

“…”

However, he couldn’t ignore the person standing beyond the unlocked door indefinitely, and Jeong Taeui had to leave this room.

Half in response to the knock, half to leave the room, Jeong Taeui opened the door. And he faced the person standing outside.

“…!”

“Hmm…? Ah, it’s you. Were you with Christoph?”

A man about half a span shorter than Jeong Taeui stood at the door.

Seeing the man who recognized him with a generous smile, Jeong Taeui bowed slightly and stepped back.

It was the elder.